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. 

V.A. Saturday

Be Music was the name used by members of New Order when they undertook production work outside the band. Peter Hook used it first when producing what became a Stockholm Monsters B-side in 1982. After that all four members used it at one time or another. Bernard's interest in synths, production and the studio meant that in the period 1983- 85 he used it often, co- producing and/ or programming on some groundbreaking singles and tracks by a raft of Manchester and Factory acts, often with ACR's Dojo (Donald Johnson) alongside him- their work on 52nd Street's Cool As Ice, Section 25's From A Hilltop and Marcel King's Reach For  should be lauded from the hilltops, sung from the rooves of the tower blocks, but these are songs largely unknown. Tony Wilson said Marcel King's Reach For Love should have been Factory's biggest hit single. Unfortunately in 1984 for ideological reasons Factory eschewed things such as promotion and pluggers and so hardly anyone got to hear it. 

Reach For Love

In 2003 LTM compiled an album of Be Music tracks, all from the period 1983 to 1985, called Cool As Ice: The Be Music Productions. Reach For Love is on it, as the other two I mentioned above. The compilation has twelve tracks on it, a selection of the Be Music catalogue. Every single one is streets ahead of the competition. Here's a handful of them.

Quando Quango were Mike Pickering's band, formed in The Netherlands and then relocating to Manchester. Mike and Hillegonda Rietveld were electronic/ electro pioneers making two ahead of their time singles and an album (Pigs And Battleships). One of those singles was Love Tempo. The other was Atom Rock which featured not just Mike and Hillegonda but also ex- ACR singer/ percussionist Simon Topping and a moonlighting Johnny Marr with Bernard and Dojo producing (recorded in Cheadle Hulme south Manchester suburb/ geography fans!) and released on Factory as Fac 102. Futuristic Manc- funk. 

Atom Rock

Far more obscure are/were Nyam Nyam, a band from Hull discovered by Hooky. He produced a single, released on Factory Benelux in 1984, recorded at Strawberry Studios, Stockport. Factory- esque, flat northern vocals with rippling Moroder synths and that grey sheen of Be Music production. 

Fate/ Hate

Section 25 were from Blackpool. They released several records on Factory, albums and singles. All are worthy of investigation. Looking From A Hilltop uses an 808 and as as innovative as anything else anyone was doing in 1983. Bernard also produced Beating Heart, a 1983 single on Factory (Fac 68), dance gloom, synths and very Sumner sounding guitars and more lovely northern singing, 'My beating heart/ Beats for you/ Only you'.

Beating Heart

Be Music Theme was recorded by Hooky in 1983, designed as intro music for Stockholm Monsters gigs (Peter often mixed their sound live). It is I suppose the first solo New Order track, years ahead of Electronic, Revenge and The Other Two. It came out on a 1986 compilation, The Quick Neat Job (out on Crepescule, a French label Factory had links with). Otherwise, Cool As Ice is the only place its ever been released. 

Be Music Theme 

V.A. Saturday

There are several Factory Records various artist compilations worth writing about in this series- the 1991 box set Palatine is the motherlode, there are several post- bankruptcy compilations, a very good compilation of Be Music productions (the name used by members of New Order for productions done outside the group, often done along with ACR's Don Johnson) and the very first Factory release, Fac 2, was a four track various artists sampler called A Factory Sample. I'll probably deal with all of them before the year is over. For today though, I offer you a Factory compilation from 1987, released on Factory US (catalogue number FACT US 17), a ten track compilation for the American listener from a time when New Order were making some serious inroads into touring the USA but just before Factory and the Hacienda went supernova. In typical Factory fashion, this Factory compilation, has no New Order on it, their biggest act missing. It is also titled Young Popular And Sexy- the least Factory sounding title on any Factory album. Wilson must have been having a laugh at someone's expense (and if it was at someone's financial expense it was probably New Order's). 

Young Popular And Sexy has ten tracks/ songs by ten Factory artists that the label must have hoped might make some headway into the US, maybe via college radio. Happy Mondays kick off side one with the chaotic, lysergic indie- funk of Kuff Dam (Mad Fuck spelt backwards) followed by the beautiful guitar playing of Vini Reilly on Durutti Column's Our Lady Of The Morning. Factory's mid- 80s line up of artists that hardly sold a record anywhere outside the Manchester postcode areas then follows- Stanton Miranda, Stockholm Monsters,  Shark Vegas (the band formed by Factory's man in Berlin Mark Reeder), The Railway Children (from Wigan, signed to Virgin and didn't really hit the heights expected of them. The drummer from The Railway Children sold my wife her first car back in the 1990s), The Wake, Kalima, and Miaow. A Certain Ratio are also present with And Then She Smiles, a pop song from 1986's Force album that should have been massive- ACR also left for a major label within a year or two, an experience that they didn't find particularly fulfilling either.

Here's some songs from it. Stockholm Monster's were from Burnage, just up the road from where I grew up. This single came out in 1987, the same year the group broke up, a swirling, dense, off kilter song with lyrics attacking politicians and those who tow the party line. 

Partyline (Partylive Mix)

Miaow was Cath Carroll's band. They signed to Factory and released two singles in '87- When It All Comes Down and Break The Code. When It All Comes Down closes Young Popular  And Sexy, sparkling indie guitar pop, and would have sounded great blaring out of mid- 80s ghetto blasters. Cath Carroll went onto release a solo album on Factory, 1991's England Made Me, a lost gem. In fact, Young Popular And Sexy is stuffed full of lost gems. 

When It All Comes Down

It's a curious compilation, a Factory curio, but one that despite being a little uneven is a good snapshot of the label, its approach and its artists, songs which should have been much more widely heard than they were. I don't know how many copies it sold in the US or whether it turned a generation of young Americans onto the wider Factory catalogue. I suspect not. 

As a bonus this is Happy Mondays performing Kuff Dam live at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in November 1989, by which time they were arguably and briefly the best live band in the country- there was definitely no- one else like them.

Forty Minutes Of Fac

In the 1980s Factory Records was the best record label in the world. Based on Palatine Road, a stone's throw from where I grew up, managed as a Marxist art project, bankrolled by New Order and home to a bunch of sullen, wilful experimental artists who famously signed no contracts and owned all their music, it put out record after record, almost none of which were hits. Today's mix is a small selection of the magnificence that came out of Factory in the mid- 80s (deliberately leaving out New Order), a period where the combined talents clustered around the table at 86 Palatine Road produced such life affirming and ground breaking music. 

Forty Minutes Of Fac

• Cabaret Voltaire: Yashar (John Robie Remix)
• Quando Quango: Genius
• Stockholm Monsters: All At Once
• Section 25: Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
• Marcel King: Reach For Love
• A Certain Ratio: Mickey Way (The Candy Bar)
• Durutti Column: For Belgian Friends

Yashar (John Robie Remix) by Cabaret Voltaire is Fac 82. Cabaret Voltaire released just this single 12" for Factory. 

Genius by Quando Quango is Fact 137. Quando Quango were formed in Rotterdam by Mike Pickering with Hillegonda Rietveld and Reinier Rietveld with former ACR singer Simon Topping joining on percussion. 

All At Once by Stockholm Monsters is Fac 107. Stockholm Monsters are the best band to come out of Burnage. 

Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix) by Section 25 is Fac 108, released in 1984, and still sounds like the future. It was produced by Donald Johnson of ACR and Bernard Sumner of New Order as Be Music. 

Reach For Love by Marcel King is FBN 43, released in 1985, and should have been number one in every country in the world. Also produced by Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson. 

Mickey Way (The Candy Bar) by A Certain Ratio is Fac 168 from 1986. It was also on the album Force, ACR's last album for Factory (Fact 166). 

For Belgian Friends is by Durutti Column and first appeared on A Factory Quartet, Fact 24, in 1980 and then on Valuable Passages, a Durutti Column compilation from 1986 Fac 164. Donald Johnson plays drums. Vini Reilly is one of the true geniuses to be found on Palatine Road during the period. He still lives nearby. 

Five Thousand

Today is the occasion of post number five thousand. When I started this blog in January 2010 I thought I'd give it a year and see how it went. That deadline passed and I just kept going, and here we are today, five thousands posts in. I don't have any songs (that I can think of) about the number 5000 so instead here's some song title maths- five times a thousand. Nothing too difficult- this isn't the number round on Countdown. 

The first is from the best band to come out of Burnage, Factory's Stockholm Monsters. Five O'Clock is from Alma Mater, released in 1984, the deliberate greyness of early 80s Factory beginning to be coloured in- a keyboard part and a drum machine ticking away, and some brilliantly untutored vocals. 

The second is from 1992 and Pale Saints, the 4AD signed shoegazers who rode in to massive acclaim with their debut in 1990 and the Sight Of You single. Their follow up, In Ribbons, closes with this wonderfully dreamy song A Thousand Stars Burst Open.  

Five O'Clock

A Thousand Stars Burst Open

Isolation Mix Fifteen: Songs Lord Sabre Taught Us Part Two

Two weeks ago I posted my fourteenth Isolation Mix, Songs The Lord Sabre Taught Us, an hour of music from Andrew Weatherall's record box, as featured on his radio shows, playlists, interviews and mixes, mixed together seamlessly (vaguely). Today's mix is a second edition, fifteen songs he played, raved about or sampled, most of them first heard via him (I was listening to Stockholm Monsters before I was a fan of Mr Weatherall, a long lost Factory band who made a bunch of good singles and a fine album called Alma Matter and also the best band to come out of Burnage). It's a tribute to the man and his record collection that there are so many great records from his back pages to sift through and then sequence into some kind of pleasing order. Rockabilly, dub, Factory, post- punk, krautrock legends, Weller spinning out through the Kosmos...



Cowboys International: The ‘No’ Tune
Sparkle Moore: Skull And Crossbones

The Pistoleers: Bank Robber

The Johnny Burnette Trio: Honey Hush

Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze: Dubwise

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry: Disco Devil

African Head Charge: Dervish Chant

Big Youth: Hotter Fire

Colourbox: Looks Like We’re Shy One Horse

Stockholm Monsters: All At Once

Holger Czukay, Jah Wobble and Jaki Liebezeit: How Much Are They?

White Williams: Route To Palm

Paul Weller: Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus Beats)

A R Kane: A Love From Outer Space

Chris And Cosey: October (Love Song) ‘86

All At Once

I passed up the opportunity recently to push my thumb on on a piece of clickbait I saw on my phone entitled 'are Oasis the best ever band from Manchester?' 'Don't be ridiculous' I thought, 'of course they aren't. In fact Oasis aren't even the best band Burnage'.

The honour 'best ever band from Burnage' lies with Stockholm Monsters, a little known band who formed in 1980, signed to Factory and released several wonderful records before splitting up in 1987. Their debut, 1981's Fairy Tales single, was produced by Martin Hannett. Wilson loved them for a while before the Happy Mondays replaced them in his affections. Peter Hook took them under his wing and produced their 1984 album Alma Mater. Their sound is very mid 80s indie- jagged, trebly guitars, cheap keyboards, the occasional trumpet and a non- singer on vocals (I mean this as a compliment. Non- singers on vocals are often my favourite singers).  In 1984 they put this single out (and in typical Factory/ 80s indie style the B-side called National Pastime is just as good- I posted it in January 2018).

All At Once

Later on they worked drum machines and New Order's Emulator into their sound and in the face of press and record buying public indifference bid farewell with a single called Partyline, a song that starts off wonky and unsure of itself, sparse bassline and swells of one fingered keyboards before it explodes into melody in the chorus. This performance on Granada TV is low key but entrancing, a glimpse of band who should be far better known than they are.



Partyline was their parting shot, a 1987 single on Factory (FAC 146 fact fans). It was produced by Hooky under the Be Music guise that members of New Order used for production work. There's plenty of reverb on the drums, too much probably heard now in 2019, and the instruments seem to be in competition with each other, overloaded and fighting for space, it's all very busy and singer Tony France is straining at the top of his register. But I love it, it's flawed but somehow perfect, and it's got a spark, a spirit and a heart that you can look for in any of the Oasis albums from [insert date here] onward and won't find.

Partyline (Partylive Mix)

Burnage, for those who don't know, is a suburb of south Manchester, bisected by a dual carriageway called Kingsway. I grew up in Withington, its neighbouring suburb a short walk west. As well as Stockholm Monsters and the Gallaghers Burnage was/is home to loads of people I went to school with, former Manchester United captain and Busby Babe Roger Byrne (who died in the muinich air disaster in 1958), actor David Threlfall and Dave Rowbotham, a former member of Durutti Column and The Invisible Girls (sadly murdered in 1991).

National Pastime

Drew wrote a post a while ago saying that blogging often seems to be about exposing the obscure, bringing to light long forgotten songs and the ones that got missed. In the spirit of that here is an absolute lost gem, a Factory Records B-side by Stockholm Monsters, straight outta Burnage. This song was the flipside to All At Once, released in June 1984.

Opening with clattering drums and a low slung bass, then a beautifully naive topline and a wonderful non-singer's vocal. Produced by Peter Hook and lost by a record company who wouldn't pay for pluggers and promotion because they believed the music would sell itself. If this was the only song they'd released, they'd still more than deserve a place in a version of mid-80s indie scene. A little slice of perfection.

National Pastime

Fairy Tales

More Factory for Friday. Stockholm Monsters were mates from Burnage, on Factory between 1981 and '87, who made some cracking guitar singles housed in some beautiful sleeves but, it almost goes without saying, hardly sold any records. Tony Wilson loved them. Fairy Tales was their debut release from January 1982, produced by Martin Hannett, sparse and spindly with piano and flute and some typically Hannett touches making this anything but ordinary early 80s indie. There are loads more gems in their small back catalogue, including their only album which was produced by Peter Hook.

Fairy Tales

Burnage's Number One Band

Stockholm Monsters came from Burnage, South Manchester and spent much of the 80s trying to make a success of being on Factory Records. They had all the benefits- Peter Hook as producer and cheer leader, Anthony H Wilson's patronage, gigs with the other bands, some press coverage, beautiful sleeves. However as most Factory bands before '87 found out, if you weren't New Order you didn't sell records, not outside the Greater Manchester postcode areas anyway. They started out fairly sparse sounding and post-punkish, trumpet and keyboards as well as guitars and driving drums, and eventually prefigured some of the Madchester sound with electronics and grooves, and a Perry Boy (Mancunian scallies essentially) image. They split in 1987 having been overtaken at Palatine Road and in the press by Happy Mondays. This song came out at the end, Partyline, and it's flawed but worth your while. Produced by Hook, Partylive Mix from the 12", Fac 146 in case you were wondering.

Partyline (Partylive Mix).mp3#1#1