Glimpses Across Thunder

One of my favourite songs of last year was Paradise by Glasgow's AMOR, a song that still sounds as good today as it did in February 2017, a hypnotic, joyful, arms aloft piece of avant disco that swoons and soars.



You can buy it at Bandcamp digitally (the vinyl is long since sold out).

AMOR are four musicians with different musical histories who've come together to make dance music for the feet and heart. Their bio on Bandcamp cites Ron Hardy, The Blue Nile, Philadelphia International and David Mancuso as reference points. There's an album out next month with this as a opening offer and I think we have a late contender for those lists people will soon be making...

Feels Like Falling

The first days after the clocks go back always remind me how much I loathe travelling home from work in the dark- and this is just the start of it, there's another six months to go. Grim. So I'll take some snatches and glimpses of light where I can find it. I wrote recently about the new single from Circle Sky (a Richard Norris project), a beautiful low key ambient techno song I eloquently described as 'rather fucking gorgeous'.

The 12" is out imminently with two remixes, one from Ulrich Schnauss who strips it back and finds some little repeating melodies which he sets off against some washes of sound. Eventually a lazy drumbeat joins in. Half way through the vocal comes in, smothered in echo, and everything speeds up a little. Then it slows down and fades. Lovely.



The 12" also has this more insistent remix from Michael Mayer, a more austere techno reworking but the softness of the original track remains.

If I Let Go

Too insistent to be ambient (and the bpm count's too high) but pretty dreamy all the same- this is brand new from Circle Sky (a Richard Norris analogue modular synth project). This is low key and rather fucking gorgeous. That's my review.

Sleepwalk

Celebrate the arrival of Friday and the weekend with this- a free download of an Aron Ya reworking of Moon Duo's Sleepwalk (if trancey, psychedelic, repetitive, acid drenched drone rock is your bag. And if it isn't, why isn't it?)

Well It Seems So Real

More from Manchester's musical back pages (and not Morrissey who makes it worse every time he opens his mouth right now- just when you think he can't sink any further he does. Pretty soon it will be impossible to listen to The Smiths without visions of racist, far right fuckwittery). I overheard the opening to Why Can't I Touch It? coming through from the TV and stopped in my tracks to let it go on. Whatever programme it was didn't let it go on very long but it sounded superb, the reggae feel to the drums, the opening riff, all angular and jerky, followed by Pete Shelley's high pitched frustration and confusion (I've always assumed this song is about sexual frustration). The twin guitars stalk around each other while the bass and drums play a kind of Mancunian dub version of Can. Why Can't I Touch It? was released in 1979 and while it doesn't necessarily sound very modern or 2018 it also doesn't sound like it is nearly 40 years old.

Why Can't I Touch It?

The Laser

There's a lot of new music out now or imminently. Hardway Bros will put out a new ep at the end of May, 4 new tracks led off by this one- Friedman Feedback Loop Revision- where Sean Johnston loops some magic over a hi-hat and some drums and then lays waste to your speakers.

Sean's ep releases over the last few years for New York label Throne Of Blood have been uniformly excellent, especially the Pleasure Cry 12" from 2016 (with Argonaut being among the best tracks of the year to Bagging Area ears). If you want to catch up with the back catalogue you can get it all digitally at Bandcamp.

Slammed

Last week Slam celebrated a quarter of a century by taking over Rinse FM and inviting a load of guests to play mixes/podcasts. One of those invited was Andrew Weatherall who put forward the hour of music on the player below, which includes some speaker rattling reggae, some head rattling psychedelia and some weird stuff. You'll find something to enjoy in it somewhere.

Polar Star

In this post-Brexit world we live in it seems more important than ever to keep looking forward, to try to keep finding things that make the days lighter and longer. Over in Sweden the Hoga Nord label have an ever expanding catalogue of leftfield music. This one from Fontan was released last August, a three track 12" (now sold out). Hoga Nord claim that Fontan are Sweden's 'number one neo-psych band' and I have no reason to doubt them. Is this trippy late 60s rock retrogressive? Possibly. But is it good? Yes indeed.



The third track off the single, Sen Sen No Sen, is a psychedelic and repetitive delight, eight and a half minutes of drumming, percussion, glockenspiel with drones and heady noises.

Andromeda And The Moon

There's lots of new stuff around at the moment. To continue yesterday's theme, it's not 'new' new stuff, but new stuff from older bands. There must be an analysis that says that April and May are good times to release music. Last week Gorillaz put out four new songs. I was going to type 'dropped four new singles' but I gagged a little bit at typing 'dropped' and I don't think an internet only song counts as a single (or if singles even exist anymore. I know that 7" singles still exist but when one artist releases an album and all the songs off it enter the top twenty, the single is pretty much a dead form I think).

The four new Gorillaz songs are a mixed bunch, and I suspect the album to follow will be too (which like all Gorillaz albums carries a long list of guest stars and collaborators from Grace Jones to De La Soul to Johnny Beth to Mavis Staples to Jamie Principle and so on). The best one and the only one I've so far wanted to listen to several times is Andromeda, which is a skip away from dance music, with a house beat and synths and a Damon vocal that isn't just that listless one he usually does. It sounds like it was fun to make and is fun to listen to.



A bit less upfront, more subtle and more interested in texture and mood is this new song from Goldfrapp. I haven't heard the whole album yet but this song, Moon In Your Mouth, is a lovely thing. The synths are moody, immersive and spacious, building, and Alison's vocal matches them, soaring where it needs to. Goldfrapp flit from synth stomp albums to folky albums. This song takes parts from both and adds some science fiction.