Previous Stuff

In June 2023, I posted the second disc of three CD-Rs of ripped albums gifted by my friend John in early 2010. Appropriately titled Stuff, the bundle contained a fair bit of stuff - artists and albums - that I wasn't familiar with.

Today's belated return visit focuses on disc !, and again I've collated a 9-track selection, sequenced in the order that the albums were presented on the CD-R.  Seven of the songs date from 2009, one from 2008 and one from 2010, which must have been freshly released when I received John's gift.

Editors appear here twice, not because I thought they're way better than anything else here, although In This Light And On This Evening is a very good album. The second track is the opener of a bonus mini-album, Cuttings II, which was included in the CD-R bundle of bootlegs.

John had previously shared music by David Kitt, which I like most of the time, depending on my mood/frame of the mind at the time. I love the instrumentation and structure but find - perhaps unfairly - that Kitt's voice can sound annoyingly indifferent at times. I like this song very much, though.

Both Editors and Doves were bands I was familiar with, yet hadn't heard any of their albums in full. I'd really liked the slew of remixes that accompanied the latter's Kingdom Of Rust and the album itself didn't disappoint either.

Likewise, Fever Ray. An astonishing solo debut from Karin Dreijer, and the beginning of an enduring fascination with their work. The same can be said for Laura Marling's debut, another artist that made an immediate impact and has grown with each album.

The Filthy Dukes album was a revelation. Based on a few tracks and remixes, I'd fully expected a collection of four-to-the-floor club bangers. Nonsense In The Dark proved to be much more complex and genre-challenging. Poison The Ivy, for example, features frYars aka Benjamin Garrett and sounds like a cover of a lost Joy Division song.

Although The Trials Of Van Occupanther will probably remain my favourite Midlake album, they proved with 2010 follow up The Courage Of Others that the parting of ways with Tim Smith wasn't the end of the road. 

Of course, around the same time Midlake also provided the musical bedrock for an artist who had been in a band and gone solo. So, 2010 saw the release of The Courage Of Others as well as Queen Of Denmark by John Grant. Whatever happened to him?!

Like the Filthy Dukes pastiche of Joy Division, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's self-titled first album sounded like it could have been released on Sarah Records back in the 1980s. However, this music was purely 21st Century NYC, not Eighties Bristol.

Come Saturday seemed like an obvious pick, knowing that I was going to post the selection today, though it's also a fair representation of the album as a whole.

When I posted disc 2 back in 2023, I doctored a negative image of John's self-produced sleeve for the headline photo. This time, I've taken it outside for a very welcome dose of springtime sunshine. 

I've just noticed that disc 3 includes a Christmas-themed album amongst the picks. I may not leave it until December - or another two years - before presenting the third and final part of this collection!
 
1) Learning How To Say Goodbye: David Kitt (2009)
2) Compulsion (Album Version): Doves (2009)
3) Papillon (Album Version): Editors (2009)
4) This House Is Full Of Noise: Editors (2009)
5) When I Grow Up (Album Version): Fever Ray (2009)
6) Poison The Ivy: Filthy Dukes ft. frYars (2009)
7) My Manic And I: Laura Marling (2008)
8) Bring Down: Midlake ft. Stephanie Dosen (2010)

9) Come Saturday: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (2009)

 
2008: Alas I Cannot Swim: 7

2009: Fever Ray: 5

2009: In This Light And On This Evening: 3

2009: In This Light And On This Evening / Cuttings II (limited edition 2x CD): 4
2009: Kingdom Of Rust: 2

2009: Nonsense In The Dark: 6

2009: The Nightsaver: 1

2009: The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart: 9

2010: The Courage Of Others: 8

 
Stuff (Disc 1) (40:40) (KF) (Mega)

Stuff (Disc 2) can be found here

Party Like It's 2009

Back to the tail end of the Noughties with a bunch of beats to bring in the weekend. Some of the artists and DJs/remixers seem to have been dormant or relatively quiet in the past decade: US punk/indie/dance act Gossip, Japanese trio Lalory, Norwegian DJ and producer diskJokke. Others such as Burns, CFCF, The Field, Richard Sen and Daniel Avery have been prolific, the latter two transcending their early work. And Little Boots has been busy in the past year as a member of ABBA's live band on the Voyage tour.

 

A sign of the times that many of the featured artists's profiles on Discogs include links to MySpace, a reminder of how quickly the world moved on and away to other platforms. Says the man who resolutely clings to Blogger and mostly avoids other social media...!

 

1) Heavy Cross (Burns Remix): Gossip

2) Little Secrets (Lalory Remix By Tom Iwami, Kazunari Kadowaki & Kazuya Tamura): Passion Pit

3) The More That I Do (Foals XIII Remix): The Field

4) Compulsion (Padded Cell Remix By Neil Higgins & Richard Sen): Doves

5) Earthquake (Stopmakingme Mix By Daniel Avery): Little Boots

6) Tropics (CFCF Remix): Apache Beat

7) IRM (diskJokke Remix): Charlotte Gainsbourg

Party Like It's 2009 (44:52)

Black & White

Well, what else could I do...? The logical, some (me included) may say ridiculous conclusion of this week's accidental monochrome theme is of course a 'Black & White' Dubhed excursion.

The selection kicks off with Dollar, a duo who it has to be said I disliked intensely when they had hits in the 1980s and loathed anew when they popped up like a turd you can't flush away in last-chance-saloon reality TV show Reborn In The USA in 2003. In the spirit of Kevin Rowland's recent rework of classic Dexys Midnight Runners' album Too-Rye-Ay, I present Dollar 'as they should have sounded', surprisingly coming across like an Andy Bell outtake from The View From Halfway Down.

Asian Dub Foundation get things back on track, with Jazzanova and David Holmes putting a different spin on Calexico and Doves respectively. Martha & The Muffins appear in their short-lived M+M guise with a song so 1984, it repeatedly mentions the year throughout, instantly freezing the song in time. I love it. 

 

A special mention for David Devant & His Spirit Wife, who I always associate with the late 1990s and was therefore surprised to find have kept going into the 21st Century, releasing their fourth album in 2019. Luckily for them, their song Black And White appears on the only single I own by the band, 1997's Lie Detector EP.

Closing proceedings is a wonderful live take of Black Man In A White World by the astonishingly talented Michael Kiwanuka, stretching out the original album version to nearly twice the length. If you were there, I'd imagine you'd have been quite happy if the song had gone on for 15 to 20 minutes.

 

As a nod to the trio of songs from 1980 by The The, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Elvis Costello & The Attractions, today's cover picture is made up of screen shots from The Blues Brothers, which came out the same year. A superb film with a spectacular scene-stealing turn from the brilliant, beautiful and greatly missed Carrie Fisher.

Happy Friday, everyone!

 

1) Hand Held In Black & White ('As It Should Have Sounded' Version By Khayem): Dollar (1981)

2) Black White (Brendan Lynch Mix): Asian Dub Foundation (1998)

3) Black Heart (Jazzanova's White Soul Dub): Calexico (2004)

4) Black And White: The The (1980)

5) Eve White / Eve Black: Siouxsie & The Banshees (1980)

6) Black And White: David Devant & His Spirit Wife (1997)

7) Black And White Town (David Holmes Remix): Doves (2005)

8) Black & White World: Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1980)

9) Black Stations/White Stations (Extended Dance Mix): M+M (1984)

10) Black Man In A White World (Live @ The Royal Albert Hall, London): Michael Kiwanuka (2017)

Black & White (47:52)