I am a big fan of the piano, but, to be fair, it’s a pretty ubiquitous instrument, and I can’t think of a style of music that hasn’t employed it at least once.
This mix attempts to encompass any music featuring piano from the last sixty years. The opening track was released in 1962, and this mix runs right the way up the present day.
This is a follow up to the All Lauren Bacall Mix that I put together back in 2019.
The Lauren Bacall as a label doesn’t appear to be in operation any longer…..
However, this closure has now slowed down Grant’s prolific work-rate – in this short space of time he’s released no less than three albums across the Dukes Distribution and Lobster Theremin labels, plus six white label EPs on the GRANT label. Naturally I have bought them all on sight, and that’s largely how this mix was constructed.
As someone who is very much a life-long fan of drum & bass, it’s nice to hear that Grant is clearly also appreciative of the genre; the opening tracks borrows heavily from PFM’s classic Good Looking Records release, The Western….and the final track in the mix features dialogue from Metalheadz chief Goldie….
So, this is the first mixtape of 2022, and it’s pretty broad, as always.
After a brief musical interval from a film to open the mix, I’ve kicked off with some classic jungle from Primary Source. This record has a lot of significance for me because I first heard it on a pirate radio show in 1994, played by Chaos & Julia Set, and I guess I was barely a year into jungle music, at the time; this one, in particular, has a very nice edit of the well-known Apache break.
The Twin Peaks Archive has some amazing material from Angelo Badalamenti, some of it taken from the film Fire Walk With Me, which is one of my favourite David Lynch movies. This collection of cues from the series & film seems to have vanished from the internet; I guess I was lucky to snap it up when it was available.
Later we find the brilliant “Bare” from Dustmite & Kuru, part of the future garage sound that seems to have stalled, a little. This was used in the excellent Photek DJ Kicks mix from around 2012, but it’s taken me ages to find the digital of this individual track.
There’s a dash of film scores and ambient music from out of Japan, courtesy of Kenji Kawai, followed later by Hiroshi Yoshimura. These have been very difficult to track down, but since the introduction of Spotify, I feel that it’s my duty to dig a bit deeper for music that’s not so widely available.
I end the mix with a duo of pretty loud, unapologetic, emo-metal tracks from Placebo, followed by Savages. This is obviously a bit of a diversion from what I normally select for this podcast, but I like to keep you on your toes!
When I first started collecting records, it was because of an interest in early hardcore stuff from around 1991 / 1992.
Not long after that, I switched to jungle / drum & bass, which was pretty ground-breaking around the mid-nineties. This mix, like the one I did three years ago, is dedicated to the more ethereal, atmospheric sound championed by DJs like LTJ Bukem; however, I’ve tried to avoid the Good Looking back catalogue here, as it’s a well trodden path; there were plenty of other labels and artists with their own take on that sound – so here’s a second mix to celebrate more of those unsung heroes of atmospheric drum & bass…
This month’s podcast is dedicated to library music – music typically written by session musicians, specifically for use in TV or film, rather than for public consumption. A lot of these records are now highly collectable and hard to find.
Labels such as trunk records and Anthology are doing a great job in unearthing the masters and reissuing some of this great music, but there is a vast cache of it yet to be discovered; various YouTube channels are now leading the way in digitising it so it can be rediscovered.
Alan Hawkshaw is one of the unsung heros of British library music; as well as contributing hundreds of pieces of music to Bruton & KPM, he also composed famous TV themes such as Countdown and Grange Hill. His Daughter, Kirsty, now records with the some of the most highly regarded artists in the drum & bass scene, namely Paradox, Seba, and Blu Mar Ten.
1. John Cameron – Half Forgotten Daydreams – taken from the album Voices In Harmony – KPM – buy 2. Pierre Dutour – Ressac – Taken from the album Aquarius – Patchwork – buy 3. Showcase Production Music – Bright Spot – buy 4. The Roger Webb Sound – Moon Bird – taken from the album Vocal Patterns – Music De Wolfe – buy 5. Salix Alba – Les Tueurs Fous – Pathé – buy 6. Alan Hawkshaw – Sky 1 – taken from the album Frontiers Of Science – Bruton Music – buy 7. The Baronet – Le Téléphone – Disques Flèche – buy 8. Brian Bennett – Thoughtful – taken from the album Drama Montage – Bruton Music – buy 9. Carlo Savini – I’m Speaking About… – taken from the album I’m Speaking About…Parliamo Di… – CAM – buy 10. Hareton Savanini – Nao Podes Fugir Do Teu Destino – taken from the album A Virgem De Saint Tropez – Fermata – buy 11. Les Hurdle & Frank Ricotti – Dissolves – Taken from the compilation Unusual Sounds – Anthology Recordings – buy 12. Les Hurdle & Frank Ricotti – Seabird – taken from the album Soft Illusions – Bruton Music – buy 13. Noel Mirol – Very Cool – Taken from the album Vol. 4 – Gaumont Musique – buy 14. Rick Baker – Canal Boat Ride – Taken from the album Pastoral / Romantic Orchestral & Electronic – Chappell – buy 15. W Karolak & Z Kalemba – Fever – Taken from the album A Softly Touch, and Go! – Amplitude – buy 16. Massimo Catalano – Foggy Night – taken from the album Life Is a Trumpet – Costanza Records – buy 17. Joel Vandroogenbroeck & Mark Monsen – Group Meditation – Taken from the compilation Unusual Sounds – Anthology Recordings – buy
Back in 2011, electro legends Dopplereffekt played a live set at Bloc, a festival hosted in Minehead, which is only a stones throw away from where I live.
I’m very sad to have missed it, because, as anyone who regularly follows the podcast will know, I am a huge fan of Drexciya and all the related Gerald Donald projects.
There are various live sets available to peruse online, but, for me, this set from 2011, which occurred during a relatively quiet period for the group, really feels like the perfect performance, and one that I return to on such a regular basis, that I felt the need to post it here.
Below is my attempt to collate the track-listing. This can be hard because it seems that Dopplereffekt regularly include unknown tracks and remixes in their live sets.
Title: Dopplereffekt Live @ Bloc – Recorded March 2011 Duration: 00:55:55 File Size: 141 MB
Approximate Track-listing:
0:00 – ????? 2:40 – Hyperelliptic Surfaces (alternate version) – from Calabai Yau Space 8:16 – Unknown 10:13 – Non Vanishing Harmonic Spinor (alternate version) – From Calabai Yau Space 16:57 – Dyson Sphere (alternate version) – from Festival Electrónica En Abril • 2003-2012 21:00 – Unknown 26:27 – Unknown 30:05 – Unknown 32:25 – Unknown 34:30 – Unknown 40:25 – Unknown 44:20 – Unknown 48:10 – Unknown 52:13 – Tetrahymena – From Tetrahymena single
Cliff Martinez – The West End – Taken from the Traffic OST – TVT Soundtracks – buy
Vangelis – Memories Of Green – Taken from the Bladerunner OST – Eastwest – buy
Malibu – Lost At Sea – Taken from the EP One Life – Joyful Noise – buy
Endless Melancholy – Caught In a Memory – taken from the album Perception Of Everything – Sound In Silence – buy
Sharon Van Etten – Hands – Taken from the album Remind Me Tomorrow – jagjaguwar – buy
Cliff Martinez – My Name On a Car – Taken from the Drive OST – Sony – buy
Dopplereffekt – Gestalt Intelligence – Taken from the album Cellular Automata – Leisure System – buy
Robert Owens & Photek – Things That Make You Feel Good (Club Mix) – Amato International – buy
Brian Eno & David Byrne – Strange Overtones – Taken from the album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today – Todomundo – buy
Hareton Salvanini – Só – taken from the album S.P.73 – Continental – buy
Astrud Gilberto – Once I Loved – taken from The Astrud Gilberto Album – Verve – buy
I’ve been into DJ Shadow since the release of Endtroducing in 1996, but it’s never felt as though it would fit anywhere in a previous podcast; however, I’ve attempted it here – rather than take something from that hugely successful album, I’ve taken a trio of tracks from a single released two years prior to Endtroducing, the Preemptive Strike compilation, which was initially only available as an import in the UK, and lastly Meiso, (A DJ Krush album for which he appeared as a guest)…..
After that we go straight into brand new music from Sufjan Stevens, who has returned this year with a real left-turn from his previous album – Die Happy is a full on electro track with a pretty emotional vocal hook…
Fugue, by Contrapoint, is one of those mid-nineties detroit techno records which now changes hands for a serious sum of cash. There are rumours that it’ll be repressed but that hasn’t materialised yet…Good luck finding a copy!
After that we hit a trio of classic drum & bass vinyls, two from the Good Looking camp, and then a curious anomaly from Dillinja’s back catalogue – I always thought the drum programming here was pretty unusual compared to everything he’d done before and since. Discogs lists it as a Lemon D single but there’s no such marking on the vinyl, and Juno listed it as Dillinja so that’s the artist I’m going with!
We then move into material more common with the podcast, a nice array of ambient music and film scores.
Last month I stumbled across a Photek record I didn’t already own! It seems ridiculous, but this one, a collaboration with the wonderful Robert Owens, was released somewhere after Solaris and before his Photek Productions label kicked in – and completely passed me by. It’s a cool slice of house music which sits nicely alongside the owens-collaborations from Solaris. Photek later re-worked the vocals on the Form & Function volume II track Things, which is, without doubt my favourite track from that album.
We conclude this month’s podcast with a pair of heart-breaking Brazilian bossa-nova songs, from Hareton Salvanini and then Astrud Gilberto – both hugely moving and epic pieces of music from the late 60s / early 70s – a magical era for Bossa Nova music, which is fast becoming my genre of choice.
The Sessions Podcast 