Those Who Put Others Ahead Of Themselves

A Certain Ratio? A Christmas song? On my birthday?

Yes, I know I promised no shameless self-promotion today, but I wanted to say a big thank you for all the lovely messages yesterday. I had a lovely evening at Casa K and an especially lovely bonus was a brand new release from A Certain Ratio on my birthday. What could be better?

It wasn't a complete surprise, I'd had advance warning the previous month from ACR's promo mailing list, as follows:

 

Did someone say Christmas?

Yes, we too roll our eyes when we walk into the supermarket 

and see mince pies for sale in November, 

so yes it is too early to be releasing a Christmas single, 

but a Christmas single we have. 

 
Who would have thought it, 

ACR does Christmas.

 
Here is our new EP, 

another ACR surprise for 2024. T

he EP is called Christmasville UK 

and is released on December 11th. 

 

Only 500 have been pressed.

it features 3 remixes by old pals Jane Weaver & Emperor Machine 

and new pals Jezebell, 

who have all remixed tracks from It All Comes Down to This.

 
Plus the brand new track Now and Laughter, 

but we’ll tell you more about that in December.

 

The 12" vinyl sold out in no time, but I ordered the digital EP last Bandcamp Friday and the full gift was delivered and 'unwrapped' yesterday. An official video was released the day before for Now And Laughter.

What can I say? Very much in the vein of It All Comes Down to This, but Christmassy. But without jingle bells on top to gild the lily, as it were.

 

To these ears, there's a very slight relation in the chord sequence to The Pretenders' 2000 Miles, albeit in different key, with different instruments and a rumbling, almost menacing bass and fuzzy undercurrent, so this is a tenuous description to say the least! I'm trying to say it's great and very pleasing to the ears, in other words!

Now And Laughter is "dedicated to workers at the NHS, homeless charities, mental health crisis centres, care homes and all the people who give up their time to help the sick and homeless in our towns and cities" and this is reflected in the heartfelt lyrics. 

 

They also reference Christmas throughout, so the song has been automatically added to the Casa K Christmas playlist for repeated airings over the next few weeks.

 

The three remixes are no mere stocking fillers either, as the list of names above should have indicated. 

 

Jane Weaver turns Where You Coming From into a pulsating, electro earworm, all descending chords and spaced out backing vocals underpinning Jez's vocals.  

Andy Meecham aka The Emperor Machine delivers nearly nine minutes of irresistible body jerking disco funk with his rework of Out From Under, taking ACR back to 1982 and snapping them back like a rubber band into 2024. Placed in any decade, it sounds fantastic. 

The final and bonus birthday delight is the inclusion of long-time Dubhed favourites, the mighty Jezebell aka Jesse Fahnestock and Darren Bell. The dynamic duo put We All Need into the Jezebellearic blender and put the setting on 'pulse'. 

Here's what Jesse and Darren had to say about it:

 

"We've been awfully busy with remix work this year ... 

but when true pioneers come knocking, 

you answer the door. 

 

Chance has brought 

Manchester post-punk/dance legends A Certain Ratio 

and Jezebell together, 

and the results are available today."

 

And boy, do they deliver. It contains all of the elements that I've come to love about their remixes and own work, whilst losing none of A Certain Ratio's character in the mix. I'm already committed but I am confident that if this was your introduction to Jezebell, as it hopefully will be for many ACR fans, then you will want to check out the rest of their music immediately.

The advantage of music over cake (and the supremely talented Mrs K excelled herself this year) is that I can keep going back for more and more in one sitting without falling into sugar-induced unconsciousness. 

On the YouTube page for the Now And Laughter video, A Certain Ratio ask to consider donating to hometown-based initiatives Manchester Homelessness Partnership and Mustard Tree.

 

You may already contribute time and/or money to helping others in different ways. I'm a flawed, imperfect person in so many ways, but setting aside my personal challenges, putting others before myself and giving selflessly whenever and however I can is something I can get with.

 

 

Clean Your House, Figure It Out And Feel Me Now

Possibly needless to say that I've enjoyed Blancmange the band far, far more in my life than I have enjoyed blancmange the dessert.

 

I was quite happy to leave the latter in the receding mists of my childhood without any strong urge to revisit it in the 21st Century. By contrast, Blancmange's music since resuming releases in 2011 has been something to continually look forward to. 

 

There were two prompts for me this week to post about Blancmange. Firstly, I'm going on a work trip to The Big Smoke later this month to attend a conference (these days, a rare thing indeed). Travelling by train from the South West, inevitably means arriving at Paddington, which inevitably brought the 2015 song of the same name to mind.

 

Secondly, I have occasionally participated in themed...I don't know what you'd call them, 'events'? on the ol' musky dead bird. I appreciate the irony that the twit's rebrand and reduction to a single letter has forced writers in an almost Prince-like homage to add the suffix 'the social media site formerly known as'...

 

Anyway, I digress. This is my second or third contribution and I barely tweet anything beyond that, but this is good fun. This time around, the theme is #SynthPopSeptember and my contributions are developing into a mix of the old (Fad Gadget, The Human League, O.M.D.), the older-than-I-thought (Les Rythmes Digitales, their remix of Cornershop) and the relatively recent (Marsheaux).

Blancmange were an inevitable inclusion, but I've gone for something that has a foot in different time periods. Clean Your House was originally a song on 2020's rather excellent album Mindset. Neil Arthur subsequent released Extended Mindset with, as you might guess, extended versions of all 10 songs. Andy Meecham aka The Emperor Machine then went one step further and turned out a pair of superb remixes of Clean Your House, elevating the song to another level entirely. The main mix has added backing vocals, funk turned up to eleven and yes, Clean Your House is basically transformed into Feel Me for the present decade.

Not the first time this century that Blancmange has had a go at updating Feel Me, though. In 2013, Blancmange released Happy Families Too..., a new version of their 1982 debut. I like the reworked version of Feel Me a lot and it shaped the version performed on stage when I saw Blancmange live in concert last September.

 

Blancmange's most recent album, Private View, was released to coincide with the tour and you can find this, Mindset, and plenty of other Blancmange releases on Bandcamp.

Note: I'd normally embed YouTube video links in my posts. For some reason, at the time of writing this, Blogger and/or YT don't want to play ball and 'couldn't find' any of the videos when I posted the links. Technology, eh?

Thank You For Wearing A Face

On 8th February, I celebrated Guy Manuel De Homen-Cristo's birthday, whilst acknowledging that I'd ignored Thomas Bangalter's the previous month. To redress the balance, here's some Daft Punk.

Not to celebrate the fact as such and, in typically contrary fashion, I'm a day late (although I did compile the selection on the actual day), but Daft Punk decided to exit in characteristically grand style one year ago. On 22nd February 2021, their official YouTube channel published an 8-minute video, Epilogue, a wordless, visually brilliant announcement of Daft Punk's demise, with De Homen-Cristo's robot activating Bangalter's robot's self-destruct to explosive effect. The legend "1993-2021" appears on screen before a musical, well, epilogue with the vocal refrain,

"Hold on...if love is the answer, you're home"

I don't own a single Daft Punk album - and I probably need to do something about that - but I have quite a few of their singles and remixes, which inform today's selection; 10 tracks in just under an hour. A truly unique duo, hugely successful and influential and yet, to the general, global public, unrecognisable behind their robotic faces.

I visited Stroud Library in Gloucestershire on Monday. There was an A-board in the entrance, with a poster advertising an event that partially obscured the (at the time) current Covid-related guidance about wearing face coverings indoors. The slightly truncated phrase seemed perfectly aligned with a post on Daft Punk. I love that life brings these little moments of serendipity.

1) Something About Us (Adithya Remix) (2021)

2) Revolution 909 (Radio Edit) (1996)

3) Da Funk (Serge Santiago Unreleased Live Mix) (2012) 

4) Technologic (Le Knight Club Remix By Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo & Eric Chedeville) (2005)

5) Face To Face (Night Drugs Rework) (ft. Todd Edwards) (2009)

6) Human After All (Emperor Machine Version By Andy Meecham) (2005)

7) Around The World (Daft Punk Edit) (1996)

8) Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (The Neptunes Remix Edit By Pharrell Williams & Chad Hugo) (2001)

9) Get Lucky (Daft Punk Remix) (ft. Pharrell Williams & Nile Rodgers) (2013)

10) The Son Of Flynn (Moby Remix) (2011)

Thank You For Wearing A Face (56:09) (KF) (Mega)

 

On a sadder note, I was completing this post when the news broke of Mark Lanegan's passing, aged 57. I did briefly considering replacing this post with an ad-hoc tribute, but I knew I wouldn't do it justice. Watch this space, but in the meantime here's John Robb remembering Mark Lanegan on Louder Than War.