Forty Minutes Of Wooden Shjips

Wooden Shjips, one of three bands Ripley Johnson leads as guitarist and singer, are an ongoing psychedelic blur, Ripley's distorted, buzzsaw/ Crazy Horse guitar tone droning and riffing complemented by the motorik rhythms of drummer Omar Ahsanuddin and the swirly organ. The songs sound like the heat of high summer, the tranced out escapism of lying on your back staring at the hazy blue sky with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Ripley's voice sits somewhere inside the mix, a presence as much as a vocal.

Forty Minutes Of Wooden Shjips

• Red Line
• Contact
• Motorbike
• Rising
• Back To Land
• Eclipse
• Crossings (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Since 2006 they've released five albums (plus two compilations) with 2018's V a peak of spaced out, shimmering psychedelia. Red Line and Eclipse are both from V. I saw them play live at Gorilla when they toured to promote it- they were in the groove and on fire.

Contact was a standalone 7" single in 2009, a cover of the Serge Gainsbourg song (originally sung by Brigitte Bardot in 1968 which later on was up on David Holmes' Essential Mix). It was later compiled onto Wooden Shjips Vol 2.

Rising is a slow riot of backwards sounds and is on 2011's West, the album where their numbed out repetition began to become warmer and more polished. Crossings is from West as well and was remixed by Weatherall, the 12" seeing the light of day in 2012. It's one of the pinnacles of his later remixes, a version that strips Wooden Shjips sound down, adds a hissy drum machine and some of his dubby/ sci fi sounds and a huge loop of bass guitar. 

Back To Land is the title track from their 2013 album, The Velvet Underground if they'd come from San Francisco and not New York. 

And if all this psychedelic rock isn't festive enough for you here's the band doing O Tannenbaum, adding sleigh bells to create a nine minute long, minimal, motorik Christmas, organ drone. 

O Tannenbaum

I Cry Glory And Wave My Flag

Back at the start of the year it was announced that Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh's Woodleigh Research Facility would be releasing a year long series of three track digital only EPs, one a month. The first one at the end of January was an EP called Into The Cosmic Hole. When it came out it was a fascinating piece of work, three sonic messages from Facility 2- the weird, shamanic title track, the robotic machine science fiction- electro of Phonox Special No 1 (Outer Space) and the homage to Stockholm Monsters and Martin Hannett of Birthday Three. Eleven more of these would be a superb way to mark the passing of the year, a year long advent calendar of the weird, the wired and the wonderful. Sadly, by the time the second release came out at the end of February he was gone. 

2020 has been coloured by Andrew's passing for me, even with everything else that has happened. It's a strange thing to be moved by the death of a person you don't know and it's not anything compared to what his family and close friends felt and are feeling still. His sudden death on February 17th brought a stream of loss and grief across social media. My Facebook and Twitter timelines were almost nothing but Andrew Weatherall for days. The broadsheet newspapers and the BBC news covered his life and career (he always baulked at that word when interviewed). Then the world then shut down. Events to celebrate Andrew's life were shelved. The Flightpath Estate (a Facebook group I co- moderate with another fan, Martin Brannagan) began to grow, from three hundred fans to well over a thousand. People from Andrew's real life began to join the group, the boundaries between fans and family and friends dissolving. Part of the increasing membership came from some press interest in the Weatherdrive, an online resource of Weatherall DJ mixes spanning the period from 1990 to 2020, from the heyday of acid house to ALFOS. Mixmag picked up on it and asked The Flightpath Estate if we'd like to write an article about the 10 best of Andrew's DJ sets on the Weatherdrive. 

The Woodleigh Research Facility release campaign continued, updates from Andrew's studio life, a monthly reminder that he was gone but still there. The recordings present a vast range of sounds but are clearly the work of the same people, Andrew's intuitive nature and vision along with Nina's creativity and studio production skills. As the months have ticked by I've played these EPs, some more than others admittedly, and noticed how the W.R.F. releases seem to echo music he made in the previous three decades, reverberations from the past into the present. The lengthy running times, like the remixes of the early 90s where the music has space and time to unfold at its own pace. David Harrow said that when they were in the studio making music as Blood Sugar listening to what they'd done, he'd often be ready to change the drum pattern or bring a new element in, and Andrew would say, 'let it go round again', and the track would be extended out for another pattern/ 12 bars. The trademark hissing drum machines and mechanical rhythms point back to the music he released on his three Emissions labels in the 1990s and the stranger, more abstract, one off recordings he made, such as the Glowing Trees 12" he put out as Meek. The topline melodies point to the sound of Sabres of Paradise, especially the Haunted Dancehall album, and the bass- heavy mutant electro of Two Lone Swordsmen records. The metallic hi- hats and rattling snares sound like the ones on the TLS remixes of twenty years ago. The dub influence resonates through the Woodleigh EPs and through so much of his previous work (and DJ sets). The esoteric song titles could come from any point in his back catalogue. 

The monthly EPs will have given us thirty six tracks by the end of the year, a huge amount of music from someone whose creative flow was clearly in full swing. Looking back, even if you pick four songs from completely different parts of his back pages, there's clearly a line running through everything. He reinvented his sound and moved from one identity to another, zigging when others zagged, from the remixes accompanied by Hugo Nicolson to Sabres of Paradise to Two Lone Swordsmen to The Asphodells to his solo records to WRF, but it's all part of a body of work with common themes and a unifying vision. Even the stuff that is outlying and on the fringes- the secret side projects, the machine funk aliases like Rude Solo and Frisch und Munter, the panel beating techno of Lords Of Afford, the odd folk music of his Moine Dubh label, the shadowy collective Fort Beulah N.U. who made five one sided white label 12" singles- fits into the world he created. He'd often play it down, be self- deprecating and modest, saying he was just a grand amateur, but the music is endlessly inventive. Even when he seemed to have driven himself down a one way road he'd manage to pull off a deft three point turn and come back with something else, something new. 

Jockey Slut, started in Manchester as a dance music fanzine and then became something much bigger, and interviewed the man many times. In the summer they announced they were going to publish a special edition book, Andrew's interviews for the magazine compiled along with some new material (including an oral history of the acid house and Sabres years and a Richard Norris article). The book began to drop through letterboxes last week. Towards the back there is a double page spread about The Flightpath Estate and the Weatherdrive and its thousand hours of DJ mixes spanning Weatherall's career, based around an interview with Martin. Towards the bottom of the page, and this was a surprise to me as I leafed through it for the first time, is my name and this blog's name. 

Which, as that man on The Fast Show used to say, was nice. 

It was more than nice, it was incredible. A few people have since commented on social media that they were drawn back into the orbit of Andrew's music because of this blog, which is amazing and lovely to hear. It's what music blogging is for, to share the music and the world it's created in with other people. In a way music blogs are just an updated version of the fanzines of the 1980s, but with far less photocopying and Letraset. That this blog has become a minor footnote in the story is crazy, humbling and when I think about it, a bit mind-blowing too. 

In an attempt to close the year in which he left I started to put together a mix of some of Andrew's music. I wondered if I could somehow manage to summarise his vast and varied back catalogue into one handy hour long compilation but I realised almost immediately this would be an impossible task. In the end I chose a couple of  Two Lone Swordsmen tracks as a starting point and then went where it took me, throwing in quite a few of the ones he sings on, some remixes, some tracks that only came out on compilations and often just went with whatever the previous track seemed to suggest as a follow up. It ended up being a little over ninety minutes long and you can find it at Mixcloud. 

Audrey Witherspoon’s Blues

• Two Lone Swordsmen: Constant Reminder
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Light The Last Flare
• X- Press 2: Witchi Tai To (Two Lone Swordsmen Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Patient Saints
• Andrew Weatherall: The Confidence Man
• Woodleigh Research Facility: Birthday Three
• The Asphodells: One Minute’s Silence (Wooden Shjips Remix)
• Andrew Weatherall: Kaif
• Michael Smith and Andrew Weatherall: Water Music
• Radioactive Man: Fed- Ex To Munchen (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
• Andrew Weatherall: Youth Ozone Machine
• Andrew Weatherall: Cosmonautrix
• Andrew Weatherall: Saturday International
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No 3 (Calexico Remix)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Sex Beat
• Andrew Weatherall: Privately Electrified
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Get Out Of My Kingdom

Lists

List time again, for what it's worth.

Albums
It looks like 2018 has been a very good year for albums, a format everyone keeps suggesting is dead or dying. Making a long list was very easy. There are albums that came out at the start of the year I'm enjoying, albums that have come out recently I'm still getting into and albums I haven't heard yet which I feel sure I should have (Beak for one, The Orielles for another and Neneh Cherry for a third).

Floating around above my top ten are all of these albums and placing them in order seems very arbitrary. All of them have brightened up my year and all are worthy of a mention- Factory Floor 'Soundtrack To A Film'; Mogwai 'Kin'; The Orb 'No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds'; Hollie Cook 'Vessel of Love'; Gwenno 'Le Kov'; J Mascis 'Elastic Days'; Tracey Thorn 'Record'; Echo Ladies 'Pink Noise';  The Advisory Circle 'Ways Of Seeing'; Half Man Half Biscuit 'No-one Cares About Your Creative Hub So Get Your Fucking Hedge Cut'. A week ago AMOR's debut album Sinking Into A Miracle arrived. If it had come out sooner I think it would have made the dozen below.

I should also mention a pair of albums out this year but not of this year- Primal Scream's Memphis Sessions, Tom Dowd's recordings left unreleased for two decades, and Joe Strummer 001, a compilation of Joe's solo years with enough newly uncovered material to make it feel like a treasure trove. Today is the sixteenth anniversary of his death and the world feels like a poorer place without him.

Previously unreleased, this is a Joe and Mick Jones song from 1986. Ten minutes inside Joe's mind with some of Big Audio Dynamite accompanying.



Albums of 2018- a top twelve

Twelve
Gulp 'All Good Wishes'
Ace kraut-folk from Wales, full of invention and melody.

Eleven
Rival Consoles 'Persona'
Perfectly judged laptop electronic dance music that works just as well at home/in the car. Very rhythmic and abstract in places but never without tunes.

Ten
Finiflex 'Suilven'
A 2018 return for the duo from Fini Tribe- an album named after a mountain, aimed at the head and the feet with multi-tracked vocals, synths and chugging electronic drums. Uplifting and fresh.


Nine
The Liminanas 'Shadow People'
Ten songs from France's best kept secret, ten versions of a psych-folk-Velvets-1960s for the modern world.

Eight
Chris Carter 'Chemistry Lessons 1'
Twenty five short electronic pieces- dance music, ambient, reflective industrial tracks, littered with found voices and shot through with melody. Brilliant and warm.

Seven
Jon Hopkins 'Singularity'
Starting and finishing with the same note, a sort of cosmic joke, and between the two some of the year's wildest techno and electronic tracks (especially the ten minute journey of Everything Connected) plus some very beautiful minor key piano pieces.

Six
Mr Fingers 'Cerebral Hemispheres'
This record has been a bit overlooked I feel, a double album by one of the men who invented house music. He spreads it around on this in a multitude of styles and the peaks are very peaky. Acid peaks Techno peaks, Dub techno peaks. All sorts of peaks.

Five 
Spiritualized '...And Nothing Hurt'
If this ends up being the last Spiritualized album then Jason has finished it in fine Spaceman style. Bleak in places but well worth committing too and an album that rewards with repeated plays.

Four
The Lucid Dream 'Actualisation'
They blew me away at Gorilla in September- I was expecting them to be good after the single SX1000 early on in the year but not that good. The album then followed it up in spades, a perfectly 2018 cut-and-shut job combining acid house, psych-rock and dub.

Three
Gabe Gurnsey 'Physical'
The sound of a night out, late 80s drum machines, synths and some impressionistic vocals parts. Funky and sexy, and drenched in the smells of clubs- cig butts, dry ice, perfume and sweat.

Two
Daniel Avery 'Song For Alpha'
Minimal techno, buckets of reverb and some lovely ambient noise, designed to be listened to from start to finish, packaged beautifully and utterly absorbing.

One
Wooden Shjips 'V'
In a year when most of my favourite and most played albums have been electronic and dance music based the album sitting at the top of my list is the fifth lp from San Francisco's rocker Wooden Shjips, setting out on a trip through their record collections (psychedelia, stoner grooves, krautrock) but done with a lightness of touch and some real earworm melodies. Ripley's guitar playing and his tone are as good as anyone since the turn of the century. Why do I like this so much? It makes me happy.



Singles/remixes/e.p.s

There have been so many great songs, singles, remixes and eps this year that I could easily extend the length of this list but 40 seems like enough (and although his name appears all over the place below I have actually left some Weatherall tracks out of this).  There are probably things I've forgotten too that I'll kick myself about next week. In the meantime here's a second list...

40. Johnny Marr 'Hi Hello'
39. audiobooks. 'Dance Your Life Away' Andrew Weatherall remix
38. A Certain Ratio ft Barry Adamson 'Dirty Boy'
37. The Liminanas ft Peter Hook 'The Gift'
36. Timothy J. Fairplay 'An Introduction To Consumer Electronics' ep
35. Field Of Dreams 'Nothing Is Perfect' original and Andrew Weatherall remix
34. Aphex Twin 'T69 Collapse'
33. The Twilight Sad 'Videograms' Andrew Weatherall remix
32. Steve Mason 'Walking Away From Love'
31. The Long Now 'Restoration'
30. Underworld and Iggy Pop 'Teatime Dub Encounters'
29. Echo Ladies 'Overrated' Robin Guthrie version
28. Daniel Avery/Jon Hopkins remix 12"
27. Hardway Bros 'The Laser' ep
26. Tracey Thorn 'Sister' Andrew Weatherall remix and dub
25. Factory Floor 'Heart Of Data'
24. Lost Cat 'Postcode'
23. The Vryll Society 'Light At The Edge Of The World' Richard Norris Dub
22. Gabe Gurnsey 'Eyes Over'/Eyes Over Extended Dub
21. Bob Mould 'Sunshine Rock'
20. Noel Gallagher and His High Flying Birds 'It's A Beautiful World' Andrew Weatherall remixes
19. Ride 'Tomorrow's Shore' ep
18. Roisin Murphy 'Plaything'
17. Rude Audio 'Rude Redux' ep
16. Daniel Avery 'Slow Fade' ep
15. Woodleigh Research Facility 'Heilige Siedhr'
14. Marius Circus 'I Feel Space' 12"
13. Craig Bratley '99.9' ep especially Take Me To Bedford Or Lose Me Forever
12. Daniel Avery 'A Quick Eternity' Four Tet Remix
11. Mogwai 'We're Not Done'

Ten
Circle Sky 'If I Let Go'
Richard Norris and Martin Dubka slipped this single out, a totally beguiling song from the heart of a very human sounding machine.

Nine
Lana del Rey 'Venice Bitch'
This took the top of my head off a couple of months ago- ten minutes of lullaby vocals about being 'fresh out of fucks forever', of being together and apart, some gorgeous atmospherics and a stunning guitar part.

Eight
The Lucid Dream 'SX1000'
Roland synths banged all the way up, bassline from '89- acid house reinvention from Carlisle.

Seven
Amy Douglas 'Never Saw It Coming'/Crooked Man remix and dub
Straight out of New York and remixed and dubbed out of Sheffield, September's moment of  late autumn sunshine Balearica.

Six
Gabe Gurnsey 'Ultra Clear Sound'
A direct and sleek single ahead of the album back in May. A proper heads up moment.

Five
Andrew Weatherall 'Making Friends With The Invader'
From a two track 12" called Blue Bullet, a long exploration of dub and guitar that I cannot get bored of hearing. The other side is pretty smart too.

Four
The Confidence Man 'Out The Window' Andrew Weatherall remix
Weatherall's had another excellent year as this list shows and this remix is up there with his recent best, a gorgeous gospel/rave/steel guitar tribute to staying out all night and coming home as the sun comes up.

Three
Death In Vegas 'Honey'
Ten minutes of sleek, seductive techno from Richard Fearless and Sasha Grey. What 12 inches of vinyl was made for.

Two
Circle Sky 'Ghost In the Machine'
I thought If I Let Go was good but this one worked its way into me a few weeks ago and refuses to leave. Futuristic and cool as fuck, deep and light and magical.

One
Roisin Murphy 'All My Dreams'
Roisin has blazed a trail through 2018 with four 12" singles recorded with Maurice Fulton, eight songs designed to work on the floor, covering a bewildering array of electronic styles. If there's a better song out this year that this one, I haven't heard it. Massive drums and bass, experimental dance music but still with a foot in pop and some great juddering shifting sections where the floor seems to give way beneath you. By way of explaining Roisin sings 'ridiculously sexy, this is ridiculous'. Ridiculously good. For good measure she directed four videos too and this one looks like good club nights feel.




Edit: I forgot this one- Four Tet's remix of Bicep's Opal, an end of year listmaker without a shadow of a doubt.

Dreams

I've seen some really good gigs this year- Mogwai at the Albert Hall, MIchael Head at Gorilla and David Byrne at the Apollo all live long in the memory-  but as a double bill Wooden Shjips supported by The Lucid Dream at Gorilla on Saturday night will be hard to beat. Gorilla is a small venue in a railway arch, holding about 500 people, an ideal place to see bands close up, with no barriers between audience and players. The Lucid Dream, four young men from Carlisle, are a band whose time has surely come. Drilled, inventive and loud they have made good on the promise a lot of bands in the early 90s made, to fuse psychedelic rock with dance music. Lined up across the stage they kick off with an electronic drumbeat from the pile of kit, pedals, drum machine, samplers and suchlike standing next to Mark Emmerson's microphone. The drummer joins in with the 'real' kit and then bass and guitars pile in as one, psyche-rock and acid house conjoined in a hugely impressive way. At times they sound a bit like the early Verve but then soar outwards from that point into psyche rather than mid-paced everyman ballads. The drum machine spits out crunching kick drum sounds, acid squiggles and siren noises, with Mike Denton's driving basslines riding over the top. The closing song builds to an extended wall-of-noise section, imagine I Am The Resurrection but if Squire had been into noise rather than melody, which having pummelled us for several minutes, they pull back from and back into the song in an instant. The Lucid Dream are probably too hard-edged, too experimental for a mainstream audience but should surely gain more fans and more exposure if they keep doing gigs like this.



Wooden Shjips have made one of this year's best albums and spend 90 minutes demonstrating how to make psychedelic krautrock for 2018, undeniably retro but fresh and human and involving. Drummer Omar uses a minimal kit, just a bass drum and snare with 3 cymbals, but on every song hits and holds a hypnotic groove that pushes and makes the front few rows move. Keyboard player Nash Whalen has the thousand yard stare of a man who dropped some acid an hour ago and is just beginning to feel the effects, adding layers of drone and texture and allowing main man Ripley Johnson to do his thing. Ripley's thing is playing ripples of golden guitar over everything else, perfectly placed in the mix, shades of Hendrix here and shades of Michael Rother there. His vocals float in from stage right, half sung and half whispered. Opener Eclipse hooks us in straight away, like waking from a dream. Ride On is slow and shuffly, Staring At The Sun glowers with the spirit of 1969. Wooden Shjips are the epitome of slow burn, of going at their own pace, of the importance of tone as much as tunes. They grow in intensity and pace as the evening goes on, sucking us in, locked into the groove, dripping sun-dappled melodies into the room over the beautiful drones, finishing with a blistering, extended version of Death's Not Your Friend.

Contact

Listening to and posting the rather excellent new song from Wooden Shjips, Staring At The Sun, made me go back to some of their other releases. I dug out their 2011 album West, a noisy, psychedelic San Franciscan monster, only seven songs long, but what a stretched out, trippy, echo laden seven songs they are- not just monotonous one chord grooves either but beautiful repetition coupled with melodies and riffs. Ripley's monotone, numb, half asleep vocals float over the top. Perfect driving music I've rediscovered. Black Smoke Rise was the album's opening song/vibe...



At this point it is worth spending some time being reminded of Andrew Weatherall's superb remix of Crossing (also from West), one of a series of remixes that showed that back at the star of the decade he was properly back in the game. His remix of Crossing has a kind of grimy grandeur feel to it, San Fran via East London.

Crossing (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

And as an bonus weekend extra, a couple of years ago Wooden Shjips released a limited edition two track 12" on white vinyl, one side being a suitably stoned cover of Serge Gainsbourg's Contact, eight minutes of fuzz and awe.

Contact

Staring At The Sun

A new Wooden Shjips album comes out in May. They released a new single back in January. Sometimes they've left me a little underwhelmed and Ripley's other band Moon Duo have given far more but the new song- Staring At The Sun- is a beauty.




Possibly the most laid back song I've ever heard. Ripley's guitar drips out of the speakers, over a narcoleptic beat and stoned vocal. There are some crunching chords intermittently but not enough to tip it off balance. Staring At The Sun drifts on, beautifully, but without ever losing focus for over seven minutes. No real aim, just being.

Back To Land

Wooden Shjips had a new lp out earlier in November. The single Back To land sounds really good- bright and clear, some lovely melody along with that heavy guitar groove. The thing with Wooden Shjips is, you know exactly what you're going to get, and they sometimes disappoint a little over the course of an album, but this one sounds like everything they do well, done really well.

The video? Your guess is as good as mine but it fits in nicely with the moral panic news stories this week about clowns threatening and chasing people in the street, from Wigan to Norfolk. A spokesman for Norfolk constabulary said 'Dressing as a clown is not against the law.'

Not yet. But it's only a matter of time.

One Minute's Silence

Strange to think that the man staring the camera down in the picture is Siegfried Sassoon (war poet, officer and anti-war campaigner). The chap on the left is Stephen Tennant, androgene, leader of the Bright Young Things and aristocratic '20s It Boy. When their love affair ended, neither ever got over it according to friends.

That Asphodells remix album I blogged about a little while back is now scheduled for release on September 7th and doesn't include all the versions I speculated that it might- no Mugwump, no Wooden Shjips. Hope the Mugwump one doesn't get forgotten. The remixers are largely the group known as The Axis- friends and studio-buddies of Weatherall and Fairplay. It promises to be an autumnal corker though the thought of September now, just as summer has got underway, is a little depressing. The tracklist goes like this...

Another Lonely City (Group Rhoda Remix)
Late Flowering Lust (Phil Kieran Remix)
Beglammered (Justin Robertson Deadstock 33s Remix)
Skwatch (Black Merlin's Reel To Reel Remix)
Never There (Hardway Bros Remix)
We Are The Axis (Daniel Avery Remix)
Another Lonely City (Daniele Baldelli and DJ Rocca Remix)
Beglammered (Richard Sen Remix)
We Are The Axis (Scott Fraser Remix)
One Minute Silence (Ivan Smagghe Remix)

So, if that's the case, it surely won't hurt too much if I post the Wooden Shjips remix which came out on limited vinyl for Record Shop Day (and appropriate thanks to Drew for this). You'll love this, believe me.

One Minute's Silence (Wooden Shjips Remix)

Axis Remix

Ahead of Record Shop Day (April 20th) comes details of an Asphodells remix 12" with this atmospheric beauty from Daniel Avery on one side (and a Wooden Shjips remix on the other). This is a song you can slide into.

Bagging Area End Of Year Review #3

List time.
I did think about not doing a list but couldn't help myself, partly because when I sat down and started to make a list I realised that I've listened to a reasonable amount of new music this year, surprising myself somewhat. At blogs where more than one person contributes or yer proper music magazines there always seems to be an attempt to get some balance into their end of year lists- here at Bagging Area there's just me so there's not so much balance, just a list of 40 songs, singles and albums that have had repeated plays through my record player/cd player in the kitchen/car stereo/mp3 player between January 1st 2012 and yesterday. I couldn't get my head around ranking them so they're in alphabetical order, rather than any attempt to say which is the best.

Andrew Weatherall- Masterpiece (compilation)
Cat Power- Cherokee (album track)
Chuck Prophet- Play That Song Again (album track)
Clock Opera- Once And For All Andrew Weatherall Remix
Daniel Avery- Movement Andrew Weatherall Remix
Daniel Avery- Fabric Live 66 (compilation)
Dexys- One Day I'm Going To Soar (album)
Django Django- Django Django (album)
Fuxa- Our Lips Are Sealed (single)
Hollie Cook and Prince Fatty- The Dub Goes On (album)
Hooded Fang- Tosta Mista (album)
Jack White- Love Interrruption (single)
JD McPherson- Signs And Signifiers (album)
Johnny Marr- The Messenger (album pre-release)
Le Carousel- Lose Your Love Andrew Weatherall Remix
Lightships- Electric Cables (album)
Madness- Death Of A Rude Boy Andrew Weatherall Remix
Mark Lanegan- Ode To Sad Disco (album track)
Orbital- Wonky (album)
Paul Weller- That Dangerous Age (single)
Public Image Ltd- This Is PiL (album, well most of it)
Public Service Broadcasting- Everest (single)
Public Service Broadcasting- Everest The Centaurs Remix
Public Service Broadcasting- The War Room (mini-album)
Savages- Husbands (single)
Scott Fraser- A Life Of Silence/A Life Of Silence Timothy J Fairplay Remix (12")
Slighter- Our Own End (single)
Tim Burgess- Oh No I Love You (album)
Toy- Dead And Gone (album track)
Toy- Dead And Gone Andrew Weatherall Remix
The Horrors- Moving Further Away Andrew Weatherall Remix
The Kills- Pale Blue Eyes (ep B-side)
The Orb and Lee Perry- Presents The Orbsetter (album)
Timothy J Fairplay- The Final Reel/The Final Reel Andrew Weatherall Remix (12")
Tindersticks- The Something Rain (album)
Underworld- Rez High Contrast Remix
Various- Isles Of Wonder London 2012 Opening Ceremony (compilation)
Various- On The Road (Original Soundtrack)
Various- Treasure Hunting (compilation)
Viv Albertine- The Vermillion Border (album)
Wooden Shjips- Crossings Andrew Weatherall Remix (ep)

All of which shows that about 25% of my list for this year were by this man (I did think about having a separate Lord Sabre list but decided against segregation)

And a fair few others there were connected to him. So here's your song, released on thick vinyl back in January this year-

Wooden Shjips Crossings Andrew Weatherall Remix

Cavernous dub production, clattering drums, filthy bass riff, reverb heavy vocals, trippy disco noises, long enough to lose yourself in; from a man having a third (at least, maybe fourth) purple patch.

As a bonus, this is how to cover a Velvet Underground song you've heard covered any number of times before and make it exciting again- the guitars in this recording are why people still pick up a stupid piece of wood with six strings on it and try to make it sound good.

The Kills Pale Blue Eyes

This time last year we'd bought our tickets for The Stone Roses at Heaton Park, probably half expecting they wouldn't make it even that far. What I really didn't expect was that on a Wednesday evening in May I'd be standing in Warrington's Parr Hall in a crowd of only a thousand waiting to see them at a free gig- and the outpouring of emotion from both band and audience that night, and the songs, will live long in my memory. This clip shows them playing Benicassim in July.



Still not sure about Ian's choice of tracksuit tops. It's worth noting also that they have maintained a total media blackout- not a single interview that I'm aware of. Shane Meadows' film of the whole thing is scheduled for release next year. Part of me is half expecting them to release a new song or single without any warning on Christmas Day or something. Whether you like them or not, approve of their re-union or not, they've managed to pull off some complete surprises and more power to them.

Lights Out

I found this on the internet- Wooden Shjips remixed by Peaking Lights, a kind of super- hippy, analogue-long hair, face-off. It'll either appeal or send you running for the hills.

Lights Out (Peaking Lights Remix)

Note to self; too many hyphens.

Remix Round Up

I don't know if readers are getting bored of the repeated Andrew Weatherall posts here but I feel duty bound to share, especially when he's on such a roll at the moment. Two links to listen only Andrew Weatherall remixes for this morning, both crackers. First up the slow-mo, bass heavy reworking of a song off Wooden Shjips' West album from last year; Crossings (Andrew Weatherall Remix) can be found on youtube here. The limited edition remix 12" includes a Sonic Boom remix and is out on Thrill Jockey on February 21st. Second, an electronic wonder job for Clock Opera (who I've not heard of) with a brilliant repeated bit where the keyboards go all wonky- Once And For All (Andrew Weatherall remix) is here. Listen only, but what a listen. You can probably find places to download them but obviously I wouldn't encourage that sort of thing.

Wooden Shjips Versus Peaking Lights

Soundcloud have another free download for you here, Lights Out by Wooden Shjips (San Franciscan long haired drone rockers) remixed by Peaking Lights (husband and wife psychedelic dub via a Fisher Price mixing desk). Yummy.

Lazy

Following Moon Duo's Mazes album, one of Bagging Area's albums of this year, comes a new album from Wooden Shjips. San Francisco's premier garage/drone/kraut/beard band have released several albums or collections of two chord, organ and guitar freakery. New album West promises much of the same but with a less dense sound and more clarity. Whether this comes from ex-Spaceman 3 Sonic Boom working on the mixing I don't know- he did provide several good remixes of Moon Duo earlier this year. This is Lazy Bones, freebie taster for West.

Lazy Bones

Moon Triplet

Moon Duo (Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada) have an excellent new album out, Mazes. Some copies of the vinyl came with an extra cd of remixes, all of which are very good. This one is by Sonic Boom (of Spacemen 3 fame/infamy). Sonic Boom monkeys about with an already psychy/krauty drone to make it moreso. Although the remixes are just numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4 this one- 1- is a remix of Scars, one of the standouts from the album. The other remixes are just as good and some get weirder and psychier.

Don't ask me what's going on with the link below. Things have gone funny here tonight. Mediafire's gone weird. Blogger's being a bit odd too. Technical issues and I'm not sure if it's me or them. Recently the powers that be deleted Beastie Boys' Dr. Lee PhD track from my account but left the earlier post of the same band's Egg Man alone. Something else vanished from my account as well, can't remember what. How many strikes does a blog get?

Frankly, I have been getting a bit dicey about the morality of this kind of music blogging over the last couple of days. The request for the full Half Man Half Biscuit gig was interesting (not the whole reason for my qualms but it played a part). I didn't start this to post full albums or full gigs, just individual songs. No real reason, that's just how it seemed to work in my head when I started out. Mr H, who has the whole gig, was uneasy about posting it- after all, it'd be obvious where the gig recording and download would have come from, and he felt HMHB might be peeved. They might not be, but you can't be sure, and without the bands' permission it didn't feel right somehow, especially as they'd been such charming and friendly guys before and after the gig. I know the theory and the justifications and the whole stick-it-to-the-corrupt-music-industry arguments but a) I know some of the stuff posted here is otherwise unavailable or out of print, but some of it isn't, b) although feedback received here tells me that tracks I've posted have led to actual, paid for download or physical sales I don't know what the proportion is and how far this justifies this, c) I'm not here to deprive people like Nigel Blackwell or Billy Childish or Andrew Weatherall or whoever out of hard earned cash but that has probably happened, d) the writing and creative side is still enjoyable, I love it, and so are the links made with many of your goodselves but I dunno sitting here tonight if this justifies giving other peoples' art away for free without their permission. Yes, it is the promotion of music, and yes some people have given permission for their stuff to be given away for free, but still... I dunno. No decisions for now, just thinking aloud.

http://download1321.mediafire.com/9k2pepqb6rog/0qzbwahxb5qqref/01+1.wma

Fallout

As a flipside to yesterday's Gatto Fritto album I raved about, there's a new long player from San Francisco's Moon Duo. Like Gatto Fritto the album Mazes is only eight songs long and deals with repetition and mood and groove, but with Moon Duo (a husband and wife offshoot from Wooden Shjips) it's all drone, warm fuzz, sine waves, strumming, distortion and motorik drumming. And the beautiful hum of overloaded guitars. If Gatto Fritto is the sunset, Moon Duo are the dark after the summer sun's long gone down. A totally absorbing and electric listen.

The vinyl version of this album comes with a download voucher (to make the music portable) and a free cd of remixes, which I'll let you know about as soon as I've listened to them.

04 Fallout.mp3#1#1

It Was Christmas Eve

It was Christmas Eve- people were rushing around doing last minute shopping, scarves and hats and gloves worn, presents being wrapped and gift-tagged, a quick drink in the pub before heading home, lights on trees just visible through the misted up windows of public transport, stockings hung up over the fireplace by excited children, bottles of Bailey's being opened, San Franciscan space/kraut/drone rockers kicking seven noisy bells out of O Tannenbaum for eight and a half minutes.

OTannenbaum.mp3

Long Haired Biker Types

Wooden Shjips are four long haired gentlemen from San Francisco who like to find a chord and then groove on it for a side of vinyl. This song Motorbike is relatively restrained clocking in at under five minutes. Coming from a Doors-y, late 60s angle with detours into krautrock territory, they've released various bits and bobs (albums, e.p.s, compilations of tracks) and you probably only need to get one, but they're good fun while they're on the turntable.

Apparently they're best known for being the chosen band to soundtrack a fashion show Bobby Gillespie was involved in. Fight the power.

Motorbike.mp3