Steve Queralt & Michael Smith’s Sun Moon Town gets “Versioned”. The digital, and limited cassette. package collecting 4 instrumentals, and 4 remixes. 

To be honest, at first I wasn’t sure about the idea of issuing Steve’s music without Michael’s words. Mr. Smith’s prose, and delivery, are such an important part of the original release. However, after spending a few days with the E.P., giving it multiple spins, Steve’s guitar and synth soundscapes, themselves, are beautiful. Chaldean Oracle, with its fragile, thin, frequencies, is a mournful musical eulogy, with movements that mimic Arthur Russell’s cello. It’s sheets of feedback, a soundtrack that suggests a dazed dawn drift, on a grey day. Cloudy urban skies, and the strong possibility of a hangover. The residuals of last night’s high still buzzing about. Reality creating a crack, and painfully forcing its way back in. 

The sad symphonic In A Wonderland, without the focus provided by Michael’s poetry, instead, draws listeners in with its fine, grainy, detail – generated as Steve’s 6-strings corrode and decay. The bass-line sucking you into the belly of the beast that is contemporary Britain. A media-manipulated dystopia of corruption, lies, and division. A populous  bullied and bled dry of everything from cash to empathy. We’re to blame. We put these people in charge. Every time we felt powerless, and so did nothing. Every time we saw something wrong, thought, “that’s terrible”, but figured, “I’m alright, Jack”, “I’m safe”. Now the wolves are at everyone’s door. It didn’t happen overnight. As Michael perfectly puts it on Glitches, “We’ve sleepwalked into the wrong England.”

Of the remixes, GLOK’s is a standout. GLOK being the alias of Steve’s former bandmate, Andy Bell. They were both in shoegazers, Ride. I read an interview with Andy where he explained that one of the reasons why Ride initially split were the disagreements about the group’s new, more electronic direction. With Andy firmly in the “rock” camp. This seems really strange now, because all of Andy’s dance music-informed stuff is completely off the hook. Here, he renders a choppy rhythm, of racing drums and grunge-y bass-line, worthy of a Woodleigh Research Facility workout. The synth and sequences similar to those of some old school Chicago jack. The track’s breakdown more of a filtering, like an ecstatic DJ getting busy on the EQ. Michael reduced to soundbite, a knowing nod toward Talking Heads. “Stop making sense.”

There are 2 further deft, divergent, drum machine-driven make-overs, from Nandele and Flug 8, but for me the other highlight is Nina Walsh’s reimagining, which rearranges Steve’s guitar treatments for woodwinds, reeds, and loose hand percussion. Like a post-punk take on the spiritual jazz of Don Cherry and Sun Ra, something on Bristol’s Y Records `80s roster, Thermoderm’s Empire State Observatory, or Primal Scream coming down, with blasts of Brenda “Beachball” Ray melodica and a generous dose dubwise echo. Micheal describing a landscape of broken dreams, a united kingdom falling apart, and the search for escape from it. Paris, France, is burning, but you have to hunt for the news. Those powers that be surely scared that we’ll all be inspired and follow suit. 

Steve Queralt & Michael Smith’s Sun Moon Town Versions is available to order from Bytes.