Forty Five More Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

Last Sunday's fifty minute mix of remixes of songs from David Holmes' Blind On A Galloping Horse album was well received and I promised a second volume. In an unplanned coincidence me, Dan and Martin played support to David at The Golden Lion yesterday afternoon, the third time we've warmed up for him and its a pleasure and honour every time. Heavenly commissioned and released so many Blind On A Galloping Horse remixes of that I could probably do a third volume. Given that I've still not included in either of these mixes the Rich Lane remix (which came about due to a connection made by a post at this blog), the Hardway Bros Meets Monkton remix and various others (Robin Wylie, Daniel Avery, Darren Emerson, Working Men's Club...), a volume three would seem to be the order of the day at some point. 

Last time I started slow, some ambient/ chilled remixes before ramping it up in the second half. This one kicks in quicker. Last time I didn't include any remixes of the same song- this time I have, both Yeah x 3 and Necessary Genius feature twice but I liked the way the two remixes of Yeah x 3 worked together and the Necessary Genius remixes are very different animals. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

• Yeah x 3 (Sonic Boom and Panda Bear Reset Remix)
• Yeah x 3 (The Vendetta Suite Reason To Live Remix)
• Necessary Genius (Lovefingers Dub And Response)
• Too Muchroom (Hardway Bros Too Much Acid Dub)
• Stop Apologising (Cosmodelica Extended Mix)
• It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Lovefingers and Heidi Lawden High Tide Mix)
• Necessary Genius (Decius Remix)

Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's Reset album was a 60s pop/ psych bubblegum adventure, reworkings/ samples of 60s songs filtered through a 21st century bubblegum box of tricks. It was followed by an Adrian Sherwood dub of Reset that raised it up a notch. Sonic and Panda's version of Yeah x 3, the most 60s pop song on Blind On A Galloping Horse, is a whir of drum machine rhythms, layers of glassy psychedelia and Raven's space echo vocal on top. 

The Vendetta Suite is fellow Belfast producer/ DJ/ musician Gary Irwin. He remixed Yeah x 3 twice- the weightless ambient drift of Reason To Drift was on last's week mix. This one, the Reason To Live remix, is more direct, led by a pulsing bass and wall of synths. 

Lovefingers is Andrew Hogge, the owner of the ESP Institute label, a DJ, producer and promoter. His remix of Necessary Genius is a deep one, with rapid fire drums, pumped up bass and Raven's vocal chopped up and FXed, and a hypnotic, repeating piano line thunders away. David list of inspirations- Tony Wilson, Weatherall, Guy Stevens, Nina Simone, northern soul, Peter Meadon, rock 'n' roll, Rastafari, Bernadette Devlin, David Keenan, Sinead O'Connor and refugees among them- rattle by. 

The lyrics for Too Muchroom come from an Andrew Weatherall quote- 'if you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room'. Andrew's influence is all over Blind On A Galloping Horse. There's a cover of Laugh Myself To Sleep from his unreleased second solo album (still unreleased due to a difference of opinion with engineer Steve Boardman who claimed co- writing credits and held the tapes/ hard drive hostage. Andrew's response was to say 'fuck him/ it' and move on, do the next thing. In a radio show he said he quite liked the idea of having an unreleased and legendary lost solo album. Appropriately Andrew's partner in The Asphodells, Tim Fairplay, played guitar on Laugh Myself To Sleep). Andrew's ALFOS partner Sean Johnston remixes Too Muchroom, one of several remixes Sean did of Galloping Horse songs. This one is exactly what it says it is- acid dub. The vocals are in there, twisted to pieces and just about audible. 

Cosmodelica is Colleen Murphy, New Yorker, DJ, producer and radio show host. Her Balearic Breakfast show and compilation albums are second to none. Her remix of Stop Apologising is like being dropped back into a scuzzy indie/ electro basement, dry ice and sticky floors, where the room smells of poppers and cigarettes and the crowd are ridiculously beautiful and elegantly wasted. 

Lovefingers makes a second appearance along with Heidi Lawden, and a remix of Its Over, If We Run Out Of Love, one of the songs that is the at the centre of Galloping Horse, heartbeat of the album. They did two, the Low Tide remix and this one, High Tide. Dark, repetitive acid disco. 

Necessary Genius returns for the ending, remixed by Decius, the London band made up of Fat White Family singer Lias Saoudi, brothers Liam and Luke May and Quinn Whalley from Warmduscher. Decius make brilliant, sweaty, sleazy, gay sauna acid house/ techno, tongues in cheeks, needles in the red and tempos pushed up high. They take Necessary Genius to its extreme here, the vocal reduced to staccato syllables and the drums galloping on and on. 

Forty Minutes Of Adrian Sherwood

Adrian Sherwood's career in music dates back more than four decades. You can dip into it at point since he started producing, mixing and making records in the early 80s and not be disappointed- there is no weak spot, no off period, no loss of quality; everything he touches is worth hearing and much of it is music of the very highest calibre. Various people have spoken about watching him in the studio, using the mixing desk as an instrument, throwing sound around the channels, pushing faders up and down, his use of echo and space and reverb creating music from somewhere else, inspired by Jamaican dub but identifiably British too. Through his label On U Sound he has released hundreds of records, Sherwood's golden touch for sound, space and rhythm all over many of them, a man with a sound that is always moving forward, always modern. As with The Fall a few Sundays ago, I could sit down a do another two or three Sherwood mixes without any bother at all- what is in this mix is just a selection of Sherwood recordings, productions and remixes. 

Forty Minutes Of Adrian Sherwood

• Whirlpool Dub
• Nocturne (Adrian Sherwood Remix)
• Acid Tabla (Adrian Sherwood Remix)
• I'm A Winner
• Dub For The Spirits
• Haunting Ground Dub
• Ju- 87
• Long As I Can See The Light (Adrian Sherwood's Dub Lightning)
• Bless Those
• The Way Of The World

Whirlpool Dub is from this year's Reset In Dub, Adrian's reworking in dub style of the entire Reset album, released by Sonic Boom and Panda Bear in 2021. It is one of this year's best albums. The vinyl arrived this week, a December dub treat. 

Mark Lanegan has never sounded darker or more doomy than in Adrian's hands (and that's saying something. Mark made a career out of dark and doomy). This remix came out in 2017 on a Mark Lanegan mini album, Still Life With Roses (Gargoyles Remixes) along with remixes of Beehive by Andrew Weatherall. 

Suns Of Arqa's Acid Tabla EP came out in 2016, produced by Sherwood and Wadada with the late Style Scott on drums (of Dub Syndicate). The bassline, tabla and rocking rhythms are all spot on. The original version of Acid Tabla was on Suns Of Arqa's 1980 album Revenge Of The Mozambites, Adrian credited as Adran Riddims.  

I'm A Winner is one of the standouts on this year's Africa Head Charge album A Trip To Bolgatanga, an album where Adrian and Bonjo shift the African Head Charge sound yet again. When they set out with AHC back in 1980 the idea was create 'a vision of a psychedelic Africa'. They made several definitive albums between 1980 and 1990, dub, sound FX, samples and African drums fused in a mystical sound. In 1990 they released their pinnacle, the mighty Songs Of Praise. In 2020 an album of extras including unreleased tracks from Songs Of Praise came out including Dub For The Spirits.

Bim Sherman became one of the key figures of the On U Sound collective, a man with a golden voice. Haunting Ground was on 1986's album of the same name, an album which featured Dub Syndicate and Roots Radics. The dub mix coming out on one of the pair of CD compilations titled Sherwood At The Controls. Bim died of cancer in 2000. His 1996 album Miracle is one of the lost gems of the 90s, songs from his back catalogue given a Bollywood makeover, re- recorded with Indian strings and Talvin Singh's percussion. 

Adrian dubbed out Primal Scream's entire Vanishing Point album, released as Echo Dek on Creation in 1997. Ju- 87 is a dub version of Stuka, a fairly uncompromising track in its original form. Adrian adds doorbells, and pulls rattling echo, deep bass, ricocheting bleeps and a scuzzy, screwed up dub to the fore. 

Long As I Can See The Light was a 1998 single by Monkey Mafia, released on Heavenly, a cover of a 1970 Creedence Clearwater Revival song. Monkey Mafia's cover is a lovely late night, downtempo cover. Adrian bends it into a new space. 

Bless Those is from Pay It All Back Vol. 4, released in 1993. Pay It All Back is a long running series of compilations/ samplers dating back to 1985. Little Annie has been part of the On U family since the early 90s, with David Harrow, Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald all contributing music to Annie's vocals. A dense sound, distorted horns and dub FX.  

The Way Of The World is by LSK and Sherwood, a track on Pay It All Back Vol. 7 from 2019. LSK is British singer/MC Leigh Stephen Kenny, born in Kent and now in Leeds. This track is a suitably dubbed out way to close this mix, two and a half minutes of digital dub, noise and samples, unease and LSK's honeyed vocal.  

Yeah

David Holmes is here on a weekly basis at the moment, his Blind On A Galloping Horse album, the series of singles that came ahead of it and DJ gigs to promote it providing a rich vein of inspiration. The latest single from the album is Yeah x 3, Raven Violet's vocals clear and centre, singing David's lines about taking a shot of equanimity and not needing to sleep in a bed with toxicity. Personal liberation, living in the now, free from fear. 

There are two remix packages, one already out and one to follow. The first has remixes by Sonic Boom and Panda Bear, who take that psychedelic 60s pop sound from their Reset album and magnify it, the bassline sounding like Hooky has joined a 1966 San Francisco acid freak out group, by X- Press 2 (a delicious funky, house remix and dub), one by Jordan Nocturne (chopped up voice, stuttering synths, pulsing bass) and a pair by Belfast friend The Vendetta Suite, the Reason To Live remix which is a Wall Of Sound tour de force and the Reason To Drift remix which is a blissed out, twinkling ambient haze. All are superb and all can be bought/ heard here. 

Remixes go both ways. Last year David remixed Getting To The Point from Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's album, the 60s psyche and bubblegum underpinned by an insistent drum machine, plentiful bubbling sounds and a lovely long fade out.

Much more recent is David's remix of X- Press 2, whose recent new album I've been meaning to get to and haven't yet. Phasing You Out has Kele Okereke on vocals and in David's hands is an eight minute trippy, percussive drum workout, Kele's voice on top of the multi- rhythmic ride, ending in a blare of police sirens. 

Double Dub

Accidental/ ambient art- this is the detail of a large piece of plywood boarding up the windows of an empty shop in Chorlton with a small piece of black tape stuck in the centre. If I set out to paint something like this deliberately, it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as this. 

Richard Norris has taken a detour recently. Alongside his always excellent monthly twenty minute ambient/ deep listening excursion Music For Healing (the most recent release in that series is the autumnal Equinox 9) Richard is now making dub and has a new label to put it out under- Oracle Sound. The first volume of Oracle Sound is out in October with three deep dubs available to listen to in advance- Lightning Version, Birthday Dub and Sodium Haze. This is dub created from scratch, allowed to unfold over long periods of time, beds of echo and space, ambient/ drone backdrops, kicking rhythms and lovely warm bass. You can find Oracle Sound Volume 1 here. Subscribers to Richard's Bandcamp can get hold of the twenty minute long Shark Tooth Dub, experimental, ambient dub that glides on and on. 

More dub now, of the dubbing out already existing songs variety. Panda Bear and Sonic Youth's album of last year Reset has been dubbed out in full by Adrian Sherwood. The original album was a brightly coloured, sweeter than sugar blast of 60s psyche- pop. Sherwood has applied forty years of dub experience at On U Sound to the songs, re- imaging the songs, breaking them down, smothering them in dub FX, pulling basslines and drums/ percussion to the fore, adding new horns/ melodica lines and adding those cymbal crashes, whirrs, gurgles and thick bottom end.  I could post every/ any version from Reset In Dub but perhaps its best just to go for Getting To the Point Dub.

 

Whirlpool

Panda Bear and Sonic Boom's album Reset came out last year, a brightly coloured, psyche- pop record that took samples/ ideas from songs from the past and recast them. Sonic Boom asked Adrian Sherwood to do a dub and in typical Sherwood fashion he didn't do a dub, he did many dubs, eventually the entire album remixed dubwise style out by Sherwood and a selection of the On U Sound cast of players. Reset In Dub comes out in August digitally and then December on vinyl. To whet your whistle they launched Whirlpool Dub into the wilds last Friday. This dub/ psyche version of Panda Bear and Sonic Boom is very nice, with a tripped out edge, lots of warmth and sounds bouncing around the parameters of the mix- there's a cello in there too which works perfectly, as Panda Bear's voice gets sent reverberating into space. Buy it here. 

Edge Of The Edge

Brother Joseph's Sonic Treasures is a repeated listening highlight, broadcasting on Radio Magnetic from Glasgow, Brother Joseph in the mix joined by Stephen Haldane and an all star cast of guests- David Holmes, Sonic Boom, Nina Walsh, Andy Bell/ Glok and Chris Rotter have all spun in guest mixes. 

Sonic Boom has recently released an album, Reset, with Panda Bear, a collaboration combining their love of early 60s pop with their own psychedelia. In making Reset they sampled various artists from the Kennedy/ Kodachrome years and constructed their own songs around the samples- The Troggs, Eddie Cochrane, The Everley Brothers, The Drifters and Randy And The Rainbows all turn up in the songs, recognisable but submerged too. The effect is a brightly coloured, woozy, layered, head spinner of an album where everything sounds both new and old at the same time. The loops and samples make the songs exist in circles, spinning permanently on a Sonic Boom/ Panda Bear jukebox- the appear, play and disappear, one after another, harmonies and handclaps and reverb drenched drum tracks rotating, seemingly forever. This one Edge Of The Edge , sampling Randy And The Rainbows' 1963 song Denise, sounds like the most early 60s Beach Boys song since the Beach Boys themselves were an early 60s band. 

Brother Joseph invited Sonic Boom back to Sonic Treasures and Sonic put together a Reset mix, the source songs and the Sonic/ Panda songs together in a seamless fifty two minutes. The full four hour show with Brother Joseph playing an hour of ambient/ psyche/ country with some new Chris Rotter magic, Stephen Haldane with a half hour delight including Django Django, Andrew Weatherall and Syd Barrett, Sonic Boom's Reset mix and then Joseph back for the outro section is at Soundcloud. 

Go On

I was reminded of this poem earlier this week while reading something else, sweltering in the heat we've had hanging over us. It's called The Dead and it's by US poet Billy Collins.

'The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,

which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes'

It was the final reading at Isaac's funeral last December, read by the celebrant at the graveside. I found it in a poetry anthology I have and it seemed appropriate. How we managed to do anything last December baffles me looking back, never mind plan a funeral- it seems now like we were alternating between being on numb autopilot and stumbling round in a fog. I haven't thought much about the poem since the funeral but reading it two days ago, sitting and sweltering in the heat we've had hanging over us for the last few days, it moved me (again) and I was struck (again) by the sentiment in it and it seemed to provide some comfort in a way I hadn't considered when I chose it back in December. 

I've not been very well recently. In the middle of May I developed a cough which refused to go away for six weeks. After three weeks of coughing I went to the doctors and they sent me for various tests- a chest X- Ray, blood tests and so. All came back clear. It was suggested I might have developed asthma and I was prescribed an inhaler which made no difference. Just as the cough started to clear up I went deaf in my right ear (nearly four weeks ago now). At a rough estimate I'd say I've got about 10% of my hearing in that ear. It's muffled and feels blocked and no matter what I do I can't pop it. It seems my sinuses and eustachian tube are blocked but nothing seems to be unblocking it and as well as being incredibly frustrating (not being able to hear is grim) it veers between uncomfortable and painful. In the morning it has sometimes cleared but as soon as I get up and stand up, it fills up again. At times the tinnitus in the right ear is very pronounced too (although that was there before it got blocked). Since going back to the doctor I've been on a steroid nasal spray and decongestants but nothing seems to be working. I've had some hay fever in the past but nothing like this. I don't know if the pollen is particularly bad this year- some reports say it is- and maybe my hay fever has been exacerbated by having Covid last December, everything inflamed by the virus, or if the stress of the last seven months has poleaxed my immune system, or if it's something else, but having never been a particularly ill person, it's really affecting me being unwell for so long. I can't help but feel it's in some way connected to Isaac's death and the aftermath of all that. Apart from anything else, it's really affecting my ability to listen to and enjoy music, which is shit. 

This is new from Panda Bear and Sonic Boom, a summer infused slice of Beach Boys style psychedelic pop called Go On with a Troggs sample contained within it's grooves. An album follows in July. It's got little to do with either the Billy Collins poem above or my medical woes but it's a feel good piece of music for the middle of July and even heard in mono lifts me up.