Wonderful words by Balearic Mike.

This astonishing record was released 40 years ago, on 21^st October 1983 …

I started writing these musical posts just over 2 ½ years ago. It was January 17^th 2021 to be exact. The depth of winter, and after the false hope of COVID restrictions lifting in the late summer / autumn of 2020, we were now back under the strictest of lockdowns again, with no end in sight. To add to the fun, I had just been given a skin cancer diagnosis a few days before Christmas – around the same time as the oncoming lockdown was announced – so I was thinking that there was the slimmest of possibilities I just might die. I hadn’t been able to DJ for about a year, either in person or on the radio, and was feeling pretty miserable, so I turned to writing about the records that I was listening to at home as a way of communicating with the world outside, in an effort to cheer myself up a bit. It was just a few lines at first, but quickly evolved into these lengthy, rambling posts. On that day, I decided to play and write about the final Beastie Boys album – one of my favourite bands – and this, The The’s absolutely awe-inspiring Soul Mining. I used the introduction “LPs that I will never tire of listening to in a million years…”

Soul Mining is one of those records that I honestly can’t imagine not having in my life, but also, I have no recollection of when it first came into my life. None whatsoever. I’ve no idea when I first heard it, or where and when I bought it. It just always seems to have been there! Obviously, that can’t be true, so I’m guessing that I must have been led to Soul Mining after hearing the singles that preceded The The’s next album, Infected, in 1986. The second single, Heartland, actually broke into the top 30, and my brother Chris and I were both fans by then, regularly seeking out and listening to music from beyond the confines of daytime Radio 1.

Although Infected was the more successful album, really seeming to tap into the zeitgeist, it’s Soul Mining that has weathered well as the years have passed. There’s something more universal and timeless in its themes. Matt Johnson sings about about love, longing, regret, and isolation… you know, the fluffy subjects. Although the singles from Infected had a real impact, and hung around for a while upon their release, it’s the songs on Soul Mining that seem to still be able to really move listeners today. As Matt Johnson himself hinted at on the sleeve notes to the special 30^th anniversary edition, stating that the song, This Is The Day “has since gone on to become probably my most famous song and, I suppose, remains the closest thing to a ‘standard’ I’ve managed to write”. An opinion that’s borne out by its inclusion on the soundtrack to the massive Marvel Comics superhero blockbuster movie Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3 this year.

Soul Mining’s longevity and current revered status is made all the more incredible when you consider that Matt was only 20 years old when he headed off to New York to begin the recording process.This was going to be Matt’s third album. He’d released Burning Blue Soul under his own name, while The Pornography of Despair, had been aborted mid-recording. Initially he set about revisiting a song called Cold Spell Ahead, which he’d previously released as a single on Some Bizarre. The song was now called Uncertain Smile. Working at Media Sound Studios with producer Mike Thorne – who’s credits included Soft Cell and Wire – Matt added an intro, played on a toy xylimba, which he bought on a trip to Manny’s Music Store on West 48^th St., while Thorne used his Roland 808 as the basis for the track. While in New York Matt dived head first into the city’s nightlife. Like his label mates, the aforementioned Soft Cell, he would spend much of his time immersing himself in the downtown club scene, and partaking in the latest hedonistic pharmaceutical high, a drug called Ecstasy. It’s impossible to imagine that this didn’t have a huge impact on the album. Prior to the New York trip Matt’s records had been a kind of post-punk industrial-psychedelia. The new one would embrace drum machines, cutting edge synths, African percussion, and a cinematic, epic sound that doesn’t seem to know any limitations. In the background, Some Bizarre founder, Stevo, had been scheming, trying to start a bidding war between labels for The The. This finally resulted in a deal with CBS, and Uncertain Smile became the first single, released through the UK subsidiary Epic, but failing to break the top 40.

Matt returned to New York a second time, but this trip went awry, possibly because the added presence of Stevo resulted in Matt’s night time adventures taking on new levels of crazy. They attempted to record the song, Perfect, but the sessions with Thorne were aborted, and the pair returned home. In London Matt began again, discarding the old songs from The Pornography of Despair, and writing a set of entirely new ones. Paul Hardiman, who’d engineered on Thorne’s recordings with Wire, was brought in to produce, and his first task was to remix Perfect for a single release. He discarded everything from the shelved New York session except Matt’s vocal and a harmonica part, played by David Johansen of the New York Dolls. SARM East and Advision Studios were both used, but the majority of the album was recorded at John Foxx’s Shoreditch-based Garden Studio, a studio Matt that loved working in so much that he later bought it. Matt recalls that Foxx gave him permission to use anything that was lying around the studio, except his brand-new Roland Juno 60. Unfortunately, temptation proved just too great, and Matt couldn’t resist using the synth, only to be caught red handed by Foxx, who simply raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Most of the album was recorded with Matt playing guitar, melodica, a handful of effects pedals, a tape recorder, Omnichord I, and Yamaha CS 01 II keyboards. Although Johnson had learnt how to create tape loops and overdub tracks during his job as a tape operator at De Wolfe studios in his teens, he didn’t have a sequencer, so he would play the lines for each instrument over and over. For the longer tracks like I’ve Been Waiting for Tomorrow (All of My Life) and Giant, this meant playing for up to ten minutes at a time.

Although the songs on Soul Mining are very intense and introspective, Matt recalls that the studio sessions were completely the opposite – “a great laugh” in fact. This convivial atmosphere was aided by a large group of Matt’s musician friends, who all contributed to the album. These included Orange Juice drummer Zeke Manyika – who’s drums and vocals on Giant might be the best thing on the album – do-it-yourself synthesiser pioneer, Thomas Leer, and the experimental Australian musician, Jim “Foetus” Thirlwell – credited as “Frank Want”. This combination of musicians, and new technology, is one for the things that gives Soul Mining such a unique sound.

The most famous guest contribution to the album comes from Jools Holland. He turned up to the Garden, on a hot summer’s day, in full motorbike leathers, listened to a couple of minutes of Uncertain Smile, and then and then played his solo in one take, with a second drop-in afterwards. His Yamaha C3 baby grand part replaced the sax solo from the original New York recording, and served as an extended outro to the track, making the album version far superior to the original 12” mix. Whenever I see or hear someone moaning about Holland, his boogie-woogieing, and ‘Hootenanny’, I think to myself, “Jools, you played that solo on “Uncertain Smile”, and you were in Squeeze, you have a free pass for life my good chap.”

With a fantastic album now in the can, they needed a fantastic cover to put it in, and as with all those early The The records, Matt’s brother Andrew, aka ‘Andy Dog’, created a painting. Andy originally put forward a picture of Matt’s head, screaming / singing, and being attacked by hammers, but Matt preferred one that Andy had made of one of Fela Kuti’s wives, based on a photo which had appeared in The Face fashion magazine earlier the previous year. The album came out to mostly favourable reviews, and despite the 3 singles failing to break the top 40, managed the respectable placing of #27. Then it became one of those seemingly lost classics. The kind of album that people who work in record shops, or music journalists all love, but the public in general are largely unaware of.

I’ve played the track Giant in my sets since I began DJing, repeatedly introducing it to new fans over the years. In the late 1990s a guy called Shane worked in Vinyl Exchange for a while. He was a decade younger than most of us, had a Red Planet tattoo, and was a keen adopter of new tech. Shane was one of the first people I knew who had a mini-disc player, and then an mp3 player, and also a home PC with recording software. He also loved Giant, and created an epic, mostly instrumental re-edit of the song, giving me a copy on CDR. Alas it was about a decade before we all made the shift from vinyl to DJing on CDJs, and so his efforts went under appreciated. I think it was about 6 or 7 years later when a re-edit of Giant from French producer Pilooski appeared. The track became almost ubiquitous on a reborn Balearic club scene, which had been rejuvenated by Harvey’s “Sarcastic Disco” mix, the discovery of Danielle Baldelli and Italy’s Cosmic-Afro scene, and the community which formed around Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton’s DJ History Forum. A few years later, when Soul Mining was approaching its 30^th anniversary, Matt had a sufficient groundswell of interest in the record to release a deluxe vinyl box set to mark the occasion (although this didn’t arrive until early the following year). In the decade since then its popularity has only grown. With Matt Johnson coming out of his self-imposed retirement to play live as The The again a few years back, a whole new generation has discovered the joy of Soul Mining. I bought myself a T-shirt with the album cover, and have been stunned when complimented on it by young people who obviously weren’t born when it was originally released, but who know and love it.

While I’ve been writing this, I’ve listened to the album about 15 times back-to-back. I could listen to it for another 15, but I do have rather a lot of other records to listen to, so should really put something else on. It’s really just that perfect. Oh well, maybe just once more …

“Well you didn’t wake up this morning, because you didn’t go to bed…”

How many times has that been true!

For more from Balearic Mike you can find him on both Facebook and Instagram – @balearicmike. 

Mike has a Mixcloud page packed with magnificent, magical, music, and you can catch him live on 1BTN, from 12 noon until 2 (UK time) every 1st and 3rd Friday.

You can also check out the super silk screen prints of “Balearic Wife” over at @jo_lambert_print