Forty Six Minutes Of Hope Sandoval

Hope Sandoval has one of those voices. It almost goes without saying. She sounds as if she's halfway between sleep and being awake, an effortless, soothing, narcotic tone, a heavy lidded half sigh. Born to Mexican- American parents, who split up when she was young, Hope struggled at school and dropped out, largely spending her teens at home listening to records. 

Hope and Dave Roback (who died of cancer in 2020) formed Mazzy Star in 1988 when the band they were in, Opal, lost its singer. Mazzy Star went on hiatus in 1997 and Hope formed The Warm Inventions with My Bloody Valentine's drum Colm O'Ciosoig, releasing three album. Mazzy Star reunited in 2016. Hope's voice has featured on loads of records with other people- The Chemical Brothers, Mercury Rev, Bert Jansch, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Massive Attack, Death In Vegas, Vetiver, Air and Le Volume Courbe have all benefited from her vocals. I could have done this mix twice given the sheer number of songs by her two bands and all those guest appearances. 

Forty Six Minutes Of Hope Sandoval

• Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Into The Trees
• Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Suzanne
• The Chemical Brothers with Hope Sandoval: Asleep From Day
• Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: Wild Roses
• Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions: On The Low
• Mazzy Star: Blue Flower
• Mercury Rev with Hope Sandoval: Big Boss Man
• Mazzy Star: Fade Into You
• Mazzy Star: Five String Serenade
• Mazzy Star: Happy

Into The Trees is a long piece of music from her third album as Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions from 2016, Until The Hunter. Hope and My Bloody Valentine's drummer Colm O'Ciosoig recorded the album in various locations including a Martello Tower in Dublin, which had a natural reverb caused by the circular Napoleonic period room of the tower. Hope plays organ, a two chord drone and Colm plays gentle tumbling drums. Hope sings gently over the top and it all goes on softly and slowly for nine minutes.

Suzanne is from the first Warm Inventions album, Bavarian Fruit Bread, released in 2001. Hope and Colm recruited several guests for the album, including Bert Jansch. It came out a month after the 9/ 11 attacks and like all albums released in the wake of that event, it seemed to have something to say on the matter even though it was clearly recorded months prior to it. The fragile, narcotic tone of the album, a numbed out response to the world, minimal and spooked. It's difficult not to associate Hope's Suzanne with Leonard Cohen's Suzanne. On The Low is also from Bavarian Fruit Bread, an album that opens with a cover of The Jesus And Mary Chain's Drop. I vividly remember buying it on release in November 2001 and playing it on a Sunday evening while getting mentally prepared for the week ahead at work and the two sides/ twelve songs being quite the Sunday night experience. 

In 1999 The Chemical Brothers put out Surrender, probably their third album and for me their most complete and satisfying record. It came packed with guest vocalists- Bernard Sumner, Noel Gallagher, Jonathan Donahue and Hope Sandoval. Hope's vocal on Asleep From Day is the perfect accompaniment to the album's most blissed out track, a song that sounds like the space between sleep and dreams.

Wild Roses is from the second Warm Inventions album, from 2009- Through The Devil Softly. It had a slightly fuller sound than the first album, a fleshed out band feel, partly possibly due to its recording being interrupted by Colm going on tour with My Bloody Valentine. The arrangements are more complex and intricate, there's a lot more going on. Still as beguiling and bewitching as ever and Hope's voice still sounds like the one you want to hear as you're drifting off to sleep. 

Blue Flower is from Mazzy Star's debut, She Hangs Brightly, from 1990. Hope and Dave Roback formed Mazzy Star as the previous band they were in, Opal, broke up and Blue Flower carried over. It's a cover of a Slapp Happy song from 1972. Mazzy Star released it as their first single in August 1990. It's far more guitar/ third Velvets album sounding than the dreamy sound they developed into- in fact it could easily be on The Mary Chain's Darklands. 

Big Boss Man is from a 2019 album Mercury Rev recorded, a cover/ re- imagining of Bobby Gentry's The Delta Sweete album from 1968. Mercury Rev enlisted a cast of female vocalists including Hope and Rachel Goswell, Latitia Sadier, Vashti Bunyan, Lucinda Williams and Beth Orton.

Fade Into You is from 1993's So Tonight That I Might See, Mazzy Star's second album. You don't need to me tell you how great Fade Into You is- one oft he best indie/ dreampop songs of the 1990s/ all time. Inexplicably good- Hope's voice, the acoustic guitars, the electric guitar topline, the brushed drums, the sense that the song is really just one huge sigh, the feeling of dissolving into another person that comes with young love. 

Five String Serenade is also from So Tonight That I Might See- an album that blurs the lines between country, indie, psychedelia and dreampop, everything soaked in a narcotic, hallucinogenic gauze. It was written by Arthur Lee of Love. 

Happy is from 1996's Among My Swan, Mazzy Star flirting with the mainstream, MTV, Batman soundtracks and all the rest that fame and a hit single, Fade Into You, brings. 

Yes, I should have included Paradise Circus, the song she did with Massive Attack and also should  have finished this mix with Sometimes Always, the song she sang with The Jesus and Mary Chain in 1994. To make up for its absence, here's Hope and Reids live in TV in the mid- 90s. 

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

This is my third and final Sunday mix pulling together some of my favorite tracks from 2025 (the first one, ambient and instrumental, is here and the second, dub and dance, is here). This one starts out folky, strays from dub to cosmische and Balearic, and picks from the past too with two covers, some Stone Roses inspiration and Mazzy Star, songs borrowing from the years 1971, 1989, 1993 and 1999. Going back to go forwards. 

An Hour Of 2025 Part Three

• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Summer Song
• Coyote: Battle Weary
• Stereolab: Flashes From Everywhere
• Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U Pt. 4 (Jupiter/ Reprise)
• Saint Etienne: Alone Together (Hove Lawns Sunset Mix)
• Pale Blue Eyes: How Long Is Now (Richard Norris Remix)
• Red Snapper: Ban- Di- To
• Five Green Moons and Brix Smith: Boudica
• Raz and Afla: Windowlicker
• 10:40 Present Retro Fit: Lavender Mist
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Joao Leao is a Brazillian- Canadian artist. This cover of a Nick Drake song came out on 7" in February on Toronto label Local Dish, a lovely, slightly tropical and ever so sweetly melancholic version of the original. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's solo album Lunga was a 2025 highlight, an album with some songs that date back to his teenage years growing up in Todmorden and the flipside to Syd's main job as leader of Working Men's Club. Lunga is downtempo, personal, acoustic guitar based with echoes of Syd Barrett in the singing and Nick Drake in the playing. Summer Song is reflective, a little lost, the sound of the end of summer. 

Notts Balearic veterans Coyote continue to drip feed new songs and tracks. 2025 saw a six track mini- album, Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, a collaboration with Peaking Lights and two singles including the one here, the dubbed out sounds of Battle Weary with the vocal sample iterating, 'Sufferin' is a poor man's crime'.  

Stereolab returned after a long gap with a new album, Instant Holograms On Metal Film, an album stuffed full of vintage synths, motorik rhythms, wit, invention and (crucially) good songs. Flashes From Everywhere starts out like an easy listening track and then goes krauty and flirts with being poppy. 

Stretford's Psychederek released the four track EP Thinkin' Bout U in August, four different versions of the song, covering everything from Pacific State style dance to broken down, beach bar Balearica (Pt. 4, the one I've included here), kind of proving there's no such thing as a definitive or final version. You can always find another way to do something. 

Saint Etienne released four versions/ remixes of Along Together (a track from 2024's The Night). The Hove Lawns Sunset mix re- imagines West Sussex as a Mediterranean island, slo mo beats and sunset by the pool vibes. Bob, Pete and Sarah then announced an album that would be their last and a tour this year that will be ditto. I think we'll miss them when they're gone.

Pale Blue Eyes are from Sheffield, an indie/ krauty trio. Richard remixed the song as a cosmische autobahn trip, soaring away from South Yorkshire and into 70s West Germany.

Red Snapper were all over my 2025. A tour in March to celerbate the 30th anniversary of Reeled And Skinned, a new album Barb And Feather, and an appearance on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 with the percussion mayhem of Qraqeb. Ban- Di- To is amped up jump blues done 2025 style. 

Five Green Moons second album, Moon 2, was a second strong dub/ folk set from Justin Robertson, who is really in a purple patch at the moment. Brix Smith appears on Boudica. Surviving The Fall/ leading an uprising against the Romans- similarly troublesome I'd imagine. 

Raz and Afla released their cover of Aphex Town's Windowlicker, an Afro- futurist dancefloor bomb that repositions Aphex Twin somewhere new. 

Jesse Fahnestock's 10:40 released An Alternative History back in April, a track Jesse made inspired by a post here at Bagging Area where I imagined an alternate history of The Stone Roses, one where they didn't mess it up after June 1990 but kept going and recorded singles, EPs and albums all the way through the 90s culminating in a gig at Raglan Road scout hut in Sale, up the road from me, where Ian and John first rehearsed way back. You can read that post here. Jesse fired up his studio, sampled Ian and built a new/ imaginary Roses track. The third version, Lavender Mist, went all backwards and is named after Jackson Pollock's painting of the same name. For a while Jesse had the idea that I might provide the vocal but I bottled it. Probably for the best. My singing voice hasn't been the same since I gave up smoking. I always planned to include Lavender Mist on an end of year mix but Mani's death in November added an extra poignancy to everything Roses related. You may have seen the photos from the funeral of his former bandmates carrying his coffin out of Manchester cathedral. A very sad loss. 

Four Tet's Mazzy Star sampling Into Dust (Still Falling) was my favourite single of 2025, a lush and slinky tune that (as I said elsewhere) sounded like summer in the summer and sounds like winter in the here and now. Kieran Hebden can do little wrong for me- his album with William Tyler was as good an album as any other released in 2025 and as Four Tet has been on a roll of superb albums in the last decade with New Energy in 2017, Sixteen Oceans in 2020 and Three in 2024.  

Bagging Area End of Year List 2025

Today marks the fifteenth Bagging Area end of year list- let's get the album above out of the way first. Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2, put together by myself, Martin, Dan, Baz and Mark with sleeve art by Rusty and released on Golden Lion Sounds, came out in the summer. It opens with a previously unreleased Sabres Of Paradise track, the full length, thirteen minute techno skank of Lik Wid Nit Wit, and then goes on to showcase brand new tracks by Dicky Continental, Unit 14, Richard Fearless, A Certain Ratio and Number, Red Snapper, Richard Norris, David Harrow, Bedford Falls Players and a cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss by Sleaford Mods. 

Piccadilly Records put it at number 12 in their Top 30 Collections in their end of year booklet (sandwiched between Pink Floyd and The Fall). If you take out the re- issues and just include the compilations, we came in third. Phonica, a very fine record shop in Soho, put it at number five in their compilations chart. It still makes me shake my head in disbelief sometimes that we have accomplished it- the quality of the music is so high, everyone involved is at their very best. 

The entire enterprise is a tribute to Andrew Weatherall, his music, life and work, and given that Andrew's standards were so high, it's no surprise that the people he worked with and who are inspired by him- like the artists on Volume 2 (and Volume 1)- are all also people who produce and create such good music. There are a handful of copies in some record shops- Piccadilly, Stranger Than Paradise, Phonica- and there might still be a few at Golden Lion Sounds but it's close to selling out its entire run of 1500 copies and once they're gone, they're gone. 

Another compilation album I've enjoyed this year is Sean Johnston's A Love From Outer Space, a celebration of the travelling cosmic disco started by Sean and Andrew Weatherall in 2010 and still going boldly to this day. The album starts with a Neville Watson dub of The Blow Monkeys and takes in Phil Kieran (remixed by Andrew), Laars, Secret Circuit, Duncan Gray, Das Komplex, Brioski and many more. Cosmic chug, never knowingly exceeding 113 bpm. 

The third compilation album that has rocked 2025 is Ein Null: 10 Years Of Sprechen, a ten track round up of the Manchester label's artists with new tracks from A Certain Ratio, Psychederek, The Thief Of Time, The Utopia Strong and more. 

The best new old music of 2025 includes Husker Du's The Miracle Year: 1985, a huge live album showing Husker Du at their mid- 80s peak, on fire. I loved R.E.M.'s re- released Radio Free Europe EP which included the semi- legendary Mitch Easter Dub Mix. The Richard Sen remixes of John Grant, sitting unreleased since 2017, finally saw the light of day. My year started with Bob Dylan and the film A Complete Unknown and I've been dipping in and out of Dylan all year as a result. I haven't committed to the latest edition of The Bootleg Series, Volume 18, but have played his 1962 song Rocks And Gravel repeatedly (unreleased in 1962 and part of this year's Bootleg Series Through The Open Window, 1953- 1962). The Return Of The Durutti Column, a comprehensive and remastered re- issue of the 1980 Durutti Column debut is stunning too. Aphex Twin's continued visits into his vaults saw him put Zahl am1 live track 1 up on Soundcloud, a typically brilliant AFX track. Volcanic Tongue, a compilation of obscure, outsider bands from David Keenan's label of the same name was a winner too, with 20 slices of eclectic, underground music dating from 1968 to 2013. 

Albums of 2025

All of these abums have been somewhere near my various listening devices this year and all are albums I'll come back to again- Reverb Delay's The Ghosts Of Dawn, David Harrow's Accelerated Life, a pair of albums from 100 Poems, Rodeo Disco and Let The Horse Run Free, Evan Dando's Love Chant, Sonar// Radar's Weak Sun, Sonnenspot's Sonnenspot, SubDan's Innerleben, Anywhere by Causeway, Red Snapper's Barb And Feather, Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience), Daniel Avery's Tremor, Five Green Moons' very recently released and probably should be in my top ten Moon 2, Rose City Band's Sol y Sombra, Dub Syndicate's Obscured By Version, The Orb's Buddhist Hipsters, Faded by The Liminanas, the vinyl releases of Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles and Ace Of Swords albums, Coyote's Wailing To The Yellow Dawn, Half Man Half Biscuit's All Asimov And No Fresh Air, Jezebell's Jezebellearic Beats Volume 2, KiF's Still Out, Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan's Public Works And Utilities, Tortoise's Touch, Pye Corner Audio's Where Things Are Hollow and Stereolab's marvelous comeback Instant Holograms On Metal Film.

10 Death In Vegas: Death Mask

Four sides of emotional and purist machine techno from Richard Fearless- side four in particular with Your Love and the title track is an immersive, psychedelic techno trip. 

9 Dean Wareham: That's The Price Of Loving Me

On the former Galaxie 500 songwriter, singer and guitarist's fourth solo album, he got back with producer Kramer and they caught Dean at his best- reverb drenched guitars, a dreamy production and a set of reflective, witty and wise songs. Understated but I kept coming back to it. 

8 Mogwai: The Bad Fire

Released at the start of the year, Mogwai are always an essential listen and this album is as good as any they've made- walls of guitars, huge melodies, songs that scrape away and soar. Some members of the band were going through tough times when it was recorded and you can hear the catharsis in the grooves of the album. Fanzine Made Of Flesh may be song title of the year too (although Half Man Half Biscuit's Horror Clowns Are Dickheads runs it close). 

7 Syd Minsky Sargeant: Lunga

Syd's solo album, a switch from the tough, electronic beats and rhythms of Working Men's Club, is a folky, downbeat treasure trove of song, with Nick Drake and Syd Barrett both sounding like they're there inside the songs. Try Long Roads for a taster of Lunga's delights...

6 Adrian Sherwood: The Collapse Of Everything

Adrian Sherwood doesn't release many albums under his own name and on the basis of The Collapse Of Everything he should do it more often. Dub is the foundation (as ever) but The Collapse Of Everything rolls and tumbles between all kinds of sounds and genres, a free flow of sound and texture with a supporting cast including Brian Eno, Keith Le Blanc and Doug Wimbish, and mostly sounds cinematic, like it's the soundtrack to something. An On U Soundtrack. 

5 Escape- Ism: Charge Of The Love Brigade

Ian Svenonius and Sandi Denton's fourth album is short and sweet, just ten songs and just a little over thirty minutes long but it's been near my turntable since its release in March. Minimal sounds, fuzz guitar, vintage synth drones and hissy drum machine, lyrics pared back to key ideas and delivered with drop dead insouciance- on Last Of The Sellouts Ian is both tongue in cheek and deadly serious. One Of The Greats performs the same dead pan trick. On Fire In Malibu he sounds like he's been tipped over the edge. For a while I thought this might be my favourite album of 2025. 

4 Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe: Liminal

The third of a trilogy recorded by Eno and Wolfe, Liminal is a joy, Liminal is an album that melds songs with ambience and comes up with something very beautiful- the soundtrack to a dream, a simple sounding but very deep record. 

3 Sewell And The Gong: The Patron Saint Of Elsewhere

I've listened to Sewell And The Gong as much as any other artist this year and the album, Patron Saint Of Elsewhere, could easily have topped this list. Seven tracks with pastoral roots, folk melodies and motorik rhythms, bridging the space between the bucolic and the cosmic. Sumptuous and wondrous and a little frayed at the edges.

2 Kieran Hebden and William Tyler: 41 Longfield Street Late 80s

41 Longfield Street Late 80s is a wonderful record- William Tyler's guitar playing and Kieran Hebden's ambient laptop production complementing each other and bouncing off each other, from the extended free form cover version of Lyle Lovett's If I Had A Boat, to the more Four Tet sounds of Spider Ballad through to the album's closer, the intense distortion and acoustic guitars of Secret City, it never lets up and keeps giving.

1 Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer

Andy Bell bounces around from Ride to GLOK to his solo records, finding time to record with a slew of other artists, and spent much of 2025 on the road with Oasis. In February he released Pinball Wanderer, the title a nod to his musical ricochets, an eight song album that he completed under the influence of extreme jet lag. Dot Allison and Michael Rother appear on his cover of The Passions' I'm In Love With A German Film Star. On Apple Green UFO he channels The Stone Roses, a song they should have written after they made Something's Burning and elsewhere he travels cosmische. His guitar playing is lighter than air, krauty and glistening, and on the title track he transports the spirit of Bert Jansch and Pentangle from the late 60s to 2025, folk melodies married with 21st century psychedelia and shuffly drums. 

Pinball Wanderer

Singles/ Tracks/EPs of 2025

I've tried to not just repeat tracks from the albums in the list above in order to make this list a standalone one. All of these singles/ EPs/ one off releases were of note in 2025...

Hugo Nicolson's Black Stick, M- Paths' Emotivated, Matt Gunn's Nowhere, Dirt Bogarde's Pihkel, a clutch of Richard Norris releases including his remix of Pale Blue Eyes' How Long Is Now and his remix of Wildflower by Gulp, Puerto Montt City Orchestra's And We'd Be So Happy, Florecer's Breathy Drops, Statues' The Pilina Experiment, several Pye Corner Audio tracks including Galaxies and the Matrix EP and Saint Etienne's Glad. 

And here's 25 for 25...

25 Factory Floor: Between You

24 The Moonlandingz ft. Iggy Pop: It's Where I'm From

23 Andy Bell ft. Dot Allison and Michael Rother: I'm In Love... (Justin Robertson's Deadstock 33s Remix and Dub)

22 10:40: An Alternative History

21 Joao Leao: One Of These Things First

20 Raz and Alfa: Windowlicker

19 Rude Audio: Strange Phenomena EP

18 Factory Floor: Tell Me 

17 Psychederek: Thinkin' Bout U

16 Pandit Pam Pam: The Senator

15  Le Carousel: We're All Gonna Hurt

14 Saint Etienne: Alone Together Remix EP

13/ 12 Various remixes of The Cure's Songs For A Lost World but especially the Four Tet remix of Alone and the Orbital remix of Endsong

11 Daniel Avery ft. Cecile Believe: Rapture In Blue (Midnight Version)

10 Coyote: Battle Weary

9 Adrian Sherwood: The Grand Designer EP

8 Coyote and Peaking Lights: Love Letters/ So Far Away

7 Deeply Armed: The Healing (plus the remixes by Keith Tenniswood and Richard Fearless) 

6 Sewell And The Gong: Quiet Storm Remixes (Ruf Dug, Chris Coco)

5 Alex Kassian x Spooky: Orange Coloured Liquid

4 Black Bones: Album Sampler (this release is some kind of blending of an EP, an album, a compilation of 12" singles- whatever it is it's fantastic)

3 Klangkollektor: Dubtapes Volume Two

2 The Light Brigade: Shuffle The Deck

1 Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Sheer joy from Four Tet, sampling/ reworking a Mazzy Star song. It was released in June and it lit up summer. It's still doing it in the depths of winter, Hope Sandoval's voice spinning against Kieran Hebden's skippy rhythms- emotive, trippy, endlessly rewarding. If you buy it on 12" there's a stripped down, subtler version of the B-side which hits a slightly different spot.  

I've probably missed something and there will inevitably be a record, track or album I pick up on in early 2026 which should be part of one of these lists. The nature of lists is that they're incomplete. Hopefully 2026 will continue to throw up more great music and more pop culture for us to listen to, dance to, obsess over and dissect. And maybe there will be a Sounds From the Flightpath Estate Volume 3...

Forty Minutes Of Folkishness

Today's Sunday mix is an inspired by or 'ish' mix, forty minutes of music that is folk adjacent or inspired- the melodies, the playing, a cover of a late 60s, English folk rock classic, an edit of a 60s folk song, some other songs that just feel like they're in the folk music vernacular. Most of the songs on the mix are from this year, the rest from fairly recently.  For want of a better phrase, they've all got a folk vibe. 

There's plenty more music sitting in my downloads and music folders that fall within the boundaries of this- Richard Norris and Dot Allison both come to mind so a part two may follow.

Forty Minutes Of Folkishness

• Luke Schneider: midafternoon classic
• Matt Deighton: Tannis Root
• Coyote: The Outsider
• Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer
• Andy Bell: Light Flight
• Sydney Minski Sargeant: Long Roads
• Totem Edits 12: Feel
• Sewell And The Gong: Passing Oort Clouds
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Luke Schneider is from Nashville, a pedal steel guitarist and part of the ambient Americana scene. midafternoon classic came out last year, a couple of minutes of ambient/ folk with nylon strings, pedal steel and harmonica. His latest four track release came out two days ago and can be found here. 

Matt Deighton's Villager is a 1995 folk gem, much overlooked at the time. Tannis Root is a few minutes of acoustic guitar and some woodwind, lovely modern instrumental folk inspired music that came out on Moonboot's Moments In Time compilation. 

Coyote's The Outsider was the closing song on their 2021 album The Mystery Light, an acoustic guitar sequence and the vice of mystic/ writer/ speaker/ philosopher Alan Watts. The Coyote duo were nodding their heads at Andrew Weatherall too, who wrote under the pseudonym The Outsider in the Boy's Own fanzine and who was exactly what Watts is talking about, 'you don't have to join, you don't have to play the game...'

Andy Bell's Pinball Wanderer came out at the start of this year. The title track is lit up by a late 60s folk rock guitar melody, some shuffly acoustic guitars and a sense that Fairport Convention and The Stone Roses in 1989 got in a room together. On his 2022 covers EP Untitled Film Stills, Andy covered songs by Yoko Ono, The Kinks, Arthur Russell and Pentangle. Light Flight was from Pentangle's 1969 folk- rock album Basket Of Light, an album that pushed them into the charts. Light Flight was also the theme tune to BBC 1's Take Three Girls, a late 60s/ early 70s drama about three young women sharing a flat in London. 

I wrote about Sydney Minski Sargeant's forthcoming solo album Lunga last week. The single Long Roads is folk indebted, echoes of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett in the playing and singing. Lunga promises to be one of autumn's highlights. 

Totem Edit is Leo Elstob and Justin Deighton. On Feel they take Gordon Lightfoot's 1967 song The Way I Feel and turn it into a 2025 folk/ Balearic groove. I've played this out and it always gets a response. 

Sewell And The Gong's recent album Patron Saint Of Elsewhere is one of late summer 2025's best, a lovely fusion of folk, drones, pastoral melodies, motorik drums and samples. Previously, in 2023, Sewell released a four track EP called Tonight We Fly and Passing Oort Clouds is a beautiful, folk inspired instrumental, looped melodies, acoustic guitars and a gently prodding rhythm. Oort clouds are (possibly) a giant spherical shell surrounding the sun, the stars and the Kuiper Belt, a bubble made of icy comet like objects. 

Four Tet's Into Dust (Still Falling) came out earlier this summer and has been getting regular plays round here ever since, the Mazzy Star sample and vocal sinking into Four Tet's folky melodies and skippy drum track, Hope Sandoval's melancholy playing off against Keiran Hebden's propulsion.

A Midsummer Mix: Forty Minutes Of 2025 So Far

There's some big news coming tomorrow which some of you will want to act on- if you were one of the people that bought a certain compilation album last year, you might want to be back here bright and breezy on Monday morning. Full details to come in twenty four hours time. 

It's the end of June tomorrow also, halfway through the year- I've no idea how the last six months have gone so quickly- but it seems like a good point to do a 2025 So Far Sunday Mix, not a definitive Best Of 2025, rather some of the tracks and songs I've enjoyed the most so far this year. 

A Midsummer Mix: Forty Minutes Of 2025 So Far

• Death In Vegas: Chingola
• Andy Bell: Pinball Wanderer
• Adrian Sherwood: Cold War Skank
• Demise Of Love: Carry The Blame
• 10:40 presents Retro Fit: An Alternative History (Lavender Mist)
• Escape- Ism: Last Of The Sell Outs
• Klangkollektor: Isle Of Stonsey
• Four Tet: Into Dust (Still Falling)

Chigola is a five minute ambient techno intro to the latest Death In Vegas album Death Mask, an album which does not hold its techno punches and which is a machine music tour de force. Richard Fearless poured a lot into the making of Death Mask, some personal losses reflected and worked through. It's an overloaded and emotional trip. Chingola is few minutes of scene setting, calm before the storm. 

Andy Bell's latest solo album Pinball Wanderer came out in February led by a cover of The Passions' I'm In Love With A German Film Star with Dot Allison and Michael Rother on board. The album's title track is an instrumental delight, a circling guitar part beamed from late 60s folk into Andy's 2025 motorik/ cosmsiche/ electric shoegaze. 

Adrian Sherwood's four track dubplate 10" came out recently, led by title track The Grand Designer and has been on steady rotation round here ever since (though I missed out on the vinyl). Cold War Skank is a moody dub/ guitar workout.

Demise Of Love is a three man modern electronic meeting of Daniel Avery, Syd Minsky- Sergeant (Working Men's Club) and James Greenwood (Ghost Culture). They have, like Adrian Sherwood, released a four track 10" EP that merges acid house, some intense techno sounds, industrial noise and the flickers of what New Order could have been had they kept heading away from the light. 

An Alternative History was written as an imaginary Stone Roses song, based on a blogpost by some blogger or other that imagined a world where the band didn't blow it but kept their heads and kept making music, avoiding the pitfalls of The Second Coming. Jesse's new Roses song came in three versions. Lavender Mist is the backwards one. 

Escape- Ism is Ian Svenonius' latest revolutionary outfit, a duo aiming to rewrite modern culture/ indie- rock with stripped down, scuzzy guitar/ drum machine/ keys/ vocals. The album- Charge Of The Love Brigade- is one of my favorites so far this year, a thirty five minute manifesto. Last Of Sell Outs is the best song on it, a meditation on commerce, art and musical integrity and the price of selling out. 

Klangkollektor is Lars Fischer from Numremberg. The EP Dubplates Vol 2, out on Manchester's Jason Boardman's Before I Die label, is a chilled Balearic dub masterclass ending with Isle Of Stonsey with pedal steel/ Hawaiian guitar sailing out into the cosmos. 

Four Tet's latest single samples Mazzy Star to achingly beautiful effect, a Four Tet track that hits all the spots, capable of moving me to tears. 

Into Dust

The release of new music by Four Tet is often the cause of much rejoicing at Bagging Area and the new track this week hits all the spots. Into Dust (Still Falling) is classic Four Tet- summer sounding, skippy drums, folky instrumentation, understated but emotive synths and keys, fresh and now but with a foot planted somewhere in the past- a past where rave and folk met...

Into Dust (Still Falling) samples the voice of Hope Sandoval (there's the foot in the past) from a Mazzy Star song, a voice that is always a welcome sound. Recently my friend Spencer sent me a link to a Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions track from 2017, a nine minute drone called Into The Trees, Hope playing a 1960s organ, holding long keyboard chords down and singing softly over the top. Colm O'Ciosoig, the other member of the group, plays tumbling drums in the background. It's magical stuff. 

Into The Trees

Hope and Colm formed The Warm Inventions as a side project from their two main bands, Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine. I hadn't heard the album Into The Trees is from, Until The Hunter, eleven songs recorded partly in a pair of Martello Towers in Dublin, spaces filled with round walls, no edges and a natural reverb. 

In 2001 Hope and Colm released the first Warm Inventions album- Bavarian Fruit Bread, an album I do own. It's a quiet, hushed, folky, small hours album with some lovely songs. Like this one...

On The Low

... and this one, written before Hope formed Mazzy Star and with a Velvet Underground third album feel. 

Suzanne

Fade Into You

Betancuria is the oldest town on Fuerteventura, a small town in the mid- west of the island. We hired a car and drove to it, picking our way up mountain roads and through some very small towns on the way. The town was founded in 1404 by a Norman knight, Jean de Bethencourt. The central square has an old church, the church of Santa Maria de la Concepcion and a short walk away there's a new museum which houses all kinds of archaeological finds from the island's much older past- ceramics, rocks with carvings and markings, necklaces, and skeletons. It must have been a heck of place to survive in lithic times. There seems to be some question about who the first Fuerteventurans were and whether they came from Morocco or were transplanted there by the Romans. 

There are several small cafes and bistros in Betancuria. The population of the town is less than a thousand, so there's no doubt that the restaurants and cafes exist mainly for the tourists. We chose one, entered and were seated in a shaded corner, cactus and plants overhanging us, a cat with kittens on top of a wall, a man setting up his guitar and microphone for some Saturday afternoon musical accompaniment. 

While browsing the menu I started singing along (quietly, semi- absent mindedly) to the song being played over the cafe's sound system and realised suddenly that it was a Spanish cover version of Mazzy Star's 1993 song Fade Into You. It sounded perfect, one of those moments where time stops for a little while. Those chords, Hope's vocal phrasings, the slide guitar...

Fade Into You

I have had a look around on YouTube and there are several Spanish language cover versions. I'm not sure if this is the one that was playing in the cafe but I like it anyway. It's by Flores De Uranio. 

Strange You Never Knew

Out in town on Saturday night we ended up in a pub at the northern end of the city centre with a decent selection of music playing. Mazzy Star's 1994 single played, the sort of song that can silence a pub- it didn't silence us, we discussed the various attractions of the song and its singer.

Fade Into You

Lovely isn't it? Acoustic guitar, a slide guitar part, a lazy drumbeat and Hope Sandoval's wondrous, hazy vocal. A song that is is much more than the sum of its parts, its all about the playing, the performance and the dust and heat that it evokes. Deserts and lust and suchlike.

In 2013 J Mascis recorded a cover version which is pretty wonderful in its own right, twin acoustic guitars and J's cracking, weathered voice.

Fade Into You

Fade Into You

A dangerously fragile, acoustic guitar-led, somewhat enervated cover of Mazzy Star's beautiful Fade Into You by J Mascis to start Monday and the first week of autumn. The ghost of Neil Young never far away, memories of Dinosaur Jr beyond reach. Bizarrely, cheapeningly, this cover version was done for a trainer advert, released on limited 7" single as a sop to the purists.

Fade Into You

Back to work tomorrow- Tuesday's coming like a jail on wheels, to misquote Mr Strummer.

Richard X, Hope Sandoval and Jarvis Cocker 'Into U'

I've been listening to the Massive Attack and Hope Sandoval song (Paradise Circus) over the last few days, especially the Gui Boratto remix, and that led me back to this. Richard X, acceptable face of the mash-up (or something). This was off his album from a few years ago. He took Mazzy Star's Fade Into You, jazzed it up and got Jarvis to sing over it. That's a technical description of the recording process. Very good track it is too. Wasn't convinced by some of the rest of the album (Liberty X?).

Looking for pictures to accompany this post, it was beardy Richard X, beardy Jarvis or Hope. Hmmm....

14 Into U.wma