Can’t believe we’ve reached ABON 0049 without posting a Fall track.

Without a doubt The Fall are one of the most important and influential groups of the last 30 years. They released their first single in 1978 and whilst there have been several points at which they looked like they might implode, they are currently still firing on all cylinders – 28 studio albums, 51 live albums and 24 John Peel sessions into their recording career.

I say ‘their’ career but actually since their inception there have been over 50 members of The Fall and only one of those has featured in every line-up. Come on down, founder, singer, Manchester City fan, lyricist, poet and Greatest Living Englishman Mr Mark E. Smith.

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Sigur Ros are from Iceland. I’ve no evidence to support this but I like to think that Sigur Ros might just have been influenced by The Fall when in 1982 our heroes from Manchester became the first band I know  to tour Iceland. No idea what the population of Iceland made of The Fall but maybe the fledgling Sigur were inspired by Mark E Smith’s majestic but very skewed take on the English language to create their own version of Icelandic. Because, Sigur sing in Hopelandic – a version of Icelandic but one they invented themselves.

Might be a surprise to all those who believe lyrics are more important than music but to my English ears the noises Sigur Ros make communicate more profoundly than the lyrics of practically anyone else currently singing in English. Even though I couldn’t translate one word of it for you. Except perversely on this track which is the only one they’ve ever recorded in English. So hauntingly beautiful is it though that: 1. I had to choose it and 2. it always makes me cry. Which is why I’ve chosen it for ABON while I’m not here to listen.

Released 2008.

Available on the CD ‘Me Su í Eyrum Vi Spilum Endalaust’ which translates as ’With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly’: Amazon.

Of course if you know someone really really special you might want to buy the Deluxe Edition which contains amongst other things a numbered unique piece of genuine 35mm film from the video of the making of the album. In which case you need: SigurRos

So here’s another unlikely collaboration. Von Südenfed is Mouse On Mars on instruments joined by one of the greatest living Englishman, Mark E. Smith leader of The Fall, on vocals.

Unlikely because Mouse On Mars are a duo from Düsseldorf whose trademark is sophisticated, well polished, often minimalist, left field electronica. Mark E. Smith meanwhile comes from Salford, sings or talks or shouts like a drunken Mancunian ranting in a bar and is…er…never even remotely polished. At all.

But on ‘Flooded’ these very same contrasts seem to have been the catalyst for a piece of music that has more life and originality in it than either acts were producing on anything like a regular basis immediately before the collaboration. And it’s one of the most infectious and funky pieces of music of the last five years.

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Daniel Johnston is a man who has spent the last 30 years or so creating his own unique world of weirdness and beauty. He’s recorded countless albums and written an amazing number of songs. I have 271 on my ipod alone. 

He started recording in 1980 when he was 19 or 20 years old. All his early albums were solo projects with Daniel singing and accompanying himself on keyboards or guitar. They were recorded in his bedroom on cassette tape which he then copied and released (or sometimes gave away) as cassette-only albums, in very limited numbers. The songs were very often works of exquisite beauty and the performances at least charming and usually intensely emotional. But the sound quality was poor – the tapes often seemed to be warped or stretched – and at best sounded like very poorly recorded demo tapes.

Which sort of makes the next part of his story make sense, because his career began to really ’take off’ when other artists started taking his songs literally as demos and recording their own versions. During the last 15 years or so he has become as likely to be known through the songs he’s written as through the albums he’s released. For someone still so relatively obscure, he is amazingly well cover-versioned. So far I’ve tracked down over 50 of these covers by artists as varied as Tom Waits, Beck, The Cardigans, Flaming Lips, Sparklehorse and Spiritualised. They pop up in the most unlikely places – there’s one by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the soundtrack of the recent film ‘Where The Wild Beasts Are’ for example. These covers are always better produced and recorded than Daniel’s originals (that would not be difficult!). More importantly they are often so breathtakingly beautiful that not only do they make you want to cry or leap for joy, they also force a complete reappraisal of the originals. He is one of the great songwriters of the last 30 years – often only drawing the roughest of sketches for others to work from. But what sketches.

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