Shadow People

The Liminanas, French beatnik/ rock 'n' roll/ psyche garage combo formed by Lionel and Marie, hit Band On The Wall on Wednesday night, expanded to a six piece band and full of everything you'd want from them- energy, long hair and beards, black jeans, high kicks, two chord songs, psychedelic freak outs and that eternally satisfying Mo Tucker drumbeat. 

There's not much in the way of a 'Bonjour' or 'Salut' from the stage. They shuffle on, plug in and blast off. Surrounding the band is a three sided screen onto which projections flash and flicker- black and white films, strobes, bright red effects, graphics running from left to right that give the impression sometimes of being inside a manic psychedelic biscuit tin. Centre stage Marie (either standing at an electronic drum kit or sitting at a minimal wood and plastic one, no cymbals just floor toms and a snare) powers away, the metronomic engine room and focus. Lionel plays guitar, sometimes stamping on pedals that add a huge roar to the sound. Next to him is a short haired lead guitarist who struts and prowls the front of the stage, high kicking, throwing shapes, playing the guitar behind his head, a Franco- Hendrix/ Wilco Johnson. A female bassist with a voluminous Afro and a long haired and bearded synth and keys player add depth and oomph and on the left there's a skinny man in a Western hat who handles most of the vocals while adding guitar and tambourine. They're a tremendous line up, sometimes four guitars cooking up a late 60s freak beat/ Velvets stew.

Early on they throw in Prisoner Of Beauty (sung by Bobby Gillespie on this year's album Faded), a growly psyche- pop masterpiece and then slalom between Faded and tier previous albums. J'adore Le Monde sounds epic, an early peak. Shadow People and The Gift, both from 2018's Shadow People album, rock in a summer of 1969 way. Istanbul Is Sleepy is psyche heaven, two chords, distortion Le Velvet Underground. 

Istanbul Is Sleepy

The Liminanas build to a conclusion, the guitarist strutting more and more, the guitars louder, the motorik beat harder, the light show increasingly intense. A cover of The Cramps song TV Set nearly blows fuses, three guitarists hitting the jagged chords with precision timing. It's all waves and smiles as they depart after Je Rentrais Par Le Bois... BB (from the album they made with Laurent Garnier in 2021, De Pelicula), played super heavy and ultra freak beat. 

They slot right back into their groove for the encore, finishing a three song set with a supercharged cover of Rocket USA, the two chord groove summoned and transported, a psyche- rock monolith- they could still be doing it now and we'd probably still be standing there, hypnotised by the sound and lights. Before that, there was El Beach, a massive amped up version, spoken word vocals, French beat poetry and 1966 guitars, one note piano, everyone shaking some action...

El Beach

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Two

Last Sunday's cover versions mix worked well enough for me to undertake a second. I started with Jah Divison and went from there, a succession of dub and reggae covers, wasn't happy with it and scrapped it and started again, setting off again with Jah Division but heading in a noisier, more guitar laden direction, all a bit more shambolic. Then it slows down and blisses out before kicking up a storm again for the finish. 

After I posted last Sunday's mix Steve from Andres y Xavi messaged me to say he had a series of cover version mixes called Under The Covers, up at Mixcloud. The latest, his ninth, covers a lot of ground from Lady Blackbird to The Droyds with Isaac Hayes, Bobby Womack and Jose Feliciano among the people sandwiched in between. Plenty to enjoy. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Two

• Jah Division: Dub Will Tear Us Apart
• The Fall: Mr Pharmacist
• The Jesus And Mary Chain: Surfin' USA
• Sonic Youth: I Know There's An Answer
• Sonic Youth: Computer Age
• Hardway Bros: 1979 GLOK Remix
• Andy Bell: Our Last Night Together
• The Liminanas: Ou Va La Chance
• The Vendetta Suite: Who Do You Love?
• Fontaines DC: 'Cello Song

Jah Division is a Russian reggae band, formed in Moscow in 1990. This is what it says in Wikipedia. It also say that the founder of Jah Division, Gera Morales, was the son of Leopold Morales, an associate of Che Guevara's. Elsewhere (Bandcamp) it says Jah Divison are from Brooklyn and their 2004 12" of four covers of Joy Division songs is their sole release. According to Bandcamp Jah Divison features members of Onieda and Home, began as a joke and the four tracks were recorded in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. Take your pick. None of which stops Dub Will Tear Us Apart from being a genius cover version whoever recorded it. 

The Fall's Mr Pharmacist is a cover of a song by Los Angeles 60s psyche garage band The Other Half, a 1986 Fall single from the Brix period and produced by John Leckie. The original was on an early 80s Nuggets compilation. Mr Pharmacist was also on The Fall's Bend Sinister album, an opinion splitting album derided by Mark E. Smith and John Leckie.

Surfin' USA was a Darklands outtake, all feeedback, rough and rowdy drums, breaking glass, East Kilbride sneers and TV preachers. The Reid brothers knew how to cover a song. The original was a 1963 Beach Boys single...

... and I Know There's An Answer was a 1966 Beach Boys album song (from Pet Sounds). Sonic Youth's cover comes from 1989, recorded for a Brian Wilson tribute album released in 1990 and sung by Lee Renaldo- no one else could sing it according to Lee who says J. Mascis helped out in the studio too. Appropriately squally and rather wonderful. 

Sonic Youth also recorded a Neil Young cover in the same time frame for a Neil Young tribute album, The Bridge (a superb album). They chose a song from Neil's most misunderstood album, Trans. Like the Mary Chain, Sonic Youth instinctively know what makes a good cover version. Computer Age is a gem in the SY back catalogue. 

Sean Johnston's Outre Mer label is an outlet for Hardway Bros recordings. In January 2024 he released an EP called My Friends which included a cover of Smashing Pumpkins 1979 (a song which is itself pretty much a New Order tribute). A remix EP saw GLOK tackle 1979, and has a massively overloaded guitar sound that makes you check your speakers are OK. 

Andy Bell's covers EP Untitled Film Stills contains four covers- Our Last Together is an after hours beauty, impressionistic, woozy and moving. Well, it moves me. 

The Liminanas featured in last week's mix and they're back today with a song from this year's album Faded. Ou Va La Chance is a cover of a Francois Hardy song, closing the album in fine style.

The Vendetta Suite are from Belfast and their 2021 album The Kempe Stone Portal is packed with electronic, acid house, Balearic and cosmische sounds plus this slowed down, electronics and feedback rumble version of Bo Diddley's classic (also covered by The Mary Chain back in the 80s). The Vendetta Suite's Gary Irwin goes all the way back to David Holmes and Iain McCready's nights at Belfast's Art College in 1990 and has worked with Holmes on and off ever since. 

Fontaines DC's cover of 'Cello Song has featured in at least three previous Sunday mixes- a Nick Drake one, a Fontaines one and an end of 2023 mix. I make no apologies for its re- appearance here. They take Nick Drake's 1969 song, a beautiful poetic song and retune it, turning it into a modern rock 'n' roll thrill with Grian Chatten finding new meaning in Nick's words. Both versions, original and cover, struck me quite profoundly in the time since Isaac' died, these lines in particular...

'For the dreams that came to you when so young
They told of a life where spring is sprung

So forget this cruel world where I belong
I'll just sit and wait and sing my song

But while the Earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky on the crest of a wave'

And that's where we're ending today. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

I held back from doing this for ages, a mix just containing cover versions, because it felt a bit lazy, a bit uninspired but the recent covers of Nick Drake by Joao Leao and The Velvet Underground by Thurston Moore twisted my arm into it. There are potentially more cover versions mixes to come. All these are relatively recent, although now I think about it Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes album came out in 2009 which is sixteen years ago and Calexico's in 2003 which is twenty two years ago- but the rest are all fairly recent. This mix leans towards the garage/ psyche/ guitar side of things. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions

• Andy Bell: Smokebelch
• Joao Leao: One Of These Things First
• Calexico: Alone Again Or
• Rowland S. Howard: Life's What You Make It
• Moon Duo: Planet Caravan
• Moon Duo: No Fun
• The Liminanas: Angles And Devils
• Thurston Moore: Temptation Inside Your Heart

Andy Bell's cover of The Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch was begun on the day of Andrew Weatherall's death, 17th February 2020, and finished in late summer/ early autumn 2023 when I emailed Andy to ask him if he had a track for our then unreleased pipe dream album Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 1. Andy's reply contained the completed cover and as soon as we listened to it, we knew it would close the album. Smokebelch itself began life as a cover version of L.B. Bad's New Age Of Faith.

Joao Leao's bossa nova flecked cover of Nick Drake's One Of These Things First, a song from Nick's 1971 album Bryter Later, came out as a 7" single on Toronto's Local Dish label and was posted here two weeks ago. 

Calexico's cover of Love's 1967 classic Alone Again Or doesn't stray too far from the original- Calexico were surely destined to cover it through with their combination of desert indie and mariachi horns. I thought I had a dub version of Alone Again Or- it sounded superb, dub groove, those horns and a snatch of vocal but I must have dreamt it. 

Rowland S. Howard's Pop Crimes was the former Birthday Party guitarist's second solo album. He was undergoing treatment for liver cancer at the time and died two months after it was released. Under those circumstances Talk Talk's Life's What You Make (second line, 'can't escape it') takes on a different meaning. Rowland's guitar playing- in fact just the way he held and approached the guitar- is pretty unique. His roiling guitar lines and feedback, the metallic clang and grim vocal delivery take the song into new places- which is what a cover version should do really. 

Moon Duo are represented twice here. First their cover of Black Sabbath's Planet Caravan was a summer 2020 release, their version of the 1970 original a chilled and weightless cosmic take. Their version of The Stooges' No Fun is from a 2018 12" single with Alan Vega's Jukebox Babe on the other side. Sonic Boom produced it. Again, a blank eyed, calmed down take on Iggy's 1969 proto- punk classic. 

The Liminanas released a compilation of singles and other rarities in 2015, I've Got Trouble In Mind Vol. 2 which included this cover version of Angels And Devils, an Echo And The Bunnymen B-side. The Liminanas, French psyche/ garage band par excellence, take The Bunnymen's Mo Tucker stomp and turn it Gallic. 

Thurston Moore's cover of The Velvet Underground's Temptation Inside Your Heart came out in September, a song he's been playing live for some time, MBV bassist Debbie Goodge plays the bass (as she does when Thurston plays live). Lou Reed's song first saw the light of dark on the 1985 outtakes album VU and has been a favorite of mine since the late 80s. Thurston more than does it justice.

Forty Five Minutes Of New Order- ish

I heard Your Silent Face on Friday night- not for the first time obviously- and it floored me once again. There's something about it that is very special- the rippling Kraftwerk inspired keys and synths, Hooky's bass and the mechanical drumming, Bernard's serious lyrics completely undercut by the 'why don't you piss off line', the way it gloriously skips between euphoria and melancholy. It's much more than all of that, one of those songs that is way more than the sum of the parts. It inspired me to start a New Order mix for my Sunday series but then I changed tack almost immediately. Rather than just sequence of load of my favourite New Order songs (almost all of which would be from the 1980s) I thought it might be more interesting or more fun to do a Your Silent Face/ New Order inspired mix and see where it took me. It took me here...

Forty Five Minutes Of New Order- ish

• New Order: Your Silent Face
• Galaxie 500: Ceremony
• Gorillaz ft. Peter Hook and Georgia: Aries
• The Liminanas and Peter Hook: Garden Of Love
• Ian McCulloch: Faith And Healing
• The Times: Manchester 5.32
• Ride: Last Frontier
• New Order: Isolation
• Mike Garry and Joe Duddell: St. Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Your Silent Face opens side two of Power, Corruption And Lies, New Order's second album, released in May 1983. It's now seen as a New Order classic, a landmark album, the fusing of dance and rock, light and shade, a band stepping out of the shadows of Joy Division and the first NO album Movement. Your Silent Face had the working title KW1 (the Kraftwerk one). Funny story about New Order and Kraftwerk- the Dusseldorff robots visited New Order in their Cheetham Hill rehearsal space/ HQ and sat open mouthed as the band showed them the kit they used to make Blue Monday. 'You made that record using... this?' 

Galaxie 500's cover of Ceremony is a beauty, a slowed down, slow burning version, ringing feedback, the guitars gathering in intensity, and Dean's upper register voice smothered in echo. Ceremony was New Order's first single (and in a way, Joy Division's last). It was released as a 12" in 1981, twice, with different sleeves and slightly different versions. Galaxie 500's version came out as a B-side on their Blue Thunder 12" in 1990. At the time the nine year gap between 1981 and 1990 was an eon, the 1981 world and 1990 world two totally different eras- for New Order as much as anyone. 

Gorillaz got Hooky to play bass as part of their Song Machine project in 2020. Aries is I think the best 'New Order' song of the 21st century. Murdoc, Noodles, 2D and Russel Hobbs/ Damon Albarn together with Hooky's bass totally nailed what NO should be sounding like now. 

Four years before Gorillaz got Peter Hook to sling his four string guitar around he hooked up with French duo The Liminanas. Garden Of Love is (again) a great 21st century 'New Order' song, slightly fragile, slightly woozy, psychedelic garage rock, the bassline wending its way to the fore and staying there. 

Ian McCulloch's Faith And Healing is virtually a New Order cover- it sounds so much like a off cut from Technique he probably should have given them writing credits. It came out as a single in 1989, taken from Mac's solo debut Candleland. 

The Times was one of Creation mainstay Ed Ball's projects. In 1990 as The Times he released Manchester as a single, a hymn to a city at the centre of a youth explosion. Hooky's mentioned in the lyrics. It's also a tribute to the sound New Order had on 1985's Lowlife. It couldn't be more Lowlife unless it came wrapped in a tracing paper sleeve. I sometimes it think skirts the line between ridiculous and brilliant. I can imagine it making some people cringe but I think it has charm. Once, driving through France it came on the car stereo on one of the mix CDs I'd burned for the trip and made me briefly, stupidly homesick. I got over it- I mean we were on holiday in France for fuck's sake.  

Last Frontier was on last year's Ride album, Interplay. It's an Andy Bell song, soaring, chiming guitars and on the money drums. It sounds like a close cousin of Regret (the last truly great New Order single, released back in 1993. Although actually, I'm happy to listen to arguments for Crystal, released in August 2001). 

Isolation is a Joy Division song, from their second/ final album Closer. It's a stunning song, the collision of electronic drums and real ones genuinely thrilling, along with the synth and bass. Ian's words are bleak, a man at the end of his tether. This version is by New Order, recorded for a John Peel session in 1998. They still play it live- they did it at Wythenshawe Park last August. 

Mike Garry and Joe Duddell's St. Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson is a song I come back to often, Mike's A to Z of Manchester music endlessly listenable and at times very moving. For his remix Andrew Weatherall, a huge fan of Factory, turned the song into a nine minute Weatherall tour de force, complete with a version of the Your Silent Face bassline. Which is where I came in. 

Faded

I've been enjoying the new album by The Liminanas, the French husband/ wife duo who've released umpteen album since 2010, an exhilarating fusion of French ye ye, psyche and garage rock. On Faded they've brought in a whole raft of guest vocalists- Bertrand Belin, Bobby Gillespie, Jon Spencer, Pascal Comelade, Penny, Rover and Anna- Jean. The songs sound like a French Velvet Underground, the Mo Tucker backbeat and rattly guitars the bedrock for the vocalists to sing above. It's really good fun and shoots by in a whirl, an album that creates its own universe. Back in autumn last year J'Adore Le Monde lit up a grim November, singer Bertrand Belin reminding us of what's worth holding onto. 

This one, Degenerate Star, has Blues Exploder Jon Spencer and Pascal Comelade giving twin vocal over the thumping drums and wheezy organ. 

And on Ou Va La Chance, Lionel and Marie paid tribute to the late Francoise Hardy with a cover that closed Faded in gloriously romantic style...

I Know So Many People Who Think They Can Do It Alone

Today's post comes from the box of CDs that have come cover mounted on music magazines over the years. I scooped this one up a while ago, and wasn't sure that I'd ever even listened to it- and it contains two recent Bagging Area postees in shape of Saint Etienne and The Liminanas. The CD came free with Mojo in June 2012, a Beach Boys/ Pet Sounds cover story with articles on Rufus Wainwright, My Bloody Valentine, Sandy Denny, Buzzcocks and Michael Kiwanuka all also trailed on the cover along with the return of Public Image Limited and (gulp) Rush. The free CD is Pet Sounds related.

It's more than related, it's a bespoke re- recording of Pet Sounds in full with Saint Etienne, Magnetic North, The Sand Band, Tim Burgess, Jeffrey Lewis, The Neil Cowley Trio, Tom McRae, The Flaming Lips, The Liminanas, Jodie Marie, Gaz Coombes, Human Don't Be Angry, Here We Go Magic and Superimposers. Some of these names mean as little to me now as they did in 2012. 

Pet Sounds is such a heavyweight, canonical album but with such a lighter than air sound that I guess it could be difficult to know how to go about doing a cover one of its thirteen teenage symphonies, Brian Wilson's beautiful melodic songs, those sing song vocals and Tony Asher's perfectly weighed words, lyrics that stand as some kind of mid- 60s poetic pop highpoint. Many of the artists take the standard route and stay pretty faithful to the source material. Saint Etienne open up with Wouldn't It Be Nice...

Wouldn't It Be Nice 

It's very sugary, the first minute or so just Sarah's voice and some backing vocals. The band come in, easy listening style before building into a bit of a 60s swirl. 

Tim Burgess, at that point releasing his excellent Oh No I Love You solo album, covers Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), acoustic guitar, a ton of reverb, and musical box melodies- pretty, also very faithful to the original. The fade out and ending is lovely. 

Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)

The Neil Cowley Trio (who I've featured before in remixed form) cover Let's Go Away For A While, modern jazz style, piano and rattling snare drum. 

Let's Go Away For A While

The Flaming Lips come along to rip things up a bit, the ones who don't hand in a standard cover, but go with distorted guitars, a psychedelic haze and wobbling synths, Wayne warbling the famous words, 'I may not always love you/ But as long as there are stars above/ You never need to doubt it/ God only knows what I'd be without you...' A lovely, frazzled, drift towards the centre of the sun. 

God Only Knows

The Liminanas, French psyche/ beat duo take on I Know There's An Answer, with authentic 60s groove and heavily accented vox- they sound like they're having fun, dropping out in the middle and then thundering back in and adding what sounds like a theremin twanging away. Hang on to your ego. 

 I Know There's An Answer

J'Adore Le Monde

My favourite French rock 'n' roll beat group The Liminanas have returned to the fray with Bertrand Belin on vocals and an achingly beautiful song called J'Adore Le Monde. Proclaiming love for the world isn't always easy- turn on the TV and sometimes the only natural response is turn the thing off again- but Bertrand, Lionel and Marie are very persuasive. The bass throbs, the Velvets style drumming thuds away, and Bertrand sounds like the singer in the hippest supper club down some side street in Paris you stumbled into one evening and then could never find again. An album, Faded, follows in February. 

An Hour Of Music Inspired By David Holmes At The Golden Lion In November 2023

Last November I wrote a post about the launch party held at The Golden Lion for David Holmes and Raven Violet's album Blind On A Galloping Horse, a memorable night in all sorts of ways. Refresh your memory here if you like. Not long afterwards Jeff Barrett of Heavenly Recordings got in touch out of the blue. Heavenly have just launched  a zine, HVN zine, a beautifully put together and produced magazine with art, photos, lists, articles and ephemera by and from various people at Heavenly. Physical products are nice and the production of an A5 zine in a digital world feels like something worthwhile. HVN zine 1 was published in the autumn with the second lined up for January 2024. Jeff said that some people from Heavenly were at The Golden Lion that night, one of them had read my blogpost and said I captured the vibe of the night and could he publish it in HVN zine 2. Which I didn't need to think about for very long, obviously. 

You can buy it at Heavenly's Bandcamp for the princely sum of 50p or get it free with any purchase from them. It's a beautifully put together magazine, lovely to look, nice paper stock (these things are important) and made by people, who care about pop culture and more besides. 

Today's mix is an approximation, a version of some of what David played at The Golden Lion back in November. It's inspired by rather than an attempt to recreate- some of the tracks may not be the actual ones played but it pulls some of what happened that night together. 

An Hour Of Music Inspired By David Holmes At The Golden Lion November 2023

• Golden Bug ft. The Liminanas: Variations sur 3 Bancs
• Jo Sims: Bass- The Final Frontier (David Holmes Remix)
• Prince: Sign O' The Times
• Khidja: Do You Know This Record Marius?
• Roe Deers ft. Wolfstream: Can't Remember
• Pete Shelley: Homosapien
• Decius: Masculine Encounter
• David Holmes and Raven Violet: Yeah x 3
• Sinead O'Connor: Jackie (Rich Lane Edit)
• Roberto Rodriguez: Mustat Varjot
• Radio Slave Vs Audion: Mouth To Mouth

Variations sur 3 Bancs, a collaboration between Golden Bug and The Liminanas came out in 2021. The EP came with remixes by Pilooski and Superpitcher and this one, the original mix. This wasn't the first record David played that night, he played some spaced out sax jazz but this came on fairly early. 

Jo Sims Bass- The Final Frontier was a 2023 release on Pamela Records. One of my favourite 12"s of last year, for what it's worth. David's remix is supercharged sci fi house.

Prince's Sign O' The Times was a 1987 single and the title track of the studio album of the same name, a Fairlight synth, simple drum machine and clipped, blues guitar riff and Prince's take on the issues troubling the USA in the 80s- gangs, drugs, AIDS, poverty, space shuttle explosions, hurricanes, nuclear war. 

Khidja's Do You Know This Record Marius? came out in 2023 as part of an EP called Transmissions 1. I'm not anywhere near bored of it yet. I'm not 100% sure that this is the Khidja track David played at The Lion but he's played it twice at NTS since then so I think there's a good chance it is. 

Roe Deers and Wolfstream's Can't Remember came out in 2022, on an album I reviewed at Ban Ban Ton Ton. I'm not sure if this is the track David played but it fits in this mix well enough.

Pete Shelley's Homosapien was a 1981 single, a groundbreaking solo single for the former Buzzcock. I don't think this is the Pete Shelley song David played, I'm sure I would remember if this had been pumping out of the Lion's sound system, but I've got it digitally and again, it fits in pretty well here. 

Decius' album Decius Vol 1 was one of 2022's highlights, a basement/ bathhouse/sauna riot of electronic sounds and beats. I don't think Masculine Encounter II was the track David played but I can't remember which one he did play- just as likely it was off one of the three 2023 Decius Trax EPs.

Yeah x 3 is from David's Blind On A Galloping horse album, a hymn to positivity, family, friends and life and love set to a kosmische/ pop electronic/ Spector musical backing. There were a bunch of excellent remixes by X- Press 2, The Vendetta Suite, Panda Bear and Sonic Boom and Jordan Nocturne. 

Jackie was on Sinead's 1987 debut album The Lion And The Cobra, a song narrated by a ghost, written when Sinead was just fifteen. Rich did his edit to play at a gig. David heard it when I posted it here following Sinead's tragic death last year. 

Mustat Varjo is from 2012 and a House Of Disco four track compilation titled On The Latch. Classic 2010s nu house/ disco/ dance music, finding itself somewhere in the space between ecstasy and melancholy.

Radio Slave remixed/ re-worked Audion's 2006  minimal techno floor filler last year and it goes on and on, tension building, bassline buzzing, freakiness freaking, for over ten minutes. 

Lions, Horses, People, Hope, Love, Resistance

I was back at Todmorden's Golden Lion on Saturday night for the launch party for the new David Holmes album Blind On A Galloping Horse, the man himself DJing for four hours to what was once again a packed and enthusiastic pub. I've said it before and it never fails to strike me, the absolute wonder that is The Golden Lion. From the outside, a fairly ordinary looking pub, standing by a canal in a northern town nestled in the hills where Yorkshire meets Lancashire. On the inside, another world. Holmes arrives and begins slowly, some floaty sax easing us in, the red lights already bathing the pub in a warm glow and the mirrorball throwing sparkles round the room. Things heat up fairly quickly, the heartbeat thump working its way in. This thumper courtesy of Golden Bug and The Liminanas is played...

Variation sur 3 Bancs

... and is followed by David's own remix of Jo Sims' Bass (The Final Frontier), a record I've played on repeat this year. David then drops in the instantly recognisable riff from Sign 'O' The Times and Prince's Fairlight synth and lyrics about Aids, the space shuttle and Hurricane Annie filling the pub. 

Holmes pitches things more and more for dancing with tracks from Khidja, Roe Deers and Pete Shelley and then, a slight easing up with the appearance of Senor Coconut's Trans Europe Express (I should add here I'm indebted to Martin and his Shazam app- my memory would not have recalled much of this amount of detail). There are tracks by Soft Rocks, Decius, Rich Lane's edit of Sinead O'Connor, Patrick Cowley, there is She's A Rainbow (I'm not sure about this, it wasn't the World Of Twist cover but didn't sound exactly like The Stones either), and this slinky disco chugger with happy/ sad house piano chords from 2012 by Roberto Rodriguez...

Mustat Varjo

It went on and on, The Human League's The Things That Dreams Are Made Of provoking much joy, and there was much more music besides, a proper night out with a lovely, friendly crowd and everyone there to dance, culminating in the ten minute epic from this year, Radio Slave's reworking of Audion's Mouth To Mouth, intense, rumbling, ecstatic techno with an irresistible ascending synthline that buzzes like a jar of wasps. 

David and Raven Violet's album has been on repeat since arriving at my house on Friday. It's a proper album, a complete piece of work with lyrical concerns and themes that tie the fourteen songs together across four sides of vinyl and seventy five minutes. The four singles released from it so far have all been huge songs for me- Hope Is The Last Thing To Die and It's Over If We Run Out Of Love lit up 2021 and 2022 and Necessary Genius, a rollcall and tribute to those who have gone who inspire him from Weatherall to Samuel Beckett, from Angela Davis to Sinead O'Connor, has done the same to 2023. Recent single Stop Apologising too. The rest of the songs stand alongside those four from the long opener When People Are Occupied Resistance Is Justified, a song surely born in David's upbringing in Belfast and directly relevant to the world today. Scattered throughout are the voices of refugees, speaking in their own languages with gentle synths and FX behind them, the voices of the repressed and downtrodden given space next to David's words and Raven's voice. 

Emotionally Clear and Yeah x 3 show a gentler, poppier side to the album. On the former Raven sings, 'Do you believe in the absence of evidence/ Do you believe in unjust punishment? Do you believe in cognitive dissonance?, and then the chorus erupts into a girl group swell of bells and synths. On the latter chiming synths and the sound of heads clearing and clouds parting, optimism and the word 'yeah', one of the oldest sounds in pop music. 

There are several nods to Andrew Weatherall, David paying tribute to his friend and inspiration: the title of an instrumental called And You Will Know Me By The Smell Of Onions, lighter than air synths, piano and a pattering drum machine; a cover of Laugh Myself To Sleep with Timothy J. Fairplay's guitars adding some post- punk/ Mick Jones fire to Raven's voice and Weatherall's words (from Andrew's unreleased second solo album of the same name); and the repeated line in the song Too Muchroom, Andrew's comment about 'if you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much room'. 

The album flows through to side four and the final three songs, that show the breadth of what David's created with Blind On A Galloping Horse. Tyranny Of The Talentless calms the pace, a slo mo drum track and lyrics about 'the ashtray of history'. It's followed by Love In The Upside Down, a tripped out monster led by fuzz bass and splinters of guitar, a giddy, swirling psychedelia filled with a sense of momentum, of other worlds, of awakening and possibility. Quite a rush. 

That just leaves the title track to carry us home, the sound of the end of a journey and finding strength in song and community despite the horrors of the world outside. Over strings and padded bass Raven sings, 'They will push you out/ And pull you in/ Whatever happens now/ We mustn't mustn't let them win', and the track fades with another speaking voice, this time I think speaking in Gaelic- a song about personal resistance, completing the loop back to the start. 

Blind On A Galloping Horse a beautiful packaged album as well, as all proper albums should be, with photos by Belfast street photographer Bill Kirk and artwork and text by British artist Jimmy Turrell, and a print of Sinead and the lyrics to Necessary Genius. As an album it feels like a statement, a personal account, a record that David had to make. Sonically, musically, philosophically, politically and emotionally, it feels very much like the album we need at this point in 2023, a response to both the inner and outer worlds, a call to action but one that also says we can still find hope out there somewhere, if we look in the right places. 

Anenome Dreams

Brian Jonestown Massacre played a gig in Manchester last week, part of a UK tour that seems to have gone down very well. It's the umpteenth time I've missed Anton Newcombe, either with BJM or L'épée in recent years. I don't have a huge amount of the BJM back catalogue but what I do have is very good. This song in particular, and I think this is a fairly widely held opinion, is an absolute beauty...

Anenome

Shimmering, tripped out, wiggy, late 60s style psyche rock of the highest order, an acoustic guitar, a  tambourine for rhythm, a lead guitar playing a weaving, winding acid topline and lyrics, sung in a wonderful drawl about a departure, a kiss off- 'You should be picking me up/ Instead you're dragging me down... Glad that you're not around/ Glad that you're not around'. Anenome was on Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request, a Rolling Stones baiting album recorded in 1995 and released in 1996. 

Anton formed L'épée with Lionel and Marie Limiñana and singer/ actor Emnanuelle Seigner (who sticks in my memory from the 1988 film Frantic which she starred in with Harrison Ford). An album, Diabolique, came out in 2019, ten songs reimagining The Velvet Underground if they'd been from Paris rather than New York. 

Dreams

Half An Hour Of The Limiñanas

The Limiñanas are Lionel and Marie Limiñana, a duo from Cabestany in the south of France, who play psyche/ garage/ pop dressed in black jeans and boots, with fuzz guitar, Mo Tucker style drums and tambourine and slightly stoned, Gauloise vocals. Over the course of nine albums and umpteen singles/ EPs they've steered their own course pulling in like minded souls along the way. Their music always feels like summer to me, the hot and sticky days of July and August, the air smelling of beer and cigarette smoke, sunglasses, tinny car stereos and the clink of beer bottles- so there's no better time to listen to thirty minutes of their music than in mid- January. C'est la vie. 

Half An Hour Of The Limiñanas 

• Garden Of Love
• The Gift (Anton Mix)
• The Ballad Of Linda L.
• Variation Sur 3 Bancs
• Devils Angels (Limiñanas Remix)
• Dimanche (Laurent Garnier Remix)
• Garden Of Love (Lundi Mouillé Mix)
• Liverpool (album version)

Garden Of Love was a 2016 single, a lovely piece of 21st century garage pop, Marie's vocal to the fore along with Peter Hook's mournful, elegiac bass playing that makes me feel weirdly homesick, even when I'm at home. Garden Of Love was remixed by Andrew Weatherall twice and released on clear 12" vinyl. Both mixes are great, the one here, Lundi Mouille (Wet Monday) is the slower, more downtempo one.  

Hooky turned up on The Gift in 2018 too, a single and song from their 2018 album Shadow People, their fifth album, ten songs where they really hit their stride and refined their sound. Anton Newcombe was on hand for a lot of the album and provided the mix for this version of The Gift. They formed a  one- off group with Anton and actress/ singer Emmanuelle Seigner and released an excellent album in 2019 that I've remembered about while typing this. I should have included one of their songs on this but it's too late now. 

The Ballad Of Linda L. is from a soundtrack to a documentary from last year about the life of Linda Lovelace, written and recorded with David Menke.

Variation Sur 3 Bancs was a collaboration with Golden Bug. A vinyl/ digital EP came out in 2021 with remixes by Pilooski, Superpitcher and Destino, French electronic/ Balearic catnip. 

Devils Angels is by Unloved, from their second album Heartbreak (2019) There was a remix EP with remixes by various folk including Weatherall, Jane Weaver and here, obvs, The Limiñanas.

Dimanche is also from Shadow People with singer, songwriter and author Bertrand Belin on vocals. It was remixed by French DJ and Hacienda veteran Laurent Garnier. The Limiñanas and Laurent released an album together in 2021, De Pelicula, a psyche French road trip/ noir which is highly recommended (even though I neglected to put anything from it on this mix).

Liverpool is from the band's 2013 album Costa Blanca with vocals from Mu (Muriel Margail)

Saturday Theme Three

A short, sweet and self explanatory theme for today from The Liminanas from back in  2021. The Fuzz Theme is on the soundtrack of a film from the year before, The World We Knew, a story of six armed robbers facing their guilt/ ghosts. Distorted guitar played through an old valve amp accompanied by tambourine and some chanting. A Link Wray, spaghetti western, surf guitar theme done in one minute forty four seconds.

The Fuzz Theme

Que Calor!

This year's album (De Pelicula) from The Liminanas and Laurent Garnier is one of 2021's highlights, a sleek and urgent collaboration with The Liminanas beatnik rock 'n' roll/ modern yé-yé streamlined by Laurent Garnier's dance music production/ DJ background. It pulses and throbs, the guitars all fuzzed and spitting with wheezy Farfisa organ and driving basslines. Meanwhile, the vocals (all in French) tell the story of Juliet and Saul and their antics, a film noir, A Bout de Soufle style trip. Que Calor! with French actor Edi Pistolas on vocals, came out in a remix package, three different versions of the song, the pick of which is this one. 

Que Calor! (Nova Materia Cover)

Nova Materia are a French group whose back catalogue is here. More thumping French psychedelia for you. The original version of Que Calor! came out with a suitably seedy, trippy video. The drums, 60s organ and Edi's vocals are a blast of 1969 in 2021 energy. 

Monday's Long Song

This came out back in February which seems ages ago now but it suits the heat of summer much more than the chill of February. Parisienne artist Golden Bug, purveyor of electronic disco/ house, felt inspired to make a 60s/ 70s psychedelic acid track and contacted Lionel from The Liminanas to help out with vocals/ poetry and guitars. Then Golden Bug got three remixers on board, one being fellow Frenchman Pilooski and this nine minute, wigged out excursion was the result. 

The Superpitcher remix, Paris via Cologne, is well worth your spending a few of your euros on too. The whole Franco- German package, original track plus five remixes is here. Vinyl sadly sold out. 

It's Hot

On this, another song in advance of their album in September, The Liminanas and Laurent Garnier have really found their groove with Que Calor- thumping Velvets drums, sharp, reverb laden vox, whoops, Kingsmen guitar riffs, psyche organ riffs, the smell of jazz cigarettes and dancing, love beads and hair being tossed around, incense and fuzz pedals. 

In many ways this song really reminds of this 2015 fuzz- rock, sex and drugs blast from San Diego's Crocodiles. Both have smart animated videos too. Back to back fun. 

Foolin' Around

Stuck In God's Waiting Room

David Holmes was back in his regular monthly slot in God's Waiting Room at NTS Radio at the start of May, another two hours of perfectly chosen music from across the board- ambient, psychedelia, Velvets indebted rock from Belfast, cinematic weirdness, dub techno from Ability II in 1990, folk, experimental exotica, The Mekons in 1978, the whole gamut of leftfield music but always with a tune and a way in. You can find it at Mixcloud, two hours well spent. 

This would fit right in with the rest of David's selections, a new song from The Liminanas with Laurent Garnier on board- thumping drums and electronic rhythms, a twangy riff, beatnik gang vibes and Lionel speaking in French (naturellement) over the top. 

The Mirror

One of our eldest Isaac's pastimes is to watch photographs stored on the computer as a slideshow, a non- stop stream of holiday photos, days out, birthdays and my shots of urban dereliction. He got up and wandered away from it the other day and must have tapped the keyboard, because when I came back to the computer the slideshow had stopped on this photo, a picture I took in August 2013 of the mountains above Lake Annecy, nestled in the French Alps. We camped at the southern end of the lake for two weeks and our tent faced out of the campsite, towards the Alps. The view, changing all day as the sun rose, climbed above the mountains and then set, was stunning. 

A French group to go with the French Alps. The Liminanas are a husband/ wife beat group, equal parts the Velvets, Yé-yé, poetry, cigarettes and fuzz guitars. This song came out on 7" in 2015 and has British writer, actor and musician Kirk Lake on spoken word vocals telling a tale of a French mirror workshop and the nature of reflection, with mentions of mermaids, Jean- Paul Sartre and a fire.  

The Mirror

Angels On My Shoulder

Keeping the Bunnymen theme going this is a cover of their greatest B- side, the kind of song most bands would kill to have written- Ian, Will, Les and Pete channelling the Velvets, covered here by French beatnik husband and wife duo The Liminanas. Renaud and Nika's version of Angels And Devils was released in 2017 originally and then again on their 2018 B-sides and rarities compilation I've Got Trouble In Mind Volume 2. The organ, sitar/ guitar, Mo Tucker drums and male/ female vocals are absolutely spot on and while they haven't really reinterpreted the song- it's a very faithful cover version- it's the spirit of Bill Drummond's bunny god reborn and exactly what you didn't know you wanted. 

Angels And Devils

Isolation Mix Four

A bit of a change again for this week's hour long isolation mix, this time a trip into more psychedelic and psyche areas, some guitars, a couple of cover versions, some remixes and a re-edit of an 80s alt- classic with an eye, a third eye maybe, on the cosmic and the blissed out. One of the segues is a little bit clumsy but I can live with it. I've had to move the host over to Mixcloud as I'd used up all my available space at Soundcloud without going to the paid for service.



Tracklist-
The Durutti Column: Otis

Wixel: Expressway To Yr Skull (Long Champs Bonus Beats)

Moon Duo: Stars Are The Light

Curses: This Is The Day

Le Volume Courbe: Rusty

Sonic Boom/ Spectrum: True Love Will Find You In The End

Mogwai: Party In The Dark

The Liminanas: The Gift (Anton Mix)

Goldfrapp v Spiritualized: Monster Love

Julian Cope: Heed Of Penetration and the City Dweller Head Remix by Hugo Nicholson

Edit Service 8 by It’s A Fine Line: The Story Of The Blues (Talkin’ Blues)

The Early Years: Complicity

The Sword

Brand new, totally retro and full of dirty guitars, Velvets rhythms and Gallic cool come L'Epée. Lou is a tribute to Lou Reed and sounds exactly like a tribute to Lou Reed should...



Back in May L'Epée released Dreams, an organ led shake and crawl yé-yé number with a video taking us through Paris in the 60s, from Montmartre to the Eiffel Tower, the banks of the Seine, pavement cafes and then heading out of town. L'Epée, a four piece made up of Anton Newcombe, Emmanuelle Seigner and Lionel and Marie Liminana sound like they should be blaring from a car's radio or through the half open window of a first floor flat.