Forty Five More Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

Last Sunday's fifty minute mix of remixes of songs from David Holmes' Blind On A Galloping Horse album was well received and I promised a second volume. In an unplanned coincidence me, Dan and Martin played support to David at The Golden Lion yesterday afternoon, the third time we've warmed up for him and its a pleasure and honour every time. Heavenly commissioned and released so many Blind On A Galloping Horse remixes of that I could probably do a third volume. Given that I've still not included in either of these mixes the Rich Lane remix (which came about due to a connection made by a post at this blog), the Hardway Bros Meets Monkton remix and various others (Robin Wylie, Daniel Avery, Darren Emerson, Working Men's Club...), a volume three would seem to be the order of the day at some point. 

Last time I started slow, some ambient/ chilled remixes before ramping it up in the second half. This one kicks in quicker. Last time I didn't include any remixes of the same song- this time I have, both Yeah x 3 and Necessary Genius feature twice but I liked the way the two remixes of Yeah x 3 worked together and the Necessary Genius remixes are very different animals. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of Blind On A Galloping Remix

• Yeah x 3 (Sonic Boom and Panda Bear Reset Remix)
• Yeah x 3 (The Vendetta Suite Reason To Live Remix)
• Necessary Genius (Lovefingers Dub And Response)
• Too Muchroom (Hardway Bros Too Much Acid Dub)
• Stop Apologising (Cosmodelica Extended Mix)
• It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Lovefingers and Heidi Lawden High Tide Mix)
• Necessary Genius (Decius Remix)

Sonic Boom and Panda Bear's Reset album was a 60s pop/ psych bubblegum adventure, reworkings/ samples of 60s songs filtered through a 21st century bubblegum box of tricks. It was followed by an Adrian Sherwood dub of Reset that raised it up a notch. Sonic and Panda's version of Yeah x 3, the most 60s pop song on Blind On A Galloping Horse, is a whir of drum machine rhythms, layers of glassy psychedelia and Raven's space echo vocal on top. 

The Vendetta Suite is fellow Belfast producer/ DJ/ musician Gary Irwin. He remixed Yeah x 3 twice- the weightless ambient drift of Reason To Drift was on last's week mix. This one, the Reason To Live remix, is more direct, led by a pulsing bass and wall of synths. 

Lovefingers is Andrew Hogge, the owner of the ESP Institute label, a DJ, producer and promoter. His remix of Necessary Genius is a deep one, with rapid fire drums, pumped up bass and Raven's vocal chopped up and FXed, and a hypnotic, repeating piano line thunders away. David list of inspirations- Tony Wilson, Weatherall, Guy Stevens, Nina Simone, northern soul, Peter Meadon, rock 'n' roll, Rastafari, Bernadette Devlin, David Keenan, Sinead O'Connor and refugees among them- rattle by. 

The lyrics for Too Muchroom come from an Andrew Weatherall quote- 'if you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room'. Andrew's influence is all over Blind On A Galloping Horse. There's a cover of Laugh Myself To Sleep from his unreleased second solo album (still unreleased due to a difference of opinion with engineer Steve Boardman who claimed co- writing credits and held the tapes/ hard drive hostage. Andrew's response was to say 'fuck him/ it' and move on, do the next thing. In a radio show he said he quite liked the idea of having an unreleased and legendary lost solo album. Appropriately Andrew's partner in The Asphodells, Tim Fairplay, played guitar on Laugh Myself To Sleep). Andrew's ALFOS partner Sean Johnston remixes Too Muchroom, one of several remixes Sean did of Galloping Horse songs. This one is exactly what it says it is- acid dub. The vocals are in there, twisted to pieces and just about audible. 

Cosmodelica is Colleen Murphy, New Yorker, DJ, producer and radio show host. Her Balearic Breakfast show and compilation albums are second to none. Her remix of Stop Apologising is like being dropped back into a scuzzy indie/ electro basement, dry ice and sticky floors, where the room smells of poppers and cigarettes and the crowd are ridiculously beautiful and elegantly wasted. 

Lovefingers makes a second appearance along with Heidi Lawden, and a remix of Its Over, If We Run Out Of Love, one of the songs that is the at the centre of Galloping Horse, heartbeat of the album. They did two, the Low Tide remix and this one, High Tide. Dark, repetitive acid disco. 

Necessary Genius returns for the ending, remixed by Decius, the London band made up of Fat White Family singer Lias Saoudi, brothers Liam and Luke May and Quinn Whalley from Warmduscher. Decius make brilliant, sweaty, sleazy, gay sauna acid house/ techno, tongues in cheeks, needles in the red and tempos pushed up high. They take Necessary Genius to its extreme here, the vocal reduced to staccato syllables and the drums galloping on and on. 

Monday's Long Song

Mildlife, Wikipedia informs us matter of factly, are a 'Melbourne based, Australian psychedelic jazz fusion group'. They have a new album out- I haven't heard it yet but will report back when I have. Last year they released a single called Return To Centaurus, a nine minute voyage into psychedelic/ cosmic space music with echoes of Giorgio Morodor and Sun Ra, music for the birth of the universe. It's ridiculously good. I only heard it a few weeks ago. The EP with the original version and two remixes can be bought here. The remix here is by Lovefingers, a fourteen minute slow jam with cosmic surf guitar, bongos and timpani, spaced out vocals and a long growly spoken word section that is very much a bathhouse odyssey. 

Return To Centaurus (Lovefingers Bathhouse Odyssey)

Sabresonic At Thirty

Big news announcement! Sit down, hold tight. Sabres Of Paradise, the early 90s dub techno trio of Andrew Weatherall, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, released their album Sabresonic thirty years ago (the exact release date is a matter of some debate but we're settling on 11th September 1993).

Over at The Flightpath Estate, the Andrew Weatherall Facebook group we set up nine years ago, the admin team (Martin, Dan, Mark, Baz and me) have had some discussions about things that have seemed ridiculous to us and have then actually started to take shape and happen. One of these is under wraps for the moment but the other is taking place three weeks today. Martin had the idea of holding a Sabresonic 30th birthday listening party at The Golden Lion in Todmorden and of inviting Jagz Kooner to do a Q&A session with him DJing after. We knocked it around a bit, a few calls were made and amazingly the Sabresonic 30th Anniversary party is happening at The Golden Lion on Friday 3rd  November. The event is free. Jagz is going to have a chat/ answer a few questions about Sabres of Paradise, the making of the album Sabresonic, working with Andrew, the Sabres remixes from the period and whatever else comes up, we'll listen to the music and open it up to the floor. The Q&A part of the evening is going to be hosted by someone new to the David Frost/ Graham Norton role (that would be me). Fingers crossed eh?

Back in 1994 Sabres remixed James and the results came out as a two track, half hour epic titled Jam J. On Andrew's residency at Kiss FM he played an early version/ remix of what became Jam J. This was never released but has been ripped from that Kiss FM broadcast, a Sabres remix of James' Honest Joe. It contains all sorts of signature Sabres sounds, the Weatherall/ Kooner/ Burns team working their magic with seven minutes of 1993 four- four dub techno, Mr Booth et al bent into all kind of new shapes (with a Kiss FM ident annoyingly appearing in the middle).  

Honest Joe (Unreleased Sabres Of Paradise Remix from Kiss FM Radio Mix)

November at The Golden Lion looks increasingly like the month of dreams. The night after the Sabresonic 30th party Red Snapper are playing. The following Friday David Holmes is DJing, a launchpad for his forthcoming album Blind On A Galloping Horse. On Sunday 19th November Manchester's Aficionado team of Jason Boardman and Moonboots host at 25th anniversary bash. That's just four of the highlights. David Holmes' recent single Necessary Genius was followed two weeks ago by a remix package, David and Raven Violet's song reworked by Skymas, Phil Keiran, Decius, Robin Wylie and Lovefingers. They've taken some time to worm their way into me but now all the different versions offer up something new and different. Lovefingers slows the song down, sticks a big, reverb heavy piano part into it and samples snippets of the people in David and Raven's list (a bit of Loaded, a brief snippet of Sinead, some Morricone). Decius do their Decius thing, chopping up a bit of vocal, raisng the tempo and making it very intense. Phil Kieran stretches the song out, bringing the synths to the fore and eventually hitting the button marked 'massive I Feel Love sequencer'. Find them all here.