People Fly By In The Traffic's Boom

Another first rate Paul Weller remix from the Wild Wood album, this time the acoustic title track is re-worked by Portishead, who surely need no introduction. As with most stuff by Portishead, there are those drums and general spookiness.

The picture shows the last time Mrs Weller let Paul cut his own fringe.

Wild Wood (Portishead Remix)

To The Kosmos Men Dare

Back in 1993 when Paul Weller got his mojo and his audience back with Wildwood, it wasn't all Traffic, bucolic jams and the view from the countryside. His producer Brendan Lynch knew that what Weller really needed was a dubbed out remix of Kosmos with tons of delay, loud screeching noises and spacey beep-beep-beeps by the dozen. Experimental and out-there, this is a million miles from The Eton Rifles, The Paris Match and Stanley Road.

Green Fred Perry polo shirt from model's own signature collection, as ANCB cleared up last time I used this picture.

Kosmos (Lynch Mob Bonus beats)

You Better Run, Run, Run

A Primal Scream song for Monday from their sonic terrorist, war against vowels phase. When The Kingdom Comes was the second B-side on the 12" of the Accelerator single, the last record Creation released. It features Paul Weller on 'auto-destructive 12 string Rickenbacker' and Kevin Shields 'sonically speaking' (both quotes from the back of the sleeve). You can probably guess who was responsible for which bits when you listen to it. The song sounds a bit like they made it up on the spot at the end of the night when they'd dragged Weller out of the pub and into the studio, Bobby Gillespie's lyrics probably took longer to sing than they did to write, and it's a fairly derivitive piece of pop-art, rock 'n' roll- despite all of this, I like it.

When_The_Kingdom_Comes.mp3

Rare Audrey

Some Andrew Weatherall for you on an August Wednesday morning, where at the moment it's not raining. This is the Two Lone Swordsmen remix of Paul Weller's Heliocentric, from his album of the same name, from 2000. Not one of his best albums I'm afraid. The remix is one of TLS's best though, and was only released on white label (500 copies I think, got my sticky mitts on one in Vinyl Exchange for under a fiver). Rumour has it that Weller didn't like it and it's never had an official release, not even on that 3 cd boxset of b-sides, remixes and other stuff that Weller put out a few years back.

I love this track, and it's best listened to loud. It takes the drums and bass, and a load of noises, and heads into krautrock territory, with a dash of Killing Joke in there as well. Can't imagine why Weller didn't like it. Several years ago a friend in a band once asked me to play records at a gig they were doing, and they'd hired a large PA. Sticking this record on made my night. It sounded immense. It does what a remix should do, take the original and bend it out of all recognisable shape, making something new from something old.

a Heliocentric (Swordsman 4UR Mix).mp3