It's Happened Before

If like me you've had a week to forget, then a bevy of beauteous, bouncy beats is just what the doctor ordered....

....as long as the doctor is Dr. Syntax, that is, former Fluke fellows Mike Tournier and Jan Burton, whose remix of AIR-adjacent Gallic gents Mellow gets today's selection off to a rollicking start.

Staying in France briefly, Fred Falke invites German chums Axel Bartsch and Asem Shama aka VanGuard back to stay at his, the results a stuttering, juddering night in the studio.

Purple Penguin was a record shop, a label, a recording artist and a way of life in my beloved birthplace Bristol. Whilst they were never as massive as, er, Massive Attack, Tricky or Portishead, they were purveyors of mighty fine trip hop music, as debut single Passion attests.

The music of Cantoma aka Phil Mison was a relatively recent discovery for me, though the song selected here - a remix of North Shore by London boys Conrad McDonnell and Dan Tyler aka Idjut Boys - was released as a 12" single way back in 2010. Like a Balearic breeze blowing through your mind.

Pet Shop Boys really need no introduction, neither should DJ and producer Danny Tenaglia, but their coming together for a remix of 1996 single Before was really rather inspired. One of my favourite PSB tracks from that period and inspiration for the title of today's selection.

Hot Chip have been circling around in my consciousness since my post on Alexis Taylor's current single on Wednesday. In 2011, Dan Snaith took time out from his Caribou day job to put out music as Daphni. Dan was invited to remix Hot Chip's single Night And Day, a Record Store Day 12" single in 2012 which hits hard and doesn't give up.

The Other Two is a tongue-in-cheek, raspberry-blowing reference to the fact that whilst New Order stalwarts Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook were getting attention for their projects, Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris quietly got on with making music of their own. Ashley Beedle is on typically fine form on this dub remix of 1993 single Selfish.

Closing this collection are The Woodentops and, in keeping with today's title/theme, it's happened before. The remix of A Pact by Skyscraper HiFi aka Jon Dasilva and Jonas Nilsson originally featured last March on the Dubhed selection It's A Glamorous World, but that feels long enough ago to justify another appearance here. A chuggy, huggy masterpiece.

I hope that's got the blood flowing and the head cleared. If not, you may require urgent medical assistance!

1) Paris Sous La Neige (Vox Remix By Dr. Syntax) (Edit): Mellow (2000)

2) Back To Stay (VanGuard Remix): Fred Falke (2009)

3) Passion (Vocal) (Single Version): Purple Penguin (1995)

4) North Shore (Idjut Boys Version) (Instrumental): Cantoma (2010)

5) Before (Danny Tenaglia's Underground Mix): Pet Shop Boys (1996)

6) Night And Day (Daphni Mix): Hot Chip (2012)

7) Selfish (The East Village Dub): The Other Two (1993)

8) A Pact (Skyscraper HiFi Remix B): The Woodentops (2025)

It's Happened Before (45:58) (GD) (M)

Decayed V: 2008

Side 1 of a mirage-cum-mixtape, the penultimate plunge into the bracing waters of the Noughties.

The things you learn when you're scraping together info for a blog post. Somehow, I managed to get through the whole of 2008 without realising that the United Nations had declared it the International Year of the Potato. What, you too? Who was doing promo for the poor spud?!

Harrison Ford returned as Indiana Jones, the fourth film in the series coming nearly two decades after the original trilogy concluded. I'm not sure it was worth the wait.

Grange Hill left our TV screens, having run every year from February 1978 to September 2008. School was never the same.

BRIT Award winners in 2008 included Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Foo Fighters, Kanye West, Kate Nash, Kylie Minogue, Mark Ronson, Mika, Take That and Paul McCartney, the latter apparently having made an outstanding contribution to music. I must check him out sometime. None of them appear in today's selection.

Black Kids kick things off with I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You, a bit of a mouthful, but a very digestible slice of pop rock that sounds very much like an outtake by The Cure, circa The Head On The Door. The song - and debut album - was co-produced by Bernard Butler, but I never got any further than this CD single.

Hot Chip were slow to grow on me and I'll admit that much as I like them now, I still find Alexis Taylor's singing either engaging or irritating. Ready For The Floor is always a winner, though I was surprised to find that it went Top 10...

...much as I was surprised to find That's Not My Name by The Ting Tings got to #1, yet My Delerium by Ladyhawke was 'only' #33 and A-Punk by Vampire Weekend a mere #55. 

Returning exactly ten years on from his last appearance in the Decadance entry for 1998 is David Holmes, with the title song of the superb album The Holy Pictures. The Verve also got back together in 2008, and split again after fourth album, the imaginatively titled Forth.

The Verve aren't the only ones to aim high and deliver epic music. MGMT were the spearhead of a new prog/psych rush, swapping acid for heroin and wearing what looked like dayglo swimwear. 

The Last Shadow Puppets aka Alex Turner and Miles Kane carried more of Sixties John Barry James Bond soundtrack vibe which meant I bought their debut album before I did the same with Alex's 'main' band, Arctic Monkeys. To date, I've yet to buy any albums by Miles, either with The Rascals or as a solo artist. Sorry, la'.

As if it wasn't bad enough that I missed the International Year of the Potato in 2008, I also missed Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip's song, Letter From God To Man. It's not just the incredible lyrics, the chopped up sample of Planet Telex by Radiohead, or Scroobius Pip's emotive delivery which increases in intensity, it's all of the above. 

Making a welcome comeback since they both appeared in the inaugural Decayed 2000 selection a month ago are Róisín Murphy and Alison Goldfrapp, 

By 2008, Róisín was promoting her 2nd post-Moloko solo album, the rather wonderful Overpowered, including the fab single You Know Me Better, co-written with Andy Cato from Groove Armada. 

Alison and compadre Will Gregory meanwhile released the fourth Goldfrapp album Seventh Tree, which marked a departure from the glitter and glam of predecessor Supernature into more reflective, almost folky territory. Whilst A&E got to #10, follow up single Happiness peaked at #25, which is a shame as it's a gorgeous pop song and a lovely way to wrap up this year's selection.

The end will come tomorrow...

1) I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You (Album Version): Black Kids
2) You Know Me Better (Radio Edit): Róisín Murphy
3) Ready For The Floor (Album Version): Hot Chip
4) A-Punk (Album Version): Vampire Weekend
5) My Delirium (Album Version): Ladyhawke
6) That's Not My Name (U.S. Radio Edit): The Ting Tings
7) Letter From God To Man (Album Version): Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
8) Holy Pictures (Radio Edit): David Holmes
9) Time To Pretend (Album Version): MGMT
10) The Age Of The Understatement (Album Version): The Last Shadow Puppets
11) Rather Be (Album Version): The Verve
12) Happiness (Album Version): Goldfrapp

3rd February 2008: Made In The Dark (#6): 3

9th March 2008: Vampire Weekend (#55): 4

6th April 2008: Overpowered (#47): 2

13th April 2008: Partie Traumatic (#11): 1

20th April 2008: Oracular Spectacular (#35): 9

20th April 2008: The Age Of The Understatement (#9): 10

20th April 2008: Seventh Tree (#25): 12

18th May 2008: We Started Notrhing (#1): 6

3rd August 2008: Angles (# n/a): 7 *

14th September 2008: The Holy Pictures (#65): 8

23rd November 2008: Forth (#56): 11

14th December 2008: Ladyhawke (#33): 5

Side One (46:03) (GD) (M)

* Letter From God To Man by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip may not have dented the Official Top 100, but it did get to #48 in the UK's Physical Singles Chart. The fact that such a chart even existed probably says more about the dominance of downloads at this point.

If you're hankering after years gone by, hunker down with my selections for 1988 and 1998.

Fish And Chips

Hot Chip (twice) and The Other Two (once), to be precise.

New music from Hot Chip is always a cause for celebration but the lads have really pushed the boat out for this one. Devotion is the precursor for an upcoming greatest hits compilation, Joy In Repetition, and it's an absolute delight. 

And the video, as you might expect from Hot Chip, is utterly brilliant.

If a three or four minute song goes on repeat, whilst reaching for your record collection or creating a playlist by the artist, then it's done it's work. Devotion excels in this regard, and I shall be listening to Hot Chip for the rest of this week (at least).

Even if you've only visited this blog a few times, you'll have sussed that I'm an advocate for the 'there's no such thing as a bad idea' approach to creating posts.

So when I was immediately inspired to post Hot Chip, the idea of a 'fish and chips' theme almost immediately followed. Rather than dismiss it as lazy, barrel scraping or indicative of a dried out husk of creativity, I leaned into it and well, here we are.

Rest assured, as quickly as the thought popped into my head, I just as quickly dismissed any thought of featuring Derek Dick aka Fish, either solo or in his Marillion days, somewhat contradicting my  'there's no such thing as a bad idea' mantra. Did I also mention that I'm inconsistent?

For me, there was only really one contender, a slice of joyous pop, like a distant relative of Devotion from thirty four years ago. After seeing Bernard and Hooky do their own thing with Electronic and Revenge, the other two from New Order (aka Gillian Gilbert and Stephen Morris) decided to take a bite from the cherry as The Other Two. Or, in this case, a Tasty Fish.

And rather conveniently, in 2015 Hot Chip remixed Tutti Frutti by New Order for a single release. The 12" features a vinyl edit at a smidge under nine minutes, but CD and digital formats contain the full length, eleven minute forty five second version, which is the must-have.

For added entertainment, I found an upload of Tutti Frutti (Hot Chip Remix) on YouTube that includes a still image of penguins. Thanks, vit3xxx!

And all cheaper than an actual portion of fish and chips these days. Now, isn't that satisfying? 

We Tried, But We Didn't Have Long

I haven't visited NPR's Tiny Desk Concert in a little while so I dropped by to find that Hot Chip played a 4-song 'greatest hits' set on Monday. And very good it was too.

 

0:00 Over And Over (2006)

05:46 Boy From School (2006)

11:00 Look At Where We Are (2012)

15:20 Ready For The Floor (2008)

 

As a bonus, here are the videos for each of the four original single releases, entertaining as always.

 

 

 

No One Gets Off Without Paying The Ride

A very happy birthday to Tracey Thorn, born 26th September 1962.

It's impossible to describe how much Tracey's voice, words and music have had over the years. Her body of work with husband Ben Watt as Everything But The Girl is immense and, as this year's Fuse album proved, unsullied by time.

Tracey's five solo albums are little treasures in their own right, each one offering something new and unique to that release, from 1982's A Distant Shore to 2018's Record.

Tracey's also been a superlative collaborator and interpreter of others' songs. This selection includes both, from John Grant and Massive Attack to covers of Pet Shop Boys, The Marvelettes and Kate Bush, the last seemingly untouchable and yet Tracey completely inhabits the song.

I'd been thinking about this post and had started pulling together a potential selection. On Sunday, Swiss Adam posted a frankly brilliant 40-minute mix of Tracey Thorn songs at Bagging Area that included quite a few overlaps with mine. Necessity being the mother of invention and all that, I started again from scratch and came up with a 30-minute selection that I hope acts as a decent companion piece to Adam's and taken together shines a light on Tracey's magnificence. 

And I haven't even mentioned Tracey's books. Buy them, read them, love them.

 

1) By Piccadilly Station I Sat Down And Wept: Tracey Thorn (2007)

2) King's Cross (Hot Chip Remix) (Cover of Pet Shop Boys): Tracey Thorn (2007)

3) Disappointing: John Grant ft. Tracey Thorn (2015)

4) Oh, The Divorces!: Tracey Thorn (2010)

5) The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game (Cover of The Marvelettes): Massive Attack ft. Tracey Thorn (1995)

6) Run A Red Light (Album Version): Everything But The Girl (2023)

7) Under The Ivy (Cover of Kate Bush): Tracey Thorn (2014)

8) Guitar (Album Version): Tracey Thorn (2018)

1995: Batman Forever OST: 5

2007: King's Cross EP: 2

2007: Out Of The Woods: 1

2010: Love And Its Opposite: 4

2015: Grey Tickles, Black Pressure: 3

2015: Solo: Songs And Collaborations 1982-2015: 7 

2018: Record: 8

2023: Fuse: 6

No One Gets Off Without Paying The Ride (30:18) (KF) (Mega)

What Have I Done? Where Have You Gone?

Today's selection features Caribou aka Dan Snaith and is a good example of one of the motivating forces behind this blog, a simple excuse to rummage around in my virtual record box and dust off some music that I haven't listened to in a while. 

Dan Snaith's been poorly served by my collection in that regard as I have relatively little of his music, far less than I thought to be honest, a few hours' worth spread across EPs, album tracks and remixes for other artists. Hardly anything from the past decade either, which I need to address.

I first encountered Dan Snaith via Jockey Slut, an essential read in the 1990s*. By the start of the 21st century, it was on it's last legs I guess but in those final moments it delivered a brilliant series of cover-mounted CDs across a year titled Disco Pogo For Punks In Pumps. Volume 4 (March 2003) kicked off with Hendrix With Ko by Manitoba, Snaith's original stage name.

 

By chance, I happened to be at a record fair shortly after and, amongst my music haul, came away with a promo CD of the Jacknuggeted EP by Manitoba. Shortly after releasing second album Up In Flames, Dan Snaith was subject to threats of legal action from Richard 'Handsome Dick' Manitoba and thus Caribou was born.

As both names suggest, Dan was born in Canada and I don't know if it's the foreknowledge of this but listening to his music evokes imagery of driving through forests, mountains in the background, passing by vast lakes and grasslands, a hint of hidden life deep beyond the trees that race past in a blur. Or sometimes, it just sounds like a modern take on Sixties psychedelic folk. Either way, there's something comforting yet uncomfortable about listening to his work. 

Over three quarters of an hour, you can find out for yourself, as Dan meets Hot Chip, Oh No Ono, Kelley Polar and Jack Tennis and revisits his old band before returning home with David Wrench to watch the sun go down and day turn to night. Beats a washed out Wednesday in the UK, in my book.

 

1) She's The One (Hot Chip Remix By Joe Goddard): Caribou (2007)

2) Eleanor Speaks (Caribou Remix): Oh No Ono (2010)

3) We Live In An Expanding Universe (Caribou Remix): Kelley Polar (2008)

4) Melody Day (Four Tet Remix By Kieran Hebden): Caribou (2007) 

5) Olé: Manitoba (2003)

6) Sun (Jack Tennis Remix By Tobi Schwermann): Caribou (2010)

7) After Hours (Album Version By Dan Snaith & David Wrench): Caribou (2007)

 

What Have I Done? Where Have You Gone? (44:56) (Box) (Mega) 

 

* In 2022, following a successful crowdfunder campaign, the creators of Jockey Slut launched a new twice-yearly magazine called Disco Pogo.

Is There Room In Your Life For One More Trip To The Moon?

In case you were disappointed by Friday's lack of beat-laden bangers, here's a suitably slipshod mix to see in Saturday. 

As usual, it's an eclectic mix spanning 1993 to 2022. It may not keep you moving, as k.d. lang implores, but you will hopefully get an involuntary twitch or jerk here and there. I would like to apologise for the cack-handed segueways and fade ins but if I did, I'd have to do so for each and every track. Hopefully, the quality of the tunes will encourage you to overlook my enthusiastic but amateurish approach...!

A couple of current loves in here, including one of many excellent remixes of the current David Holmes single and the latest in a consistent series of great one-off tracks by Pye Corner Audio aka Martin Jenkins. There are some reworkings of musical legends Gong, Kraftwerk and The Cure and - I couldn't resist - two helpings of Andrew Weatherall, back-to-back. 

The opening twofer by Baron Von Luxxury aka Blake Robin and k.d. lang remixed by Tony Garcia may be a bit of red herring regarding the subsequent direction of the mix, but I think it just about works. 

I've also dropped in a bit of uptempo Four Tet, from Kieran Hebden's excellent 2020 album Parallels, as well as Confidence Man. The latter track might be from 2017, but their current album Tilt is on constant rotation at Casa Khayem.

 

To close, another Dubhed favourite, Dan Wainwright. Dan and his partner Elle Redding have just released a new album, Mother Oak, which I received this week, so expect to a further appearance here in the not too distant future.

1) I'm Not Bad, I'm Just Drawn That Way (Instrumental): Baron Von Luxxury (2013)

2) Just Keep Me Moving (Wild Planet Mix By Tony Garcia): k.d. lang (1993)

3) It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Working Mens Club Remix): David Holmes ft. Raven Violet (2022)

4) A Sprinkling Of Clouds (Belly Dance Mix By System 7): Gong (1999)

5) Evidence The Enemy: Andrew Weatherall (2017)

6) Bubblegum (Andrew Weatherall Remix): Confidence Man (2017)

7) Aerodynamik (Intelligent Design Mix By Alexis Taylor & Joe Goddard): Kraftwerk (2007)

8) Wrong Number (Crossed Line Mix By Omid Nourizadeh): The Cure (1997)

9) Parallel 8: Four Tet (2020)

10) Dirty Window Of Opportunity: Pye Corner Audio (2022)

11) Nothing Ever Stays The Same: Dan Wainwright (2021)

Is There Room In Your Life For One More Trip To The Moon? (47:45)

A Crawl Around The Clubs Getting High

Dusting off some sorely neglected (by me, at least) club cuts, ready for the Friday dancefloor, personally these days a patch of carpet between the sofa and the TV. I'd forgotten how much I love these songs: the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Cortney Tidwell tracks are particular delights; Fred Falke and Mark Pritchard are guaranteed to get me shaking (although there's now a simultaneous creaking and rattling); the brief detour to Japan via 5th Garden & Pizzicato Five brings a smile every time; Prins Thomas, James Zabiela & DJ Q bring some serious beats and, to cap it all off, one of my favourite ever remixes by The Orb. The original version of Home by PWEI supplies today's post title. Happy Friday, everyone!

1) Carambola (Mark Pritchard Remix): Azymuth (2000)

2) I Feel Bonnie (House Mix): Hot Chip ft. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (2010)

3) Kanal (Prins Thomas Sure Oppstøt): Telephones (2010)

4) Don't Let Stars Keep Us Tangled Up (Ewan Pearson's Objects In Space Vocal Remix): Cortney Tidwell (2007)

5) Candy (James Zabiela Remix): Spooky (2008)

6) Animal (Fred Falke Remix): Miike Snow (2009)

7) Cooking (Arling & Cameron High Pressure Mix): 5th Garden (1998)

8) Love's Theme (Saint Etienne Mix): Pizzicato Five (1997)

9) R U Still In To It? (DJ Q Remix): Mogwai (1998)

10) Home (Orb Sweet Sin And Salvation Mix): Pop Will Eat Itself (1995) 

A Crawl Around The Clubs Getting High (1:16:17)