Before we move forward, let’s take a step back. I always think I’m done with including appendices to shows that I did where a track I wanted from a John Peel show wasn’t available at the time I was covering it, only for it to come to light a few years later. However, I’m deluding myself clearly because the moment that Twitter user @johnpeel3904 uploaded White Star Falling by New Mind, which I had originally hoped to share when Peel played (and misidentified it) on his 07/12/91, I knew I had to have it here.
It’s a relief to me to see that whatever fascinations it held when I first heard it are still in place. Discogs describes the track as electro industrial which seems pretty on the nose to me. This is not a piece of music for ‘avin it large to. Indeed, it sounds like nothing less than the sound of war given its sampled shouts of phrases like Incoming and the various Mayday calls which crop up along the way. The backing is equally intense with the beat sounding like the repetitive, dull thud of distant artillery fire. The first Gulf War was still fresh in the memory at the time that Jonathan Sharp, the man behind New Mind, recorded it. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that the track conjures up the aural equivalent of screaming aeroplanes from which white stars fell and blocked out the starlight in a haze of fire. We could watch it on television overnight back then, a festival of ongoing news coverage that eventually brought us 24-hour rolling news, a development which should have seen Saddam Hussein put to death 15 years early.
Anyone who understands the vagaries of dance music will not be surprised to learn that the Body Politic EP which featured White Star Falling was the only EP that New Mind ever put out. However, this was not due to Jonathan Sharp deciding to abandon the monicker for 20 other aliases, but instead because he decided to go down the Pink Floyd/Moody Blues/Genesis route and make New Mind into an albums only act. With 5 albums released between 1993 and 2001, there is every chance that New Mind will pop up on future Peel playlists, and if the results are as arresting as White Star Falling, we’ll see them posted here.
Housekeeping: I’m moving house next week which may mean a longer than usual gap to the next post. Posts have become a little more irregular over the course of this year for which I can only blame pressure of work, but I still have plenty of Peel related music to share and I hope that you’ll continue to find things to enjoy over the coming months.
Video courtesy of John Peel and thanks to Vibracobra23 for recognising the title of the track. Now, if either of them has the session by Krispy 3 that was broadcast on this programme, one really would have everything one could wish for from 7 December 1991.
No comments:
Post a Comment