Fifty Minutes Of Soundtrack Saturday

2025's year long Saturday series Soundtrack Saturday has reached the final reel but before the credits roll it seemed that a Sunday mix of various songs and scores from the various film soundtracks I've written about would make a good Sunday mix. This is the result, seventeen tracks from sixteen films, sequenced with something approaching a narrative arc- it starts out in the desert with Harry Dean Stanton tramping round the dust, stays out west for while and then shifts to Tokyo, sleeplessness and jet lag. We jump around some other locations- Long Island, France, Memphis- and have visions of a post- apocalyptic USA before the climax, a death, some levity and then Rutger Hauer in the rain. 

The photo at the top is of Stretford Essoldo, a former cinema just up the road from me, a beautiful 1930s building that has been sadly empty and unused for decades. 

Fifty Minutes Of Soundtrack Saturday

• Ry Cooder: Cancion Mixteca
• Ennio Morricone: Watch Chimes
• Bob Dylan: Billy 7
• Joe Strummer: Tennessee Rain
• Tom Waits: Jockey Full Of Bourbon
• Kevin Shields: Intro- Tokyo
• Kevin Shields: City Girl
• Mick Jones: Long Island
• David Holmes: I Think You Flooded It
• John Lurie: Tuesday Night In Memphis
• Gabriel Yared: 37 Degrees 2 Le Matin
• Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: The Road
• John Barry: Theme From Midnight Cowboy
• Brian Eno: Deep Blue Day
• Son House: Death Letter Blues
• B.J. Thomas: Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
• Vangelis: Tears In Rain

Cancion Mixteca is from Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders' 1984 film, a Ry Cooder soundtrack with some dialogue from the film that stands up as an album in its own right.  

Watch Chimes is from Sergio Leone's For A Few Dollars More, the second installment of the Dollars trilogy, released in 1967. 

Billy is from Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, Sam Peckinpah's 1973 Western, Bob Dylan contributing the soundtrack and appearing in the film. 

Joe Strummer did the soundtrack for Walker, Alex Cox's 1987 Western- one of Joe's best 'wilderness years' songs. 

A Jockey Full Of Bourbon appears in Down By Law, Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film- Tom Waits is one of the three stars of the film as well as being a key part of the soundtrack. 

Intro- Tokyo and City Girl are from Lost In Translation, Sofia Coppola's 2003 film, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson lost in Tokyo. 

Mick Jones provided three tracks for the 1993 film Amongst Friends- Long Island is the most complete, a Jones solo song. 

I Think You Flooded It is from Out Of Sight, the first of many David Holmes- Steven Soderbergh soundtrack collaborations, released in 1998. 

John Lurie's score for Mystery Train had to compete with some big hitters- Elvis' Mystery Train for one, Roy Orbison's Domino for another. A second Jim Jarmusch film in this mix- the use of music is central to Jarmusch's films. 

Gabriel Yared's guitar playing is from the soundtrack to Betty Blue, another late 80s film that made a deep impression on me- Beatrice Dalle made quite an impression too. 

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' soundtrack work spans all sorts of movies and documentaries. They began with the soundtrack to 2009 film The Road, a harrowing version of Cormac McCarthy's equally harrowing novel. 

Theme From Midnight Cowboy is gorgeous, a John Barry highpoint from a composer who recorded dozens of soundtracks. That harmonica. Stunning. 

Brian Eno's soundtrack work is wide and varied and an Eno only soundtrack mix would definitely work- Deep Blue Day is from the 1996 film Trainspotting but originally on Another Green World, Eno's 1975 album. 

Son House's Death Letter Blues is from 1965, just Son and a metal bodied resonator guitar. It's a stunning song and performance, Son's lyrics and performance can chill to the bone. It appeared on the soundtrack to On The Road, the  2012 version of Jack Kerouac's novel. 

B.J. Thomas' Raindrops Keep falling On My Head was a worldwide smash following its appearance in the 1969 film Butch Cassady And The Sundance Kid. The song is probably what the film is best known for, along with the two stars- Robert Redford and Paul Newman- and the famous shoot out ending. 

At the end of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott's 1982 sci fi/ film noir version of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Rutger Hauer sits on top of a crumbling building in the rain, holding a dove and improvises a farewell speech as Harrison Ford slumps in front of him, his life saved. 'All these moments will be lost in time', Hauer says as Vangelis' synth score plays. But they're not are they- they replay endlessly, equally moving each time. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Back in January of this year I stated this weekly Saturday series, following year long ones from previous years- Saturday live (live performances) and VA Saturday (various artists compilations). Saturday Soundtrack is drawing to a close and I need to think of something new for 2026. 

Soundtrack Saturday started with Blade Runner and then went on to cover Wings Of Desire, Paris Texas, 20th Century Women, Walker, Lost In Translation, Performance, Bullitt, Midnight Cowboy, High Fidelity, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, The Rockford Files, Escape From New York, The Sheltering Sky, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Shopping, Absolute Beginners, Salvation, Repo Man, Trainspotting, The Beach, Flashback, The Wicker Man, Brian Eno on Jubilee, Heat and We Are As Gods, Ennio Morricone's Dollars trilogy, Sid And Nancy, Amongst Friends, Rockers, Mystery Train, Betty Blue, Goblin scoring Profondo Rosso, Suspiria and Zombi- Dawn Of The Dead, Butch Cassady And The Sundance Kid, Apocalypse Now!, The Clangers, Chris Massey's live re- scoring of silent films from 1920s Germany (The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, Metropolis and Nosferatu), Brush Strokes, Out Of Sight, Down By Law, The Ipcress File, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (The Road, The Assassination Of Jesse James BY The Coward Robert Ford and La Panthere De Neiges), various Western TV and film themes Rawhide, Bonanza, The High Chaparral and The Magnificent 7), On The Road and most recently Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid. 

You don't need me to tell you how great Blade Runner is and how perfectly Vangelis' music fitted with Ridley Scott's visuals. One of the joys of the Blade Runner soundtrack is the use of dialogue from the film on the OST album. Harrison Ford's voice adds a lot to the Vangelis' synths here, sci fi noir and symphonic drama in sync...

Blade Runner (Main Titles)

I think it's now pretty clear that Ford's Deckard isn't really the hero of Blade Runner. Deckard's job is to 'retire' replicants. In 2019, when the film is set (made in 1982 when 2019 seemed impossibly far away), most work has been outsourced to replicants, human seeming androids made with an expiry date. These replicants have reached a pint where the manufacturers can even give them memories, enabling them to believe they are human. Early on Deckard meets Rachael (played by Sean Young), a replicant who has no idea she is not human. Deckard falls in love with Rachael, further adding to the complications. 'Too bad she won't live forever', he is told at the end, mockingly. 'But then again, who does?'

What it means to be human is central to the film as is the question of the morality of creating beings that believe they are human and giving them the jobs that humans won't do. Pris, played by Darryl Hannah, is described as 'a basic pleasure model'. Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, is the leader of a four replicant gang, AWOL on earth and needing to be retired. Batty and the other replicants are the real heroes of Blade Runner. At the film's end Batty demonstrates his humanity, saving Deckard despite the Blade Runner trying to kill him. Batty's monologue, partly improvised by Hauer, is legendary...

Tears In Rain

In 2013 Grumbling Fur released a song, The Ballad Of Roy Batty, a cosmic, choral, psychedelic song with Hauer's words sung by the band. It sounds like it could a bad idea on paper but actually works really well, the monologue's message- life is short, experiences are fleeting, we all die, make the most of it- as apt now as it was when a fictional character muttered it on film back in 1982. More in fact. 

A Brand New Moon Is Born

I was in two minds about going to see Mercury Rev at New Century Hall last Friday night. A friend who saw them in Dublin last year said they were a bit hit and miss and the album, Born Horses, has some good songs on it and some I'm less sure about. But, I've been playing the pair of late 20th and early 21st century albums that are probably their peak- Deserter's Songs and All Is Dream- a lot recently and the possibility of seeing those songs played live was very tempting. My brother was keen, several friends were going and there were some tickets left so I took the risk and it more than paid off. Mercury Rev were on fire and as they wend their way across the country this month anyone going to any of the other dates is in for a good evening. 

The two core members, singer/ guitarist Jonathan Donohue and guitarist Grasshopper, have been joined by a new piano/ sax/ flute player Jesse Chandler and keys player Marion Genser plus a drummer (set up at the side of the stage) who loves the motorik kraut rhythms. They arrived on stage one by one, picking their way into the ambient soundscape of The Little Bird. Donohue arrives, very much the frontman, theatrical hand gestures and long cuffs sticking out from under his black jacket and then they burst into Tonite It Shows. From that point on their homebrewed combination of 1940s Disney soundtracks, 60s psychedelia, 90s alt- rock, their own weird Baroque Americana, long drawn out Tangerine Dream style sections and bursts of twin guitar, everyone playing everything together and really loudly, really hits home. 

Halfway through, after a run of psychedelic torch songs, Jonathan leans into to the mic and starts speaking Rutger Hauer's famous lines from Blade Runner, 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I've watched C- Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate... all these things will be lost in time... like tears in rain'. Jesse gets the sax out and they play a full cover of Vangelis' Tears In Rain from the Blade Runner soundtrack that drifts by beautifully. Then the dive into Goddess On A Hiway, blasting into the chorus with the lines 'And I know it ain't gonna last/ When I see your eyes arrive/ They explode like two bugs on glass...

Goddess On A Hiway

The second half of the set is perfectly weighed- Ancient Love from Born Horses, a song with a lengthy spoken word section inspired by the words of Robert Creeley and sumptuous, orchestral early 70s easy listening.

Tides Of The Moon from All Is Dream is followed by the always powerful Holes from Deserter's Songs, a song that still startles not least the bit where the band drop down and Donohue sings, 'Holes/ Dug by little moles/ Angry jealous spies/ They got telephones for eyes'. And then Opus 40, a song seemingly inspired equally by 1920s cinema and wasted 60s cosmic psychedelia, the existential lyric 'I'm alive she cried but I don't know what it means' at its heart. 'Tears in waves/ Minds on fire'. Donohue is conducting the band, throwing his arms out left and right. Finally the play The Dark Is Rising, the huge, emotive and affecting opening song from 2001's All Is Dream, a song about love and loss set to a grand swell of orchestral psychedelia, Jonathan crooning 'In my dreams I'm always strong'. I'm sure I can't be the only person wiping their eyes.  

The Dark Is Rising

The band start to wind the song down, Jonathan departs, the musicians leave one by one and that's it, no encore, the songs played almost without a gap between them, one becoming the next and fading out as they faded in ninety minutes earlier. 

The two pictures above are mine. This one is from the band's Facebook page taken by Vittorio Bongiorno.

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

While searching through my music folders and files recently I was struck by the number of songs I had that have the word 'dream' or 'dreams' in the title. A rich source of songwriting inspiration. They say hearing about other people's dreams is really boring but I don't think that's always they case. My own dreams have become really vivid and at times quite disturbing in the three years since Isaac died (and also since I started taking statins for high cholesterol a year and a half ago). Waking up having dreamed of Isaac, him being there and talking to me, is always a startling way to start the day (or the middle of the night). It takes a moment for me to realise it was a dream and that he's not there. Sometimes that half asleep- half awake state can be really pleasant and attempting to go back to sleep to go back into a nice dream is something that I'm sure lots of us do. 

Whatever the reason for dreaming, the brain/ consciousness sifting through stuff and pulling things from the dim and distant past into our sleeping state along with bizarre and random, surreal situations, is a rich vein of inspiration for songwriters- both musically and lyrically. Ambient music often seems like an attempt to make music that can soundtrack dreams. The blur and fuzz of shoegaze and psychedelia likewise. As all this percolated through my head on the road coming home from work one evening last week it seemed that a dreams mix was in order. 

Forty Minutes Of Dreams

• Kevin McCormick & David Horridge: Glass Dream
• Kim Gordon: Dream Dollar
• Spatial Awareness: Dream Food (SA Dub)
• Suicide: Dream Baby Dream (Single Version)
• Lunar Dunes: Pharaoh's Dream
• Ride: Dreams Burn Down
• Mark Peters: Red Sunset Dreams
• Sheer: Mezcal Dream
• Spirea X: Chlorine Dream
• Blade Runner Soundtrack: Deckard's Dream

Kevin McCormick is a Mancunian guitarist who released several albums of minimal instrumental music in the early 80s. He met bassist David Horridge in the late 70s and in 1982 they recorded Light Patterns, a minimal, gently psychedelic/ ambient album. Largely ignored, the album and others by Kevin were re- released in 2021. Last year Kevin released a new album- Passing Clouds- which is lovely and can be found at Bandcamp. 

Kim Gordon's solo album from last year, The Collective, passed me by a bit but it's a powerful piece of work, a jolt of electricity, hip hop drums, noise and Kim's NY blank cool. 

Spatial Awareness released Dream Food as an EP last year, an electronic trippy delight with this dub as a dreamy counterpoint. 

Suicide's Dream Baby Dream is one of those songs, an all timer. It came out as a single in 1979, a repetitive synth, drum machine and vocal blur of brilliance, a song lost in its own state of warm, blissful ignorance, the synth patterns circling endlessly. A track that could be loped for an hour and not outstay its welcome. 

Lunar Dunes' Galaxsea originally came out in 2011, post- jazz, post- punk, dubby global tracks 'for truth seekers and interplanetary vacationers'. The band included former members of Cornershop and Transglobal Underground and took the 1960s and 70s West German bands as their inspiration. Pharoah's Dream is at the centre of Galaxsea and rattles along in a cosmische and future jazz way.

Dreams Burn Down was on Ride's 1990 debut album Nowhere, a shoegaze classic, crunching FX guitars, slow motion drums and typically youthful lyrics about lost or unrequited love. Live Dreams Burn Down is massive, a wall of sound and sensation. 

Mark Peters is a guitarist from Wigan. His solo albums, 2017's Innerland and 2022's Red Sunset Dreams, are big Bagging Area favourites. The title track of the second is a rippling ambient instrumental, the wide open spaces of the American West crossed with north west England psychedelia. 

Sheer is Sheer Taft who in 1990 made one of the era's best wobbly Balearic dance records, the mighty Cascades. In 2022 Sheer Taft, now residing in Spain rather than Glasgow, made a follow up, an album called ...And Then There Were Four, a Spaghetti Western album with Andrew Innes and the late Martin Duffy from Primal Scream on board.

Jim Beattie was a founder member of Primal Scream, leaving to form Spirea X who released an album in 1991, Fireblade Skies. The debut release was a single the year before, Chlorine Dream, guitars from The Byrds, attitude from Glasgow, drums and vocals from 1990. 

An expanded, full length version of the Blade Runner soundtrack, The Esper Edition, was unofficially released and has done the rounds as a bootleg for years. The film deals with all sorts of themes dreams being one of them. Deckard's Dream is one minute and ten seconds of Vangelis/ ambient sound. In the film Deckard dreams of a unicorn, the meaning of which has been argued about since the film's release in 1982. 

Soundtrack Saturday

Throughout 2024 I ran a series every Saturday called V.A. Saturday, a celebration of the various artists compilation album. I could probably keep this going but felt it was time for a change so am shifting the Saturday slot to an appreciation of soundtrack albums, the records/ CDs released to accompany films. There's a difference between soundtracks and original scores which I will probably skirt the line of, and maybe at times the old V.A. Saturday might return. 

When I was a kid, I'm talking twelve/ thirteen, I was really into soundtracks. I was a big fan of cinema and the early 80s were a good time to be into films. Soundtrack albums were tied in to the cinematic releases, and were often if truth be told a bit of a let down. What sounded epic and exciting over the cinema speakers and complemented by the visuals could easily sound less so at home. But there were enough really good soundtrack releases that stood on their own two feet and it was a habit that lasted through the 80s, vinyl OSTs and soundtracks a big part of my fledgling record collection. In 1981 I bought the Raiders Of The Lost Ark soundtrack, my first soundtrack album, with John Williams' orchestral theme played by the London Symphony Orchestra often on the Dansette turntable. I was a slightly quirky child at this age. The same year, '81 (I was eleven), I was invited to a fancy dress party and went as Lawrence of Arabia. Everyone else was far more plugged in to popular culture for their fancy dress. The Raiders soundtrack didn't survive the years- I've no idea what happened to it. 

The following year Blade Runner came out. I was a big Harrison Ford fan and had an interest in film noir (early evening BBC2 often showed black and white films from the 1940s). The cinema up the road from us in Withington, the Scala (later Cine City, now a Tesco) had a liberal attitude to age certificates and admission and twelve year old me got in to see Blade Runner despite looking )and being) too young. Blade Runner is a very different kettle of androids compared to Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Star Wars- dark, ambiguous, dystopian. I loved it and love it still, whatever cut or version you're watching. I had no problem with the studio added voice over (and don't still) or the vaguely happier ending the studio tacked on to Ridley Scott's film. 

The soundtrack too planted deep roots in me, Vangelis' synthesisers and timpani, his wide screen electronics, jazz saxophone and film noir influences, all very memorable and  striking. Not that anyone could buy the soundtrack- it was unavailable until 1994 and then released in a strange version that included recordings not even used in the film.  

Vangelis' equipment list for the recording of the soundtrack is a synth lovers dream- various Rolands including the Jupiter 4, Yamahas, a Fender Rhodes. He supplemented them with traditional percussion instruments and when the various versions of the soundtrack were released, snippets of dialogue from the film were included, not least the famous Rutger Hauer Tears In Rain monologue. Blade Runner is a masterpiece, a perfect vinyl soundtrack album, twelve tracks of early 80s synth music, enormously influential, futuristic, moving, powerful, evocative, romantic and haunting, and a narrative in its own right. 

Blade Runner (Main Titles)

Tales Of The Future

Blade Runner (End Titles)

Tears In Rain

Saturday Theme Eleven: RIP Vangelis

News came through on Thursday evening that Vangelis had died aged 79. Vangelis' soundtrack to Blade Runner (and all the other aspects of the film) are one of the formative influences on my tastes. Back in 1982, aged 12, the dark sci fi crossed with film noir of Blade Runner had a huge impact on me. Vangelis' synth soundtrack, from the pulsing, swooping Main Titles music through to the subtly epic Tears In Rain scene, is superb, the perfect synthesis of music and visuals. The soundtrack wasn't actually released until the 1992. Due to contractual difficulties an orchestral version recorded by the New American Orchestra came out in 1982, a version which was some distance from Vangelis' soundtrack. To listen to that you had to play your VHS copy. 

In the middle of the film replicant hunting Blade Runner Deckard is saved from death at Leon's hands by Rachael (the beautiful and brilliantly cast Sean Young). In a previous scene Rachael had turned up at Deckard's apartment trying to convince him she was human and not a replicant, based on the belief she had memories of her childhood. Those memories, the memories of her creator's niece, were implanted in her. When they return to Deckard's apartment, a single's man's flat in the middle of a futuristic Los Angeles where it rains perpetually, Deckard promises not to track her down and 'retire' her. They kiss and Vangelis' Love Theme plays, lush symphonic synth music with Dick Morrissey's tenor sax taking the lead. 

Love Theme

Later on, in the late 80s and early 90s Vangelis' music would enter my musical world again, with the majestic State Of Independence (both the 1982 Donna Summer single and the 1992 cover by Moodswings) and then the mid- 90s revival of some of his first band's music, the Greek psychedelia of Aphrodite's Child, especially the epic Four Horsemen.

RIP Vangelis. 

Tears In June

Richard Norris continues to produce his Music For Healing series, monthly long form pieces of ambient/ deep listening. It started in March last year, and turned out to be an excellent way to deal with the pressures of lockdown. This year's releases have all been named after the months they appear in- June's is a particularly special piece of music. It's at Bandcamp. As it plays, the twinkling synth parts and washes of warm drone, there are moments where it really reminds me of Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack and especially Roy Batty's death scene with Rutger Hauer's partly improvised monologue. 

'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion. I watched C- Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.'

Tears In Rain

As June plays it attains a real sense of weightlessness, of being beyond gravity, the feeling of drifting through space. This feed from the International Space Station provides some very fitting footage to go with Richard's music. 

Too Bad She Won't Live... But Then Again, Who Does?

'A new life awaits you in the Off- world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!'

Two weeks ago I published a post about Blade Runner and the long lasting impact of Vangelis' music from the 1982 film. The soundtrack, held up for years in legal disputes, eventually came out in the mid 1990s and included pieces of dialogue from the film among the synths and timpani to great effect. For some time there have been a series of bootleg editions of an album called Blade Runner Esper Edition, originating (I think) in 2001 on CDr. The Esper Edition is the full, proper soundtrack to Ridley Scott's film, an ambient/ musical edition across two discs, the score as well as music from the film itself, the dialogue (but not Harrison Ford's controversial film noir voiceover) and all the noises from the film- the rain, street sounds, voices, gunshots, the Voight- Kampf machine, hovercars, footsteps, all the ambient background sounds of Los Angeles in 2019 (or the Blade Runner version of it). You can fall down some internet wormholes looking at all the different bootleg editions that have been produced, various claims to be definitive and better or best quality. This one seems to be highly rated and to my ears is as good  as you're going to need. 

Blade Runner Esper Edition

And if you want to go deeper and further Youtube is full of parts of the soundtrack slowed down for a long, soft, ambient drone, white noise and Vangelis six hundred times slower than intended- this one, Blade Runner Blues slowed right down is a beautiful way to spend an hour.

Tales Of The Future

More and more I think that the soundtrack to Blade Runner has been a formative influence on my listening. Which is weird because if someone asked me to list my favourite artists I'd never reply 'Vangelis'. Then film came out in 1982 and I saw it at the cinema (the Scala in Withington, a very run down flea pit with three screens, two small ones downstairs and a larger one upstairs with double seats on the back row. Entry was £1 and they weren't too fussy about age restrictions. It later became Cine City and then was demolished). The look of the film, the non stop rain and night, neon lights, 1940s/ 1980s fashions, Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Darryl Hannah and Sean Young all captured my attention- the famous roof top scene and Roy Batty's death (and Hauer's famous improvised lines) lingered long after the credits had rolled. Vangelis' instrumental score must have stuck with me too- the synths and keyboards, the rolling drums and pulsing synthesisers, the bleeps and sounds of the machinery worked into the music and the snippets of dialogue, the strange bursts of Japanese singing in Tales Of The Future, the ambient washes of sound and sudden rumbles of distant timpani... I hear these all over the place in things I listen to at the moment. Vangelis has a long shadow.

Tales Of The Future

Blade Runner (End Titles)

Tears In Rain

Strange to think that when Blade Runner came out the year it was set in, 2019, was nearly four decades away in the future and is now two years gone. These Polaroids were taken by Sean Young during filming are an incredible time capsule and snapshot of the past/ future.

Isolation Mix One

'Don't create congestion in commonly used space', a poster from the Soviet Union, 1950s.

I thought I'd do something new today and maybe make it a regular feature. Everyone and their dog is transmitting DJ sets at the moment. One thing we've all got lots of is time. So in the moments between phoning in to long video conferences, teaching online lessons, wiling away hours absentmindedly surfing the internet and social media, spending time with my family and getting my state sanctioned daily exercise allowance I've also put together the first Bagging Area mix, fifty four minutes of music called Isolation Mix 1.



It's actually Isolation Mix 1.1, the first one wasn't quite right and I removed a couple of tracks and replaced them with some other ones. It's a mix of old and new, largely ambient and instrumental, a bit of dub and dub techno in there and appearances from Rutger Hauer and a retired French footballer.

Daniel Avery and Alessandro Cortini: Illusion of Time v Eric Cantona 'As Flies To Wanton Boys...'
Four Tet: Teenage Birdsong
Durutti Column: The Second Aspect Of The Same Thing
Richard Norris: Shorelines
Sabres Of Paradise: Jacob Street 7am
A Winged Victory For The Sullen: Keep It Dark, Deutschland
Vangelis: Tears In Rain
The Orb: The Weekend It Rained Forever (Oseberg Buddha Mix (The Ravens Have Left The Tower))
Dub Trees: King Of The Faeries (Avengers Outer Space Chug Dub)
Two Lone Swordsmen: As Worldly Pleasures Waves Goodbye...

Do Androids Dream Of 2019?

We're now in the year Blade Runner was set. We have until November for all the aspects of the film to be realised- replicants, flying cars, off world colonies, Voight- Kampff empathy response machines (although it wouldn't surprise me if these do exist). Maybe Blade Runner isn't very far from our 2019 at all- in the film corporations are all powerful, product and advertising is everywhere, the climate is seemingly broken (perpetual rain and night), the wealthy isolate themselves living high up above the streets where everyone else exists. Deckard's Esper machine is voice controlled and has the functions of Google Earth, the ability to manipulate photographs.

In Blade Runner's 2019 people dress in a cross between 1940s film noir and early 80s synth pop.

In the meantime, Vangelis' soundtrack remains a repeated joy.

Rachel's Song

Blade Runner Blues

Towca Androidow

Sometimes things just come together nicely, one thing from over there and another from over here. On Friday the Pulp Librarian posted this Polish promo poster for Bladerunner on Twitter. On Saturday while watching something completely unrelated on Youtube this long trancey remix of Vangelis' Bladerunner soundtrack turned up on the right hand side. A rather good expansive, trippy re-working of the film's soundtrack by Tranonica.

Orion

Sons And Daughters were a two boy/two girl band from Glasgow, dressed like Johnny Cash and sounding like a roots group gone punk. Taut guitars, crisp drums, Scottish swagger, growls and shrieks in the vocals. I liked their first two albums a lot. They split up a few years ago.

The Emperor Machine is Andrew Meecham, synth enthusiast and producer and formerly a member of Bizarre Inc. In 2012 he remixed Sons And Daughters' Orion and turned it into a long, funky, expansive, in your face, cosmic trip. Eleven minutes and thirty seven seconds of trip.

Orion (Emperor Machine Mix)

Orion is one of the most prominent constellations in the sky, visible across the world, named after Orion the Hunter from Greek mythology. It makes me think of Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Bladerunner...

'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die'

Playground Mix

Back to the playground (and the classroom) for me today. Let's start the week with a smashing mix from The Orb, featuring mainly The Orb but also Lee Perry, Madlib, Cypress Hill and Vangelis (from the Bladerunner soundtrack ...'I've seen things you people wouldn't imagine...attack ships on fire off the Shoulder of Orion, C-Beams at the Tannhauser gate...'). A pretty relaxed mix all round.



Baghdad Batteries - THE ORB
Interlude - MADLIB
Outland's (Fountains Of Elisha Mix ) - THE ORB 
Africa - THE ORB Feat LEE SCRATCH PERRY 
Legalise It - CYPRESS HILL
Fussball (Instrumental) - THE ORB 
You're Heard - DAEDELUS & TEEBS 
No Ice Age - THE ORB Feat LEE SCRATCH PERRY 
Majestic 6 - THE ORB UNRELEASED 
Congo - THE ORB Feat LEE SCRATCH PERRY 
Frogtime - SCREEN 
Moon Building Part 3 Ambient - THE ORB UNRELEASED 
Jahara - TEEBS 
Tears In The Rain - VANGELIS