Slide Guitar, Glide Sitar

The music that we make

Will heal all our mistakes and lead us

The music that we hear

Is always standing near to feed us

Morcheeba ‘The Music That We Make (Moog Island)’

There’s too much music knocking around isn’t there?*  Try as one may and I have tried damn hard at times, you can’t buy it all.  There are plenty of bands that I like a track, or two by and have mentally filed in the check-them-out-later-after-I’ve-bought-everything-by-Sabbath-ever-drawer.   It’s not their fault; it’s not them, it’s me.

So here’s a post about two of them, conveniently** situated in the M section of my children’s inheritance.

So let’s take Morcheeba as our case study.  A late 90’s act that never quite fitted into any neat genre hole, which is always a definite plus for me.  They were variously labelled as downtempo, trip hop, chillout, Zen carpet … you get the picture^.  For me their sound reminded more of the Beastie Boys noodling around with Hammonds and guitars in a relaxed mood, more than anything else.  They had a good sound and in Skye Edwards a really good, soulful vocalist.

I just always meant to check them out further.

Ah well, what I did get by them (as well as the quite excellent Tape Loop on … (coughs) … CD) were promo copies of their Trigger Hippie and The Music That We Hear (Moog Island). 

Trigger Hippie states a good case for the band, built around beats but also some rather great slide guitar / glide sitar.  ‘Trigger Hippie (Extended Mix)’ is the jewel in the peach here.  Definitely a late night track, it just hits exactly the right mellow groove from the first second the needle hits the groove.  What a gorgeous voice. 

The 12″ features ‘Trigger Hippie (The Hipstrumental)’, which I could just listen to on a loop for hours and ‘Trigger Hippie (Live At the Mackie) an extended mix, which sounds very ‘live in the studio’ with some absolutely great wah-wah guitar and organ parts – the Beastie Boys would have been very proud to have owned this jam I reckon.  I need to MP3-ize this for my commute immediately. 

The Music That We Hear (Moog Island) is a retooling of ‘Moog Island’ from Morcheeba’s debut album.  I prefer the more sultry original, over the poppier re-release, but that’s completely irrelevant anyway because the 12″ I have here is techno dude Arthur Baker’s remixes.  The record does not tell you what they are called but a bit of research tells you that they are ‘The Music That We Hear (Moog Island) (Arthur Baker’s Blowout Express The Music Mix)’ and the B-side is the yadda-yadda-yadda ‘Dub Mix’. 

It’s good enough too, it sounds to me like every bar, club did that was artfully dark and aiming for sultry back in about ’97.   The sort of thing you would dance with a girl wearing a tight sweater and a big white hair clip to^^.  It is all fine, but a bit too polite for me.

Lastly, for a change of scene and pace let’s head to a certain ex colony of ours for Moist Push.  Yet another DJ promo I was sent, this time back in ’94.  I knew absolutely nothing about this lot until I looked them up just now, they never happened over here in the UK at all.  They got labelled grunge-lite and ignored.  Okay, so based solely on ‘Push’ there is a kernel of truth in that, but it is a good tuneful track with a very good guitar solo.  Both dance remixes here, by the usually excellent Youth, are poop. 

So this is the paragraph that, when I’ve finished deciding what goes in it, will neatly sum up the disparate listening experiences above, link it all back to the opening paragraph and preferably the post title, before ending with a witticism.

Awesome, eh? or will this post just be one you quite like, stick on a shelf for 22 years and then forget to buy an LP by?

911 Down.

PS:  Pissed off.  I thought I had just invented the ‘glide sitar’ thing out of my own head.  When I was looking at different versions on Discogs just now, what do I see? they only called one of their mixes (which I have never seen/heard before) ‘The Glide Sitar Mix’.  Damnit! It’s like they did a cover version of my thoughts, 21 years ago.

*that’s one of those rhetorically thingy questions, like what angry lady friends use; do not be fooled there isn’t a choice of answers here.

**and, this time, uncontroversially.

^oh and I totally made ‘Zen carpet’ up as a genre.

^^although why I would be wearing a tight sweater and a big white hair clip is another matter entirely!