See You Again

Another super short post, just to say that another Tyler, the Creator video fucking bangs. This time it's See You Again featuring Kali Uchis...

Related post: O, Ok, Okr, Okra 

Scandinavian Wastes

Seeing that this Bank Holiday Sunday could not be anymore stereotypical in its wetness, how about some melancholic instrumental post-punk from Manchester to soundtrack the rainfall and the grey?

Scandinavian Wastes is the opener of The Invisible Girls by Martin Hannett and Steve Hopkins - two names that are better known as producers rather than musicians.

Hannett is the more famous of the duo due to his work with Factory Records. He was the producer with a singular vision for popular music, shaping the sounds of bands like Joy Division, Magazine, and Buzzcocks. And while he worked with U2 he also produce ESG, so everything balances out.
 
I'd not heard of The Invisible Girls until Andrew Weatherall ended a recent show on it. And according to Hopkins, The Invisible Girls was to be a band:

"The idea was to assemble a roster of key instrumental players, produce tracks to be fronted by different singers/stars - and get some hits!"

That never came to fruition but that may be more to do with the addictions of Hannett rather than the quality of the music. So if you're after some sad disco this Sunday, with beautiful drum sounds plus the space you expect when Hannett's producing, then hit that play button and head to Factory Benelux to buy a copy.

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• Music For Misfits
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Original image: By No machine-readable author provided. Romary assumed (based on copyright claims). [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5 ], via Wikimedia Commons

Selected Soundcloud Works

After the T69 Collapse video dropped, I've been on a big Aphex binge. And after getting lost in the autoplays I stumbled across this gem:

I never really delved in to the user18081971 SoundCloud dump. Trying to break down over 20 hours of Aphex Twin rarities from his archive just seemed too daunting. So praise be that Brethren hand-picked 12 tracks and neatly packaged it as Selected Soundcloud Works (2015).

The comments section seem to dig '13 high hats tune tamclap orig' the most but my highlights are 'sams car' (naturally)...

And '17 kids beach', whose vocal sample seems to echo Tamphex and Come On You Slags...

The whole thing is so damn good that it might be my album of the year. I don't care if it was uploaded in 2015... and isn't an album.

Cumbia In Your Ears

I'm a sucker for an unusual cover, so here's Quantic y Los Míticos del Ritmo's take of Hotline Bling...

It's definitely the best cumbia version of Drake I've heard this month.

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GWTF 22: Gwennap Collapse

So you may have heard that Aphex Twin is back...

Redruth sprang to mind when I saw the terraced housing and railway bridge in the beginning sweep of T69 Collapse's video. Turns out others came to the same conclusion in the YouTube comments.

Amongst the Redruth references were pointers to an interview Richard D. James did, alongside Luke Vibert, with John Peel at Gwennap Pit in 1999.

The fan theory is that the Collapse EP artwork and latter part of the video is a nod to Gwennap Pit. And when the video dropped on Tuesday, I happened to be less than two miles down the road from it, as my mum lives in Carharrack. So guess what I did on Wednesday morning?

In the pit 🚧🚧🚧 #GwennapPit #T69Collapse #AphexTwin #Cornwall #Methodism #Methodist #Preach #Peace

A post shared by Sammyfax (@ceefaxoflife) on Aug 8, 2018 at 2:52am PDT

Much is made of Aphex Twin's Cornish roots and myth building, listen to the recent BBC Radio 4 documentary for starters, and seeing that Lanner is just down the road from Gwennap, I think it's a solid theory.

As for T69 Collapse itself, it sounds like it could easy have been on Syro, which is no bad thing. Yet that breakdown, when the melodic refrain breathes after the collapsing drums (around 3:15), is up there with the best things he's done.

So I've pre-ordered the Collapse EP, along with a Buddha Machine, from Bleep. I chose the cassette version for I am a bell.

Related Post: Carharrack: Hard At Work Since 1290