Forty Minutes Of Music For Sunday

Today's mix is just some music that seemed to fall together well. I was rediscovering some tunes from five years ago, some of them by ambient/ Balearic duo Seahawks*, and started weaving them and some much more recent tracks into one piece. No theme, just some music, mainly ambient or in the ambient area, I like and that strikes a chord with me right now. 

Forty Minutes Of Music For February 2026

• Seahawks: Islands
• Kevin McCormick: Passing Clouds
• Hawksmoor: Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer
• Le Carousel: Echo Spiegel (Psychedelic Mix)
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Boards Of Canada: Olson Version 3 (Peel Session)
• Olodum: Farao Divindade Do Ogito (Pandit Pam Pam Deep Into The Bowel Of A Dub)
• Maria Somerville: October Moon

Islands is from Seahawks 2014 album Paradise Freaks, a beautiful piece of music that comes in at under two minutes long but which says and suggests so much in that time. It's the final track on Paradise Freaks, a short closer after an hour of longer tracks that seems to sum the whole album up. 

Kevin McCormick is a guitarist from Manchester, who should be better known than he is, whose early 80s recordings were recently re- issued and who plays on the 12" from Arrival that came out on Before I Die last month, a highly recommended release. Passing Clouds is from October 2024, a guitar meditation on sky watching.

Hawksmoor's Am I Conscious Now? will be out on Before I Die soon and is going to be one of the best ambient releases of 2026. Last year a two track EP called Life Aboard The International Space Station came out, reprising two unreleased tracks from 2021- one of them was this one, named after a JG Ballard short story. Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer is several guitars, acoustic and electric, playing together.  

Le Carousel is Phil Kieran from Belfast. Next month he's going to release one of 2026's best post- Weatherall/ electronic albums, The Humans Will Destroy Us. Last year's WE're All Gonna Hurt was a big tune round Bagging Area way and Echo Spiegel came out right at the end of last year. Phil's own Psychedelic Mix is an ambient/ psychedelic journey, four minutes of beatless, floaty, slightly trippy synths that spin further and further with each passing bar.

Private Agenda are a duo split between London and Amsterdam. Their six track mini- album Submersion came out in May 2021- remixes of material from their Ilse de Reve album. Seahawks created something spectacularly otherwordly with their remix of Malanai Ascending. Malanai it turns out is a gently cooling breeze found in coastal parts of Hawaii which makes perfect sense when you listen to the music. 

Thurston Moore's Asperitas came out last Monday, a ten minute guitar instrumental with drum machine taken from a six track album of instrumentals based on the skies as seen in England, wales and Ireland. All six tracks are named after types of cloud. Asperitas is a total joy, thudding primitive drum machine and Thurston's chilled, repetitive and evocative guitar parts. 

Now I'm looking at the tracks I've chosen for this mix and wondering if there is a theme after all, one I wasn't even aware of as I was pulling the tracks together- islands, clouds, skies, storms, breezes... 

I've been on a Boards Of Canada binge recently and their Peel Session, released by Warp in 2019 but recorded for Peel back in 1999, has been on repeat. Olson is one of four tracks from the session, the one that made the most sense in this mix.

My friend in Sao Paulo Eduardo records as Pandit Pam Pam and has been featured at this blog several times. Last month he sent me two new tracks, one out at the end of the month and also this one, an edit of a song celebrating the Pharaohs and deities of ancient Egypt. Eduardo said his wife was listening to it and his kids loved it too and it drew him in, and with carnival approaching he did a new version, something dark, danceable and dubby. Mardi Gras is on Tuesday next week, 17th February, and the carnival started over this weekend- it seemed apt to put it into this mix.

Maria Somerville's album Luster came out last year and I slept on it a bit, not really appreciating it, or just giving it enough time, until recently. It's an album inspired by the mythic and the real, the wild coastal landscape of Connemara, Ireland, a mystical swirling record that blurs ambient, early 80s 4AD and dreampop. Another subliminal nature nature- how strange that this only became apparent after pulling the tracks together and I began writing about them.

* Maybe this was subliminal influence from the Superbowl, not a sporting event I take any interest in, but Seattle Seahawks were in the Superbowl- the final I think we call it in most other sports- and they beat the New England Patriots 29- 13. I didn't know that until I looked it up. The main interest in the Superbowl from my end over here was that trump didn't go 'because it was too far away', and the half time entertainment was by Bad Bunny who sang entirely in Spanish (he's from Puerta Rico) and this was widely viewed as an anti- Trump, anti- MAGA performance especially when he announced 'I love America' and began listing countries from South, Central and North America while his dancers carried their flags. Trump predictably said that it was, 'absolutely terrible, one of the worst EVER!' and added 'no one understands a word this guy is saying'. Trump is a cunt.

Forty Minutes Of Seahawks

Since 2010 Seahawks, a duo made up of Pete Fowler and Jon Tye, have released a hatful of albums, singles and EPs, plus done multiple remixes of other artists- dreamy, drifting, brightly coloured ambient/ Balearic/ cosmic music that ebbs and flows in waves. The mix below is a sample of some of their own tracks with a couple of remixes stitched in, perfect for the heat that's arrived this weekend and which promises to be something else next week. Music to do nothing to. 

Forty Minutes Of Seahawks

I've listened back to this mix several times since putting it together and have to say it sounds really good- that's all credit to Seahawks. Making a lovely sounding mix from their music was not difficult at all. Islands, Missed and Rainbow Sun are all from the Paradise Freaks album, released in 2014. The Pye Corner Audio remix of Sky Is You comes from a remix EP the same year that also featured a Prins Thomas remix that I couldn't fit on here but is very much worth checking out. Escape Hatch is from their 2016 album of the same name. The remix of Tim Burgess, every gloriously broken and wasted eleven minutes of it came out in 2012 and their remix of Private Agenda was one of last year's highlights from a six track remix mini- album called Submersion.

• Seahawks: Islands
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Seahawks: Rainbow Sun
• Seahawks: Escape Hatch
• Seahawks: Sky Is You (Head Tek Pye Corner Audio Mix)
• Tim Burgess: A Gain/ Stoned Alone Again (Seahawks Remix)
• Seahawks: Missed

Malanai

Some more thoughts about bereavement. I'm not always sure sharing this stuff publicly is the right thing to do but writing it down definitely helps me and this seems a better place to put it than say Twitter or Facebook. If you just want the music, feel free to skip to the end. I really wouldn't blame you- this isn't necessarily what people come here for and I get that. 

It's now nearly three months since Isaac died. That feels like quite a long time without him- a quarter of a year- but in lots of ways it feels like it's passed very quickly and it's very recent. There are times now when I can go a period of time without feeling completely bereft or physically ill from it, where for the duration of a TV programme say or the time it takes to read an article or the chapter of a book it isn't at the front of my mind. When it comes back though, the grief, it still has the capacity to crush me. A memory or photograph can do it. At first looking at photos of Isaac helped, it made me feel closer to him. Not it's pretty painful to see them. One of the side effects of smartphones and social media is the memories function/ algorithm which pushes 'a year ago today' into your  timeline unexpectedly. Sometimes it makes me smile and sometimes it reminds me he's gone. I had a few fairly flat days at the end of the week before last, not good or bad just flat. On Monday night I saw a photo of Isaac and it sideswiped me, leaving me thinking (I almost said it out loud to myself), 'how are we ever going to get over this?'. And I think the answer is we won't ever get over this, it's just that over time, it becomes easier to live with. 

When a person with learning disabilities dies there has to be a review to check that everything happened correctly and that there were no concerns about their care and what happened. This would involve input from the hospital, the GP and the deceased's family. We were asked if we wanted to contribute and said yes. The meeting took place on Zoom and was pretty tough going for us at times (and we had no concerns about Isaac's care or how he and we were treated in hospital). The report was emailed to us recently and seeing it all in print was hard.

On Saturday we had our first big family get together since he died, an afternoon pub meal for my family for my Mum's 73rd birthday with twenty three of us present, ages ranging from six months to 83. It's the sort of event Isaac would have loved, all those people to speak to. It's the first time we've gone to one without him. I can never be sure how I'm going to be. Tears are never far away. I've cried in front of various people recently who I never would have before and usually I just say something like, 'don't worry, this happens all the time at the moment, just keep talking to me'. The birthday party was fine by the way. I felt a little out of it once or twice but on the whole it was a good get together and another hurdle cleared. But when we got home and sat down a wave of sadness broke onto me. When this happens I just go with it, accept it's all part of the process, but it's pretty heavy and it feels very like it did back in December. I guess three months isn't really very long at all. 

We've also had family to stay and I've been out with two different sets of friends, all of which has been good. It's good to see people and it's good to do things. It helps. That's where I'm up to I think. 

This came out last year and I thought I'd give it a bump to put it back out into blogworld. Private Agenda are a London/ Berlin duo whose six track EP Submersion last year was inspired by water, the sea, coasts and islands. Seahawks are a Balearic duo who have made some wonderful albums over the last decade. Their take on Malanai Ascending is a languid, floating beauty, shimmering synths and bubbling rhythms rippling ever onwards for six minutes. It could be twice as long and I wouldn't complain. Malanai I've just discovered is a trade wind and in Hawaiian translates as 'the gentle blowing of the northeast wind'. 

Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)

My journey to work yesterday was disrupted by a lorry that had overturned on Barton Bridge, a flooded road with a car abandoned in it and a fallen tree that closed part of the A666, the effects of Storm Franklin blowing in on northwest England coming only a day after Eunice had battered the south. None of your gentle blowing of the northeast winds round here. 

When All This Is Over

A new Bagging Area mix for Sunday, an optimistic sounding one now that the days are getting longer and the summer seems to be just round the corner. A lot of these songs have been posted here recently individually but they sounded good together. I'm not sure there's a huge amount of cause for optimism with the continuing, ceaseless flow of bad news, bad government and virus rates increasing but maybe it's best to turn the news channel off for a while and unplug. It's at Mixcloud, it won't embed but you can find it here. 

As the voice says in the opening Coyote song, 'when all this is over.... I plan to go north...' 

• Coyote: Café Con Leche
• Private Agenda: Malanai Ascending (Seahawks Remix)
• Chris Coco: Rainy Season
• Reinhard Vanbergen and Charlotte Carulaerts: Julien
• Primal Scream: Inner Flight
• Justin Deighton and Leo Zero: I Feel Edit
• Cantoma: The Mountain (Lexx Remix)
• HiFi Sean Ft. Yoko Ono: In Love With Life
• A Certain Ratio: Berlin (album version)
• Coyote: Feedback Valley
• Future Beat Alliance: Birth (Claude Young Remix)

Malanai Ascending

Private Agenda are a two man team split between London and Berlin (Sean Phillips and Martin Aggrowe) who have an extensive back catalogue behind them, their own work, along with numerous remixes and collaborations. Their first full album came out in 2019, an album called Île de Rêve, a dream island which inspired the nine tracks- downtempo, Balearic, ambient music. The album and the rest of their back catalogue is here. Recently a remix package called Submersion came my way- water, islands, the sea, coasts all loom large in Private Agenda's musical headspace. The six remixes are a mini- album in themselves- half an hour of washes of synth, drum pads, half heard vocals, brightly coloured passages and parts where the sound drifts by, repeating piano parts and warm drones- with remixes and reworkings by Coral Sea, JQ, Delac, Delmer Darion, Ocean Moon and this one from Seahawks.

Seahawks are masters of this kind of thing, the point where Balearic and ambient gently bump into each other, with their own recordings dating back to 2010 and the authors of several albums which I've played to death- Paradise Freaks, Escape Hatch and Starways are all recommended. Seahawks remix of Malanai Ascending is a chilled but persistent, slightly psychedelic swim in warm seas, the bass pulsing while waves of sound swoosh by, birdsong, a piano- kaleidoscopic like bright sunlight glinting off the surface of the sea. Buy it digitally or on cassette here.