Sat In The Passenger Seat, Having An Out Of Body Experience

A selection of long songs for Sunday, designed to transport you...well, take your pick from Mars or Dorset and all points in between, or just head straight out of this galaxy and see what else is out there.

 

The shortest song in this selection clocks in at a few seconds under twelve minutes, the longest contribution edges over fourteen and a half. Too many beats between them all to be considered pure ambient music perhaps, but they all have enough going on to stimulate the senses.

First stop, Japan and a couple of electronic music legends. Magic Dome by Yoshihiro Sawasaki was (I think) his debut release, first appearing on the flip of the Neocrystal 12" single, then the album Perfumed Garden, both in 1994. 

Soft Ballet was formed by Ryoichi Endo, Ken Morioka and Maki Fujii in 1986, though my introduction to them was via their remix albums featuring Western artists such as LFO, Jah Wobble, Orbital, Fluke and Global Communication. The third and final in the series reworked 1995 album Form, by which time Soft Ballet had split, although they reunited for a couple of albums in the early 2000s. 

Speaking of Global Communication, Tom Middleton resurrected the GCOM alias in 2021 for a 20-track magnum opus E2-XO. Most of them are pretty short, several clocking in at a minute or less, until you get to the album closer, Beyond The Milky Way. Just ride the stellar wave and drift into the unknown.

 

The Orb and Youth transformed ambient music in the late 80s/early 90s, whether separately or together. I've plumped for the latter, with a remix of Spanish Castles In Space, one of my favourite songs by The Orb, in any incarnation. Alex Paterson and Martin Glover have continued to work together, not least last year's Orb album, Prism.

 

Back down to Earth now, more specifically Wimborne in Dorset. Al Stewart grew up there and Robert Fripp was born in Wimborne Minster, so you know the vibes are good.  MLO were/are Jon Tye and Peter Smith; Jon continues to push the ambient envelope, as one half of Seahawks.

 

Matt Gunn is the new kid on the block, relatively speaking, with a clutch of great releases on the Paisley Dark and Electric Wardrobe labels. Matt's first album Mostly Fiction is a good jumping on point, though his EPs also come recommended.

 

Youth is back for the finale, with an end of the millennium reworking of psychedelic rockers Gong. I first discovered Steve Hillage as the credited producer on the 12" single of Sweat In Bullet by Simple Minds, later as a founder of System 7, so my journey back to Gong was full of detours and diversions, but I eventually got there. A bit like this compilation, if you will.

 

1) Magic Dome (Full Length Version): 澤崎吉広 (Yoshihiro Sawasaki) (1994)

2) No One Lives On Mars (Even Longer) (Remixed By Carl Craig): Soft Ballet (1995)

3) Beyond The Milky Way (Full Length Version): GCOM (2021)

4) Spanish Castles In Space (Extended Youth Mix By Martin Glover): The Orb (1991)

5) Wimborne (Spacetime Continuum Mix By Jonah Sharp): MLO (1994)

6) Space Drohne I & II (Album Version): Matt Gunn (2023)

7) A Sprinkling Of Clouds (Full Length Edit By Youth aka Martin Glover): Gong (1999)

 

1991: Aubrey Mixes: The Ultraworld Excursions: 4

1994: Perfumed Garden: 1

1994: Wimborne Revisited EP: 5

1995: Forms: Remix For Ordinary People: 2

1999: You Remixed: 7

2021: E2-XO: 3 

2023: Mostly Fiction: 6

Sat In The Passenger Seat, Having An Out Of Body Experience (1:30:02) (KF) (Mega)

Twenty Five Minutes In Wimborne

In 1994, MLO aka John Tye and Peter Smith released their second album - and second of that year - on Rising High Records, eight tracks of understated beauty called Io.

The opening song, Wimborne, is named after the market town Wimborne Minster in Dorset, in the South West of England. It's a gently transporting, transformative tune, prime material for chillout compilations and mixes. In researching this post, I've found that the Music From Memory label released a MLO compilation in 2021 titled Oumuamua and again featuring the original album version of Wimborne as the opening track. 

 

 

MLO also released the Wimborne Revisited single in 1994 and, as I was a fan of Rising High Records, I bought it at the time without having heard anything by MLO previously. The fact that the line up of remix artists included Wagon Christ aka Luke Vibert probably swung it for me.

The CD contains the album version plus five remixes, clocking in just shy of 80 minutes. The aforementioned Wagon Christ, Spacetime Continuum (Jonah Sharp) and Starfungus (Brian Douglas) all deliver downtempo excursions that don't deviate too far from the original path, whilst MLO themselves offer up a remix that briefly ups the tempo and extends the song to over 16 minutes.

None of that compares to Daniel Pemberton's mix, though. An expansive, meandering mix over twenty five and a half minutes that, on listening, feels considerably less than that. If you're going for a walk, have a stack of tedious chores to do or have a rare opportunity just to relax today, stick this on and it'll take you to a calmer place.

It was lovely to discover via Swiss Adam's excellent series of Sunday half-hour mixes over at Bagging Area that John Tye is still making great music - this time with Pete Fowler - as Seahawks. Although they've been releasing music as Seahawks since 2010, I've only just been catching up to them since last summer.

I haven't been able to find out much about Peter Smith, post-MLO, and Discogs is frequently an unreliable source - there are over one hundred Peter Smiths listed. However, I think that it might be the same Peter Smith that's been a staple member of Band Of Holy Joy since their 2014 album Easy Listening, contributing synths and a multitude of other instruments. 

Daniel Pemberton's career has been much easier to track, building up a sizeable CV as a soundtrack composer for film and television. The jaw-dropping fact that I learned whilst writing this post was that when Daniel released his first album, Bedroom, and delivered his astonishing remix of MLO's Wimborne, he was sixteen years old.