Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Track Of The Day: Frank Sidebottom's Supergroup - Hit The North
Any words needed? I don't think so. Having just posted 'Living Too Late' on my various socials, this appeared as presciently as The Lady Of The Lake. It's a sign, I tell ye.
Track Of Yesterday: The Fall - Living Too Late (Beggar's Banquet)
I’m sure a lot of us feel that we’re living too late, and I’m no exception. More and more as we hurtle into an uncertain future, looking back at a past that we never knew, but would like to have been a part of. I wouldn’t have to go that far back, just between the wars, or shortly after. I’ve always been attracted to the idea of living in Paris during the time of the surrealists. Failing that, the 1950s nether regions, but I would have to be living in London or New York. These times evoke something strong, but that’s another story. And as far as this track is concerned, beside the predictably meaningful mumbling of Mark E. Smith, it’s all about the bass.
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Track Of Yesterday: The Economist - Damcase (Exit Strategy)
As far as dub techno goes, this one is a big room bonanza. Stripped down to its bare essentials, it’s a driving piece of deep house with the requisite overtones which serve to highlight the necessary flourishes. What the bollocks is he on about I hear you say? Well, everything is in place, but liberties have been taken with the various motifs. Well, there’s only so much gibberish that can be spouted so it really is a case of letting the music do the talking, and this piece of upfront dance floor divination has all its ducks lined up. Stripped down beats, razor sharp synth swathes and a nice line in between the lines disorientation means that this tune manages to hold its nerve to build and build and build, exstablishing a feeling of familiarity in the best possible taste.
Monday, October 13, 2025
Sunday, October 12, 2025
Track Of The Day: Al Jabr – Those Who Dare (Funk) (Alphaphone Recordings)
It starts inauspiciously, but soon gets into its stride. A simple loop weighed down by its own density, like a musical white dwarf embellished by the tweak of radio waves from a lost world disappearing into the Kuiper Belt. As momentum builds more flourishes are added until we’ve got this piece of rampant cosmic disco which could have been spawned by an unholy union between The Funky Drummer and The Egypt 80. It’s Richard Kirk though, so what exactly did you expect?
Saturday, October 11, 2025
Track Of The Day: Hell - Copa (Disco B)
Hell is DJ Hell and ‘Copa’ is a sleazy glimpse into a parallel world where the housewife’s choice, Barry Manilow, is turned on his head and put through the disco rinser. The last vestiges of the high life are filtered out as the twentieth century shuts down to a collage of divas, muscle Marys and industrial amounts of coke. So much coke that it starts to act in reverse and you’re knackered from excess. It’s all (lip) gloss and polish dancing in the foreground of what is to become an age where all the high ends are sharper and the bass is buried. It’s nostalgia’s last gasp, the comical decadence an interloper. It’s also an incredibly lazy tune which manages to make me think of ‘The Love Boat’.
Friday, October 10, 2025
Track Of The Day: Robert Drewek vs Tomie Nevada - Done In Two Days (Rawax)
I came across this tune very recently. It starts rather innocuously but then develops into some sort of synth monster. Almost electroclash in parts, but with a strong bent. It also sounds much better pitched down to the pace of cosmic chug. It’s at it’s best after the breakdown, when its five or six layers push and pull like rhythmic tectonic plates of disco bliss. All of this wrapped in a gossamer light envelop of phantom synth washes which, at times, sound like a spectral barrel organ.
Thursday, October 09, 2025
Track Of The Day: Alex Tolstey ~& Michael Lawrence - Smoke Seducer (Boshke Beats Records)
I really like this track. It’s a persistent, portentous plodder in the best possible way. It’s also a very good example of a track that mixes techno with electro. “But what’s the difference?” I know in my head, and I could bore you with my take on it, but it would only be used as a chat up line in a meme (you know the one). With that in mind, it’s no surprise at all the release comes with a Carl Finlow remix. This is the original though, and it’s a haunting piece of frictional techno, or off the leash electro depending on your perspective. Great noises throughout, which really bring it alive, give depth and add a tribal element to it. Wonderful.
Track Of Yesterday: Jeff Mills In The Bush (Axis)
It’s just a loop, but there’s so much in it. And if this is some sort of flashback into a distant past, then its credible. Whatever the motives for making this track, it couldn’t sound more evocative and dramatic. According to the most recent comment on Youtube, “The bassline is actually cropped and pitched from Mory Kante - Yeke Yeke (Afro Acid Remix) produced by Martyn Young, released 1987.” Which is interesting. Going back to the source, or a source. When this came out it was a pivotal moment in techno. Mr Mills suddenly went in a different, more functional and funky direction. Which isn’t to say that he hadn’t explored those possibilities before, but now here was a series, designed especially for DJs and their slabs. And what’s more, these are no ordinary tools. The tracks on these releases each step up in their own way and become much more than the sum of their parts. I colse my eyes and I’m back in Rough Trade Paris snapping them up, knowing that they’ll do the business. I think that the first two came out at the same time, which felt like Christmas at the time. Tracks like these set the standards for others to follow, and they still are.
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