BEATS OF LOVE 

138. The Drift by deary 

 

THAT CAPITALISM survived communism is no surprise. It's less theoretical and lends itself to corruption. Communism was a big ask and a big threat, which is why we had a social democratic society. 

Meaning there was less nepotism and cronyism and more education and opportunity. Now, with the end of the cold war, there is a complete inattention to the plight of everyday folk as unimaginative politicians inflate their own egos and get obsessed with one another. 

It's why Starmer can go from socialism to something that could be mistaken for the Sunak era in a few short months. It's why populism, the last throw of the dice in any democracy, is so popular. Its ideas, values and tenets are malleable. Another unspoken truth is that everyday folk are a bit like politicians. Creating a low-cost world with mass consumerism, meaning that they can also unimaginatively inflate their own egos and get obsessed with one another. 

Despite still having slavery in its DNA, this unchecked capitalism has now become the new religion. Reagan, by exhausting Russias wealth pool, created an oligarchy. And not just in Russia. A politician's role is now to serve that whilst trying to serve the low-cost world we create. Meaning that only the very richest feel any gains. Something similar occurred during the late Roman Empire. When its ideas, language, and culture took hold elsewhere while it became obsessed with lying and deceiving the everyday folk in its care. 

It's why another part of the world with more imagination and integrity holds the key to moving humanity forward. One not so lost and confused in its own self.  

BEATS OF LOVE

137. Bigger & Closer (Not Smaller & Further Away) by David Hockney 

IT WAS with trepidation that I entered the Aviva studio, thinking I was going to see another three-hour show. The last time I went, I saw Laurie Anderson. As compelling as elements were, it was sprawling in over indulgence and went on far too long.

My relief was palpable as I discovered two of the three hours my missus had allotted to this were actually in the bar. The last time I saw Hockney in Manchester was his photographic exhibition, that left me a little cold. I like to see the artist's hand in the work, so I was even less drawn to this. 

However, despite massive reservations, once I found my perch aloft, I became drawn in and mesmerised. Aviva for once made perfect sense as its vast space became awash with a vibrancy that was both colourful and high spirited. I couldn't help but do a bit of people spotting as my eyes scanned the dominant spaces and saw miniature people sat to attention, laid back with their phones, lent against walls, sprawled out on the floor, and knelt down playfully. It very much had a festival flavour. 

Lightroom's masterstroke is having Hockney's distinctively northern voice making pithy comments to guide us through his work with a sense of great purpose. An advantage he has over Van Gogh for sure is this artistic control. Artist Chanje Kunda noted that this gave the work an African flavour by evoking oratory art traditions perfected by the elders and passed down through generations. It certainly gives the exhibition its sense of reverence that means there's no casual banter, allowing the spoken word and image to coalesce. Prompting us to ask, 'are we seeing the work through Hockney's eyes or our own?' Probably our own. That said, the method helps us reach a better level of understanding his work without scrunching our faces in brain ache. 

What came to life for me were the photographs I had dismissed. Possibly because they lend themselves to reproduction, or most likely because I now know what foregrounding time and perspective means. Hockney is a great entry point for this type of installation, as his use of colour is joyful. His big themes, water, spring, theatre; dramatic. It's a great appetizer, as I'm surely not alone in wanting to view more of his actual work now. There is a great big book near the entrance, a more comprehensive catalogue of his oeuvre with a £4500 price tag. I'm guessing it's still there.   

I have my reservations about future installations working as well, but the three-year effort to realize this blockbuster art show needs commending. A blockbuster  art show in Manchester. That's a first.  

BEATS OF LOVE 

136. On a Sunday by Nick Heyward

FINDING ONE'S way home after the party was always difficult and on more than one occasion, I needed neighbours to carry my body through the door. 

One particular dark episode, I was Sunday strolling home, away from my good mate Bob's party where I'd just made the best of playing his records and was singing Candi Staton to myself when I bumped into my workmate Tim. A guy who'd just literally just gambled his house away. Convinced the national wank a lottery would save him, only it didn't. 

Inviting him back to my mother's house to share a whisky was a bad idea. To then invite the more excessive remnants of the party, Bob's pal Nick amongst them, an even badder one. Finally, returning home on the Monday, I had my copy of this, the single I'd bought off Tim more out of pity as I already had one and a David Holmes single bought from Vinyl Exchange. On the face, just an ordinary Monday.

All I recall after my ill-fated stroll home, though, is one guy leaving and returning with strips of what he said was his granny's medication. The particular strip I bought only finished on Tuesday at work and lead to me collapsing, needing a stomach pump. On my hospital departure, I recognized some faces congregating outside and learned that Nick had died. 

My time with Nick was sketchy, to say the least. We'd been totally out of it and on every other occasion it would've been a laughing matter. We parted ways upon my angry mother's return home on the Monday afternoon like naughty schoolboys, yet before Tuesday teatime he had died. Everyone, except those closest to him, was happy to buy into this myth of me leading him astray. I'm naturally prone to guilt, but eventually forgave myself, as being blamed is my burden to carry. 

I guess it's only natural to preserve the best possible version of somebody when consigning them to memory. Tim, too, has sadly died, but not before finding family joy. I just hope he and Nick have found their way home.

BEATS OF LOVE 

135. Ultra Violet by Mark E

I HARK back to the hours, sat on cold floors listening to blokes (always blokes) mixing after hours. Mixing similar bpm's and similar records. Then, whenever the chance arose, I'd spin 60s tunes, which pissed people off. Shirley Bassey's Something excepted. 

Unless Fiona, Emma or Joanne beat me to it and they'd always spin something truly memorable. Then something else that sounded brilliant, but they'd be dancing and not mixing. I was much more curious to see what they were playing, and, as they turned me onto, There's a Riot..., Stepping Razor, Forever Manna, Rune Lindbaek and Larry Heard's brilliant mid-nineties stuff, I realized they were effortlessly cool.  

When rehearsing for our joint DJ debut, I recall Jeff listening to my records and finding the dramatic point in which to cue on another record and realized he was actually doing it properly. I just danced then changed the record or if I was DJ'ing, fade out the sound on one deck before cross fading. I sort of assumed that so long as the record was good and the drama was in focus, I'd keep the floor and I was sometimes right. I took my influence from my unsung heroes, who were actually poets and journalists. These women trod a path to make it easier for the next generation to find a collective voice. 

I'm pretty sure if we had a time machine and could play today's music at yesteryear's afters, there'd be loads of beige beatport DJ wannabes mixing away and then breaking the rare silence, Fiona would stagger across the room and drop this onto the deck. Enough said. 

                   

BEATS OF LOVE 

134. Gypsy Soul by Tommy Bolin

AFTER A pretty horrific week, I needed to hear some warm, mellow, soothing grooves. This, in turn, always makes me nostalgic as I recollect my own golden era.

I'd successfully stayed offline until 2007, knowing my collecting would go crazy. Then the OU bought me a computer. Then Psychemagik, Moonboots, and Lexx posted some incredible mixes. Then Aficionado, Melting Point, Red Light Records and Is It Balearic? started groups that put more amazing music out there. 

Pretty sure this slow burning fire was a Melting Point post. This great record I'd hitherto avoided as Deep Purple crossed that line. That line where my eclectic taste sort of stubbed its big nose up in musical snobbery. That line that I now realize chalked out my own musical ignorance. I now let no stone go unturned when lending my ear, coz Bolin plays his acoustic with an understated drama that makes this flickeringly beautiful winter warmer so damned memorable. It was actually a toss up between this and the mighty Alexis, an earlier tune he wrote which is also brilliant, but the hot flamenco lead outro break sort of won it. 

Yeah, it has been a pretty horrific week where I've had to compromise to stay in employment. Thank God I have this playing on the stereo to fall back on. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

133. Gift From "La Mer" by Hajime Mizoguchi

THE ENIGMATIC Arthur Russell is the reason we all love a cellist. His recent reissues are a wow, go buy. 

Fellow cellist Hajime Mizoguchi employed everything but his cello when creating the cuts on his debut album, Halfinch Dessert, only using it to add in colour and depth. Reminiscent of Basquiat, whose found material became both an alternative canvas and an integral part of his early work.

Mizoguchi, like Russell, had non-classical alliances. Notably Seigen Ono of Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence fame, besides ad industry experience. Prompting Diego Olivas to note “Hajime loved to make music that was contemporary and accessible, but in a way his music had a lot of ruminative and big-hearted romantic melancholy that one would shake off making purely technically-proficient music.”

This move away from sheet music towards more abstracted imagery was liberating as it embraced a digital technology that still sound so now, like this understated beauty, that floats along on a soft cushion of airy percussion. Sounds he created to induce sleep following a serious road accident that left him in severe pain with whiplash. (Cheers, Diego, again.)

Sounds that decades later still soothe troubled souls like mine with its masked complexity and warm energy. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

BEATS OF LOVE 

132. Burning World by Loop

GREAT, BEING old and online coz you can order Imagination's debut album with this elusive Loop twelve and not bat an eye. Nobody making a sarky comment or a glancing a disdaining look.  

Before the rift with my father, as a reward for passing tests he set, he played Subbuteo with me. We had the throw-in takers and corner takers and my father actually headed brilliant goals past my shaky defence. I never got to find out how he did that. 

He only ever watched me play actual footy once and, despite scoring a hatful of goals, I got substituted. He simply said to me 'you're a goal hanger and don't know the off-side rule.' Devastated, but he was right. I just lazily marked the most useless defender who flattered my absolute averageness. 

Sacking off the footy and getting truly lost in music gave me my proper sense of identity. Something that went beyond criticism. Realizing Jeff, who up to this point was some plain scruff, liked the Mary Chain, changed everything about our relationship. I had a musical ally. My kid sister and Bob loved a lot of my records too, and this also gave me the confidence to alienate them. 

They'd hate this lengthy hypnotic delight, for example. Less nihilistic and less of a sensory assault than their later work, it instead uses a more colourful bass motif and a tambourine to snake charm effect. The Field Mice cover actually creates a proper song out of it, but isn't as bewitching. I prefer this less energized Loop and have some sympathy with folk who play their later 45s on the wrong speed. I can sit back in a comfy chair and nod out to it. 

Great, being old and online coz every week there's some unexpected wormhole to go down. That I've had to wait until now to get lost in this speaks volumes about the thrill. 

 

BEATS OF LOVE 

131. The Beauty in your Body by The Lilac Time

ALWAYS CHAMPIONED the underdog. It explains why I've got a soft spot for Stephen Tin Tin Duffy, who threatened to take off countless times but spent his musical career bubbling under. Kiss Me was the high point of his underwhelming stab at synth-pop supremacy and made it into my mate's ghetto blaster, but it wasn't until he resurfaced with the Lilac Time he became fascinating. Not that fascinating, so I was buying his records, mind. 

However, when Sifters put their sophomore album Paradise Circus in the racks for buttons, years later, I bit, and discovered this, my perfect comedown track.

Baffling why on a sunny Saturday afternoon I'd get back to the flat and lie star- shaped across the bed and sleep happily, but by Monday night I'd be coated in sweat with insufferable liver cramps, needing countless pillows to support my curled up, aching, body. It was pre-empting this and hating myself that the tune's slowly unfurling beauty came to life. 

Whilst still awake, before I became beset by fear, its pastoral elegance relaxed my tired mind. By the time the banjo and organ really kicked in, I could even pathetically romanticize my sorry state. Someone says it rips off Leonard Cohen, but I don't care. It helped me out big time. 

Only after seeing a fairly famous DJ post-afters curled up in the same discomfort as myself did I realize that there are no better-class drugs for richer folk. That was day one of my determination to knock it all on the head. 

Thankfully, despite now being sat-back in a comfy chair and clearheaded, I still love playing this eminently fascinating tune.   

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

22 JIM BEATTIE: Not God but not half bad

PART 1

MUST ADMIT Primal Scream only came into my orbit because of the Stone Roses in 1989. Bobby Gillespie was simply the drummer in JAMC until I read some articles that made me do some revision. Must also admit that Jim Beattie only came into my orbit because of Snub TV in 1991. Despite liking Chlorine Dream, I stopped short of purchasing a copy when I read he 'hated the Stone Roses.' Yeah, I was that fickle. Ditto Adventures in Stereo. 

What Gillespies' frustrating memoirs Tenement Kid did was colour in Beattie's character sympathetically. The retrospective Reverberations LP gives more than a flavour of the dynamics within the early Primal Scream and after much revision, I can declare Beattie to be the finest exponent of the very short pop song. 

His Glaswegian Scream years feel more than embryonic. Styled on Love's disarming image and sounding Byrdsian, they were to have a greater influence by fashioning the explosive Madchester sounds. Hence why I parted with a pretty penny to purchase their early singles retrospectively. Their Warners related material was easier to find and cheaper to buy. 

The making of which comes alive in Martin St John's equally frustrating memoirs. It's comical to hear the skeletal tambourinist attempt to hide his bitterness. He was dead right about Bewitched and Bewildered, though. It was insane not to work that pearl of a tune onto the album.  

Beattie exclaims that in retrospect being in that wider Scream gang and the early recordings were 'some of the best times of my life.' Gentle Tuesday abandons their very short song manifesto clocking in at over a massive three and half minutes and Beattie's Rickenbacker held the tune together. Had the wider world been ready for sixties spiked indie jangle pop, there might not have been such an acrimonious split. 

Reduced to a four-piece, even with the addition of Andrew Innes and badly compromised in the studio, their anti-climatic debut album would never be a classic. The overworked songs sound less focused and the spikiness of their earlier work was gone. Silent Spring being a case in point as it sounds much better on Reverberations.

Beattie left shortly after its release. Without either the enthusiasm for a move to Brighton or high energy rock 'n' roll or a move back to Creation records.  

PART 2

UNMOVED BY the parallel style of the day, Beattie returned in 1991 when all eyes were on his former band, whose masterpiece Screamadelica was being hotly expected. There could've been some headroom for his new band Spirea X, named after the song solely credited to himself in his time with Primal Scream, had 4AD presented them to us in 1989. To say Spirea X should've set the world on fire would be daft. Shoe-gaze favourites like Ride were shaggable and signed to Creation, which at the time was really happening. 

Keen to escape comparisons with these younger, hipper bands, he was talking Biblical and political but then getting edited right down to tiny snippets and soundbites. When he said his band would succeed through a 'sheer force of ideas', he couldn't have been imaging the album Fireblade Skies. Sure, Chlorine Dream, creates great harmonies that are swept into the air by his 12 string majesty, but shares more in common with the catchier shoe-gaze acts than with the sonic architecture Kevin Shields was stirring up. 

The very short but memorable opener Smile is even better and could've been a part player on Screamedelica itself, but the rest of the album strives for a more direct pop distortion. Signed DC could've been a far earlier Primal's track. Another very short gem of a tune. The album lacks truly catchy hooks and the shuffly drums are at odds with their less linear approach. Making it sound a little uncohesive. Unsurprisingly, once it failed to sell, the label dropped them.  

Adventures in Stereo formed out of the fall-out and were initially a sample based project. Former manager Simon Dine supplied the loops to give Judith Boyle's vocal, less space, which achieved a sugary quality. However, their output was patchy. When We Go Back really hits the spot and sounds not unlike like the 60s girl group miniature, they were striving to achieve, but other songs were disappointing and sounded straight-jacketed by the concept. Their b-side version of Nobody's Scared sounds like Saint Etienne on a budget, but is even more charming for it. 

Despite being the victim of misfortune, his musical story ends on a high. Abandoning the sample only idea, following Dine's departure, the stripped back 2000 album Monomania is great with Beattie distilling all he has learned into wonderfully short warm and woozy numbers that channel Pet Sounds, really bringing the best out of an angelic sounding Boyle. We Will Stand sets a high bench mark but miraculously the quality persists throughout. It's definitely a future classic and a great way to bow out. 

It's not without irony that Gillespie and Innes, after generously unearthing superior versions of Give Out..., and Sonic Flower Groove, then tarnished their own legacy through sheer greed. Downgrading former band mates and making them less than peripheral characters in the story. A story that would read better with everyone, part of the socialist utopia they painted when on E. 

At least Beattie knew that was all complete bollocks from firsthand experience, preferring instead to make some sweet music with his girlfriend. A sensible man.    

BEATS OF LOVE 

130. Mind Bomb LP by The The 

REFLECTING ON the first time, I went back to Jockey Slut's infamous afters and painfully struggled to break into conversation. I kept looking at my kid sister and she kept looking at me whilst looking mainly at the flat itself. I'd just sat in Bugged Out dipping speed into my brandy and coke and was already feeling empty whilst everyone else was bursting full of life.

I suppose the awkwardness served some purpose, as on subsequent nights after the ice broke someone introduced me to a lank-haired dealer who sold E's. I began dipping them into my drinks too, so became happier. Whilst everyone else got involved in relationships and business, I just carried on with this same stifling routine until it finally became too boring. Boring for me, and for everyone else.

I couldn't work over fIfty hours a week, then party for twenty and keep the musical passion I needed to be interesting to myself. What this self indulgent masterpiece is full of, is passion. It drives Matt Johnson's concept album with its intensity and sparkle whilst harnessing a great musical response from a quality team of players. I thought Gravitate to Me was the cut, but listening back now, I can see a cohesion that makes every single track equally enthralling. 

There's his prophesies about America and the Middle East that explode with rich metaphors and his sharp musical vision. It's a shame the label feared him being seen as the Salman Rushdie of song and pulled their weightier first single. He'd gone on a strange diet and forced some of his band to do the same to reach this unsound level of intensity that helped him see into the future. An intensity that speaks directly to our human soul and, for the short while, it is playing, helps us untangle this mess we call life with a lot more passion. 

What is truly remarkable is how utterly now it sounds. That I was in that flat talking up Acid Eiffel whilst forgetting all about this mighty album speaks volumes about the folly of youth. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

129. Never Understood: The Jesus and Mary Chain by William & Jim Reid 

BEING IN bunker mode mentality because of more weird dark art shit has led to a lot of books being read.

John Berger and Will Hodginkison deserve honorary mentions. The former for reminding me that Marxism is still alive in spirit and the latter for making me laugh out loud five times. This book, however, is the cream of the crop for being the most brutally honest autobiography I've ever read. 

Psychocandy was the ultimate antidote to the artifice of eighties pop, which grew the prettiest flowers on a monolithic slab of fuzzed up feedback and its creators, the first pop stars to speak directly to my teenage self. I'm still indebted to them for being so real then and now. The goths I knew were all middle-managers or bank clerks and hated the gritty realism of the Mary Chain. Unsurprising coz goths were all about that same artifice, I guess.  

They glaze over this period of relative solidarity with a warmth that fades out with each subsequent chapter until they can no longer be on the same continent together. That said, a shared self depreciating humour accompanied by a hindsight that comes with age means the book remains colourfully gripping throughout and never once loses sight of the disorientating music. Music, as understood from the perspectives of at least half a dozen different versions of each brother.

That Dave Booth regularly span Never Understand at the Hangout was a testament to their musical influence. It was like a shot of something authentic that had more in common with Funhouse tracks than the sugary Inspiral Carpets tracks being played. It's tragic to learn that a band who, to my mind, at least existed within the confines of their own in-built mythology, was jealous of the happening scenes that sprung up around them. Tragic, but heartening to learn that they're human after all. 

Ultimately, despite the authors' best efforts to convince you otherwise, that's their lasting legacy. They transcended the age in which they first came into fashion to become something truly timeless.