What music are you listening to currently?

[Adrian]

Hanna Peel……..Firwave.

Such is the long shadow of Covid that this is effectively the live launch of Hannah Peel’s acclaimed album Fir Wave, even if it comes nearly two years after it was released, and long after it was shortlisted for the 2021 Mercury prize. She explains tonight that it wasn’t even meant to be a proper LP: she was initially asked to remix a 1972 KPM album of library music called Electrosonic, created by BBC Radiophonic Workshop luminaries, but Peel became so immersed in the project that she ended up creating seven completely new pieces of music.

Many of the sounds she works with tonight are samples from that 1972 album – unique analogue synth voicings that were programmed by the likes of Delia Derbyshire, Brian Hodgson and Don Harper – all played live by Peel and fellow synth wizard Hazel Mills. Peel is an acclaimed string arranger for the likes of Paul Weller, John Foxx and Erland Cooper (all of whom are in the audience tonight), and she occasionally switches to violin and piano, but the emphasis tonight is on the electronic.

Fir Wave is, superficially, an album that borrows from the bleeps and beats of dance music. But Peel takes us into more unexpected territory – the squelchy acid house of Patterned Formation is in 7/4 time; Reaction Diffusion is a piece of woozy electronica set to a Casiotone waltz rhythm; while the dreamy, gothic pulses of Carbon Cycle are in a constantly shifting time signature.

For her first encore Peel performs two tracks from her Rebox EPs: synthpop classics played on a small wind-up musical box, activated by long strips of coded paper. Sugar Hiccup by the Cocteau Twins and New Order’s Blue Monday are transformed into glittering, childlike nursery rhymes, sung in two-part harmony and beefed up by Mills’s synth basslines. Peel then plays a piece from her EP Unheard Delia, based around snippets of a revealing interview with her hero Delia Derbyshire, wreathed in elegiac synth strings.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023 ... ace-london

[Adrian]

Cold Wave…#1

Compilation of different artists…experimental / synth/ electronica etc

[Adrian]

Soft Cell>……Non Stop Extended Cabaret….

One of the elements of December 2023’s rapturously received deluxe 6CD box set of Soft Cell’s stone cold 1981 electro pop classic, ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’, was the inclusion of the entire original album presented as extended 12” versions.

Now released on vinyl for Record Store Day 2024, ‘Non-Stop Extended…’ features contemporary full-length versions of the tracks, many of which have never been on vinyl before.

The debut album from Marc Almond and Dave Ball AKA Soft is truly an icon of electronic music. Not only did ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ introduce the world to classic singles ‘Tainted Love’ (one of the biggest global hits of all time) ‘Bedsitter’ and ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’, it also shocked and delighted in equal measure with a 10-track song cycle straight outta the seedier, sleazier, darker side of life. ‘Sex Dwarf’, ‘Frustration’, ‘My Secret Life’, ‘Seedy Films’… four decades on, it still has the power to thrill, shock and swoon.

Created by Soft Cell’s Dave Ball using only the original studio parts (they’re not remixes, they’re extendeds!), highlights include 2021’s ‘Tainted Love’ anniversary vinyl 10” rework plus new and unreleased 2023 box set versions of ‘Seedy Films’, ‘Sex Dwarf’, and ‘Entertain Me’. ‘Bedsitter’ is represented in its original 12” extended version as all concerned agreed it just could not be improved upon!

Also included are a new rework of the band’s first single for Phonogram, ‘A Man Can Get Lost’ and new previously unreleased remixes of its flip, ‘Memorabilia’, by The Hacker and Daniel Miller."


https://spindizzyrecords.com/products/ ... l-rsd-2024

[tweber]

This is a gorgeous listen!! Heartbraking and uplifting in equal parts, Pat's a powerful writer.
Almost became a victim of the Dublin Vinyl liquidation only that Ray from Music Zone here in Cork stepped in and helped to get it released on vinyl.
Shows the power of community between the independent record shop and the musician I suppose....mods I've nothing to gain from this other than the joy of spreading the word about good music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwJpZwZoIuQ

[cybot]

I like it!

[Adrian]

Tea time Dub Encounters….

Underworld and Iggy Pop come together in a collaborative creation…. Most enjoyable.

[Adrian]

Jungle…..For ever.

2018, on yellow vinyl.

Most enjoyable!

[tweber]

This re release is one of my favourite lps ever. Myself and my late wife re-bonded with Ben's music during lock down....He was stuck in Sydney during 2020 and did a weekly youtube broadcast. She was stuck in London away from me, friends and loved ones so BFF and his youtube channel became really important to us. I introduced her to his music in the early 00s and still really really love this, more important now that she's gone

[cybot]

This re release is one of my favourite lps ever. Myself and my late wife re-bonded with Ben's music during lock down....He was stuck in Sydney during 2020 and did a weekly youtube broadcast. She was stuck in London away from me, friends and loved ones so BFF and his youtube channel became really important to us. I introduced her to his music in the early 00s and still really really love this, more important now that she's gone

Thanks for sharing Shane…..

[cybot]

This mesmerising black plastic landed on my doorstep from somewhere East of Eden. Some of the best music I’ve heard in an age. Thanks Shane for the wake up call. Don’t sleep on this one.