That time you dreamt of dreaming of being taken up by the birds surfing over the capricious spirals of a wind drawn with delicate lines rising to face gaping clouds dissolving into faces telling you of things you ought not to forget, of things that needed solving down in that ground you had just abandoned, you covered your ears and closed your eyes and let birds with glimmering eyes take you up, just below that space in the unforgiving dome which glimmered with the intensity of a mystery awaiting beyond the grey veil, this is the music you left behind you in an empty grove where things that needed solving were left unsolved so that mysteries that had to be faced were faced, and so they were, we saw a lightning bolt but we never heard the thunder.

Tickley Feather- Fancy Walking

We have championed Tickley Feather since we first listened to her in Art for Spastics, her bewitched S/T album out in Paw Tracks (Badmaster Records if you want vinyl, you so do) is the realisation of a lovely promise, or isn’t Fancy Walking the echo of placid and dreamy humming emerging from a heart-shaped den in the midst of the forests where the threads of the universe are being knit, so you can wear it like a warm sweater covered in the most beautiful patterns?

That time you went to the island, you told me about it with words stolen from someone who had been there before you

‘All down the west coast of the island at night glitter the lights of a city five miles long, its towers like black and gold cigarette packs standing on end. In the malls fluorescent light skids off the surfaces of hard and soft designer goods: matte plastic, foams of lace and oyster satin, the precise curves of cars and shoes and shoulder pads. This city is well-known for the scent of Anais Anais in its street; stacked video screens in the cocktail lounges; and, down by the ocean front- where men push past you smelling of sweat and seafood, and you can hear the soundtrack of your own life playing from the dashboard of a white car- neon of green, red or frosty blue. Music pulses from the amusement arcades, clears its throat in the night clubs. In the jazz bars they serve only Black Heart rum, and you can hear the intricate bass lines twenty miles out to sea‘.

I fell in love in this city I had never been with someone I had never seen, all through the words you had stolen and the music they became

Automat- The Rise, The Advance, the Genius (Original 1978)

The Cosmic Club people keep going from strength to strength, Automat’s ‘The Rise, The Advance, the Genius’ included in the fourth volume of their fantastic 12” compilations is the sound of a quartet of tuxedo-clad chrome androids passionately re-interpreting Giorgio Moroder’s the Chase to soundtrack Aha’s famous music video of romantic adventures across the pages of a graphic novel if only it had been written by early era William Gibson, shot in the perfect blue of a Michael Mann stylistic overdose, and ended with the echo of her stilettos fading away in the distance of a neon-lit back-alley, love doesn’t get any more synthetic than this, but it doesn’t get any realer either.

This one goes for Hugo, we hope last night was magic.