Here's another one that sounds like absolute rubbish on first listen but hey you can't stop playing it then bam the genius hits you. Hideous vaudeville novelty with awesome honky tonk piano. Warning: Absolute toe-tapper will have doing what you believe to be The Charleston within seconds. Also It'll get stuck in your head for the rest of the day and maybe the rest of your life.
Now gimme dat gimme dat gimme gimme gimme dat ding!
The tune: Infectious singalong 70s pop, wee bit funky, genius words sung with folky lullaby melody and harmonies, crowd chorus and pre-glam take it down now hand clap delirium.
There's something about Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep that makes you not hate it for some reason and then it eventually it becomes embedded in your brain forever. I mean some have called it a moronic pop crime but they didn't mean it as THE compliment that it is, yet as an aesthetic value a moronic pop crime is highly appealing. As an achievement this is one of the great moronic pop crimes.
A pop masterpiece.
*And there's more than meets the eye. Emma points out there was something upsetting about this song when she was small. The thought of your momma or poppa mysteriously being "far far away" was horrifying for a child. The fact that these traumatic lyrics of neglect & abandonment were sung in a chirpy... er... sorry, upbeat manner adds to the sinister tone.
The first song I recall liking. I was just over 3 years old but fuck me it was number one here for eight weeks. So I guess I heard it a gazillion times and maybe it was an involuntary decision in music taste at the time but I gotta say as a cranky old fucker this is a top tune, a pop-rock banger baby! Not a bad choice for your first favourite song.
Also gotta love a jumper with your band name on it... just not enough jumpers in pop music anymore. The day jumpers stopped being worn in rock might be the day it all turned to shit.
[1974]
Possibly even better though was their number 12 hit from the previous year, (It's) Magic.
State of the art pop-rock finery.
The sound of the 70s.
Toppermost musos! Looking into my crystal ball I can see a future for them in a little up and coming group called The Alan Parsons Project.
All the melody, rockin' 70s gee-tars played with a sixpence man, strings, funky wah wahs and hand claps galore: All luscious!
Came across this the other day. A bittersweet tune. Seven years later and it's only had 2169 views. Somewhere between Dave Graney, Jarvis, Galaxie 500's echo-chamber and all those other lost indie singer/songwriters you've forgotten the names of from the 80s and 90s. They call him the southend troubadour: The Essex Riviera's hardest working musician.
Gateway To The North - Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan [2020]
"It is an endeavour to provide a balanced town in which the motor car has certain privileges, public transport has certain privileges and people, perhaps most of all, have the privilege of walking about in in safety from their homes, as far as the children are concerned, to their schools and the parents to their... (audio dubbed out/washed out into oblivion but I've pieced the missing bit together) ... social facilities, to the shopping centre and so on"
This was the first thing WRNTDP did, a year before his debut album, and a great synchronicity of sound and vision it was. If you thought his music was a bit, you know, BOC-ish, well his very first video featured footage from the actual Film Board Of Canada where the two great Scots got their name.
Runcorn New Town [1974]
Here's the 1974 documentary from the Film Board Of Canada. The town planners and social engineers are at pains to deny any sort of utopianism going on.
Check out the proto-hauntological closing credit music at 37:32. It's eerily dystopian with fx laden analogue synthesisers emitting a plethora of dark tones .
A Scarfolk Council Public Information Message
Just outside of the village is Lower Frontbottom.
Don't forget children are dangerous.
72 diseases.
Remember never accept sweets, cigarettes or alcohol from a child.
For further information please reread.
The View From Halton Castle - Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan [2023]
The funny thing is when Colin added guitar to his usual synthetic formula he created his best record. It's a shame then that it was only an EP. I'm sure I'm not the only one waiting for him to head in this direction again on a future recording.
The chic double exposures and kaleidoscopic fx make this video pretty psychedelic and once again he's using footage from the Film Board Of Canada Runcorn New Town (1974) documentary to great affect.
Open Green Spaces - Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan [2025]
The true sound of the new towns where the idealogical utopian optimism sours and the green belt becomes just as bleak and brutal as the urban spaces of the derelict old town. The sound of where the darkest shit happens and the safety you were sold becomes a lie. It's grim up north.
Bucolic jam of the highest order. Featuring the tune Butterflies Bees & Other Insects by Vic Mars. The video though mainly features birds.
Another prime slice of bucolica from Vic Mars. This video featuring Walking On A Bearing which is another tune that turned up a few years later on his 2015 LP The Land And The Garden on Clay Pipe Music.
The video's got ye olde hiking in the countryside. There's cows, roads, ruins, rolling hills, a bus, a village and a headland on the bay. Somewhere in Britain in the 60s or 70s I presume. Lovely.
The Road Through The Village - Vic Mars [2015]
More of the same probably from the same source as the previous footage. All manner of out of the way stuff. Some of these old clips seem to be older than the 70s. We get vintage images of canals, birds, boats, fishing, a salvation army band, babies eating butties, eldery folks, gardens, tea rooms, scones with jam and cream, ponds, parks, churches, fishies, ducks, even a bloody horse and cart, flora & fauna, the woods, couples on bicycles, quaint cars, a ye olde hardware shoppe and a tranquil sunset.
The Land And The Garden - Vic Mars [2015]
All this lovely music was apparently created on a mellotron and recorded on tape. Are all the flutes, guitars, dulcimers and glockenspiels synthesized too, I dunno. Mars is influenced by all sorts of things like memories, meadows, kids telly soundtracks by legends Freddie Philips & Vernon Elliot, ye olde composers like Vaughan Williams & Gustav Holst, Vintage British Railways posters, library music, specific geographical locations, early ambient, Virginia Astley, nostalgia for a lost England, school music etc.. All similar ingredients to hautological acts yet there's nothing disconcertingly sinister or particularly eerie about it. The picturesque homespun warmth of these graceful pastoral jams is a pure delight.
The Land And The Garden is a deeply personal work based on the childhood memories of Mars' native Herefordshire composed while he was homesick in a foreign country. It evokes an idyllic time in the 70s and 80s when he would explore the liminal spaces at the edge of town of where the village meets the countryside and beyond.
Villages, Hamlets & Fetes - Vic Mars [2015]
Step right up, step right up every tune's a winner...
Wall Of Ivy - Vic Mars [2015]
In a way those above ye olde nostalgia videos detract from this charming music. I prefer just listening to the album, it's a whole lot more than a cheap nostalgia rush. The beauty of this music doesn't have to be tied to a specific time and place. I mean I'm enjoying it here and now in my autumnal Aussie backyard. Having said that this one's a bit Trumpton-y.
Genius succinct twenty second song from Brian Cant and Freddie Philips.
Chatter chatter
Have you heard the latest gossip...
Not a word to anyone
But do you know the...
Natter natter
Well, my dear, you know
You could have knocked me over with a feather
I was shocked
Urban Hype - A Trip To Trumpton [1992]
Trumpton samples, breakbeats, anthemic pianos and ruff rave riffage. Hardcore raving goodness or as one mush in the comments says "cheesy chart shite". I mean it's hardly very hard hardcore but its a whole lotta fun. Some called it Toytown Techno or Chartcore.
The opening credits for the first episode of Grange Hill from 1978. Featuring the unmistakable sounds of Alan Hawkshaw.
Apropos of nothing Emma put on season 5 of Grange Hill from 1982 after tea the other night. Not seen these episodes since 1982 but I probably watched it up until the late 80s. Maybe the ABC stopped showing it, if my memory serves. Anyway surprisingly some episodes were still quite watchable, then again some were horrendous and infuriatingly unwatchable. Mainly what makes it interesting though is the time capsule aspect indicating how much our freedoms have been eroded since I was a kid. I mean in Starmer's Britain some of these scallywags would be getting a visit from the the fuzz because of words.
Alan Hawkshaw - Chicken Man [1976]
Feem tune gold.
An absolute banger and all time classic British telly theme tune.
The jolly bouncing funkiness of it all is so infectious, exuberant and full of cheeky swagger.
Make no mistake this isn't just a great library music or top theme tune for the telly, it's one of the greatest pieces of music of the 70s!
So the Grange Hill theme came from a 1976 music library record from Themes International Music called Rock Comedy.
Fun Fact: Hawkshaw played keyboards on Donna Summer's classic 1977 LP Once Upon A Time.
Write the theme tune, sing the theme tune.
Opening credits for Minder. Funnily enough Dennis Waterman didn't write the theme tune at all. It was co-written by his Mrs, Patricia Waterman and some other bloke.
Dennis Waterman - I Could Be So Good For You [1979]
Absolute time capsule gold of a video. Filmed at Church Street Market London before the influx. Waterman seems very strange or maybe he's just had one pint too many. Worth watching for the lady with the dog sequence and the bit where he's sleazing onto a saucy parking inspector... so much awkward... everybody seems to hate him. They don't make 'em like this any more folks.
Back in the days when there was comedy.
Comedy: It's funny. You might like it.
You haven't got long to live you know. Go on give it a try.
Opening and closing credits to Only Fools and Horses.
John Sullivan - Only Fools And Horses Theme [1982]
Here's a video that prints the lyrics which sheds some light on what they're on about.
Stick a pony in your pocket
?
*Reliably informed by the Welsh lady in residence that a pony is 20 quid.
Many think this is Rodney singing. I just assumed it was Chas n Dave. Anyway it turns out Only Fools creator/writer John Sullivan wrote the tune intending for Chas n Dave to sing it but they couldn't make it on the day so he just sang it himself.
John Sullivan - Hooky Street [1982]
This clears up what some of those lyrics are.
Mush
?
*Emma tells me a mush a dude
The end of an Only Fools And Horses episode is great because you get this, the best closing credits song in the history of telly.
I always assumed this was some sort of minor hit because I heard it on Melbourne's airwaves on 3RRR and 3PBS back in the day but maybe it was just on those British obsessed specifically Anglophile shows I used to listen to. And I recall the genius pop triumph Back In Denim getting in the 1992 Melody Maker best albums of the year chart but...
Anyway there's a very good book about Felt/Denim/Go-Cart Mozart main man Lawrence that came out last year written by Will Hodgkinson. So maybe he's finally having a resurgence and will get be famous in his 60s. Can you have a resurgence if you didn't really get a surgence.
Denim - Back In Denim [1992]
Stomping glam choon with massive crowd chorus worthy of a terrace chant. Before Suede and Oasis jumped on the bandwagon. Legendary.
Denim - Song For Europe [1992]
Lawrence and the boys and lady some of whom were Glitter Band veterans on Vic & Bob's Popdoodledandy. This was a 1992 pilot for channel 4 for a show that was never commissioned. The hilarious episode didn't got aired until 2012 and is now considered a cult lost item in Vic & Bob lore. There you go, you learn something every day.
Denim - Summer Smash [1997]
I didn't even know they did anything after Back In Denim. I mean I thought music was done by 97 so I wasn't really paying attention. All the great 90s genres were finished: Shoegaze, Grunge, lo-fi, ambient, hardcore rave, jungle, techno and whatever were over. Post-rock, trip-hop and brit-pop were starting to get way too fucking boring and I wasn't into tech-step or speed garage until later when I realised I had been wrong.
This tune though coulda been a an absolute summer smash to go along with Bittersweet Symphony and Tubthumping before the teenybopper-ization increased its stranglehold on the second half of the 90s. However that was not to be. The story goes that this Radio 1 single of the week was cancelled just after promotional copies had been sent out due to the death of Lady Diana. It was considered that mourners may have thought the title was in poor taste at that moment in time.
Mozart Estate - Relative Poverty [2022]
Lawrence is still a card and this is funny stuff.
Come On sing it!
"I'm living in relative poh-hov-erty
I'm living on a tenner a day
Goodness gracious
a tenner a day!"
Brilliant video for a brilliant tune directed by Jesus And Mary Chain's bass player Douglas Hart and Valerie Philips. Someone in the comments neatly calls it ChaznDaveWave. Actually the comments are onto it: Syd Barrett, The Kinks, Marc Bolan, Chaz n Dave, wrote the theme tune sang the theme tune - Minder, Grange Hill & Only Fools And Horses.
Those upbeat bouncy synths redolent of British TV sports themes and library albums put this in a zone similar to hauntological acts like Position Normal and Belbury Poly. Actually I've always thought the first Denim LP could have been a precursor to all that stuff too maybe was it just the track The Osmonds.
Mozart Estate - Electric Rock n Roll
This one's just from a coupla months ago. A revival of of a twenty year old Go-Kart Mozart tune. I wanna go down town tonight to the disco like I'm 23 years old again.
Girl, I feel good now So put your red dress on Oh, you look so cool Nails and make-up done
Oh we're all gonna go downtown tonight Oh we're all gonna go downtown tonight
All those nights she danced to electric rock and roll All those nights she danced to electric rock Electric rock and roll
Girl, oh you taste good Oh you turn me on Move to the DJ I'm gonna shoot my gun
A very windy wind recording. Lots of wind. Squalling wind. Not just the wind though, all the the things around being affected by the wind like abandoned buildings, trees, road signs, fences, grass and misc. other items.
Antarctica [2015]
Chilly winds captured in Antarctica. The sound of the howling wind during a blizzard battering the recording equipment and the base camp building causing all sorts of reverberations, drones, low frequency vibrations and general sonic havoc.
Five years later: The Scenic Route is a splendid album that still holds up which is pretty good for a retro faux library LP. Lush downtempo electronic library jams. Exquisite arrangements and melodies take this beyond mere library muzak recreations. These are sublime luxurious instrumentals, smooth, sweeping, soulful and cinematic.
For cruising or daydreaming in any kind of weather at any time of day...
Nice...
This cover designed by Paul Flack of Trunk Records fame is excellent, appealing on so many levels. So evocative of idyllic seaside drives. Then there's the whole fantasy of living the lighthouse life...
Gee I dunno... you think it was inspired by this 70s library LP cover at all...
This original design was done by Nina Klein for Studio G's 1974 music library Scenic and Romance: Volume 2.
This fascinating documentary from the BBC Archive might put you off your living in a lighthouse fantasy.
Peter Balke [1845?]
Clarkson Stanfield [1836]
A coupla great ye olde paintings with lighthouses in. Also containing boats. I like a very lot.
The all time greatest electronic album nobody ever says is the all time greatest electronic album. The reassuring halcyon loveliness of Wenn der Südwind weht isirresistible.
Veilchenwurzeln - Roedelius [1981]
It's lush, pastoral, sparkling and mildly euphoric. The lightness of touch and unhurried approach is a winning and charming musical strategy.
Mein Freund Farouk - Roedelius [1981]
These gliding breezy melodies all seem so effortless like they always naturally existed it's unimaginable how they were even created.
Auf Leisen Sohlen - Roedelius [1981]
As serene as the delicate glistening of raindrops on leaves in the golden sunlight... idyllic.
Saumpfad - Roedelius [1981]
Somehow he even makes the only vaguely ominous tune on the album just as comforting as the tranquility he usually delights in.
Sonnengeflecht - Roedelius [1981]
Gentle elation evocative of playful childlike innocence...
I don't think this is Artemiev but it might be Simon Preston from a Deutsche Grammophon 14 cd box set compilation Johann Sebastian Bach: The Organ Works. The only Bach albums I have are Switched On Bach,Johannes Passion Version IV (1749) and Matthäus-Passion so I'm no baroque expert and find it tricky navigating classical catalogues. Simon Preston is best known to pop culture plebs for playing some Bach on his organ for the Rollerball (1975) soundtrack.
[1975]
The first 22 minutes and 40 seconds here are the original Aduard Artemiev recordings for the soundtrack of Tarkovsky's 1975 masterpiece Zerkalo aka The Mirror.
Supreme synth-y soft-rock with incredible 80s synthetic violin solo and er... some zither!
How many top 10 hits have a zither in them? Probably only this.
Another one from back in the primary school dayz, although I feel like this popped up in a couple of movies in the 90s/00s and was there a techno cover version, maybe...
Never seen this video or maybe just forgotten it but I guess I probably just thought this was the same group who did I'm Not In Love...
Lyrical sentiments similar to Talk Talk's philosophical bent of getting your shit together/self improvement to make sure you have a good meaningful life.
Now for a journey to Lindisfarne and the sounds of nature on the Holy Island as captured by Chris Watson. Featuring the sea, an array of birds and the wind.
Lamenting The Colours Of Melting Ice - Pan·American & Kramer [2025]
Speaking of peak Labradford. This here is main man Mark Nelson and Lamenting The Colours Of Melting Ice is nostalgic ear candy for me as it reminds me of early Labradford.
Over the last couple of years Mark (Pan·American) has collaborated with Kramer for two fantastic LPs of spaced out dreamy and drifting improvisations occasionally dipping into glowing psychedelic ambient Americana. Shadowy shifting shimmering tones... lovely.
In The Time It Takes To Drown - Pan·American & Kramer [2025]
Absolutely gorgeous post-rock ambient-Americana. The "beautiful like the stars at night" guitars and keyboards are couched in marshmallow-y reverb for a supreme secluded nocturnal atmosphere. Depending on your mood this could be lonesome and melancholic or the sound of serenity found in solitude.
Been watching Adam Curtis' HyperNormalisation (2016) again after also watching Academic Agent's critique of the documentary from the right, sensible centre and centre left. We've all known (well a lot of us) for a bloody long time that the partisan division is a joke, left/right is an obsolete gauge, this fake scam is protecting power and people actually want the same things ie. an end to the hyper-capitalism of, dare I say it, neoliberalism.
There's plenty of Curtis' usual suspects on the soundtrack like Morricone, Eno, Nine Inch Nails, Aphex Twin, Burial et al. But there's also a few less famous artists utilised to great effect in this masterclass of sound design too.
Some of you might know Ragsdale as he's the fella behind Sulk Rooms whose albums have featured in some end of year lists here at CardrossManiac2 anyway Warning Mass is a classic ominous minimal track that moves the atmospheric tones around that then swell into calamitous intensity. It was perfect for the show.
Pye Corner Audio - The Black Mill Video Tape [2012]
This awesome tune popped up which I hadn't heard since Ghost Box released Sleep Games fourteen years ago. Some post-Carpenter hauntological synthwave goodness.
Gavin Miller - Fotograf (Part 2) [2013]
Then there was this excellent eerie track that I didn't know.
worriedaboutsatan - Blank Tape [2016]
Blank Tape is dark, minimal, ambient with a hint of ye olde post-rock. This was a duo featuring Gavin Miller with the unmistakeable touch of Thomas Ragsdale. Incredible spectral electronics.
worriedaboutsatan - All Safe All Well [2015]
This bit of atmospheric minimalism reminiscent of peak Labradford. Shifting tones of gloom.
A prime slice of 70s cosmic synth goodness. There is even a little bit of acoustic guitar and flute here and there. Top Belgian/Spanish kosmische krautrock.
Back in the 90s and 00s I was often tuned into 3MP and Magic 693. 40s, 50s and 60s pop and easy listening. Lovely songs like this all the time on the airwaves. I need a station like these today. Anyway Connie was a good catholic girl of Irish/Italian descent from New York who ended up in Hollywood. She starred in movies and tv, dated Elvis and did this tune. She's still around at the grand old age of 87. The impeccably produced and arranged Sixteen Reasons was a top ten hit in America and Britain in 1960 and it subsequently showed up in David Lynch's 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive.
[1964]
Speaking of easy listening there's a great instrumental version of Sixteen Reasons by Lawrence Welk here on his LP The Golden Millions at 20:19.
An inspired piece of sound collage Americana style where hypnagogia and hauntology deliriously intersect. Ride the creepy ghost train into the American dreams of the past. Fragments of decayed American pop culture are reanimated for a phantasmagoric ye olde carnival revue on Halloween.
Dug out some old Stars Of The Lid cds recently from a scary cobwebby box at the bottom of the cupboard. Twin Peaks and the music of Twin Peaks influenced a lot of 90s artists and groups on Kranky were the most inspired in their influence. Stars Of The Lid were the crème de la crème of the ambient drone contingent of so called "post rock". They weren't particularly popular though none of my friends ever said can I borrow that groovy new Stars Of The Lid cd Tim. I'd love to know the sales figures rankings of early Kranky releases. When they were the coolest underground record label on the planet before signing Godspeed and Low I imagine they didn't shift vast quantities of cds to rival the likes of Fugazi. There is a book I've been meaning to read You're With Stupid writtenby Kranky co-founder Bruce Adams that might shed some some light on this topic. Anyway SOTL are probably known to the kids these days because many of their tracks feature prominently in Adam Curtis Documentaries.
On Music For Twin Peaks Episode #30 we get tenebrous tones and unsettling dark drifting drone-scapes or the eeriest kind. It wouldn't have been out of place if used on the legendary TV show. A fitting musical tribute for Agent Dale Cooper emerging from The Black Lodge after a tumultuous time in the red room with his doppelgänger only to smash his head on a Great Northern Hotel bathroom mirror revealing Bob has deleteriously entered his psyche.
When the cosmic ambient end of hypnagogia became vaporwave. If someone said this was a lost track from peak Oneohtrix Point Never from 15 years ago you'd believe them. The exhilarating shapeshifting sound design here is random and disorienting.
Plunderphonic sound and vision. This warped hazy nostalgia of the 1980s in the 2020s is vaporwave to infinity. If you love surfing videos, garish and smeared neon synthwave video graphics, slow-mo 80s funk and stretched early 90s smooth jazz saxophones then this is for you. Degraded and deformed VHS psychedelia.
One of the best ambient albums from the last ten years. I guess 暗い自然 [Dark Nature] come at ambient from a vaporwave angle but there are sequences here that could have come straight out of the 90s Isolationism era of dark ambient. The recontextualised source material is chopped and slopped, slowed down, put through a hypnagogic echo chamber and into a fog machine creating superior dark ambience and sonic decay. Amongst the cold and murky terrain an eerie and sombre mood descends.
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