Shakedown

There's a school of thought that Smashing Pumpkins were a difficult band to like/ love (although they obviously had their fans, they were massive in the mid 90s) but that they had one solid gold song- and that song is great because it sounds like New Order, chiming guitars, motorik drumming, foreground melodic bassline and coming of age lyrics. 

1979

1979 came out in 1995 and sounds like Ceremony but if New Order had recorded it in 1987 rather than the wreckage of Joy Division in 1980. In an unexpected turn of events,  when New Order returned in 2001 with the album Get Ready, Billy Corgan turned up on vocals with Bernard on the song Turn My Way and played guitar with them as they toured that summer. In an interview from the time Stephen Morris was asked how it was going with Corgan on board. 'He's alright I suppose', Stephen replied to the journalist, which told its own story to this reader. 

In another unexpected turn of events Hardway Bros released two EPs on Monday, both out on Sean Johnston's Outre- Mer label, the first a four track EP titled My Friends and the second an EP of remixes. The My Friends EP covers the range of styles and has something for everyone: an eight minute Vietnam epic called Saigon, voices from Apocalypse Now!, congas from Sympathy For The Devil, synths from a Belgian New Beat basement; a fifteen minute wigged electronic trip called Hello My Friends; a hi hat and kick drum banger Functions For Machines; and a cover of 1979 with Duncan Gray on guitar and Sarah Rebecca on vocals, a smoothed out, gliding cover of Smashing Pumpkins with synths, guitars (courtesy of Duncan Gray) and pulsing drums. You can buy/ hear the My Friends EP here. 

The remixes EP sees a regular visitor to these pages, Andy Bell wearing his GLOK hat, bring his cosmische influences to 1979. There are two remixes, bookending the EP, the first a four minute reworking, the chords and synths filtered and chopped up. At the other end of the EP comes the second GLOK remix, the GLOK Remix Reprise, gentle, blissed out, guitar led remix, a little like Ride's Vapour Trail slowed down and played acoustically, with Sarah Rebecca's vocal shimmering on top, a very different reading of the song to Billy's mid- 90s rites of passage version. The first treat of 2024. 

In between Andy's pair of remixes are remixes by Warehouse Preservation Society, Djale and Tech Support which span chuggy dub, cosmic electronica and squiggly house. Get it here. 

No One But Me

There's an enormous five disc edition of The Wicker Man out this week, a 50th anniversary celebration of the film. The box contains three versions of the film (Director's Cut, Theatrical Cut and The Final Cut) along with all manner of extras- interviews, trailers, documentaries, commentaries and photographs. There's more info at the BFI shop. The final disc is a CD which has grown from a Katy J Pearson cover of Willow's Song which was on her Sound Of The Morning album. Willow's Song is from the film and supposedly sung by Britt Eckland, played by the band Magnet (Britt apparently struggled to hold a tune even when equipped with a bucket and Willow's Song was actually sung by Rachel Verney. Or possibly Annie Ross). Written by composer Paul Giovanni, Willow's Song is haunted 1973 psychedelic folk, genuinely beautiful, a moment of calm with a darkness residing inside it too. 

Katy J Pearson's cover is psychedelic/ motorik, a krauty four four beat kicking up and echo laden guitar. As well as Willow's Song the box contains several other songs from the film covered by Katy. 

The CD also contains a pair of new versions of Katy's Willow's Song, one a far more folky cover done with alt- folk group Broadside Hacks, the acoustic guitars and folk arrangement transporting it back to Summerisle in 1973 with visions of Edward Woodward, pagan rituals and Britt. 

The other is a seven minute remix by Richard Norris, a slowed down dub folk remix with long trumpet notes and deep bass. Katy's voice eventually glides in on top, floating over the dubness. Richard's recent immersion into dub sounds and production as seen in his new Oracle Sound label, is paying off massively with this remix, a track crying out for a vinyl release. 

Credit where it is due- earlier this week Khayem featured the Richard Norris remix over at Dubhed as part of a 2023 mix he put together, marking the slow fade from summer to autumn. All three versions of Katy J Pearson's cover have the shiver of autumn about them, the dusk falling sooner and the mornings cooler and mistier even if the trees are still full of green leaves. 

Back at the tail end of 2021 Sean Johnston put Hardway Bros aside for a while and released a cover of Willow's Song as The Summerisle Trio, a collective formed with Duncan Gray and singer Sarah Rebecca (later expanded to The Summerisle Six for the This Is Something 12"). Willow's Song was only available as 7" vinyl on Golden Lion Sounds, backed with The Emperor Machine's chunky self explanatory dancefloor monster Dance Your Tit Out. The Summerisle Trio's cover is less folky than Katy's cover, the drum machine and synths casting an electronic shimmer behind the vocal. You can listen to it here. 

Nostalgia For The Future

I've lots of recently released music to share. The new EP from The Long Champs came out two weeks ago on Tici Taci, a label celebrating ten years of releases while also continuing to put out consistently good music. The EP's title track, Nostalgia For The Future, is a six minutes of chug, submarine sonar bleeps, mangled guitar lines, faint echoes of voice and from two minutes twenty six a fuzzy, distorted bassline that push everything onward. Layers of guitars and feedback bounce around the track, some nostalgia for late 80s and early 90s indie- dance guitar bands spliced into 2023 cosmic Welsh chug. 

The EP features two more tracks- Mind Trip, Right On and A Hungry Ghost. Mind Trip, Right On, is slower paced, a bumping bassline and various FX toplines playing off against each other. A Hungry Ghost has more of those squally guitars, backwards guitars and bursts of feedback, with insistent drums and a tambourine. You can listen to all three here.  The Long Champs 2020 album Straight To Audio is still available physically at Bandcamp, full of slo- mo, indie dance, ALFOS chug treats. 

Tici Taci are releasing four compilations to celebrate the ten years of operation. Decade Volume 2, sixteen tracks selected by label boss Duncan Gray spanning the years 2015- 2017, an embarrassment of riches including selections by Duncan himself, Uj Pa Gaz, Veneno, Planet Jumper, Tronik Youth, The Long Champs and James Rod. The compilation finishes with Duncan and Sraah Rebecca and their song Erotica Nervosa, a sleek six minutes of bump and grind. Over throbbing bass Sarah sings of sexual obsession, how freedom's just a word until you lose it and of being reborn in the fire. Decade Volume 2 can be bought here. 

Erotica Nervosa

This came out in September and was widely missed and it's a shame because it is an excellent piece of disco-tinged house. Duncan Gray provides the music, the clipped riff and the beats, the whooshing noises and the grimey bassline. Sarah Rebecca provides the vocals, about drive and ambition and sexual obsession, ending up chanting 'I will be reborn in the fire' over a dirty, descending guitar part. 

It's a Monday at the end of November. Christmas is too far away to look like any fun. Black Friday is a dispiriting now annual occurrence. We all could all do with some uplifitng, slinky, funky dance music in our lives couldn't we? 

Pleasure Cry

I've given the vintage photographs thing a rest recently- become a bit of a cliche innit? But this Jacques Henri Lartigue picture from about a century ago of a woman sunbathing and rewinding the gramophone is pretty special.

Sean Johnston's Hardway Bros return with a four track 12" of proper dance music, the sort that should be heard in the dark backroom of airless nightclubs or outdoors somewhere as the sun goes down/comes up. The ep's title track is this song, vocals by Sarah Rebecca, a sultry groover with a dirty bassline and takes that old house music plus sex vocal thing and sends it out of your speakers and into your ears/loins. Cymbals tap away, kick drum thumps, 'my legs are like butterflies...this is my pleasure cry'.