Lucky 7s

Over at Ban Ban Ton Ton Dr. Rob gave over most of January's posts to celebrations of music from 2025. Rob is based in Japan where 7 is considered to be a lucky number. He asked Ban Ban Ton Ton contributors, friends and musicians to submit their Lucky 7s of 2025, starting at the tail end of December with Mark Barrott, and then saw in the new year with the Chinese Year of the Horse. 

When I Was On Horseback

Lunar Dunes in 2007, sitar driven space rock for the Year of the Horse.

Throughout January Rob published Lucky 7s from a slew of Bagging Area adjacent people including Richard Norris, Sean Johnston, Deeply Armed, Davie Miller of Fini Tribe and Jason Boardman as well as Rob's own selections themed into Balearic, techno, reggae and dub, and rock (guitars really rather than rock). Rob asked the five of us in The Flightpath Estate if we wanted to contribute our own Lucky 7s. 

My Lucky 7 got their own post, six records from 2025 that saddled my horse and one from 1989 (in tribute to Mani). You can find that post here. 

Martin, Dan and Mark all sent in their favorites from 2025, playing fast and loose with the concept of 7 in some cases- Martin opens the post with 7 compilations from last year, Mark compiles his favourites including Crooked Man, 10:40, Psychemagick, Death In Vegas, Hugo Nicolson and the Johnny Halifax Invocation while Dan brings in his 7 including Maria Somerville, Sydney Minsky Sargeant and Daniel Avery. You can read that here. 

Rob asked me if I'd also like to contribute a Lucky 7 gigs post. I went to sixteen gigs in 2025 and narrowing them down to seven highlights was tough but you can find my Lucky 7 gigs here with reports of memorable evenings of live music in the company of Mercury Rev, Red Snapper, Shack, The Sabres Of Paradise (twice), Iggy Pop, Working Men's Club and The Charlatans, as seen at a variety of venues, large and small. Just thinking about Iggy Pop rocking the Victoria Warehouse, shirtless and wild at the age of 78, Sabres dubbing out The White Hotel and Mercury Rev's dreamy excursion into the Blade Runner soundtrack gives me a slight shiver, the memories still quite vivid and alive- and just listening to this Iggy and The Stooges blast of raw power from 1973 brings it all back. 

Raw Power

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

While searching through my music folders and files recently I was struck by the number of songs I had that have the word 'dream' or 'dreams' in the title. A rich source of songwriting inspiration. They say hearing about other people's dreams is really boring but I don't think that's always they case. My own dreams have become really vivid and at times quite disturbing in the three years since Isaac died (and also since I started taking statins for high cholesterol a year and a half ago). Waking up having dreamed of Isaac, him being there and talking to me, is always a startling way to start the day (or the middle of the night). It takes a moment for me to realise it was a dream and that he's not there. Sometimes that half asleep- half awake state can be really pleasant and attempting to go back to sleep to go back into a nice dream is something that I'm sure lots of us do. 

Whatever the reason for dreaming, the brain/ consciousness sifting through stuff and pulling things from the dim and distant past into our sleeping state along with bizarre and random, surreal situations, is a rich vein of inspiration for songwriters- both musically and lyrically. Ambient music often seems like an attempt to make music that can soundtrack dreams. The blur and fuzz of shoegaze and psychedelia likewise. As all this percolated through my head on the road coming home from work one evening last week it seemed that a dreams mix was in order. 

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

• Kevin McCormick & David Horridge: Glass Dream
• Kim Gordon: Dream Dollar
• Spatial Awareness: Dream Food (SA Dub)
• Suicide: Dream Baby Dream (Single Version)
• Lunar Dunes: Pharaoh's Dream
• Ride: Dreams Burn Down
• Mark Peters: Red Sunset Dreams
• Sheer: Mezcal Dream
• Spirea X: Chlorine Dream
• Blade Runner Soundtrack: Deckard's Dream

Kevin McCormick is a Mancunian guitarist who released several albums of minimal instrumental music in the early 80s. He met bassist David Horridge in the late 70s and in 1982 they recorded Light Patterns, a minimal, gently psychedelic/ ambient album. Largely ignored, the album and others by Kevin were re- released in 2021. Last year Kevin released a new album- Passing Clouds- which is lovely and can be found at Bandcamp. 

Kim Gordon's solo album from last year, The Collective, passed me by a bit but it's a powerful piece of work, a jolt of electricity, hip hop drums, noise and Kim's NY blank cool. 

Spatial Awareness released Dream Food as an EP last year, an electronic trippy delight with this dub as a dreamy counterpoint. 

Suicide's Dream Baby Dream is one of those songs, an all timer. It came out as a single in 1979, a repetitive synth, drum machine and vocal blur of brilliance, a song lost in its own state of warm, blissful ignorance, the synth patterns circling endlessly. A track that could be loped for an hour and not outstay its welcome. 

Lunar Dunes' Galaxsea originally came out in 2011, post- jazz, post- punk, dubby global tracks 'for truth seekers and interplanetary vacationers'. The band included former members of Cornershop and Transglobal Underground and took the 1960s and 70s West German bands as their inspiration. Pharoah's Dream is at the centre of Galaxsea and rattles along in a cosmische and future jazz way.

Dreams Burn Down was on Ride's 1990 debut album Nowhere, a shoegaze classic, crunching FX guitars, slow motion drums and typically youthful lyrics about lost or unrequited love. Live Dreams Burn Down is massive, a wall of sound and sensation. 

Mark Peters is a guitarist from Wigan. His solo albums, 2017's Innerland and 2022's Red Sunset Dreams, are big Bagging Area favourites. The title track of the second is a rippling ambient instrumental, the wide open spaces of the American West crossed with north west England psychedelia. 

Sheer is Sheer Taft who in 1990 made one of the era's best wobbly Balearic dance records, the mighty Cascades. In 2022 Sheer Taft, now residing in Spain rather than Glasgow, made a follow up, an album called ...And Then There Were Four, a Spaghetti Western album with Andrew Innes and the late Martin Duffy from Primal Scream on board.

Jim Beattie was a founder member of Primal Scream, leaving to form Spirea X who released an album in 1991, Fireblade Skies. The debut release was a single the year before, Chlorine Dream, guitars from The Byrds, attitude from Glasgow, drums and vocals from 1990. 

An expanded, full length version of the Blade Runner soundtrack, The Esper Edition, was unofficially released and has done the rounds as a bootleg for years. The film deals with all sorts of themes dreams being one of them. Deckard's Dream is one minute and ten seconds of Vangelis/ ambient sound. In the film Deckard dreams of a unicorn, the meaning of which has been argued about since the film's release in 1982. 

Monday's Long Song

I've been playing catch up recently with a group called Lunar Dunes- they had a track on Collen Cosmo Murphy's Balearic Breakfast 2 compilation, released in June 2023. A friend then tipped me off to two albums by them, From Above (from 2007) and Galaxsea (from 2011). They formed in West London with members coming from Cornershop, Transglobal Underground and Natacha Atlas's band, a three piece that expanded to become a six piece inspired by the cosmische sounds of West Germany in the 1960s and 70s, making music that circles around space rock, ambient, dub, global and post- jazz. 

Off World Beacon was the closing track on Galaxsea. It fades in slowly with shakers and sighs, and a guitar line picking out some sparkles. A piano joins in, the notes played high up with the right hand, all very weightless and floaty. Gradually Off World Beacon gathers pace with drums and more instruments, the guitar becoming more gnarly, a voice way off in the distance, more intensity, more space rock, on and on for over seven minutes.

Off World Beacon

V.A. Saturday

Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy is a long standing DJ, radio host and presenter. She has compiled two compilations for Heavenly Records, Balearic Breakfast and the follow up Balearic Breakfast 2. The first was released in June 2022 and has long since sold out- second hand vinyl copies are currently well into three figures at Discogs. Balearic Breakfast finds the Balearic spirit wherever Colleen sees it- dance music, 80s electronic synth pop, deep house, ambient. The album starts with Joan Bibiloni, a very calming and chilled opener and then heads into Cantoma territory (Phil Mison, Cantoma's main man, is a Ibizan veteran). Linkwood Family, Mildlife, Lady Blackbird and Andrew Weatherall's Asphodells all show up before the album ends with first Caoifhionn Rose and then Mike Salta and Marty Mortale. At that point, all that's left to do is to go back to the beginning, with Joan Bibiloni and the ambient burblings and dreamlike state of Sa Fosc...

Sa Fosc

Balearic Breakfast 2 followed twelve months in June 2023, more of the same, a wonderfully selection of tracks from the corners of the musical world, the rarely known and lesser heard, a tracklist that includes Mental Remedy, Manolo's gorgeous Amalfi Drive, Gallo, Residentes Balearicos, Hard Feelings, Midlake and Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve, Lunar Dunes and Dip In The Pool. It's impossible to pick a best or favourite- they all work so well in slightly different ways. Try Lunar Dunes and the self- descriptive Moon Bathing. 

Moon Bathing