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. 

Monday's Long Songs

This popped up out of nowhere at the weekend, an early 90s rock/ dance/ power ballad sung by Maria McKee and written/ recorded in collaboration with and produced by Youth. Someone somewhere said it's like the rock version of Sunshine On A Rainy Day which is quite apposite- Youth co- wrote and produced that record too, except Zoe took Sunshine On A Rainy Day to the top ten while Sweetest Child got stuck at number forty five.  

Sweetest Child (Extended Mix)

The bass and drums chug along in an early 90s way and Maria sings her heart out, a big sounding, soaring love song. The much missed Throb from Primal Scream plays guitar and lets rip with a huge solo. Saul Davies from James contributes violin and Nick Burton, formerly of Westworld and future Two Lone Swordsman, plays drums. The extended mix is nearly eight minutes long, a nicely drawn out affair with the last few minutes a Throb guitarfest. 

As a compare and contrast/ enjoy them both together bonus, here's 90s flower child Zoe and her 1991 single, a genuine pop- dance classic.

Sunshine On A Rainy Day Extended 12" Mix

Rave Of The Pops

The Top Of The Pops repeats on BBC4 have recently been flying through September 1991, a run of episodes where if we ignore Bryan Adams and his Robin Hood song (more a war crime than a single), Prince's single entendre Cream (chorus 'cream... get on top') and The Scorpions and their fall of the Berlin wall 'tribute' Winds Of Change it was wall to wall dance music, the rave dream come true, the long tail of what started in 1987/ 88 forcing its way into the charts and selling in huge quantities. Some of these singles were pop music dressed in dance music's clothes but they were rave/ dance music nonetheless. In some ways the episodes reminded me of those classic 60s pop music programmes where you got hit after hit - Hermann's Hermits, Sonny and Cher, The Animals, The Stones doing Get Of My Cloud, The Equals and whoever else had a single out that week. In September 1991 there was Sabrina Johnston doing Peace,(American soul/ dance music) and Rozalla's Everybody's Free, a song which the holiday makers in the Med bought on returning home from their two weeks in the sun. The Prodigy were making their first appearance with Charly. Oceanic were from Wallasey and their song Insanity was enormous, rave/ dance music for the masses (and nothing wrong with that). Super upbeat, bouncing rave pop with huge key changes. 

More credible and authentic maybe were Utah Saints, a Leeds duo who came up through the clubs, booking all the big late 80s/ early 90s names and who moved into making records, sampling left, right and centre. Bill Drummond reckoned they were the first true stadium house band. In 1991 What Can You Do For Me?, sampling Gwen Guthrie and Annie Lennox, went top ten . They understood that dance music needed to be presented live and armed with banks of TV screens, a dreadlocked bassist pushed front and centre, a drummer and bags of energy they pulled it off. 

Bizarre Inc were from Stafford and in 1991 had a hit with the brilliant Playing With Knives. By September they were back in the big sellers and back on Top Of The Pops with Such A Good Feeling. More TV screens, dancers dancing on top of banks of TV screens, full on pilled up chart music, piano house and techno from the north Midlands, a place where the clubs were full every weekend. 

I don't have What Can You Do For Me? in mp3 form, despite its speaker shaking brilliance, but here's Playing With Knives, rave hoover bass, kick drums and the instruction 'just dance and move your body'.

Playing With Knives (Quadrant Mix)

Less frenetic but just as much a child of the acid house revolution was Zoe's dreamy, optimistic, Balearic pop, Sunshine On A Rainy Day (the metal guitarist, all frilly shirt and long hair is well Balearic). It reached number four in the charts and sold enough to be the eighteenth best selling single of the year.  

Sunshine On A Rainy Day (12" Mix)

It's easy to sneer at Top Of The Pops and the charts but in the late 80s and early 90s it felt like change was taking place and the previously comfortable environs of the BBC, all 80s pop and megastars, were being invaded by a bunch of outsiders making music in their bedrooms and feeding it into the culture through the clubs and radio stations, blaring out of cars late at night and bedroom windows. Big selling music isn't necessarily better or worse than underground music but the charts of September 1991 looked like a complete shift, a sea change was taking place (and that's without even mentioning the guitar bands that had discovered the Funky Drummer and remixes at the same time). In some ways the 90s was born here. 

Trip Trip Away

I heard this the other day, pop-dance from 1990 (re-released in 1991). It sounded really good. Not that we've had any sunshine. Plenty of rainy days. I posted this song at the somewhat irregular This Blog Continues To Decline blog, unfairly as it is a good tune.

Sunshine On A Rainy Day (Extended 12" Mix)

For added joy here's Zoe on Top Of The Pops. That dancing wouldn't pass muster on a reality pop show now (and all the better for it).