Monday's Long Song

 

Terry Callier was a Chicago born folk-jazz-soul guitarist, singer and songwriter. Long time forgotten and rediscovered by the acid-jazz scene in the early noughties. Raised in several doo-wop groups and the friendship of Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron he became also a remarkable voice of the liberation of black music in the early seventies. 1972 he released Dancing Girl a perfect symbiosis between folk, soul and jazz with critical lyrics about the situation of the black population in America. The song begins with a folk guitar and you expect Nick Drake to start singing. But Callier himself takes over with his soft soul voice, which reaches falsetto before falling into soul towards the end of the song. A forgotten masterpiece.

Terry Callier - Dancing Girl

New Song On Sunday

 

Belfast based DJ and Producer Phil Kieran reanimated his project Le Carousel from 2013 with a new release last week. Billowing synths and a straight electronic beat form the foundation on which Kieran gives free rein to his pulsating rhythms. A song with a hypnotic pull.

Saturday Three

 

Another week has passed and we are ready for the weekend. So let's start with a couple of songs who have immortalized Saturday in the title.

First a song from the debut album by The Cure. An album that only featured a floor lamp, a fridge and a hoover on the cover and didn't reveal any other information. For those who listened to the album, it was a musical revelation.

A song from David Bowie's early days and played far too rarely.

The Drifters were an American rhythm and blues/soul vocal group best known for their song Under The Boardwalk. But this is also a nice one

Shimmering Lights

 

Ben Hunt is a DJ and producer from Brighton who wasn't on my radar until recently and only came to my attention by chance when I was browsing Leeds Paisley Dark Label's Bandcamp page. Shimmering Lights was released at the end of last year alongside several remixes. A song that could pass for a lost work by the Chemical Brothers or Underworld. It may sound old school, but this trippy spaced out sound would have been hailed as great in other times.

Also worth listening to is the remix by Spellbound, also from last year, which has a strong affinity to post-punk.

All Show & No Go

 

Earlier this month Maps, a collaboration between Swiss electronic duo Sinner DC and Peter Kember aka Sonic Boom. Originally conceived as a live performance for a festival twelve years ago the result is now available. This performance brought together Sinner DC's ambient electronica and Sonic Boom's dazzled guitar sound. Waves of spliced guitar distortion drift over a steady electronic kick drum, pounding the song into oblivion until a voice that sounds dangerously close to Lou Reed’s begins speaking at a loud volume over the rest of the mix. The consistent development of Kember's typical guitar sound meets the ambient and psychedelic excursions of Sinner DC and makes this album an early highlight of the year. 

At the end of last year Sonic Boom remixed another song by Sinner DC, also worth a listen.

Singles Released This Week Years Ago

 

Another journey through releases of songs that made me fun listening again.

1970: Detroit rock and blues band Rare Earth released a cover version of Temptations hit Get Ready. Although the single is pretty good I prefer their long version.

1981: Vince Clarke prepared the sound of electronic pop music with Depeche Mode. I Just Can't Enough was the first of many upcoming melodic hymns.

1987: Prince released his best album for me with a statement of what was going on these days.

1991: REM release Losing My Religion, not their best song but the one that made them super stars.

1984: Bananarama was probably the first British girl band that brought us in the 80'sna lot of classic pop songs like this.

1980: Squeeze should be named if someone asks for a band formed in the post-punk days and later turned into pop-rock hymns.

1973: Bruce Springsteen released his debut and Blinded By The Light was one of his early highlights of the great storyteller.

1979: From the ashes of the latest pub-rock band The Motors Bram Tchaikovsky showed how great power-pop could be.

1979: It takes a lot of chutzpah to record cover versions of soul classics at a time when music was in upheaval. But the two comedians Aykroyd and Belushi did it very well.

1980: Atomic by Blondie is too good to remain unmentioned here.

Long Train Running

 

If you read the title of this post and you think about The Doobie Brothers you are right. But it is not the original country rock song, it's the rework by Flying Mojito Bros, two American disco/house DJ probably from California. Since a couple of years they take their inspirations from classic songs from the 60's/70's and rework them for the dancefloor. They self describe their sound like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young playing at the Hacienda or The Orb playing at Woodstock. And I think this could work well at any club to move people to the dancefloor.