Swing Like A Bitch

I’m happy today so let’s have some beauty.

I got my hot hands on a Café Del Mar: Cuatro Sampler 12″ on 24 July 1997* and liked it a lot. Two tracks, 22 minutes of music** and a whole lot of bliss.

Some context: the original Café Del Mar was a beachside bar in Ibiza that became famous in the early 90’s for DJ Jose Padilla’s sunset sets, which then spawned a series of Balearic ambient chill-out music compilations – that rapidly declined in quality and turned a rather niche pleasantness into the type of corporate aural mulch you suffer as hold music when you have to call your bank these days; ‘Ear dung’ as our family call it.

As people didn’t make this stuff on purpose/to mass order back then the early compilations were a magpie-like treat as all manner of artists had tracks remixed, extended and mellowed by Padilla and chums; it was where I first heard Penguin Café Orchestra for example. Mrs 1537 was a devotee of the sound for a couple of years.

At its best it was a nice musical moment, sunsets, sandcastles, donkey rides and ice-creams, or whatever folk did on that island^. Café Del Mar: Cuatro Sampler is a great artefact too.

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Mounting the B-side first we encounter, John Martyn on ‘Sunshine’s Better’, a stunning remix of it by Talvin Singh lasting no less than 12:53. I don’t know the original track at all and I like this mix so much that I would be very loathe to hear it now.

‘Sunshine’s Better (Talvin Singh 12″ Mix)’ is a gorgeous, unhurried rendition of a sympathetic, healing sunset in aural form. It is unabashedly gentle and unashamedly soothing, which are not qualities in large supply in the 1537.

Martyn’s mellifluous curly growl is the lead instrument, backed by gentle synth washes, meandering sax and some subtle tabla. It’s all pleasingly sparse and imperfect in the way that only someone who has Really Lived’s voice can ever be.

The lyrics are a typical Martyn-esque treat, pre-emptively charting the course of a relationship through uncertainty, ecstasy, off into resignation and a regretful world weariness. The utterly incongruous phrase ‘swing like a bitch’ rings through.

I play this a lot.

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Flip it over and we get Wasis Diop ‘No Sant’, a drum and bass take on a Senegalese folk/pop track. To give it its full title ‘No Sant – Featuring Lena Fiagbe (Flytronix 12″ Remix)’.

The remixer(s) jettison almost everything from the original, as far as I can tell, keeping the vocals only (Lena Fiagbe has a gorgeous voice). It is absolutely bloody brilliant too, right up there with the best drum and bass I have ever heard.

‘No Sant’ starts out sounding a lot like Pink Floyd Animals, evoking an English pastoral, before sliding all manner of treats our way – a diamond sharp D&B rhythm, chasing flutes and trumpets, slices of psych soul orchestration and sax appeal. The bass really kicks in after a few minutes and counterintuitively lifts everything. The joy here is very much in the 9:27 journey.

Which makes it all the more frustrating that this version does not appear to exist anywhere in the aether. Only the truncated version above.

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Over the years, because it is the only vinyl source of both tracks^* and scarcity value, my Café Del Mar: Cuatro Sampler has become worth quite a bit; which is a shame because otherwise I would charge you all with seeking it out immediately to put a glowing disc of sunshine in your lives.

Bliss.

1290 Down.

*or 10,266 days ago, as I am sure you will all have worked out immediately.

**or 1.18 early Van Halen LPs worth, as I am sure you will all have worked out immediately.

^can you tell I’ve never been/would rather die than suffer all those wankers?^^

^^yes, yes, I know it would have been a beautiful scene for about 3 months in 1991.

^*the album when it was released also only had short versions of both tracks on it as well.