I have been playing some 45’s this evening, it’s more effort than chucking an album on but I rather enjoyed it anyway, it’s like a mixtape of sorts I suppose. Some of the 45’s were picked up in a couple of job lots and I’ve just found time to play them, they all play fine, which is good.
Before playing anything I had to make some adjustments to the equipment. The family decided they would put a record on while I was at work. I’d left it set at 45 rpm and they put on a 33 1/3, Damn by Kendrick Lamar to be exact, and couldn’t figure out why it sounded so odd. In an attempt to fix it they pressed the Loudness button and the Muting button on the amp, adjusted the Balance and the Bass. when that didn’t work they messed about with the settings at the back of the tone arm and took the weight off accidentally and couldn’t figure out how to get it back on. It took me 15 minutes to put it right, mostly because it took me ages to spot the muting button was pressed in.
Anyway, here is the pile of records that were played today. I made a spotify playlist of them, because I do that sort of thing, it’s here:
https://open.spotify.com/embed/user/1136278651/playlist/7d0RalpttYlPAJ3Dll5UzJ
Haven’t played ‘Music for Chameleons’ by Gary Numan for a long time, the intro could easily be by Japan (Pino Palladino on bass seems to be the reason why). The B-Side (Noise Noise) features Theresa Bazar of Dollar on Vocals, it also has David Van Day listed as providing ‘Helpful Hints’, I think that can be translated as being a pain in the arse. Why Gary? Why? I didn’t play the B-side.
Looking at what I chose to play I think it fair to say that I am the DJ that nobody would ever hire twice!
I decided to charge up my Ipod Classic today for the first time in a long while, over a year, maybe two. I can’t remember what is on it. I have a reasonable idea of course but I’ve completely blanked the disc and re-loaded several times in the past to remove a lot of spurious tracks that I never listened to, it’s a 120GB so it holds a lot of junk if you let it.
So I set it to Shuffle this morning and for absolutely no reason at all I began writing down the tracks it played, and this isn’t the first time I’ve done that, which is worrying. Anyway, as I’d taken the time to write them down I’m going to share them. There’s no editing or omissions in an attempt to look cooler, after all, I am either the coolest guy on the planet (according to my dog) or well past the age where being cool is a thing (ask anybody else other than my dog). Here we go then:
| 1 | Rush – Closer to the heart |
| 2 | Pink Floyd – Breathe |
| 3 | Brian Eno – A measured Room |
| 4 | Phil Collins – Only you know and I know |
| 5 | Radio Head – The Bends |
| 6 | The Doors – LA Woman |
| 7 | Eluvium – All the sails |
| 8 | Zero 7 –Pepe Bradock WTF HPPND Remix (Today) |
| 9 | The Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter |
| 10 | King Crimson – Dicipline (Live) |
| 11 | Boards Of Canada – Hey Saturday Sun |
| 12 | Massive Attack – Teardrop |
| 13 | Genesis – More Fool Me |
| 14 | Radiohead – Knives Out |
| 15 | Neil Young – Old Man |
| 16 | The Handsome Family – If The World Should End In Ice |
| 17 | Mogwai – Folk Death 95 |
| 18 | John Martyn – The Glory of Love |
| 19 | Spiritualized – The Individual |
| 20 | The Cocteau Twins – Violaine |
| 21 | Four Tet – Aying |
| 22 | Genesis – The Knife |
| 23 | Lambchop – There’s Still Time |
| 24 | Sigur Ros – Rembihnutur |
| 25 | Mogwai – Wait For Aidan |
| 26 | Bob Marley & The Wailers – Lively Up Yourself |
| 27 | Bjork – Wanderlust |
| 28 | Nick Drake – Parasite |
| 29 | Henry Mancini – The Streets of San Francisco |
| 30 | Japan – Swing |
| 31 | Faust – Picnic on a frozen river, deuixeme tableaux |
| 32 | Future sound of London – High Tide on the sea of flesh |
| 33 | Tricky – Suffocated Love |
| 34 | Peter Gabriel – I don’t remember |
| 35 | Explosions In The Sky – Our last days as children |
| 36 | PIL – Attack (live) |
| 37 | Neil Cowley Trio – Lament |
| 38 | Mazzy Star – Flowers in December |
| 39 | The Sex Pistols – Seventeen |
| 40 | Ennio Morricone – A Fistfull of Dollars |
That’s all.
This is a mix tape that I put together in 2010 and listened to a lot at the time, I called it ‘Dreamstate’ and made an image for the cover:
The tracks are split for a C90 cassette, so up to 45 minutes a side. I’ve used youtube this time, although they videos are mostly irrelevant, it’s not for watching but for listening.
SIDE 1:
1. Moonlit Sailor – Sunbeams (5:29)
2. Stafrænn Hákon – Járn (8:30)
3. Balmorhea – Bowspirit (5:17)
4. Audrey – Carving and Searching (3:19)
5. Ioseb – When The Bomb Hit The House Next Door (9:53)
6. God Is An Astronaut – Fall From The Stars (4:27)
7. Phantogram – You Are The Ocean (5:49)
SIDE2:
1. The Album Leaf – Eastern Glow (6:06)
2. 65daysofstatic – I Swallowed Hard, Like I Understood (5:27)
3. Efterklang – Horseback Tenors (5:48)
4. Harmonia – Veterano (4:00)
5. Mew – White Lips Kissed (6:45)
6. Sigur Rós – Glosoli (6:18)
7. Sufjan Stevens – The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders (7:02)
Apple Music Link:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/playlist/dreamstate/idpl.u-mJy8DerI6zdbq
Press play to listen!
And here we go with the first of 33 1/3 radio shows going live for one week. At the end of the week it will be replaced by show 2 but there will be both Apple and Spotify playlists of all the tracks included, available when the show is replaced.
It’s the first show I’ve done for quite some time, and it’s recorded live, so I was a bit rusty but I think it went ok. Let me know if you manage to find the time to have a listen.
Another month goes by and another surprise arrives in the post. This month the album I received from ‘That Special Record‘ was ‘Verdaillon’ by ‘Saåad’. Why not press play below now before you read any further so you can hear exactly what I’m talking about.
Listening? Good, then I’ll begin.
This current incarnation of Saåad consists of Romain Barbot and Gregory Buffier, who were once part of the Toulousian post-hardcore scene and have produced about a dozen albums so far. I did not know any of this before the album arrived this morning, frankly, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as post-hardcore scene anywhere, which is one of the great pleasures of allowing somebody else to choose an album for you. As I am quite a few months in now I feel that I can trust Miguel at ‘That Special Record‘ not to send me anything bad as there isn’t a single release I’ve received that I haven’t liked, to varying degrees admittedly, but I’ve never not played an album multiple times and enjoyed the listen.
As a result, through my own imagination or by design, I am transported to catacombs, to a room in the back of a church where there is water being scooped from a font, to the end of a service where a full house lays their bibles down on the pews in unison. Workmen repair something broken in an out of the way apse, monks, hoods up with faces hidden in shadow chant as an old but magnificent church organ sustains long chord changes. And then there is the ambience. It sounds almost ridiculous to me as I write it but much of this music is constructed around a church organ, an instrument I never thought would dominate any album I would ever own, but the sound of it, in it’s original setting with giant reverberations make it a powerful, dark, brooding thing at times, but at others it invokes all those memories of church services attended as a boy where everything was so very serious, and mysterious, to the child dressed up in his Sunday best and not knowing what was going on, only that it must be very important. At other times the organ is uplifting, spiritual even, bringing light to the dull lives of the listening congregation.
The infinite playlist is now 100 tracks with a play time of 7 Hours and 44 Minutes.
It’s a playlist that anybody can add tracks to, it’s all explained on its own page, which is here:
Join in!
Side 1, Track 3:
Total Run Time: 12:00
Julian Cope: Greatness & Perfection: 3 Minutes 15 Seconds: 1984
Audio:
Taken from what is probably my favourite Cope album, ‘World Shut Your Mouth’, which doesn’t contain the song of the same name. This was the first release by Cope after the break up of The Teardrop Explodes and it could easily have been a Teardrops song.
Video:
See latest update
Side 1, Track 2:
Total Run Time: 9:31
The Psychedelic Furs: Sister Europe: 5 Minutes 38 Seconds: 1981
Audio:
My first introduction to the Psychedelic furs was with the release of ‘Forever Now’ back in 1982, which caused quite the stir amongst the circles I used to be a part of. I went backwards through ‘Talk Talk Talk’ and the eponymous debut album. There are a number of tracks that I could have chosen from these three albums, which is the best of their output in my opinion though I stopped listening to anything new by them in about 1987, such as ‘Dumb Waiters’, ‘Into You Like A Train’, ‘Pretty in Pink’ of course and almost anything from their debut. I decided not to choose anything from ‘Forever Now’, but instead plumped for ‘Sister Europe’ from ‘Talk Talk Talk’, then I changed my mind to ‘Imitation of Christ’ and then back to ‘’Sister Europe’!
Video:
See Latest Update
I do love a mix tape, or a playlist as young people call it nowadays, so I thought I’d do an evolving one, adding tracks to it now and again until it is finished. I’ll use spotify and also try and have a video for each song to accompany it. To begin with, volume one, will be from my twenty’s, let’s call it ‘The Lost Years’. It will be a 120 cassette, so an hour each side, and we begin with:-
Side 1, Track 1:
Total Run Time: 3:53
Echo & The Bunnymen: The Cutter: 3 minutes 53 seconds: 1983
Audio:
I used to have a bit of a downer on Echo and the Bunnymen (for those that don’t know, Echo was the drum machine), mostly due to a feud they had with The Teardrop Explodes, although I only ever read The Teardrops side of the story, well, the Julian Cope side of the story actually. I’d always liked this track, and ‘The Killing Moon’, but never explored their catalogue much further until a few years ago. I missed out. I should have not been such a bloody fool and let the music do the talking.
Video:
See latest Update
Here’s a playlist of reasonably new songs that have a feeling of being from an older time. There’s a video playlist as well, just because.
Quite laid back, a 74 minute mix.
Made for a drive to work the other day.
Back at the tail end of 2011 I went to see Gary Numan at The Assembly in Leamington Spa. It wasn’t until over half way through that it was announced that two of the band hadn’t turned up, I hadn’t really noticed the absence, so they’d done a pretty good job. There’s a video below from that gig that somebody took and below that is the set list for that night.
Now that the NOW’s are out of the way for a while, here is a 72 minute playlist that I often listen to while using excel, I have no idea why exactly, it just sort of happens.
http://open.spotify.com/user/1136278651/playlist/1AtisCGOApZSLhyG6vitTd
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