The New Cue #400 July 26: Fionn Regan, James Taylor Quartet, Tess Parks, Bill Callahan, Wand, Yannis & The Yaw, Sophie, Sunflower Bean, Pixies, Ghost Dubs, Efterklang

"Just enjoy the gerbil"

Good morning,

Welcome to edition number 400 of The New Cue. 400! Big number, that. It’s the amount of times a day Neil Young talks about why vinyl is better than streaming. A number that Yungblud can’t count to. The average yearly income of a music journalist. How many years it’ll be until the Eras tour concludes. How many times an hour Russell Brand thinks about what it would be like to have sex with himself. 400, a lot!

So thanks very much for being here. It’s a good start. The next step should be to become a paying subscriber if you’re not already. That way you get full access to each and every edition, and we get paid. Mi casa su casa!

Is that the right saying? Who knows, no-one here speaks German. Anyway: onto today’s Recommender shenanigans, kicking off with a mind-blower pick from author Kirk Field. Here’s this week’s playlist:

And here for the Apple Music brigade.

Enjoy the edition – and if you do, spread the word. Maybe that way, we’ll get to make another 400…

Ted, Niall and Chris

---

An Album To Blow Your Mind

Award-winning author and rave raconteur Kirk Field picks an ambient house cult classic.

Kirk Field: “I had a white label but had to sell it when times were hard for £25. The next day Reckless Records in Berwick St had it on the wall for £150!”

Former Mixmag journalist Kirk Field won an ARIA Award for his 2023 book Rave New World: Confessions Of A Raving Reporter, a heady journey into the clubbing scene of the late 80s and early 90s. In the spirit of the era, he’s keeping the party going by taking it on tour for Rave New World: Acid House Cabaret, performing at Edinburgh Fringe next month and then heading across the UK in the autumn. Ticket details are here. https://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/kirk-field-tickets/artist/5461922

Here, Kirk tells us about his love of KLF co-founder Jimmy Cauty’s cosmic ambient house exploration Space.

Space
Space (1990)

“This was originally a collaboration with Alex Paterson and ear marked as The Orb's first album until Jimmy Cauty stormed off with the masters. After replacing Paterson's input, he released the album as a solo project under the name ‘Space’ on KLF Communications in 1990.

The Memorex cassette of ‘Space’ that Cauty gave me when I interviewed him for Mixmag remained inserted in my cassette player for months afterwards. It was all I needed as I returned exhausted, ecstatic and elated from a rave.

It formed the soundtrack to many a back-to-mine session (visually accompanied by Teletubbies with the sound turned down as this was the pre-fractal video era).

As the title suggests, it's a vast sonic voyage through alien worlds, placing the awestruck listener at the forefront of a new frontier; perfect for a new decade and the rave new world I found myself in.

Structurally it's beautifully simple; eight continuous suites each named after a planet which reinforce the narrative of outward - or inward – travel, and the dizzying array of seemingly endless new possibilities inherent in the evolving culture in London at that time. These are conveyed through a canvas comprised of classical music, nursery rhymes, nature sounds, analogue loops and a grand minimalist ambience.

'Space' was my generation's 'Dark Side of The Moon’ and has aged better than Orb (or other KLF) recordings from that era. 

The fiver I lent Jimmy to photocopy the cover for my feature at Clapham Prontaprint was never paid back, incidentally. I see it as my contribution to the million pounds he burnt a few years later!”

---

Recommender

Ted Kessler

This morning, the forthcoming new Fionn Regan album O Avalanche landed in my Promo Jukebox account. Immediately after listening, I went to check that there was a track lifted from it to promote this fact so that I could write about it today. For this O Avalanche is some kind of minor masterpiece. Recorded in Majorca, it’s the Irish singer-songwriter’s seventh collection and his first since 2019’s Cala, a set of dreamy, soft-focus hymns about love and the elements, a waft of warm melodic longing, like an intense summer romance in album-form. I got it into my head that it’s like a cross the Notorious Byrd Brothers and Jose Gonzalez, but I’m not sure if that’s off-putting to others. Anyway, it’s not out until November, so I’ll keep some powder dry for then. In the meantime, feast upon Headphones from it.