We're Gonna Shake Up Your Sleepy Mind

Having already posted three Colourbox songs recently I wasn't going to do anymore but the mp3 player keeps chucking this up, as if it's urging me to share it, and who am I to ignore the God of the portable music device?

Arena 2 is a brilliant mid-80s, proto-house torch song- huge piano, skittering and rudimentary drum track and massive soulful vocal. It makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand up. Stunning.

Arena 2

MARRS Attacks

Pump Up The Volume by MARRS is surely one of the greatest singles ever made and a number one single to boot. From 1987 it was a one-off collaboration between members of AR Kane and Colourbox, both Bagging Area favourites, with extra input from djs Dave Dorrell and CJ Mackintosh. Does it sound twenty four years old? I've lost track of how things should sound after that amount of time. Made up mainly of samples it still shakes dancefloors- well, the floor in my front room anyway. I don't know if anyone would play it in a proper club anymore. This is the B-side Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance), made up of an AR Kane track with Colourbox programming the drum machine.

Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance).mp3

Baby I Love You So

I couldn't let Colourbox go by without posting this, the A-side to the 12" single with Tuesday's postee Looks Like We're Shy One Horse on the flip. Baby I Love You So is a cover of an Augustus Pablo track. This is electronic dub at it's best- big, swirly sound with swathes of colourful synths, a massive bassline, reverby guitars, samples and vocals from Lorita Grahame. Seven minutes or so of wonder. Play it back to back with Looks Like... for full effect.

02 Baby I Love You So 12_.mp3

Breakdown

And back again...

Here's some more Colourbox, this time their debut single Breakdown from 1982, with guest vocals from Debian Curry. There's much less dub and none of the Western samples on Breakdown, just some very 80s leftfield electronic pop but I believe this kind of thing is all the rage with young folk today. Funny how bands then could go from pop to weird, a journey bands tend to do in reverse, if at all. The fact they had a variety of influences and used them all to make their own music that changed and developed over five years, is something to be applauded.

Breakdown.mp3

Looks Like We're Shy One Horse

One of the records Weatherall played when warming up for the Screamadelica live show on Sunday night was this- Looks Like We're Shy One Horse by Colourbox, a magnificent piece of electronic dub with an extended and very dubby outro. Sounded even better booming through Primal Scream's PA system. Looks Like... was released as the B-side to Colourbox's 1986 single Baby I Love You So. On the same day they released their Offical Colourbox World Cup Theme single. Colourbox went on to collaborate with A.R. Kane as MARRS and hit the number one spot with the mighty Pump Up The Volume. This is subtler and spacier but no less good.

No-one- that's no-one, not one single soul- has downloaded yesterday's live version of Come Together. This is a Bagging Area first, a completely unwanted track.

12 Looks Like We\'re Shy One Horse.wma