Iness Mezel - "Amazone"

I heard Amazone by Iness Mezel on the unpredictable and fascinating RTE Lyric FM show, Reels to Ragas.with Gerry Godley.  It's on 7-8pm on Tuesdays, and I was putting our 7-month old to sleep upstairs, as one does.  Not with reels to ragas I might add, not exactly sleeping music good though it is.  So anyway as luck would have it I was descending the stairs tentatively baby-monitor in hand, listening for the telltale rustle-clunk-pause-scream that denotes the loss of the soother during the critical going-to-sleep phase - and for some reason this night, sleep happened before the loss-of-soother incident.  The point being, I was in the kitchen a few minutes short of 8pm, while Reels to Ragas was still on, and Mr Godley played "Amazone" as his final track.

It's been a long time since I've actually stood jaw-open at a track, but this one did it for sure.  It's tempting to describe it as a car-crash collage of styles (which implies that it's a bad thing - which it most definitely is not).  What is is, is a quite astonishing collage that (to my mind) draws the links between styles across thousands of years and thousands of miles.

It's the sound of Berber Africa looked at through a French lens, and (most compelling of all), is driven by the most African of all modern musics, pure Chicago house.  The verses are the thing - that spinning loopy 1-bar feel, and the stomp of the kick and the claps together, the echoes of ancient Africa as only Chicago made them sound, with that North African vocal floating and imploring over the top as the beat grinds away.

Thank you Iness Mezel, thank you Gerry Godley.  Cracking!

Larry Heard - "Alien"

I always forget about Larry Heard.  I'll forget for ages, and then hit on one of his old records, put it on, and I'm always blown away by how good they are.  Flirting a bit with the 'proper' musicianship side of things (I like the dislocated emotion you get from stripped machines, alright?) - he still made just jaw-dropping soundscapes.  From a production point of view, his tracks were always flawless as well - the mixes are so good, and he always chose the perfect noise for every part.  Lush.

I came across Alien by him earlier this week, and knew immediately that this was the track for Friday.  I think it's one of his greatest tracks of all time - the easy warm bassline, the open spacey pads, the clicking drum pattern, a mix that feels like there's so much space you could walk in and between all the sounds inspecting them from every angle, and piano and lead sounds draped over the top like a satin sheet.

Happy Friday!

Dawn Landes - "Young Folks"

© Alex Solmssen

I came across Dawn Landes in an article about music production..... in..... Tape Op.  The name may come as no relief to you, but I've spent the last *month* trying to remember after losing the magazine!  Anyway, I digress and I've hardly even started.  Landes has done a great deal of production and engineering herself, and really knows her stuff.

She's also got a great voice, writes great tunes, and radiates unaffected believable love of music.  Here in honour of her brilliantness, are three Dawn Landes tunes for Friday.  Well, actually two of them are the same tune, Young Folks.  One version sung with young folks, and the other version sang with old folks.  Pretty cool huh?  And in fact Young Folks isn't even her tune.

Alright already, here's 1 Dawn Landes tune for Friday, and 2 different versions of Dawn Landes singing someone else's tune for Friday.  Pedants.

Black Dub - "The Birth of Bellavista Nights"

I came across the Black Dub project following a feature in the latest Sound on Sound.  Black Dub is the latest project from Daniel Lanois, who produced The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and a stack of other U2 and non-U2 stuff.

From Sound on Sound:

One very noticeable feature that unites both Le Noise and Black Dub is that they appear to be painted with fairly broad brush-strokes, using raw, free performances. In the past, Lanois has been responsible for his fair share of layered, very detailed, almost perfectionist records, works that seem to embody his one‑time adage that an image of beauty is greatly enhanced by the introduction of a piece of grit. On Le Noise and Black Dub Lanois appears to have reversed his maxim: they sound more like grit greatly enhanced by pieces of beauty.

“Thank you for noticing the qualities of grit and freedom in these new albums,” replies Lanois. “I like the broad brush-stroke analogy. It’s a very painterly way of looking at things, and I love for music to have pictures. That part of my work has never changed: I like things to be cinematic. I also think that the detail is always there in my work."

Lanois has always had interesting idea about music and art, and how to get there, and this is no different.  There was lots of talk in the interview, both from Lanois and from his co-producer Mark Howard about the importance of capturing the actual performance of the instrument, and how the technology was really secondary to the music that you were recording.  I hadn't heard of Black Dub before, but it was enough for me to go searching.

It's interesting stuff, and here's one great example - three and a half minutes of perfectly captured guitar nestled in those Lanois delays.  Just an amazingly perfect guitar sound, a great rolling riff, and a story all in one noise.  It's the sort of thing you want to have on vinyl, with an immensely expensive hifi to play it through.

Signature SP1200 project

I've been quite lucky in salvaging a couple of things that were getting thrown out at work. Deemed surplus to requirements - one of them was an original SP1200 sampling drum machine. Killer 12-bit angry sampling, drum noises go in weedy and come out like a lump hammer. It's not hard to see why it's popular.

Then, in the course of an office clearout, I discovered that I'd also come in to possession of the full service manual for said SP1200...

Which was even more interesting. Component lists, circuit diagrams, engineering troubleshooting - everything that went into making this machine the legend that it is.

But then at the end, it got even more interesting - the credits page, not present in the end-user manual (not the end-user manual I have anyway).

I pondered over that list of people responsible for this most legendary of machines. Then I realised that I had buried in the house at home (another thing I got in trouble for bringing home!) - an unused overlay for the SP1200.

Never before stuck on a machine. Virginal. Still with the sticky back ready to go.

So this has me thinking. What if I could rustle up everyone on the list of original SP1200 credits? I know where to find four of them right now, another guy I'm sure I can track down through the first four - and I think I've located another four, which would leave only four heads to find.

What if I could get the overlay to them all individually?

What if they all signed it, and got it back to me, and I pulled off the overlay on my SP1200, and stuck the signed overlay on it?

Would I then have an SP1200, signed by the entire original team that put the machine together?

Is it just me, or would that be not only unique, but a physical piece of music and sampling history?

Lykke Li - "I'm Good, I'm Gone"

It's Portuguese Government Bond auction time! But more about that later.

I've liked Lykke Li for a long time. Really, really good tunes, good singing, and catchy without being infuriatingly annoying. Music that (hopefully, probably) will still sound good in 10 years - and that's the trick.

It's also great to see someone who can *really* actually do it - who has real musical talent. You can tell the difference - the people who are trying less, and still producing more. The people who can do it without any technology fixing their mistakes and polishing out the human element. The ones who can just sing, with no amplification, and convince you.

Here's Lykke Li, in a toilet, no amplification, and again the song just shines through. I'm not sure about the need for the spoons, taps, etc, but when you're a kooky Scandi, you can get away with anything.

Happy New Year!

Pulsate

Where music, visuals, technology, UI and meditation collide...

Check out Andre Michelle's flash audio gadget, Pulsate. Click to make at least two circles, and then watch and listen.

Hypnotic, random and beautiful. Bravo!

Disco Nihilist - "Leaving Bull Creek"

I found out about Disco Nihilist through the new Love What You Feel label - here is one of the tracks on the debut LWYF release, great circular trippy stuff.

For some reason last week, I was wandering about searching for Disco Nihilist to see what other stuff they had released, and stumbled on this track on Construction Paper records.

This is right up my street for dark playing-out club material. The kick seems a bit thuddy at first, but just try that through a big system and watch it go. Then there's the 2-beat synthy groove, which starts off almost inaudible and then growls and grows around the kick as it prowls on. Strident, moody, thudding walking-pace dark house, which just about suits a week full of strident, moody news - more on that later.

For now, happy Friday!

P.s. - another track from the 12" is here, and it's pretty nice too...

Live Music Project - Studio Rebuild

I finally sold the beautiful mixing desk I had available for a few months. Baby on board, it was never really going to work out spacewise.

I'm going to miss the masses of inputs, and the incredible lightshow from the meterbridge when it was all running in the dark. I'm especially going to miss that warm 60Hz bass EQ.

With changes come opportunity though, and so in light of the fact that a change of mixing desk is on the cards, I'm now reassessing the entire music setup to try and squeeze more musical output out of less space. This is going to be a bit of an ongoing project, and I'm not quite sure what shape the final setup is going to be, but I'm going to cherry-pick the most crucial pieces of the studio, and rebuild a new setup from scratch.

The remit is - it must be physically small, it must be very fast to work with, it must produce great quality results, and - it needs to be robust enough that I can take it out live. To look at it from the opposite direciton - I'm going to build a 'live' setup, and then use that setup to be the writing studio as well. The old setup was amazing for in-house, but Logic Pro on a massive rack PC running through a big recording desk, was never going to be any way to go and perform the tracks live. And if you were performing from Logic, you might as well play a CD, right?

So first things first - mixing desk replacement. Flexible, small, good-quality, and gig-proof. I've pretty much decided on the solution for that problem - more news soon.

The second conundrum, which is the big one, is - how to sequence electronic tracks live? It needs to be a totally flexible solution, but it also needs to be a totally robust solution.

I'm wobbling between Ableton Live, and a hardware solution of some sort - options include the MPC3000 (expensive, rare, old, big), the RS-7000 (pricey, looks nasty, bit of an unknown quantity) and the ASQ-10 (floppy disks, old, rare as hens teeth, not cheap for what you get). I did even consider the Orbital Alesis MMT-8 solution, but you have to play everything in live when sequencing, which is a bit of a turn-off for certain experimental tune-writing in the studio.

I had thought about a Machinedrum, but it turns out it doesn't do polyphonic sequencing for external MIDI devices. I haven't written it off as part of the setup, as it does look pretty unrivalled as a modern drum machine if you don't want preset samples - but for sequencing everything, it's not going to work.

So what it's coming down to is - will Ableton be flexible enough, intuitive enough, and (crucially) robust enough to take out live, or do I need to go back and reconsider hardware options again...

S Express - "Superfly Guy"

I had forgotten about this. What a brilliant main groove - 3 drum noises, a bassline, and a couple of micro samples - lethal stuff.

Happy Friday!

Lupe Fiasco - "Dumb It Down"

I don't listen to a huge load of hip hop - an occasional work trip to LA means that a convertible and cruising the freeways to some chord-laden West-coast rhythms somehow suits the SoCal vibe - but when you really want some serious rap to make your brain stop and back up, Lupe Fiasco has got to be top of the game.

Try "Dumb It Down" from a few years back: an utterly hypnotic beat that keeps stepping up and down just by swapping the kick drum sound, a deathly dark synth line, and outrageously conscious lyrics implicitly lancing gansta rap and everything that goes with it.

You been sheddin' too much light Lu - you make them wanna do right Lu
They're getting self-esteem Lu - these girls are trying to be queens Lu
They're trying to graduate from school Lu - they're startin to think that smart is cool Lu
They're trying to get up out the hood Lu - I'll tell you what you should do...

Toto - "I can't stop loving you"

I checked in the blog archives, and it was back in 2007 that I mentioned Danish superstar Bjarne Langhoff and his stunning stop-in-the-aisles demonstrations that year (and possibly the year before, I can't quite remember) at the NAMM and Frankfurt music tradeshows.

Bjarne was delivering unbelievable covers of a few songs, culminating with the double-act of "Man in the Mirror" by Michael Jackson followed with "I can't stop loving you" by Toto. Now I've always had a thing about proper, pure pop and songwriting, and one of the overriding principles I've taken has always been that you need to keep your verses under control (if not outright moody), and when you hit the chorus, it really needs to deliver. (pet hate - modern pop tracks that don't really go for it in the chorus)

Or as the KLF instructed, "always use the one you can't believe you're using".

Well here's that Toto track, and while I've got to say that Bjarne's version was probably even better (when you hit the first chorus, you really knew you'd arrived at a very important point), it's really a great song. The verses are perfectly crafted, and although the Totmeisters could do with a the totally open-mouthed power singing that Langhoff consistently delivered, the chorus is pretty epic.

Time passes quickly and chances are few...

The Stone Roses - "Ten Storey Love Song"

Back in the 90s (and it's strange to think about how long ago the 90s actually were), I did all sorts of bits before, during and after university. One of them, was a temporary involvement with big-gig security, working for a company that provided security to lots of the huge English festivals. There were many funny moments that can't really be printed, but there's another one that occurred to me this morning that can.

Security was always a lottery at a big festival - you could end up doing anything from the easy and surreal (guarding doors backstage while famous people came and went), to utterly boring (directing traffic at the edge of the site on dusty trails for hours), to frantic (dealing with an entry gate, particularly the main gate). Somehow fate intervened when I decided to do the 10 hour overnight bus journey south for security at the Reading 1996 festival, and from nowhere, I was plucked to do main-stage security, standing in front of the main stage for 3 solid days in the pit.

The lineup is recorded on wikipedia, and my memory is of seeing The Prodigy, Terrorvision, Ice-T, Garbage, Dodgy, Super Furry Animals, Moloko, Kula Shaker, Sonic Youth, Ash and Reef. It's where my love of Billy Bragg started, I caught all of his set, and it stuck with me since. A guitar, a guy, belting out his songs, and some politics I was utterly in agreement with - evidently I'd started my drift to the left even back then.

I was in the pit when Sonic Youth closed it - that was an all-hands-on-deck set - I think they were last. It was one of the more disconcerting moments I had, after 3 long days, standing on the security plinth above the crowd in the front row in the dark, with blitzkrieg sheets of white noise pouring out of the PA behind for minutes upon minutes upon minutes, while nuclear whole-stage strobes caused the 80,000 odd faces in front of me to flick in the darkness like some deranged film, eventually bringing me to the edge of vertigo. And in the midst of this you were supposed to spot and fish out bodysurfers, many of whom were huge guys wearing heavy duty boots, and every time the strobes fired, they weren't where you thought they were last time.

(The barrier in front of the crowd was about 20 feet separated from the stage by the 'pit' - and had a raised platform on the stage side you could stand on, to see better, or fish people out of the crowd. It looked something like this, only the one at Reading was monstrous and had no 'separations' in the platform, so you could walk/run along it the width of the stage. Anyway, you would stand 'down' in the pit when it was daylight, when the crowd was reasonably under control, when nothing needed attention. When it got dark, you needed to help or retrieve someone, or have a careful look into the crowd, you would stand 'up' on the plinth)


Then there was my front stage security encounter with the crazed and fluorescent Julian Cope, who chose to jump through the pit and up on to the security barrier, saunter up to me, and lean on my shoulder in front of the crowd while singing a couple of lines. Which I thought was very cool being a Cope fan, although not only did I have to maintain the arms-crossed deadpan serious security face, I took some heat for it from my Glasgow security colleagues afterwards ("***t was wearin' a dress!"). Not to worry - they felt more of a man when they got with the herd - Julian - you can lean on my shoulder any time. (Oh - and if anyone who was in the front 10,000 people while JC was playing happens to have a picture of this moment, I'd love a copy. It was a pretty funny moment, so there's got to be a photo somewhere)

Then there was seeing Black Grape live. Even better, seeing Bez live. Never has a man looked so off his face, and jumped up and down in a Sergio Tacchini tracksuit to such massive crowd acclaim. Still a legend...


But the moment that still stands out for me, was seeing Stone Roses live. It's universally gone down in the collective memory as a disastrous gig for them, a shambles, and was the last gig the Roses ever played. But not only did it sound not bad to me, it had some amazing moments in it.

And the most amazing moment for me was standing up on the plinth, facing the crowd, while they cranked out "Ten Storey Love Song" - with the sound blowing outside in the wind, that heaving subterranean thud that you only ever get from a massive PA system, and that huge walking bassline. There was a girl in the very front row, clearly a fan, tears streaming down her face the whole song. It's never left me.

Soundstream - "Good Soul"

Friday! Friday! Friday!

Epic good-times tune, from Erik & Fiedel of that wierd blue MMM record fame (latterly to become known as Donna - more on this one some other time).

Anyway, "Good Soul" appeared under the new name Soundstream, followed Donna and some other more obscure releases on MMM - this is a bit less wierd, and a bit happier. It's utterly superb walking pace thudding happy cut up disco-by-synths house. It's even got chords and stuff - works just as well through a massive system as it does in my car on a sunny day.

Happy Friday!

The 12 days of Chicness

So I started running a "12 days of Chicness" series of videos on facebook. It seemed to be a good way of reminding myself of the utter brilliance of their songwriting back catalogue - both for Chic, and for other bands.

To avoid a blog post every day, I thought I'd collapse them here weekly - so today, 1 week until the gig, 5 days in, here's the first 5 days of Chicness...

Aphex Twin - Analogue Bubblebath

Friday morning.

The UK managed to nearly-elect a conservative government, which is probably what will ensue. There is a honking financial hole to be dealt with, and a conservative government will almost certainly mean that the burden will fall most harshly on the poorest and least able to defend themselves.

The Euro is about to split up. And that's not hyperbole or metaphor. Effects on poor people - see above.

Turn it up and let it go.

Underground Resistance - Journey of the Dragons (UR)

I love Underground Resistance, and Galaxy to Galaxy from 1993 is one of the most mindblowing releases (in my mind) that dance music has ever conjured up - 2 12" slabs of insane deep soulful electronics.

Somewhere in that doublepack is "Journey of the Dragons", a massive building swell of swirling emotions, clicking rimshots, pinned down with an insistent 808. Re-reading the label now, I find out that not only does it have Mad Mike's hands on it, but also features 'magic' Juan Atkins.

The writing on the label reads:

(dedicated to the memory of Chris Hani,
Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee & Yoshihiro Hattori.
May your journey through the stars be peaceful.)

Deep, deep, deep shit.

U2 - "No Line On The Horizon"

U2 albums always go through a process with me - from nonplussed, to interested, to fascinated, to amazed. The last few have been easier to get in to, but there's always a twist.

Their latest, No Line on the Horizon, opens with the title track - an amalgam of everything U2 have been. I know a girl, whose like the sea. Walking-pace drums, rumbling bass, verses squeezed through musical passes with vocals hanging on thirds and sheets of distorted guitars that hark back to Achtung Baby, while the choruses open out into plains of more relaxed lyrics and a New Years Day/City Of Blinding Lights piano line. I watch her changing every day for me. A decent chunk of the album was worked on and/or recorded in Fez, Morocco, and you can hear the first evidence in the first track in the form of an Arabic stringed instrument. There's a lot of more subtle percussive stuff happening as well - lots of toms, tabla-type bits, and the kick has been cut right back, managing to keep the rhythm driving while quietly changing the form - clever and subtle. Every night I have the same dream - I'm hatching subplots, scheming some scheme, oh yeah...

The next track, is Magnificent. By far the most commercial track on the record, it's an absolute belting epic of classic U2, featuring the most monstrous guitar line on the album, 4-on-the-floor kick, a thunderously anchored bass playing root lines, and the most celebratory lyrics. I was born... I was born to be with you. Everything here is right - all the sounds are perfectly chosen, and the mix is a killer. Obviously the mixing on every U2 track is amazing, but this one is pretty produced, and they really, really nailed it. I was born, I was born to sing for you. The arrangement (something people often ignore) is also in a completely different class here. In the verses, the guitar riff is history and you're left with Bono's vocals exposed over the bassline. The first verse backs the vocals with real background guitar chords, verse two adds soaring Eno synths and some organ pieces over the top. Backing right off during the verses creates acres of space for the melody to sing, and it also means when the guitar riff comes back in the chorus, it hits like a ton of bricks. The vocals and the guitar back each other from start to finish, stepping out of each others way at the appropriate moments, while the whole track rises and falls in intensity with the verses and choruses. It's a masterpiece of arrangement - if you are looking for the Beautiful Day on this album, you can stop searching here. Only love, only love unites our hearts.

So far, so optimistic but "Moment of Surrender" takes a much gloomier turn, opening in a Thomas Brinkmann style scuffle of looped glitching and resolving into a sequence of strings that heralds the darkest track on the album, an agonising work revolving around getting the wrong side of addiction. I tied myself with wire, to let the horses run free. It's one of Clayton's great moments too, because while the bass work is unspectacular, it's perfectly judged, and (like the verses in Magnificent) without the bass, this song simply doesn't exist. We were barely conscious. Whether the song references Clayton's difficulties isn't clear, but someone writing knows what they are talking about. I've been in every black hole. Horses are always up for a run, but it's difficult to know whether can you get them back in the stable before you take them out. Life, from leaving the house, crossing the road, to playing the stock market, has something to do with judging your own comfort in the face of risk. It's an unremittingly bleak song: I was punching the numbers at the ATM machine - I could see in the reflection a face staring back at me.


This bleak darkness sets the stage for one of the great moments of the album.


Birdtweets, happy muted chimes, clean wake-up guitar arpeggios... Sunshine... Sunshine. Welcome to Unknown Caller. I was lost between the midnight and the dawning. There is a story being told here, and it's not just a series of single songs. Bono carries the pensive verses as he explains the depth of where we've just come from. In a place of no consequence, or company. And over and over again, Bono keeps finding the head of the nail (rusty or not)... I had driven to the scene of the accident, and I sat there - waiting for me... The verses having outlined the troubles of the past, the choruses talk of a hope for the future: Go - shout it out - rise up. These two songs together are the addiction analogy of the lift plunging down, where every so often you pass a floor where, if you are ready, you might be able to get out. Restart and - reboot yourself - you're free to go. The corner around these two songs is a gobsmacking illustration of the power of the album, and it's a stunning reminder of what you will forever lose with single-song download models. It proceeds into riotous ecstasy, bombastic organs and brass heralding the hope of tomorrow. Deep in the second song of this story in two parts, corners are being turned and chances are getting handed out. Shout for joy - if you get the chance. Jaw-dropping.

That done, we're into "I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight", which is a journey into surviving as a couple dressed up as an ode to - well - an ode to going crazy tonight. Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot. There's much revisiting here of ground covered in "A man and a woman", and one understanding the other. It's not a hill it's a mountain, as you start out the climb. Musically it's more straight U2 in the vein of the last two albums, and you have to pinch yourself to remember that while this doesn't stand out on this album, most other bands would kill to have one track like this on their record. We're gonna make it all the way to the light.

Sixth is "Get on your boots" - the lead single from the album, the one that sounds least like the rest of the album, and the one that always made least sense to me. You free me from the dark dream. Heavy distorted bass riffing, drum machines, synth noises battering around, some semitone tuning and weird harmony vocals that certainly aren't straight out of Dalkey - and walls of distorted guitars. I don't wanna talk about wars between nations. Less commercial than much of the rest of the album to my mind, it's got one of the more odd vocal references I've ever heard from U2 on record, when towards the end, Bono starts intoning an unmistakeably Shaun Ryderesque "Yeah hey hey". Madchester referenced in a new U2 record? Perhaps not for the last time!

Next is Stand Up Comedy, a stunning full-blooded emotional call to arms. I gotta stand up - the wire is stretched in between our two towers (surely a Man On Wire reference?). Again maybe it's me, maybe it's just the dominant 7th, but every time I hear Bono yelping Come all ye people, I'm hearing Shaun Ryder again and the drugged out bawling of Reverend Black Grape. Which is weird because at the back end of the instrumental break, the "God is love and love is evolutions very best day" is set back and positively reeks of Stone Roses era Brown. NLOTH Manchester influence - in my head only, or on the album?

As we progress into "Fez - Being Born", it does feel like we're leaving the classic widescreen U2 behind as a half-speed sort of almost William Orbit-esque dub thing winds slowly along with Bono, a million miles away in fields of reverb intoning "let me in the sound". Then suddenly the track breaks, and it's into more classical U2 stylings. Atlantic sea cut glass... It's not a track that immediately grabs you (which probably means it'll be a stone cold classic in a few years) - but it's a pretty amazing mood. African sun at last...


White As Snow follows, and it's a slow, lyrical walk through heart-wrenching territory. My brother and I would drive for hours - like we had years instead of days. It's another strange track, which has been in some corners ascribed to the feelings of a soldier dying in Afghanistan following a roadside bomb. Only poppies laugh under the crescent moon... Loaded with suspensions and emotive harmony vocals (how come the Edge can sing so high?!), it's both absorbing and uncomfortably emotionally claustrophobic at the same time. Now the wolves are every passing stranger - every face we cannot know.


Breathe is the penultimate song, and it's a triumphant return to the joyous best of the sound of Pop. The verses are nearly scat/rapped in an uncontrollable torrent of ideas (Doc says you're fine, or dying, Please, Nine 0 nine, St John Divine, on the line, my pulse is fine, but I'm running down the road like loose electricity) - while the choruses are transcendent thanksgiving (Walk out into the street, sing your heart out, the people we meet, will not be drowned out, there's nothing you have that I need, I can breathe). If you didn't like old U2, you're not going to like this - and if you love old U2, you need to get yourself a copy of this album.


The eleventh track, Cedars of Lebanon, brings the tempo right down, and closes out the album in a contemplative and densely pensive atmosphere. I'm pretty sure it's been put out there that the lyrics on this album were written from the perspective of different people, and from the lyrics here, it's only possible to conclude that Bono is thinking of veteran Middle East columnist Robert Fisk. The evidence is everywhere - Yesterday I spent asleep, woke up in my clothes in a dirty heap, spent the night trying to make a deadline, squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline. See this brief interview with Fisk (he actually doesn't say he's retiring, despite the title). Child drinking dirty water from the river bank, soldier brings oranges he got out from a tank... Following the greatest studio reference I can remember (the worst of us are a long drawn out confession - the best of us are geniuses of compression), the song and the record close out with cryptic advise - Choose your enemies carefully 'cos they will define you, Make them interesting 'cos in some ways they will mind you, They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends, Gonna last with you longer than your friend.


An awesome album and (I suspect) a massive grower, I expect songs from this to be getting discovered by people long in to the future.

For my money and despite some incredible U2 records in the intervening period, No Line On The Horizon is possibly the best U2 record since Achtung Baby. Don't believe me?

Come back to me in a few years.

Schatrax - First Heartbeat (Schatrax)

A deep one for Friday.

The mythical Schatrax (one of the only labels which I've ever fallen so in love with I've become a completist - mentioned once previously), and the amazingly deep and underdone "First Heartbeat".

I love this track - it's a gorgeous mood. I love the really muted bassline buried around the bass drum (works so well over a PA), and the synth sounds are just gorgeous, and that sort of early 90s UK-style shuffling hat/cymbal/brush thing going on - you're never sure what bit is what, but it grooves.

It was also one of the first tracks on the first DJ mix I ever did back in 98, which scored me my first DJ gig ever. Great times, great memories. Another label that stopped before they put a foot wrong (see also Bluespirit, Basic Channel, Emoticon). Schatrax - thanks for starting, and thanks for stopping.

Schatrax weren't always easy records - some of them were angular and difficult - but when they did sublime, they really did it perfectly.

Rudder - "Floater" (live in Amsterdam)

I posted a while back about Rudder's great album "Matorning" - well here they are playing "Floater" live in Amsterdam...

Thunderous, driving jazz for the next century - turn it up... get some!