The Demise Of Love Is Real

Earlier this year Demise Of Love released an EP, four tracks by the combined talents of Daniel Avery, Syd Minsky Sargeant and James Greenwood (Ghost Culture). Last week they released an EP of remixes (called Reworks) with one by each member of Demise Of Love, one third of the whole remixing the whole. 

Daniel remixed Carry The Blame, a sleek techno rework of the source track with rattling drums, sci fi synths, a distant vocal and a feel that is somewhere between Demise Of Love and Daniel's own work (but without the crunching industrial guitars of his new solo album Tremor). It sounds like a robotic New Order, stuck inside the machine (that's a compliment by the way). 

Syd has adopted his Working Men's Club for his remix of Be A Man, a mid- 80s EBM resurrection version- think Nitzer Ebb or more recently Factory Floor. Sirens, tough beats, muscular bass. It breaks down for the line, 'The demise of love is real/ For the energy I feel', and then kicks back in with the statement, 'God the shit really hit the fan/ God I've really gotta be a man'. 

Ghost Culture remixes Strange Little Consequence with Syd's vocal sounding even more numbed out and alienated than on the original. The bass buzzes and the drums punch and a gnarly acidic squiggle works its way in and to the fore. Intense. 

What's In A Name?

Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan, the synth based musical vehicle for Gordon Chapman- Fox, has a new album out, the sixth under the Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan name- Public Works And Utilities. The album buzzes with ideas and invention. A few weeks ago this track came out to promote it, Swift, Safe And Comfortable...

The video and sounds are in sync, the synths and drum machines replicating railway rhythms. This isn't just nostalgia for 60s modernism, concrete and the years of political consensus- Gordon is genuinely angry about the stripping of the UK's infrastructure in the 1980s by the Thatcher governments, the wholesale selling off of our public utilties. Forty years later none of the industries that were sold in the great Thatcherite privatisation scam are better for us as a nation- the services are worse and they're owned for the benefit of shareholders. 

The tracks on the new album are designed to play live, influenced by the tour W-RNTDP undertook last year. They are upbeat, for dancing too as much as listening too. On side B of the album there is a nineteen minute epic The People Matter which fades in slowly with drones, distortion and some horns before finding a cosmische pulsebeat. 

I have a friend who thinks that Warrington- Runcorn New Town Development Plan is a terrible band name, so bad it puts him off listening to them. But I think there are worse band names out there... 

Hello English Teacher!

English Teacher have pulled in some remixes and this one by Daniel Avery is predictably great, Avery building a wall of Stooges- esque guitars onto The World's Biggest Paving Slab. How good is that?

Todmorden's Working Men's Club have done a version too, skeletal acid house crossed with early 80s post- punk. 

And if we're talking about possibly poorly chosen band names Dry Cleaning are about to return with anew album and tour, the eleven song Secret Love (coming early next year). Dry Cleaning's debut, New Long Leg, was one of my favourite albums of 2021, grimy post- punk and flat, non- sequiturs. 

Scratchcard Lanyard

Summer Songs

Summer Song came out three days ago, a third single from Sydney Minski Sargeant's forthcoming solo album Lunga (out in September). Summer Song is a real treat, a slowly trippy, woozy, light headed song that sounds like it was written lying down in long grass in August staring at the brilliant blue sky. There are echoes of Syd Barrett and 80s 4AD band Ultra Vivid Scene (both good things), a late 60s/ late 80s interface, but also very much Syd's own work. 

Four weeks before Summer Song Sydney released Long Roads, finger picked guitar calling Nick Drake to mind, another song infused with heat of summer longing and end times melancholy. Syd is only 23 years old. 

Both songs are a far cry from his other bands and work. Syd's main band is Working Men's Club who spent part of the summer supporting LCD Soundsystem in Brixton after a full tilt, packed out warm up gig at The Golden Lion. Syd's also a third of Demise Of Love (with Daniel Avery and Ghost Culture) who put out a four song EP in May, industrial techno and 80s alt- pop spliced together.

WMC have a very different vibe, Syd's alienated vocals running with industrial synths, New Order in the 80s sounds and thudding machine drums. Teeth was a 2019 single- the Anthony Naples remix adds some dancefloor euphoria. Ploys was from their second album Fear fear, out in 2022 and very much a response to Covid and lockdown. Erol Alkan pumps it up, synth squiggles and jack hammer kick drum, and Syd singing 'being sad makes me happy... when we talk of the times/ We talk in the past tense'

Teeth (Anthony Naples Remix)

Ploys (Erol Alkan Remix)

When We Talk Of The Times

LCD Soundsystem began an eight night residency at Brixton Academy last week, the New York art- dance, post- punkers continuing their habit of rolling into a city and taking it over for a week. If I hadn't been down to London for Sabres Of Paradise I might have thought about going, although I'd prefer it if James Murphy decided the next UK destination for a residency is a bit closer to home- Manchester would do fine. 

In 2010 LCD Soundsystem released their third album This Is Happening, an album that at the time I remember feeling a little ambivalent about. It seemed quite stuck to the LCD template that Murphy and co. had established on Sound Of Silver three years earlier but it's grown on my over the years and songs like Drunk Girls, I Can Change and Pow Pow all worked their magic eventually. This Is Happening starts with this song...

Dance Yrself Clean

Many of LCD's songs are builders. Dance Yrself Clean is very much a builder and at nearly nine minutes long there's a lot of time to build. The first three minutes are very slow and low, a sparse drum machine pattern, James' voice compressed and alone, some backing vocals joining in and the thud of a piano. The lyrics dissecting friendship gone wrong or maybe some soul searching. The song explodes in the third minute, synths and FX, and continues ever onward, James now on the floor and dancing himself clean. 

Support at the second half of the residency comes from Working Men's Club, the Calder Valley's own electronic dance/ rock/ acid house/ post punkers, a group led by Syd Minsky- Sargeant. On Friday night Working Men's Club warmed up for those gigs with one at The Golden Lion, a much more intimate venue than Brixton Academy. 

The pub is packed, the downstairs stage is low and where I'm standing over by the DJ booth it's difficult to see much, Syd's head and microphone, the occasional glimpse of the other members of the band. A stuttering synth loop kicks in and builds over several minutes, other loops kicking in, eventually all coming into sync and then we're off, a full on WMC sound- synths, bass, 303s and 808s and on top Syd's vocals, repeated loops of lines. There aren't any gaps between songs, one song seguing into the next, an hour long megamix. Working Men's Club sound like New Oder if they'd kept pushing and got tougher after Technique or maybe Joy Division in an alternative 1983, one where Ian didn't die but they'd gone fully synth and electronics anyway. WMC's second album, Fear Fear, came out in 2022 and was informed by lockdown and existential dread, Syd's fear writ large. 'When we talk of the times/ We talk in the past tense', rattles round the pub over some very heavy post- punk/ New Beat. There's a healthy dose of late 80s rave and its defiance, its anti- authoritarian stance- the refrain from the song John Cooper Clarke, 'We dance and we smile/ We laugh and we cry/ We play and we fight/ We live and we die', sounding anthemic. 

Both Working Men's Club albums were mixed into single, twenty minute megamixes by Syd, versions of the albums and the live set. Megamix and Megamix II give you an idea of what the live set sounds like. 

Live the songs are even more physical than they sound on disc, Syd a bobbing and frenetic presence at the front of the stage, conducting and waving his hand around as his stream of consciousness is thrown around the pub, the soundman applying layers of FX to the vocals. We get an hour and then they're off. On the basis of tonight, anyone with tickets for LCD Soundsystem should get there in good time. 

Be My Guest was on WMC's self titled debut album, released in 2021, crunching drums and laser focused noisy guitars, Syd bursting out of a small town in West Yorkshire. 

Be My Guest

Syd is also a member of Demise Of Love, a trio made of him, Daniel Avery and Ghost Culture's James Greenwood. A four track 10" EP came out recently led by Strange Little Consequence which I posted in February. This song is also on the EP, Like I Loved You, a slow burning summer epic, some New Order gone interstellar synths, distorted vocals and a loud/ quiet dynamic that keeps the song shape- shifting. 

 

Monday's Long Songs

David Holmes' It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love is right up there in terms of single releases of 2022. The remix package came out two weeks ago, six reworkings of the original from Lovefingers and Heidi Lawden, Working Men's Club, Darren Emerson and Hardway Bros. All push it onwards and outwards. 

Darren Emerson's Huffa Remix is nine minutes long, a pulsing, building, thundering, epic early 90s Underworld style remix with Raven Violet's vocal intact. The breakdown and re- entry at the six minute mark, whooshing noises and enormous kickdrum with the synths and bassline well into the red, is thrilling stuff. For the last three minutes we're then riding the midnight train from Romford/ Belfast/ wherever you are. 

Hardway Bros Live At The SSL Dub picks out a distorted synthline and crunching drums and builds a full head of steam, threatening to turn into Man 2 Man and Man Parish's Male Stripper, a glam/ chug stomp. 

Lovefingers and Heidi Lawden offer two remixes, Low Tide and High Tide versions. The Low Tide one echoes mid- 80s New Order, shades of Bizarre Love Triangle and The Perfect Kiss, Holmes and Raven sent onto the dancefloor circa 1986 with cowbell and lasers.

Working Men's Club's remix is the shortest (under seven minutes) and the furthest from the original, a darkly frenetic, stripped down, acidic banger- close your eyes and the strobe will be flashing.