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Steve Hillage has had a long and interesting musical life- part of the Canterbury scene in the early 70s, solo and with Kevin Ayres and Soft Machine, then Gong with Daevid Allen (and where he met his partner Miquette Giraudy, his and Miquette's 1979 solo ambient opus Rainbow Dome Musick, production work with Simple Minds in the early 80s and The Charlatans a decade later and from 1989 his and Miquette's ambient/ dance outfit System 7 with The Orb and Youth and he played a key role in establishing the dance tent at Glastonbury.

Steve and Miquette are not standing still. System 7 are back with a new album, Flower Of Life, out later this month. A single came out ahead of it at the end of March, I Want More...

Coldcut's Matt Black is present on I Want More, which starts out with Can inspired bass and then mutates into pulsing synthlines, Matt's demo the launchpad for a soaring, insistent, four- four track that began as a discussion about Miquette's early 70s film soundtrack work, specifically a French underground film from 1969 about heroin addiction in Ibiza called More (to which Pink Floyd contributed the soundtrack). This short clip provides a flavour of the film...

This is Pink Floyd's Main Theme from the soundtrack, a very late 1960s Floyd track- cymbal splashes, wheezy organ, skittery drumming and throbbing bass. The sound of what they called a Happening. 

Main Theme

System 7's album follows in couple of weeks, ten tracks with early 90s ambient/ progressive house grooves and synth sounds. The title track pulses with positivity. On Beulah Alex Paterson from The Orb shows up, crunchy drums, synth squiggles, a Mae West vocal sample and visions of fields filled with dancers. There are faster and thumpier tracks, full on banging psy- trance on Atmosphere and an Eat Static collaboration Transceptor. Penultimate track Bonjour takes us down, three minutes of comedown with a slightly paranoid edge that eventually evens out. Flower Of Life finishes with a System 7 remix of Delia Derbyshire Appreciation Society, Dubby Chain Signal is an extended downtempo/ ambient, chill out room delight that could be twice its seven minute length and not outstay its welcome. 

In The Locker

A postcard from 1996 today, System 7 and Alex Paterson from The Orb, and a gently pulsing, psychedelic bubblebath with a nod in its title to the seabed- aptly so- this track sounds like it has surfaced from the bottom of a deep blue sea and into the sun. A funky guitar part strumming away for eleven minutes, a dubbed out bassline, warm atmospherics and a faint male voice choir humming along. 

Davy Jones' Locker (The Orb Mix)

Desir

System 7, formed in the early 90s by Steve Hillage and his partner Miquette Giraudy, were one of the obvious links between the late 60s/ early 70s hippy movement and acid house. Hillage and Giraudy were both members of Gong, purveyors of space rock/ jazz psychedelia, and in the late 70s Hillage had more or less invented The Orb's sound with his album Rainbow Dome Musick. In fact, it was hearing that album played by Alex Paterson at Heaven with a house kick drum underpinning it that led to Hillage meeting Paterson and Hillage forming System 7. The intention was for Paterson and Hillage to record ambient house with Hillage's guitar high in the mix. Paterson and fellow Orb man Kris 'Thrash' Weston both feature on System 7's self titled debut and the follow up 777 album, as well as Tony Thorpe of the Moody Boys and KLF, Youth and Derrick May. On 777 Paterson's credit is noted as 'ambience, navigation'. 

Steve Hillage was one of the people who was derided during punk, the Year Zero approach of 1976/77 designed to slam the door shut in his face and the generation gap swallow them whole. Finding favour a decade later with two ex- punks, Youth and Paterson, very much involved must have been very satisfying.  

Desir (Butterfly Remix)

Steve Hillage was instrumental in establishing the Dance Tent at Glastonbury (another hippy- acid house link) and went on to produce The Charlatans 1994 album Up To Our Hips, a dense, swirling, post- Madchester, pre- Britpop record that is much undervalued, some of which echoes the late 60s space rock of Gong and Hawkwind. Feel Flows wouldn't be out of place in Ladbroke Grove in 1968. Jesus Hairdo is more focussed but just as much a hippy 90s as anything.

Feel Flows

Jesus Hairdo

Monday's Long Songs

Duncan Gray has been responsible for many Andrew Weatherall and ALFOS approved pieces of music in the recent past, plenty of slo- mo, trippy chuggers with lovely grinding basslines and a dark heart. The latest is a tribute to Gong/ System 7/ solo artist Steve Hillage, nine and a half minutes of slow paced psychedelic magick. Bandcamp have Danucan's Steve Killage to listen to and to buy here. A much better way to spend Monday morning than getting in your car in the dark and going to work. 

Even longer, twice the length in fact, is this Plastikman remix of System 7's Alpha Wave from 1995, Richie Hawtin sending everyone and everything into a state of hyper- realised acid techno mania. The build up for the first ten minutes is just absurd, endlessly building higher and higher, relentless stroboscopic action. There's a breakdown in the eleventh minute that makes you wait and wait, anticipating the inevitable, exhilarating rush of re- entry, which eventually starts to happen sometime around fourteen minutes before the dam bursts. 

Alpha Wave (Plastikman Acid House Mix)

Today is our eldest Isaac's birthday, he turns twenty two. He'll be spending it in lockdown and still being shielded, as he has been since March. Some presents and cards, some neihgbours passing by the front of the house, a couple of Zoom parties, a drive through for lunch and a takeaway for tea. Happy birthday Isaac.