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album // Bad Head Park
single // Persian Blues
single // Time To Dream
'Time To Dream' was taken from David Baker
and Simon Leonard's second album under the name Fortran
5 (Bad Head Park). With a soulful, hazy dub sound, it
certainly basks in the chilled-out vibe of tracks on Primal Scream's
classic Screamadelica, featuring slide guitar, the harmonica
solo from Ennio Morricone's Midnight Cowboy soundtrack and
sensual vocals from Jackie Sheridan. Holding the track together
is a springy, pulsing low-end and dubbed-up beat. Sheridan's lyrics
are wispy, very Haight Ashbury in its romantic notion of everyone
thinking about how nice the world would be if we all took the time
to dream. Yep, that should do it. Think Orb's 'Perpetual Dawn' with
a dub beat instead of a breakbeat.
There was a brief time for a while when I'd have
tracked down a single for a David Holmes mix. Back in the Sugarsweet
days, way, way before his morphing into soundtrack wealth, his mixes
were robotic, lengthy drawn-out techno and house reinterpretations.
Such is Holmes' semi-formulaic reworking of 'Time To Dream' - nine
minutes long, a funky hook but very little of the original bar a
snippet of the harmonica in a breakdown right at the end; it feels
like he went off on a tangent, and then realised, after eight minutes
'Shit, I'd better use some of the original'. And nine minutes of
that droaning 'meeowww' noise is difficult to stomach. Fortran's
own, ahem, Up Your Bum With A Bicycle Pump Mix likewise ditches
much of the original in favour of a superior, surging motorik techno
with a Cologne electricity and plenty of Empirion-esque EBM sounds.
And, of course, the harmonica at the very end.
Sometime NovaMute and One Little Indian act Spirit
Feel serve up their Fruit Of The Spirit Mix, which busts through
Holmes' record for duration at over thirteen minutes. Theirs is
a monumentally hypnotic ambient breakbeat excursion that moulds
and shapes the original into an even more dubbed-up space. Check
out those Tubby-styled guitars and hats in the fully dubbed section.
Finally, the Joe Mix by Baker and Leonard is a fully wired heavy
dance mix with a retro (then current, of course) happy-clappy rhythm
and madly-filtered noises and acid squelches. It's the slightly
goofy, unpredictible (and vaguely tongue in cheek) dance music Fortran
5 specialised in.
7"/Cassette:
A. Time To Dream (Original Mix)
B. Time To Dream (Up Your Bum With A Bicycle Pump Mix)
12":
A1. Time To Dream (The David Holmes Mix)
A2. Time To Dream (Up Your Bum With A Bicycle Pump Mix)
B1. Time To Dream (Fruit Of The Spirit Mix)
B2. Time To Dream (Original Mix)
CD:
1. Time To Dream (Original Mix)
2. Time To Dream (The David Holmes Mix)
3. Time To Dream (Up Your Bum With A Bicycle Pump Mix)
4. Time To Dream (Fruit Of The Spirit Mix)
5. Time To Dream (Joe Mix)
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