Let's Form A Cell

A few years ago I featured X Film Pus Ultra, Douglas Hart's debut solo single which I had been too late to the party on. About 18 months ago I managed to track down a reasonably priced copy and came across when searching through one of the singles boxes when looking for a Moon Duo 7". So I put it on and it still sounds tremendous. It got me thinking about the follow-up that I was also too tardy on and so I checked Discogs, two copies one ridiculously priced and the other not too dear but in Japan and with the postage still more than I am prepared to pay for a vg+ record.  I decided to check out the Blank Editions website in the vain hope that there would be a re-release or something alas no but what I did find was a tape for sale that combines the 7" and the 12"and duly ordered. There are still some copies available here.

Monday's Long Song

Not more 21st Century psych!

Yip, there is a lot of it about and much of it is of a very high quality, although I'm not sure that a 7 year old track is really that upfront. It doesn't seem that it has been that long since I first heard HeadOn/Pill but it must be as the record states it in black and white 2013. I bought this album on a whim at the time as the name of the band appealed to me, King Gizzard and The Wizard Lizard.  Head On/ Pill is a 16 minute epic trip of a track that seems to be over in about half of that time. It has been released as a stand alone 12" on two occasions, as a picture for RSD 2014 and then again as a coloured 12" last month both of which if you could get a copy will cost you ridiculous money and I'm not sure why as you can pick up the album Float Along - Fill Your Lungs for a quarter of the price on Discogs and you get the bonus of an extra 7 tracks. 

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard - Head On/Pill

Ennio Morricone RIP

I posted this way back in the early days of the blog. 

Rest Easy Maestro

If there is anybody who could be said to be a better film scorer (don't know if that is the correct term) than the sadly departed John Barry then it would have to be Ennio Morricone, from his spaghetti westerns through the Mission to Cinema Paradiso they are all classics. My personal favourite has got to be Once Upon A Time In America, bits of which I used to drop into mixes all the time when I thought of myself a bit of a budding Weatherall back when delusional in the early 90s.

There are probably loads of scored by Morricone that I have never heard of. Today's track being a case in point it comes from the 1970 Italian film "Ciita Vioenta", Violent City or otherwise known as The Family which starred Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland and was set in New Orleans. I have no recollection of ever seeing this film but if it was ever on terrestrial telly when I was a teenager there is a good chance that I did as my father is a big Bronson fan!

I discovered this track on the Cherrystones compilation which I bought as David Holmes had something to do with the compiling. Most of the tracks on the cd were new to me but all are really good even the Cher track, a cover of I walk On Gilded Splinters and worth the five and a bit quid it is now going for on Amazon. It was more than double that at the time of release.

Ennio Morricone - Svolta Definitiva

Monday's Long Song

Going back a bit here. On Twitter Richie posed the question "what was your favourite stadium gig?" I have never been to a stadium gig as such, frankly the idea fill me with horror;  far too many people, no personal space and being the length of a football pitch away from the stage is not a prospect I found enticing and that was prior to the current situation. 

When I was a lot younger i did attend a few gigs in Arenas with a pal and his day courtesy of Harvey Goldsmith, who was a friend of my pal's dad. I saw Bowie at Wembley Arena and also Roger Waters Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking at the NEC Birmingham. The Bowie gig was amazing as we were pretty close to the stage up to the right and Bowie was of course absolutely brilliant. But I have vivider memories of Waters gig, possibly because we were so close to the stage, the fourth row and also it was the first time I had been to a gig with any sort of added visuals apart from just lighting, there was a huge three panel screen the length of the stage which projected both Gerald Scarfe's animation as you would expect but also live action sequences directed by Nicolas Roeg for the Pros and Cons half of the show and for the old Pink Floyd tunes there was footage that had accompanied performances of those tracks on Pink Floyd tours. It was all very impressive to a fifteen year old boy who apart from the Bowie gig the previous year had only ever experienced the Glasgow Apollo. 

I still remember the set list as the first half  contained some of my favourite Pink Floyd and opened with a haunting extended version of Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun. The version posted is not from the specific night that I was there but from New York on the second leg of the tour the following year

Roger Waters - Set The Controls For The Heart of the Sun (Live 1985)

Anything More

Over the past couple of nights I have dug out and revisited the two volumes of The Complete Works by Spiritualized which collects alternative versions, b-sides and sessions from the very early days of Jason Pierce's band up to 2003's Amazing Grace and their are gems a plenty not least the instrumental version of some of the songs. The Spaceman was not averse to throwing everything including the kitchen sink and full orchestras into the studio, his idea of stripped down was a 7 piece band. I always think that Pierce is at his best when he is bearing his soul and at his most fragile like on Broken Heart, the Japanese only orchestral version of this has featured here in the past but it was a good few years ago and will probably do so again but the one that stopped me dead in my tracks last night was Anything More from Let It Come Down, jeez it floored me and for the duration all of the shit that's going on disappeared and I was caught up in the tune so much so that when it finished it,  it was repeated not once but twice before I returned to listening to the rest of the second disc from Volume 2.

I intend to make a playlist this weekend of the most beautiful Spiritualized tracks that I can put on when the anxiety levels are up which pretty much means that this will be all that I will be listening to for the foreseeable.

Spiritualized - Anything More (instrumental)