BEATS OF LOVE 

82. Vanishing Point by New Order

I RECALL Peter Hook friend requesting me on Facebook and thinking that he must be a really shit DJ. 

His latest creation, Hacienda gin, also looks shit. That the two bands most synonymous with his name are by far the most celebrated amongst folk I know sort of irks. They had their moments for sure, but were fashion victims. That his cement slab style bass is possibly the most distinctive is testament to him. He looked and acted like a welder but definitely gave their sound an edge. 

I fell in love with Low-Life but struggled thereafter. Gillian Gilbert helped steer them away from a pure dark introspection that added to their mythology and toward a more colourful radio friendly synth-pop sound. I fucking hated True Faith, their first stab at lyrical compromise to garner radio-play, because it was too obvious. And it rendered Hook's unique bass sounds pretty pointless.  

However, by the time Technique came out, they fully comprehended the pulsating electronic beats that rendered Hook's unique bass sounds pretty redundant. And more importantly, so did we. This track is the exception and like some monolithic being, Hook wields his semi-redundant bass like an early agricultural farmer with a scythe, not knowing whether there'd ever be another meaningful moment. The rest of the band looks like they're in Ibiza with all the latest technology at their fingertips and the contrast is magnificent. 

I saw them play it in Reading in 1989 in the pissing rain when we tried to surrender to their dynamism like we were still in Manchester. The Sugarcubes went down better from where I stood. Unlike True Faith, this track's given proper space to breathe. It makes the contrasts more exciting; it makes the lyrics sound more meaningful, and it makes the overall effect quite dizzying and overpowering. New Order never came close to recapturing its brilliance. 

Perhaps if Hook hadn't snidely bought the Hacienda trademark rights in 2001, he'd still be in some form of working relationship with New Order and not feeling so royally shafted. But then there'd be no gin. 

  

BEATS OF LOVE 

81. You're Gonna Need Me by Dionne Warwicke

MUST THANK Lawrence for not just turning me onto the mighty Peddlers but for inadvertently turning me onto the racks, I found their records in and charity shops. 

When Fat City opened up in Afflecks, many of the records I found in these racks and in charity shops appeared with inflated price tags in their breaks section. What was a cheap record shopping aside was becoming costlier in its own right.

Dionne Warwick was a staple growing up with mum. Her sunlit interpretation of What the World Needs Now was the song mum's partner chose as her final funeral song. Not that I recall it being played. I also managed to buy with ease her Bacharach and David catalogue from these racks and charity shops, but this has proven elusive until now. 

An acrimonious split with the duo resulted in a move to Detroit's finest writing/production team, Holland-Dozier-Holland. She added an E onto her name and relinquished creative control on her album Just Being Myself.  A name that had been changed on the advice of an astrologer to realize the chart success that had been proving elusive also failed badly. She was losing heart after her move to Warners and the album sold poorly, which explains why it's hard to find. This B-side is an incredible track and should've been the lead track. Since the turn of the millennium, it has been sampled no fewer than 23 times in the fractious hip-hop community. 

I still find myself more drawn to the originals, and this is a case in point. What's not to love about the soothing, soulful delivery and Gene Page's dramatic arrangement? A more concentrated delivery with Holland-Dozier-Holland producing one of their rawest masterpieces which has more than stood the test of time. Many recordings have two lives. The life of unfulfilled artist's intent or harsh criticism at the time of its making. Or, the life of its re-appraisal by people unborn at the time of its making, which is often much more forgiving. Life is simply too short when there is so much brilliance to wax lyrical about stuff you don't like anymore.    

What is magical is that those who loved it the first time around, and those who love it today, more than likely felt and feel the same joy in the same passages, creating the sweetest harmony on some form of metaphysical level. 

 BEATS OF LOVE 

80. I Feel You (Mudd Remix) by Payfone &  Kyd Nereida

UNSURPRISINGLY, I was writing about Brown Fang x Torn Sail until Dr Rob posted his own blog piece and absolutely nailed their efforts. Rendering my own attempt to convey a need to buy it on sight, absolutely pointless and futile. Just buy it on sight. 

However, like the club golfer honing their practice swing and dreaming of a 22 handicap, I picked up this twelve and went somewhere incredible enough to sit typing again, dreaming of the day. Somebody I don't know from Adam will engage. 

In the meantime...

Payfone first came to my attention on Phil's peerless Golf Channel label. Subcoinscient Lamentation was and is a bass-burbling stone cold classic. It was only eclipsed in 2019 when the vocal delivery became more prominent with the stunning I Was in New York. To be fair, I didn't think they'd ever eclipse it. I certainly didn't when I first heard Kyd Nereida's voice on last year's outing Put Your Face Away, but here, with more prominence, she sounds compellingly emotive. And more than a little sultry. 

No point saying she sounds like such-and-such crossed with such-and-such coz her voice is unique. She's a special talent for sure. I was initially drawn to the A-Side with its darker stabs but over the loud speakers this warmer slo-mo mix teases in the highest peaks and adds Michele Chiavarin's wondrous piano, creating something truly amazing. The woozy delirium creates sensations akin to experiencing a guilty pleasure. It's that satisfying.  

Sometimes experiencing music completely lost in the moment with a little less reckless abandon can feel superb. Fuck the handicap, let's dance.     

 

BEATS OF LOVE

79. Every Cloud (Coastlines remix) by Simon Peter 

IT'S KIND of funny how folk connect with the tops. 

The tops being the higher ground where the locals convince themselves that they're in Saddleworth when in fact they're in Oldham just like me. My mum, as a young girl, used to walk with my grandfather regularly in her ill-fitting trench-coat over these tops. Yet in later life she became disenchanted with the memory. She may have seen me becoming more like him with my complete lack of ambition. 

I used to walk my much loved Raleigh Fourteen up the tops to Bishops Park myself before playing pitch and putt obsessively. I needed some sort of reward; I guess. Now the reward is the walk itself. My mother and uncle's ashes are both scattered by the nearby monument. Despite there being far better walks, there is nowhere else where the earth actually talks to me as I try to unlock my family's mysteries.  

This four tracker is amazing. Every Cloud is a meander through slight acoustics. Katie English's flute creates a beautiful undulating swell that sounds simple, but for such a lightness of touch to let in so much colour and warmth, it is truly a feat of nature. Something in the water in Flower Sound Studio I guess. 

However, this rework by the ever dependable Coastlines adds steel pan and Spanish guitar (cheers Juno). Taking it somewhere even more incredible. A masterclass in understated perfection for zoning out to after a long winter walk over the tops. The piano truly ascends and I'm left in shut eye paradise. 

If living felt this good every time the postie gave me a parcel, I might even die happy before they bury me in the lower ground of Moston cemetery. With my grandfather in the family plot nobody else wanted. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

78. History by The Verve

MUSIC IS love. 

On a day my dentist drilled a small hole in my tongue, I decided to smile and pay for the treatment without a quibble. Possibly because I could hear my mother's voice telling me not to be soft but most likely coz, I wanted to carry on walking back to the tram-stop singing this timeless classic to myself and not replay some trivial drama.

I liked Mad Richard before he got into some competitive battle with the Gallaghers after their Verve support slots preceded a stratospheric success. Intent on being both a more highly lauded frontman and songwriter (he already knew he was infinitely better), than them. I guess he envied their lifestyle. 

Suddenly, the cosmic unpredictability that made the band sound so fresh and exciting gave way to concept and planning. I wasn't remotely interested in chart positions or record sales and assumed folk that were didn't have much soul. The first singles lifted off A Northern Soul were deeply disappointing and soulless, so I switched off. Then they broke up.

I sat with a small pile of records and then, for no apparent reason, played this on YouTube and it has turned into a bit of an obsession. The small pile of records remains untouched. They create a baroque styled psychedelic masterpiece that heralds in a balladeering that the masses soon latched onto, but with an outpouring of soul. That thing that had seemingly gone missing.  

I'm guessing the whole world knows this song except me. Forget William Blake, but instead surrender to the emotive delivery of those words. Ashcroft could be reading out his shopping list but set inside those haunting violins and with the band cradling the song so beautifully, his pain would still be transparent. 

That's why music is love. It lets us experience raw emotion on a deeply personal level. It's why I'm swallowing salt water solution and not complaining. I want one more uninterrupted listen.  

 

BEATS OF LOVE 

77. A-Side: Are Your Dreams at Night 1985 Sizes Too Big? by Graham Holliday

PUBLISHER, THE Grass is Green in the Fields for You according to the blurb, shuns exaggerated, self-opinion, and instead favours collaboration, community and conversation.

And any book that has Pat Fish cast as a catalyst for change has simply got to be read. Despite the publishers' best intentions, Graham Holliday utilizes eyewitness accounts of an important backroom gig by the Spacemen 3 to cement what he felt he had already witnessed. His blog itself morphed into something bigger than mere memories of a gig, despite the book's claim.

Watching small gigs is in the main voyeuristic and only rarely a communal experience, but when it is it transcends the stadium experience coz, the acts themselves become as encompassed in it. There are no barriers, as this book testifies.

Jason has become the minor rock star he was on his way to being when I first fell under their spell. These lucky attendees saw something different. He had stood up for a start and was too young to look anything other than normal. Prompting Fish to write 'Here come your girlfriend's little brother's mates.'

The gushing praise for the band is great to read but unsurprising. That a tape is actually out there of them being booed is revelatory. Will Carruthers bitterly funny, exaggerated, and self-opinionated anecdotes sort of bring everything into better focus when counter balanced with the book's enthusiastic fanboy accounts.

Holliday nails it when describing the stark divisions inside the Spacemen 3 affiliated Reverberation club.

'Territorial regulations applied : how old you were, how you dressed, what school you went to, (or had gone to), what music you liked, who your friends were, where you lived, how you lived, maybe even how you talked, if you smoked, if you drank, or if you took drugs.'

They could apply to most clubs in the mid to late eighties. And most likely today.

Again, despite the publishers' best intentions, the project is initiated, edited, and written by Holliday and thank God it has been. He has even felt compelled to write what he was listening to during the writing and editing process. Checking some of them out now. 

That, to me, has been the real highlight, discovering seldom heard peripheral acts  

and finding some fresh raw garage treasure in the process. 

And then playing Spacemen 3 records ridiculously loudly, of course. 

SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO

19. A Mountain of One : People with love

PART ONE 

WHAT I love about getting old is reassessing all manner of stuff and coming to the conclusion that there is always some overlooked magic.

When a band fuse together effects from the greats like early R.E.M. and Natural Life yet still  find a melting point to create songs that come to sound like their very own, then that band deserves high praise. Or an elongated blog piece like this. 

A Mountain of One unsurprisingly found their way onto my turntable with their very first EP. The highlight for me was the opener Ride that more than showcases their stylistic leanings. Sounding both barren and weighty, it was unashamedly AOR in an age of po-faced coolness and locks into a great groove. Like a breezier Beta Band on a good day. To get Martina Topley Bird on board, then waste her with a pointless cover of Ginny's classic Can't Be Serious was a bug-bear. I'm still not sold. 

Their second EP contains two absolute gems. Innocent Reprise actually improves a competent tune and illustrates their studio prowess. It has aged magnificently. Better still, People Without Love is a thought-provoking call and response anthem that treads a similar terrain to the Sandals. It shares the same energy and still sounds relevant. Rhyming couplets like these empower, whereas so much music underarm serves and weakens folk. Probably the only good thing about covid, the underarm serve masterclass, is that it brought them back together.   

Normally when a band reforms, it's for some banal reason like money, but instead A Mountain of One have knocked it out of the park with Stars Planets Dust Me. Their finest to date, it simply had to exist. Hard to believe it's being given away in the Rough Trade knockdowns. Folk are clearly mad not to buy it. As per usual, it has a mighty impressive roll-call of assists, Dip in the Pool being the most successful, with the mesmerizing, shimmering closer Soft Landing. 

Transcending labels like synth pop, nu-disco, and Balearic, the duo retain the weight of their previous work but reach an higher altitude and consistency. Star  is pop brilliance, but my personal favourite is Our Love Must Grow, which has a unique skank all of its own. Only Dennis Bovell creates something even more magical to improve the songs opener Custards Last Stand. So magical it's possibly my best buy of 2022. As per usual, A Mountain of One realize their own vision better than anyone when working the remaining songs.  In fact, other than Dennis Bovell, only Swedish band Studio have been able to add something of lasting value to their music. Their version of  Brown Piano deserves a blog piece all of its own. Until last year, my A Mountain of One  journey ended with it.   

PART 2

IT'S PERHAPS inevitable that after releasing Institute of Joy a full decade would have to elapse to hear anything else.  

Institute of Joy had a scale of ambition that was only half realized and its mixed reviews put me off at the time. However, for the cost of a tenner, I now have in my possession the CD with an Inspirations mix CDR, a mint copy of the vinyl EP, and a Bones picture disc. I buy a few CDs nowadays and the CDR plays ridiculously well too.  

Mo is the perfect collaborator and foil for Zeb, giving him the confidence to settle into a groove. Their explorations usually deliver the perfect blend of epic mountain top music and hypnotic space-dust. Infusing just the right amount of soul and gospel to ensure the tracks fall well short of pastiche. The album's sonic architecture is as rich as it is expressive. The Verve's sprawling, jazz infused hymns influence the mood this album creates. So many bands get linked with Pink Floyd, with most lacking any degree of brevity to justify serious comparison. Not so A Mountain of One. They understand depth and space and have assembled a cast of talent to back up such comparison. 

Bones once reminded me of Coldplay, but now I can appreciate its rolling percussion that loosens it, and then find that all important groove. Zeb's voice soars with a textural warmth that sets it apart. Sometimes my in-built prejudices stopped me from listening properly, I guess. Fool. Like a lot of their tunes, Hail Pleasure appears happy bathed in a proggy swamp before shaking itself free with a psychedelic abandon. It's a spiritual lift for these gloomy times we live in. Even their darkest brew, a heady version of Leonard Cohen's Who By Fire, pummels the depths whilst maintaining a lightness of touch that makes the song their own. Forget PJ Harvey. 

   

Their almighty canon of work is  destined for mutant radio stations to pick up in the future, somewhere.  For sure.