Seventy Minutes From GL11

Back in February Todmorden's Gold Lion pub celebrated its 11th birthday with a weekend of entertainment with Hot Chip's Joe Goddard on the Friday night and on Saturday Deeply Armed playing live upstairs and David Holmes downstairs. The afternoon also had us playing, The Flightpath Estate, from 2pm through until the evening. We had plans to recreate our entire set but for various reasons that hasn't happened but I'd pulled my parts of the set together and it occurred to me that rather than them sitting unused I may as well sequence them together as one piece and share them here. So this is a twelve song selection of what I played at The Golden Lion- Dan, Martin, Baz and Mark's tunes are all missing I'm afraid- keeping track of  what I played is hard enough- and maybe one day we'll sort the full setlist out and post it.

Adam's Flightpath Estate Set From GL11

• Arrival Ft. Kevin McCormick: Common Place (Thought Leadership Remix)
• Cluster: Zum Wohl
• Captain Beefheart and His Magic  Band: Observatory Crest
• Cowboy Junkies: Sweet Jane (Mojo Filter Junkie Re- Love)
• A Mountain Of One: Innocent Reprise
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Warpaint: Disco// Very (Richard Norris Remix)
• X- Press 2: Witchi Tai To (Two Lone Swordsmen remix)
• Doves: Kingdom Of Rust (Prins Thomas Remix)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Tarantula
• Secret Soul Society: See You Dance Again
• Mark Lanegan: Ode To Sad Disco

Arrival's 12" single came out at the start of January, the year's first essential release for me, two tracks from the Stockport duo with the wonderful guitar playing of Kevin McCormick at their core. Thought Leadership, also a guitarist and also from Stockport, remixed Common Place pulling many different threads into one piece of music. 

Cluster's Zum Wohl is from their 1976 album Sowiesoso, a favourite of mine, an album where Cluster and Conny Plank regrouped in rural West Germany and made pastoral ambient electronic/ synth cosmische. 

Captain Beefheart's Observatory Crest made a late jump into my digital record box for the Lion's 11th birthday. I fond myself humming it in the week leading up to the event and it fell into the afternoon vibe I was aiming for. It came out in 1974 on his Bluejeans And Moonbeams album, an uncharacteristically accessible and mainstream sounding record for the good Captain. 

Cowboy Junkies' cover of Sweet Jane came out in 1988 on their majestic Trinity Sessions album. It gained Lou Reed's approval, the song done the way it should have been back when The Velvet Underground made Loaded. Cowboy Junkies have spent the last two week's touring the UK and they played Manchester last Sunday. I was really tempted to go but also tickets were £53 plus fees and it felt like a lot of money. Mojo Filter's Balearic edit is from 2015 and he doesn't do too much to it, just add a subtle electronic undercarriage and a bit of a sunset sheen. 

Innocent Reprise is from A Mountain Of One's EP2, originally out in 2007 and then compiled with EP1 as Collected Works. Lovely sunbaked Balearic folk. 

Asperitas is from an album Thurston Moore put out in early February this year, six long guitar instrumentals inspired by skyscapes of the British Isles, an album called Guitar Explorations Of Cloud Formations. Asperitas is several guitar parts, some controlled feedback and a primitive drum machine. It's a really good album ranging from chilled and krauty to noisy and if by any remote chance he's reading this, vinyl please Thurston. 

We played in rotation at GL11, three tracks each and then handing over to the next Flightpather. Richard Norris' remix of Warpaint came later on in the afternoon, the pub filling up a bit and I can't remember who went before me or what they played but it must have inspired me to turn the bpms up a little and go into dancier territory. Back in 2014 Warpaint were very much a going concern, their California post- punk/ dub sounds getting lots of attention. Richard's remix is one of his best- an indie rock gone Balearic monster.

Two Lone Swordsmen's remix of X- Press 2 is from 2006, Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood heading into the garage rock/ rockabilly sounds that would come to fruition on 2007's Wrong Meeting. Witchi Tai To is a Native American chant that Jim Pepper turned into a hit single in 1971. Recorded in 1969, peyote jazz fusion. 

Doves Kingdom Of Rust was from the 2006 album of the same name. The Prins Thomas remix of the song is a beauty, the guitars and bass circling round each other, Jimi's windswept vocal nailing a certain type of Mancunian melancholy with references to black birds and cooling towers and then the strings swoop in...

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo. His cover of Colourbox's Tarantula came out in February this year. The wandering trumpet line and bubbling bass dance around each other.

Secret Soul Society's edit of Neil Young's 1992 song Harvest Moon dropped into my inbox a few weeks before GL11, the line 'I wanna see you dance again' going round and round, a dub/ disco version of 90s Neil Young.

Mark Lanegan's Ode To Sad Disco always works. New Order- esque dance/ rock from 2012's Blues Funeral, a throbbing sequencer bassline, synths and guitars and packed with very visual lyrical imagery- one of those songs that always hits the spot for me. 

Gonna Keep It Underground

One of last month's books was Thurston Moore's memoir Sonic Youth, written during lockdown and published two years ago bit I only got around to it now. Thurston writes directly and economically but at length (Sonic Life is over four hundred pages). His memory is fantastic- he can vividly recall aspects of his life, gigs particularly. His life changed when his older brother exposing a very young Thurston to Louie Louie by The Kingsmen, the addictive joy of distorted guitar chords planting a seed that grew and grew in the pre- teen Thurston. He recounts his teenage years, the growing interest in leftfield and proto- punk bands in the early and mid 1970s. Tragedy strikes the Moore family with the sudden death of his father and the impact that has on himself and the family, Thurston briefly heading down a self destructive road of teenage delinquency. 

He writes of his teenage friendship with his best friend Harold and their trips to New York City in the mid- 70s to see the bands and singers they'd read about in magazines- the New York Dolls, The Ramones and Patti Smith- coupled with his first attempts at playing the guitar (inspired primarily by Ron Asheton's guitar sound on The Stooges and Funhouse). Thurston is above all a fan and his fandom, his love of bands and music and the associated culture- records, cassettes, posters, flyers, magazines, books, gigs- drips off every page. He loves experimental artists and noise, genuinely thrilled by artiness and one- off gigs that many people leave early from. 

His depiction of New York is also vividly drawn. Thurston moves there in 1978, looking to become part of the scene he's been tiptoeing into as an out of town punter. Pre- gentrification it was possible to rent an apartment in Lower Manhattan for less than $100 a month. Thurston notes the changes in the mid- 80s as bands, poets and artists and the various ethnic minority groups who live down there begin to get priced out by the arrival of people with money. For a while Thurston lives in a crime ridden but exciting post- punk playground where you had to watch your step- don't go out to buy cigarettes at 3 am he notes- but also where you could see Patti Smith and Ramones play at CBGBs and The Dead Boys at Max's Kansas City, the bands mere inches away from the crowd, where the fledgling New York noise of James Chance and Liquid Liquid rubbed shoulders with really obscure art- funk and punk rock. 

The early 80s scene which he gradually becomes a part of, first via his role as guitarist in The Coachmen and then by the beginnings of Sonic Youth (and playing as part of Glenn Branca's guitar orchestra), is filled with a vibrancy and energy and partly populated by people who become legendary in years to come- Madonna, Keith Haring, Jean- Michel Basquiat and The Beastie Boys are all doing their things in early 80s/ mid 80s Manhattan and in this creative maelstrom Thurston gives birth to Sonic Youth, meeting Kim Gordon and enrolling Lee Ranaldo. They go through several drummers before Steve Shelley takes up the drum seat permanently. 

Thurston's recall of these years, the details of gigs and recording studios, trips out of New York to play gigs elsewhere, several people crammed into vans with all their gear and no money, the connections made with similar bands doing similar things in other cities- Minutemen, Bad Brains, Black Flag- is incredible. He outlines Sonic Youth's artistic growth Sonic Youth as they hone their sound, the alternate tunings, with drumsticks and screwdrivers jammed into guitar necks, writing songs and lyrics, untutored and expressive, each album a step on from the previous one-  1986's Evol and 1987's Sister being breakthrough records and then the mighty Daydream Nation in 1988, putting the band on a level with the groups he moved to NY to see play. Sonic Youth's move to a major label and the 1991 tour with Nirvana brings the group to European festivals and big crowds and his friendship with Nirvana, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love is central to several chapters. Kurt's death too. 

There's warts and all as well as the rush of being in a band on the rise- his own (sometimes bratty) behaviour and the tensions between bandmates and crew jammed together in confined quarters is alluded to if not detailed. There's also the whole Kim Gordon situation- Thurston and Kim split in 2013 after a 27 marriage and even longer time as bandmates. In 2013 Kim published her own book, Girl In A Band, a book that opens with Thurston and his betrayal and makes their relationship central to her view of things. Thurston's book deals with the split, his relationship with Eva Prinz that led to it, and the end of the band, right at the end of the book- literally a few paragraphs in the last chapter. It's too personal to speak about in public is his defence. The end of the marriage ended the band and it ends the book too. 

I enjoyed Sonic Life- Thurston writes well and he really brings 80s New York art rock scene, the downtown hip hop/ art- world crossover and Sonic Youth's career to life, and (sign of a good book) it sent me scurrying back to their records and his endless enthusiasm for music, bands and records is genuine and palpable. But one of the things that struck me about Sonic Life is that it's really not a book about the people in Thurston's life. Kim gets a part and their daughter Coco does towards the end, his teenage friendship with Harold too, but I don't feel like I came away knowing anything about what Lee Ranaldo or Steve Shelley were actually like as people despite Thurston spending decades playing with them. Really, Sonic Life is about music and its attendant culture and its transformative effect on Thurston- other people's music, via gigs and records and shared stages, and Sonic Youth's music, music made by a fan of music. 

Kotton Krown is from 1987's Sister, the album where they married their experimental art- noise to tunes and really nailed how to write affecting leftfield, post- punk, where they transcend their influences. The lyrics on Sister are personal but oblique, sung by Thurson and Kim intuitively. Someone called it 'the last great album of the Reagan era' which rings true. Distorted guitars as a response to trickle down economics. 

Kotton Krown

A year later Daydream Nation distilled the Sonic Youth sound and songwriting into one of the best albums of the 1980s. It's an exhilarating blast of energy and electricity, it led them to a major label and Goo and Dirty and giant festival stages but remains at heart an album made by kids with scruffy pumps and ripped jeans. 

Hey Joni

Forty Minutes Of Music For Sunday

Today's mix is just some music that seemed to fall together well. I was rediscovering some tunes from five years ago, some of them by ambient/ Balearic duo Seahawks*, and started weaving them and some much more recent tracks into one piece. No theme, just some music, mainly ambient or in the ambient area, I like and that strikes a chord with me right now. 

Forty Minutes Of Music For February 2026

• Seahawks: Islands
• Kevin McCormick: Passing Clouds
• Hawksmoor: Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer
• Le Carousel: Echo Spiegel (Psychedelic Mix)
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Boards Of Canada: Olson Version 3 (Peel Session)
• Olodum: Farao Divindade Do Ogito (Pandit Pam Pam Deep Into The Bowel Of A Dub)
• Maria Somerville: October Moon

Islands is from Seahawks 2014 album Paradise Freaks, a beautiful piece of music that comes in at under two minutes long but which says and suggests so much in that time. It's the final track on Paradise Freaks, a short closer after an hour of longer tracks that seems to sum the whole album up. 

Kevin McCormick is a guitarist from Manchester, who should be better known than he is, whose early 80s recordings were recently re- issued and who plays on the 12" from Arrival that came out on Before I Die last month, a highly recommended release. Passing Clouds is from October 2024, a guitar meditation on sky watching.

Hawksmoor's Am I Conscious Now? will be out on Before I Die soon and is going to be one of the best ambient releases of 2026. Last year a two track EP called Life Aboard The International Space Station came out, reprising two unreleased tracks from 2021- one of them was this one, named after a JG Ballard short story. Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer is several guitars, acoustic and electric, playing together.  

Le Carousel is Phil Kieran from Belfast. Next month he's going to release one of 2026's best post- Weatherall/ electronic albums, The Humans Will Destroy Us. Last year's WE're All Gonna Hurt was a big tune round Bagging Area way and Echo Spiegel came out right at the end of last year. Phil's own Psychedelic Mix is an ambient/ psychedelic journey, four minutes of beatless, floaty, slightly trippy synths that spin further and further with each passing bar.

Private Agenda are a duo split between London and Amsterdam. Their six track mini- album Submersion came out in May 2021- remixes of material from their Ilse de Reve album. Seahawks created something spectacularly otherwordly with their remix of Malanai Ascending. Malanai it turns out is a gently cooling breeze found in coastal parts of Hawaii which makes perfect sense when you listen to the music. 

Thurston Moore's Asperitas came out last Monday, a ten minute guitar instrumental with drum machine taken from a six track album of instrumentals based on the skies as seen in England, wales and Ireland. All six tracks are named after types of cloud. Asperitas is a total joy, thudding primitive drum machine and Thurston's chilled, repetitive and evocative guitar parts. 

Now I'm looking at the tracks I've chosen for this mix and wondering if there is a theme after all, one I wasn't even aware of as I was pulling the tracks together- islands, clouds, skies, storms, breezes... 

I've been on a Boards Of Canada binge recently and their Peel Session, released by Warp in 2019 but recorded for Peel back in 1999, has been on repeat. Olson is one of four tracks from the session, the one that made the most sense in this mix.

My friend in Sao Paulo Eduardo records as Pandit Pam Pam and has been featured at this blog several times. Last month he sent me two new tracks, one out at the end of the month and also this one, an edit of a song celebrating the Pharaohs and deities of ancient Egypt. Eduardo said his wife was listening to it and his kids loved it too and it drew him in, and with carnival approaching he did a new version, something dark, danceable and dubby. Mardi Gras is on Tuesday next week, 17th February, and the carnival started over this weekend- it seemed apt to put it into this mix.

Maria Somerville's album Luster came out last year and I slept on it a bit, not really appreciating it, or just giving it enough time, until recently. It's an album inspired by the mythic and the real, the wild coastal landscape of Connemara, Ireland, a mystical swirling record that blurs ambient, early 80s 4AD and dreampop. Another subliminal nature nature- how strange that this only became apparent after pulling the tracks together and I began writing about them.

* Maybe this was subliminal influence from the Superbowl, not a sporting event I take any interest in, but Seattle Seahawks were in the Superbowl- the final I think we call it in most other sports- and they beat the New England Patriots 29- 13. I didn't know that until I looked it up. The main interest in the Superbowl from my end over here was that trump didn't go 'because it was too far away', and the half time entertainment was by Bad Bunny who sang entirely in Spanish (he's from Puerta Rico) and this was widely viewed as an anti- Trump, anti- MAGA performance especially when he announced 'I love America' and began listing countries from South, Central and North America while his dancers carried their flags. Trump predictably said that it was, 'absolutely terrible, one of the worst EVER!' and added 'no one understands a word this guy is saying'. Trump is a cunt.

Monday's Long Song

Thurston Moore's latest solo work came out on Friday, a six track album released onto Bandcamp called Guitar Explorations Of Cloud Formations. All six tracks are long, clocking in between eight minutes and ten and a half. They were inspired by the skies and clouds of the British Isles, as seen by Thurston and his partner Eva Marie in England, Wales and Ireland. Thurston sketched the instrumental tracks out in 2025 backed by a drum machine ahead of a live performance in Dublin. There is plenty of noise in the six tracks especially the first three, but the last three are instrumental and experimental guitar at its best, meditative and absorbing, repetition as an artform. 

On the final track, Asperitas, nine minutes and forty seconds long, the drum machine kicks into life and Thurston's guitars play some lovely melody lines,  melody lines countered by backwards shimmers, single notes rippling out as slow bursts of fuzz and feedback glide in and out. Asperitas clouds are rough and wavy, looking like a rough sea in the sky. Apparently, despite appearing ominous, they always dissipate without a storm forming. 

Thurston's guitar playing ripples and flows, notes rising and falling as the drum machine keeps thudding away. It's a joy of a track, one to put on while you lose yourself in something or just sit staring into space- you can listen here. 

The previous one, Cirrus, is rather good too, a Velvets style riff repeated endlessly while two or three other guitar lines entwine themselves around it for ten minutes. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

I held back from doing this for ages, a mix just containing cover versions, because it felt a bit lazy, a bit uninspired but the recent covers of Nick Drake by Joao Leao and The Velvet Underground by Thurston Moore twisted my arm into it. There are potentially more cover versions mixes to come. All these are relatively recent, although now I think about it Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes album came out in 2009 which is sixteen years ago and Calexico's in 2003 which is twenty two years ago- but the rest are all fairly recent. This mix leans towards the garage/ psyche/ guitar side of things. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

• Andy Bell: Smokebelch
• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Calexico: Alone Again Or
• Rowland S. Howard: Life's What You Make It
• Moon Duo: Planet Caravan
• Moon Duo: No Fun
• The Liminanas: Angles And Devils
• Thurston Moore: Temptation Inside Your Heart

Andy Bell's cover of The Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch was begun on the day of Andrew Weatherall's death, 17th February 2020, and finished in late summer/ early autumn 2023 when I emailed Andy to ask him if he had a track for our then unreleased pipe dream album Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. Andy's reply contained the completed cover and as soon as we listened to it, we knew it would close the album. Smokebelch itself began life as a cover version of L.B. Bad's New Age Of Faith.

Joao Leao's bossa nova flecked cover of Nick Drake's One Of These Things First, a song from Nick's 1971 album Bryter Later, came out as a 7" single on Toronto's Local Dish label and was posted here two weeks ago. 

Calexico's cover of Love's 1967 classic Alone Again Or doesn't stray too far from the original- Calexico were surely destined to cover it through with their combination of desert indie and mariachi horns. I thought I had a dub version of Alone Again Or- it sounded superb, dub groove, those horns and a snatch of vocal but I must have dreamt it. 

Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes was the former Birthday Party guitarist's second solo album. He was undergoing treatment for liver cancer at the time and died two months after it was released. Under those circumstances Talk Talk's Life's What You Make (second line, 'can't escape it') takes on a different meaning. Rowland's guitar playing- in fact just the way he held and approached the guitar- is pretty unique. His roiling guitar lines and feedback, the metallic clang and grim vocal delivery take the song into new places- which is what a cover version should do really. 

Moon Duo are represented twice here. First their cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan was a summer 2020 release, their version of the 1970 original a chilled and weightless cosmic take. Their version of The Stooges' No Fun is from a 2018 12" single with Alan Vega's Jukebox Babe on the other side. Sonic Boom produced it. Again, a blank eyed, calmed down take on Iggy's 1969 proto- punk classic. 

The Liminanas released a compilation of singles and other rarities in 2015, I've Got Trouble In Mind Vol. 2 which included this cover version of Angels And Devils, an Echo And The Bunnymen B-side. The Liminanas, French psyche/ garage band par excellence, take The Bunnymen's Mo Tucker stomp and turn it Gallic. 

Thurston Moore's cover of The Velvet Underground's Temptation Inside Your Heart came out in September, a song he's been playing live for some time, MBV bassist Debbie Goodge plays the bass (as she does when Thurston plays live). Lou Reed's song first saw the light of dark on the 1985 outtakes album VU and has been a favorite of mine since the late 80s. Thurston more than does it justice.

Make Something Of All The Noise

Back in the 00s there were a lot of two person bands,  some maybe inspired by the sudden ascent of The White Stripes who proved that less could be more (and put a lot of bass players out of work perhaps). One of them were The Kills, formed in 2001 by singer singer Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince. Between 2003 and 2011 they put out four albums- Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, Midnight Boom and Blood Pressures. In 2016 they released a fifth, Ash & Ice. I dipped in and out and can't remember what the first thing I heard by them was but I think it came from a music blog- they always strike me as an early days of music blogs band.

The Kills were dark and messy, four track/ eight track recordings, garage blues and Velvets sounds, Jamie's gnarly guitars and basic drum machine programming and Alison's chain smoking vocals. In 2011 I heard this song and it became one of the songs of the year for me...

Baby Says

Jamie's guitar playing is superb, the tone and ringing, fuzzy lead line endlessly brilliant. Alison comes in with one of those gutter punk love song lyrics, instantly conjuring the Chelsea Hotel, leather jackets and dirty jeans, a life shot in grimy black and white- 'Baby says/ A howl of romance I'll get/ From all your sleeping dogs/ You thugs of God/ I'll get one yet'. Eat your heart out Allen Ginsberg. 

They released The Last Goodbye as a single from Blood Pressures too which had a cover of Pale Blue Eyes on it- so many bands have covered The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes but The Kills bring manage to something of themselves to it, a scratchy, lo fi, rickety version.

Pale Blue Eyes

Last week Thurston Moore released his own Velvets cover to mark Sterling Morrison's birthday, a version of Temptation Inside Your Heart. Debbie Googe (ex- MBV) plays bass on it. Thurston's been playing the song live for ages and its probably about time he committed it to tape...

Thurston plays that riff like its all that matters and his NY drawl is perfect on this. The Velvets version didn't come out until 1985 when it was on the VU album and is one of my fvaourite VU songs- Lou is all the place vocally, funny asides, laughter and goofy lines thrown about. Lou starts off saying, 'somebody shut the door', and, 'somebody get her out of here'. Later on he chucks out, 'electricity comes from other planets', and there's more nonsense at the end- 'the pope in the silver castle'. The 'wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong' backing vocals are a joy too. Sterling and Lou's guitars are locked into each other in a way that makes the Velvet Underground in 1968/ 9, the perfect guitar band. 

Temptation Inside Your Heart

Alison Mosshart turned up last week too on the latest preview from Daniel Avery's forthcoming album Tremor. Greasy Off The Racing Line is dark electronic blues, a grimy, overloaded bassline, synth noise explosions and Mosshart back at the mic, ten chain smoked cigarettes in and falling down a deep hole. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of New Order And Friends

This is a follow up to last Sunday's Your Silent Face mix which veered into their New Order's back catalogue and those of some adjacent artists- Galaxie 500, The Liminanas, Ian McCulloch, Gorillaz, The Times, Mike Garry, Joe Duddell and Andrew Weatherall. This one starts off with another Power, Corruption And Lies song, Age Of Consent, and then heads off with some covers, some 80s NO, another Weatherall remix and some recent edits. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of New Order And Friends

• New Order: Age Of Consent
• Iron And Wine: Love Vigilantes
• Thurston Moore: Leave Me Alone
• New Order: Dreams Never End
• New Order: Lonesome Tonight
• New Order: Regret (Sabres Slow 'N' Lo)
• New Order: Vanishing Point (Rich Lane Edit)
• New Order: Blue Monday (Newly Reordered Remix)

Age Of Consent is the opening song on New Order's 1983 album Power, Corruption And Lies, a day- glo, lysergic rush of guitars, bass, drums and synths, Bernard sounding more comfortable as vocalist. His choppy, rapid Velvets guitar breaks are a joy too. A peak New Order album song. 

As is Love Vigilantes, the opening song on 1985's Low Life, forty years old this month. Bernard's Vietnam ghost story lyric is up there among his most off the wall, and the band, Stephen Morris in particular, are on it, the classic New Order sound perfected. Iron And Wine's 2009 Americana acoustic cover is a low key beauty, Sam Beams tripping the song down to the country that lies at its core. 

Thurston Moore's cover of Leave Me Alone, another Power, Corruption And Lies song, is from the B-side of a 7" single from 2019, recorded in Salford with 'local musicians and local pints', to quote Thurston. 

Dreams Never End is from Movement, the 1981 New Order debut that saw them trying to will themselves out of being Joy Division and into becoming something else. Hooky sings Dreams Never End, his bass and Bernard's guitar wrapping around each other, inching away from the shadow Ian's death cast of them. If a compilation of the band's 10 best album tracks were put together this song would be on it.

Lonesome Tonight was the B-side to Thieves Like Us, a superb 1984 single. Lonesome Tonight is its low key flip, melancholic, stripped down, beautiful, self- produced song that any other band would have given A- side status to and promoted to the world. The band's limitations forced them to experiment, to use their heads and the studio, and Factory put few, if any, demands on them to be commercial. From this they made truly great records. 

Regret was their 1993 comeback single, an indie- pop guitar riff with a singalong chorus. Sabres Of Paradise got to work on it and turned in a pair of epic remixes. Andrew Weatherall's genius is evident in both, especially the first remix- take the bassline, slow it down and find acres of space, loop a little guitar part and a line of vocal, and hey presto, turn New Order's indie- pop into Lee Perry style dub.

Vanishing Point was an album track, another one, that could have been a single, off 1989's era- defining Technique. Rich Lane's edit takes all the best bits, pumps them up and sends it off flying.

There are times when I think I never need to hear Blue Monday again. The band may feel the same. A few years ago Jack Butters, a friend of Rich Lane's, made an entirely unofficial edit that goes all thumpy and acidic, finding a new story inside the song, making it worth hearing all over again. 

The Serpentine

Thurston Moore released a new song last weekend, a brooding, Stooges- ish piece of guitar music that he recorded on May Day 'barefoot in London', all kinds of ominous sounds, the recorded version of heavy skies. The words, written by poet Radieux Radio, do a similar job, making springtime in the Serpentine sound more like a threat than a walk in the park. It's at Bandcamp. 

Thurston Moore released Pollination as a 7" single back in 2020 with a cover of New Order's Leave Me Alone on the B-side. It came with an eight page zine written by Radieux. 

Pollination

Isolation Mix Thirteen

Lockdown ends today- at least, that's how the government and the media have been portraying it with occasional reminders that social distancing and a 2 metre gap might be important. The government have largely dropped the daily infection figures and death toll from their bulletins. You don't want to be depressing people at this stage of proceedings with doom and gloom, not when there are pints to be drunk! The media have been splashing stories about Super Saturday, Independence Day and the End Of Hibernation. It does look like they deliberately chose July 4th so they could call it an Independence Day. Meanwhile, Leicester is in lockdown, the R rate in London is apparently creeping above 1, there are Covid hotspots around the country, the deaths are still well over one hundred every day, and lots of people are talking about a second wave and a second spike without the people in charge actually wanting to do anything about it. We are still shielding, the medical advice we received this week is that due to our son Isaac being in the extremely vulnerable category we should stay in isolation until August 1st. Despite a few minor changes to our lockdown lives, we are still very much in isolation.

This mix is an hour and eight minutes of music with a folky, ambient, pastoral tinge with some Balearica and guitars thrown in, some old stuff and some brand new- some birdsong and synth ambience to start and finish, blissed out tracks from Seahawks, Apiento and Ultramarine, Green Gartside solo and as Scritti Politti, acoustic guitars courtesy of Nancy Noise, Michael Head and Barry Woolnough, some understated brilliance from The Clash and Sandinista!, Julian Cope covering Roky Erickson, Thurston Moore covering New Order and Jane Weaver's cosmic/folky weirdness.

Tracklist-
Stubbleman: 4am Conversation

Seahawks: Islands

Nancy Noise: Kaia

Green Gartside: Tangled Man

Barry Woolnough: Great Spirit Father In The Sky

The Clash: Rebel Waltz

Thurston Moore: Leave Me Alone

Julian Cope: I Have Always Been Here Before

Jane Weaver: Slow Motion (Loops Variation)

Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band: Picasso

Scritti Pollitti: The Boom Boom Bap

Apiento: Things You Do For Love

Ultramarine: Stella (Stella Connects)

Stubbleman: 6am Chorus

Day Or Night No One Knows

It's a funny thing- over the years since Daydream Nation came out I've fluctuated in my appreciation of Sonic Youth. Working backwards from Daydream Nation threw up lots to enjoy (Bad Moon Rising, EVOL, Sister) and then forwards as well but with more mixed results. I loved Goo but there are swathes of their albums from the 1990s and 2000s I missed and was fine about missing. I bought and enjoyed NYC Ghosts And Flowers and Murray Street but completely missed and still haven't heard Washing Machine and A Thousand Leaves (both highly rated I think). I sometimes think they seem like style over substance but when they hit the target they hit it good and proper.

Teenage Riot (Live at Paradiso, Amsterdam, 1989)

Thurston Moore doesn't come out of Kim Gordon's 2015 autobiography Girl In A Band too well and he can come across as bit worthy on punk documentaries. I saw him play with his group in Manchester last year. I'd gone along on a whim in a way and was glad I did. It looked interesting, the venue is a former garage across the road from Strangeways prison, MBV's Debbie Googe plays bass in the band and his Spirit Counsel album last year was a good if infrequent listen.  His cover version of New Order's Leave Me Alone had pricked my attention too, a really good take on the song. Sometimes maybe you're just more in tune with things than at other times. Three weeks ago I posted his lockdown release, a nine minute instrumental for three guitars called Strawberry Moon. Last week Thurston announced the release of an album recorded back in March, just before lockdown hit. By The Fire has Debbie on bass and Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley on the drums on some songs plus Jon from Negativland. In advance he put out this single, Hashish. According to Thurston the song is 'an ode to the narcotic of love in our shared responsibility to each other during isolation'. The opening guitar drones and atonal picked notes followed by the thumping drums and wasted vocals are exactly what you'd expect from Thurston Moore and if this had been a few years ago I could easily have shrugged and moved on but right now they are hitting the spot completely.

Monday's Long Song

Thurston Moore's Strawberry Moon, a nine minute piece played on/for three guitars, in that New York, experimental minimalism, Glenn Branca, Spirit Counsel vein he's been exploring. Thurston is a resident of London right now not New York. You can take the boy our of New York but you can't take New York out of the boy. Strawberry Moon was recorded and released the same day, 3rd June, a celebration of the first full moon of June 2020. A good, go with the flow, piece of music.

Spirit Counsel In Salford

I spent Sunday evening at The White Hotel in Salford. First things first, the venue is not and never has been a hotel. It is down a side street surrounded by derelict buildings, some empty lots, a few down at heel shops and takeaways and Strangeways Prison just across the road. If the building looks like a 1970s brick and corrugated iron converted garage, that's because it is. The steel shuttered doors are still in place and at one point Thurston uses one to play his guitar. Beer is served from the pit that once would have been used to work on the underside of cars. It is not salubrious. It is dingy and smells of oil. It is, therefore, the perfect place for some noise. Thurston Moore has always tried to keep one foot in punk rock and rock 'n' roll with the other in the avant garde and free jazz and this show does both but with the foot in the avant garde more firmly planted. No vocals, no singing, just three guitars and drums, the final night of a European tour with his band including Debbie Goodge, ex- My Bloody Valentine, on bass. The gig consists of one song, played for an hour, a version of the first disc of last year's three disc Spirit Counsel album. You might think finding spirit counsel in a converted garage in Lower Broughton could be tricky but Thurston and band do their best to lead us towards something transcendent.

Opening with a long ambient section, drummer Jem Doulton splashing the cymbals with beaters as the guitarists tune up (or detune up). Eventually the guitars start to hum and feedback gently and Thurston stands, head back and eyes closed. As the noise builds they wait, coming in together on Thurston's nod of the head, then stick in that groove waiting for him to nod his head again, tension and release. Later on as the noise builds he shouts the changes over the music '1- 2- 3- 4', the group piling in or dropping out bang on the 4. The hour long piece, Alice, Moki And Jayne, keeps circling back to a four note guitar part and although it looks improvisational it's clearly all very well rehearsed. When the four note refrain has reached the end of its part the band crash into some heavy riff rock or growly three guitar rhythms. At one point a beautiful chorus like melody takes over, the group locked in and hypnotised. There are freeform parts and drumless parts- in one section Jem pummels the cymbals over wailing feedback, shards of cymbal noise ricocheting around. There's a long feedback section, Thurston pushing his guitar against the steel shutter, over his head and then throwing his arms around the guitar. Freakout and meltdown. Repetition and flow. There are echoes of Sonic Youth, some of the chords and the playing the guitar with screwdrivers or pens on the neck of the guitar but it's also absolutely not Sonic Youth.You could watch it and think that it takes itself a little too seriously, that this is the practice room stuff of much younger men and women, jamming for hours without ever really getting anywhere, rock musicians playing at being avant jazz. But it's real and coherent, physical and powerful and as good a way to spend an hour in a garage on a Sunday night near Strangeways as you're going to find at this stage in proceedings.

On A Thousand Islands In The Sea

Thurston Moore is going to release three 7" singles in November and each one will have the same B-side, a cover of New Order's Leave Me Alone. I've said before that I'm not a massive fan of covers of New Order songs. Lonelady's recent cover of Cries And Whispers and Galaxie 500's slow burning take on Ceremony are two of the few exceptions. Thurston's cover will join those ranks, a rather lovely and chilled out take on the song, starting out quite Byrsdy and ending with a restrained squall of acoustic guitars and feedback. Thurston recorded in his version in Salford, Sumner and Hook's hometown, dipping his scuffed Converse into the River Irwell and coming up trumps.



New Order recorded the original at Britannia Row in Islington in 1983 and it closed their Power, Corruption And Lies album, a quantum leap forward from 1981's Movement. Hooky's divine bassline and Bernard's acidic guitar spiralling around each other for ages before Bernard starts singing his plea for solitude. People often cite Age Of Consent and Your Silent Face as the singles that Factory should have released from Power, Corruption And Lies if Factory and New Order had been in the business of something as mundane as releasing songs as singles that had already appeared on albums. Leave Me Alone is right up there with those two songs, a gem surrounded by jewels.

Leave Me Alone

Ciccone

In 1988 Sonic Youth put out The Whitey Album, not very well disguised as Ciccone Youth and in tribute to Madonna Louise Ciccone. Most of the attention was on the record's cover versions. These had been put out as a single on New Alliance in 1986 and were expanded out for the album. Coming at a time when Sonic Youth were being praised to the heavens for Daydream Nation this was possibly an effective way of defusing some of the hype- some noise, contributions from Mike Watt, jokey covers plus a hip reference to krautrock with the song Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening To Neu! The cover of the album was a photocopied close up of Madonna's face. Madonna apparently gave her blessing to it, remembering the band from her clubbing and Danceteria days. Ciccone Youth did their Madonna thing on Into The Groove(y) and Burnin' Up. Someone on Youtube has done the decent thing and set the music to clips of Desperately Seeking Susan (the only Madonna film that is actually watchable).



Better still though was their version of Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love. The video and vocal were recorded in a karaoke booth for $25- D.I.Y. punk rock in attitude, style and cost. It was also a very effective way of sending up Palmer's video with Kim Gordon singing the song deadpan and dancing with images from the Vietnam War flashing over the top.



This is the standard setter and last word in ironic cover versions. And still sounds great.