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.  

Fifty Minute Midwinter Mix

A mix for the winter solstice, the longest night and shortest day, and to celebrate the fact that we'll start to get a little more daylight every day. Songs with winter in the title are plentiful and there are quite a few that didn't make it into this mix for various reasons- I wanted to keep this mix largely ambient/ ambient inspired (although that goes a bit off piste in places as you can see from the tracklisting below). Aztec Camera's Walk Out To Winter, The Bangles/ Simon and Garfunkel's Hazy Shade Of Winter and Teenage Fanclub's Winter just didn't fit and A Certain Ratio's ten minute drone epic Winter Hill was too long and cutting it down/ fading it out didn't seem right. 

Fifty Minute Midwinter Mix

• Joanna Brouk: Winter Chimes
• Pye Corner Audio: A Winter Drone For Christmas
• SUSS: Winter Light
• The Durutti Column: Sketch For Winter
• Trentemoller: While The Cold Winter Waiting
• Michael Head And The Red Elastic Band: Winter Turns To Spring
• Stockholm Monsters: Winter
• The Pictish Trail: Winter Home Disco
• Saint Etienne: Her Winter Coat
• Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Winterlong
• Vashti Bunyan: Winter Is Blue
• Glass Candy: Warm In The Winter

Winter Chimes is from a 1980 Joanna Brouk album, The Space Between. It is atmospheric and enchanting, just chimes and piano sitting somewhere in the space where ambient crosses into New Age.

Pye Corner Audio's Winter Drone For Christmas- the title is exactly what it is- is from Christmas Eve 2023, five minutes of low key synth loveliness. 

Winter Light is from Promise, the 2020 album by SUSS, an ambient Americana trio from New York. Highly recommended.  

Sketch For Winter is from The Durutti Column's 1980 album, The Return Of The Durutti Column album, Vini Reilly's debut long player. Vini was pushed into Cargo Studios in Rochdale by Tony Wilson during a period when he was suffering from severe depression. Tony thought it might save Vini. In the studio was Martin Hannett and a van load of new equipment. The album, Fact 14, was housed in a Situationist inspired sandpaper sleeve, and contains ten tracks of Vini playing guitar and Martin playing 'switches' (as the sleevenotes say). It's recently been remastered and re- issued and sounds better than ever, a foundational album for Factory and UK post- punk (not that it sounds post- punk but it is- Vini says, doing what he did could only have happened in the space that opened up after punk). 

Trentemoller's 2006 album The Last Resort was the Danish producer's debut, an electronic album that sounds very live.

Michael Head and The Red Elastic Band's Adios Senor Pussycat still sounds like one of the best albums of 2017 and of that entire decade. Winter Turns To Spring is Mick on piano and singing, a change of sound from the rich, full band scouse folk rock that makes up most of the album. 

Stockholm Monsters were from Burnage and signed to Factory. Winter is from 1984's Alma Mater, a record produced by Peter Hook and largely ignored in 1984, one of those albums that is a lost gem. A dark, monochrome sound, led by the bass guitar, very poetic and very Factory. 

The Pictish Trail is Johnny Lynch, who operates out of a caravan on the Isle Of Eigg, Scotland and was part of the Fence Collective and the man behind Fence Records, an open minded, folk influenced label started by Lynch and King Creosote. Winter Home Disco kicks in with a drum machine but the folk and psyche follow quickly. A rather beautiful song from 2008 which all of a sudden seems a long time ago. 

Her Winter Coat was a 2021 single by Saint Etienne, Pete Wiggs creating a Christmas sounding song without going full Xmas cheese. Icy and quietly epic.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse's Winterlong came out on Decade,a  triple lp compilation from 1977 that was only the start of Neil's career long trawl through his unreleased vaults and shelved projects. Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure I heard the Pixies cover of Winterlong, released on a 1989 tribute album called The Bridge, before I heard Neil's. Neil and Crazy Horse recorded Winterlong in 1973 at Neil's Broken Arrow Ranch. It is perfect in the way only Neil and Crazy Horse can sound- slightly frazzled, slightly out of tune, ragged and dreamy and psychedelic, searching for something- love, fulfillment- before concluding, 'it's all an illusion anyway'. 

Vashti Bunyan's Winter Is Blue is lyrically dark- winter and loss of love, life having no meaning. The guitars and arrangement are deceptively jaunty, a trick folk music often pulls. This is the Immediate version, recorded it for Andrew Loog Oldham's label in 1967 and unreleased until 2007. Vashti re- recorded it for her 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day, a record so poorly received that she packed it all in and went to Scotland by horse and cart and then to Ireland for several decades before its rediscovery in the 21st century. 

Warm In The Winter is a joy- Glass Candy released it as a single on Italians Do It Better in 2013. Giddy synth pop, a song in love with life and with itself, 'Crazy like a monkey/ Happy like a new year'. Partway through Ida sings, 'You're beautiful. You came from heaven. We love you!' and the synth arpeggios build, and the song skips and swoops, and the darkness gets pushed out and, once again, winter passes. Happy solstice. 

An Hour Of Sunshine From Glasgow And Two Hours Of Do!! You!! From Richard Sen

John Fenner of Glasgow did this mix recently and shared it, Cafe Del Muir, an hour and seven minutes of sunshine for a rainy day in Glasgow (or anywhere). It's a blend of old and new and some of the tunes John selected came via recommendations from this blog- it's nice to see the ripples that go out and come back. There's a couple that are new to me as well and so the ripples go back out again. You can find Cafe Dal Muir at Soundcloud. 

• The Chemical Brothers: One Too Many Mornings
• Four Tet: Loved
• Saint Etienne: Alone Together (Hove Lawns Sunset Mix)
• The Cure: Pictures Of You (Extended Dub Mix)
• The Vendetta Suite: Warehouse Rock (Timmy Stewart's Six Minutes To Sunrise Mix)
• Sinead O'Connor: You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart
• The Main Stem: Since You Left (Prins Thomas Miks)
• 10:40: Kissed Again
• Bal5000: Bleu Infini
• The Blow Monkeys: Save Me (Neville Watson Dub)
• The Light Brigade: Only Love Can Save Us
• Orbital: Belfast (ANNA Ambient Mix)

On Friday Richard Sen hosted his weekly Do!! You!! radio show, two hours of top tunes from a man who knows his musical onions. Richard played three tracks from our forthcoming Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 album (and ave us a shout out) so if you're itching to hear three of the tracks from it- the unreleased version of Lik Wid Nit Wit by Sabres Of Paradise, Red Snapper's Qraqeb and Sleaford Mods cover of Two Lone Swordsmen's Sick When We Kiss (retitled as sick wen we x) then this is the place to do it until the vinyl copies start arriving on doormats and in porches. As well as those three Richard plays tons of other great tracks, including some classic trance, breakbeat, and some very deep cosmic disco. Listen here. 

Glad

Saint Etienne are about to bow out after thirty five years of making records. Sarah, Bob and Pete are releasing their final album, International, in September and ahead of it put out a song last week, the irresistible, uptempo, Northern Soul on synths sounds of Glad...

Glad was co- written by Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands and has Dove Jez Goodwin on guitar but it's Saint Etienne through and through, a song celebrating taking joy in small things.

Back in February they released some remixes of Alone Together from last year's The Night album. The Hove Lawns Sunset Mix is a Balearic joy, lazy drums and summer horns. They did a vinyl release, pressing up the number that were ordered. My copy has never arrived, lost somewhere in the postal system rather annoyingly.

Forty Five Minutes Of Two Lone Swordsmen

At the airport in Belfast they have robots to serve your breakfast. You have to go to the till and speak to a human to order but then the human loads your mugs and plates of food onto these robots and they bring them to your table. The eight year old me reading 2000AD in 1978 would have been beside himself at this aspect of the future but somehow, it just seemed a bit ridiculous. They even give the robot a smiley face to make them seem more human.

None of which has much to do with today's post and Sunday mix- except that the music Two Lone Swordsmen made is still far more of the future, more the soundtrack to 2000AD, than the robots at Belfast airport ever will be. When Andrew Weatherall formed Two Lone Swordsmen with Keith Tenniswood they made it a mission to go further and deeper, to take a more thorough and more purist approach to electronic music. After the sprawling magnificence of 1996's The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate) which went from stoned, paranoid ambience to big beat to two step and back again, they drilled deeper- minimal, brutalist electronic machine funk, ambient techno and glitchy dark electronic dub (with a detour into hip hop on A Virus With Shoes and then an exciting mutation into garage rock and rockabilly). Sometimes the music seemed a bit unfriendly and it lost a few people along the way but this being Mr Weatherall, there's no shortage of gold in among the darkness. 

This forty five minute mix is a celebration of Andrew's birthday today- he would have been 62 today. Many of his friends and family are at The Golden Lion today, day three of AW62 which will end tonight with a live performance by The Jonny Halifax Invocation (who have promised some live band TLS action) and a dub set from Adrian Sherwood. Happy birthday Andrew.

Forty Five Minutes Of Two Lone Swordsmen

• Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) (Two Lone Swordsmen Dub)
• We Change The Frequency
• Cotton Stains
• Lino Square
• Black Commandments
• Untitled Two Lone Swordsmen Remix
• Glide By Shooting
• Hope We Never Surface

Saint Etienne's 2000 album Sound Of Water was a bit of a departure for them. The Two Lone Swordsmen Dub of it's single Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) was a deconstruction, reducing the tune to its minimal dub basics, the wobbly bass a particular treat.

We Change The Frequency is from 1998's Stay Down, sometimes the TLS album I think is my favourite and one which has really grown over the years, lots of short, repetitive mechanical pieces and some gorgeous ambient techno, everything submerged in oceanic depths of bass and echo (like the deep sea divers on the cover). Hope We Never Surface is the opening track and always seems to be like a door opening... or a hatch...

Cotton Stains is on 2000's Tiny Reminders, the furthest and most purist they went, tunnel vision electro Six sides of vinyl, each disc starting with a track made up of static, a tiny reminder, before drilling into the netherworld of basement glitchy electronic bass and techno. Cotton Stains is the real sound of robots serving up breakfasts at airports- just before they declare independence and overthrow the security. 

Lino Square is from The Fifth Mission (Return To The Flightpath Estate), a fractured, mechanised but funky little number with a wiggy synth pattern kicking in after a few minutes. 

Black Commandments is from a 7" single that came with an EP, A Bag Of Blue Sparks, released on Warp in 1998, that included the track Gay Spunk (a title borrowed from Peter Hook's bass amp spray paint message).  

Untiled Two Lone Swordsmen is a remix of Ganger's Trilogy, a 12" from 1998, a nine minutes long and dusty with a flicker of guitar running through it. Ganger were from Glasgow, post- rock and krauty.

Glide By Shooting is one of the finest TLS tracks, a track on the double vinyl remix EP Swimming Not Skimming. Depth over surface. Eight minutes of sleek, mesmerising brilliance. 

Six Thousand

Today marks post number six thousand at Bagging Area, which is a big number which ever way you slice it. To mark this here's something new and rather wonderful from perennial Bagging Area favorites Saint Etienne. 

At the tail end of last year Saint Etienne released an album called The Night, a record made for misty dawns and murky autumnal days, for headphones at three in the morning and for losing oneself in. Much of it was ambient and found sounds,along with a wash of synths, Sarah Cracknell's voice occasionally appearing out of the haze, suddenly something sharp and clear. It was not really like anything they'd done before, very much a mood piece, an album that you could play and that would act as background noise, every now and then catching your attention. As it might with the song Alone Together, a guitar plinking into life, a lazy laptop drumbeat ticking slowly away, some chords and then Sarah singing. It was very much the most fully formed song on The Night and even then still a very loose, whispery, gauze- like song.

Alone Together

For the record, I loved the album but can see why it split opinion anong the Saint Etienne fanbase. Now the group have remixed Alone Together, released next month as a four track CD/ digital EP and two track 12". There is a remix each from Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley (Bob's with Augustin Bousfield), an extended version of the album track and a Cosmodelica remix by Colleen Cosmo Murphy. Bob's remix, the Hove Lawns Sunset Mix, is a thing of beauty, the sound of summer come early, terraces in the Med at sunset, long days and long shadows, a properly Balearic remix. Shuffly drums, clipped guitar, piano, Sarah and at three minutes some horns that parp away just so... the flutter of strings, the gentle throb of electronic bass, Spanish guitar. It's a summer holiday pressed onto black wax. The video was, I suspect, not filmed in Hove. 

Ambient Christmas

I've avoided Christmas music here this year largely but today I thought I'd treat you to an ambient mix for Christmas Eve. I said last week that for me ambient music and found sounds do carry a very wintry and Christmassy feel- the half heard conversations and hum of background noise of shops and pubs, bells and drones, and the constant half dusk of December. This mix is all of that, mostly ambient, and a little bit more. 

Forty Minute Ambient Christmas Mix

• Pye Corner Audio: A Winter Drone For Christmas
• Pye Corner Audio: Omnichord Omnishambles (At Xmas)
• Pye Corner Audio: Satan's Slay
• Durutti Column: One Christmas For Your Thoughts
• Saint Etienne: Lillehammer
• The Vendetta Suite: Christmas In Cologne
• Pandit Pam Pam: Equipe Exploratoria Papai Natal III
• Pye Corner Audio: Get Thee Behind Me Santa

Pye Corner Audio releases new music onto his Bandcamp page monthly, ambient/ drone/ acid tracks that are free/ pay what you want. Martyn Jenkins (Mr Pye Corner Audio) has recorded four Christmas tracks, all included in this mix, the opening three forming a long slow ambient fade in and the fourth a long slow drone fade out. It's worth noting that Omnichord Omnishambles was PCA's Christmas 2020 track, the omnishambles being a reference to the then chaotic government of Boris Johnson and the bewildering, populist, bullshit decision making of the government during Covid and Christmas in 2020.

Durutti Column's One Christmas For Your Thoughts is from 1981 and a compilation called Chansons Noel on Crepescule (along with other early 80s post- punk heroes such as Aztec Camera, Paul Haig, Simon Topping and Cabaret Voltaire). Vini and his guitar never sounded better. 

Saint Etienne's Xmas 2021 EP was a four track CD only release that followed hot on the heels of their I've Been Trying To Tell You album. Lillehammer is a gorgeous wintry instrumental, named after the Norwegian ski resort which hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics. The lead song on the single was Her Winter Coat, Pete and Bob's music a low key, mini- winter epic, synths and sleigh bells, and Sarah in spoken word mode. 

The Vendetta Suite is Gary Irwin from Belfast, a veteran of the city's acid house scene. In 2021 he released an album called The Kempe Stone Portal with Christmas In Cologne on it, a song that first appeared in 2019's The Wheel Turns EP. Cosmische Christmas. 

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He released an album this year which should have made yesterday's list and an EP that did, plus his third Christmas release. The Natal III EP also contains a ten minute long track that should have been on this mix but I wanted to keep it to forty minutes, the brilliantly titled Santa Crying And Depressed On 26th Because He Is Concerned About The Coming Years, As He Is Technically An Illegal Immigrant And The Political Landscape Is Changing. You can find that here. 

Happy Christmas. 

I Know So Many People Who Think They Can Do It Alone

Today's post comes from the box of CDs that have come cover mounted on music magazines over the years. I scooped this one up a while ago, and wasn't sure that I'd ever even listened to it- and it contains two recent Bagging Area postees in shape of Saint Etienne and The Liminanas. The CD came free with Mojo in June 2012, a Beach Boys/ Pet Sounds cover story with articles on Rufus Wainwright, My Bloody Valentine, Sandy Denny, Buzzcocks and Michael Kiwanuka all also trailed on the cover along with the return of Public Image Limited and (gulp) Rush. The free CD is Pet Sounds related.

It's more than related, it's a bespoke re- recording of Pet Sounds in full with Saint Etienne, Magnetic North, The Sand Band, Tim Burgess, Jeffrey Lewis, The Neil Cowley Trio, Tom McRae, The Flaming Lips, The Liminanas, Jodie Marie, Gaz Coombes, Human Don't Be Angry, Here We Go Magic and Superimposers. Some of these names mean as little to me now as they did in 2012. 

Pet Sounds is such a heavyweight, canonical album but with such a lighter than air sound that I guess it could be difficult to know how to go about doing a cover one of its thirteen teenage symphonies, Brian Wilson's beautiful melodic songs, those sing song vocals and Tony Asher's perfectly weighed words, lyrics that stand as some kind of mid- 60s poetic pop highpoint. Many of the artists take the standard route and stay pretty faithful to the source material. Saint Etienne open up with Wouldn't It Be Nice...

Wouldn't It Be Nice 

It's very sugary, the first minute or so just Sarah's voice and some backing vocals. The band come in, easy listening style before building into a bit of a 60s swirl. 

Tim Burgess, at that point releasing his excellent Oh No I Love You solo album, covers Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), acoustic guitar, a ton of reverb, and musical box melodies- pretty, also very faithful to the original. The fade out and ending is lovely. 

Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)

The Neil Cowley Trio (who I've featured before in remixed form) cover Let's Go Away For A While, modern jazz style, piano and rattling snare drum. 

Let's Go Away For A While

The Flaming Lips come along to rip things up a bit, the ones who don't hand in a standard cover, but go with distorted guitars, a psychedelic haze and wobbling synths, Wayne warbling the famous words, 'I may not always love you/ But as long as there are stars above/ You never need to doubt it/ God only knows what I'd be without you...' A lovely, frazzled, drift towards the centre of the sun. 

God Only Knows

The Liminanas, French psyche/ beat duo take on I Know There's An Answer, with authentic 60s groove and heavily accented vox- they sound like they're having fun, dropping out in the middle and then thundering back in and adding what sounds like a theremin twanging away. Hang on to your ego. 

 I Know There's An Answer

Half Life

Three years ago Saint Etienne returned with an album called I've Been Trying To Tell You. It was largely well recieved but I think a bit of an opinion splitter too but I loved it- the album was steeped in the mists of memory and the recent past, based around the long gone optimism of the period 1997 to 2001. According to Bob Stanley it was about 'optimism, the late 90s and how memory is an unreliable narrator'. The songs are sample based, Pete Wiggs taking elements from unlikely sources from that time period- Natalie Imbruglia, Honeyz, Lighthouse Family, Samantha Mumba, Tasmin Archer and The Lightning Seeds- and combining them with found sounds and synths/ laptop programming. The songs are all drenched in a woozy haze, a slowness, fragments of a dream, a weird nostalgia for a period that feels disconnected from today despite being relatively recent. It also refused to draw any firm conclusions about that period- what was it? Were things getting better? Did it just feel that way because we were younger? 

Pond House

The album was followed by an Christmas EP, led by the magnificently wintry and melancholic Her Winter Coat. 

The EP also had this song, Lillehammer, an instrumental that takes the laptop ambience that forms the background to I've Been Trying To Tell You and breaks things further apart, the sound of dusk at 4pm in December. 

Lillehammer

Now Saint Etienne are about to release a new album, The Night, out this Friday. It's been preceded by a single, Half Life, which is the feel of the songs from I've Been Trying To Tell You and the Christmas EP but even more so. Half Life is less than two minutes long, an ambient Saint Etienne lost on the edge of town as darkness falls, far away from things. Sarah whispers. Washes of synth drift by. A mistreated piano plays an out of tune melody line. Bass bumps away slightly. On its own it floats by quickly, only just there. As part of an album I imagine it will be surrounded by similar songs, part of a late 2024 ambient Saint Etienne treat.

Daniel Avery And The Early Bird

No forty minute Sunday mix from me today- I've been away this week and haven't had much time. Instead, enjoy this sublime two hours from Daniel Avery and The Early Bird Show at NTS from last week. Daniel plays an early morning selection of songs and tracks, joining the dots between ambient, indie, trip hop and techno, with PJ Harvey, some of his own music, Sinead O'Connor, Two Lone Swordsmen, Holden Federico, George Clanton, James K, Deftones, Death In Vegas, Everything But The Girl, Skee Mask, Smashing Pumpkins, Interpol, Solvent, and Nulifer Yanya all making appearances. The full tracklist is here and you can listen here. Two hours well spent. 

I've posted two different Daniel Avery mixes previously. Both are still available to download. In November 2022 I put together a forty minute mix of remixes Daniel has done of other artists- it's quite intense and thumpy. 

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes 

• Enfant Sauvage: 58500 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Saint Etienne: Fonteyn (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Leaving Laurel: Winter In The Woods (Daniel Avery Remix)
• David Holmes: Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Mandy, Indiana: Alien 3 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Joshua James: Amber Rush (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Daniel Avery: Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)

Previous to that, in February 2022 when I started this Sunday mix series, the second forty minute mix I posted was a Daniel Avery one, thirty minutes of echo, reverb, FX and emotive ambient/ techno.

Half An Hour Of Daniel Avery

• Together In Static
• Illusion Of Time (Teodor Wolgers rework)
• Petrol Blue
• Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)
• Into The Voice Of Stillness
• A Story In E5
• Midnight Sun
• Lone Swordsman

Forty Minutes For Christmas Eve

I haven't really felt much Christmas joy so far this year and all of a sudden it's Christmas Eve and I need to try to get into the spirit a little. Therefore, today's Sunday mix is a Christmas special, a little under forty minutes of Yuletide tunes to sing around the Christmas tree. Admittedly The Jesus And Mary Chain aren't particularly full of Christmas cheer but a little noise and self- loathing is all part of the season isn't it? 

The picture, 'cos I know you're asking, is from a nativity scene that gets erected every Christmas about half a mile up the road from here. It's full of the Joyeux Noël spirit and is a feast for the eyes. 

Forty Minutes For Christmas Eve

• Durutti Column: One Christmas Your Thoughts
• The Sugarcubes: Birthday (Christmas Eve)
• Basement 5: Last White Christmas
• The Vendetta Suite: Christmas In Cologne
• Low: Just Like Christmas
• Johnny Marr: Free Christmas
• Sonic Boom: I Wish It Was Like Christmas Every Day (A Little Bit Deeper)
• The Fall: Xmas With Simon
• Saint Etienne: Her Winter Coat

One Christmas For Your Thoughts was originally released as part of a 1981 compilation, Chantons Noel, on Crepescule along with other festive tunes by artists including Aztec Camera, Paul Haig, Simon Topping, and Cabaret Voltaire. It then became an extra track on the various CD re- issues of LC, the 1981 Durutti Column classic- LC stands for Lotta Continua, the struggle continues. This is a particularly lovely piece of Vini Reilly guitar playing and let's face it, there's never a bad time to listen to Vini.

Basement 5's Last White Christmas came out in December 1980, dub/ punk produced by Martin Hannett. Post- punk dread as standard.  

Birthday was a single by The Sugarcubes, their breakthrough record. In 1988 Jim and William Reid remixed it three times, each one with a Christmas title- Eve, Day and Present. Scuzzy Christmas sounds. Side A of the 12" is double grooved so when putting the needle on the record it was always a lottery as to which version you'd get. 

Christmas In Cologne is on The Vendetta Suite's December 2019 EP The Wheel Turns, a festive krautrock treat from Belfast's Gary Irwin, Christmas a la La Dusseldorf.

Just Like Christmas has become one of the few seasonal songs I'll actively seek out around Christmas, the  Minnesotan three piece releasing it as part of an eight song Christmas album in 1999. Sleighbells, Velvets drums and sweetly sung lyrics about driving from Stockholm to Oslo, it starting to snow and it feeling like Christmas. 

Johnny Marr's Free Christmas was given away free from Johnny's website back in 2011. Chiming guitars, acoustic guitars, baritone guitars and some choral voices with Mr Marr wishing listeners a happy Christmas. 

Sonic Boom's 2020 Christmas song was a reworking of another of his songs from the All Things Being Equal album and has Galaxie 500/ Luna's Dean and Britta helping out on vocals. Christmas as repetitive, trippy drones and a song specifically for a Christmas we all spent in Covid enforced isolation. 

Xmas With Simon was the B-side to 1990's High Tension Line single. The Simon in question is Simon Wolstencroft, ex- Fall drummer who I bumped into at the Unknown Territories gig last weekend. Shame I didn't have the presence of mind to get a photo with him. The caption would have written itself. 

Saint Etienne's Her Winter Coat was a December 2021 single, a rather beautiful Pete Wiggs song and production, a wintry blur of synths, sleighbells with the distinct air of melancholy. Just like Christmas. 

The Oxford

To conclude this week's run of photos of abandoned and defunct pubs this is The Oxford on Oxford Street, Liverpool. It was once part of a Victorian terrace and is now the only building that remains standing. Given its boarded up state I guess that may not be the case for much longer. It stands at the eastern end of the University of Liverpool campus. At the other end is The Cambridge, a regular haunt of mine back in the late 80s and thankfully still open. This is one race in which Cambridge have definitely beaten Oxford.

Today is Weatherall Remix Friday Twelve and his ties in to last Sunday's Saint Etienne mix post too. Back in 2000 Two Lone Swordsmen remixed Saint Etienne's Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi), a single from their Sound Of Water album. The album is a low key, minimalist affair, pared back and with some influences from the late 90s leftfield/ avant garde/ ambient end of things. 

Two Lone Swordsmen went to town on remix duties, producing four versions- gritty, bass heavy TLS urban dub. Only one was officially released, the other three appearing on a white label promo disc. I'm not going to describe each one in turn- they're all variations on a theme that go progressively further, murkier and dubbier. If you like the turn of the millennium TLS dub sound (and you should) you'll enjoy these. If you're a completist (and I know some of you are) you'll want them for your collection. 

Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix)

Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) (Two Lone Swordsmen Instrumental Remix)

Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) (Two Lone Swordsmen Dub Remix Version 1)

Heart Failed (In The Back Of A Taxi) (Two Lone Swordsmen Dub Remix Version 2)

Forty Five Minutes Of Saint Etienne

When Saint Etienne appeared in 1990 they seemed too good to be true. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs love of 60s pop and kitchen sink drama, 70s TV and films and late 80s dance music blended together into a dizzy, heady style of dance/ pop/ indie- dance, knowing but inclusive, cool but not taking itself too seriously. Their first few singles were all totally loveable and Foxbase Alpha remains one of 1991's best albums- a year stuffed full of great albums. They kept it up into the mid- 90s, So Tough and Tiger Bay, with Sarah Cracknell firmly now part of a trio. This forty five minute mix focusses on those early/ mid 90s records, songs in love with pop music in all its forms, with samples from their extensive record collections and a real sense of joie de vivre. There's nothing wrong with much of what came later but these early songs have a thread running through them that the late 90s ones (and onwards) don't. 

Putting this together made me think of several other things. Firstly, a second Saint Etienne mix pulling a lot of the remixes of their songs together might work (and one dealing with their post- 1998 songs). Secondly, I have a load of Two Lone Swordsmen dubs of Heart Failed (In the Back Of A Taxi) that should show up int he Weatherall Remix Friday series. Thirdly, I've been meaning to go back to 2021's I've Been Meaning To Tell You for some time and promised a post about it here ages. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Saint Etienne

• Speedwell
• Girl VII
• Everlasting
• Mario's Cafe
• Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)
• Conchita Martinez
• Like A Motorway
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves by Andrew Weatherall)

Speedwell was the B-side to third single Nothing Can Stop Us from 1991. A lovely deep sound, warm bass, vocal sample from an old gospel record. There were a pair of remixes by Dean Thatcher and Jagz Kooner too, the Flying Mix one of the sounds of summer 1991. 

Girl VII is from Foxbase Alpha- any of the songs from that album could have shown up here, the freshness of the songs, the samples, Sarah's singing, the sheer fun involved in them. In Girl VII Sarah reads out a list of places, 'June 4th, 1989, Primrose Hill, Staten Island, Chalk Farm, Massif Central, Gospel Oak, Sao Paolo, Boston Manor, Costa Rica, Arnos Grove, San Clemente, Tufnell Park, Gracetown, York Way, Videoton, Clerkenwell, Portobello, Maida Vale, Old Ford, Valencia, Kennington, Galveston, Holland Park, Studamer, Dollis Hill, Fougeres, London Fields, Bratislava, Haggerston, Lavinia, Canonbury, Alice Springs, Tooting Graveney, Baffin Island, Pollard's Hill, Winnepeg, Plumstead Common, Hyderabad, Silvertown, Buffalo', one of my favourite lists in any record ever. 

Everlasting was supposed to be a single with You're In A Bad Way as the B-side. THeavenly disagreed and wanted You're In A bad Way as the single and Everlasting was unreleased until the 2009 CD re- issue of the album. 

Mario's Cafe and Conchita Martinez are both from 1992's So Tough. Mario's Cafe is instant 1992 with its KLF references and very located in London, specifically a cafe in Kentish Town. Conchita Martinez samples Rush. 

Kiss And Make Up is a cover of a song by The Field Mice, one of 1990's essential 12" releases, in its EU flag sleeve but in green and white. The remix 12", in reverse coloured sleeve, green stars on a white backdrop, came with two remixes, the Midsummer Madness and midsummer Dubness remixes, both by Pete Heller. 

Like A Motorway is from 1994's Tiger Bay and a single too. The band hid themselves away in the Forest Of Dean to write the album, thinking they'd come back with some pastoral folk songs. They were planning on writing an album of death songs too. Like A Motorway is a sleek gliding rush of Morodor- esque synth- pop, borrowing the melody from a 19th century folk song, Silver Dagger. Once you realise the vocal is about a death not the break up of a relationship it changes it somewhat. The line, 'She said her life/ Was like a motorway/ Dull, grey and long/ Til he came along' is a cracker. The 12" came with a David Holmes remix that can shatter dancefloors, full on acid- techno. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart was their debut single, a cover of Neil Young's 1970 classic. Saint Etienne turned from a waltz time song into one with a four four house rhythm and changed Neil's major chords to minor ones. Summer 1990 gold. Andrew Weatherall's remix is one of his best, the song turned into a dub with the dub half first and the song half second. Andrew pulls the dubby bassline to the fore, adds an Augustus Pablo inspired melodica line (played by Loft/ Weather Prophet Pete Astor) and the pair of samples from Jean Binta Breeze's Dubwise ('cool and deadly' and 'the DJ eases a spliff from his lyrical lips and smilingly orders... cease' sending sample spotters down a rabbit hole or two, and not for the last time). The song is pre- Sarah, with Moira Lambert on vocals. 

Midsummer

Today, 21st June, is the summer solstice, the midpoint of the year and the time at which it's lighter longer and later than at any other point- something worth celebrating. It therefore also has to be noted that we start crawling back after tonight, we can't have one without the other. Something Rich Lane noted on his chuggy, slow mo Balearic classic from 2020 titled Solstice. 

According to the Christian church midsummer is officially 24th June, six months before/ after Christmas, but given that any midsummer celebration almost certainly pre- dates Christianity let's go with today. 

In 1990 Saint Etienne's glorious second single, their shuffly indie- dance cover of The Field Mice's Kiss And Make Up was remixed twice by Pete Heller, the Midsummer Madness and Midsummer Dubness versions, both versions arguably superior to the original single. They didn't release the remixes until October 1990 which seems a missed opportunity. Both are full of the spirit of the times, that joyous sense of freedom and possibility that the period had- although maybe that's partly because I was just twenty and everything was in front of me. The world was changing though. Thatcher gone, people power across the eastern Europe contributing to the fall of the Eastern Bloc, Nelson Mandela's release. Let's kiss and make up.

Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Madness Mix)

Kiss And Make Up (Midsummer Dubness Mix)

Room for one more? This is Midsummer's Dream by DJ and producer Massimiliano Pagliara, southern Italian by birth but resident of Berlin. This track, seven minutes of thumping drums and trancey synths and acid toplines, came out last year and sounds much more Berlin than Lecce. 

Midsummer's Dream 

An Hour Of Weatherall Covers

We all love a good cover version don't we? The reconstructing of a familiar song in a new form, the buzz of hearing someone do a song differently, irreverently or lovingly, and the nodding of the head to influences and inspirations. At times cover versions can also seem a bit lazy, a way out of writer's block or something thrown together for B-side at a late hour and under pressure, but when done well and with the right intent, they're a joy. 

In two weeks time it would have been Andrew Weatherall's 60th birthday had he lived. There are a series of events taking place nationally throughout April to celebrate this- a full on night at Fabric in London with a huge line up of DJ talent together with nights in Glasgow, Belfast and Todmorden, all places with strong Weatherall connections and crowds. I'll come back to the Todmorden one nearer the time (29th April) with more details but it does include a second ride out for The Flightpath Estate DJ team (which includes yours truly). I expect to run several Weatherall posts over the next few weeks- that's probably not much different to usual round here, he does tend to feature fairly often- and thought I'd kick off with this one, a mix for Sunday of cover versions Andrew either recorded as an artist himself or other other artists he remixed. It is not surprisingly a fairly eclectic bunch of songs and artists. It now occurs to me that I should have put the originals together as a mix too so maybe that will follow at some point a companion piece.

Fifty Five Minutes Of Andrew Weatherall Cover Versions

• Carry Me Home
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart (A Mix Of Two Halves)
• Witchi Tai To (2 Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• The Drum (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• A Love From Outer Space (Version 2)
• Sex Beat
• Slip Inside This House
• Goodbye Johnny (Andrew Weatherall's Nyabinghi Noir Mix)
• Faux/ Whole Wide World

Carry Me Home is a cover of a Dennis Wilson song from 1973, a wracked funereal blues for a dying soldier in Vietnam that was written for the 1973 album Holland but was left off. 'Life is meant to live/ I'm afraid to die', he sings. Primal Scream's version which Andrew produced is from the Dixie- Narco EP, a very downbeat and beautiful way to pay homage. Andrew and Hugo Nicolson's mix of instruments and production is stunning, Duffy's electric piano at the start and the acoustic guitar and cello in the end section especially so. 

Only Love Can Break Your Heart is a Saint Etienne cover of a Neil Young song. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that. Andrew's remix sent the song into a dubbed out bliss, Augustus Pablo- esque melodica in the first half (played by Pete Astor of The Weather Prophets), the Jean Binta Breeze dub poetry sample in the middle cutting the track in half, and then the song appearing in the second (along with the Jean 'cool and deadly' sample). 

Witchi Tai To was a 2007 single by X- Press 2, the Two Lone Swordsmen remix adding the live drums of their sound from that period and matching the Wrong Meeting albums of the same year. The original was a a 1971 single by Jim Pepper, a Native American singer and saxophonist who took a peyote chant his grandfather taught him and turned it into a hybrid jazz/ Native American song. X- Press 2's cover was sung by Tim de Laughter of The Polyphonic Spree. 

The Drum was a single for The Impossibles, an Edinburgh duo who made early 90s jangly indie- pop. The original is a Slapp Happy song from 1974. Weatherall's remix, from 1991, is a lesser known one from his early 90s hot streak, a tour de force of throwing whatever is at hand in the studio/ imagination at a remix and it working. Andrew was ably assisted by Hugo Nicolson on this one too. 

A Love From Outer Space was the calling card from the 2013 album by The Asphodells, the outfit he formed with Timothy J. Fairplay after they had bene working together on remixes and their own material and realised they had enough for an album. Andrew's vocals were a big feature of The Asphodells (following on from the Two Lone Swordsmen records of the previous few years where he stepped up to the mic for the first time since the early 80s). A Love From Outer Space also became the name of his traveling club night, with compadre Sean Johnstone, a night never knowingly exceeding 122 bpm. The original song is by late 80s one offs A.R. Kane, a duo of dreads who made spaced out dub/ dreampop. 

Sex Beat was a Two Lone Swordsmen single in 2004 and on the From The Double Gone Chapel album of the same year, a radical shift in sound and style after the pure electro of 2000's Tiny Reminders. Andrew and Keith Tenniswood becoming a garage band with Nick Burton on drums and Chris Mackin on guitar. Sex Beat was such a blast when it came out in 2004, an energetic swerve in the road to somewhere new. Sex Beat was on The Gun Club's 1981 debut Fire Of Love, a blues/ rockabilly/ Southern Gothic classic. Leader, singer and writer Jeffrey Lee Pierce pops up again in this mix in the form of Goodbye Johnny.

Slip Inside This House is a cover of The 3th Floor Elevators song from their 1967 album Easter Everywhere, the second song on Primal Scream's 1991 opus Screamadelica, a juddering statement of acid house intent after the rock n' roll opening of Moving On Up. Hypnotone's Tony Martin was involved in the production of this track too. It was sung by Throb. Bobby Gillespie is said to have bene suffering from 'acid house flu'.

Goodbye Johnny was on Primal Scream's 2013 album More Light. It came from a covers project that paid tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. Weatherall's spaced out remix tips its hat to the Nyabinghi sound of African Head Charge, a big influence on Andrew. 

Faux/ Whole Wide World comes from a Radio One session from 2004. Faux was the first single ahead of From The Double Gone Chapel, a scuzzed up slice of electro- rockabilly, combining rapid programmed drums and fuzz guitars with Weatherall vocals and lyrics about the love of his life, Elizabeth Walker. As a touring band Two Lone Swordsmen had a habit of working Faux into Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World, a peerless 1977 single. At the time Andrew was recommending the new album then just released by Eric, Bungalow Hi, a record Andrew described as 'like Duane Eddy meets Aphex Twin'. The recording here is ripped from a radio session, never officially released. There was a version on the Rotters Golf Club website for a while too, part of a three song session they recorded playing at the Bloc Weekender. Of all the lyrics that swirl around Andrew's world and outlook, 'I don't do faux', is as good as any. 

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes

Daniel Avery's new album Ultra Truth came out on Friday, a record already sounding like a contender for album of the year. Across fifteen tracks Daniel's cavernous, euphoric/ anxiety inducing ambient/ industrial/ techno has been fine tuned into an emotive and immersive album. Back in January when I started this Sunday mix series the second week was an Avery half hour mix. In way of a follow up and to celebrate the release of Ultra Truth I thought I'd do a second Avery half hour but this time remixes, Daniel's of other people and one of Daniel, all dating from the last couple of years. The sounds that are trademark Avery- the reverb, the drums, the wall of fog and distortion, the thump of the kick drum, the wobbly synths- are present in many of these which range from fairly languid to full on 'panel beaters from Prague' techno (quote courtesy of Andrew Weatherall, who is never very far away). 

Forty Minutes Of Daniel Avery Remixes

• Enfant Sauvage: 58500 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Saint Etienne: Fonteyn (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Leaving Laurel: Winter In The Woods (Daniel Avery Remix)
• David Holmes: Hope Is The Last Thing To Die (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Mandy, Indiana: Alien 3 (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Joshua James: Amber Rush (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Confidence Man: Feels Like A Different Thing (Daniel Avery Remix)
• Daniel Avery: Lone Swordsman (Chris Carter Remix)

Temple Head And Filthy

Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have a very good sideline outside Saint Etienne, putting together themed compilation albums for Ace Records. Often these mine the rich seams of the 60s and 70s, unearthing forgotten album tracks and B-sides. Their most recent album is Fell From the Sun, a selection of 98BPM tracks from the summer of 1990 where the dance music revolution slowed down and a floaty, chilled out, modern psychedelia came in, records for the sunrise. 

Many of the songs on the album (double vinyl, single CD)  have been posted at this blog before- Primal Scream's Higher Than the Sun (produced and remixed by The Orb), Sheer Taft's Cascades, Saint Etienne's B-side Speedwell, One Dove's Fallen, BBG's Snappiness, the Jon and Vangelis/ Martin Luther King inspired Spiritual High by Moodswings, the Apocalypse Now! sampling Never Get Out Of The Boat by The Aloof and The Grid's Floatation. You'd be correct in seeing the hands, or the spirit, of Andrew Weatherall all over this compilation- Loaded was one of the records that kicked it off. There are quite a few I've never posted (one below and also Soul Family Sensation's I Don't Even Know If I Should Call You Baby, which is odd as I love it and was sure I'd written about it at some point). There are lesser known songs from Massonix, Elis Curry, History and Q- Tee and Critical Rhythm. It's a lovely snapshot of a time and a place (Britain in the summer of 1990), perfectly chiming with this period of hot and sunny weather we've been having. The sleeve photos and Bob's notes are spot on too, as you'd expect.

This is one of the songs on Fell From The Sun that I can't believe I've never posted here, Temple Head by Transglobal Underground. All the summer of 1990 elements are present- a unifiying, coming together 'Na na na/ Na na na' chant, that 98 BPM chuggy rhythm, loved up pianos and a 'watch the skies' vocal sample (from the film The Thing From Another World). The group signed to DeConstruction who re- released Temple Head on 12" the following year. 

Temple Head (Pacific Mix)

Fell From The Sun goes very well with another compilation covering the same period put together by Jon Savage and released in 2015, a double vinyl album called Perfect Motion- A Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia. Savage also saw it as a new (or neo) psychedelia and pulled together his snapshot of the 1988- 1993 period, a time when dance artists, guitar bands and pop groups with new technology and new drugs made music that seemed to promise endless possibility. Jon's compilation also has Saint Etienne (with Q-Tee, on their B-side Filthy) and Primal Scream (Slip Inside This House, itself a cover of freaked out 1960s psychedelia) and fellow guitar travellers Shack, Northside, The High and The Stone Roses (with one of their head-spinning backwards tracks, Full Fathom Five) alongside Deee- Lite, a Pet Shop Boys B-side, Weatherall's remix of Sly And Lovechild and his group Sabres Of Paradise's Clock Factory, rave from 808 State, DHS and Joi and DNA's remix of Electronic's Get The Message. A slightly wider ranging selection than Bob and Pete's but the two compilations sit side by side very well, two halves of the same pill.

Filthy was the B-side to the 1991 re- release of Saint Etienne's first single, their cover of Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart, a genuine lost classic. Riding in on a, yep, filthy bassline and a swamp rock guitar solo sampled from Afrique, South London rapper Q- Tee delivers a scene stealing vocal, rapping and singing. 'This is not a media hype', she drops huskily before the xylophone solo comes in. 

Filthy

Half An Hour Of Disco Poco Loco Pub

Out in Mallorca, straddling the Palma Nova/ Magaluf border, sits Disco Poco Loco Pub. Sadly, it wasn't open when we were there two weeks ago but every time we passed it I enjoyed the sign and the thought of Disco Poco Loco Pub. For this week's half hour mix I'm putting together thirty four minutes of music that the DJ at Poco Loco might have played. I'm guessing that the tracks I've stitched together below aren't what will be coming out of the speakers and filling the floor once the season is well under way in Magaluf so the mix below is more of a Poco Loco mix of the mind or of my imagination, some piano house and Balearic remixes, spanning the mid 80s to this year. 

Disco Poco Loco Pub Mix

• Voice Of Africa: Hoomba Hoomba
• Piano Fantasia: Song For Denise
• Coyote: As The Crow Flies
• Saint Etienne: Speedwell (Flying Mix)
• The Aloof: Never Get Out Of The Boat (Gosh Mix)
• Audio Trip: Dreamatic

If the mix is a bit clunky in places, that's all part of the appeal. The DJ at Poco Loco isn't too fussed about mixing, it's all about the vibe and the song selection. Plus it's difficult to see with those sunglasses on indoors. While smoking. It was even more random when he/I was trying to shoehorn Penguin Cafe Orchestra and the theme from Hill Street Blues into it. Maybe we'll have to return to Disco Poco Loco Pub another time. 

Underneath Disco Poco Loco Pub  there is a shop selling tat for tourists. Being both a tourist and someone who is partial to a bit of tat, I had a look inside. All three of us agreed that Isaac would have loved the mug you can see below. He would have laughed long and hard at being offered his juice in it. So we bought one for him. It now sits on the bookshelf near by records and stereo, in between a replica Lewis chessman and a knitted Andrew Weatherall doll. I did think about putting it on his grave but we felt that was a step too far. 

Saturday Theme Six

Saint Etienne's 1991 debut Foxbase Alpha is an album that perfectly summarises time and place (autumn 1991 to be specific), a cohesive record from start to finish taking from pop, the 1960s, wider British popular culture, the purity of the 7" single, house music and club culture, couple of cover versions that show the breadth of their influences (Neil Young and The Field Mice), samples from TV and radio and more besides. It concludes with a song named after Melody Maker photographer and drummer Joe Dilworth, a short piece of 60s influenced pop, fading in on a shimmer of synths, a ton of reverb on Sarah's voice and some lovelorn lyrics- 'Oh babe/ I know you've gone/ I won't be sad alone/ Cos the song you left me/ Has the sweetest refrain'. Piano and swelling synths drift on, then suddenly replaced by traffic noise and voices talking about the 90s, the decade ahead and finishing with the two word phrase- waffle cardigans. After the dreampop and feedback of the previous song, Like The Swallow, an intense trip that borrows from the spirit and sound of The Stone Roses backwards songs and AR Kane, it's a classic Saint Etienne nod and wink. 

Dilworth's Theme

Joe Dilworth played/ plays drums in Stereolab, Th' Faith Healers and Cavern Of Anti- Matter. This song, Void Beat, was on Cavern Of Anti- Matter's 2016 album Void Beat/ Invocation Trex. Cavern Of Anti- Matter were formed by Dilworth and fellow former Stereolabber Tim Gane, based in Berlin and is very pleasant way to spend the best part of ten minutes, cosmische to the max. 

Void Beat

2021: A List

I've done an end of year list at the end of every year since starting the blog in 2010. I started to pull a list of albums and songs together back in November and thought I should at least try to finish it off. Everything I've listened to since the end of November has been coloured by Isaac's death so I'm not sure if this is how the lists would have turned out if things had been different but we are where we are, as people say. 

Albums of 2021

I've heard loads of good albums this year. My initial list ran to over twenty albums (and that was before the Pye Corner Audio album turned up) and there are several I've not heard yet that would surely be contenders had I got round to listening to them (I'm thinking of Carnage by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and this year's releases from LoneLady, WH Lung and Low). Floating around somewhere outside my top ten are these albums (in no particular order): Andres Y Xavi's Sounds From The Secret Bar; Stinky Jim's It's Not What It Sounds Like; The Vendetta Suite's Kempe Stone Portal; Steve Cobby's Shanty Bivouac (which has a close to perfect side 2); Richard Fearless's unsettling ambient techno masterpiece Future Rave Memory; Roisin Murphy's remixed Crooked Machine; Bicep's Isles; Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Caluwaerts' Souvenir Des Bon Gout; Sons Of Slough's Bring Me Sunshine; Sonic Boom's remix album Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough; Cheval Sombre's pair of albums Days Go By and Time Waits For No One; Dry Cleaning's New Long Leg; Cerulean by Nashville Ambient Ensemble; The Liminanas and Laurent Garnier's De Pelicula; The Grid and Robert Fripp's Leviathan; Rose City Band's Earth Trip. The Bagging Area top ten looks like this-

10. Pye Corner Audio 'Entangled Routes'

9. Mogwai 'As The Love Continues'

8. Richard Norris 'Hypnotic Response'

7. Dean Wareham 'I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A.'

6. Sedibus 'The Heavens' 

5. Daniel Avery 'Together In Static'

4. GLOK 'Pattern Recognition'

3. Coyote 'The Mystery Light'

2. Circe Sky 'Dream Colour'

1. Saint Etienne 'I've Been Trying To Tell You'

I wasn't expecting Saint Etienne to make an album as good as this, at this stage of things- made in isolation but sounding like the work of three people in a room together, I've Been Trying To Tell You is a woozy, reflective album digging away at late 90s nostalgia (but not sounding itself nostalgic), built around samples from that period and with a strong undertow of bass and a warm wash of effects. On top of this Sarah Cracknell's voice is used almost like a sample library, cut up phrases and snatches of dialogue. 

EP of 2021

5. Rich Lane 'Camo' 

4. Three EPs of outstanding new music from A Certain Ratio, 'EPA', 'EPC' and 'EPR'. I couldn't separate them so have bunched them together. 

3. SUSS 'Night Suite' 

2. Hugo Nicolson 'Lost And Found'

1. Andy Bell and Pye Corner Audio 'The Indica Gallery EP' 

No question here, the single piece of vinyl/ mp3s I've probably played as much as any other this year since it came out in April, six wondrous remixes of Andy Bell's 2020 album The View From Halfway Down. Pye Corner Audio's sunshine dreamscape remixes were the sound of this year for me in lots of ways, especially the analogue cosmische of Skywalker, Indica and Cherry Cola. 

Indica (Pye Corner Audio Remix- Glok Re- edit)

Songs/ Tracks/ Singles

So many good songs/ tracks/ remixes, I could easily list a top fifty. Someone wrote recently a top ten should be enough and I kind of agree- but all of these have been essential listening in 2021 (again, in no particular order);  AMOR 'Unravel' from Lemur; Daniel Avery's Lone Swordsman as remixed by Chris Carter; Craig Bratley and Amy Douglas' No In Between; 10:40's Sleepwalker; a pair of remixes of Fontaines DC, one of A Hero's Death by Soulwax, the other Televised Mind by Dave Clarke; A Mountain Of One's Stars Planets Dust Me; Perry Granville's Dexter In Dub; Mat Ducasse's Bunny's Lullaby; Dan Wainwright and Rude Audio's Early Morning; Future Beat Alliance's Primordial Sky; Daniel Avery's remix of Winter In The Woods by Leaving Laurel; Coyote's remix of Original Cell by Projections and Coyote's two track 12" Will We Ever Dance Again; Cheval Sombre's Althea; various Pye Corner Audio one offs (Fictional Drilling and Eyes Open stand out); and last but not least Woodleigh Research Facility's All Is Not Lost and Vernal Invocation releases. 

As well as all of those Sean Johnston has been responsible for a steady stream of remixes in his Hardway Bros guise, any one of which could/ should be in the list below but they can have their own sublist here- 

Hardway Bros Sublist

10. Martyn Walsh and Simon Lyon 'Afterglow' Hardway Bros Dub

9. Shadowlark 'Come Around Here' Hardway Bros Remix

8. Cold Beat 'Double Sided Mirror' Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Noch Einmal Remix

7. Rheinzand 'Obey' Hardway Bros Stereo Odyssey

6. Deo' Jorge 'Sparking Plugs' Hardway Bros Sueno Cosmico remix

5. James Bright 'Suburbia' Hardway Bros ALFOS Has Risen remix

4. Psychedereka 'Screamdereka' Hardway Bros Meet Monkton Downtown

3 IWDG 'In A Lonely Place' Hardway Bros Axis Dub

2. Secret Soul Society 'Yo, We've Landed' Hardway Bros Redux remix

1. Margee 'Wrong Dream' Hardway Bros Cosmic Intervention

The top eleven songs/ tracks of 2021 at Bagging Area therefore finish looking like this-

11. Andrew Weatherall 'Y.W. Eleven'

10. Richard Norris 'Music For Healing- December' (but most of the other monthly releases in this series could get in here too)

9. Private Agenda 'Malania Ascending' Seahawks remix

8. 10:40 'Kissed Again'

7. Rheinzand 'We'll Be Alright'

6. Psychederek 'Screamadereka' 

5. IWDG 'In A Lonely Place' (plus remixes from Hardway Bros, Keith Tenniswood and David Holmes )

4. Rude Audio 'Railton Ruckus' (plus remixes by Hugo Nicolson and Bedford Falls Players)

3. Coyote 'The Outsider'

2. Coyote 'Cafe Con Leche' from the Return To Life EP

1. David Holmes 'Hope Is The Last Thing To Die' 

This song, a tour de force from Mr Holmes with vocals by Raven Violet, provided a glimmer of light in a year that has been bleak as fuck for all kinds of reasons, personal and political, macro and micro. The song is political, a call to arms, a lyric about not putting up with it any more,a demand to say enough is enough, but it works on a variety of levels for me. Hopefully 2022 will see it get a vinyl release.