A few good times in my life
Like the weeks before another eclectic mix of songs from times long gone by. Have a nice journey and good memories.
1967: Jefferson Airplane
1972: Tanya Tucker
1977: The Clash
1991: Jane's Addiction
1988: John Mellencamp
1970: Free
1992: The Cure
1984: The Style Council
1995: Prince & The Revolution
You can see how quickly the years go by by looking at the release date of albums that you liked right from the start and still feel happy listening to many years later. 40 years ago today, New Order released their third album Low-Life.
The album was released when the Iron Curtain was drawn across the continent. Even New Order had one installed at the time: instead of cities and countries, it separated their musical oeuvre from that of their predecessor band Joy Division. With their predecessor Power Corruption & Lies, the quartet broke new musical ground in 1983 and combined the old bastard indie rock with the new temptation in the form of the TB 303 bass synthesizer and the Emulator II sampler, which had to be fed with 3.5-inch floppy disks.
Seemingly effortlessly, New Order succeeds in fusing effervescent indie rock and shimmering dance pop, which is nevertheless clearly located in the underground. Their optimism and joy of playing also characterizes Low-Life: the promise of a golden future is already evident in the opener Love Vigilantes, which begins completely unglamorously with four snare drum hits and then places a melodica at the melodic center. Sunrise begins with a shadowy, wafting synth sound à la Atmosphere, before Peter Hook unleashes one of his golden bass lines and provides the counterpart to the synth thunderstorm.
With Elegia, they shift down several gears and present an almost meditative excursion into dark worlds before redefining electronic music towards the end with Sub-Culture, featuring hammering sequencer beats and a grandiose bass line.
New Order - Love Vigilantes
New Order - Sunrise
New Order - Elegia
New Order - Sub-Culture
Yesterday I featured the new song by Coyote and I mentioned that this song was inspired by Peaking Lights, a band I never heard before. Some research revealed that they are an American husband-and-wife duo who have been releasing music regularly for more than a decade. A few years ago they said goodbye to the West Coast to live in Amsterdam.
Each of the members, Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes, started their career in various post-punk, goth and psychedelic bands before they decided to make music together. Their sound could be described as a lo-fi melange of dub, psychedelic pop and krautrock. In 2012 they released their opus magnum Lucifer and in the same year they released Lucifer In Dub with edits of their former album.
And yes, although they are not from Jamaica, they have a feel for how to make a good dub version.
Since Lucifer they still creates free-flowing, repetitive to narcotic dub designs with drums, Hammond, synths and voice.
I've to admit that I am a huge fan of Coyote, a long time running project by Nottingham DJ's and producers Timm Sure and Richard Hampson since I bought their album The Mystery Light back in 2021. Since then they released several albums, singles and remixes all refined with their own Balearic vibes.
Now they released a new song inspired by Peaking Lights, an American couple releasing dub inspired songs since more than a decade. Coyote thought that it would be a nice idea to combine their Balearic sounds with dub and some reggae borrowings. And this experiment works well. Some dubbed synths, spoken words over a steady flowing rhythm should be the soundtrack for a sunny Sunday.
Exeter's Mighty Force label is one of those you can trust if you are looking for new electronic music, acid house and techno. Formed as a record store and label in the early nineties they stopped at the end of last century and took a twenty-year hiatus to return to releasing new and almost always great music as a record label six years ago. At the end of last year, they released a highlight with the Reverb Delay record.
The Storm Has Passed was the outstandig song from their album, an almost nine minute long journey to dubby spaces with a steady flow. Someone described this music as ballacid and the he was right.
Now Reverb Delay returned with a new EP with various remixes of Horizontal Rain by Reverb Delay's Marcus Farley and Paddy Thorne. He transformed the the Detroit inspired dub-techno into a space journey with warm synths and and an atmospherically rhythm.
Escape Pod is one their new songs, where they move with rattling drums more into an intensive dub-techno that would fill every dancefloor.
A few weeks ago Red Snapper released their new album Barb And Feathers. Formed in London in 1993 as a instrumental band and in the beginning, they played straight jazz with double bass, sax and guitar, sometimes infused with Beth Orton's voice and new sounds for the time.
I became aware of this record when my youngest brother copied it for me and raved to me about the then new sound mix of dub, jazz, post-punk, techno and trip-hop.
The album has two different parts and on side one they celebrate a faster sound. Ban-Ti-Do starts the record with a Lust For Life-esque rhythm with a surf guitar and horns that reminds me to the best days of Pigpack and ends with a cover version of Bowie's Sound And Vision.
One more journey to some songs from my musical education.
1967: The Kinks
1981: Talking Heads
1998: Madonna
1970: The Temptations
1982: ABC
1966: Wilson Pickett
1980: Roxy Music
1969: Joe Cocker
1974: Bad Company
1987: Suzanne Vega
