Spooked

Alex Kassian is in a rich vein of musical form- the Berlin based producer and DJ struck gold in 2021 with a 12" titled Leave Your Life which contained the title track in two versions and on the flipside the magnificent Spirit Of Eden (which came with a beautiful Bill Laswell Dub). Following that Test Pressing released the Voices 12" and last year Alex's cover of Manuel Gottsching's E2- E4 which came with a pair of Mad Professor remixes. 

Last month Alex released Orange Coloured Liquid, a reworking of Spooky's 1993 track. Alex has outdone himself again- Orange Coloured Liquid (Part I) and Part II are 2025's most Balearic moment, a sumptuous, mellow, lost in a trance version. Part I is powered by a breakbeat that keeps it grounded while the synths, keys, piano and pads do their utmost to soar. Part II is weightless and ambient, with strings and a harp.

The 12" and digital package come with a Placid Angles remix by John Beltran which shifts it again, the breakbeat back with a twinkling melody and the faintest echo of voices- it ends with a floaty synth string breakdown and fadeout that could happily play out for much, much longer. The EP finishes with the Spooky original from the duo's 1993 album Gargantuan. You can get the digital at Bandcamp. 

Monday's Long Song

The first signs of spring are in the offing- daffodils showing their yellow heads and blossom tentatively appearing on trees. It's forecast to be a return to winter this week with snow and ice. I'm done with winter now, I need some warmth and some sunshine. 

I've posted two shoegaze/ ambient techno remixes recently, the Future Sound Of London remix of Curve last Monday and the Reload remix of Slowdive two weeks before that. Here's a third, Spooky's 1994 of Undertow by Lush. By 1994 Lush had moved on from the shimmering, FX drenched early sound to something more radio friendly. Their Hypocrite single came with this remix, a nine minute version of a song from their album Split. Lots of chopped up guitar chords, the sound of the FX pedals as much as the guitars themselves, feedback, ambient noise, a lovely looped bass part with a fragment of vocal floating on top, all underpinned by a crunchy drumbeat. 

Undertow (Spooky Remix)

Monday's Long Song

William Orbit's career took him from early 80s synth act Torch Song to a wonderful album in 1990 as Bass- O- Matic and a series of solo albums titled Strange Cargo (I, II and III). After that he moved into production and remixes for the big players- Madonna, Prince, Britney et al. Strange Cargo III in 1993 was a tour de force of Balearic and ambient dance- pop, layers of FX and chugging rhythms led by Water From A Vine Leaf (featuring the voice of Beth Orton), seven minutes of tropical rainforest/ electronic ambience. 

Water From A Vine Leaf

The Underworld remixes of Water From A Vine Leaf are superb but I've posted them before. This one is a throbbing, uptempo remix by Spooky, driving and bit trancey and none the worse for it.  

Water From A Vine Leaf (Xylem Flow Mix) 

Schmoo

In the early 90s Underworld's remixes were as essential as their own material, the group producing a slew of long, tribal, dub techno remixes that were monumental trips in their own right. Between 1992 and 1995 their remixes of Bjork, William Orbit, The Drum Club, One Dove, Orbital, Saint Etienne, Leftfield, Front 242 and Shakespeare's Sister are all superb work and as was standard at the time, they often produced two or three mixes, making what amounted to mini- albums and great value for money on 12" or CD single. In 1993 they remixed Spooky, one of the era's omnipresent progressive house outfits (and still at it today), turning in a nine minute thumper with dancing topline piano melodies, a pair of disembodied voices (one a female 'ooh' and 'yeah' and the other sounding like a foreign radio station or platform announcement), bleeps, a huge bassline and a crashing rhythm- what more do you want? Or need? 

Schmoo (Underworld Mix)