Thursday 30 April 2020

Orange Sky



I don't have anything to say really apart from I really love this song. I first heard this on Jon Richards morning show on KEXP when I was still office based, which feels like ages ago and I suppose 18 years is a long time. I used to tune into the Seattle station,  put my headphones on and block out the rest of the office. Never thought I would ever say this but I miss being able to get up wander across the office and chat to colleagues. Skype and MS Teams is how me and the people I work with keep in touch but I have never considered it a medium for just talking shit to other people, too much like the phone for my liking, something that I have always used very infrequently as anybody know knows me will attest to.

This always had the feel of a lost John Martyn song about it

Alexi Murdoch - Orange Sky 

Monday 27 April 2020

Monday's Long Song



I have had a bit of an Orb fest over the weekend, digging out some stuff that I haven't played for some time. One of these was the first volume in the Orbsessions series of albums. Volume 1 contains unreleased tracks and collaborations from the very early days until 2005. The first track on the double album Mummie Don't must be from the days when the Orb was a collaboration of Alex Paterson and Jimmy Cauty, although I can't be sure as there are no sleeve notes but you will be able to spot sounds and samples that would be used not only on other tracks by the Orb but also the Space album and KLF records.

The Orb - Mummie Don't

Friday 24 April 2020

It's Friday . . . Let's Dance



Over the past week or so I have been starting off my post work listening sessions with a mix cd out of the cupboard. The ones that I have got the most pleasure out of have been the ones that aren't squarely four to the floor dance but the more eclectic ones such as the Portishead and David Holmes groundbreaking Essential mixes but the ones that had me transfixed for their duration were the UNKLE ones. James Lavelle knew how to compile a mix did he not. He was also quite adept with the remix. Here is a remix of a DJ Shadow track featuring Roots Manuva from the 2002 released Mashin' On The Motorway double 12" released on where else but Mo Wax.

In other news, there is no other news

Stay safe and have a good weekend people.

DJ Shadow - GDMFSOB (UNKLE Unscensored)

Tuesday 21 April 2020

My Love Is Your Love, Forever




This track is another one of those that has you thinking "what the fuck were they thinking about at Motown?" as this is another of those absolutely brilliant songs that was never released and languished in the vaults. That statement is not entirely true as My Love Is Your Love, Forever was released in 1972 on an Isley Brothers Music For Pleasure  compilation only available in the Netherlands! A full five years after the group had recorded this gorgeous Stevie Wonder/Ivy Jo Hunter penned track. It was eventually released on  the Richard Searling curated 7" as part of the Motown's 7s Box - Rare and Unreleased Vinyl where it was backed with Something's Wrong by Chris Clarke.

I love this song, one of my favourite Motown tracks ever and also # 13 in my Northern Top 50.

The Isley Brothers - My Love Is Your Love (Forever)

Monday 20 April 2020

Monday's Long Song



Today's track turned up a couple of times over the past week. Firstly, on the UNKLE mix, Edit Music For A Film and also when sorting out the cupboard pictured above yesterday I found a CTI Records sampler cd which had been previously presumed lost quite a while ago which has the track on it.

Also Sprach Zarathustra by Deodato, is a jazz funk interpretation by Brazilian musician Eumir Deodato of the introduction to the Richard Strauss composition. Not sure why I was surprised to find out that it was released as a single in 1973 but I was even more surprised to find out that it reached number 7 in the UK charts and breached the billboard top 40.

Deodato - Also Sprach Zarathustra

Friday 17 April 2020

Is It Friday . . . Does Anybody Want To Dance?



In these troubled times it is good to keep in touch with old friends.

Ah, Sturdy Girl, I wonder how she is dealing with lockdown, I hope if she has been able to keep a plentiful supply of Olde English 800 and managing to keep her exercise regime going. 

This piece of electro came out last summer and really appealed to me me with it's old school simplistic beats and obscure film samples. I have no idea who Rogue Filter is/are but he/they have released three hand stamped 12" singles in a similar vein that are all worth checking out.

As far as the football is concerned, there is none or any on the horizon for the foreseeable future. The SPFL have decided to call the leagues in Scotland now and there has been much wailing and nashing of teeth, however I'm not sure that it would have been possible for any other resolution. One thing that has pissed me off is Tam Cowan on Off The Ball, congratulating all of the Motherwell fans who have bought their season tickets for next year and how wonderful they are. Am I the only person who thinks that this is a totally stupid thing to do, buy tickets for a season when you don't know when it is going too start, if it even will start  or what form the league you will be in will now look? And what about those fans that can't afford to buy tickets at present due to living on 80% of their wages or worse and don't see football as a priority at present or would rather wait and see what actually is on offer , are they lesser supporters Mr Cowan? We don't all have the luxury of a salary from the Murdoch press and appearance fees from the BBC. Anyway, I could go on and on about this but mini rant over.

Stay safe people.

Rogue Filter - Bot Wars

Thursday 16 April 2020

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face



Yesterday I was on a bit of an UNKLE tip, I started off with the |Edit Music For A Film mixes and then went through various albums and Unklesounds mixes and then finished off with the absolutlely beautiful rendition of Ewan MacColl song made famous by Roberta Flack. This single was originally produced as a souvenir of James Lavelle's curation of the Meltdown festival in 2014. I was lucky enough to get a copy of this single from the UNKLE website, however on first play there was a heck of a lot of surface noise on the record but the vinyl looked fine. I contacted the webstore and was duly sent a replacement which sounded the same and noted that on Discogs someone else had complained about the surface noise so it was probably a pressing problem which iss an absolute shame as it's a gorgeous single right down to the white cardboard cover with the Unkle figures in white glitter.

Listening to the track had a rather soothing effect on me last night and I hope it brings you five and a bit minutes of calm today.

UNKLE featuring Keaton Henson - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face 

Wednesday 15 April 2020

Wise Words From The Bard Of Barking



I can't remember which tour it was on, if it was the Talking To The Taxman About Poetry or The Workers Playtime one , I have a suspicion it was the former, but I have never forgotten the words that Billy Bragg used prior to launching into the sheer heartache that is Levi Stubbs Tears, well I have forgotten the actual words but this is the jist of it, no matter how hard things get, get the kettle, make a brew, put on a Four Tops record and all will be fine with the world again.

Tuesday 14 April 2020

Good Times



I realise that the title of today's slice of heavy garage is not particularly apt and I'm not trying to be ironic either, it just happens to be in the words of the Swede "a rather splendid racket", a fuzzed out wig out that was presumably heard by very few people outwith the Dallas Texas area on it's limited release in 1968. It was exhumed until earlier this century when a limited number of mint originals were found by some now considerably better off psych/garage crate digger.

Nobody's Children - Good Times 

Monday 13 April 2020

Monday's Long Song



I know that my posts were pretty infrequent prior to this shitshow starting but like most people I know I am finding it difficult to focus on anything and the blog is not a prioruty at the moment. However saying that |quite often I find myself thinking that's a really good tune I must post that but then the notion disappears and I go back to worrying about,  well everything really . I do find myself listing to lots of longer, mainly instrumental tracks, things that I can get lost in but I have also found myself reaching for some things that in normal times would be inexplicable, last Thursday I found myself playing Grendel by Marillion and last night I managed to last all the way through Supper's Ready and not a Gabriel fronted version but the one from Second's Out and you know what I found neither of these tracks truly awful but do find myself looking for a "cleanser" almost immediately usually something which restores the pure music snob in me, the more obscure the record the better.

I have rediscovered the ambient delights of Pete Namlock whose music back in the mid 90s was pretty hard to come by, I picked up Air and Air II in Fopp in Byres Road and then there seemed to be a release every other week and it was not possible to keep up. A few years back when perusing the CD racks in Monorail, I came across a very reasonably priced boxset of volumes 9 - 11 of Namlook's collaboration with Klaus Schulze, Dark Side of The Moog and very good it is too, however I'm not sure that I will be purchasing Vol 1-4 any time soon as the cheapest copy is tad expensive Vol 5 -8 are available at a much more reasonable price and are on the list but way way down. Posted is the first track from Vol 11, The Heart of Our Nearest Star, Part 1.

Klaus Schulze & Pete Namlook - The Heart of Our Nearest Star (Part 1)

Monday 6 April 2020

Monday's Long Song



I'm not sure about the rest of you but I have been finding myself turning to a lot of more downtempo, soothing music at the moment, Richard Norris' ambient excursions, FSOL, John Foxx's London Overgrown album (which I expect will feature in the coming weeks) and over the weekend 29 hours of The Dark Outside, Inside which was absolutely wonderful.

Today's track comes from a cd bought on a whim. Arc of Doves was a project by Japanese producer Tetsuya Nakamura and I don't know why I never bought anything further than the debut Impressions as it is a gorgeous set  of ambient(?) Modern Classical(?) pieces, I don't know as someone more eloquent than me put it "all of these are just labels". However it does have the desired affect in that when it's on I forget all about the anxiety of now and get lost in the soothing tones and repetition.

Arc of Doves - Impression

Thursday 2 April 2020

Silence of the Morning



How about a huge slab of fuzzed up heavy psych to brighten up your Thursday in self-isolation?

The Glass Sun were a trio formed in Westland Michigan, originally named the Cyclones but changed their name when the brothers, Bruce and Rick Roll, the guitarist and bassist returned from being drafted to Vietnam in the late 60s but it wasn't until 1971 that they entered the studio to record the first of two singles they released on local Detroit label Sound Patterns. 300 copies of Silence of The Morning/Oh Sandy, both written by Rick while stationed in Vietnam in 1968,  were pressed up and like so many other records of the time failed to make an impression on the record buying public until the internet age when Silence of The Morning was unearthed and shared all over the world by psych and garage heads. The single is now rightly considered a classic of the garage -fuzz genre and would set you back north of £400 if you were lucky enough to source a copy of the 7".

The Glass Sun - Silence of The Morning