I Am Not Unconscious, I Am Wide Awake

David Holmes and Raven Violet are back with a new single, Stop Apologising, less than a month after their previous release, Necessary Genius.

 

Stop Apologising is a pulsing, electro glam rock stomp, a 2020s relative of Goldfrapp's Ooh La La. The radio edit is a stripped back affair, lyrically pared down to a singular chorus cycle

 

Stop apologising 

For the things you’ve never done 

Stop catastrophizing 

Get your feet back on the ground 

Intoxicating promises 

Losing touch with my own mind 

I am not unconscious, I am wide awake 

And not so blind

 

The single offers up the full length version plus a pair of remixes (vocal and instrumental) each from Horse Meat Disco and Cosmodelica. The former push the Giorgio Moroder needle into the red, upping the tempo and creating an insistent, throbbing dancefloor pulse with stabbing keyboard chords and an additional verse to boot

 

Before I die 

I wanna know that I have lived 

So I called the locksmith 

He did the best with what he had 

He helped me deal with things 

I did not understand 

Cautionary mycology 

Now putty in my hands 

Colleen Murphy's remixes pull the song and stretch it into elastic funk, the underpinning bassline immediately reminding me of the CSS remix of Office Boy by Bonde Do Role from 2007. The Cosmodelica remix takes things further, with rising waves of synths crashing over funky guitar licks and Raven's vocals. Right now, impossible to pick a favourite, they're all excellent.

For added enjoyment/nostalgia value, the accompanying video for Stop Apologising looks like it was created on a ZX81. Wow and then wow.

 

Necessary Genius is also a superb single, one that evokes the sound and feel of Holmes' previous album The Holy Pictures and particularly the Andrew Weatherall remix of I Feel Wonders. Raven runs through a call list of "dreamers, misfits, radicals, outcasts", name checking Angela Davis, Tony Wilson, Nina Simone, Lord Sabre and the recently departed, deeply missed Sinéad O'Connor. 

The digital release is a bumper package with seven additional remixes from Skymas, Decius, Phil Kieran (vocal and dub versions), Robin Wylie and two 'Dub And Response' reworks from Andrew Hogge aka Lovefingers at 142 and 130 bpm respectively. All are worth your time and your money.

 

All of this is a precursor to the release of David Holmes' fifth album (ignoring his numerous film and TV soundtracks), Blind On A Galloping Horse, on 10th November. 

 

In addition to Raven Violet's contrbution throughout, "there are spoken word accounts from Afghan and Ukrainian refugees now welcomed as residents in Belfast, alongside a Palestinian ambulance driver and French and Irish observers of the UK’s turmoil of recent years. Their voices add to the feeling that this record is a call to action, a motivation and a head clearing, slate wiping journey."

 

On the strength of these two songs, the inclusion of previous singles Hope Is The Last Thing To Die and It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love in updated versions and the promise of Holmes' recording of an unreleased Andrew Weatherall song called I Laugh Myself To Sleep, Blind On A Galloping Horse is a surefire contender for my (very long) list of album highlights of 2023.

Blind On A Galloping Horse is available for pre-order in physical and digital formats right now from the usual suspects. I was going to add it to my Christmas list but I just couldn't wait.

Waiting For My Life To Change

Another Bandcamp Friday, another clutch of new songs to add an already impressive 2022. Ten random selections of highlights from the year so far, some so newly purchased that I listened to them for the first time whilst compiling this playlist.

Catherine Anne Davies aka The Anchoress delivers another beautifully balanced cover of a song that Jackson Browne wrote when he was 16 and Nico recorded for her debut solo album, Chelsea Girl, in 1967. In between, a smattering of songs from albums that set the bar high early from Andy Bell, Dan Wainwright, Mr. Oizo & Phra and Trentemøller. Momus' latest album officially dropped on 1st April and I wrote about it here. Confidence Man have also released their latest, Tilt, and on a single play so far, it's enormous fun.

 

David Holmes & Raven Violet have followed up last year's superb Hope Is The Last Thing To Die with the equally brilliant It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love. The song was initially released on Valentine's Day and a clutch of remixes have just dropped. Darren Emerson and Hardway Bros aka Sean Johnston deliver superb mixes, but they're all good, as this one (of two remixes) by Lovefingers & Heidi Lawden amply demonstrates.

 

I knew absolutely nothing about Jeshi, being drawn in by the flurry of label and artist mail drops that come in prior to Bandcamp Friday. A quick Google search reveals that Jeshi is from East London, has previously worked with slowthai and Vegyn and "turns the richness of British culture in swerving, genre-moulding rap". Ross From Friends, better known to his chums as Felix James Clary Weatherall, "provides his own compressed, fidgety interpretation of techno/house". It's a good combination.

 

Closing the selection and quite rightly celebrated on Bagging Area yesterday, is a track from the latest EP by Jesse Fahnestock aka 10:40. The lead track is a 2021 highlight, Kissed Again, originally appearing on the excellent Higher Love Vol. 1 compilation and deservedly getting a release in its own right. Its accompanied by two new songs, Coat Check and Fin, the latter described as "a haunting blissed out beauty tailor made for the majesty of a warm summer sunset". I can vouch for the fact that it works equally well on a dark, cold spring night and a bright, frosty April morning. What better way to finish the playlist, before hitting replay again?

1) These Days (Cover of Nico): The Anchoress

2) Riverside: Andy Bell

3) Relieve The Pressure: Confidence Man

4) Ruin From The Flood: Dan Wainwright

5) It's Over, If We Run Out Of Love (Lovefingers & Heidi Lawden Low Tide Mix): David Holmes ft. Raven Violet

6) 3210 (Ross From Friends Remix): Jeshi

7) Influencer Village: Momus

8) Hits Me (Instrumental): Mr. Oizo & Phra

9) Glow: Trentemøller

10) Fin: 10:40

Waiting For My Life To Change (49:48)