BEATS OF LOVE 

118. Hai-Donan by Shigharu Mukai-Morning Flight     

IS IT Balearic are spinning off in a variety of musical directions that highlight their depth of talent. The Marius Circus twelve has unsurprisingly been the pick, but Wrekin Havoc's Camino is also brilliant and representative of what they do best. Soulful Italo influenced goodness.

If the Delia Recordings sampler is anything to go by, three brilliant LPs are just around the corner by Shrinkwrap, Torn Sail and Brown Fang. Three unique acts that instantly scream quality. Add to that Jim's remix package that includes a sun-drenched Begin interpretation of Still River Flow with its subtle keys, with a more dizzying, floor-friendly X-Press 2 remix of Phoenix and you have a Midlands set on musical fire.

I had to mention that, but this week I've been obsessed with this colourful masterpiece. It was either Basso or Moonboots who first introduced me to Japanese jazz-fusion with its ridiculous attention to detail and resplendent touches that work against the American orthodoxy to produce something more sanitized yet more magical. When I searched for some online info about trombone virtuoso Shigeharu Mukai, I not only discovered he'd lived in New York before forming his group back in Japan, but also learned of his blood group. Note the ridiculous attention to detail.

More noted for the powerful Miracle of Tungus that elevates his trombone to the next level boogie machine, this album opener leaves me drenched in steel band percussive fairy dust. With reggae man Pecker sprinkling the magic as the trombone soothes, whilst I ask myself, 'is it Balearic?'

BEATS OF LOVE 

117. Last Night I Had a Dream by Randy Newman

I'VE ALWAYS been fatalistic and superstitious. And with just cause. My father suffered a heart attack on Friday the 13th, then suffered a fatal one thirteen days later. 

My mother spent a full six months of tests and anxiety after a bleed led her GP to fear the worst, only to be given the all clear. Less than a month later, she was dead after tripping over her hair drier.

Quite a few friends attended Buddhist retreats in their twenties and despite me not biting, the undeniable change in them left an indelible mark on my senses.  I vividly recall the torpor of an unmonitored cold turkey withdrawal from Librium in my aunt's back bedroom where she thought I'd gone full, Syd Barrett. Only when I prayed did I feel any relief and at just that point, a massiv bolt of light shone through the window. I woke up less agitated, reasoning it was just coincidental that the streetlights came on. But I wasn't certain coz I began praying more regularly.

Despite turning back to my faith, I still catastrophize too easily, worrying about all the bad or strange stuff that might happen. What my faith and music do is give me introspective time to reflect on all the good stuff that has actually happened. And continues to happen. These reflections feed into me imaginary others, which sounds a little schizophrenic, yet who've actually helped me to stop smoking and to regulate my alcohol intake. Not before helping me challenge myself to stop partaking in unwanted behaviour patterns.

Little wonder I'm able to call these my other friends. Friends that enter my subconscious more and more, strengthening my faith while making me a little less fatalistic and superstitious. Hallelujah! 

BEATS OF LOVE

116. Sworn by Dream Boys

MUST SAY, it's great to have Horsebeach's Pure Shores spinning on the turntable. Ryan has made the song his own with his inimitable charm and colourful way around a song. 

Wanting to know what made him tick led me to discover this LA/Scottish band whose name creates a google nightmare. Their sole LP was a steal and has been played constantly since it arrived. Their songs are awash with a fiery fragility that sound like they could collapse at any time but miraculously don't. 

The chiming guitars glide over rich harmonies that never sound fey and keep a certain suspense. A suspense that's missing in most songs. Even songs made with guitars in 1986. 

This song is short but packs a real punch with its subtly crafted breaks and soaring fallen angel voices. A band should sound like one person, albeit a superhuman one, so Horsebeach has a distinct advantage, as do bands comprising siblings, and in this song, the trans-Atlantic Dream Boys truly do sound as one. No mean feat.  

There's nothing greater than hearing a short blast of perfect guitar pop. It's arguably the only enduring gift left to give that commerce and media styling hasn't tainted. 

https://open.spotify.com/track/2Ehm3s5f2OQF9bYGeqBJnD

             

BEATS OF LOVE 

115. Sometimes by James

THE MIND is strange, or at least mine is. I have this crystal clear image of a guy at my school enraptured on the stage with James in one of their oversized tee-shirts. 

I've never seen James live, and the only possible explanation for this crystal clear memory my mind holds is he was instead invading the stage as The Man From Delmonte supported the Fall. It would help explain why the life affirming anthems of the era sung with frenzied passion on a bed of proper adult musicianship sailed clean over me. I loved the unpredictable intensity and warmer intimacy of less accomplished smaller gigs. 

With age, this momentous song now feels alive in me as, outside of Weatherall's interpretations of their work, I've never really experienced the band itself at the peak of its powers. Cheers to Matt Best for sharing this might online. It's truly heartwarming to know that the Beehive Mill was their practice space as round here mills became warehouses, stifling creativity, before finally being razed to the ground. I was going to treat myself to a vinyl copy until I realized I could add the CD to an existing order for just 50p. The fact I keep spinning it means it's super value for money coz you can't buy a chocolate biscuit for that.

The mind is wonderful, or at least mine is. For, despite having some serious water cascading toward me, I can completely escape myself and still get lost in music. It hasn't failed me yet.   

BEATS OF LOVE 

114. One Goodbye in Ten (Album mix) by Shara Nelson

BOB STANLEY wrote a moving piece in the Guardian about his friend Shara Nelson.

Not known for a profligate lifestyle, instead she unassumingly but magnificently touched us with songs she co-wrote, so the news of her deteriorating mental health was tragic. And yes, I concurred Bob was right. When famous men lose their minds and behave uncharacteristically oddly, they get labelled geniuses which help them cope with the public shaming. Women have no such support. The fact she has kept a dignified silence speaks volumes. 

Despite being a major part of quintessentially the Massive Attack arsenal, this track fully realizes a Motown influenced sound the Saint Etienne boys had been trying to master. She never impinges but contributes to a greater whole and as a result, Stanley and Wiggs have never crafted a better song. The timeless soaring strings still get me every time and the warmth of her soothing voice, like a fine taste of Remy, put me in my happy place. Great pop music can be as effecting as any work of art and its exponents don't need to be capricious or contemporary. They just need to know exactly what they want to do.

Thank God Shara heard Only Love Can Break Your Heart and began to hear this absolute dynamite. For this alone, she deserves countless blessings. 

 

BEATS OF LOVE 

113. Reflection on the Crucifixion of Our Lord, Jesus Christ by John Littleford

WE SKIPPED film class to attend this talk in my local church community hall. It's fascinating to learn about the other life of people and even more fascinating when they turn you onto their art.

John's crucifixion series took inspiration from Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece with its Triptych design and contemporary theme, but moved toward abstraction. I'm not really into moving towards something, but thankfully the last work he displayed was more figurative and, thanks to the massive success of Oppenheimer, more now. Inevitably, physical texture is less dramatic when mixed-media art get photographed, so I came away wanting to see the actual works.

His Great War figures, sympathetically painted, are climbing over the trenches to meet their fate. This he only alludes to, more mindful of today's more meditative viewer, who could easily assess graphic war imagery. Grünewald was fearless in depicting a plague infected Christ as a figure of empathy. The site of the commission being a hospice where plague doctors walked about in the protective masks that influenced the beak like creations of Hieronymus Bosch. Inflicted patients desperately needed hope. The intended site for John's is a modern day unimpressive parish church. Possibly ours. Yet we, too, still need hope. 

Depicting the second atomic bomb because its cloud lends itself to encasing Christ better is odd, but that's the problem with schematic figurative art, I guess. Thumbing through the delightful draughtsman ship of John's sketch-books is fascinating coz you see how reworked his Christ was before he arrived at the Gauguinesque figure. A figure dwarfed by the famous sentence of reconciliation 'Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.' These words of God still have great global force. The 20th century made horror inescapable while introducing collective shock and mass spectacle into society. The 21st century, with its Millennium dome, the first building in history to put a gun to its own head and pull the trigger, summarizes this state of overkill we now live through.

It's why when this series escapes John's attic and bubble wrap, it will be important. Important for the church when it finally becomes more radical in defence of social justice, which it must, to offer people an antidote to their feelings of intense hopelessness. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

112. This by Me 

This 

 is like the lottery of childhood friendship 

tossing words about boisterously for sheer fun,

then crying out loudly for Mum

once the fighting starts

Who reflects herself

across my mental plane

in a translucent ocean wave

Suddenly, after a big cheery splash, 

 everything is unruffled, calm even

and I think, 'something's amiss, I must've plagiarized this'

BEATS OF LOVE 

111. Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season) by The Byrds

WAS GOING to write at length about the Hangout at Isadora's, but drug stories are often boring and this is a bit of a drug story. The first few times I attended the club, pissed out of my tree, I danced wildly. Meeting a lovely girl in a suede dress on the dancefloor whose Hulme sofa I later collapsed on. 

I awoke having my hair playfully stroked with Bob Marley playing on her cassette player and thought I'd gone to heaven. Fast forward to the following Friday evening and I'm half cut but paralyzed by nerves, unable to call the number she'd given me. Then my good mate Stu, in exasperation, took the phone and, impersonating me, arranged my date.

Unfathomably, on the train down to meet her, he handed me a micro-dot, which I duly swallowed. My first time on drugs then excitedly coincided with my first date. Then I stopped the uncontrolled laughter. Before you think my good mate Stu wasn't such a good mate, I must confess to living a charmed life and revelling in being a bastard. 

Locking a guy out of his own car as he got battered in my place was bad, but actually trumped by a case of mistaken identity. I emptied the contents of my Holsten Pils into a driver's open window as we exchanged expletives. Further up the road, the irate driver, now armed with some lead piping, shoved straight past me and instead hospitalized my mate. So I deserved this.   

This being the crippling fear I was now experiencing in the club. The bemused girl attempting to hold my hand was scaring me. In fact, everything I set eyes on was. Even Stu, who seemed to have a whale of a time. I was better at closing my eyes and listening to Dave Booth's brilliant tunes. Then, as I nervously sidled away from my date, I experienced my Damascus moment. Exploring the swirling lights when this mighty tune came on and a small group of folk who looked like Candy Flip encouraged me to hold hands. We all danced together, only we didn't just dance, we flew up into the air and became a tangible mass of love. Feeling truly incredible and something akin to what I hoped clubbing could feel like.  

I had a dilemma: did I phone the girl to apologize or did I chase that incredible high? In fact, no dilemma at all.  

    

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

21. THE KLF :  Less is More

 PART ONE

I WAS literally bouncing off the Midland hotel walls in a wretched stupor on a Tuesday morning. I'd been out since Monday teatime where I'd been to an In the City Basics night. That preceded being in a posh flat ingesting acid with a guy I didn't know from Adam, which preceded sipping beer in the lively hotel until breakfast which preceded bouncing off the walls in search of a toilet. 

Alone then and bouncing off the walls, I startled a guy who was about to close his door but who was unfortunate in that he couldn't divert himself away from my attention. I cajoled him into making me a coffee as I fell into his room. He'd signed These Animal Men, but I didn't hold that against him. My ears well and truly pricked up when he said he was meeting up with the K Foundation later that afternoon. I wanted in but had six long hours to kill before their panel discussion and was already half-dead. Going back to my gaff in Withington for some shut eye was a no no as I wouldn't have reawakened. Instead, I hoped to score a cheap wrap of whizz back in the Midland. There I learned that middle-aged music industry types don't do cheap wraps of whizz.

By the time the K Foundation entered the building, I slumped across the bar and couldn't focus properly. Shielded from folk like me, but recognising that one shielder was John Robb, I found my feet and lurched towards Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond anyway to make my introduction. Only I didn't. I simply shook everyone's hand and slurred 'fucking ace' as I gestured towards my lighter. Had John Higgs's mind stretching book been out there, I might've had more to say but luckily it wasn't. I didn't stay for the discussion and didn't wash my right hand for days after. 

I wish I'd been more reverent coz these two visionaries are true beacons of light. Never had I heard crickets chirping on an album until I put their groundbreaking Chill Out on the turntable. 

PART TWO

THE KLF created in 2 days, armed with field recordings, samples, and punk in joking, a record that has intrigued us for over 3 decades. I picked up my copy in Probe and so built up a lot of anticipation on the journey home as I stared at its à la Floyd's sleeve wondrously. It's one of those albums that always puts a great big smile on my face as I reflect on the positivity associated with raving in 1989. Chill out music has since become synonymous with more linear beats and relaxing rhythms, for winding down to after a day in work, but the KLF made theirs for still being on, or coming down off drugs. Well, considering most folk the day after the rave. 

However, never was I raving in a field. Once invited to one, but needed over thirty quid when I had just enough cash to buy a burger and board the last bus home. We scored our drugs off a white rasta at the Whitts on Drake Street in Rochdale.

He'd wear a garish shell-suit and walk around chewing his face intensely, saying in hush tones either 'Sensi, sunshines, strawberries' and we'd be all smiles, or 'Squidgy black, ohms' and we'd look properly worried. We always buggered off on the train to Mancunia, nibbling on our wares, but on this one occasion, encouraged to stay, we went further down the road, then to The Pub. Foolishly; we necked our drugs. All these mad-heads who sung along to American Pie pissed out of their trees were now full on raving. 

The strobes were on, but all I could look at were the rottweilers pacing about, or folk whose smiles were twisting off their weathered middle-aged faces. I was confused and scared as there was no leaving there until the notorious owner wanted us out. Thankfully, after a terrible trip, it finally ended and any notion I had of ever raving in a field also ended. 

Occasionally, the inside of my head would glaze over with musical snippets of the night before creeping out with the freshness of a warm sun while the small birds in the garden would be singing warmly, making life sound sweet. On this occasion, though, still disturbed by this lock-in rave I'd attended, I had to put on some ready-made music to drift off to. Thank God then for the KLF's debut album. Interwoven with samples, found material, and deep space programming, it's perfect for those fragmentary moments that really help blink out a bit of bliss before stepping back onto the carousel of life.  

The trip I'm still on listening to this evokes a vast ancestor trod desert earth that slowly comes to life in a less distant past with Graham Lee's pedal steel guitar and the fractured samples that seem to flap about on an untuned nighttime radio. Sounding brilliantly sun-kissed but not site-specific. Their short film Waiting brings to life a soundtrack on the Isle of Jura which, with Ladyland era Hendrix, samples and harsh coastline noises, plays like a visual prequel to a rave that captures feelings of anticipation perfectly. The idiosyncratic £1000 a head, island rave, at what Orwell described as 'an extremely un-getatable place,' arrived a year later when they returned. I've envied attendee, Sarah Champion, ever since.

Cauty was the musician, and a bloody minded one at that. It was he who called time on the KLF at the peak of their power and he who wrote off ambient house despite coining the phrase himself. He had a point coz I actually bought a spare of his masterpiece Space in Our Price's sale bins. Arguably the best 3 quid I've ever spent. As conceptual as Chill Out, it works well as a companion piece that demands more of the imagination. The sleeve nods to the artwork of French Romanticism, the liberating force in classical music, to make a humorous point about his own planetary exploration. What he calls 'Music for 14 year old space cadets.' The press release unsurprisingly ends with the word plop.  

Despite erasing all Alex Paterson's parts after splitting with the Orb, he made what was due to be their debut album his own. And all in the space of a working week. Jamming it out on analogue synths, sampling and looping classical elements, the album becomes a much sparser affair. Darker, deeper, and slowly becoming housier, the journey has aged spectacularly well and is probably the only record to encapsulate the term ambient house. It remains a groundbreaking record. Proving once again that less is more.  

As much as I loved their art foundation, the unique ambient music they created with a candour and humility in Trancentral is what possessed me to want in. Unsurprisingly, ending with the word plop. 

 

BEATS OF LOVE  

110. Cascade by Niecy Blues

NOT THAT I made a resolution, but after watching her fawning interview with Mone and Barrowman which almost forgot to drop them in the shit, I resolved not to watch Laura Kuenssberg again. 

That went well as I sat agog while she cosily chatted with the PM less than a fortnight later. Leaving me convinced I knew more about the junior doctor's dispute and the post office scandal than the pair of them. Obviously, I didn't, but their dumbing down of politics in the media has now meant dramatists have more credibility.

Whilst my mother's partner celebrated his daughter-in-law's  50th at the Ivy, all attention was on their table until Kuenssberg and Dominic Raab turned up and sat nearby. Suddenly, all attention diverted away from my mother's partner's table and towards theirs, giving him the chance to see just how much booze they consumed. Then, unsurprisingly, Raab, when interviewed the following day, became utterly confused by the meaning of misogyny and sounded truly horrible.

 

The political landscape is now characterized by a revolving door of public school ninnies like him being cosseted by the media when they behave appallingly. Many see that appalling behaviour as authenticity, which epitomizes society's shortsightedness. The media never cossets ordinary folk. 

With this track evoking the headphone heaven of the finest trip-hop but with a fresh and twisted soul sensibility, putting me in my happy place, I resolve never to mention the flaccid state of British politics ever again. 

BEATS OF LOVE

109. Abigail's Party  DVD

PUNK-ROCK started our generation gap, but before that explosion, the teenager was born and grew up. Teenagers who defined themselves by buying and not making stuff. Who mimicked what they watched on the telly to style themselves, serviced their own ego and distanced themselves from their parents. Teenagers, a lot like me then. 

In this fresh, new state of alienated consumerism, these teenagers would continue as adults, defining themselves as middle-class despite being born into houses with tin-baths, buying stuff, including 'brand new' homes and often parented punk-rockers who rightfully rebelled against them.  

No art captures this unconscious state of blind aspiration that is still prevalent in society better than Mike Leigh's brilliant play. I've only seen it on DVD about fifty times. It survives because all the social antagonisms that the tragi-comedy teases out persist today. Their complete lack of any emotional transparency makes his class-obsessed characters, who instead only express themselves by what they consume, appear truly preposterous. Until we recognize little bits of ourselves in them. 

His only proper middle-class character, Sue, looks as uncomfortable as we do watching it. However, whilst she's recognizing something shockingly novel, we're instead recognizing our own family's social shortcomings and the binge-drinking culture that was spawned in society at large. 

Tragically, the punk-rockers in their more pronounced state of alienation failed to grasp that making stuff was essential in resisting Thatcherism. Sadly, they're now conjoined with their parents in that same middle-class bunker mentality. 

Distanced from both the white-working-class community they should've belonged to and migrants who they should be sympathetic to.