The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Golden Apples of Thamesmead

The Golden Apples of Thamesmead… On the occasion of proximity to the long day of the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere this edition features musical explorations in and around the quirky suburb of Thamesmead in SE London, the place that Golden Apples of the Sun collective member Jesse Yuen now spends a fair bit of his time and can be heard on local online community radio platform, RTM.FM – not to be confused with RTRFM home of the Golden Apples. Jesse presents a show called North of the River Swan. Exploring dub and beyond, the show often wanders into Golden Apples of the Sun musical territory.

Explore more with Jesse’s own show liner notes further below below.

LISTEN:

Restream the show here

HQ 2 hour Mixcloud Mixtape here

TRACKLISTING

Mark Pritchard – Come Let Us (feat. Gregory Whitehead)

Donato Dozzy + Tin Man – Test 3

Golden Ivy – Kulen Natt

Jorge Ben – Brother

Paul Parrish – English Sparrow

Brian Protheroe – Pinball (Ashley Beedle Tripped Rework)

Nat Birchall – Mysticism Of Sound

A.C. Marias – Just Talk

Josephine Wiggs Experience – Arizona

I.A.O – Nothing above us

Systemwide – Ripe Up (Pan American Midnight Sun Remix)

NJE in dub – Beachcomber In Dub

Sunun – Lately dub

YL Hooi – Stranger

Kallista Kult – The Earth Did A Line

Sinéad O’Connor – I Am Stretched on Your Grave

Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of The Heart – Visions Of You (Pick ‘N’ Mix 1 by Andrew Weatherall)

Jah Wobble’s Invaders Of The Heart – Visions Of You

Trance – Wintergarden

Interview w/ Hannah Ehrlich (Crossness records)

Anrimeal – Encaustic Witches (Crossness records)

Anrimeal – Could Flower [Demo] (Crossness records)

The Silver Field – Song Of Wandering (Crossness records)

John Martyn – Smiling Stranger (Alternate Take #2)

Kid Loco – She’s My Lover (Bang Bang Remix)

The Karminsky Experience – L932

WANT MORE? – Liner Notes….

Rising from London’s Erith marshes in the 1960s, Thamesmead was to be ‘The Town of Tomorrow’, a town to address the city’s housing shortage after the Second World War. It’s experimental brutalist design with blocks of flats connected by elevated walkways built around a system of lakes and canals was to be a utopian community setting. 

In reality, the project ran out of money and was heavily de-scoped. With no way to cross the nearby Thames, no centralised shopping district, banks or train station, the suburb was isolated and quickly neglected. The damp set in and the concrete metropolis began to decay.

Thamesmead was one of the first places in the country to receive a license for a community radio station. Broadcasting initially on a localised cable radio system from a cupboard in a local church, Radio Thamesmead ran from the late 70s to 2009 under various names over that time. 

In 2018 the artist-led space TACO! (Thamesmead Arts and Culture Office) revived the station as an online community radio platform, RTM.FM. 

From humble beginnings in the cupboard in a local church, the station now broadcasts from the slightly fancier setting of the kitchen in a disused control centre for the power station that provided communal energy to the Thamesmead community in the pre-Thatcher, pre-privatisation days.

Jesse presents a show on RTM.fm, North of the River Swan. Exploring dub and beyond, the show often wanders into Golden Apples of the Sun musical territory. One such artist featured in Jesse’s the Golden Apples mix is Melbourne’s YL Hooi with a haunting and dubwise cover of the Love Joys track, Stranger.

Amongst the concrete of Thamesmead exists a creative and welcoming community of local artists. One of which is Hannah Ehrlich, who runs the independent record label Crossness Records. With an emphasis on female psych-pop, glitchy tape loops and computer folk, the label has released albums from The Silver Field and Anrimeal. We meet Hannah in this month’s episode and hear her talk about the placid, acrid bend in the river that is Crossness, Thamesmead.

Wandering further afield and further back in time this month’s episode also explores discarded pop songs from the early 90s. Perhaps not timeless in sound, these two early 90s tunes still stand strong after Jesse blows the bargain bin dust off them. 

Equal parts funky drummer beat (originally by Clyde Stubblefield), traditional Irish prose and Sinead’s voice, Jesse has watched this Youtube video way more times than you would guess in the last few months. 

Continuing down the Sinead O’ Connor rabbit hole lands us in the world of Jah Wobble. This is a super solid TV performance coupled with a trippy psychedelic backdrop. Bonus points go to the crowd, bopping away as they did in 91. 

A.C. Marias – Just Talk – As featured on the NME/CND compilation VC Carry on Disarming (1989).