The Mid- Week Special

Three newbie, one off single releases for mid- week to get you pumped up and in the mood for the local elections tomorrow, a soundtrack as you contemplate where to cast your vote. Maybe a more cosmic disco/ psychedelic approach to politics would benefit everybody at this stage in proceedings. It goes without saying that there is nothing remotely cosmic, psychedelic or Balearic about Nigel Farage and Reform and there's a lot to be said for voting with the sole intention of stopping Reform.

Pye Corner Audio tends to deal in dystopic, sci fi techno, acid and murky, subterranean ambient music. It's not all dark and edgy but much of it is. His latest track is very different and parallels the sunshine facing, optimistic sound of his forthcoming album (with Andy Bell's guitar on board), an album with track titles including My Shimmer, Euphoria, Rays Of Sunshine and Greet The Dawn. 

New track The Cool Breeze At Sunset came out on 1st May, an appropriately May Day sounding Balearic/ kosmische five minutes of music with percussive taps, wafty synths, some Mediterranean piano and whispery, almost jazzy 80s chord progressions. 

The Cool Breeze At Sunset is at Bandcamp, free or pay what you want. 

Brighton producer/ DJ Gordon Kaye follows his Galactic Ride single from last year with a new one, Garbage In Garbage Out. Uptempo cosmic disco with some lovely disco- birdsong screeches, a wobbly acid bassline and Gordon's daughter Gabriella singing. Nine minutes of heavenly, brightly lit psychedelic acid house. 

Garbage In Garbage Out is at Bandcamp. 

Jesse Fahnestock's music is always a pleasure, as part of Jezebell and on his own as 10:40. The latest 10:40 track is a one off edit, Winner. It kicks off with some very 10:40 synth sounds and a chunky drumbeat and then a familiar acoustic guitar riff, early 90s stoner folk/ hip hop mangled into new places. Get crazy with the Cheez Whiz. Soy un perdedor.

Get Winner at Bandcamp, free/ pay what you want. 

Ariadne is the name of a locomotive at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, displayed in the newly re- opened Power Hall. Ariadne was constructed in the British Rail works in Gorton in 1954 and hauled carriages between Manchester and Sheffield until 1977 when the line closed and Ariadne was sold to the State Railways in The Netherlands (which is where this livery and eye catching double arrow logo are from). 

In Greek mythology Ariadne was the daughter of King Minos and Pasiphae. She helped Theseus escape from the labyrinth and the Minotaur by giving him a ball of wool which he used to retrace his steps. Later on Theseus abandoned her. 

Typical. 

Dionysus saw Ariadne sleeping and fell in love with her and they married. She became the mother of eleven children including Oenopion (who personifies wine) and Staphylus (who is associated with grapes). 

I spent some time seeing if I could connect any of this, all sparked by the photo I took in MOSI recently, with the music posted above but apart from some vague ideas about wine, partying, Mediterranean islands and the British and Dutch railway networks capacity for bringing people together I haven't really come up with anything. 

Cycle Whim

A pair of unrelated but spring- like new recent releases for early April. First is a single from Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor's new solo album with Green Gartside on backing vocals (and when Green joins in on the chorus he soars). On A Whim is from Paris In The Spring and is sumptuous, buttery electro- pop packed with hooks and melodies and going straight to the heart. Guaranteed to make you smile. 

Out last week on the spring equinox and from an album that will be released on the summer equinox comes Cycle, the first offering from the latest Pye Corner Audio album and with Ride/ GLOK's Andy Bell on guitars and PCA's Martyn Jenkins singing for the first time. The pair collaborated previously on 2022's Let's Emerge, a post- lockdown response to the early 2020s world. Cycle is from More Songs About The Sun, a glorious synthpop/ cosmische song welcoming the coming of springtime and full of the promise of summer.  

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last Saturday's card said this- Cluster Analysis. And in response to the card I posted a track by West German group Cluster, 1976's Zum Wohl. What else could I do? Walter agreed- the band Cluster was is first response too but then said this- 

My second thought reminded me that cluster analysis was a significant part of my profession. In terms of music, every mixtape and every playlist is a cluster of this kind—depending on the underlying intention. I opened a playlist in Spotify. The cluster was the release date of the songs. Coincidentally, 'Ndrangheta Allotment by Meatraffle was at the top of the list.

'Ndrangheta Allotment

When I turned over today's card I got this...

[blank white card]

To which I spluttered a sort of half laugh. The process of writing a blog is often to start with a blank white page and to see where it goes. Often I have a clear idea of what a post is going to be about. There's a notebook next to the computer in which I keep a list of songs/ artists/ topics to write about. It gets added to endlessly and items are crossed out as they get covered. When the pages become a mess of crossings out and scribbles I turn over and start a new page, transferring anything from the old page not yet covered onto the new one. 

Often a post comes together which isn't on the list so the list is a memory jogger and bank of intentions and ideas. And sometimes, I click on New Post on the dashboard and see what happens. But [blank white card] is more or less the starting point so on this occasion I'm not sure Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategy did very much in terms of firing the creative process. 

I put the three words into the downloads folder search box and went for the first return in each case. 

Blank

Blank Stare

Pye Corner Audio from 2024- noise and fear, a synth drone underneath just about audible, hammer on metal- then at two minutes a synth chord emerges sounding like the most distorted guitar in the world, changing slightly and just when you're about to give up, the noise almost too much a little musical refrain appears and gradually- very gradually- comes to the fore. The sound of the last song being when the universe collapses. 

White

White Shirt

A total change of sound- White Shirt is from Some Friendly, The Charlatans debut album, released in October 1990. Rob Collins' Hammond organ is the key instrument, that wheezy sound swirling and leading. Tim Burgess said the song was mainly inspired by Felt and also an attempt to shift Collins away from Deep Purple and The Beatles. 'When my white shirt lets me down', Tim sings, 'Like one we race against the wind'. 

Card

Master Card

From Mogwai's 2014 album Rave Tapes, an album that has been overshadowed by ones they've made since- I'd always go to 2025's The Bad Fire, 2021's As The Love Continues, 2017's Every Country's Sun or 2016's soundtrack Atomic before putting Rave Tapes on. Guitars raging, a staccato riff, keys, pounding drums- Master Card is a sound hewn from granite. 

Each of these three artists has been on these pages multiple times- maybe that was what Eno's card was hinting at, doing something completely different. 

Feel free to play along and suggest your own Oblique Saturday responses in the comments box. 

Union Versions

Marconi Union are an ambient/ electronic trio from Manchester with a dozen albums behind them dating back to 2003 and most recent one in the middle of 2025, The Fear Of Never Landing. Last month a remix EP of three tracks from the album came out, remixes of Marconi Union by Pye Corner Audio and Carbon Based Lifeforms plus a new version by MU themselves. 

Carbon Based Lifeforms remix of Eight Miles High Alone takes a synth arpeggio and builds around it, a slowly simmering, uplifting version of the track with vocal sighs, synth whooshes and a voice fading in and out. It's an electronic dream, the sort of track that has been made using machines but could only have been created by humans, full of moments and pauses, pulsing synths and atmospheres. Life affirming sounds that seem to celebrate just the act of existing. 

Pye Corner Audio, a regular on these pages, remixed In Motion- a deep synth chord intro, some topline notes that dance about and then the thud of a kickdrum and FXed choral sounds and we're off into rhythmic, analogue rave territory. Forward momentum. Walls of synths. A little drama. 

If those two aren't enough- and getting past them is a job, each track begs you to replay it as soon as it fades out- there's a remix of Cloudsurfing by Marconi Union, a reinterpretation that sends the original down a synth pulse tunnel, the sort of track that plays with montages of futuristic cityscapes, speeding 22nd century vehicles flying through seventy mile long underpasses beneath the sea, Marconi Union filtered through a Detroit retro- futurism. 

Three pieces of vivid, emotive and hypnotic electronic gold. TFONLEPRMX can be found at Bandcamp. Highly recommended. 

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. 

Three Hours At Yard In September

Back at the end of September Pye Corner Audio played at Yard in Cheetham Hill, a gig put on by Beautiful Burnouts. Support came from Shunt Voltage and three Flightpath Estate DJs- myself, Martin and Dan.  It's taken a while but we've finally recreated that night and it went up on The Flightpath Estate Mixcloud this week, three hours of music with our sets and two special minimixes- Shunt Voltage by Martin and Pye Corner Audio by Dan included- to give a flavour of what happened that night. It was a fantastic evening, one I won't forget- at one point, on stage sandwiched between Shunt Voltage and Pye Corner, I looked up to see the entire room looking in my direction, my fingers poised over the faders, ready to segue from James Holden to Daniel Avery and Jon Hopkins. You can listen to it here. 

Martin

• [0:00] Two Lone Swordsmen: The Crescents 
• [4:00] The Utopia Strong: Old Mathers
• [8:00] The Sabres Of Paradise: Edge 6 (Ambient) 

Adam

• [10:00] Durutti Column: Sketch for a Manchester summer 1989 
• [12:00] Cluster: Sowiesoso 

Dan

• [20:00] East Coast Love Affair: Xylocopa Violate 
• [25:00] Quadratschulz: Gestalt (Lowfish Remix) 

Martin

• [30:00] Black Bones: Take It Personal
• [34:00] Rude Audio: Mile On A Hill (Rich Lane Dub Remix) 

Adam

• [40:00] Peaking Lights: Midnight Dub 
• [46:00] Ambient Babestation Meltdown & Borai: Wait 

Dan

• [50:00] Coral D: Shock Front 
• [57:00] Shinichi Atobe: Whispers Into The Void 

Martin

• [1:02:00] Roe Deers: Move To The Beat (Edit) 
• [1:10:00] Richard Sen: Tough On Chug, Tough On The Causes Of Chug 

Adam

• [1:16:00] Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?

Shunt Voltage

• [1:21:00] Shunt Voltage: minimax by Martin

Adam

• [1:31:00] James Holden: Blackpool Late Eighties 
• [1:39:00] Daniel Avery: Glitter (Jon Hopkins Remix) 

Pye Corner Audio

• [1:46:00] Pye Corner Audio: minimix by Dan

Dan

• [2:06:00] David Harrow: AanDee 
• [2:12:00] Anatolian Weapons: Further Spiralling Down 
• [2:17:00] Phil Kieran: Artifical Analogue (Extended Dub)

Martin

• [2:24:00] Black Bones & Autumns: Cruising 
• [2:29:00] Richard Norris: Dim The Lights 

Adam

• [2:37:00] The Light Brigade: Shuffle The Deck 
• [2:42:00] Jamie XX & The Avalanches: All You Children 

Dan

• [2:46:00] Radioactive Man: The Clappers 

Martin

• [2:51:00] Caribou: Volume 

Adam

• [2:55:00] Jezebell: Turn It Yes 

Martin

• [3:02:00] Andy Bell: Smokebelch II 

Coloured Lights, Smoke, Music

On Saturday night The Flightpath Estate DJ team (me, Martin and Dan this time, the Flightpath's northern branch) supported Pye Corner Audio and Shunt Voltage at The Yard in Cheetham Hill, north of Manchester city centre, a gig put on by Paul Watt and Beautiful Burnouts. The Yard is a lovely venue, an old Victorian building turned into a one room gig space and was close to sold out, 250 tickets sold. We had three slots- an hour before Shunt Voltage (an ambient/ dub hour), a twenty minute interval between the two acts and then an hour after Pye Corner Audio had finished to entertain anyone who decided to stick around. 

The ambient hour was fine, we played two tracks each in rotation and gave the room and gathering crowd some warm up music. We were set up on the stage, next to Pye Corner's kit and Shunt Voltage's equipment. A laser show was also set up for added visual entertainment. 

I was at the decks when the Shunt Voltage duo took the stage, just one track into my two. One of Shunt Voltage had to reboot his laptop so I stayed at the decks and then when they were ready to go cued up something so that when Shunt Voltage had finished I could just go back on stage and hit play. 

Shunt Voltage were really good, two men, a bank of synths and laptops, some FX pedals and a microphone which each member used at different times, gnomic repetitive phrases delivered over the crunching electronic sounds. At times it sounded like Mark E. Smith (aptly as The Fall have a song called Cheetham Hill) playing with early 80s Cabaret Voltaire/ late 80s 808 State, full on rhythms and bursts of synth noise and samples and a series of projections behind them that fitted the music perfectly. Manchester music- not the kind that's filled stadiums this summer but the more underground and leftfield electronic/ industrial/ acid techno that's as much part of the city's heritage as the guitars are. 

Resistor

As they completed their set and took their applause I slipped onto the stage behind the decks, waited a few seconds and then hit play. I'd been deliberating about whether to keep the thumpy, electronic energy in the room going, keeping the beats and bpms where Shunt Voltage had left them, or whether I should cool it down. Pye Corner Audio was likely to start with some slow, beatless, ambient stuff I thought but also I reckoned he'd have the audience eating out of the palm of his hand so I decided to keep the uptempo energy going. I hit play and James Holden's Blackpool Late Eighties boomed out. I fiddled with a few knobs, adjusted a few buttons and looked up...

It seemed like at that exact moment every single person in the packed out room was looking at me- instantly DJ imposter syndrome shot through me, 'What am I doing up here? What the fuck do I do next? How did I end up in this situation?' A bit nerve wracking. 

Heads were nodding I noticed and I quickly looked down, deciding to ignore them all and concentrate on cueing up the next track, getting it in exactly the right place to mix from deck A to deck B and pray I didn't mess up the transition. I slid the fader across and Jon Hopkins' remix of Daniel Avery's Glitter boomed into The Yard, tough, slo mo four four techno drums and a growing synth noise intensity. I was a minute or two into when Pye Corner Audio appeared next to me and I wondered if he was a bit pissed off that I'd gone a bit too hard- not that there was much I could do about it at that point, I was committed. He got his kit up and running, I mixed into a third track and then he gave me a smile and nod that he was ready to start. I hit the pause button, the track juddered for a few seconds and then I cut the noise. 

This picture shows what seemed to be two hundred and fifty pairs of eyes scrutinising my every move. It makes me feel a little anxious just looking at it. 

Pye Corner Audio started off with some very ambient synth sounds, quietening the room completely. Some brief interludes of sounds, bubbles and whirrs and then an FXed but recognisable voice came over the PA, Andrew Weatherall talking about smoke and music and coloured lights, acid house as gnostic ceremony. For the next hour Pye Corner was superb, gradually building the set, bringing in rhythms and bass, a larger and entrancing sound. Behind a lot of his tracks and sounds there's a sense of unease, the discomfort and folk horror of 70s public information films mixed with Cold War dread filtered through acid house and rave. The set built- no real gaps between tracks just a seamless segue from to another or the briefest of pauses, the crowd bobbed along, heads nodding, hands waved around, some dancing near the front. It was a superb hour of electronic ambient/ acid house synth music with this track at the heart of it...

Quarry Rave

Pye Corner finished by bringing the FXed and filtered Andrew Weatherall sample back. I'm not sure if he knows about The Flightpath Estate and our connections to Andrew's music but if not it was a lovely connection and coincidence. 

There's something about Pye Corner Audio's music I associate with lockdown. During the 2020- 21 period Martyn Jenkins dropped new tracks onto Bandcamp monthly and the subterranean, dystopic element in his music fitted with those times- but the warmth and communal spirit that is filtered through much of them was equally appropriate, a small community of people isolated from each other physically but listening to the same music via the internet. These things passed through my mind as the projections flashed away and the music filled the Victorian school room. 

After Pye Corner Audio ended his set we played some more tunes, from 10.30 through until 11.15, a hardy crew of dancers hanging around for more fun. It was pissing down outside so staying indoors and listening to our acid/ techno disco was the lesser of two evils. Dan got up and played David Harrow's AanDee, a track from Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 named after Mr Weatherall and Martyn (Pye Corner) asked about a couple of tunes we'd played, later sending a message to Flightpath Martin saying it was really good night and 'felt like a proper rave'. We kept playing, enjoying the freedom and the sound system. We got some good pictures out of it too. Amazing what coloured lights, smoke and music can do. 

Resist

Back in February Pye Corner Audio released an expensive box set compiling his Where Things Are Hollow series along with some new tracks and remixes. It's a comprehensive album and a deep dive into PCA world, where analogue synths and drum machines conjure up murky ambient, blurred electronic soundscapes, 70s sci fi/ TV and subterranean drones. The new Where Things Are Hollow included a remix John Talabot did back in 2020 which shifts Pye Corner Audio into slightly different territory, a powering, thumping breakbeat providing eight minutes of direct propulsion.

Resist (Jon Talabot Remix)

Pye Corner Audio regularly releases new music onto his Bandcamp page. At the start of August a two track EP came out, Matrix, which veered into shadowy cosmische house. Get it here. And closer to home Pye Corner Audio is playing live at Yard in Manchester, a venue in Cheetham Hill in the shadow of HMP Strangeways, at the end of September. There are still some tickets available- and I'll be able to enthuse to Martyn Jenkins directly about his music as some of The Flightpath Estate DJ team are playing support to both Pye Corner Audio and Shunt Voltage. 

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. 

Noise Inject

This is the flipside to yesterday's post, the solo album In Waves from Jamie Xx and its sonic effervescence, exuberance and sheer joie de vivre. Pye Corner Audio's Martyn Jenkins operates from a much murkier place, regularly releasing single tracks onto Bandcamp that sound like postcards from a subterranean world, one where daylight rarely reaches and dark, ominous analogue synths, drones, radio static and hissing drum machines evoke some dystopic otherworld- a dark rave where everyone's dancing on their own. The latest missive from Pye Corner Audio came out last Friday- Noise Inject- and can be found at Bandcamp, a pay what you like deal. Click play/ download and let its five minutes of spectral, gloomy rave come down. I love it by the way- none of this is a criticism. 

Martyn's tracks often have highly evocative titles, names that conjure up exactly what the track is going to sound like- Mayday Acid, Rotational Squelch, Quarry Rave, Murk, Fictional Drilling, Eaten From The Inside, Five Years In The Dark, Social Dissonance and Skip Function all give you some idea of what to expect. The exception to these dystopian sounding soundtracks was the album that came out in July 2022, Let's Emerge and its single Warmth Of The Sun. Let's Emerge is a ten track vinyl/ digital album, a response to Covid, lockdowns and isolation, with Martyn writing music to capture a 'collective sigh of relief... new beginnings and a sense of hope'. Andy Bell played guitar on five of the tracks and a shared love of Spacemen 3, tremolo guitars and The Beach Boys were part of the inspiration. A few months later former- Spaceman 3 man Sonic Boom remixed three of the tracks including this one...

Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)

Friday/ Saturday Bandcamp Bonanza

Bandcamp Friday yesterday dropped a ton of new music into my Inbox and while today is a day late in terms of the benefits the artists get from the monthly Bandcamp Friday (Bandcamp waive their fees for one day a month) it's still worth posting some of the highlights- and yesterday was packed full of highlights.

We'll start with a 10: 40 remix of Puerto Montt City orchestra, a song called Hey You, out on Brighton's Higher Love label. By his own admission Jesse's work as 10: 40 has been an ongoing mission to make music/ remixes that channel Spiritualized and this one takes that to the nth degree- cue up Jason Spaceman's Lay Back In The Sun either before or after this and enjoy the sun drenched, blissed out ride....

                                                 

The song is a cover of 14 Iced Bears' Hay Fever, an 80s indie classic. You can get buy the 10: 40 remix of Puerto Montt City Orchestra at Bandcamp.

Next, another murky, underground, radiophonic, analogue synth missive from Pye Corner Audio, the first one for a few months, this one titled Texture Reels. Four minutes and forty five seconds of subterranean, kosmische reel to reel intensity. Get it at Bandcamp, pay what you want. 

Thirdly, Emma. Matty Ducasse records as Skylab. His Skylab International offshoot released a new single onto Bandcamp yesterday, a cover of Hot Chocolate's Emma. Mat plays and produces, Zoe Filthy- Rich songs. The drum machine pitter patters, chunky machine rhythms. The synths ping and blip. Hot Chocolate's mid- 70s pop- soul hit is darker than you might think. Producer Mickie Most asked singer Errol Brown for 'darkness and depth'. Errol gave him lyrics about lost childhood and suicide, a film star 'who can't keep living on dreams no more'. Mat and Zoe dredge up all of the pain and darkness that Errol piled into his lyrics. The EP is at Bandcamp, remix, edit and instrumental.

Lastly, Richard Norris whose Oracle Sound dub project has become essential listening. Richard has recorded three albums of dubs, available digitally and on vinyl via his subscription service. Recently he hosted his friend Jon Carter, who DJed at the Heavenly Social in the 90s and recorded as Monkey Mafia as well as under his own name. Richard wanted to show Jon some new kit. They ended up making a dub track called Ceefax- rocking drums and bass, space echo, melodica and an Ampp Freq live dub machine. The results come in three parts- Ceefax, a Norris dub and a Carter dub. All three are at Bandcamp. As I keep typing. 

You can buy all the music above for less than the price of a pint of lager in central London (and some central Manchester pubs). And while the lager may look briefly colder and more enticing, the music will last longer. 

Monday's Long Song

Pye Corner Audio added another track to his hefty back catalogue of analogue dystopic acid last week with a Bandcamp release titled Walk In The Forest. Seven and a half minutes of burbling, radiophonic machine music, with an intermittent rattly drum machine that sounds like drawing pins being shaken in a biscuit tin and eventually uncharacteristically euphoric, rising synth chords. There's a lovely long fade out to the end too. Available at Bandcamp for free/ pay what you want. 

Today is May Day, the bank holiday that celebrates worker's rights and always seems to promise the start of summer. Last year Pye Corner released a track to mark this, the six minutes and fifty three seconds long, deeply dark/ darkly deep trip of Mayday Acid that would give any Maypole dancing ceremonies a very different edge. 

Mayday Acid

Forty Minutes Of Pye Corner Audio

In my head I'd done a Pye Corner Audio Sunday mix quite recently. On checking, it turns out that that mix and post was in March 2022, nearly two years ago. Martyn Jenkins is pretty prolific, his monthly releases onto Bandcamp the tip of the iceberg. He recently re- released his 2015 album Prowler, seven slices of Pye Corner modular paranoia and dark radiophonic ambience. It felt like a Pye Corner Audio Mix Two was in order. Almost all of these tracks come from releases in the last two years, uploaded to Pye Corner Audio's Bandcamp page as free downloads/ pay what you like. It's a treasure trove of dark ambient, squiggly acid, subterranean techno, analogue rave and lovely, if sometimes unsettling drones. I wanted to include a pair of remixes, his remix of First, I Heard Colours by Principles Of Geometry from 2022 and his remix of Lack Of Sleep by Maps from last year but in the end neither really fitted in tone. Another Sunday, another mix. 

I try to keep these Sunday mixes to between thirty minutes and forty five minutes, partly for reasons of discipline (trying to limit yourself in terms of time or space is a good thing I think), partly because it's a good amount of time as a soundtrack to other activities- cooking tea or driving to work for instance- and partly I think because being brought up on home made cassette compilations, it's the same timing as one side of a c90. There's so much Pye Corner Audio material It would have been easy to spin this out for a couple of hours but I kept it just under forty five minutes. You can still download the first Pye Corner Audio mix which can go on side two of that tape. 

Forty Minutes Of Pye Corner Audio Two

• Winter Drone For Christmas
• Unmarked Reel Two, Track One
• Rotational Squelch
• Cabaret Sauvage
• Stregan Acid
• Skip Function
• Dirty Window Of Opportunity
• Acid Addendum
• Seen From Above
• Somewhere There's A Sunrise

Winter Drone For Christmas is exactly what it says, released in December 2023 and the kind of Christmas music I can get behind. Unnerving and soothing at the same time, modular synth drones becoming 

Unmarked Reel Two, Track One was one of two tracks given away as a free download in 2010, a series of drones and noises. It was paired with Transmission Six: Sunken Village. Track titles are a Pye Corner Audio speciality. 

Rotational Squelch kicks things up a gear, an acid banger from February 2021. 

Cabaret Sauvage came out in August 2023, music for a summer rave, one where there is precious little light and smoke fills every space around you. There's a funky guitar riff in there too that sends it in a My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts direction.

Stregan Acid was part of a four track EP titled Midnite Acid, out in April 2021. Hiss Wave is one of the labels attached to this release to which I'll add dark, kosmic acid. The squelched out bassline and hi hats are seriously deep and intense. See also last year's Mayday Acid which I meant to include here but didn't. 

Skip Function, from December 2021, opens with oscillating bleeps and some calming tones, slowing things down a notch in this mix. 

Dirty Window Of Opportunity dates from April 2022 and is a return to analogue acid dance, bouncing bassline, rattling electronic percussion, machine handclaps and a John Carpenter- esque topline. There's some daylight and sunshine poking through in this one. 

Acid Addendum came out on 1st December 2023, an advent treat, most unseasonal sounding and a blinding piece of music- crashing drums, 808 squiggles, hissing percussion and utterly danceable. 

Seen From Above was released in April 2023, another dark, rhythmic thumper. This one is late 80s/ early 90s acid but with some of that late 70s/ early 80s post- punk/ Throbbing Gristle feel. Smothered with lovely hiss too. 

Somewhere There's A Sunrise, a title with some optimism in it, came out in April 2020, a month into the first Covid lockdown with the comment from Martyn, 'Holding on for that sunrise...'. That whole period, lockdowns and later on tiers, the sudden and dramatic changes brought to everyone by the pandemic and (at that stage, late April 2020) with no end in sight, is a strange world to put yourself back into- it feels recent but remote too. Somewhere There's A Sunrise is the product of being confined to home for 23 hours a day, an optimistic piece of analogue electronic music, with a hint of Italian house in there somewhere. 

Tenth Floor Down And Cabaret Sauvage

Two more new tracks from Bagging Area favourites, both released earlier this month. First up is courtesy of Dirt Bogarde, Stourbridge's finest, who has shifted slightly from acid house thumpers to some post punk dread. Tenth Floor Down has a Killing Joke/ Joy Division descending bassline and ominous synth swirls, things sounding a little tense and with gritted teeth. The acid works its way in and a female backing vocal softens things a little, but its a gripping, intense ride. Buy it at Bandcamp.  

In a similar sonic area is the latest track from Pye Corner Audio, Cabaret Sauvage, four minutes of dark, dystopic, radiophonic murk, a punk- funk guitar riff beamed in from early 80s Talking Heads, synths that could come from sci fi TV from the same period and a bassline that throbs. Buy it at Bandcamp.

Forty Five Minutes of Sonic Boom

Pete Kember's music in Spacemen 3 and afterwards as Spectrum, E.A.R. and Sonic Boom, sometimes looks like one long blissed out haze of analogue synths, shimmering waves, drones and endless repetition. Nothing wrong with that. His back catalogue has a wealth of songs, albums and remixes. The three quarters of an hour below contains nothing from his 1994 masterpiece Highs, Lows And Heavenly Blows, a treatise on meditative, tranced out, hypnotic guitar and synth drones with Sonic's trademark lethargic vocals, and that's solely because I don't have any of the songs from it in digital format. Pete currently lives in Sintra, Portugal which is clearly good for his work rate- he's released two new albums since 2020 and toured to promote them, along with last year's album with Panda Bear, as well as producing albums by Cheval Sombre, Beach House and Moon Duo. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Sonic Boom

• Tremeloes
• True Love Will Find You In the End (Alternate Version)
• How You Satisfy Me
• Just Imagine
• The Horizon (Sonic Boom No Drums Version)
• Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough
• Frozen (Sonic Boom Mix)
• Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)

Tremolos and True Love Will Find You In The End were both released as Spectrum in 1992, the former a four minute wobbly, two note drone and the latter a gorgeous cover of  Daniel Johnson's most well known song. They were also on a 1997 compilation called What Came Before After which is where this version of True Love Will Find You In The End is from. 

How You Satisfy Me is from 1992's Soul Kiss (Glide Divine), an album that came with a translucent, liquid sleeve. Rare and expensive second hand and prone to bursting/ degrading. 

Just Imagine was the lead song from 2020's All Things Being Equal. Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough was a follow up a year later, with a remix of Just Imagine and some new songs.

The Horizon is by Sinner DC, a Swiss ambient/ electronic/ drone group who have made a dozen albums since the 1990s.

Frozen, not from the Disney film about a snowman of the same name, is by The Insect Guide, a duo from Leeds who formed in 2005 and released two albums between 2007 and 2010.

Warmth Of The Sun is by Pye Corner Audio from last year's Let's Emerge album, a track with Andy Bell on guitar. Sonic Boom remixed three of the songs for an EP titled Let's Remerge.  

Tidal Love/ Seen From Above

We spent last weekend on the western coast of northern England and the weekend just gone on the east coast, a few days in a caravan north of Hartlepool. The beach north of Hartlepool is dramatic and beautiful, a little wild and both unspoilt and post- industrial. The beach has coal mixed into the sand, the coal seam surfacing in the sea and lumps of coal and coal dust being washed up on the beach. The view above was taken on Monday evening at high tide, standing at the edge of the north sea looking out towards Europe at dusk. The one below was on Saturday morning, much bluer and brighter skies.

I love a beach with bits of the industrial past half buried in the sand, the tide wearing it away slightly more every day. The coast is good for the soul. 

Two new songs for Tuesday. First is new from Andy Bell, a frequent visitor to these pages in solo form, as GLOK and as a member of Ride. He has recorded a four track with Masal, out in May, with the first track from it being available to listen to and buy now. Tidal Love Conversation In That Familiar Golden Orchard is described at Bandcamp as 'ambient, astral jazz' and that fits perfectly. Andy's wandering, cosmische guitar lines are underpinned by brushed drums, analogue synths and harp, a light, floating psychedelic exploration. 

Also out last Friday is the latest from Pye Corner Audio, who has previously worked with Andy, remixing six songs from The View From Halfway Down, with Andy returning the favour by playing guitar on last year's Let's Emerge album. The new Pye Corner Audio track, Seen From Above, is at Bandcamp (a pay what you want deal) and is a return to the darker, dystopic sounds he's known for with a kick drum and hi hat adding some propulsion to the menace. Dark techno, the flipside to Andy and Masal's Tidal Love. 

Forty Five Minutes Of GLOK

Two disclaimers before getting into the body of this blog.

1. I had been trying to put together an Andy Bell mix for some time and couldn't get it right until I separated the Andy Bell material from the GLOK stuff. I'm still not sure that I've got it right but it's better than the earlier attempts.

2. Between putting this GLOK mix together and  writing this post I spent several hours in local pubs with predictable effects and then came home and wrote this. 

Andy Bell's music outside Ride has been a revelation to me in recent years. His connections with Andrew Weatherall and the tracks they recorded together, his initially anonymous, house and kraut influenced tracks as GLOK and then his solo albums have been some of my most played music. GLOK's cosmische, pulsing, never-ending waves of synths and guitars music have hit the spot in all sorts of ways. This is a selection not a Best Of, some GLOK tracks that hopefully work together as one piece. 

 Forty Five Minutes Of GLOK

• Pulsing (Ambient Version)
• Kolokol
• That Time Of Night (Edit)
• Somaside
• Pulsing (Citadel Version)
• Cloud Cover (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Memorial Device
• Indica (Pye Corner Audio Remix- GLOK Edit)

Pulsing and Kolokol are both from the intended to be anonymous debut GLOK album, released in July 2019. Pulsing later saw the light of day as an EP called The Citadel. Andrew Weatherall's urban ambient remix, harking back to Two Lone Swordsmen in some ways, came out on there an the subsequent album of remixes, Dissident Remixed. 

Somaside was sent out to everyone who bought the follow up album, 2021's Pattern recognition, which suffered from endless delays due to pressing problems and vinyl backlogs. Pattern Recognition is a superb album. The only reason that more of its tracks don't appear on this mix is that so may of them are so long that they'd use up so much time of my self- allocated thirty to forty minutes. 

Memorial Device is from Pattern Recognition and also the name of an imaginary Airdrie post punk group/ 21st century novel by David Keenan. 

Indica was on Andy's solo album The View From Half Way Down, the Bagging Area album of the year in 2020. Pye Corner Audio remixed the entire album superbly. The GLOK remix is Andy remixing a remix of himself. 

Monday Mix

A mix for Monday, my seventh for Tak Tent Radio who broadcast out of central Scotland with a range of contributors and guests. This one, has music from a lot of artists who have graced the pages of this blog this year- Mark Peters with Dot Allison remixed by Richard Norris, Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel from 1991, Pye Corner Audio remixed by Sonic Boom, Andy Bell remixed by David Holmes, Gabe Gurnsey, Jazxing, Jezebell's recent edit of Laurie Anderson, Carly Simon, Dirt Bogarde and Boxheater Jackson. In short- starts ambient, goes Balaeric and ends up dancey. Listen here or here.

• Mark Peters and Dot Allison: Sundowning (Richard Norris Ambient Remix)
• Pete Wylie and Wah! The Mongrel: Don’t Lose Your Drums
• Pye Corner Audio: Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)
• Andy Bell: The Sky Without You (David Holmes Radical Mycology remix)
• Gabe Gurnsey: To The Room
• Jazxing: Fala
• Jezebell: Re- birth (Edit)
• Carly Simon: Why (Extended 12” Mix)
• Dirt Bogarde: So Far Away
• Boxheater Jackson: Don’t Complicate

Geometry And Audio

Principles Of Geometry are a duo from Lille, France about whom I know very little. Guillaume Grusso and Jeremy Duval have been making electronic music since 2005, a smattering of albums, singles and remixes of other artists. A new album, their fifth, is imminent and the single First I Heard Colors was released last Friday. This Pye Corner Audio remix was what drew me in... 

It fades in gently, an ambient synth excursion that then snaps into focus. Pye Corner Audio's vintage drum machine starts thudding away, the synths pulse and twinkle and everything's gone 80s horror/ sci fi soundtrack meets acid house, John Carpenter lost on the floor in the strobe and dry ice. The remix and the original can be found at Bandcamp. The source track is shorter, minimal and abstract with a voice just about audible whispering 'everything begins at exactly the right time'. 

Saturation Point

More new music, this time from regular postees Pye Corner Audio and Sonic Boom, the latter remixing the former. Pye Corner Audio's album Let's Emerge has bene a 2022 highlight, layers of subtleties and nuance in the drones and ambience. Pye Corner is often the music of dystopic nightmares, unsettling and subterranean. On Let's Emerge he has tried to face the light and make music that is optimistic and warm. On the closing track, Warmth Of The Sun, with Andy Bell on guitar he more than achieves it. Over the previous two sides of vinyl, the more I listen to it, the more I hear it (especially now my right ear is functioning more fully). 

Sonic Boom, residing in Sintra, Portugal, has remixed three of the tracks from let's Emerge and they're coming out as an EP, digital and vinyl with the 10" vinyl limited to 1000 copies on orange vinyl with am inside print too. By the time I heard about it it had sold at Bandcamp which at least spared me the moral dilemma of whether or not I could justify spending £17.99 on a three song EP (spoiler- I couldn't). The first of the three is available to listen to, a remix of Saturation Point that Sonic has pivoted back to the gloom. It starts out with gloomy synth sounds and creeping drones but eventually the door opens and twinkling beams of light work their way in, with a lovely, echo- laden Andy Bell guitar line that working its way to the fore. The EP, Let's Remerge!, out in November, also has Sonic Boom remixes of Haze Loops and Warmth Of The Sun which on the basis of this will be worth waiting for.