A chance recommendation via Kathryn on Bluesky at the weekend introduced me to Cloth and their wonderful new single, Polaroid.
Cloth hail from Glasgow and are not just a duo, but twins Rachael Swinton and Paul Swinton. Polaroid, like their previous (and second) album Secret Measure was recorded and produced by Ali Chant in Bristol.
There's a driving bass and guitar strum, furnished with strings and and propusive percussion, over which Rachael's vocals bounce lightly over the top. I love it.
As is often the case, I hear a band for the first time, check out more and find that they've been going for 5 years or more. In fairness, Cloth's self-titled debut album came out in November 2019 and things pretty much hit the fan across the world not long after, but I'm glad to have finally come to Cloth and their music.
...While scouring t'internet for more background on Cloth, I discovered that Cloth are currently signed to Mogwai's label Rock Action (who also provide a rather fine remix of Felt) and, prior to that, previously debuted on Last Night from Glasgow in 2018.
As a LNFG member, I have access to their digital vault covering 2016 to the present. Sure enough, I've been sitting on Cloth's debut album and a couple of EPs all this time and was none the wiser. Time for me to catch up...
In a first - and possibly - last for this blog, today's Dubhed selection is a complete overhaul of Bon Iver's second album by yours truly.
Literally twelve years in the making, I completed the final mix on Saturday morning and stitched together the full album in the early hours of Sunday. Why so long?!
In yesterday's post, I wrote about how I'd loved Bon Iver's debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, but I hadn't really stuck with Justin Vernon's music since.
When
Vernon released Bon Iver, Bon Iver in 2011/2012, he didn't just settle for physical and digital formats and videos for every track on the album. The stems from each
song were also made available online for people to use and abuse as they
wished.
I
think there was some competition as well, with selected remixes getting
an official post under the Bon Iver Stems Project banner. Look online
and you can still find both the original stems and the many, many fruits
of the online community's labours. I hadn't listened to any of them
prior to today's post.
I had a go at a couple of my own remixes back in 2012, firstly Michicant and then Perth. My vague recollection is that I attempted both in the wee hours between midnight and dawn, suffering from insomnia and possibly having had a glass or two of vino tinto earlier in the evening, and there's a boozy, woozy feel to the tracks.
And that's pretty much where I left it for the next twelve years. I liked them both, but I didn't feel particularly compelled to have a go at any of the other songs on Bon Iver, Bon Iver. So there they remained, curious anomalies in my music collection.
It was hearing S P E Y S I D E in September and then the rest of the SABLE, EP that not only provided the spark, but fuelled the fire with a far greater intensity that those sleep-deprived, alcohol fuelled experiments in 2012. I not only wanted to complete the project, I had to. But only if I had fun doing it.
So, a few 'rules' were applied to each one:
1) Spend less than an hour per song if possible, never more than two;
2) Go with the feel, don't overthink or overwork it;
3) Apply the Andrew Weatherall rule: find the 'hook' - instrument, vocal, whatever - and build the remix from there
4) Camomile tea not alcohol!
And between 31st October and 30th November 2024, I completed the remaining eight remixes that make up the album.
When I say 'remix', I've reconstructed, re-ordered, re-cut, remixed and arguably ruined each song. I've also re-sequenced the original album's track list. From the moment I finished my overhaul of opening song Perth, I knew that it had 'closing song' written all over it.
The rest of the album fell into a natural running order as I completed each track, almost like putting the pieces of a jigsaw together. The very last remix I completed was Calgary, track 8 on the official album, settling into track 7 here. The only one to retain it's place in both versions is the penultimate song, Lisbon, OH.
For today's selection, I've split the album into two sides as well as the full album. At 49 minutes, it's a bit longer than the official release, but I'm happy with the end result.
I should probably add at this point that despite having the stems sitting on my hard drive for over a decade, I hadn't heard any of the songs on Bon Iver, Bon Iver prior to starting each remix. Really.
This was accidental back when I did Michicant and Perth, but it became vitally important when I restarted the project, so that I wasn't unduly influenced by the sound and structure of the original when approaching my version.
So, for example, Minnesota, WI started with the first thing that I listened to, the stem of Justin Vernon playing guitar. I decided to loop it, laid Vernon's vocals over the top and then embellished ever so slightly with some baritone banjo, ending up with a stripped down, shorter version that reminded me of Ali Farka Touré, hence the mix title.
Lisbon, OH is a short instrumental, at 1:33 more of an extended introduction to the album's closing song, Beth/Rest. There weren't a lot of elements for me to work with, and I'd left some lovely sounding pedal steel guitar out of Beth/Rest, which seemed to be a good fit here, creating an extended 4 minute piece which I think works well. Apart from one other song, this was the only time that I combined elements from different songs.
'Less is more' is the general theme of my approach, though: I don't think there's a single song where I used all of the stems, and very often I would take an element that was perhaps only a few seconds or relatively minor in the original and make it the focus.
No bones about it, I'm an amateur when it comes to using the Audacity music software and the quality and the balance sounds remains firmly in the realm of 'just for fun'. But it was a lot of fun, I enjoyed each and every song that I worked on.
As the mix titles will shout loud and clear, I was heavily influenced by Talk Talk, Ali Farka Touré, John Cale and The KLF's Chill Out, so it's fair to say that this is a downtempo album.
The album closes with my re-imagining of Perth, named the Black Swan River Mix, as a nod to my all-too brief time in Australia in 1990/1991, when I saw black swans on the banks of the Swan River that also gave name to the brewery where I worked as a kitchen hand for a while. All relevant as there's an 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach to this one that sets it apart from the other remixes, whilst still being part of a coherent whole.
Perth is the only other song that features an element outside of the stems. The sample that underpins the remix is the opening second or two of a bootleg live version of Bon Iver performing Bob Dylan's Every Grain Of Sand, just a couple of chords and an audience member exclaiming, "awesome!". I looped it for nearly eight minutes and then started building up, adding vocals, speeding up the bonkers drum pattern by 45%, mangling and reversing some of the brass, creating a mad cacophony. And then, at 5:03, the guitars come in.
Once I finished the final remix and sequencing, I listened to the album in full.
I'm glad that I hadn't listened to any of the songs before starting on my own versions as I think I may have found it too daunting a prospect. The songs are so good and the album itself is wonderful. However, embarking on this mad venture has given me an even greater appreciation of the talent and the vision that goes into creating music. And how much fun it can be.
I appreciate that there may be Bon Iver fans out there who may be seething from the opening seconds as this disrespectful desecration of a creative genius' work. I hope that that some of you enjoy what you hear. I'd love to hear from you either way.
Bon Iver, Bon Iver (Done Over By Khayem)
Side One
1) Minnesota, WI (Khayem's Farka Blues Remix) (2:36) [#2 / 3:52]
