It's Plain To See

This song revolved back into my life at the weekend and I played it umpteen times on Sunday, something about it really striking a chord. 

I'm Not The Man I Used To Be

How good is that? I was reminded on Sunday evening that it was a favourite of Drew of the now dormant but once essential music blog, Across The Kitchen Table. 

In 1989 Fine Young Cannibals were making a second album, The Raw And The Cooked. Some of the songs that would appear on it were already out- their cover of Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't Have Fallen In Love With) was in Jonathan Demme's 1986 film Something Wild and Good Thing, Tell Me What and Hard As It Is all showed up in Barry Levinson's 1987 film Tin Men (with FYC playing a band in a nightclub in the film). They were moving away from the 60s soul towards something more contemporary. Andy Cox and David Steele had made an acid house inspired single as Two Men A Drum Machine And A Trumpet while singer Roland Gift was acting in Sammy And Rosie Get Laid and Scandal. They reunited and the band told their label they wanted Prince to produce the rest of the album. Prince wasn't available but strings were pulled and Fine Young Cannibals ended up in Paisley Park with David Z, a member of Prince's Revolution. The big hit single She Drives Me Crazy came from those sessions as did I'm Not The Man I Used To Be. 

I'm Not The Man I Used To Be is built around a James Brown drum loop, the ever dependable and in 1989 increasingly ubiquitous Funky Drummer, a subtle guitar part and some lovely synth chords. Roland Gift's voice was indeed a gift and his vocal is wonderful, introspective and heartfelt, full of regret and emotion. It's not house music but it's coming from that plac. 

'Oh, it's plain and it's a shame/ I can't explain/ But I'm not the man I used to be'

It was the fourth single off the album- record companies really rinsed albums back in the 80s. Of the remixes and extended versions the Jazzie B and Nellee Hooper remix is a winner. I don't have an mp3 but it's on Youtube.

I once saw Roland Gift in real life, walking down the street in Islington one evening in the mid- 90s when we used to spend quite a bit of time in that part of London. He has that kind of charisma and style that makes it look like he's in a video when he's doing nothing more than walking down a North London street after dark. Fine Young Cannibals didn't make any more albums, more's the pity- the former Beat pair of Andy and David and Roland drifted apart and they called it a day in 1992. Roland apparently resurfaced this summer playing two gigs. 

Protection

We've been away for a couple of days this week, a trip to North Yorkshire to Harrogate and York. One of the in- car entertainment CDs I took was Massive Attack's second album, Protection. Released in September 1994, three years after Blue Lines re- wrote the book for British reggae/ soul/ rap, in many ways Protection is the equal of that debut- Tricky had gone (except for an appearance on Karmacoma) but 3D, Mushroom and Daddy G were still writing great music that skipped across boundaries and invented a new one, something defiantly their own. An entire genre, trip hop, grew up in their wake. Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt appear on two songs including the magisterial title track, Horace Andy contributes vocals (again), Nellee Hooper's production is first rate (again), and songs like Karmacoma, Eurochild and Spying Glass are as good as any on Blue Lines. On Sunday driving up the A1 the pair with vocals from Nicolette sounded superb...

Three

Three is the third track (obvs), opens ominously (also obvs) with a sampled voice shouting 'Three three three' and then Nicolette's voice glides in, 'Three, my lucky number/ and fortune comes in threes'. Three is the sound of a band in total control- synths, rattling drums and tension and Nicolette's distinctive vocal.

She sings on Sly too, the first single from the album, tucked away on side two of Protection.

Sly

More drama- strings and percussion, slo mo drums, a song that takes shape slowly, with a South Asian feel, an Indian string quartet, South pacific melodies, Nicolette singing about time travel motion and wandering. Dream music. 

None of which helps to explain why they chose to finish such a great album with their cover of Light My Fire, a song that sounded odd at the time and no less so now. Blue Lines concluded with Hymn Of The Big Wheel, one of the best songs they made, one of the best songs of the 90s. Protection ends with Light My Fire, seemingly a deliberate attempt to undercut everything with a sly smile and a wink. 

In A Forest

The BBC re- runs of Top of The Pops have got to the end of 1995 recently. I record them and watch them in bunches, fast forwarding through the rubbish and watching the good stuff- in this way I can get through some episodes in just a few minutes, the charts in 1995 being a smorgasbord of rubbish, big selling pop, guitar bands breaking through and some genuine moments of brilliance. In late August 1995 Bjork was back at the Top Of The Pops studios promoting Isobel, the second single from her album Post. Jarvis Cocker was presenting...

Isobel is a strange choice for a single, not a natural radio friendly unit shifter but I think Bjork's confidence in 1995 was such that she did whatever she wanted to and her record company largely went along with her- I think Isobel was an important song for Bjork and she wanted it as a single. The third single would be It's So Quiet which it's fair to say crossed over. Isobel is one of post's highlights, a dramatic and enticing song with sweeping, cinematic strings, very mid- 90s percussion and a trip hop breakbeat, co- written by Nellee Hooper (who co- wrote and produced Debut). There's a sense that Isobel is a film or play condensed into song form, part of something much bigger than a five minute song. Bjork's lyrics were co- written with Icelandic poet Sjon, and a based on a story Bjork wrote about a girl who goes back to live in a forest. The lyrics were sparked a year earlier in 1994 by a moth that Bjork found in her collar one day and which stayed there until the evening. She saw the moth as an omen and went off creating a story and a person around it, writing apparently 900 pages of a diary. On the verge of mania and almost throwing the book away, but wanting the song to be completed for her next album, she contacted Sjon, explained it all to him and they collaborated on the lyric. 

On Eurotrash (!) in 1995 she explained the story of Isobel- 

'She [Isobel] was born in a forest by a spark, and as she grew up, she realized that the pebbles on the forest floor were actually skyscrapers. And by the time she was a grown-up woman and the skyscrapers had taken over the forest, she found herself in a city, and she didn't like all the people there so much, because they were a bit too clever for her.

She decided to send to the world, all these moths that she had trained to go and fly all over the world and go inside windows of people's houses— the ones that were too clever— and they'd sit on their shoulder and remind them to stop being clever and start to function by their instincts. They do that by saying "Nah-nah-nan-nah-nah!" to them... and then they'd say "Oh! Sorry! I was being all clever there!", and start functioning on instinct'

Isobel is isolated, lives by herself In the city she danced on tables and fell in love with the wrong people so she returned to the forest, living in isolation. It seems fairly clear that Isobel is at least partly autobiographical and in the song Bjork switches between third person and first person. It's a superb, dramatic and complex combination of words and music- pitched among the sheer madness of mid- 90s Top of The Pops it almost seems like a completely different artform. 

Isobel

Bjork has said that Isobel is part of a song cycle, preceded by Human Behaviour (from Debut in  1993) where Isobel is a little girl, living with animals, happier in the natural world than with people. Human Behaviour is one of the best songs on Debut, and that's saying something, a bouncing house beat and typically outstanding vocal. 

Human Behaviour 

Bacholorette was on 1997's Homogenic, part three of the story, more strings and timpani and another co- write with Sjon, and sees Isobel go to the city, finds things not working out and returns to the city. 

Bacholorette

In the 00s Bjork added two further songs to the Isobel song cycle- Oceania from Medulla from 2004 and Wanderlust from 2007's Volta. Oceania is sung from the point of view of the ocean, all human life emerging from it and a place with no borders, races or religions. Again Sjon was on board lyrically. This song, the last recorded for Medulla, was commissioned by the International Olympic Committee for the 2004 Athens games opening ceremony. That's some journey Ms. Gudmundsdottir has made, from Icelandic punk to Top Of The Pops to the Athens Olympic games. 

An Hour Of Björk

A month ago Khayem did a fairly definitive recreation of a Björk mixtape centred around her 1993 solo debut Debut. I'd been planning on doing a Björk Sunday mix here for some time and almost shelved the idea but a few days ago decided to go ahead. Debut and its surrounding singles and remixes are massively important songs and records for me, so resonant of a time in my life where it seems looking back like it was perpetual weekend. In Big Time Sensuality she sings, 'I don't know my future after this weekend/ And I don't want to', a line summing up how life felt. Almost everywhere we went Björk's songs were being played, stitched into the fabric of mid- 90s nightlife. When my then flatmate brought Debut home we played it constantly, the album seeping into our every day life. If I had to draw up a list of the albums which mean the most to me, Debut would be on it. It's hugely innovative too, Björk and producer Nellee Hooper inspired by the previous few years changes and freedoms, the sounds and rhythms, creating something self contained, optimistic, joyous and life affirming, a record in love with itself and with endless possibility. 

I've expanded the mix below beyond Debut but there's nothing post- 1997, it's all 20th century Björk. Her output from the 21st century can be obtuse and bewildering at times (and incredible at others), and it needs a mix of its own. My Sunday mixes have tended to be between thirty and forty five minutes long, the ideal length for a trip out (or one side of a tape, subconsciously maybe). Once I started this one it just kept getting longer and having reached the forty minute mark I couldn't leave off Underworld's marathon remix of Human Behaviour so what we have here is an hour of Björk Guðmundsdóttir, her unique vision and singing accompanied by a cast of like minded collaborators- the production of Nellee Hooper is an essential part of Debut and Graham Massey of 808 State played a pivotal role in her solo adventures beyond the Sugarcubes as the 80s became the 90s. Listening back to this last night I was struck by how good everything here still sounds, from the giddy skipping pop- acid house of Big Time Sensuality to the dislocating oddness of The Black Dog's version of The Anchor Song. She's brilliant and we're lucky to have her.  

An Hour Of  Björk

• One Day (Sabres of Paradise Endorphin Mix)
• Ooops
• Big Time Sensuality (Fluke Minimix)
• Violently Happy (Fluke Well Tempered Mix)
• There's More To Life Than This (Recorded Live In The Milk Bar Toilets)
• Hyperballad
• Venus As A Boy (7" Dream Mix)
• Army Of Me
• The Anchor Song (The Black Dog Mix)
• QMart
• Human Behaviour (Underworld Remix 110BPM)
• You've Been Flirting Again (Icelandic Version)

One Day was remixed not once but three times by Andrew Weatherall's Sabres Of Paradise. All three are superb, increasing in length, intensity and tempo. There was a 10" single with two of the remixes, the Endorphin Mix and the Springs Eternal Mix titled Björk Cut By Sabres, and then a six track compilation in 1994 called The Best Mixes From The Debut Album For People Who Don't Buy White Labels which rounded up all three Sabres remixes, the twelve minute Underworld monster and the two Black Dog remixes. I included The Black Dog's remix of The Anchor Song here too although it could easily have been the one of Come To Me. Such is the embarrassment of riches of Björk all six remixes could have/ should have been included here.

In 1991 808 State released ex:el, one of the period's  best dance albums although it tends to get a bit overlooked now. Björk's co- wrote and sang on two songs, the magnificent, slow burning sex- techno of Ooops and QMart. This sparked a long running song- writing partnership with 808's Graham Massey. Björk had loved 808 State's 1989 album 90 and phoned them up out of the blue looking for some help with drum programming. She flew to Manchester the next day. The 808 State boys showed Björk round the sights and clubs of Manchester and wrote and recorded at various studios in the area. 

Big Time Sensuality is off Debut, a song about being in love with going out and dancing, the sheer giddiness and delight evident in her vocal. The video, filmed in black and white on the back of a flatbed truck with Björk in a long silver dress is so of the time too. This song as much as any reminds me of 1993/4- it was played constantly in the flat I lived in, the remixes played in every club around town and me and Lou pretty much met on the dancefloor while it was being spun at Paradise Factory in Manchester. The Fluke Minimix is the version for me but there are some other remixes that hit the spot too, not least Justin Robertson's (not included here). Fluke also remixed Violently Happy (two versions) another single from Debut. 

Two more songs from Debut are on the mix- There's More To Life Than This is an astonishing song from an album full of them, full of manic Björk energy, and the jaw dropping moment she records the sound of the Milk Bar, running from the dance floor to the toilets, closing the door and then coming out again. I also love the way she sings 'ghetto blaster'. Venus As A Boy, the second single from Debut, is absurdly good, marrying post- club ambient sounds with tabla. The version here is the 7" Dream Mix, a mix by Mick Hucknall and Gota Yashiki. This marks the only appearance of the Simply Red singer at this blog. 

Hyperballad is from her second solo album Post, released in 1995, an exhilarating fusion of folk, acid house and synth pop. Hyperballad swoops in and out, as if the song is dropping from a height and shooting then back up again, head spinning production and vision. Post has several such moments- Possibly Maybe should possibly, maybe, also have been included on this mix.

Army Of Me came out in 1995, the lead single from Post. It's her most streamed song on Spotify which suggests its her most popular song. Björk and Graham Massey wrote Army Of Me in a terraced house in Gatley that belonged to a mate of Massey's and had a home studio set up. Gatley's not that far from here, I pass through often on my bike. The idea of Björk popping out from one of the houses to nip to the shop in the mid- 90s in a break from writing is bizarre and amusing. From such humble, suburban beginnings does great music appear- Army Of Me is a force of nature, the bassline alone more a landslide than a musical element and the pulverising industrial drums contain a sample from Led Zeppelin's John Bonham. The final song on this mix, You've Been Flirting Again (Icelandic Version) was on the Army Of Me CD single, the orchestral strings bringing things to a dramatic conclusion. 

Thirty Seven Minutes Of Massive Attack

This week's Sunday half hour mix comes from Bristol courtesy of Massive Attack. It's difficult now to remember exactly the impact Massive Attack had back in 1991 when Blue Lines was released, instantly switching on the heads of people to the reggae/ dub/ hip hop (soon to be trip hop) sound. Ravers, house heads, indie kids, almost everyone, was suddenly listening to something else. They went on to make some stunning songs and records after that but maybe with slightly less of 'the shock of the new' that they had in spring '91 (a time when they also dropped the word Attack from their name due to the bombing of Iraq by the US led coalition). Protection and Mezzanine both had outstanding songs and moments (plus the various remixes and versions, not least Mad Professor's dub of the whole Protection album). After that my interest came and went and I've dipped in and out (dipping back in for the remixes from Heligoland and 2016's Ritual Spirit EP. 

The thirty seven minute mix below tries to avoid the obvious mixes even if it goes for some of the big hitter songs and has a dub vein running through it, ideal for making your Sunday breakfast too. I realised putting it together that it could be three times the length without any drop off in terms of quality. It takes in vocals from Horace Andy, Tracey Thorn, Liz Fraser and Hope Sandoval, remixes by Brian Eno, Mad Professor, Larry Heard and Gui Boratto and has the combined talents of Smith And Mighty, Johnny Dollar and Nellee Hooper at the producer's desk. 

Thirty Seven Minutes Of Massive Attack

• Hymn Of The Big Wheel (Nellee Hooper Mix)
• Protection (The Eno Mix)
• Safe From Harm (Instrumental Original Mix)
• Teardrop (Mad Professor Mazaruni Mix)
• Any Love (Larry Heard Remix)
• Paradise Circus (Gui Boratto Remix)

I'll Lie Here Forever

It's difficult to find adequate words to say about Sinead O'Connor, the loss of her son Shane, and the pain she and Shane's father must be feeling at the moment. Even with everything we've been through recently to lose a child to suicide is just unimaginable. Her Tweets over the weekend have been full of rage and anguish although she had softened her tone towards the hospital yesterday. I hope she can find some way through it. 

This song was from her 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, the album that brought her the worldwide fame that seems to have blighted her life ever since. The words to I Am Stretched On Your Grave are from an anonymous 17th century Irish poem titled 'Táim sínte ar do thuama', translated by Irish writer Frank O'Connor. For her version with Nellee Hooper producing, Sinead sings over Clyde Stubblefield's famous drum break from James Brown's Funky Drummer while a very Massive Attack bassline bubbles away. The final minute, where the Irish fiddle takes over, is some finale too. 

I Am Stretched On Your Grave

Fifty

Today is my wife's 50th birthday and obviously that's the kind of milestone you can't miss. We will be having a slightly scaled down Covid friendly birthday (due to Isaac's ongoing immune system and vulnerability issues) but there are a week of activities ahead and today we will do presents, cake, balloons, a night away and everybody loves you. Happy birthday. 

Back when we first met in 1994 we spent a lot of time clubbing. Big Time Sensuality by Bjork was one of our tunes, a heady, euphoric ode to the weekend, to dancing, to joy and being alive- 'I don't know my future after this weekend/ And I don't want to!' The video, filmed on the back of a flatbed truck in New York is so of the time too and what Bjork's clothes always remind me of Lou then. 

Of all the mixes and versions available I think this is the killer, Fluke absolutely getting everything exactly right. 

Big Time Sensuality (The Fluke Minimix)

Trouble

 

Sinead O'Connor is back, a single released on Friday that is as powerful, moving and heartfelt as anything she's done in the past. Never one to shy away from real life issues and always prepared to wear her heart on her sleeve Trouble Of The World is a cover of a traditional song made famous by Mahalia Jackson (who was on the stage at the March On Washington in August 1963 and was the person who drove Martin Luther King to go off his script when he made his I Have A dream speech- 'tell it Martin, tell them your dream' she is said to have told him). The cover was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and all the proceeds will go towards BLM. It was produced by David Holmes in Belfast, a place steeped in it's own history of civil rights and protest. The video was directed by Don Letts. Buy it at Bandcamp. 

I posted this song earlier this year, back in April which seems a long time ago now, but it's worth posting again and going back to. The Emperor's New Clothes is a song about more personal issues- fame, boyfriends, pregnancy, advice being offered, people's views of her and how she should look, being a single mother- but as Sinead knows the personal is also the political. 

I Don't Know No Shame

Sinead O'Connor's Mandinka arrived in my head at the start of the week, going round and round. It was a very welcome blast from 1987, Sinead's voice up against those beefed up indie- rock guitars and crashing drums. She was going against the grain from the start, signed to a major label and shaving her head when they suggested she wear miniskirts and grow her hair long.

Mandinka

The follow up to 1987's The Lion And The Cobra took her into the mainstream courtesy of the Prince cover that went to number one in every country it was released in and that video. There's lots to love on I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got aside from Nothing Compares 2 U, an album that has contributions from ex- Ant Marco Pironi on guitars, Andy Rourke, Jah Wobble, Kurt Wallinger and Nellee Hooper. The culture clash of I Am Stretched On Your Grave, a 17th century Irish poem over the Funky Drummer. The anger and confession of The Emperor's New Clothes, and what could be her mission statement in the summer of 1990, 'I will live by my own policies/ I will sleep with a clear conscience'. The video for this one is memorable too...



At Glastonbury in 1990 Sinead played on the Saturday afternoon, either just before or just after De La Soul if memory serves, clad in leather biker jacket and a Viz Fat Slags t- shirt and the darkest sunglasses. The Emperor's New Clothes was the one that caught fire that afternoon, crashing guitar chords, the rousing chorus and Marco Pironi's windmilling.

Sinead saw politics as part of what music was for. The song Black Boys On Mopeds was a denunciation of the police and their treatment of young black men, specifically Colin Roach who died of a gunshot wound inside Stoke Newington police station in 1983 and Nicholas Bramble who died in May 1989 being chased by police who assumed the moped he was riding was stolen. It wasn't, it was his. He crashed and died. The culture of policing in London in the 80s was one of stop and search, cover ups, institutional racism, wrongful arrest, police brutality and racial harassment. Sinead opens up pointing the finger at the very top...

'Margaret Thatcher on TV'

Before delivering the sucker punch...

'England's not the mythical land of Madame George and roses
It's the home of police who kill black boys on mopeds'

And this one too....

'These are dangerous days
To say what you feel is to dig your own grave'

This appearance on The Late Show, BBC 2's late night arts and culture show is stunning. Viva Sinead.

The Wheel Keeps Turning

Since posting Massive Attack's 1991 single Unfinished Sympathy I've been listening to my fairly battered copy of Blue Lines and some of the 12" singles that surrounded it. There's no getting away from the brilliance of the album and especially it's final song, the whale sound, Buddhist, ecology trip hop/ ambient beauty of Hymn Of The Big Wheel. The heartbeat drum opens it, there's didgeridoo and then the sound envelopes the room before Horace Andy begins his wonderful, androgynous vocal. The lyric, a man talking to his child, about life and its cyclical nature, the weather, inequality, cities and factories, the sunset, the need to have one's soul mended. It's breathtaking stuff.

Nellee Hooper did a remix not too far removed from the album version but more breakbeat- led and with a heart stopping piano part. Co- written (and sung on uncredited) by Neneh Cherry, if you needed another reason to love it. They can play this at my funeral.

'The big wheel keeps on turning
On a simple line day by day
The earth spins on its axis
One man struggle while another relaxes'

Hymn Of The Big Wheel (Nellee Hooper Remix)

2632 West Pico Boulevard

Like yesterday's Gary Clail song, this song was inescapable in 1991 but is cut from superior cloth, a genuine contender for Best Song Of The Decade etc.

Unfinished Sympathy

Describing the constituent parts of the song doesn't really do it justice or come anywhere near identifying what gives Unfinished Sympathy its power. The scratching at the outset, as soon as the needle hits the groove, some studio voices and the tsk tsk tsk of a hi- hat, locate the song in Massive Attack's roots as a 1980s hip hop collective, the programmed drums roll in, and then we're off, the strings rolling ominously, the 'hey hey hey' sample (John McLaughlin and Mahavishnu Orchestra apparently), leading into Shara's 'I know that I've imagined love before...'. For the next few minutes the strings and Shara swell and soar, drama and emotion building, and little touches like the piano rundowns and more scratching keep the song firmly rooted. It sounded 'classic' the first time you heard it. It's never really sounded dated. It can still silence a room.

The stings were added afterwards by Will Malone. Massive Attack tried synth strings but they didn't cut it and so opted for a full orchestra, having to sell a car to pay for it ( a Mitsubishi Shogun fact fans).

Nellee Hooper's 12" mix is pretty smart, re-arranging it for the dance floor, opening with piano and pushing the piano and drums to the fore. Less dramatic and less deep than the album mix but when those extra vocals come in around three minutes it's all arms in the air and spines a- tingling. Plenty of scratching, some chanted backing vox, thumpier drums- its all good.

Unfinished Sympathy Nellee Hooper 12" Mix

The video is famous, filmed in a suburb of Los Angeles with Shara shot in one take as she struts through the streets, ignoring everyone around her. The group, 3D, Mushroom and Daddy G are all there briefly. Some of the other people in the video are extras and some real residents of the area who wouldn't get off the streets. The main reason they went to L.A. to film the video, 3D said, was for the light, a golden light you don't get anywhere else. It's a brilliant video, the perfect accompaniment to the song, and much copied. This map pinpoints Shara's walk should you find yourself chasing the golden light and in L.A. with the desire to recreate it.

Blue Lines was a stunning album, a record I don't think they've come close to matching in the years that followed. That's not really a criticism- nobody else has come close to it either. It was a genuine crossover record, growing through word of mouth, passed on from hand to hand by cassette through the spring and summer of 1991. From the opening paranoia of Safe From Harm to the slow- slow- quick- quick- slow rapping of 3D, Tricky and Daddy G, to the groove of Be Thankful For What You've Got, the zonked out calm of Daydreaming to the closing beauty of Hymn To The Big Wheel, whale song, liquid beats and Horace Andy's vocals.

Two Suns Ready To Shine Just For You

Last Thursday The Vinyl Villain posted a review of Bjork's Debut from the NME in 1993. Debut is one of the musical high points of the 90s, a record that is giddily in love with music and possibilities of sound. Producer Nellee Hooper constructed the perfect sonic palette for Bjork's ideas. Songs like There's More To Life Than This, Big Time Sensuality and Violently Happy reflected the club culutre of the times, nights Bjork had spent with 808 State soaking up the music and the spirit of the times. On One Day they produced a real gem, a song that starts out with a little synth part and a giggling child, a beautiful bassline and then a heartbeat kick drum before Ms. Gudmundsdottir swoops in. The part at one minute nine seconds where the song shifts gear is heart-stopping and there are some beautiful little sonic touches- a bent guitar note, some backwards wobbles, a whistle. Bjork meanwhile sings her heart out 'one day/ it will happen/ one day/ it will all make sense' and 'I can feel it'

One Day

Andrew Weatherall and the Sabres Of Paradise boys produced three remixes of One Day. On the Endorphin mix they keep Bjork's vocal but slow things down to a glacial pace with a booming kettle drum underpinnng it.

One Day (Endorphin Mix)

The Gate

It seems to me that at some point around the turn of the millennium Bjork lost the sense of fun that characterised her 90s solo work. Debut and Post were informed by dance music and possibility, inventive and arty at the same time, but full of life and with a pop sensibility. She has continued to make art but the artier its become, the more multimedia the packages, the more difficult I've found it to engage with and enjoy. Often very impressive but not always that much fun. Her last album was a traumatic divorce record. I understand why she made it but I haven't played it very often. She's just released a new song called The Gate, the first from a new album, and it is about rebirth, hope, moving forward, a utopia compared the the self described 'hell' of Vulnicura. The video is dazzling, a bit hippy-dippy, but dazzling. The song is over six minutes long and while it never quite leaps forward and takes off like I expected it to the first time I heard it, it sounds a step into the light and part of an album that might be fun to listen to.

And as a reminder of what she gave us back in 1993 here's Come To Me, a song about the giddiness of falling in love and absolute devotion, set to a some softly padding drums, a haze of synths and sounds, and strings that sweep in to set your skin ablaze.

Come To Me

Every Morning I Walk Towards The Edge

I was reminded of this song on social media the other day and it re-awakened the song for me. Hyperballad swoops in from somewhere else, from Bjork's imagination and Nellee Hooper's fingertips, picks you up and carries you off for a few minutes, somewhere else entirely. Not so much a song, more a force of nature. There's nothing ordinary, prosaic or run-of-the-mill about Hyperballad. Bjork's own explanations of it, about being a few years into a relationship and making it feel alive and 'the art of not forgetting about yourself' add to the song (sometimes when artists explain what I song is about I wish they hadn't bothered). The music sweeps by in a rush of rhythms and textures, brilliantly and beautifully.

Hyperballad

There Is More To Life Than This

There's so much stuff going on right now. Head spinning. Political parties collapsing in front of our eyes and decades old certainties vanishing. Anger all over the place.

Tonight England play Iceland at Euro 2016. I've loved the Icelandic team and fans. England have a real banana skin waiting for them and Roy Hodgson is under pressure to deliver after criticism of tactics, selection and strategy. England out of Europe? Twice in four days?

Prior to the Icelandic football team Bjork was their most exciting export. This song off Debut is a joy, lighthearted and in love with itself. The vocals were recorded live in the Milk Bar, London. The bit where the toilet door shuts and and the beat and muffled crowd can be heard and then re-appears shows the sense of freedom and fun that Bjork and Nellee Hooper had when recording the album. I also love the way she pronounces ghettoblaster.

There Is More To Life Than This

93

Having posted songs by Bjork and Sabres Of Paradise in the last few days, both from 1993, it struck me that that year looks like an interesting one, a really good one. I kind of took it for granted at the time. Looking at John Peel's Festive 50 and the NME's end of year list as a couple of starting points there's a lot of variety and several different scenes going on. There's a Jon Savage compilation album that came out a year ago- Perpetual Motion 1988-1993- which celebrates (in his view) a new kind of psychedelia characterised by indie-dance, house and  rave. Savage is currently promoting his new book 1966. I don't think '93 was quite as revolutionary as '66 and it doesn't fit into Tony Wilson's 1955-1966-1977-1988 cycle either but there was a lot going on and more good music than you could shake a stick at.

Bjork's Debut was fully dancefloor informed, making the switch from skittery, post-punk indie to house seem completely smooth and obvious, engineered by Nellee Hooper's production skills (honed with Massive Attack and Soul II Soul). I've been soaking up Debut on the way to work this week- there's not a weak song on it and it's a completely alive album, full of fun and interesting, ear-catching sounds, and on half of the songs four-to-the-floor beats that keep it fresh and propelled. Andrew Weatherall put out out Sabresonic, his first fully formed album outside his production work on other group's albums. Sabres Of Paradise preceded the album with the peerless, mighty Smokebelch II 12". One Dove's Morning Dove White also came out in 1993, a Weatherall produced lost classic, a morning-after/coming-down album much loved round here and by other bloggers. Orbital's untitled 'green' album came out with Chime, Satan and Belfast as its centrepieces. Leftfield and John Lydon firebombed Los Angeles. Ultramarine's United Kingdoms drifted in and out beautifully. Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman was released in January 1994, but presumably worked on to perfection through '93. There are a multitude of other first rate house singles and records in '93 too- Secret Knowledge's Sugar Daddy for one, Disco Evangelists' De Niro for another, Jaydee's Plastic Dreams for one more. I'm sure other people can suggest others I've missed. Even the chartbound dance pop was properly good- Sub Sub's Ain't No Love. Maybe what was happening in retrospect was the last gasp of acid house as it had started in 1988, five years of innovation and ecstasy, just starting to peter out as dance music split into a hundred sub-groups. Portishead, Tricky and trip hop were just around the corner. Drum and bass too.

Peel's list and the NME's both have placings for the last gasps of grunge and alt-rock- Nirvana, Sugar, The Breeders, The Lemonheads, Grant Lee Buffalo, Afghan Whigs, Hole and Dinosaur Jr. The Fall have a mere ten songs in the Festive 50 and The Infotainment Scan in the NME's albums of the year. New Order came back from hiatus with Republic, not a classic album but it's got Regret on it. St Etienne's So Tough refined their sound- Avenue, You're In A Bad, Hobart Paving. Paul Weller cemented his revival with Wild Wood. Teenage Fanclub, Tindersticks and The The put out good records. PJ Harvey chucked in Rid Of Me. Suede's debut, Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish, Boo Radleys' Giant Steps, the Manics Gold Against The Soul, The Verve's A Storm In Heaven, Elastica and Pulp are all in there, signposting what was going to happen with Britpop but those records all have some spark and imagination about them and, Blur apart, none of the retro homogeneity of what came a year or two later. Cypress Hill, The Goats and The Pharcyde made albums that showed that hip hop still had life in it too. There'll be loads more below the surface. I'm sure there are a lot of years you could re-look at and discover a similar diversity of sound, style and invention but 1993 seems to have it spades and somewhat under the radar too in being thought of one of those 'classic' years.

Some music. I don't think I've ever posted PJ Harvey before, which is pretty poor of me.



More Bjork too, cos I'm in the mood...

Something Important Is About To Happen

Between 1992 and 1994 I shared a flat with a friend. We both bought records and for reasons of limited finances and common sense he bought some records and I bought others. This meant that when we went our separate ways I was short of a lot of records from that period which I knew very well but now didn't have, some of which I filled in and some I never got around to. Years later I went to my collection looking for Debut by Bjork- and didn't have it.

Big Time Sensuality is one of my favourite songs from the time- the throb of the bass, the rush of the synths, the sheer giddiness of the vocals- and a fantastically memorable video too. It also perfectly illustrates why Bjork went solo. Would this song have been improved by Einar shouting over it intermittently? It would not.



The version of the song that soundtracked the video single release was the Fluke mix, more clubby. The album version is here if you want to compare and contrast. And this is one of Justin Robertson's thumping, arms-in-the-air remixes.

Big Time Sensuality (Justin Robertson Lionrock Wigout Mix)