BEATS OF LOVE 

162. This Is What She's Like by Dexys Midnight Runners

THE CONFERENCE season finished with Theos think tank's annual lecture, delivered in compromising tones by Andy Burnham. Who lacked the conviction necessary to fully explain his third way of doing politics. 

Prophetically concluding his post lecture Q and A by saying we should 'prepare for a very dark road ahead.' Very defeatist, from someone with more than a modicum of power. Akin to losing at musical chairs by sitting down before the music stops.

Luckily, here the music never stops. I'm reading Kevin Rowland's disturbingly candid autobiography and spinning Don't Stand Me Down a lot. Starting with a song of greatness. The Occasional Flicker exuding the uncompromising confidence that comes with having a great but muted style and the musical talent to outreach oneself. That this exhilarating even more original effort eclipses it epitomises the valiance at its heart.  

To start the greatest ever 12 minute song with a rich accented conversation about the elusive topic of love is absolute genius. To then weave and tease said voices into an uncompromising harmonic Pièce de résistance, whilst not forgetting the violinist or to mock the English upper classes, is as insane as inspired. It's both as catchy as hell and utterly opaque. Fully expressing a third way of doing popular music. 

If any song proclaims 'we should prepare for a very sunny road ahead', it is this.

BEATS OF LOVE 

161. Penetration by Iggy and the Stooges 

SORRY, BUT being pro-immigration is more a part of my Balearic being as Ibiza is. 

What's striking about Farage's polling is only a third of his own supporters think he's racist and will abolish our NHS. Predictably, his week started with a humongous lie about what we'll save addressing the Boriswave by attacking legal migrants and nothing about what we'll lose, namely our collective soul. 

His own vanity and fear of Boris Johnson has led to a flagship announcement that assumes we'll want a system that's no kinder to us Brits but far, far harsher to everybody else. So harsh that we'll just let folk die outside hospitals so we won't have to queue as long. So harsh that we'll happily work alongside folk who see no future, just the prospect of deportation. 

Farage shares some semblance of punk rock's ideology in that he seeks to destroy things, but where punk sought to expose truths, he seeks to conceal them. Seeking to destroy integration to conceal the truth that there is more that unites us than divides. Seeking to destroy our human rights to conceal the truth that they protect us more than threaten. And seeking to destroy our NHS to conceal the truth that it misdiagnosed his testicular cancer decades ago.  

I'm heartened that two-thirds of his own supporters don't think he's racist or trying to abolish our NHS, as they must now be having second thoughts. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

160. When Will it End by Honey Cone

LAYING OFF 500 people one day and inciting nearly 150,000 protesters to act in defence of their country, the next, takes a special psycho. A country not under attack and not even his. 

Elon Musk that special psycho loves choreographing the very folk his politics has laid to waste. The next logical step for these folk was to turn toward a party intent on redistributing wealth, but social media has schooled them. Social media doesn't challenge opinion, its algorithms create echo chambers which simply reinforce existing belief. 

Users are now adept at rebuking Corbyn whilst failing to explain what Thatcher ever did for the traditional working class. They're armed with quotes to defend the billionaires, but can't explain why less inequality creates happier societies. They've also adapted to deflect criticism, rebuking correlations with Nazi Germany, but cannot explain away their rising anger. 

An anger that divests folk of individuality which has its roots in aggressive violence and not victimhood. It's more pitiful still watching labour politicians too scared of losing votes to big up multi-racial, multi-faith Britain. Instead, giving legitimacy to no marks like Tommy Robinson. Instead, apologists for this huge, ever growing loveless grievance narrative that stokes this rising anger. 

A narrative manufactured and bankrolled by folk who think nothing of laying 500 people off. Absolutely nothing.

BEATS OF LOVE 

159. Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' by Michael Jackson

IT'S EASY to clap when your political beliefs aren't being challenged. 

Such was the case last night when Jeremy Corbyn came into town to outline the vision of his future party. Likening himself in this moment to Kier Hardie, who had to break away from the liberals, added a touch of gravitas to an otherwise confusing enterprise. 

How, with no name, no leadership personnel, no trade union support and no print press interest, the guy next to me expects him to win the 2029 election, is anyone's guess. Everyday Reform is pulling away with an anti-immigration spin. Once again, their acolytes I speak to get their facts wrong. Telling me half a million asylum seekers is too many. I have to correct them and say 40,000 tops. 

Farage's mass deportation plans hinge on finding an estimated number of illegal migrants. He's very confident that the number is over half a million, but will probably only find a few thousand on account of his number being imagined. He's also very confident his top team aren't racists, but more than any other politician has to sack a load for being just that. More people now see that capitalism is a death cult, and it's no surprise to see a very confident former hedge fund manager masquerading as an everyman to distract from the fact. 

Demanding that people turn away from economic truth to explain loss and social reality to explain justice and instead believe in something that radicalizes the dreamer in them. Them nearly always being white, working class and poor. Outside were small-town activists labelling those dreamers fascist with an air of self righteousness, but Corbyn, if he's to become a political threat, will have to wake them up. Convincing them they're both brainwashed and wrong.

Sadly, he'll probably need Farage in office to achieve that. And challenge our political beliefs and his staunch humanitarianism. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

158. Patron Saint Of Elsewhere LP by Sewell & the Gong

NOT SURE how this talented duo was going to translate over a long-play listen after a mighty impressive twelve, but they've locked into one hell of a mood and groove with a confidence which is highly addictive. A tad weightier but still spangled with enough air to take all the heavy chocolate in your life away.

I would've been heaping a lot of high praise about the coming together of kosmische precision and pastoral reverie, but Dr Rob beat me to it again. * And far more eloquently descriptive. Even citing the sound within to be evocative of a drug free Spacemen 3. I've never dared imagine a drug free Spacemen 3. Surely it's like imagining the Beatles without George Harrison. 

The pressing is flawless too, which helps when drifting off deep. So deep that I stubbed my little toe on my swivel chair's foot while surrendering to it. The most pain I've felt in ages which is odd considering how many heavy pallets I've mishandled of late. So much so that I actually put on a pair of socks to lie down and finish my listen. 

If this was a dish, it would be paella. Best shared. I miss communal listening. Whilst not as intense, it is great sharing the energy and space with someone appreciative. Loving the print too with its soft sherbert hues that nailed what I was imagining my flyers would be like when an illustrator friend helped me out until they came back. Nothing like this, of course. 

Only this time I actually bought their work for the colourful psychedelia of the music in its entirety. Beguiling drones and all. 

* https://banbantonton.com/2025/07/31/sewell-the-gong-patron-saint-of-elsewhere-dsppr/

 BEATS OF LOVE 

157. You are the Place by Shilpa Gupta 

MASSIVELY INDEBTED to my missus Factory International family. Their support following Ma's sudden death has been incredible.

I slipped out of the house for a second visit to this highly emotive multilingual sound installation. It encouraged me to lie back, immersing chill-out style to the fractured tender voices that moved nearer and further away. 

Lamenting voices singing about the personal  as stored in memory, echoing the Rochdale community in all its brilliant diversity. Gupta's clever attempts to strike discord, the ever moving lightbulbs and microphones, brilliantly show that the harmony which sits at the heart of this most vulnerable of choirs cuts through anything. Their verses get to the essence of what makes us human. Our vulnerability so often masked is what unites us and not constructs of power like flags. Celebrated in a plethora of different languages, it sounds less like a sound tapestry and more like a meaningful whole. 

I'm an honorary migrant. I feel the same shrill in my ear going past an immigration solicitor's office, and that same dread when the far right is in the news. My Nigerian family is mainly abstracted overseas, faces on the phone, where the remove during emotional crises is greater felt. Especially at this sad time. 

I laid back on the floor with small pools of tears in my eyes as I meditated on what could be and not what is. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

156. Ghost Assembly DJ set 

I EXPERIENCED social trauma at 28. A before and after, for sure. Clubs before always created a bit of stress and I always needed a livener at home beforehand, as I was no longer anonymous. I was very much the village idiot of clubland. I had a reverence for clubs and there was something ritualistic that, with hindsight, replaced the importance the church had been. 

After was a nightmare, I was trying to walk into the same clubs but on pills for my nerves. A hesitant introspection replaced a fearlessness of character, and I craved reinvention. To compound matters, the redundancy that was going to get me back to the metropolis never materialised, so I became bitter in my bungalow.

Hard to believe that I could now sit watching Wimbledon after work in the same bungalow, indifferent whether the missus wanted me to join her at MIF 25 or not. She did, so after showering and deciding my freshly cut hair looked flat, I put on my Horsebeach cap and headed out to meet her. My only consideration. 

When I got there, I did my usual pacing around and read that Abigail's Ghost Assembly was DJing as part of Dave Haslam's takeover. Despite the missus working the following morning, she agreed to stay, as I had a lot of warm fuzzy memories forming in my mind of my time in the Boardwalk and beyond. 

Abigail was entering the scene as I was exiting, but I always find her hiding in the same corners as me on the very few occasions our paths cross. I know that diffidence and have massiv respect that this set is laying bare her studio work and exposing it to folk a bit like me. The rustiest mover for sure, but her twisted hypnotic beats worked a treat. Tweaking memorable nostalgic touches like vocal stabs and harmonicas into unique and sturdy backbeats creates a lot of natural spark. De Laatste Rit is the catchiest, but there's definitely at least two more acid tinged shufflers that are equally trance inducing. Transcendence has never been so short and sweet.

I found myself completely knot kneed by Haslam's opener, the frenetically brilliant Company B's Fascinated, so called it a night. My first public dance since covid. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

155. Steady Weather LP by Torn Sail

I'M SORT of mystified by the one policy obsessives. Through Christine's e-mail, I helped get my labour MP to actually vote against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill,  but it still went through.

Now, hearing a whiff that the tories or reform will repeal it, she's now asked me to pressure them to a manifesto commitment. Like those two parties will ever comprehend human experience. Fuck politics, I'm still processing Ma's sudden death, whilst the missus attends a prearranged funeral, so I'm feeling out of sorts. 

Thank God for a bit of sunburst and a timely reminder from Huw that he was hosting a listening party for Torn Sail's third album Steady Weather. Huw has unwittingly helped me cope with life because he should be much more popular. If he has the grace to persevere with not being, then I can persevere with the trials and tribulations of my life. I ponder the reasons for him not being and can only find the hazy intensity of the music and an uncompromising approach isn't hitting folk immediately. It says a lot about the modern music listener.

Nick Drake needed future listeners to become much more popular, and maybe Torn Sail does. Thankfully, Murray Scott is carrying on evangelizing where I left off and whilst the listening party was intimate, everyone seemed blown away. I was in the back garden and everything was swaying gently in perfect harmony with the mesmerizing guitars. Huw had conceived his three LPs as far back as 2019 and he made the third sound darker when discussing it, like a massive divergence. Thankfully, it's as warm and sunlit as it is, sprawling and epic. I won't badger on coz everyone knows I love this band, other than to say not a guitar strum is unnecessary.

I'm still sort of mystified by Torn Sail. Mystified why they aren't much more popular coz they're still amazing and fully comprehend human experience.  

https://tornsail1.bandcamp.com/album/steady-weather

BEATS OF LOVE 

154. Ma

SO LUCKY, I had two selfless mothers so quick to love and so slow to judge. Brillant paradigms of how to live life fully. Religious yet liberal-minded, they made fairer and better choices than the rest of us and had a value system that earned respect. 

Despite their family commitments, they were both charitable. Not questioning why someone needs help, but questioning how they can help. My mother was the lynchpin of my UK family. Without her, we have channeled a more worrying nature, eroding trust and untying the bonds between us. 

The missus' mother 'Ma' was the lynchpin of my  Nigerian family and its wider community. She came to our wedding in November, imparting her wisdom to us in a short window of time whist freezing her socks off. I saved her from a hard fall when she lost her footing on the elevator in Next, but she saved our marriage by instilling the same strength of the spirit as my mother.

With her sad passing, I instantly feel privileged to have had Ma in my life. I'm mindful of the massive vacuum she leaves behind and the worrying nature of the remaining family. Like my mother, she lent an ear to every family member, and either resolved problems or supported us through difficulties. Despite their fleeting help to family members recovering from alcoholism or gunshot wounds, they would both rather have been celebrating the birth of a child. They both did it with a smile and elegance, despite knowing the heartache of widowhood. It's a strength and resilience that I don't see in myself or any other family members.

I will forever regret not flying us all out to Lagos to reunite when Ma was in the health to travel. It's pretty telling that every Sunday she asks after mother's surviving partner. Only on Sunday we were describing the care home he has just moved into. I wish I wasn't keener on playing records than staying on the phone longer. Like me, the missus has lost her mother and best friend and I suspect, like me, all her siblings have too. The pain makes her vulnerable and I can see the child in her, which hurts me. 

I just pray Ma has found perfect peace and the rest of us can honour her memory by giving more and receiving less. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

153.  Do You Like Worms? (Roll Plymouth Rock) by The Beach Boys

BRIAN WILSON was another saviour. I practically owe Pet Sounds my life as very little else reflected at me from my intense feelings of introspective alienation in the late 80s. 

Set-aside and bullied mercilessly into creating by a jealous father, he set the band apart. Understanding intricate harmonies whilst tapping into the pop zeitgeist. Still today the pinnacle of good-time music. 

Retiring from the stage in 1964, the experimentation evidenced on Pet Sounds; wild harmonic melodies, richer orchestration, and soul searching emotive lyrics, still had buckets of commercial appeal but culminated in a proper work of art. Complexity made to sound simple is never easy and takes true genius. Exchanging 4 boxes of records in the mid-nineties for my CD box set was an easy decision. 

A Smile bootleg and Domenic Priore's Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! The Beach Boys, which documents the madness surrounding the sessions, were essential to every self respecting music freak. Then in 2011 Capitol finally unloaded all the sessions onto CDs. I found a higher state of grace because of the way my understanding of the world was being set to this heartfelt and mind-blowing music. I can now die happy. 

In the fallout of his aborted masterpiece, bandmates, accustomed to success, played the retro circuit to packed stadiums. His touches of genius on Wild Honey, Holland and Surf's Up whilst mainly laying on his bed full of barbiturate and fast-food are still brilliantly creative. With the conservative brand established, Brian played the part of the led astray leper for years. 

That it took until 2011 to let the faithful hear the Smile sessions in all their studio glory tell you how conservative the brand was. More tragedy surrounded his life than his death. In death, those that know understand deeply just how important it was that the competition for pop musical supremacy took place. That Wilson felt tortured into surpassing the studio achievement of the Beatles means we've all benefited. 

That I have a favourite out of all his pure gold is a minor miracle, but this was the tune I played in my head post-op when I realized there was no morphine drip as promised.

BEATS OF LOVE 

152.  Bryter Layter LP by Nick Drake 

THERE WAS an actual real time just prior to its studio completion when this product threatened to sell and make everyone involved in its production thrilled.

A time that evokes the challenging positive words spoken by Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King in actual real time just after the TET offensive in Vietnam. Words that cut through to society at large. In both cases, times then, of optimistic bravery.

Cutting himself off from the security and safety of Cambridge to decamp in the capital, Drake's more urbanized lyrics appear to suggest he felt dwarfed rather than looming large. There's a vulnerability but determination in his voice. A drum kit changed the studio dynamic with Fairport players, amongst others adding to his distinctive finger picked guitar, creating a more upbeat sound. That said, Kirby's arrangements maintain that distinctive wispy pastoral elegance that marked out his debut. 

We all recall playing tunes to amazed small pockets of folk and trying to figure out how to scale up. Forget the dark stuff. This is a careerist record and all the better for it. One that searches out pop tones and scales things up perfectly. Forget the theorized accounts of its delay and subsequent commercial failure, but bask in its breezy majesty. And let that reticent but compellingly transportive voice whisk you off.

That there's been no challenging positive political voices, cutting through to society at large since Luther King and Kennedy is truly unfortunate. That no one has bettered Drake's stab at jazz infused folk/pop isn't. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

151. Find Your Eyes by Benji Reid

IN 2019, ahead of the A Thousand Words retrospective, Benji wanted his work unpacking as he felt wrongly that dyslexia held him back. As part of the writing team tasked with that, our mission was to turn a fraction of his Instagram followers into attendees. 

Volunteering was tough, finding it difficult to write for commercial ends and not simply offer jejune opinion. After the opening night drew on the usual pool of art connoisseurs and affiliations, I felt a sense of failure. Justified after returning to the gallery shortly after to find all his photographs had gone and deciding then that the unpredicable nature of gallery life wasn't for me. 

Slap bang in the middle of MIF that same summer, I also promoted Antoine. Seeing that dream evaporate, too. That it has taken this long to attend Benji's Aviva show isn't surprising, then. What is, is how utterly enthralling it is. John McGrath needs thanking for getting Benji back on the stage. A stage that comes alive as the artist narrates his lowest ebbs and inbuilt structures that surround black masculinity to create in real time some of the most captivating photography you'll see all year. Transforming these dark themes over three acts into a challenging triptych of hopeful wonder. 

the Missus and Benji

Interplay between photographer, director and performer is now made explicit. Articulating his multi disciplinary practice as a Choreo-Photolist, better than anyone, demystifies elements of his practice. The process is the performance. It evolves autobiographically, taking us on a journey from sharp monochrome intensity to a gliding colourful vibrancy. There's still a self restricting quality which is trademark Benji but the three graceful performers, themselves defying gravity, really make his work even more spectacular.

I was nudging the missus as she clapped with his star performer mid-flight, but it became infectious and a responsive part of the show. Probably exclusive to tonight. After Benji even gave us a few moves, no doubt spotting his pre-imagined Instagram attendees.