Forty Minutes Of Hypnotone

Last week Khayem at Dubhed posted a recreated 1997 mixtape which included a Hypnotone remix of The Lilac Time's Dreaming, a remix that did not go down well with Stephen Duffy at the time but as Khayem points out is 'pretty close' to 'Hypnotone's high water mark remix of Sheer Taft's Cascades (that remix of Cascades is a desert island disc for me). The post sent me into the Hypnotone's back catalogue and today's mix is the result, forty minutes of Hypnotone remixes and their own material to light up Sunday. 

Hypnotone were Tony Martin, a Manchester producer with Martin Mittler (bassist from Intastella and Laugh) and later Cordelia Ruddock (who Tony discovered at a fashion show). Hypnotone signed to Creation which led to work with Primal Scream and The Lilac Time, both Creation acts at the time. Their self- titled mini album from 1990 is a lost gem, an early 90s time capsule. 

Forty Minutes Of Hypnotone

• Dream Beam (Ben Chapman Remix)
• Hypnotonic
• Atlantis (Hypnotone Edit)
• Dreaming (Hypnowah Remix)
• Dreaming (Wave Station Remix)
• Cascades (Hypnotone Mix)
• Come Together (HypnotoneBrainMachineMix)
• Electraphonic

Dream Beam was the debut release, a 1990 12" on Creation from that point where Alan McGee wanted Creation to be a dance label and briefly did it very well indeed. The much missed Denise Johnson is on vocals, 'feel so high', sung over chilled dance bleepy house. I saw Hypnotone play live at Sefton Park in Liverpool in the summer of 1990, this track floating over the lake in the summer darkness, everyone very chilled as Denise's voice rang out. It was remixed twice, once by Danny Rampling and once by Ben Chapman, the latter being the pick of the pair for me, perfect 1991 dance music. The robotic voice repeating 'hypnotise us... hypnotise us...' is very hypnotic and as the track comes to a close the collapse into the final vocal message, 'I don't know if I'll ever see you again...' is a blast.

Hypnotonic, all piano house, rattling 808s and a very early 90s rap courtesy of Carlos (2 Supreme), was a 1991 single was recorded at Out Of The Blue in Manchester, a studio in the then semi- derelict Ancoats area, now part of the ever growing regeneration of central Manchester.  

Atlantis was a 1991 12" single by Sheer Taft, remixed by Tony. The Hypnotone remix of Cascades, also from 1991, is a genuine classic of the era, a record that was big everywhere from Ibiza to Manchester and in between. It appeared on the Creation dance compilation Keeping The Faith which is a definitive document of a time. 

Dreaming was a 1991 single by The Lilac Time, a pair of remixes that sound great today, dubby Balearic house- why Stephen Tin Tin Duffy didn't like it is a mystery. 

Come Together, Primal Scream's second Screamadelica- era single, is better known in its Weatherall and Farley remix forms but the Hypnotone remix is a belter too, harder and faster, distorted voices, thumping 808 kick drums, horns, bubbling bass, everything piling up in an ecstatic rush. It was on Keeping The Faith and released as a white label 12" along with the fourth and largely missed BBG remix of Come Together. Tony co- produced the cover of Slip Inside This House that appears on Scremadelica too. 

Electraphonic was on the second Hypnotone album, Ai, released in November 1991. 

Tiers

Tonight at one minute past midnight Greater Manchester goes into Tier 3, the highest rank of the government's new Coronavirus restriction system- if this government can really be said to anything as planned or thought out as a system. The government have had months to prepare for an autumn wave. Literally everyone said it was coming. They've had months to set up a functioning testing service, to create a Track and Trace system, to come up with a coherent plan for dealing with the rapidly rising numbers of new cases and the influx of hospital admissions. Instead, they paid people to go to the pub for food in August while turning the blame for non- compliance with the rules onto the people. 

What they have signally failed to acknowledge is that this government lost all it's moral authority to govern, every last ounce of it, when they failed to sack Dominic Cummings in May. At that exact moment and that charade in the garden of 10 Downing Street where their senior advisor- an unelected member of the government remember- refused to admit any wrong doing, Johnson's government could no longer tell anyone what to do. They had broken the rules themselves and didn't care. They were laughing at us. They were contemptuous of us. 

Since then some people have kept to whatever rules are in force wherever they live, some people have largely followed the rules using their own judgement and common sense about where they can bend them and some people have taken the view that if the government don't play by the rules then why should they? Some of us have barely crept out of lockdown at all- we are still effectively shielding an extremely vulnerable person. Watching other people flout the rules hasn't been easy. The feeling that existed back in April, that we were all in this together, which existed genuinely for a while, has been blown apart. As numbers have crept up again since September Johnson has dithered and delayed. They locked down too late in March, they opened up too early in the summer. They introduced local restrictions that were difficult to understand and changed seemingly on a whim. They left Leicester in a local lockdown that never seemed to end. They announced that one place would go into further restrictions almost instantly while another would be able to wait until after the weekend. Now, with Merseyside, Lancashire and Greater Manchester all in Tier 3, gyms in Merseyside must close while in Lancashire they can stay open. Pubs serving 'substantial meals' can stay open but pubs that don't must close- does Covid 19 not infect people while using a knife and fork? They bullied the civic leaders of Liverpool into accepting Tier 3 and then found that the elected mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, the leaders of the council and a cross party group of MPs wouldn't roll over. Funnily enough the pair of Conservative MPs refusing to accept new restrictions without a fight (including the Chair of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady) weren't attacked with the same venom Burnham has been. The politicians fighting the government's attempts to impose Tier 3 on Greater Manchester weren't even necessarily arguing that the restrictions weren't called for, they just wanted the evidence that the ones being proposed would be effective (which wasn't forthcoming because this government is shit at details and just relies on the selective use of data to try to prove points). What Andy Burnham and the rest also wanted was financial support for the thousands of locals who would be affected by the loss of their jobs and the withdrawal of income. Johnson's middle man, Robert Jenrick (himself guilty of breaking lockdown restrictions in April), found himself up against a Zoom wall of anger and disgust, from Tories as well as Labour, and when it came to finding another £5 million, told his boss Johnson that the deal was off. Andy Burnham stood in front of GMex- the site of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819- and quite rightly told the cameras that this government promised to level up the north and here they were further levelling down. 

It seems pointless to close some businesses while leaving many others open. It seems pointless to close some pubs while leaving many still serving. Schools, colleges and universities are one of the main breeding grounds of the infection currently but since various opponents have called for a short 'circuit break', Johnson's government refuse to consider this- not for scientific reasons but because it's politically unacceptable for them to do what the opposition have asked for. A circuit break policy is now taking effect in Wales and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Scotland follow suit, but once again Johnson dithers until it's too late. Their own scientific advisors recommended it several weeks ago. Johnson rejected it but still claims to be 'following the science'. Tiers, as someone pointed out recently, are not enough. 

Here are The Lilac Time, mid 60s psychedelic style, in 1990...

It'll End In Tears 

Here's Paul Weller remixed by Leo Zero, Blackpool Northern Soul style, in 2010... 

Tears Are Not Enough (Leo Zero Remix)

A couple of days ago on social media I said this about Andy Burnham...

It's fair to say that this man becoming a genuine hero in Manchester and the north west wasn't predictable. His reasons for becoming mayor didn't always seem clear, his run for the Labour leadership in 2015 was a disaster and I don't think everyone here has always trusted him, but he's shown true leadership and grit the last few days, standing up to the useless bunch of chancers and incompetents in the government and standing up for us. More power to him.

And I stand by all of that, cometh the hour, cometh the man etc. It has been a truly absurd year, a nightmare in many ways, full of personal and public disasters and political horrors. It's genuinely encouraging to see the odd green shoot while also keeping that anger burning.

Dreaming

Things are weird at the moment- it goes without saying really- but despite now having got into a routine during the lockdown period and the weekly events becoming ways to mark the passing of time (weekends free of virtual and online/video work, Tuesday putting the bins out, Thursday night clapping) there are moments when the sheer otherness and scale of what is happening hit home. The community that is being fostered, especially on streets like ours where people live close to each other and while the sun has been shining people have been socially distancing in their front gardens, talking to each other across walls and hedges, is a definite feature of 2020. But there are times when it's all a bit much. The silence outside. The absence of the people you'd expect to see every day. The strange atmosphere in supermarkets. The crossing the road to avoid people when out for a walk. The new normal seems normal and then something happens that makes you remember how un-normal this all is, how far from normal we are.

As I type this a hearse with a coffin in it and just two cars following has driven past my window.

 I've seen several links to newspaper articles about people experiencing more vivid or more lucid dreams during the lockdown and I have found myself waking up suddenly, in a jolt, from some very vivid dreams. I don't think the dreams themselves are especially strange- often they seem to be work dreams- but they do seem to be very real.

In May 1991  Creation's dance act Hypnotone remixed The Lilac Time. Hypnotone remixed other Creation artists, memorably Primal Scream and Sheer Taft and had several great records at the time themselves. The remix of Dreaming is a lovely piece of dance pop, warm and open, ambient and bleepy, and the voice repeating 'all the people on this earth... I am talking to you'. A record totally in tune with the shift that had taken place at that time.

Dreaming (Hypnowah Mix)

Somewhere Down The Road

Last week the Madchester Rave On blog posted up a 12" single from May 1991, remixes of The Lilac Time's Dreaming by Creation dance act Hypnotone. I'm not even sure I knew that these remixes existed and if I did I don't think I'd heard them before. Hypnotone had a classic 1990 release on Creation, the magnificent, bleepy Dream Beam and an excellent eponymous album in the same year. They remixed Primal Scream and Sheer Taft. This remix of Dreaming is very 1991 and a very chilled, spaced out affair. The whole 12", with the original song and a different version of the remix was posted by MRO here.

Dreaming (Wave Station Remix)

The Lilac Time started out in 1986, an indie/jangle-pop/folk band founded by Stephen Duffy (formerly Stephen Tin Tin Duffy) and his brother Nick who veered from major to indie in the 80s pitching up at Creation around 1990 and being managed by Alan McGee. In 1987 they released a beautiful, jaunty but melancholy single called Return To Yesterday, a song I never seem to get bored of and one I've posted before.

Return To Yesterday

The lyrics, written over 30 years ago now, seem to take on a new meaning in the light of our current political situation.

'It was the day before the day before yesterday
When we thought everything would now go our way
We inherited a fortune of innocence
And they took it all away

We travel on the last bus from sanity
Through province town to cities of obscurity
And somewhere down the road it occurs to me
That I might have missed my stop

But I will not return to yesterday
Or smooth out the human clay
We'll face this new England like we always have

In a fury of denial

We'll go out dancing on the tiles
Help me down, but don't take me back

I heard a lover calling to Saint Anthony
Sadly treating love like her property
Only battles can be lost and so it seems we do
But I'm hoping for a change

I left you at the bus stop in working town
Now the service has been cut re-named slumber down
I can see you on the bars of your brother's bicycle
Now I hope you're not alone

And all the politician creeps
I know they want them back
And the couturier weeps
She knows they won't come back

And the lovers who seldom speak
I know they want them back
And me falling back into your half term kisses
No I will not'

Duffy seems to be writing about loss of childhood and how the future isn't what it was promised to be, that adult life is emptier than it seemed as a child. I can't help but feel Duffy is coming out against nostalgia here, he isn't wanting to go back to childhood or teenage years, despite the lure of the half term kisses, but something has been lost. 

Both sides of the Brexit argument could fit in to this, the Leavers who want to return to the mythical England of their imagination and the Remainers who feel they've been betrayed, sold out and ignored and who suddenly in 2016 found themselves in a country they didn't recognise. The chorus- ''we'll face this new England like we always have/in a fury of denial, we'll go out dancing on the tiles''- speaks for itself. 

The Girl Who Waves At Trains

Ha! Another one- although this one is The Girl Who... rather than The Girl With...
Stephen Duffy's Lilac Time have get plenty of gems hidden in their back catalogue- this is one of them.

The Girl Who Waves At Trains

The Lilac Time 'Return To Yesterday'

A lost gem from 1988 this one, having little in common with what else was happening in that year. Stephen Duffy decided being a solo pop star wasn't his cup of tea, so formed The Lilac Time with his brother. They're still around in some form today. I havn't got much else by them but this is a cracking little song, very English sounding. It's got brisk drumming, a lovely melody, crisp and perfectly pronounced vocals, finger picking and folky banjo, and a tune that the milkman can whistle. I'm not really selling this one yet am I? The lyrics seem both nostalgic and rueful, but at the same time the chorus keeps telling us 'No I will not, return to yesterday'. It goes on

'We'll face this new England,
Like we always have,
In a language of denial,
We'll go out dancing on the tiles'

Which seems pretty English to me.

As does complaining about the cutting of rural bus services, as he does in the fourth verse.

I know you probably don't really care what I think about the lyrics, this isn't an English Literature lesson, but this gets into my head and nags at me, and I think Stephen Duffy really nails something here. So come on, even if you normally come for the dancier, more leftfield stuff (as the mediafire download stats tell me), click and download this one. It's a good 'un.

Today's post is dedicated to Mr Michael Foot, the last socialist leader of the Labour Party, who died today aged 96. Keep the red flag flying.

return_to_yesterday.mp3