Asha Bhosle

Legendary Indian singer Asha Bhosle died a few days ago aged 92. Her singing career,alongside acting and television presenting work, spanned eight decades and apparently she is the most recorded artist in history. She may be best known to British indie audiences from the title and lyrics of their 1997 single Brimful Of Asha.

Brimful Of Asha

What a great song- The Velvet Underground via Indian TV and film, the beauty of the 7" single as an art form, Asha's sister Lata Mangeshkar (also a singer of renown), Ferguson Mono, Jacques Dutronc, the Bolan boogie, Trojan Records... a lyrical stream of consciousness that makes perfect sense even if you don't get all the references. The single stalled on release but a Norman Cook remix smashed its way to the top of the charts and it sold millions. Asha herself said that the song was significant, the moment that two worlds, British indie rock and Bollywood, collided.

Asha Bhosle sang on this song, O Je Suis Seul,too by West India Company. West India Company were Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe (from Blancmange), Asha and tabla player Pandit Dinesh (when West India Company started in 1984 Vince Clarke was involved too but Erasure became a much bigger day job). 

In 1989 West India Company rubbed shoulders with Dr Alex Paterson of The Orb and his Battersea neighbour Andrew Weatherall (then at the start of his remix career) and the pair did two remixes of O Je Suis Seul, another Asha Bhosle cultural collision, this time, acid house/ ambient house and Bollywood spliced. Weatherall drops in the 'Yep, I know that feeling' sample, Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas, one he'd use again on Screamadelica a year later. Thrash, then of The Orb, engineered both remixes, the Bhagwan Boogie is Andrew and the Orient Express Mix is Andrew and Alex. 

O Je Suis Seul (Bhagwan Boogie)

O Je Suis Seul (Orient Express Mix)

Both are totally of their time, have a wonderful 1989 innocence about them and are completely fantastic, the Bhagwan Boogie especially. 

Asha also sang on Bow Down Mister, Boy George's late 80s/ early 90s acid house/ Hare Krishna outfit Jesus Loves You. George wrote the song on a trip to India- Asha said several times it was the song she was most pleased to have contributed to. Her vocal in the second half elevates the song. 

Bow Down Mister (A Small Portion 2 B Polite Mix)

Asha Bhosle also appears on this 2021 track by Bicep, a duo from Belfast. Asha's vocal is a strong presence in the track, set back from the tumbling and thumping drums and the skipping synths, the track on the verge of falling apart. The album Isles was released in early 2021, a point where any communal activities- dancing, clubbing, going to gigs, even meeting indoors- were out of the question. Asha's vocal seems to fully capture that in a way, partway between euphoria and melancholia. 

Sundial

Lastly, and I was completely unaware of this song until this week, is this- in 2002 Asha sang a duet with Michael Stipe, a song that appeared on an album by 1 Giant Leap (Faithless' Jamie Cato). The Way You Dream is pretty stunning- eight minutes long, building gradually with tabla and samples, Asha's divine voice, strings, Michael joining in just after two minutes, singing along with and around the vocal the 1 Giaat Leap pair had already recorded with Asha. 

Asha's funeral took place two days ago, huge crowds coming out to pay tribute to her as she made her way to be cremated where she was sent off with a gun salute. 

RIP Asha Bhosle. 

Forty Minutes Of January And February Songs

A month ago I had the idea that at the end of January I'd put together a January mix, songs with January in the title or lyrics, and then maybe repeat throughout the rest of the months of the year. For one reason and another it didn't happen and now it's February. No problem, I thought, I'll just roll January and February together, and do that. It turns out I have not very many January songs and even fewer February ones- the only February songs I could find were Lou Reed's Xmas In February and Billy Bragg's 14th Of February and neither really fitted with the vibe I started the mix with. I extended February's reach into Valentine's Day and that, no surprise, made it much easier. All of which is a long winded way of saying here's a forty minute mix of songs about January and February. 

Forty Minutes Of January And February Songs

• The Orb: Perpetual Dawn (January Mix 3)
• M- Paths: January Song
• The Durutti Column: Requiem For A Father
• My Bloody Valentine: Soon
• Lizzy Mercier Descloux: My Funny Valentine
• Charlotte Gainsbourg: Deadly Valentine
• New Order: 1963
• Half Man Half Biscuit: Epiphany (Peel Session)

Perpetual Dawn is an Orb classic, remixed twice by Andrew Weatherall in fine style. For their album Aubrey Mixes: The Ultraworld Excursions, released and deleted on the same day in 1991 The Orb remixed songs from Beyond The Ultraworld, finding new shapes and sounds for seven essential early Orb tracks including the January Mix 3 version of Perpetual Dawn- early 90s ambient house at its best.

M- Paths release ambient/ electronic music, sometimes for Mighty Force and sometimes on their own label. Now down to the core figure of Marcus Farley, who also records as Reverb Delay, this track came out a year ago, at the start of January 2025, an archival M- Paths recording for the new year.

Tony Wilson, TV presenter and founder of Factory Records, was also from 1978 the manager and friend of Vini Reilly. When the original band version of The Durutti Column split in 1978 Wilson decided that the future for Durutti was Vini Reilly and whoever else was around but that Reilly was such a talent that he should make Durutti Column his own. Wilson also decided that he would put all Durutti Column records out on Factory and that he would manage DC/ Vini along with fellow Factory founder Alan Erasmus. Wilson formed a management company on the 24th January 1978 and called it The Movement Of The 24th January, borrowing the name from the Situationist students who formed their own International Movement on 22nd March at Nanterre University 1968 (Mouvement 22 du Mars). Here is a copy of the letterhead Wilson designed for his company...

Requiem For A Father is from The Return Of The Durutti Column, the debut album released in January 1980, Vini's guitar playing and Martin Hannett's echo and delay devices and synths in perfect harmony, Vini playing a song for his Dad and Hannett making a rhythm out of a digital machine that sounds like a cat purring close up. 

My Bloody Valentine have been never very far away this year to date, their songs soundtracking much of January 2026. Soon is from Loveless in 1991, a track that did things with guitars that genuinely hadn't really been done before. Kevin Shields' guitars following Vini Reilly's is exactly where my head is at right now. 

Valentine's Day is less than a week away lovebirds. 

Lizzy Mercier Descloux was a French punk, friends with Patti Smith and Richard Hell, published Rock News and moved to New York where she set up ZE records with her partner Michael Esteban. Lizzy released several albums, minimalist punk/ No Wave, wrote poetry and painted, retired to Corsica to write books and lived a full and varied life. She died in 2004. Her cover of My Funny Valentine, the Hart and Rogers song, is from her 1986 album One For The Soul which had Chet Baker guesting on some of the tracks including this one. 

Sticking with French artists, Charlotte Gainsbourg released Rest in 2017, her fifth solo album and one that dealt with the death of her father Serge and alcohol addiction. Deadly Valentine was a single and is dramatic synth pop with a lively throbbing bassline and feathery vocals.

1963 is from the B-side to 1987's New Order single True Faith, a giant in their back catalogue. 1963 could have been a single in its own right. Bernard's lyrics are peculiar/ awful (delete according to taste). 'It was January/ 1963/ When Johnny came home with a gift for me'. Bernard once spun a line that the song was about JFK and Marilyn Monroe arranging for Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot Jackie Kennedy so they could get together but Oswald shooting the wrong person. Bernard may not have been entirely serious- Marilyn died in 1962 so at the very least his chronology's off. Producer Stephen Hague thought it was about domestic abuse. Whatever the lyrics deal with, the music is New Order 1987 magnificence.

Half Man Half Biscuit recorded Epiphany for a Peel Session. It starts out with Nigel Blackwell narrating a chance occurrence on a Friday in July that then unfolds in surreal Blackwell style taking in Dictionary Corner, black apes gibbering on dark lawns, a lime Dyson, a date in Parbold (near Wigan), a crossed telephone line, a sickly foal, a straggle haired girl called Karen Henderson, songs recorded for a a hospice, bus outings, Billing Aquadrome and busking at Embankment Tube before concluding 'January the 6th. Epiphany'. 

Monday's Long Songs

The Orb's latest album came out last Friday, their eighteenth since 1991's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld. Alex Paterson has been rejuvenated in recent years, working with a new partner Michael Rendall in The Orb as well as Andy Falconer as Sedibus and with Fil in OSS. The new album, Buddhist Hipsters (I know, the title sets my teeth on edge a bit too) has split opinion among the fanbase. Some are saying its the worst Orb album since [insert personal worst Orb album here], some saying there are four or five tracks to cherry pick and some saying it's got lots of what makes The Orb The Orb. I had it a month ago and listened to it a lot for a week on my new (much shorter) commute to work. 

Buddhist Hipsters has a slew of guests and collaborators including Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy, Youth, Killing Joke's Paul Ferguson, Roger Eno and Andy Falconer. It recalls earlier 'classic' Orb in places, with voices sampled from TV and radio, long sci fi synth chords, deep bass, ambient house rhythms and chopped up sounds and on track two, P~1 noise and sound collage. Opener Spontaneously Combust is ten minutes of early 90s Orb. Sacred Choice brings the reggae. The Oort Cloud (Too Night) revisits early 90s progressive house. To these ears though the album's best moments come with the final pair of tracks, the first, Under The Bed, written and recorded with Andy Falconer sounds like it should have been on last year's Sedibus album, seti, one of 2024's highlights. Under The Bed has the same widescreen ambience, a wash of synths and piano, voices coming through the mix, swirls of space dust and static and orchestral drones. Ten minutes long and utterly magical.

It's followed by Kharon, which is twelve minutes long, and sets off with a plummy BBC voice commenting on Sputnik and satellite deep space exploration. The FX and drones swirl around, bleeps dart about and Roger Eno is on hand to add piano to the gathering solar storm. A wall of ghostly voices. Dripping water/ piano notes. After four minutes a ripple of synth arpeggios- and then at the end, static and a halt and someone saying, 'goodnight goodbye goodbye'. 

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I had an idea that I would do a Sunday mix of all those short electronic/ ambient tracks that appear on albums, the intros and outros, the bridging tracks, found sounds, brief ambient pieces and short one minute ideas that never got worked up into a full track but that the artist clearly liked. I realised that to make it forty minutes long would require at least twenty tracks and time constraints this week meant that I started the mix but haven't got anywhere near forty minutes- it's just shy of twenty one minutes, fourteen tracks from a variety of sources. I need to give it more thought really and gather together some more and either do a part two or expand this one out but in the meantime, here it is...

Twenty One Minutes Of Two Minute Tracks

I decided early on that two minutes was the cut off (although there are a couple here which just tip over that time). I was going to go totally beatless but that didn't work out. It's almost completely without vocals too. I wasn't sure it all worked but playing it back last night I was pretty happy with it. An expanded edition/ part two is definitely on the cards. 

• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Gospel Oak FX)
• Two Lone Swordsmen: Tiny Reminder No. 1
• Four Tet: This Is For You
• Sewell And The Gong: MYND
• The Orb: Snowbow
• Ultramarine: A Year From Monday
• A Man Called Adam: Easter Song (Hi- Tech)
• M- Paths: Calm
• Polypores: Mystery Energy Score
• Aphex Twin: Avril 14th (reversed music not audio)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Interludio
• Daniel Avery: First Light
• Sydney Minsky Sargeant: Intro
• Andrew Weatherall: Intro

A Man Called Adam's Easter Song is one of their best, a triumphant piece of optimsitc, life affirming Balearica. In 2017 the duo put out a special edition on Bandcamp to celebrate the song's 20th birthday which came with two new very short versions, the found sound intro of Gospel Oak FX and the ambient with beats of Hi- Tech. Both appear on this mix. 

In 2000 Two Lone Swordsmen released their electronic triple disc opus Tiny Reminders, Weatherall and Tenniswood's pursuit of  techno/ bass purism followed through to its end. Each of the three disc opened with a burst of static/ quiet noise called Tiny Reminder and numbered 1, 2 and 3. 

Four Tet's Sixteen Ocean's was a 2020 highlight, three sides of vinyl that soundtracked those early days of lockdown in March/ April 2020 of that year. This Is For You is one of five short tracks on it- the others are Hi Hello, ISTM, 1993 Band Practice and Bubbles At Overlook 25th March 2019- any/ all of which I was going to include here and didn't.

Sewell And The Gong's Patron Saint Of Elswhere is one of my favourite albums of 2025, a Balearic  folk/ motorik beauty with MYND a short one minute fourteen seconds of sound sandwiched between much longer excursions. 

The Orb tend to do long tracks. Snowbow is from 2005's Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt, an album I only found recently and have been enjoying. Snowbow is the closing track, two minutes and fourteen seconds.

A Year From Monday gave me the idea for this mix. It's on an album of Ultramarine recordings from 1997/ 8 that sat unreleased until this year. I posted it a few Monday's ago and listening to it in the car I wondered how it would work with a load of other very short tracks around it. 

M- Paths' Calm was on their album Hope, released on Mighty Force in 2023, a rippling melody line and drums. 

Polypores released an album in June, Cosmically A Shambles. I posted a song from it on Friday. The slightly hyperactive and bleepy Mystery Energy Score is in the middle of the album and this mix. I couldn't decide if its energy was a good change of pace or not and nearly took it out. In the end I thought it just about worked.

Aphex Twin's Avril 14th is his most streamed track, a Satie like piano piece smothered in reverb. THis version, the music reversed not audio version, is from user18081971's Soundcloud page, widely acknowledged to be Richard D James' outlet for all manner of unreleased music. 

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Interludio is from Dot, an EP from January this year, six tracks recorded while caring for a young baby, Diogo. 

First Light is the opening track on Daniel Avery's Song For Alpha, a 2018 album that was the start of a run of outstanding albums that isn't over yet. One minute and forty seconds of wodnerful ambient drones. 

Sydney Minsky Sargeant's album Lunga came out last week, an autumn 2025 highlight. Intro is the opening track (obviously), a short ambient piece that eases us into Lunga. And out of this mix.

Andrew Weatherall's Intro was the very short first track on Convenanza. 'I seem to have got in with the wrong crowd', the voice says, setting Andrew's stall out. 

These Are The Days

This pair of songs came out while I was away last week and I've been catching up in the last few days. First is a new one from The Charlatans, one of two new songs they performed at Manchester's Castlefield Bowl recently alongside a set of hits and favourites. We Are Love has the band in sunny side up mode, all warm organ chords, Johnny Marr-esque guitar picking and Tim being anthemic and euphoric, 'this is the place, these are the days'. 

An album of the same name is coming out in October. The band went back to Rockfield in Wales to record it, a studio with some deep memories for the group- organist and founder member Rob Collins died there on 21st July 1997, twenty eight years ago yesterday, while they were recording Tellin' Stories. Going back to go forward. That this group, thirty five years old are still so enthused about making new music and still with the fire in their bones after all this time is clearly a good thing.

Of a similar vintage are The Orb who also released a new track last week ahead of a new album. The single is Arabebonics, five minutes of kaleidoscopic ambient house/ North African fusion with a rap from Rrome Alone. 

The Orb and various Orb side projects (Sedibus, OSS) have been in fine form over the last few years and many of the people who helped Alex on those albums are here on the new one, Buddhist Hipsters- Andy Falconer from Sedibus along with Youth, Steve Hillage, Miquette Giraudy and Roger Eno. Hopefully Buddhist Hipsters will be an album that stands alongside Abolition of The Royal Familia, Enter The Kettle, Seti and The Heavens. 

This would seem to be the ideal point in time for an Orb remix of The Charlatans wouldn't it?

Monday's Long Song

I was going through one of the shelves of CDs recently and rediscovered the compilations of remixes by The Orb, double disc CD albums titled Auntie Aubrey's Excursions Beyond The Call Of Duty, a massive round up of remixes The Orb undertook in the 90s for other artists. Volume 1 came out in 1997 and took in Primal Scream, Killing Joke, Zodiac Mindwarp, Yello, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pop Will Eat Itself and a slew of others. Volume 2 came out four years later and threw The Orb's net even wider- Wendy And Lisa, Lisa Stansfield, The KLF, Robbie chuffing Williams, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Can, The Grid, System 7, Meat Beat Manifesto and Art Of Noise among others, and this one...

Towards The Evening Star (Mandarin Cream Mix)

Eight minutes of mid 90s Orb remixing the mighty Tangerine Dream, from the when Thrash had left and Andy Hughes was working as Alex Paterson's right hand man. The familiar Orb sheen and sampled voices are there, a lovely chuggy rhythm kicking in and washes of synth shifting from left to right across the speakers. It's a blurred area with Orb remixes to know where the original artist ends and The Orb begin- there's as much Orb in this as there is Tangerine Dream. By three and a half minutes in everything's cooking nicely, ambient house with the emphasis on house, chunky drums and bass. The radio/ TV voices return during the break down and then the drums thunder back in and its all systems go for a few more minutes before everything ends with a dust storm. 

The original track came out the year before on Tangerine Dream's Goblins' Club album, the German band's twenty fourth studio album. It's not a TD album I know- my TD knowledge is limited to Zeit, Phaedra, Rubycon and Force Majuere and I feel that on the whole that's enough. Apparently The Orb's remix was unsolicited and unofficial leaving TD's Edgar Froese both furious and litigious. The remix came out as a CD single paired with the original track so it's a bit odd that Edgar seemed to know nothing about it. Record company shenanigans maybe. 

Monday's Long Song

Another aurora borealis photo, a bit out of focus but I like the chimney pots in the corner. Today's long song is from 1991 and The Orb and the fifteen minute epic that closes the first half of the Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld album. 

Spanish Castles In Space (Lunar Orbit Five)

Much of the work that went into Ultraworld came from Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty's DJ sets at Paul Oaknefold's Land Of Oz nights at Heaven in London, the long layered multitrack sets with three decks and tape and CD players all linked up, BBC Radiophonic Workshop albums, dub records, sound effects records, NASA samples, very few drums and whatever else they could get their hands on. 

Spanish Castles In Space samples the love theme from Spartacus by Bill Evans, the narration from a Soviet Union field recordings album called Звуковые И Биоэлектрические Сигналы Рыб (Audio And Bioelectrical Signals Of Fishes apparently), and Crystal City by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Glynis Jones. It is a long, chilled and very worthwhile trip. 

Fifty Minutes Of Music Inspired By Apollo 11

A couple of nights ago I watched Apollo 11, a 2019 film about the events of July 1969, fifty five years ago this summer, when astronauts Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were fired into space on a Saturn V rocket and Armstrong and Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. The film is a documentary using only archive footage from NASA (including previously unseen 70 mm film) without narration- the only audio comes from the films themselves, voices from ground control and the three men, sound from the mission and ending with a speech by Kennedy at the start of the 1960s. This is a ten minute preview. 

There were several pieces of dialogue between the people in ground control and the three men in a tin can hundreds of thousands of miles away in space that are instantly recognisable, partly because they've been sampled on records. I thought it might be a good theme for a Sunday mix, a collection of tracks inspired by the Apollo missions, some with samples from ground control and the three astronauts, some from other film versions and some just from the wider topic of lunar exploration. It came together quite quickly. It's no surprise probably that The Orb feature.  

Fifty Minutes Of Music Inspired By Apollo 11

• Brian Eno: Always Returning
• Brian Eno: An Ending (Ascent)
• Tranquility Bass: They Came In Peace
• Sedibus: Toi 1338b
• Ian Brown: My Star
• Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon
• Meatraffle: Meatraffle On The Moon (Andrew Weatherall remix)
• The Orb: Supernova At The End Of The Universe (Earth Orbit Three)

Brian Eno's music for the 1983 album Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks is rightly a legendary piece of ambient music, the soundtrack to a film called For All Mankind, an Al Reinhart documentary about the Apollo missions which didn't see the light of day until 1989. Eno, his brother Roger and Daniel Lanois created an album of heavenly, stargazing sounds, synths, piano and pedal steel. Always returning and An Ending (Ascent) bookend the film's soundtrack- both a gorgeous.  

They Came In Peace is a 1991 single by Tranquility Bass, an American duo of Michael Kandel (who I've just noticed I share a birthday with, and who sadly died in 2015) and Tom Chasteen. It's one of 1991's best 12" singles, opening with crickets and the gentle hiss of percussion. The vocal sample, 'they came in peace, for all mankind', is Neil Armstrong on the moon, reading from the plaque left on the moon that reads in full, 'Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969, AD. We came in peace for all mankind'. The bass loop is one that I could happily listen to for hours, crickets chirruping away around it. Andrew Weatherall later sampled the bass loop for his Squire Black Dove remix of One Dove's Breakdown. Fun fact; I was given Andrew's copy of this 12" last year by Sherman at AW60, blue vinyl with a sticker on the plain black sleeve noting the BPMs of the four tracks in Andrew's handwriting. 

Sedibus is the recent project of Alex Paterson and Andy Falconer, an Orb offshoot (Andy was a collaborator back on the early Orb albums). Space exploration, the cosmos and the moon programmes are all over The Orb and Sedibus. This year's second Sedibus album is about the search for extra- terrestrial life, SETI. The first album, The Heavens, came out in 2021 and this track has a vocal sample intoning the word Sputnik, the USSR's satellite that preceded the US moon programme. Toi 1338b is a planet int eh Pictor constellation, discovered in 2019 by a seventeen year old student on an internship at Goddard Space Flight Centre. Toi 1338b is eleven times the size of earth 1301 light years away from us.

My Star was Ian Brown's return to music after the breakup of The Stone Roses and for me remains his best solo single. NASA samples are an integral part of the song, along with a throbbing bassline and twinkling guitar line and Ian's lyrics about space exploration, nuclear stations, military missions and astronauts being the new conquistadors. The vocal sample 'You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again, thank the lord', is in Apollo 11, ground control shitting bricks as the command module re- enters earth's atmosphere and drops into the ocean. My Star came out in January 1998 ahead of the album Unfinished Monkey Business.

Meatraffle's Meatraffle On The Moon came out in 2019, a fantastic dub- inflected song imagining un- unionised workers stuck in dead end jobs on the moon, with the weekly meatraffle and karaoke sessions in the lunar base social area their only joy. 'They are so sick of this they just wanna be by the sea', they sing and sound utterly defeated by it. The song is on Meatraffle's second album, the highly recommended Bastard Music. Andrew Weatherall's remix is a nine minute bass- led dub monster that spins the poor moon workers woes out into the cosmos. 

The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld is an ambient house touchstone, their 1991 debut album and tour de force. NASA samples appear all over it, not least in the back to back twenty five minutes of tracks Supernova At The End Of The Universe (Earth Orbit Three) and Back Side Of The Moon (Lunar Orbit Four). I picked the former, which has samples of Saturn V blasting off, various flight control to lunar module communications, and one from Dr Strangelove Or How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Bomb. 

An Hour Of Midsummer Ambience

Today's mix is inspired by the music Martin and I played last Saturday might at Soup with Contours and Marconi Union, sixty minutes of largely ambient music with a tendency towards the cosmic and the odd detour into dub, on this day, the mid point of 2024- how did we get to 30th June so quickly? It seems like only recently it was New Year. The picture is from December last year and an Anglo- Saxon cross in the churchyard of St. Edward's church in Leek, Staffordshire (my Dad's hometown and home to the local delicacy, the Staffordshire oatcake). Anyway, midsummer, late nights, warm days, ambient bliss, dub bass. What more could you ask for?

An Hour Of Midsummer Ambience

• Underworld: Dark And Long (Most 'Ospitable Mix)
• Khartomb: Swahili Lullaby (Synkro's Balearic Dub Mix)
• M- Paths: Emerge
• Sabres Of Paradise: Chapel Street Market 9am
• Zoe: Moonsister (Lunar Dub 1)
• William Orbit: The Story Of Light
• Coyote: Every Forest Tells A Story
• The Woodentops: Dream On (Balearic Ultras Brooking Bass Remix)
• Andy Bell: Smokebelch II
• African Head Charge: Dub For The Spirits
• Sedibus: SETI Part 3

Dark And Long opened Underworld's 1994 album dubnobasswithmyheadman. The single version came with four different mixes, the ambient Most 'Ospitable one being a thing of great beauty. 

Khartomb's 1983 single Swahili Lullaby, post- punk dub,  has recently been re- issued by Jason Boardman's Before I Die label along with this ambient/ Balearic remix courtesy of Stockport producer Synkro. 

M- Paths album Submerge came out on Mighty Force earlier this year, one in a long line of outstanding releases from the reborn Exeter label. Emerge is the final track, piano and synths combining to give the feel of surfacing from underwater to feel the warm hit of sun on your face. 

Chapel Street 9am was on Sabres Of Paradise's 1994 album Haunted Dancehall, Weatherall, Burns and Kooner creating a morning walk through the streets of London after a night at the titular nightclub, electronic seagulls yapping overhead and the gumshoe Maguire heading home. 

Zoe had a huge hit with her song Sunshine On A Rainy Day, a pop- rave classic from summer 1991. The Orb and Youth were involved and The Orb remixed her song Moonsister for the 12".

William Orbit's Strange Cargo 3 is a lost ambient/ global/ dub gem from 1993. The Story Of Light is a blissed out ambient peak.

Coyote released Every Forest tells A Story earlier this year, another spoken word vocal sample layered over laid back ambient/ Balearic music. 

The Woodentops released their album Fruits Of The Deep in April and a single Dream On a few weeks before with this floaty remix by Brighton's Balearic Ultras. 

Andy Bell's cover of Sabres Of Paradise Smokebelch II is from our album Sounds Of The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. In a chain of events that still leaves me scratching my chin, we had almost every track ready for mastering and I emailed Andy (he'd been on tour in the US with Ride) to see if he had anything for us. The following day he sent me Smokebelch, saying I'd inspired him to finish it. He started it the day Andrew died and completed it for our album, inspired by Andrew. Coincidentally, our album made Piccadilly Records mid- year top 25 collections round up a few days ago. 

Dub For The Spirits came out on African Head Charge's Churchical Chant Of The Iyabinghi, an album of previously unreleased tracks and dubs from their 1990 classic Songs Of Praise. Every home should have one.

Sedibus's SETI (The Search For Extra- Terrestrial Intelligence) came out at the start of the year and I'm still going back to it, a lovely mix of synths, samples and 'real' instruments and an endless, questing vision of outer space as a place to find something else/ yourself. 

V.A. Saturday

This Saturday series is jumping around all over the place, a celebration of the various artists compilation album, something that when done well is as good as any 'proper' album. Recently I've posted Lenny' Kaye's mid- 60s garage and psyche rock extravaganza Nuggets, a pair of Andrew Weatherall collated compilations (9 O'Clock Drop and Force Tracks), the Detroit techno classic Retro Techno/ Emotions Electric and Colleen 'Cosmo's Murphy's Balearic Breakfasts. Today I offer you a Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs modern classic, their 2022 compilation Fell From The Sun, an album that is very specific in its parameters spanning a period lasting two years (1990- 1991) and solely tracks that are at 98 beats per minute. 

The lost in ecstasy face on the front cover, snapped at legendary London club Shoom, gives more than a hint at what's inside, fourteen slices of blissed out, shuffling, slightly woozy, indie- dance crossover/ straight dance music from the early 90s, a period where there seemed to be exciting, genre busting, record deck hogging 12" singles released weekly but also a time when tempos were suddenly cut, where the paced slowed and people took a breather before heading back to the floor. Bob and Pete were part of the scene, Saint Etienne releasing their own contribution to the scene in the form of their cover of Neil Young's Only Can Break Your Heart. Fell From The Sun opens with Primal Scream's Higher Than The Sun (Higher Than The Orb), a record that redefined Primal Scream as a band (something that Andrew Weatherall had already done not once but twice wit their previous two singles, Loaded and Come Together). If they'd stopped after Higher Than The Sun, it would have been enough, a sun dappled, sky scraping ode to becoming unlocked and going with the flow, of losing oneself in the moment. Bobby Gillespie isn't always the man I'd go to for lyrics but Higher Than The Sun is close to perfection, 'My brightest star's my inner light/ Let it guide me/ Experience and innocence bleed inside me/ Hallucinogens can open me or untie me/ I drift in inner space free of time/ I find a higher state of grace deep inside'. 

Higher Than The Sun (Higher Than The Orb Extended Mix)

Spaced out sounds and whispers swirl around, a faint pulse bumps in, and a rising synth line appears and then the rhythm gently kicks in, as Bobby coos 'I believe you get what you give', and then organ and drums and woooo sounds. Saxophone. Eight minutes of bliss. 

After that Bob and Pete guide us through a version of 1990- 91 at 98bp, stopping off for the mighty Cascades by Sheer Taft, The Grid's Floatation, Saint Etienne's glorious B-side Speedwell, One Dove, Transglobal Underground, BBGs Snappiness and The Aloof and finding room for a few lesser known gems- Elis Curry's U Make Me Feel, Massonix's Just A Little Bit More, History and Q- Tee's Afrika. 

The track titles alone conjure up the look of 1990- white Levi's, Travel Fox and Converse, long sleeved t-shirts, boys with centre partings and shoulder length hair, girls with short hair, dungarees, football shirts, Happy Mondays t- shirts, Spike Island and Kate Moss on the cover of The Face. 

Towards the end of the album are this pair of tracks. Firstly, I Don't Even Know If I Should Call You Baby by Soul Family Sensation, a British trio switched on by Chicago house in 1989. They split in 1992. Johnny Male went on to Republica. Guy Batson worked with Saint Etienne. Singer Jhelisa Anderson sang with The Shamen on LSI. None of them ever sounded better than on this song. 

I Don't Even Know If I Should Call You Baby

Fell From The Sun closes with Moodswings' Spiritual High, a cover of Donna Summer's State Of Independence, with a typically 1990 drum pattern, Chrissie Hynde, loved up synths and keys, bouncing bass, rattling rim shots, a wheezy organ, a choir, tumbling piano chords, and eventually, finally, Martin Luther King-  Grant Showbiz (a former Smiths and Billy Bragg roadie) and drummer James Hood creating a sound that is the very essence of that period between early spring 1990 and autumn 1991.

Spiritual High (The Moodfood Megamix)

Geordie Walker

The news of Geordie Walker's death in Prague following a stroke was announced at the weekend, drawing the curtain on one of the most innovative and distinctive guitarists of the post- punk period (and beyond). Alongside Jaz Coleman Kevin/ Geordie was the only constant member of the group, forming Killing joke with the singer in 1979 after replying to an advert, his guitar playing was enormous, his Gibson hollow bodied guitar tuned down a whole tone lower than standard tuning. His set up and style, melody lines as opposed to solos, crunching metallic rhythm parts, ringing feedback, a seemingly effortless approach that created the sound of several guitars playing at once. 

Some music from the Killing Joke back catalogue in tribute to Geordie Walker.

Turn To Red was from Killing Joke's debut release, a 7" EP from October 1979. They were always into the idea of remixing their music, and the multitude of dub versions and remixes are all worth investigating. This dub of Turn To Red is fast, heavy dub, rimshots, echo, noise and thump.

Turn To Red Dub

Eighties came out in the middle of the 80s, a single and also on the album Night Time. Kurt Cobain famously purloined the guitar riff for Nirvana's Come As You Are. The Serious Dance Mix is as hard as anything from 1984, a stomp with Geordie's guitars up front. In fact, it's a song with everything up front. 

Eighties (Serious Dance Mix)

In 1992 Thrash of The Orb took Requiem and gave it the full 1992 Orb remix treatment, with sound effects, space and echo, bass, coiled guitar parts, stuttering synth parts, rain and wind and whatever else he fancied, the song stretched out for eleven minutes, trance dub, a long strange trip down the river. 

Requiem (A Floating Leaf Always Reaches The Sea Dub Mix)

In 1993 Andrew Weatherall played his first Essential Mix. Those tuning in back in November 1993 or listening later on tape, copies passed around and re- copied time after time, would have heard Killing Joke's Millenium opening the show, not the first time Weatherall confounded expectations and played something unexpected and made it work, Killing Joke sounding perfectly at home among the early 90s techno of Sabres Of Paradise, Plastikman, LFO and Black Dog. 

RIP Geordie Walker. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The KLF

On Thursday 23rd November 2023 The KLF re- appeared with a website KLF Kare (providing 'branding solutions to independently owned care homes'), a song (a cover/ version/ premix of Harry Nillson's Everybody's Talkin' At Me, with Ricardo Da Force on vocals and a lengthy introductory sample from Top of The Pops. You can hear it here) and in Toxteth, Liverpool a night time event including the laying of bricks for The People's Pyramid, a procession across the Mersey and an afterparty at Future Yard in Birkenhead. 23rd November 2023 was always likely to be a day of KLF action, the number 23 being highly significant in KLF world and Discordianism and 23rd November being significant previously in KLF activities. 

The 23rd November was also Isaac's birthday and the age he was when he died. I've written before about 23 and Isaac, including the fact that I was reading John Higgs' book about the KLF when he died and how when I picked the book up a few weeks later, the first chapter I read was about the importance of 23 to The KLF and in Discordianism. When I woke up on Thursday, which was a really tough day all round, I found The KLF in my various social media feeds, the above 23 graphic jumping out at me. A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me a photograph of the famous KLF ice cream van, which turned up at a KLF event she attended, the number 23 emblazoned on its side. I left a comment on one of her posts, coincidentally (or not) 23 minutes after she posted it. Etc etc etc. 

Today's Sunday mix therefore suggested itself- demanded itself really. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The KLF

• I Believe In Rock 'n' Roll
• Jerusalem On The Moors
• Kylie Said To Jason (Full length Version)
• Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)
• 3 a.m. Eternal (Blue Danube Orbital)
• It's Grim Up North Part 1
• Last Train To Trancentral (White Room Version)
• What Time Is Love? Live At Trancentral (Radio Edit)

I Believe In Rock 'n' Roll is from Bill Drummond's solo album The Man, an album recorded and released by Creation in 1986 when he was 33.3 years old and ready for 'a revolution in my life'. This song is fairly self explanatory and contains lyrical and musical references that would appear in his public life thereafter- pedal steel guitar (Chill Out), Penkiln Burn (his website) and his belief that Elvis is king among them. 

Jerusalem On the Moors was the fourth track on the CD single release of It's Grim Up North, a weatherblasted orchestral take that fades into techno. It's Grim Up North was recorded as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu and released as a single in 1991, a list of northern towns set to industrial  techno, two men with the world at feet and the freedom to do whatever they wanted to. It's Grim Up North Part 1 is ten minutes long, starting out lyrically in Bolton and ending in Cleethorpes, taking in Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley, Bradford, Buxton, Crewe, Warrington, Widnes, Wigan, Leeds, Northwich, Nantwich, Knutsford, Hull, Sale, Salford, Southport, Leigh, Kirkby, Kearsley, Keighley, Maghull, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Oldham, Lancs, Grimsby, Glossop, Hebden Bridge, Brighouse, Bootle, Featherstone, Speke, Runcorn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Barrow, Morecambe, Macclesfield, Lytham St Annes, Clitheroe, Pendlebury, Prestwich, Preston, York, Skipton, Scunthorpe, Scarborough-on-Sea, Chester, Chorley, Cheadle, Hulme, Ormskirk, Accrington, Leigh, Ossett, Otley, Ilkley Moor, Sheffield, Manchester, Castleford, Skem, Doncaster, Dewsbury, Halifax, Bingley, Bramhall and the M62 in between. 

The KLF released Kylie Said To Jason in 1989, the only survivor from the pair's road trip film, The White Room, with the titular stars of Neighbours and SAW set to a track that is the full fruits of Drummond and Cauty's Pet Shop Boys obsession. It was designed to sell bucket loads of records and establish The KLF in the charts. It failed to make the top 100. 

Justified And Ancient was released as a single on 25th November 1991 and while typing this I see that this is today's date, thirty two years later, which wasn't planned but doesn't surprise me either. Do you need me to explain the genius of this song, of Tammy Wynette, stadium house, King Boy D, Rockman Rock and an ice cream van, all bound for Mu Mu Land? You do not. Bring the beat back. 

3 a.m. Eternal was The KLF's second monster, a top ten hit. This mix from the 12", the Blue Danube Orbital Mix, is by The Orb, a sound collage/ ambient house version and sounds like part of Chill Out that went missing and resurfaced, the Blue Danube waltz section in the middle the interruption to the chilled out bliss. 

Last Train To Trancentral was a single in 1990, released as per in multiple versions and mixes, Pure Trance, Live From The Lost Continent, Iron Horse and several others. This is The White Room version, from the album with rap from Ricardo da Force and vocals from Black Steel, Maxine Harvey and Wanda Dee. Trancentral is The KLF's spiritual home, a place they were bound for, Mu Mu Land, the lost continent. It was also their recording studio in Stockwell, south London (also Jimmy Cauty's squat)

I had to include What Time Is Love?, in many ways the definitive KLF song, a genuine acid house classic, one that straddles borders and slips into The Live At Trancentral Version came out in 1990, an extraordinary moment of brilliance as the sincere, surreal and chaotic world of Drummond and Cauty collided with mainstream culture and the stadium house trilogy went overground. The radio Edit here brings this mix in at just shy of forty five minutes and so would fit on one side of a c90 cassette. As the beats hammer away, the siren blares and the rave riff repeats, let me ask you a question... 

Forty Five Minutes Of Prins Thomas

Forty five minutes of Scandi space disco/ psychedelic house from Norwegian DJ and producer Prins Thomas to ease you into Sunday. His remixes/ diskomiks are a rich vein of music and his own releases are well worth exploring too (along with his records with Lindstrom). The mix below is little more than a sampler but it turned out really well (if I do say so myself), a dizzying mix of electronic sounds, cosmic disco, Balearic/ ambient styles and some quite intense dance music.  

Forty Five Minutes Of Prins Thomas

• Prins Thomas: Gran Paradiso
• Rusty: Everything's Gonna Change (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
• Dungen: Achmed Flyger (Version 2)
• Daniele Baldelli and DJ Rocca: Space Scribble (Prins Thomas Remix)
• The Orb: Alpine (Prins Thomas Short Yoga Break Version)
• Deo' Jorge: Sparking Plugs (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
• Quixote: Before I Started To Dance (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)

Gran Paradiso is from Prins Thomas' Italia Uno EP, twisting, giddy psychedelic acid- ambient, released in 2013. 

Rusty's Everything's Gonna Change came out in 1989 and then again in 1992, Italo house that was big, nay massive, in Sasha's DJ sets. Prins Thomas' remix from 2013 is a smooth, sultry, lush ride. 

Dungen are a Swedish band who make pastoral psychedelia, long guitar epics. In 2017 Prins Thomas remixed songs from their Haxan album, ending up with an entire new album, ten songs sent into new directions. His version of Achmed Flyger is bubbling bass- led psyche.

Italian legends Daniele Baldelli and DJ Rocca's Space Scribble came out in 2011 with Prins Thomas' remix on the B- side of the 12". Daniele is one of Italian music's innovators, one of the originators of the cosmic disco scene and sound. Space Scribble is a huge piece of electronic music, seriously good stuff. 

The Orb's Alpine dates from 2016 and the Moonbuilding 2703 album. Prins Thomas provided three remixes of the track, including the one here which is said to be ideal for a short yoga break. I've never done yoga so can't really comment. 

Deo' Jorge's Sparking Plugs came out in 2021, part of an EP called Robotic Souls which also contained a cosmic Hardway Bros remix which was big round these parts. Prins Thomas' remix is very good indeed, finding a Balearic/ cosmic disco sweet spot and spinning it around for nine and a half minutes. 

Quixote are a French group about whom I know very little. Discogs says they make leftfield, krautrock, nu- disco and that's good enough for me. Before I Started To Dance came out in 2008. For his remix Prins Thomas added bass, guitar, omnichord, melodica, synth, drums and percussion- a little bit more than just sticking a new drumbeat underneath the song. Hummed backing vocals, acoustic guitar, a driving bass, some jangle, thumping rhythm and then some harmonised vox, extended on and on. Lovely stuff. 

Forty Minutes Of Depeche Mode

I recently watched 101, D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film from 1989 that showed the group preparing to play the 101st gig and final leg of their world tour the year before. It was good fun, a time capsule peak into the world of 1988, with a van of radio competition winners travelling to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena to see DM with live snippets of the group interspersed. 

It's fair to say that I'm a fan of some of Depeche Mode's songs rather than an outright fan of the band. Their story is interesting, electro- pop boys from Basildon who survive the departure of their songwriter becoming a pop sensation and then a stadium size electronic rock group. The death of Andy Fletcher last year showed a fairly unique aspect of the group too- Fletcher was the man who made the group work but whose contributions weren't predominantly musical. For the mix below I've concentrated on the late 80s/ early 90s era of the group, mainly singles with some remixes. I seem to have omitted Personal Jesus which is an error on my part. 

Forty Minutes Of Depeche Mode

• Happiest Girl (Orbital Mix)
• Never Let Me Down Again (Tsangarides Mix)
• I Feel You (7" version)
• Enjoy The Silence (Rich Lane A&E Cotton Dub)
• Blasphemous Rumours
• Barrel Of A Gun (Underworld Soft Mix)

From 1990 The Orb's remix of Happiest Girl confusingly titled as the Orbital Mix (how both The Orb and Orbital mist have wished the other had chosen a different name). The remix is typically Orb- like, downtempo ambient house with Dave Gahan's words on top. As well as a 12" single in 1990, it came out on The Orb's compilation of their own remixes in 1996, alongside a welter of other remixes- Pop Will Eat Itself, Erasure, Killing Joke, Primal Scream, Yello, Innersphere and Wir all feature. 

Never Let Me Down is a throbbing, growling, druggy electro- rock single from 1987 and from their Music For The Masses album. The Tsangarides mix is from the 12", a remix by Chris Tsangarides. My favourite DM song, one that has worked its way into my musical world in recent years. 

I Feel You was a 1993 single, screeching tyres, glitter stomp and blues guitar riff. 

Enjoy The Silence was a 1990 single and from their massive 1991 album Violator. Synths, monochrome gloom, a lush darkness made for those sunset moments in stadia round the world- along with Personal Jesus it's the 90s Mode in excelsis. The version here is a re- edit by Stoke- on - Trent's Rich Lane, a man who knows his way round a re- edit better than most. 

Blasphemous Rumours came out in 1984, a song about suicide, survival and religion that baited the religious, including those in the band. The crunchy synth sound and industrial drums show the way ahead. 

Barrel Of A Gun was a single in 1997, the lead song for their Ultra album. Underworld's remixes, three of them, showed the two sides of late 90s Underworld- the Hard Mix is nine minutes of thumping, hard and fast drums that don't let up. The Soft mix (included here) is Underworld in dreamy, floaty mode and proof that Underworld were still capable of great remixes and of creating some lovely, low key, intimate moments.

Chocolate Hills

Alex Paterson's Orb side project Chocolate Hills announced a new song and album recently, the song called Cracking Kraken and the album Yarns From The Chocolate Triangle (out in June). Sometimes I think Orb world is being spread a bit a thin, release after release by multiple incarnations and offshoots but the quality remains high and Cracking Kraken seems to promise a lot- piano, deep sea submersion, ambient sound, distant drums, synths with a rupture towards the end and sampled voices and noises. No doubt it will all make more complete sense in the context of the full album. 

Chocolate Hills is Paul Conboy with Alex. Paul swears off computers using only analogue kit and pre- digital age gear. The ten track album is a musical expedition, an imaginary voyage by sea to the Bermuda Triangle and back. Back in 2019 Chocolate Hills released an album called A Pail Of Air, a deeply ambient and atmospheric seven track exploration of synths, sounds and samples which is one of the highlights of the recent Orb related releases. 

Reclaim

Piano In Triste And Dub

Two piano pieces for Saturday, one from the 1880s and one from the 2020s, both finding a stillness, sadness and a delicate beauty in single piano notes played slowly. 

The first is Gymnopedies No. 3, composed by Erik Satie in 1888 and played here by Reinbert de Leeuw in 1980. 

Gymnopedies No. 3 Lent et Triste

The second is thirteen minutes of Roger Eno playing piano, seemingly endlessly, while The Orb offer some background found sounds, FX and ambience. 

The Weekend In Rained Forever In Dub (The Waterbed Experience Mix)

Forty Minutes Of The Orb

Dr. Alex Paterson has been in a rich vein of form in recent years  with The Orb and various side projects rediscovering and revisiting the sounds and elements that made The Orb so good in the 90s- widescreen ambient dub house liberally peppered with vocal samples and the feel of the weightlessness of space. It seemed only right to stitch some of these together into a forty minute mix, the only problem being Orb songs are sometimes of such a length that it could easily have been a three song mix. It was only once I started putting it together I realised that some of the Orb's recent works have a particularly current resonance...

Forty Minutes Of The Orb

• Dohnavùr: New Objectivity (The Orb's Rest And Be Thankful Mix)
• Sedibus: Toi 1338b (Edit)
• OSS: Wow Picasso!
• The Orb: Ital Orb
• The Orb: Alpine (Prins Thomas Short Yoga Break Version)
• The Orb: The Weekend It Rained Forever- Oseberg Buddha Mix (The Ravens Have Left The Tower)

Dohnavùr are a Scottish duo on the excellent Castles In Space label. The Orb's remix is on a remix package that came out in January this year. 

Sedibus is Alex and original Orb man Andy Falconer. Their album The Heavens came out in May 2021 and was one of the records that sound-tracked last summer for me. 

OSS (Orb Sound System) are Alex and Fil Le Gonidec. Enter The Kettle, a six track album, came out in either November 2021 or July 2022 depending on whether you got the digital or the endlessly delayed vinyl. 

Alpine was a single from 2016 with the Prins Thomas mixes following shortly after. At this point The Orb were Alex and Thomas Fehlmann (who has since departed). 

Ital Orb and The Weekend It Rained Forever are both from the album which was one of the sounds of the first lockdown, released just a couple weeks after the country shut down- March 2020's Abolition Of The Royal Familia. On Abolition Of The Royal Familia The Orb were Alex and Michael Rendell with contributions from Roger Eno the lovely piano on The Weekend...), Youth, Steve Hillage, David Harrow, Gaudi, Miquette Giraudy and Nick Burton and it sounded then and still sounds now like a 21st century Orb classic. Have the ravens taken flight yet?

Monday's Long Song

I posted the Hardway Bros remix of Sparking Plugs by Deo'Jorge last week (the post is here) and at that point hadn't heard the Prins Thomas remix of the same track. Nine and a half minutes of dark, entrancing, sinuous, Scandi- disco is what I'm saying. 

Prins Thomas remixes, often titled Diskomiks, are a joy- wiggy, pulsing and inventive versions. His soaring Diskomiks of Kingdom Of Rust by Doves is always a pleasure to hear as is his spaced out bouncy remix of Seahawks with Tim Burgess on vocals, there's a stunning take oo Terr's Tale Of Devotion, a very long one of Kelly Lee Owens's Bird from last year and A Man Called Adam's Paul Valery At The Disco. This one of Alpine by The Orb is very good too, a track I thought was pretty recent but is already five years old.

Alpine (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)

Whippersnapper

The sheer quantity of new material coming from The Orb stable could be a bit overwhelming; alongside the Royal Familia album and the remixes version, the recent further adventures of The Orb remixes of other artists, the outstanding Sebidus album from Alex Paterson and Andy Falconer, not to mention the Chocolate Hills album from 2019, there's now another new album in the pipeline- Enter The Kettle from OSS. OSS is Orb Sound System (or On Sum Shit), a collaboration between Alex and Fil, friends from both being Killing Joke roadies way back and with Orb history dating back through various albums and gigs. The first taster for Enter The Kettle is Whippersnapper, a track that sounds like it started out in the same space as the Sebidus album, space travel and widescreen ambience, but on OSS Fil brings a tougher edge to the sound, a metallic, industrial ambient groove. 

The album isn't out until November and it seems a bit depressing to be looking and pre- ordering an album that far ahead, when summer will be long gone and winter in front of us, but I'm guessing that this is in large part due to the problems in getting vinyl pressed by the limited number of pressing plants available and the major labels block booking plants for their own releases.

The quantity of releases Alex has been putting out across the Orb board, to go back to the start of this post, would be too much of the quality wasn't high but the entire Orb operation is at the top of its game at the moment and OSS looks like being another genuine contender. 

Iron Chair

I started the week with an Orb related release and we're bouncing back in that direction today with one of the remixes from the Abolition Of The Royal Familia Guillotine Mixes album, out back in April. There's a host of Orb- linked names offering up new versions of tracks from last year's album- Youth's ten minute odyssey Shape Shifting Pt 1 is superb, a long drawn out ambient first half and a driving beat driven second. David Harrow contributes two remixes, both well worth the price of admission. Moody Boys, Andy Falconer, Sendelica and Kris Needs all turn up and then there's this beauty from Gaudi, the album track bent into all kind of new shapes and positions. 

Ital Orb (Iron Chair) Gaudi Remix