Birthday Dub

Another belated happy birthday, this time to Richard Norris, who celebrated his 58th on 23rd June by recording and releasing a new track called Birthday Dub. It's a monster and available as a name your price digital download on Bandcamp.

 

 

I'm a few months into my first year as a subscriber via Bandcamp. It's been an immersive experience. Not only do I get new music (like Birthday Dub) on release, there are subscriber-only releases (the similarly bass-heavy album Oracle Sound Volume One, for example) and access to Richard's full digital discography. And there's a lot, including his Music For Healing series and the rather wonderful Lore Of The Land by The Order Of The 12. 

 

The original 'Music For Healing' version of June is twenty minutes long. Here's the edited version to give you a flavour.

Richard is also a prolific remixer, not just as The Grid (with Dave Ball) and Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve (with Erol Alkan) but hundreds (thousands?) under his own name. This is a particularly fine example from last year, a transformative remix of Sundowning by Mark Peters featuring Dot Allison.

 

Here's another, Richard's 2021 remix of Machine Girl, a track originally from Perry Farrell's 2019 album Kind Heaven and co-starring his wife Etty Lau Farrell.

 

Speaking of remixes by The Grid, I've always had a soft spot for their rework of Am I Right? a 1992 hit for Erasure. The Unofficial Erasure Club clearly agreed and compiled a video montage for the remix in 2015.

As for The Grid themselves, Floatation and Swamp Thing are perhaps the defining tracks, but I loved pretty much everything they did. Another early favourite was the single A Beat Called Love, song and video featuring the rather wonderful Sacha Souter.

 

If Sacha looks familiar it's because she adorned the cover of Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs top notch compilation from last year, Fell From The Sun: Downtempo And After Hours 1990-91, featuring the original album version of Floatation which (if memory serves me correctly) is ironically one of the few versions not to include Sacha's sublime vocals!

 

I was tempted to cap this off by reposting a link to a Richard Norris-inspired Dubhed selection from 2021, but I'm going to hold fire on that for now as I have a few ideas for another post. In the meantime, many happy returns Richard and thanks for all the music, past, present and future.