Dub Syndicate - Tunes From The Missing Channel

1985, ON-U Sound Records Ltd, ON-U LP 38

A1: Ravi Shankar Pt.1
A2: The Show Is Coming
A3: Must Be Dreaming
A4: Over Board
A5: Forever More
B1: Geoffrey Boycott
B2: Wellie
B3: Jolly
B4: Out And About

This LP was a purchase I made about four years ago based solely on a friend's recommendation. Dub Syndicate are basically a project of producer Adrian Sherwood and Style Scott, former drummer with Roots Radics and Creation Rebel, plus of course a whole bunch of friends and session musicians. Stylistically, while it owes much to reggae and dub, this album back in the mid 1980s was pushing the envelope of the whole genre. Drums and percussion are featured prominently, which should come as no surprise seeing as one half of the nucleus of Dub Syndicate is a drummer.

Predictably enough, side 1 opener, "Ravi Shankar Pt.1" features a (faux) sitar melody line which sound surprisingly effective over a dub bass backing and what sounds like a motorbike being kick-started into action. "The Show Is Coming" features spoken vocals courtesy of Fats (so it says on the record cover) and has a much more urgent beat, a staccato bass guitar solo, and the repeated refrain "something nice is going to happen to your ears" which could be subtitle to this album. The next track, "Must Be Dreaming", slows things down again and showcases a lazy melodica courtesy of Doctor Pablo. "Overboard" is of a more experimental nature and features former Public Image Ltd member Jah Wobble providing one of his signature repetitive basslines plus he plays keyboards here too. For the most part Tunes From The Missing Channel is an instrumental record; other than the previously mentioned "The Show Is Coming", the only track featuring vocals is side 1 closer "Forever More", a stripped back dub affair which allows Bim Sherman's vocals to sit prominently in the mix.

Side 2 opens with Dub Syndicate's tribute to a legendary Yorkshire cricketer. "Geoffrey Boycott" is an uptempo little number with a simple but effective synth hook. "Wellie" (featuring a second ex-member of PiL, Keith Levene on guitar) is another synth-led piece which unfortunately makes no great impact on the listener, while "Jolly" at least manages to live up to its name being indeed a jolly little tune. I don't feel that side 2 really takes off until the final track, "Out And About", which manages to recapture the vibe established by side 1 before the whole record comes to an end.

I feel that Tunes From The Missing Channel is most definitely a record of two halves. You listen to side 1 and think, "Wow! that's amazing!", then flip it over to side 2... which isn't bad, but then again isn't astonishingly great or particularly groundbreaking. Additionally, on side 1 the tracks either segue into one another or else have no silence between them and so effectively create one seamless piece of music that takes up the entire side of the record. Side 2 has definite track breaks and it feels like these are the not-so-good tracks, those which may have been b-sides on a single record.

All in all, Tunes From The Missing Channel is a very enjoyable album for fans of reggae and dub music, but a couple of lacklustre tracks on side 2 stop it from being a truly great album. If only side 2 had been up to the standard of side 1 it could have been a classic!

Wind - Sleep 10" EP

2012, Jansen plateproducksjon, JANSEN 020

A: Throwing Stones
B: Cathedral

I took a chance on this record after having read a review by Julian Cope on his website in November 2012. I love reading Cope's reviews, if I can understand them with his various obscure references, although on a few occasions I have searched online for music he has reviewed and found it to be, quite frankly, unlistenable. But I was intrigued enough by his review of this record by Norwegian trio Wind to track down a copy, which I ended up ordering online from Shiny Beast. It was a little costly, but when I received the record and was first able to listen to it properly on 10" white vinyl (record label Jansen plateproduksjon seem to favour white vinyl for some reason) I decided it was such a good record that it was worth the price.

The EP contains just two pieces - one extended track on each side - having a total playing time of around 20 minutes (which is why I am referring to it as an EP rather than a single). The songs are two slices of melancholy psychedelia, perhaps mixed in with a dose of ambience. These are very atmospheric recordings, at times it seems hard to believe it's just three guys creating this gorgeous blanket of sounds with a standard set of instruments: drums, bass, guitar and synth. The music is never over-stated or in your face, rather it is mesmerizing and sensitive.

Without wanting to sound patronising, I was quite surprised to find out how young these guys are (check out their photo here to see what I mean) because their music is so mature and thoughtful.

The cover, by the way, features a photograph of one of Dutch artist Theo Jansen's incredible wind machines, or Strandbeests, as he calls them.

Themes For Action

2013, Network, 7954006

A1: Man In A Suitcase
A2: The Saint (1966 main title)
A3: The Prisoner
B1: The Saint (1968 main title)
B2: Danger Man (1960 main title)
B3: Danger Man (1964 main title)

Here's a Record Store Day find that I didn't have written down on my list before the event, but I saw this in the shop and just had to grab a copy. It's a 7" record playing at 45rpm recorded in mono and with six tracks on it. Some would call it an EP, but these tracks are so short that the combined length of the record is less than most singles. That is to say, there's nothing "extended" about it.

The record contains the themes for 1960s ITC produced cult classic TV shows, Man In A Suitcase, The Saint, Danger Man and The Prisoner from legendary composers Ron Grainer and Edwin Astley. The first two tracks on each side of the record are quite short at about 20 seconds a piece, with the third title on each side being a longer piece and all the more satisfying for the listener. Quite frankly, the music for Patrick McGoohan's masterpiece The Prisoner is worth the record price alone.



Fantastic stuff!

Permanent Clear Light - Higher Than The Sun

2012, Regal Crabomophone/Fruits De Mer Records, Winkle 7

A: Higher Than The Sun
B: Afterwards

If you're one of the few vinyl junkies that does not already know about Fruits De Mer Records may I suggest that you check them out soonest? FdM specialise in psychedelia, progressive rock, krautrock, R&B, acid-rock, spacerock - and - more importantly they make these releases available exclusively on limited edition vinyl. Many fans of the label are subscribers and buy every release. Nearly all releases sell out quickly, with earlier records from the label sometimes turning up on eBay and changing hands for quite staggering prices.

Most FdM releases are cover versions, that is to say reinterpreations of classic songs by modern artists and a few other legendary and semi-legendary acts such as The Pretty Things and The Bevis Frond. However, a handful of original songs have been released on FDM's Regal Crabomophone imprint.

Released in the latter part of 2012, "Higher Than The Sun" is an original song from Finland's finest psychedelic three-piece, Permanent Clear Light. The song lives up to its title and delivers magnificently to lift the listener higher than the sun as best it can without assistance from substances. It is the perfect psyche record, laid back and dreamy with swirling synths and a cosmic guitar solo. On the B-side of the disc the band tackle Van Der Graff Generator's "Afterwards" and manage to put their own stamp on the song quite nicely.

I also should mention the sumptuous packaging of this single, which goes to illustrate the care and attention to detail that FdM put into its releases. The record sleeve is like a mini-album cover rather than the usual single "bag" (as the industry refer to them). It is printed on high quality board stock, and even has a spine printed with the artist, title and record label details, just like you'd expect on an LP record. The artwork on the cover in this instance is a 3D image of the sun courtesy of NASA and a pair of red/blue lensed 3D glasses is included with the record inside the sleeve, along with a fold out poster of the 3D cover art. The record itself sits in an inner sleeve (nice to have one of those on a single!) and is pressed on coloured vinyl. My copy is a bright yellow/orange colour, but I know that a translucent lilac was also available. I think I prefer the colour of the copy that I have; it fits in better with the artwork and theme of the record's title track. But whatever... I told you it was a sumptuous package.

I believe that FdM quite remarkably still have a few copies left of this single. If you like psyche music, I can't recommend it heartily enough, so get yourself over to the FdM website and order yourself a copy.

Permanent Clear Light, by the way, have just released their debut album, "Beyond These Things". At the moment it is available on CD and as a download, but I am holding out on buying a copy so far as I have heard whispers from PCL guitarist Markku Helin that a vinyl edition may be in the pipeline. The album includes a version of the song on the single reviewed here, the album version being titled "Higher than the Sun - Astral Travel" so I'm hoping it's an extended version with added psychedlic elements!

The Conny Plank re-Work sessions

2013, Grönland Records, 12GRON123

A1: Eurythmics - Take Me To Your Heart (Popnoname Remix)
A2: Moebius & Plank - Infiltration (Walls Remix)
B1: NEU! - Für Immer (Eye/Boredoms Remix)
B2: Eurythmics - Le Sinistre (Kreidler Remix)

This was a Record Store Day purchase. It's a 12" EP featuring four tracks that have been reworked by the late legendary German record producer and audio engineer, Conny Plank. This was on my list of records to look out for on Record Store Day last month. I was referring to my list whilst asking the proprietor of Tangled Parrot in Carmarthen, Wales, which titles he had in stock. Seeing the list in my hand he commented that he had the Conny Plank record in stock and did I want it. "Oh yes please," I answered and grabbed the record as he passed it over and added it to my growing pile of purchases without actually looking at it.

When I got home, I saw that the Conny Plank record contained two songs by The Eurythmics. Had I seen this in the shop I probably wouldn't have bought it as I am no particular fan of The Eurythmics, not being overly fond of Annie Lennox's voice (and if you ask why, just listen to "There Must Be An Angel". I really can't be dealing with that kind of over-the-top singing with too many notes crammed in to each syllable).

However, on playing the record and listening to it several times over, it soon became the favourite of all my Record Store Day purchases. The Eurythmics tracks are both excellent, Lennox's voice is nicely understated and they fit in nicely with the two more "krautrock" style pieces. The version of "Für Immer" by NEU! (one of my very favourite acts) feels as if it has been broken down into its component parts and then re-built in an enirely new shape. And why not? If I want to listen to the original version, I can always play "NEU! 2". "Infiltration", the Moebius and Plank piece (Conny Plank himself along with Dieter Moebius, best known for his work with Cluster and Harmonia) feels like it's going to be a weird ambient instrumental piece to start with but soon develops into the most incredibly hypnotic "kraut" vibe.

So yeah, it's a great record and one which I'm so pleased that I bought. It's just as well I didn't see the tracklisting when I was in the shop as my Eurythmics prejudices would have gotten the better of me. I now think that perhaps I've judged them too harshly and that I should discover more of their non-hit single work.

An introduction - my life of record collecting

My name is Gavin Wilson. I am no stranger to the world of blogging, and as such have been running the world's first and longest running guitar blog. As you might guess from that, I am a guitarist and a musician recording under the name of Spurious Transients. Earlier this year I signed a recording contract with nanoBOX records and I am currently engaged in recording my first album. It's always been my ambition to release my own record. Whilst a CD release would be nice, I would really like to have my work released on vinyl.

There's just something about vinyl. As a medium for music it has to be the ultimate. Downloads have no soul - it's like you're just downloading music as software rather than an artefact in its own right. CDs are not a lot better. I don't think the CD ever succeeded as a replacement for the vinyl record, as the propanganda tried to tell us in the 1980s. If anything the CD was a replacement for the audio cassette, complete with plastic boxes, titchy artwork, and even recordability.

Vinyl offered the real musical experience. The covers were works of art in themselves. You had inner sleeves with lyrics and/or other information. Then there was the whole craze for coloured vinyl records, picture discs, shaped discs. Sure, it was all marketing, but it made the vinyl record so much more collectable, so much more tactile as an object, and - damn it - so much more FUN!

I remember first walking into record shops in the late 1970s, soon after the punk explosion, just when mainstream vinyl started getting really interesting. There were records all over the walls, 7" singles and 12" LPs, colour vinyls, picture discs, and racks full of all sorts of records. It was incredible just to browse through them all and drink it all in. I remember when I first discovered the 12" single. The concept of it just blew my mind... it's a single but on a 12" record! I thought the idea was madness to start with, but I soon discovered the potential behind the format. I just loved hanging out in record shops back in those days, they were the coolest places. Come the CD age, all the atmosphere had gone.

I've been collecting records since the later 1970s. In the 1980s I gave in to the lure of the CD - I'd moved away from the family home and it was quite frankly easier to build up a new stereo system with a CD player - it was more for convenience than anything else to start with (which ties in neatly with my cassette analogy). I now have a collection of hundreds of CDs - I've not counted them to be honest, I think there must be way over 1,000 - but more recently I've gone back to buying vinyl records again. I think that came about, ironically, because of the dreaded iPod! I'd been importing all my CDs into iTunes to play on the iPod, and then I turned my attention to vinyl records that I had never re-bought on CD and I started converting those over to MP3s via a turntable with a USB connection. Then I actually started buying a few limited edition vinyl records, playing them once and converting them to MP3s, perhaps burning off a CD copy as well.

But now I'm finding I like to buy most of my new music on vinyl - and I like to listen back to it on vinyl as well rather than digitising it first as I had been doing for the iPod. To my ears I just prefer the sound. Of course, my re-kindled interest has been bolstered by limited edition vinyl-only releases such as those of the excellent Fruits De Mer label.

I think part of the reason I was swayed by CDs in the late 1980s was that in the 1970s and 80s vinyl records were churned out in their thousands, but quality control was very poor. I seemed to be forever taking records back to the shops because they were warped, or they skipped, jumped, or were scratched. Today, vinyl manufacturers seem to have gotten their act together. The best quality virgn vinyl is no longer only reserved for classical music only with "popular" music being pressed on inferior recycled vinyl. We now get decent quality vinyl, better pressings, proper quality control - all no doubt because vinyl is now more "niche" with some titles being pressed in very limited editions from as low as 100 copies up to say 2,000 copies.

So, if you've read through all this rambling, I thank you for your perserverence and patience. On this blog I want to share with you some of my vinyl purchases. I shall review records, and share with you recommendations of cool records that are out there. I'm also going to be dipping into my record collection and looking at some long forgotten gems and a few classics too.

I expect I'll even include the occasional CD too, as much as I'd like to focus on vinyl 100%.

Please stay tuned for more...