A few good times in my life
Last month Newcastle's synth-pop collective (Adam Parkinson, Oliver Merchant and Lucy Whalley) returned after a short hiatus with a new song. Policeman is a hypnotic spoken word story about a small-scale police corruption. Sheffield's Crooked Man gives this pop song a jazzy, constantly flowing rhythm. A great and unexpected return of the collective.
Sheffield's DJ and producer Richard Barrat released today a new record. As always a collection of downtempo dancefloor tracks with great female vocals on it. But the highlight is a collaboration with Roisin Murphy. A transcendental track that starts with a gentle groove and is refined by Murphy. A relaxed cosmic journey lasting more than seven minutes.
A few months ago Transmission Towers, a two piece band from Liverpool released their first album Transmission One. I liked the outstanding track Everything, a mixture of tribal rhythms, some acoustic guitar and synths in the background and the hypnotic singing of Eleanor Mante but sadly this song went off my radar.
I got aware of this album again when Sheffield based producer Richard Barratt aka Crooked Man remixed the whole debut. He transforms the post-punk inspired original into a percussive hypnotic piece of electronica by replacing the guitars with drums and buzzing synth lines. Anyway, another overlooked song from this year.
This post has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the French band of the same name. Rather, these lines are about a song that was written and released some time ago by JIM, a Balearic/folk/rock project from Nottingham. I recently came across this project and their songs, which are worth mentioning here at another time. This remix was created by Crooked Man, a project by Sheffield's Richard Barratt, who has been travelling under various pseudonyms for years. This version is a little gem that has received far too little attention to date. A clear rhythm/groove over which ethereal variations waft, gentle yet demanding and propulsive. A song that could appear on many end-of-year lists.
