Forty Minutes Of January And February Songs

A month ago I had the idea that at the end of January I'd put together a January mix, songs with January in the title or lyrics, and then maybe repeat throughout the rest of the months of the year. For one reason and another it didn't happen and now it's February. No problem, I thought, I'll just roll January and February together, and do that. It turns out I have not very many January songs and even fewer February ones- the only February songs I could find were Lou Reed's Xmas In February and Billy Bragg's 14th Of February and neither really fitted with the vibe I started the mix with. I extended February's reach into Valentine's Day and that, no surprise, made it much easier. All of which is a long winded way of saying here's a forty minute mix of songs about January and February. 

Forty Minutes Of January And February Songs

• The Orb: Perpetual Dawn (January Mix 3)
• M- Paths: January Song
• The Durutti Column: Requiem For A Father
• My Bloody Valentine: Soon
• Lizzy Mercier Descloux: My Funny Valentine
• Charlotte Gainsbourg: Deadly Valentine
• New Order: 1963
• Half Man Half Biscuit: Epiphany (Peel Session)

Perpetual Dawn is an Orb classic, remixed twice by Andrew Weatherall in fine style. For their album Aubrey Mixes: The Ultraworld Excursions, released and deleted on the same day in 1991 The Orb remixed songs from Beyond The Ultraworld, finding new shapes and sounds for seven essential early Orb tracks including the January Mix 3 version of Perpetual Dawn- early 90s ambient house at its best.

M- Paths release ambient/ electronic music, sometimes for Mighty Force and sometimes on their own label. Now down to the core figure of Marcus Farley, who also records as Reverb Delay, this track came out a year ago, at the start of January 2025, an archival M- Paths recording for the new year.

Tony Wilson, TV presenter and founder of Factory Records, was also from 1978 the manager and friend of Vini Reilly. When the original band version of The Durutti Column split in 1978 Wilson decided that the future for Durutti was Vini Reilly and whoever else was around but that Reilly was such a talent that he should make Durutti Column his own. Wilson also decided that he would put all Durutti Column records out on Factory and that he would manage DC/ Vini along with fellow Factory founder Alan Erasmus. Wilson formed a management company on the 24th January 1978 and called it The Movement Of The 24th January, borrowing the name from the Situationist students who formed their own International Movement on 22nd March at Nanterre University 1968 (Mouvement 22 du Mars). Here is a copy of the letterhead Wilson designed for his company...

Requiem For A Father is from The Return Of The Durutti Column, the debut album released in January 1980, Vini's guitar playing and Martin Hannett's echo and delay devices and synths in perfect harmony, Vini playing a song for his Dad and Hannett making a rhythm out of a digital machine that sounds like a cat purring close up. 

My Bloody Valentine have been never very far away this year to date, their songs soundtracking much of January 2026. Soon is from Loveless in 1991, a track that did things with guitars that genuinely hadn't really been done before. Kevin Shields' guitars following Vini Reilly's is exactly where my head is at right now. 

Valentine's Day is less than a week away lovebirds. 

Lizzy Mercier Descloux was a French punk, friends with Patti Smith and Richard Hell, published Rock News and moved to New York where she set up ZE records with her partner Michael Esteban. Lizzy released several albums, minimalist punk/ No Wave, wrote poetry and painted, retired to Corsica to write books and lived a full and varied life. She died in 2004. Her cover of My Funny Valentine, the Hart and Rogers song, is from her 1986 album One For The Soul which had Chet Baker guesting on some of the tracks including this one. 

Sticking with French artists, Charlotte Gainsbourg released Rest in 2017, her fifth solo album and one that dealt with the death of her father Serge and alcohol addiction. Deadly Valentine was a single and is dramatic synth pop with a lively throbbing bassline and feathery vocals.

1963 is from the B-side to 1987's New Order single True Faith, a giant in their back catalogue. 1963 could have been a single in its own right. Bernard's lyrics are peculiar/ awful (delete according to taste). 'It was January/ 1963/ When Johnny came home with a gift for me'. Bernard once spun a line that the song was about JFK and Marilyn Monroe arranging for Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot Jackie Kennedy so they could get together but Oswald shooting the wrong person. Bernard may not have been entirely serious- Marilyn died in 1962 so at the very least his chronology's off. Producer Stephen Hague thought it was about domestic abuse. Whatever the lyrics deal with, the music is New Order 1987 magnificence.

Half Man Half Biscuit recorded Epiphany for a Peel Session. It starts out with Nigel Blackwell narrating a chance occurrence on a Friday in July that then unfolds in surreal Blackwell style taking in Dictionary Corner, black apes gibbering on dark lawns, a lime Dyson, a date in Parbold (near Wigan), a crossed telephone line, a sickly foal, a straggle haired girl called Karen Henderson, songs recorded for a a hospice, bus outings, Billing Aquadrome and busking at Embankment Tube before concluding 'January the 6th. Epiphany'. 

Spaced In

Mighty Force continue to put out top quality releases, a slew of them throughout the year and with no signs of letting up just because it's December and Christmas is coming. The latest is five new tracks from M- Paths, the work of Marcus Farley, an EP called Emotivated. The title track- Emotivated (Assemblage Mix)- is a beauty, rippling melodies, whooshes, synth arpeggios and the voice of JFK, the optimism of the early 60s and the space race as an act of altruism.

On A Mission belches in with a synth bass burp and skippy drums, a change of tone and pace, a robotic voice- darker and tougher. Shapes And Patterns mines the techno seam further, busy hi hats and synths that pan across the mix, rapid fire drums. Soaring In Ambience is true to its title, slowing down and blissing out, clouds of space dust passing by, many, many miles away. The EP closes with Tranquility Bass, drones and Kennedy again, chopped up and distorted, along with Apollo mission control. Eventually slo mo drums come in, that push on like pistons. 

Emotivated is at Mighty Force's Bandcamp and well worth your time and money. 

In November Mighty Force released the latest album by Virgo (Yasutaka Sato), a twelve track opus called Collision With Chronos. It's an album rides the space waves too, sci fi techno/ electonica, atmospheric synths and crunchy drums. Decadence is the shortest track on it, a sub- three minute interstellar burst of synths, minimal drums, FX and piano and rather lovely- especially when an angelic choir emerges through the skies. 

The whole album is recommended, as ever with Mighty Force, and you can find it here. 

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I had an idea that I would do a Sunday mix of all those short electronic/ ambient tracks that appear on albums, the intros and outros, the bridging tracks, found sounds, brief ambient pieces and short one minute ideas that never got worked up into a full track but that the artist clearly liked. I realised that to make it forty minutes long would require at least twenty tracks and time constraints this week meant that I started the mix but haven't got anywhere near forty minutes- it's just shy of twenty one minutes, fourteen tracks from a variety of sources. I need to give it more thought really and gather together some more and either do a part two or expand this one out but in the meantime, here it is...

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I decided early on that two minutes was the cut off (although there are a couple here which just tip over that time). I was going to go totally beatless but that didn't work out. It's almost completely without vocals too. I wasn't sure it all worked but playing it back last night I was pretty happy with it. An expanded edition/ part two is definitely on the cards. 

• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Gospel Oak FX)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No. 1
• Four Tet: This Is For You
• Sewell And The Gong: MYND
• The Orb: Snowbow
• Ultramarine: A Year From Monday
• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Hi- Tech)
• M- Paths: Calm
• Polypores: Mystery Energy Score
• Aphex Twin: Avril 14th (reversed music not audio)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Interludio
• Daniel Avery: First Light
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Intro
• Andrew Weatherall: Intro

A Man Called Adam's Easter Song is one of their best, a triumphant piece of optimsitc, life affirming Balearica. In 2017 the duo put out a special edition on Bandcamp to celebrate the song's 20th birthday which came with two new very short versions, the found sound intro of Gospel Oak FX and the ambient with beats of Hi- Tech. Both appear on this mix. 

In 2000 Two Lone Swordsmen released their electronic triple disc opus Tiny Reminders, Weatherall and Tenniswood's pursuit of  techno/ bass purism followed through to its end. Each of the three disc opened with a burst of static/ quiet noise called Tiny Reminder and numbered 1, 2 and 3. 

Four Tet's Sixteen Ocean's was a 2020 highlight, three sides of vinyl that soundtracked those early days of lockdown in March/ April 2020 of that year. This Is For You is one of five short tracks on it- the others are Hi Hello, ISTM, 1993 Band Practice and Bubbles At Overlook 25th March 2019- any/ all of which I was going to include here and didn't.

Sewell And The Gong's Patron Saint Of Elswhere is one of my favourite albums of 2025, a Balearic  folk/ motorik beauty with MYND a short one minute fourteen seconds of sound sandwiched between much longer excursions. 

The Orb tend to do long tracks. Snowbow is from 2005's Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt, an album I only found recently and have been enjoying. Snowbow is the closing track, two minutes and fourteen seconds.

A Year From Monday gave me the idea for this mix. It's on an album of Ultramarine recordings from 1997/ 8 that sat unreleased until this year. I posted it a few Monday's ago and listening to it in the car I wondered how it would work with a load of other very short tracks around it. 

M- Paths' Calm was on their album Hope, released on Mighty Force in 2023, a rippling melody line and drums. 

Polypores released an album in June, Cosmically A Shambles. I posted a song from it on Friday. The slightly hyperactive and bleepy Mystery Energy Score is in the middle of the album and this mix. I couldn't decide if its energy was a good change of pace or not and nearly took it out. In the end I thought it just about worked.

Aphex Twin's Avril 14th is his most streamed track, a Satie like piano piece smothered in reverb. THis version, the music reversed not audio version, is from user18081971's Soundcloud page, widely acknowledged to be Richard D James' outlet for all manner of unreleased music. 

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Interludio is from Dot, an EP from January this year, six tracks recorded while caring for a young baby, Diogo. 

First Light is the opening track on Daniel Avery's Song For Alpha, a 2018 album that was the start of a run of outstanding albums that isn't over yet. One minute and forty seconds of wodnerful ambient drones. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's album Lunga came out last week, an autumn 2025 highlight. Intro is the opening track (obviously), a short ambient piece that eases us into Lunga. And out of this mix.

Andrew Weatherall's Intro was the very short first track on Convenanza. 'I seem to have got in with the wrong crowd', the voice says, setting Andrew's stall out. 

Midnight Echoes And American Questions

Out on Exeter's Mighty Force label, the home of much high quality electronic music in recent years, is this ten track album from J- Lower. The album is packed with deep, dynamic tracks. It opens in fine style with this one, String Theory, a punchy and powerful acid track that never stops giving. 

Vortex is one I keep going back too, more 303 action, busy drum pattern, a squelchy bottom end, the distinctive tink of the electronic cowbell and a mangled snatch of vocal. You can listen and buy here.

M- Paths released two albums on Mighty Force and also have a Bandcamp page adorned with electronic music, not just the optimistic ambient- techno of M- Paths but also Reverb Delay's heavy duty dub techno and more recently a track by a third outfit, Mars Geographical. America, What Have You Done! came out last week, an eight minute reaction to the election of Donald Trump and his first few weeks in office which have upended the international order, sold Ukraine down the river in order to make friends with Putin's Russia (appeasement has some powerful messages for us when the history of the 20th century is taken in to account) and sewn chaos and distrust internationally. America, What Have You Done! samples Trump at the start and then powers into a rolling, throbbing acid thumper with a message in the middle. Get it free/ name your price here. 

M- Paths By Name, Empaths By Nature

M- Paths released two albums on Exeter's Mighty Force, a label reborn after a post- 1999 hiatus. Label boss Mark Darby released the first Aphex Twin 12" and pulled together an array of talent for the second life of the label, including M- Paths and Reverb Delay. Those two outfits are two different sides of producer and DJ Marcus Farley, M- Paths an optimistic ambient/ techno, electronic side (M- Paths by name, empaths by nature is the tagline) and Reverb Delay a heavier dub techno affair, inspired by Basic Channel and the techno sounds of Detroit. Marcus has set up a Bandcamp page called M- Paths Recordings to release new tracks and experimental sounds throughout 2025, a calendar of releases.

I posted January's Shapes And Patterns at the end of last year here. February's release, Love Is On Your Side, came out yesterday, an off kilter track with a naggingly superb topline and the ghost of backing vocals drifting by. It breaks down and the female voice sings 'let your heart be your guide', before the rhythm kicks back in, synths and spring noises joined by strings. Reverb Delay's February release, Super Being is Reverb Delay in Dub, an excursion in echo and space that sounds like it comes from offworld. 

We started communicating via messenger and email, mainly musical tip offs and recommends and also our mutual despair at the current state of Manchester United Football Club, but also realised we'd both grown up in/ around Manchester, shopped in the same record shops and probably attended the same gigs and nights. Between us the idea for an interview came up and following a bit of back and forth and a lengthy email trail, this is the result...

Adam: What's your background?

Marcus: I really do believe that our environment moulds the music we like and the music we make.  I was born in Wandsworth in 1970.  As a baby my parents moved to the Peak District, near Macclesfield.  Our nearest city was Manchester and I spent my youth in Affleck’s Palace, Piccadilly Records and Eastern Bloc and was a regular at the indie nights at the Ritz and 42nd Street. 

There was something about the North, particularly Macclesfield, Manchester and Salford in the 1980s.  These were not the thriving towns and cities we see now, they were gloomy and gritty and had an edge. I agree with Tony Wilson when he famously said of my favourite band, that Joy Division is the sound of Manchester.  It is also the sound of Macclesfield, with Ian Curtis and Stephen Morris growing up there and attending King’s School like I did. 

Adam: What's your sound? Where does it come from?

Marcus: As Victor Hugo said, 'Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.' It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but I think it’s the sound of uplifting melancholia- music and lyrics that make you feel better, despite being about heartache or malaise. Love will Tear us Apart is a good example - heart wrenching lyrics, yet the music is uplifting, and no matter how bad things may have been, Ian was in a far more terrible place, and by default, that lifts you out of your own gloom. I took my daughter to see the mural of Ian on the main shopping street in Macclesfield recently. She's a fan, too. It was a really good experience, as I felt so proud of Ian, and the town I grew up in.  

Which is a long way of saying that I think you can hear Joy Division's influence in M-Paths. You can also hear 4AD bands like Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, and two of my musical heroes, Talk Talk (particularly for the ambient parts of their last 3 studio Albums and Mark Hollis’ solo album), and Susumu Yokota (particularly his Sakura, Boy and Tree and Grinning Cat albums).  

Adam: I'd never heard any of Susuma's music before and can now thoroughly recommend Sakura, an ambient album released a quarter of a century ago and filled with a certain kind of timeless beauty. Listen to Sakura here. 

Adam: What came next? 

Marcus: I have a Philosophy Degree. In my early 20s I went to Birmingham to do social work training- and this is the essence of M-Paths by Name, Empaths by nature, as I have been a social worker for 26 years. 

Like a lot of people, it was The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and Weatherall’s work on Screamadelica that got me interested in electronic dance music. Then the pastoral tones of Aphex Twin really drew me into that world.  But when I moved to Birmingham, I discovered the newly formed House Of God techno night. Birmingham is similar in a way to Detroit, a then dying and now dead car industry with large industrial wastelands. The DJ and producer Surgeon, and the producers Regis and Female developed what we now call Birmingham techno on the Downwards record label. Uncompromising, hard techno that has both a funky swing in a Chicago House way, and a locked groove influence from Jeff Mills and Robert Hood, with an added ingredient of industrial music. But I had a real epiphany moment sometime in 1993 at the House Of God when I  first heard Basic Channel’s Phylyps Trak and the Maurizio remix of Vainqueur’s Lyot. Everything came together for me. I had to make dub techno. Something that took almost 30 years, as Reverb Delay, for me to get round to doing. House of God still has the same core DJs over 30 years later - Surgeon, Sir Real, Terry Donovan and Paul Damage.  Each is superb in their own right with their own style and selections.

Adam: How did you start releasing your music?

Marcus: My friend Spotter suggested that I try signing for Mark Darby’s Mighty Force.  Mighty Force famously released the first Aphex Twin 12" and the first music by Tom Middleton (of Global Communication) and Matthew Herbert. Mark Darby has become a good friend.  He worked for Rough Trade also, working with labels such as 4AD, so we have a shared history musically of what we have liked.  

Adam: I'm always interested in how people actually go about creating music, how it happens. What's your creative process? What comes first, rhythm or melody?

Marcus: I  always start with kick drum and hi hats for the Reverb Delay stuff as they're the basis for dub techno that everything fits around so I like to get a groove going first. With M-Paths I always start with pure ambient pads and chords then add the rhythm in sections. 

Initially I set out to make really hard dancefloor techno, but it's really hard to get right - it’s like punk - seems simple enough, but that is often harder than something more grandiose to do as there are less elements and they all need to be absolutely on point. Without really thinking, it kind of happened by osmosis that I ended up making ambient and more home listening stuff as M-Paths, the pads and chords just became really ambient naturally and I love breakbeats so I do a lot with slow breakbeats. I loved dub and when I first heard Basic Channel I knew I wanted to make dub techno but didn't know how it was done.  As my skills developed I realised it was driven mostly by the effects, done very subtly. Atmosphere can happen not by adding stuff but by taking elements out, particularly drums, even just removing the hi hat in sections, or removing claps and rides. I like most electronic music from house to techno to jungle to ambient, and can listen to gabber at breakfast. I don’t think I create music due to my mood. I generally have a few songs on the go at once for different projects. But I definitely listen to music dependent on mood. Apart from Joy Division, Susumu Yokota and Talk Talk- I can listen to in any mood, any time. 

Adam: gabber?! Now there's a largely forgotten musical scene, Belgian and Dutch 90s hardcore techno. 

Marcus: I'm a big fan of Dutch techno, particularly the stuff from the Parkzicht club in Rotterdam where Speedy J was a DJ with DJ Rob and others. 

Adam: back in the early/ mid 90s I was a big fan of Speedy J. My then flatmate and I used to love Beam Me Up! and the album Ginger, proper space age ambient techno from The Netherlands. It seemed so futuristic. Speedy J was on Warp too and in 1994 everything Warp released was worth listening to. 

Beam Me Up!

Marcus: They play Speedy J at every Feyenoord home game! United have The Stone Roses, they have Speedy J!

Adam: a question for the kit and equipment nerds. What do you use in the studio?

Marcus: I have had some great synths and drum machines, but I would say that now my go to is Roland Cloud, where I can access all the Roland drum machines and synths that I need whilst taking up zero extra space. My studio is by default in the smallest room in the house and most of the space is already taken up with records, CDs and decks. Within Roland Cloud, my go to is the Space Echo effects unit, used a lot with my Reverb Delay stuff and also in M-Paths. I have always used echo units, as well as delay and reverb. The echo units in Ableton are decent, and so is Replika by Native Instruments. The Space Echo has been used by lots of bands over the years but I wanted it as that is what Basic Channel and Vainqueur use. 

Adam: what are you into at the moment? What's the last album you bought?

Marcus: The new Sandwell District album, their first music as Sandwell District in over 10 years and the first since Juan Mendez (Silent Servant) sadly died. They have put up one song for preview and it's absolutely immense.  It was started by Karl O’Connor (who records also as Regis also and runs Downwards), Peter Sutton (Female), Juan Mendez and Dave Sumner  (Function) and is named after Sandwell where Karl O’Connor grew up.  Brilliant name, brilliant label.  Other than that, I mainly buy old vinyl stuff I stupidly got rid of on vinyl years ago!  

Hidden by Sandwell District, eight minutes of squelchy and thumpy 2025 acid techno. 

Shapes And Patterns And Burning Floors

Let's end the working week, the last full week before the Christmas holiday, and the end of the school term with some more new music- both electronic but with a world of difference between them. First is a track from M- Paths who I first encountered at Mighty Force, with a really impressive pair of albums. This new one is self- released, a four minute burst of Aphex Twin inspired ambient electro/ techno called Shapes and Patterns that has rapid, rattling drums, dancing synths and repetitive melodic passages interrupted by bursts of bass, the music never settling for long but constantly twisting and turning.

Out today on the ever wonderful Tici Taci is a new EP from Jack Butters, an original called Floor Burner and a pair of remixes. The vocal sample, 'I think it's time to make the floor burn', should leave no one in any doubt about why this track exists. Drums and synths judder and chug, the bassline descends, wobbly FX fire off all over the place. 

The remixes come from Rule Six and The Time Machine Drop Outs. Rule Six go for the low slung, slow burn, the bassline pumping on as the synths and FX glitter around it. Time Machine Drop Outs are Matt Gunn (see yesterday's post) and Chad Jackson (of the Hacienda and hearing drummers getting wicked among other things). The tempo is low, the guitar is funky, the floor is burned. 

Fifty Five Minutes Of Mighty Force

Mighty Force began life in 1990 as an Exeter based record shop and then label run by Mark Darby, created largely to put out the music on a tape passed to him by one Richard D. James. Said cassette contained Analogue Bubblebath, the first appearance on vinyl of Aphex Twin. The label ran to 1999, from '95 in London, and then closed its doors. Mark began releasing music again in summer 2019 and since then had put out album after album of outstanding electronic music- ambient, techno, dance music, acid and all points in between and around, releases by David Harrow, Boxheater Jackson, M- Paths, Golden Donna, Myoptik, Long Range Desert Group, Yorkshire Machines, WRNR, Shrieky, SubDan, M- Paths, D'FunK, Fluffy Inside, AP Organism, Paddy Thorne, KAMS, Sven Kossler, Solipsism, and dyLAB plus several compilations of MF Acid and this year has already released two further compilations to celebrate the label's thirty three years. MF33 Volume 2 can be found here. The most recent Mighty Force release appeared ten days ago, an hour long mix of music by Boxheater Jackson containing music from his Indigenous State Of Mind album and some previously unreleased Boxheater tracks. Find it here. There is nothing on Mighty Force that isn't worth listening to, Mark's quality control is ridiculously high. Today's mix is a celebration of the label, nine tracks long with eight from the reborn Mighty Force. 

Fifty Five Minutes Of Mighty Force

• Aphex Twin: Analogue Bubblebath
• AP Organism: Moon Rocks
• Fluffy Inside: Nylon Corner
• KAMS: Website Rave
• Long Range Desert Group: Lutheran Burglar
• Yorkshire Machines: LS3 03
• M- Paths: M- Paths By Name, Empaths By Nature
• Boxheater Jackson: Let It All Go!
• David Harrow: Jitter

Analogue Bubblebath is a perfect piece of electronic music, a track Mark heard in his shop over the shop's sound system and was 'like nothing (he'd) ever heard before'. It took a while to convince Richard/ Aphex Twin to release it, Richard eventually agreeing while under the influence of LSD. Analogue Bubble bath is otherworldly, emotive, inventive, ambient dance music that keeps shifting shape, and still sounds like the future. 

AP Organism released Space Docks And Moon Rocks in May 2023, a two track EP of dubby/ cosmic/ ambient electronica from Andy Pitman.  

Fluffy Inside's Nylon Corners came out in July 2023, a ten track album that works as both headphone and dancefloor music. The title track is a beauty, acid melodies dancing about over rattling 303 percussion.

Website Rave is from KAMS Described Spaces album, a twelve track delight. Website Rave sounds exactly like its title suggests it should- acid basslines, thumping machine drums, squiggles, sirens, the occasional sampled vocal shout. 

Long Range Desert Group's album Pro- oxidant was one of my favourites back in 2022, drawing its influences not just from electronic music but from post- punk, from ACR, 23 Skidoo and Talking Heads. Heads down, absorbing and cinematic, the whole album is  an essential Mighty Force release. 

Yorkshire Machines put out their Firing Up EP in late 2023. It is thumpy acid dance music. LS3 03 samples Sean Bean from the TV adaptation of David Peace's deeply unsettling Red Riding quartet of novels. No one made the construction of a vast shopping centre sound more like a threat than a promise.

M- Paths have had two albums out on Mighty Force, Hope in March 2023 and Submerge in April this year. The track here is from Hope. On the whole M- Paths make chilled out ambient and ambient techno. The one here is pretty thumpy though, dance music as a thing of optimism. 

Boxheater Jackson has had two full length albums out on Mighty Force, the first We Are One in 2022  and the second this year's Indigenous State Of Mind from September last year. Both albums are superb, Big Vern creating widescreen, stripped down, consciousness raising, awestruck dance music. Boxheater Jackson is otherwise known as Big Vern Burns. He who DJed alongside Andrew Weatherall at the Double Gone Chapel and before that was an engineer at Sabresonic and then went onto Rotters Golf Club. 

David Harrow's road to Mighty Force takes in a past that includes time spent with Psychic TV, writing and producing with Anne Clark, being a key member of the On U Sound crew, playing with Jah Wobble, recording with Andrew Weatherall as Blood Sugar and then on Sabres as Technova, writing Billie Ray Martin's Your Loving Arms, moving to LA and releasing music as James Hardway and more recently putting out modular synth/ ambient/ dub recordings under his own name. Jitter was the title track on a two track EP from 2023, a slice of mighty, jittery acid techno to finish things here. 

An Hour At Tak Tent

Tak Tent Radio is a Scottish based internet radio station that broadcasts all manner of interesting, experimental, leftfield and niche shows by a variety of guests. I've contributed guests mixes for a few years now and last weekend the latest Bagging Area Tak Tent emission went out, my eleventh. You can listen to it at the Tak Tent website here or at Mixcloud here. It's a chilled out dubby/ ambient/ Balearic affair, mostly music released this year but with a vintage Andrew Weatherall and David Harrow track thrown in, their sole recording as Planet 4 Folk Quartet (for Warchild in 1995). 

• M- Paths: Emerge
• Planet 4 Folk Quartet: Message To Crommie
• Richard Norris: Pagan Dub
• Sewell & The Gong: Passing Oort Clouds (Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s Remix)
• Justin Robertson’s Deadstock 33s: Minus Shadows
• Psychederek: Hapi
• Spatial Awareness: Dream Food (SA Dub)
• Timothy J. Fairplay: Centurion Version
• Coyote: Every Forest Has A Shadow (Vanity Project Remix)
• KlangKollektor: Midnight Express
• Florecer: Hidden Thoughts

An Hour Of Midsummer Ambience

Today's mix is inspired by the music Martin and I played last Saturday might at Soup with Contours and Marconi Union, sixty minutes of largely ambient music with a tendency towards the cosmic and the odd detour into dub, on this day, the mid point of 2024- how did we get to 30th June so quickly? It seems like only recently it was New Year. The picture is from December last year and an Anglo- Saxon cross in the churchyard of St. Edward's church in Leek, Staffordshire (my Dad's hometown and home to the local delicacy, the Staffordshire oatcake). Anyway, midsummer, late nights, warm days, ambient bliss, dub bass. What more could you ask for?

An Hour Of Midsummer Ambience

• Underworld: Dark And Long (Most 'Ospitable Mix)
• Khartomb: Swahili Lullaby (Synkro's Balearic Dub Mix)
• M- Paths: Emerge
• Sabres Of Paradise: Chapel Street Market 9am
• Zoe: Moonsister (Lunar Dub 1)
• William Orbit: The Story Of Light
• Coyote: Every Forest Tells A Story
• The Woodentops: Dream On (Balearic Ultras Brooking Bass Remix)
• Andy Bell: Smokebelch II
• African Head Charge: Dub For The Spirits
• Sedibus: SETI Part 3

Dark And Long opened Underworld's 1994 album dubnobasswithmyheadman. The single version came with four different mixes, the ambient Most 'Ospitable one being a thing of great beauty. 

Khartomb's 1983 single Swahili Lullaby, post- punk dub,  has recently been re- issued by Jason Boardman's Before I Die label along with this ambient/ Balearic remix courtesy of Stockport producer Synkro. 

M- Paths album Submerge came out on Mighty Force earlier this year, one in a long line of outstanding releases from the reborn Exeter label. Emerge is the final track, piano and synths combining to give the feel of surfacing from underwater to feel the warm hit of sun on your face. 

Chapel Street 9am was on Sabres Of Paradise's 1994 album Haunted Dancehall, Weatherall, Burns and Kooner creating a morning walk through the streets of London after a night at the titular nightclub, electronic seagulls yapping overhead and the gumshoe Maguire heading home. 

Zoe had a huge hit with her song Sunshine On A Rainy Day, a pop- rave classic from summer 1991. The Orb and Youth were involved and The Orb remixed her song Moonsister for the 12".

William Orbit's Strange Cargo 3 is a lost ambient/ global/ dub gem from 1993. The Story Of Light is a blissed out ambient peak.

Coyote released Every Forest tells A Story earlier this year, another spoken word vocal sample layered over laid back ambient/ Balearic music. 

The Woodentops released their album Fruits Of The Deep in April and a single Dream On a few weeks before with this floaty remix by Brighton's Balearic Ultras. 

Andy Bell's cover of Sabres Of Paradise Smokebelch II is from our album Sounds Of The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. In a chain of events that still leaves me scratching my chin, we had almost every track ready for mastering and I emailed Andy (he'd been on tour in the US with Ride) to see if he had anything for us. The following day he sent me Smokebelch, saying I'd inspired him to finish it. He started it the day Andrew died and completed it for our album, inspired by Andrew. Coincidentally, our album made Piccadilly Records mid- year top 25 collections round up a few days ago. 

Dub For The Spirits came out on African Head Charge's Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, an album of previously unreleased tracks and dubs from their 1990 classic Songs Of Praise. Every home should have one.

Sedibus's SETI (The Search For Extra- Terrestrial Intelligence) came out at the start of the year and I'm still going back to it, a lovely mix of synths, samples and 'real' instruments and an endless, questing vision of outer space as a place to find something else/ yourself. 

Submerge

In April last year M- Paths released an album on Mighty Force, one of a string of first rate releases on the Exeter label in recent years, label boss Mark Darby clearly knowing his musical onions. Mighty Force's Bandcamp is a treasure trove of electronic albums and EPs and this year celebrates it's 33rd anniversary with a series of MF33 compilation albums, one already out and another to follow shortly. 

M- Paths 2023 album Hope was born in the early 90s influences of chill out rooms and the ambient/ indie of the 4AD bands but went beyond both of those, an ambient/ electronic masterclass, music bathed in the warm glow of analogue synths and made with the intention of connecting the listener to nature, each other and optimism. The new album, out a few weeks ago, is titled Submerge and is definitely an album to get lost in, to listen to with headphones on and sink into. There are thirteen tracks with Submerge and Emerge bookending the album, the feel of drifting below the surface and falling deeper into the ocean as the strange undersea world engulfs you, is present from the opening moments of the title track, sub bass, synths and then a clattering drum beat... 

Many of the tracks have single word titles- Panoramic, Reflect, Celestial, Beach, Contemplate- that reflect the album's theme and signpost the wonderous ambient techno that Marcus Farley and Nick Murray have crafted. Celestial is as good an example as any, six minutes of soaring electronic music, washes of synth bleeps, rippling toplines with the steadying, pushing thump of the drums.

Other tracks give strong suggestions about the nature of the music in their titles too, In No Hurry, On The Up and In The Warmth, all speaking for themselves. After over an hour of this ambient techno submersion things come to the surface with Emerge, a track that comes in gently with some piano notes picked out, Erik Satie all at sea, gradually joined by an industrial clanking for a rhythm track, as if great iron chains are lifting the submarine out of the water. Warm bass and a heavenly choir drift in and the clanking becomes electronic drums, panning between the speakers- it's a wholly beautiful and blissed out way to finish the album and the experience of listening to it, the sense of a journey completed and the hit of the sun on your face as you finally break through the waves and breathe the air again. Buy or listen at Bandcamp. 

Monday's Long Song

The newest release on Mighty Force is by a duo named M- Paths, the latest in a line of impressive albums coming out on the Exeter label. Marcus Farley and Nick Murray met at school and came together through backgrounds in DJing and drumming and have pooled their experiences and influences- chill out rooms in early 90s clubs and the meditative ambient/ indie of the 4AD bands. One of the tracks on Hope is titled M- Paths By Name, Empaths By Nature- as well as this and the names of some of the other songs (Grow, Calm, The Connection, The Path, Autumn's Safe Haven) the music, ambient techno and warm electronica, feels like it is facing the sun after a long winter. M- Paths want to feel connected to nature and to people and the thirteen tracks on Hope all point in an optimistic direction.

Grow (Part Two) is a perfect example of what can be found on Hope- shimmering, colourful synths, pulsebeat drums and sparkling melodic toplines, unfolding over seven minutes. Natural feeling ambient techno, full of warmth and and done with a real lightness of touch. 

The last track on Hope, The Colour Of The Trees, is another long one, clocking in at over eight minutes, and worth giving the time to fully. It starts out slowly with what sounds like a deep exhalation of breath. Repeating synth lines work their way in with some piano, running water and rumbles of distant thunder, building gradually, the rippling melodies circling over the backdrop of found sounds, birds and rain. Hope can be bought/ listened to at Bandcamp.