spiritualized are an english rock band formed in 1990 by jason pierce, former member of spacemen 3. i love their music, but also think they have some of the best album artworks out there. the lyrics is usually about love, religion and drugs.. their best known album is ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space, from 1997.  if you haven’t heard them before you should listen to this track called i think i’m in love.

Love in the middle of the afternoon
Just me, my spike in my arm and my spoon
Feel the warmth of the sun in the room

(probably just hungry)

If you can’t engage in pointless nostalgia at the end of a decade, when can you do it? Being as Heinz have fucked up the flavour of their tomato soup recently (either that or my tastebuds have become warped from too much time fucking with Covent Garden cartons), old compilations of adverts on Youtube have become the greatest comforter in my life. There is something strangely safe about being annoyed by those faux-Spike Lee Sprite adverts again, or hearing the Direct Line jingle before going “wait, aren’t those adverts still on?”, or enjoy Alan Shearer’s Emmy-winning turn in that one McDonalds advert. Anyway, while those are truly great, there is something to be said for the guys who’ve for some reason uploaded nearly every indie chart from The Chart Show throughout the 90s to Jewtube, wherein instead of being reminded of Schweppes Schizan and Cadbury’s Astros you can instead be reminded of yet another third-tier Britpop act. Fanastic. Here’s five of our favourites:

June 13th, 1998
“Eat My Goal” presumably on a rerelease to coincide with Ivan Zamorano doing it big on the main stage in that year’s World Cup. Collapsed Lung must have made so much money from whoring that song out it’s unbelievable. Urusei Yatasura were fucking dope and made that summer a little bit easier for me, soundtracking hella Worms Armageddon marathons. Money Mark, on the other hand, didn’t. Ultrasound: they had a fat dude in them. That was it. Now we’ve got Antony Hegarty and Beth Ditto and Eminem, we expect our fattey singers to get up to antics IRL as well, rather than just make shitty prog indie. There really has never been any need for Super Furry Animals. Time has healed the wounds of the time: “Come Back To What You Know” should be filed alongside “Slight Return” in that “OK, these dudes weren’t killing music this is a pretty good song y’know no seriously I’m not being funny”. Hey look it’s John Robb! What a fucking cock! Gomez were only ever of any use when that one dude turned up on that Eels song as the voice of the dead. Spiritualized are just unnecessary to anyone born after 1976.

March 21st, 1998

One from… not even the arse-end of Britpop, more like the winnet of shit on the buttockhair of Britpop. A stunning batch of the mediocre and awful here. Hurricane #1 kill both their career and credibility in the space of three minutes by doing an advert for The Sun, Andy Bell seemingly using his thirty pieces of silver to buy the costume those NoWaySis dudes wore when their act was hot in 1996. The Jennifers featured here aren’t Danny Goffey’s pre-Supergrass, pre-wifeswapping parties with Jude Law act, but rather some Scottish chancers optimistically hoping the Seattle sound revival would have happened by 1998. Mainstream were apparently dubbed the “saviours of rock” by Select Magazine at the time, and if you can’t see how music could be rescued by five guys with Suede’s record label behind them and a bunch of Doors albums in their tourbus, then you’re a lesser man than me. One of Space died this year. Good. Time has made me more amiable to Lion Rock, but Black Grape are still terrible. I really miss having Tjinder Singh around as a race-baiting troll, especially the time he smashed up an Idlewild CD while doing the NME’s singles review column because they were “all that’s wrong with whiteboy music”. As opposed to big beat, TS, huh? I have nothing to say about The Make-Up, but Bernard Butler probably could have done with dying in 1999 and making himself an actually memorable figure in indie history. “Yes” hasn’t aged well, and people actually liked that at the time, so his fully solo stuff isn’t going to get any love over here. Never cared for The Delgados, but it was nice they were out there doing their thing imo.

August 7th, 1997

I’d never heard of Ricky Spontane before now, my guess is Steve Lamacq played them twice on consecutive Thursdays at 9:47 and that was enough to convince 12 people to buy their record. Before we had a shit tonne of bands with “Wolf” and “Crystal” in their name, we had a bunch with “China” in (China Drum, China Black, China Crisis, some others). A lot of punk bands who formed in the late 80s must have been swearing like troupers when Green Day, The Offspring and NOFX broke through in the mid 90s, because they must have realised they all looked just a little too old to hang with them. Pretty sure Linoleum were somebody’s idea of a joke, although where central casting found that near-infinite supply of chicks who looked like recently fired 60s go-go dancers to front these bands I have no idea. I… kinda like “The King of All Time” by The Levellers. It reminds me of playing Sim City 2000 and naming all my cities and sports teams after X-Files characters. I was 14 at the time. “Magic Piper of Love” was Edwyn Collins’ certified wood follow-up to that one hit he had. “Lazy Line Painter Jane” is a fucking banger, and if your heart doesn’t leap when “Let’s see your kit for games” kicks in you really have no business reading this damn blog. Stuart Murdoch used to have the skinniest arms in the business as well, reminiscent of either dead Welsh boxer Johnny Owen, or the stickman from the hilarious “xkcd” comics.

January 25th, 1997

Kinda dreading the day when I “get into” Napalm Death tbh, because that’ll be when I’ve finally reached some level of comfort with my obesity and accept that I’ll never be thin. The Boo Radleys star in a very special episode of Reboot. Sidi Bou Said just look like generic “female rockers dicking around in a multicoloured video that Beavis and Butthead get mildly entertained by”. I saw Chris Thingy from 3 Colours Red at Coventry train station in 1999. He had fans hanging off him like flies around shit. I was trying to think of a top 10 guitar band from that era who’ve had less impact on modern music, and for the life of me I can’t remember if Electrasy did go top 10. Placebo’s debut album is probably one of the 100 greatest records of all-time, and although we go to bat harder for “Bruise Pristine” than “Nancy Boy” around here, sometimes you gotta play the hits. Really can’t be bothered to run through a list of “lol romo” gags just because Boutique are in this. “All I Want” is a little bit special, and not just because it brings back joyous memories of wasting pocket money in the Crazy Taxi machine. There’s just something ballsy about making your major label debut single a sub-two minute thrashout. “Saturday Night” was the worst Suede single until “Head Music”, then all bets were off. GEDGE~!

April 13th, 1996
Complete with oh-so-90s “bouncing through a maze” graphics. It’s like something from Motormouth. Smaller, replete with Noel Gallagher filling in for a few tracks whenever he had the time on their album. You know how Rock of Love > Flava of Love because metal skanks > rap skanks? I think indie weedcarriers may be more worthy of celebration and mockery than rap wc’s. “Stupid Girl” is still a banger in 2009, and reminds me happily of the girl who used to go to my school who was a big Garbage fan and had massive tits. I just searched for her on Facebook and in her display photo she is wrapped up in toilet roll and wearing a tinsel garnish on her head. You tell me. Pour one out for your man from Lush who hung himself, because he played drums on probably the only 10/10 track from the Britpop era (“Animal Nitrate” is maybe only a 9.8 because Brett Anderson is just the worst kidn of person). Compulsion were Jacknife Lee’s band before he became easily the greatest remixer and producer of the noughties, what an amazingly talented individual. When Patrick Macnee dies, all of the eulogy montages of his career are going to end with him popping his head out in that Oasis video. And that’s going to be even more tragic than the fact he’s dead. He was raised by a lesbian couple, you know? Spare Snare are some Scottish shit nobody cares about. Snuff are some English shit that for some reason a lot of people care about. Hearing the rest of Rocket from the Crypt’s catalog is like hearing the fifty #1 singles Nena had in Germany for the first time, it really isn’t helping anyone. This chart comes from the month when Bis were the most important band in the UK, being the first unsigned band to make the top 40 (apart from, y’know, Prince and Cliff Richard) and for a while it looked as if the reaction to Britpop would be deformed ageplayers shrieking like a stuck pig on a sugar rush. Manda Rin has some terminal illness now, so, y’know, one love. I forgot how Scottish her fucking accent was.

As this is being written, all 47 — or maybe it’s 147 — tracks of the superdeluxecollectorsfabulous edition of Spritualized’s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space — one of the greatest albums of the past quarter century — is downloading from the iTunes Store.

For the most part, it’s hard to care about the complete sessions of anything.  When the Beatles Anthology was released a decade back, we were sort of relieved to find how few were the half-baked takes of songs remaining.  The good stuff, it turns out, made it to the light of day, and we didn’t really gain too much rooting around in the attic.   With the exception of Bob Dylan, there aren’t many artists whose demo tracks we really want to listen to.  I mean, the three CD version of The Stooges’ Fun House was not played in our house.

But Ladies And Gentlemen was a work so profound and unexpected, the idea of being able to float around in the gory maw of its creation is inspiring.  When Spaceman 3 morphed into Spiritualized, and Jason Pierce — an artist who is at his most interesting precisely when his reach exceeded his grasp — was given full reign to explore, the results were, momentarily, thrilling.  We are not completists; we don’t have to listen to the entire Pierce oeuvre.  There is a fair amount of non-melodious noodling in the rest of Spiritualized’s corpus.

But not Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. It does float through space, and takes us with it, as comets whiz by and dramatically bounce off one another.  Glad this artifact was brought back from the nether reaches.

Today the Observer’s Music Monthly breathed its last with a rollout of the decade’s best albums. As you’d expect it was deeply wishy-washy, with many Dizzee namedrops and Mike Skinner jocking. The reason? Because ‘best album’ polls are generally dated before the voting journos involved have even hit send on that mail with the rich text attachment.

Opinions are like rectums and all that, because while Spiritualized topped ‘97 polls in several publications, looking at recent polls, the dated ‘Urban Hymns‘ and overrated ‘OK Computer‘ have lapped ‘Ladies And Gentleman We Are Floating In Space‘ and its celestial glory. Which is, of course, an injustice. While Yorke read ‘No Logo’ and became toe-curlingly politicised in the most fey, ineffectual manner, and Ashcroft moped about solo in Wallabees, Jason Pierce and his fellow cosmonauts kept the faith, even if commercial success gradually rolled back to a cult following.

Spiritual, dense and perfectionist in his approach to sonics, Jason Pierce wasn’t the only former smackhead whose work aged with a great deal more grace than the swaggering yayo rockers and rappers of the time – veteran musician Mick Head and Shack’s slight return was around the same time as Spiritualized’s masterpiece, as was B.G’s ‘Chopper City In The Ghetto.’ It took me a minute to get into ‘Ladies And Gentlemen…’ but not as much as the previous releases like ‘Pure Phase‘ forced on me during smoke sessions by Spacemen 3 loving pushermen.

Two concert experiences were ruined by my own excesses of the era – at one show, the vast strobe light backdrop sent me to sleep standing up for the gig’s duration, and at a free outdoor performance in Bristol, a hashcake handed out from a hippy’s Tupperware sent me off to never-neverland once again. I was also mistaken for Pierce in Nottingham record shop looking at Sun-Ra records – at first I was flattered, but then I realised that it was my gaunt appearance and deathly pallor that caused confusion. Still, Spiritualized defined the conclusion of my higher education.

Then there was the packaging. I noticed later was that my indie kid associates were already engaging in oneupmanship surrounding the first pressing glow-in-the-dark edition of the group’s second LP. What followed was something even bigger. ‘Ladies And Gentlemen…‘ was available in three CD formats – the pill blister pack, the lowly slipcased version for those slow off the marks and late adopters flocking after hyperbolic coverage, and best of all, the twelve disc full pill packet variation. Designed in conjunction with Farrow, who dropped a serious boxset in association with frequent collaborators the Pet Shop Boys this year, it was noted at the time that this was manufactured in an actual pharamacutical factory. No half stepping where J. Spaceman is involved. Beyond just alluding to the narcotic influences that paved the project’s path or music’s drug-like synthetic opiate power, this pushes the concept to the limit.

It also embraces the much derided compact disc format’s clean, efficient aesthetic and renders it as clinical as it can possibly be – where a reissue label like Numero sells me shiny discs by evoking the dusty warmth of the vinyl remastered and unearthed within, Farrow and Pierce make no attempt to flee that surgical sheen. They choose to face it head-on, proving there’s a surprisingly eloquent design language beneath the surface, and one worth amplifying. While the content takes authentically bluesy turns and rebuilds Spector’s Wall Of Sound, you’ll  find no vinyl nostalgia externally.

This Creative Review conversation to coincide with the release of  ‘Songs In A&E” proves that the medical theme sustained, and that emphasis on packaging hasn’t diminished in the face of an industry slump.  On release, ‘Ladies And Gentlemen…‘ was an attempt to make a musical offering a tactile experience as well as an audible one, and in the interview,  Pierce explains,

“Before I worked with Farrow, I did an album called Pure Phase. Even then I wanted to try and get away from the CD jewel case. It was a cheap product in an ill-designed box, the plastic cracked, the spindles broke. People were spending decent money on design but they were putting it behind the cheapest bit of plastic known to man: it seemed like the music wasn’t important. I’d seen Mark’s work for the Pet Shop Boys and thought it was beautiful. It fitted what needed to be done in order to get the music packaged and onto a rack, but it managed to do something different with it.“

You’ve got to admire a collaborator whose dedication to perfect type means he tailors the album’s running time to an attractive round number so it looks good.  Lavelle’s Ben Drury assisted Mo’ Wax releases walked a similar, and costly line when it came to packaging, hence the jewel variations, and in both cases, the profits were munched Pacman-style like those apocryphal tales of  ‘Blue Monday‘ costing Factory more than RRP. Now, as the notion of buying a CD seems almost quaint, Pierce’s approach feels strangely prescient  – the MP3 is as faceless as it comes, but dressing them up is nigh-on impossible, beyond a few iTunes Euro exclusives. It’s not something you’d cherish.

What’s the solution in making music physical again? Extra discs of rarities are a given now. How about the big budget anthology? The Warp20 set’s smartly packaged mix of paper, vinyl and CD was a success at around £120, but you’d expect that from a company that’s as savvy as Pierce in giving up the goods, The Pixies and Neil Young efforts are desirable, but strictly for the monied consumer. The Stone Roses lemon USB is an idea as fruity as it looks. At mass market level there’s little that can’t be zip-filed. The touted rise of vinyl is heartening but fractional when it comes to the bigger picture.

Things done changed in those twelve years. On Monday, ‘Ladies And Gentlemen…’ returns in remastered form, as a similar trio – blister pack, solo and just before Christmas, the twelve disc, on ATP Recordings to coincide with the group performing the album in its entirety at All Tomorrow’s Parties and it leaves me with mixed feelings. Just to appease the original collectors, it’s black rather than white. As someone who ogled the twelve pack in Notting Hill Gate’s Record & Tape Exchange, labelled with an exorbitant price, it’s  tempting.

“This includes 12 x 3” Mini CD’s of the complete full album track-by-track, a homage to the original release. This will be accompanied by 2 bonus discs (as per tracklisting below). For those who don’t want to open the blister pack, each unit will come with a code to download the original album.

Limited to just 1000 units, each collectors edition will come with a prescription numbered out of 1000 and signed by Jason Pierce. Anyone who pre-orders the collectors edition before November 15th can have their own name, or name of their choosing printed on the prescription.”

2009 is a time when you can wipe the slate clean on your retrospective regrets. Like ‘Quantum Leap’ and Sam’s job to right past wrongs, a lack of ideas means a recycled formula of remaster and re-release allows you to see the same thing time and time again. Is ‘Ladies In Gentleman…’ and its triple-threat of reduxes a case of a mad labour-of-love finally making sense over a decade down the line,  or a penny-pinching blip in an otherwise flawless sleeve art evolution?

This video still works for me -

On a barely related note (well, the aforementioned Mr. Lavelle handled the soundtrack), when does this Abel Ferrera documentary reach DVD? The press pack is out there, but it seems to be in limbo.

Another tune to crush leaves to. enjoy.

När grannarna drar på sig underbyxorna och drar upp blygardinerna är det fest på Annexgatan. Då får man surfa hur mycket man vill och ladda hem musik komprimerad i formatet MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3.  Idag var jag sugen på rymdrock. Från en kille, i låt oss säga Taiwan, upp i rymden, in i grannens stora datamaskin och över till mig och min vikbara dito.

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space.
(från bloggen med det jävligt häftiga namnet Music Is Art)

Det var inte vilken version av låtjäveln som helst som hittade till min vikbara datamaskin, det var Elvis-versionen, Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (I can’t help falling in love) eller om du så vill och, efter vad jag har förstått, orginalversionen. Bara sekunder efter att jag fått reda på låtens existens (och i ditt fall efter läsandet av extremt krystade och långa meningar) har jag ( och i ditt fall du)  lite mer fakta i ämnet. Jo det här var orginalversionen, jo Jason Pierce var (ovanligt) trasig när han skrev låten. Hans flickvän (och tillika tidigare keyboardist i Spiritualized) Kate Radley hade i hemlighet gift sig med Richard Ashcroft från The Verve. I HEMLIGHET. Fyra dagar efter att Verve och Spiritualized giggat ihop. Pierce började älska heroin istället för en tjej.  Antagligen old news för den lyckliga med koll på Spiritualized.

Jag gillar “Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space” och jag såg nån akustisk avart av bandet för några år sedan i en lerpöl som Danskarna kallade Roskilde, det var en tråkig spelning. Jag vet ingenting om Spiritualized egentligen. Men jävlar vad bra den här låten är, och i den här versionen,  som Taco fylld med Tacos.

Som bonus bjuckar jag på en länk till en EP upplagd på en av mina favorit mp3-bloggar. Bandet heter Tits och den bästa låten handlar om deras glädje över att Elvis är död. Den andra låten låter nästan likadant, men den handlar om att sångarens pappa också är hans langare. Det bjuckar jag på för att en av låtarna handlar om Elvis och resten av mitt inlägg handlar om en låt med Elvis-referenser. Det är så man knyter ihop en säck.

Roxbert

“… Христос, Будда, Кришна – самые опасные враги любых религий. У них нет никаких Учений и никаких Правил. У них есть великая Любовь и великая Свобода, которой они делятся с каждым, кто хочет и может взять Её…

… Христос, Будда, Кришна не противоречат друг другу ни в чём. Это мы противоречим друг другу во всём, потому что не понимаем и не хотим понимать Их. Христианство, Буддизм, Кришнаизм создали мы сами. Вместо того, чтобы просто любить друг друга, просто любить Христа, Будду, Кришну, просто любить всех и всё. Вместо того, чтобы быть свободными людьми, вместо того, чтобы быть Свободой, вместо того, чтобы быть. Всё, что есть хорошего в Христианстве, Буддизме, Кришнаизме, создано не благодаря религии, а вопреки религии. «Просто любить» сложно. Гораздо проще молиться и поститься, строить храмы и писать книги. Но Истина не может явить Себя в словах, в человеческих словах, по самой своей нечеловеческой, Божественной природе. Слово – это не Бог, слово – это человек.

… Мы говорим, что «верим в Бога» и мы гордимся этим, мы можем не любить или даже ненавидеть кого-то за то, что он «не верит в Бога» или «верит в Бога» меньше нас или иначе чем мы. Но где же здесь Бог? Здесь только гордыня и ненависть, только страх перед Непознанным и Непознаваемым и желание выдать Его за Познаваемого и Познанного, тщетное желание назвать Неназываемое. Быть вне религии не значит быть атеистом. «Верить в Бога» – очень и очень мало. Не надо «верить в Бога». Надо увидеть и услышать твоего и только твоего Бога во всех и во всём, в том числе и в себе, и стать Его частью и Им Самим всецело, однажды и навсегда. Гораздо проще быть рабом Бога, чем быть Богом. Но Богу не нужны рабы, Богу нужен только Он Сам…”

Александр Богомазов, не-философ (отсюда).

I think I’ve been gone more than I’ve been home lately.  Here’s what I’ve been listening to in the car, in no particular order.

1. Blur – Blur (Virgin 1997)
2. The Sexy Accident – Mantoloking (independent 2009)
3. Spiritualized – The Complete Works, Volume One (Arista 2003)
4. Sam Billen – Headphones and Cellphones (The Record Machine 2009)
5. DJ Shadow – Private Press (MCA 2002)

Some nights I like to sit alone, weeping uncontrollably into the darkness. I’ll pour myself one too many babychams and think about times past. Maybe if I’d been willing to see things differently, maybe if I’d been willing to change, things could have been different. I light another cigarette, lie back, put another record on. Just a coupla more tunes to see me through troublesome times. Sometimes it’s Armchair Boogie by Michael Hurley, sometimes it’s the Never Ending Story by Limahl. Doesn’t matter. Just me, myself and the music. And sometimes – sometimes that’s enough, y’know?

But crapping crikey, do I really need to pay £20 to go and ‘see’ someone perform in near darkness? One of the best things about listening to music in the dark on your own is that YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN. It’s like being serenaded by angels whilst you have a particularly emotional wank. Things change when you’re sat amongst hundreds of other people doing the same.

Hope Sandoval’s last solo album, Bavarian Fruitbread (and most of the Mazzy Star back-catalogue), is one of those albums you can turn to in a crisis. It never lets you down. It’s dreamy, it’s hypnotic and it can completely re-tune your brain. It goes with darkness like civil servants go with a blank absence of ideas and intellectual rigour. But the choice to actually perform in darkness is questionable.

Ok, I’ve seen some bands pull it off: Mogwai, Melt Banana, Spiritualized etc. There are bands that made nineties journalists dribble themselves into a care homes with talk of soundscapes and sonic cathedrals. There are bands creating a noise such that you don’t know whether to punch yourself in the eyes, or shit yourself inside out. Hope’s music aligns her with the former. Trouble is, it’s music that engages through it’s emotional and lyrical resonance. It isn’t just about the sound. For the audience to be fully engaged and immersed, it helps to see the physical nuances of the performer’s delivery as they convey, amplify or even distort the feelings behind the words.

Don’t get me wrong, the video work is a captivating performance in itself. It’s repetitive enough to draw you in and let the music wash over you.  But without the focus of a visible human being, on it’s own, I’m not sure it’s enough . It may be that performing in darkness is a way for Sandoval to deal with a reported crippling shyness. It may be a way of resisting lazy journalistic reductions of this music to talk about the physical beauty of the performer, which used to happen a lot when she was in Mazzy Star. In which case, all well and good. It’s just a shame that such an unscalable barrier is erected in the process. It begs the question of whether Hope actually needs to attend her own gigs. And that can’t be a good thing.

OK Computer? Nevermind? Loveless?

Que nada. O melhor disco dos anos 90 foi lançado em 15 de junho de 1997, 10 dias antes de eu completar 10 anos. Engraçado pensar que, na época, eu não tinha a menor noção de estava sendo lançado “Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating On Space”, a obra-prima do Spiritualized. Um disco que seria tão importante na minha vida, 12 anos depois.

Jason Pierce estava deprimido. Se antes ele posava sorrindo, com a genial camiseta “Drugs Not Jobs”, na época da gravação deste disco ele estava no seu ponto mais baixo.  Havia acabado de tomar um pé na bunda de sua namorada (e tecladista da banda), a baranga (tudo bem Jason, o coração não se apega a essas coisas) Kate Radley, que o trocou pelo Richard Ashcroft, vocalista do Verve. Para curar a dor de corno, ele fez o disco de sua vida. O disco não é composto por doze músicas. Na verdade, Jason Pierce compôs 12 mantras. São canções para você balbuciar em voz alta nas horas mais difíceis. Quando não há solução ou esperança.  Apenas cante.

Tudo o que precisamos na vida é um pouco de amor para espantar a dor. É isso o que Jason Pierce nos ensina, mesmo sabendo que esse amor pode despedaçar o coração e levar a felicidade embora. Mas ele sabe que no fim das contas, o que queremos é que ela, aquela, esteja do nosso lado. Sorrindo.

Já é o suficiente.

I ♥ Spiritualized®

free spiritualized bootlegs here (official)

this is art work.

xk

Winter’s here for most of us. (I said “most of us,” Claire and Overconfident.) Time to enjoy those lazy Sunday mornings. Only venture outside the covers long enough to grab some cocoa, the Sunday paper (if available) and curl up in bed with your main squeeze. Maybe throw in an old movie or tenderly get your fuck on.

Make a day of it, starting with this week’s very special Sunday Chillout Special Edition.

Ulrich Schnauss – Between Us and Them
Germany’s answer to m83, Ulrich Schnauss has been mixing My Bloody Valentine/Cocteau Twins beauty with racks of electronics for nearly 15 years. His tracks are long on “pretty” and short on “boring,” producing the kind of blissful ambience that just dares you to demean it with the left-handed compliment “chillout.” (Which I already did. See above. Apologies all around.)

Whitey – Made of Night
Fucking Whitey. How does he do it? Let me just state something right out front:

This the best fucking thing I have heard in a long time.

That is not to cast aspersion (nifty word, huh?) on anything else I’ve heard recently. I have heard a ton of great music lately. A ton.

This is just saying this track is that fucking amazing. The sound of quiet desperation. Existing rather than living. Letting a lifetime of bad choices carry you into the dark. It’s all in there. And it is done so well. Just listen. I lack the proper adjectives.

This reviewer doesn’t. All you need to read is the last line.

One Dove – White Love
Scotland. Is there any place like it? Between the weather, the poverty and the unintelligible accents, it’s a wonder anyone ever gets out of there alive. Featuring the impeccable production of Andrew Weatherall and the airy vocals of Dot Allison, White Love glides gracefully towards the dancefloor. Just enough kick to keep your heart rate up and enough layered vocals to curl up in and stay warm.

Mogwai – Tracy (Kid Loco Mix)
Scotland. Is there any place like it? Apparently not, but that doesn’t stop great bands from popping up all over the place like some sort of impeccably tasteful kudzu. Mogwai, another of the Scottish greats, have been working their particular brand of post-rock for over a decade, eschewing lyrics for guitars and propulsive drumming for more guitars.

Building layers and layers of texture out of some quite strumming, the Glasgow quintet create some of the most amazing noise ever laid down on wax. (Records, kids. They’re like mp3s, except that you would need a couple of sherpas and some pack mules to transport a gig or two anywhere.)

Mogwai gets reworked by French electronica producer Kid Loco, who adds his trademark downtempo touch in a deft bit of addition through subtraction, adding ample breathing room that allows the track to ebb and flow.

Spiritualized – Shine A Light (Unreleased Mix)
Someone had the notion that the only thing missing from space rock was soul. And not just any soul, but a shattered soul, wrapped in bruises and numbed with heroin. That man was J. Spaceman, a refugee from drone-rock antagonists Spacemen 3.

This is an unreleased version of a track from Lazer Guided Melodies. It breathes a little heavier and approaches the crescendo a bit noisier than its “proper” version, but that’s what makes it better. It has more of a cathartic feel, as if bringing the noise would drown out the pain. J Spaceman is most likely in the business of killing himself to death, intertwining his despairing smack lust with the rock-bottom hopefulness of old spirituals and last chance prayers to a god that won’t save him. He won’t because he knows that deep way down, J doesn’t want salvation: he just wants to feel something different.

All files in one easy-going zipped up folder:
Heavy Rotation Vol. 21

-CLT

[All music posted on Fancy Plans... is kick ass and too awesome to be contained. All music is also posted temporarily and, due to its high level of ass-kicking, should not be distributed without a prescription and care should be taken while operating heavy equipment or dancing around the living room (clothing optional, but do remember that the blinds are open/kids are still awake).
Should you wish to have your brilliant artistic statement forced back into confinement, please email me at 2timegrime@gmail.com. Feel free to leave a comment, as that will probably be noticed sooner.
By all means, if you like what you hear (and you will), please support the totally rocking artist(s) by purchasing some music or heading out to see them live.]

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LOVE,axinia

Spiritualized storverk brukar väl anses vara Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating Into Space från 1997. Detta album har för övrigt ett av pophistoriens coolaste omslag. Komplett som en magmedicin med booklet och allt. Jag skulle dock vilja slå ett slag för gruppens första album Lazer Guided Melodies från 1992 där de psykodeliska inslagen från Spiritualized föregångare Spacemen 3 får fullt utlopp. Parallellerna till Lou Reed och Velvet Underground är tydliga eller varför inte som en 90-tals gottpåse med några bitar av Stone Roses och The Verve i. I bakgrunden ligger något slags rymdtema som hälsosamt nog inte får ta över helt (inget Babylon Zoo med andra ord) utan ligger där bara som en känsla. Den bakåtlutade känslan som plattan förmedlar och att Jason Pierce röst ligger väldigt långt bak i ljudbilden bidrar också till att man känner sig en aning tyngdlös när man lyssnar på Spiritualized i allmänhet men Lazer Guided Melodies i synnerhet. Det är hög tid att återupptäcka det här albumet.

http://open.spotify.com/user/addejoydiv/playlist/1nyKEQbL7cIarmZWt2zCbX

Having recently posted spots by Evie Sands and Miranda July, I looked up this video for “Anyway That You Want Me” which was also covered by Sands and Was Featured in July’s film, Me And You And Everyone We Know”.

As part of ATP’s Don’t Look Back season Spiritualized performed their classic album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space in its entirety at Royal Festival Hall.

Reviews

“When it ends you feel exquisitely transported”
- The Guardian

“A raging electrical storm of white light and guitar feedback”
- The Independent

“A conduit for forces romantic and cosmic”
- The Daily Telegraph

“The best number of the night aims to shake the very foundations of the venue”
- The Fly

Photographs

Photographs Minh Le.

Photographs Steve Parkinson