I have liked US Girls, “Heavy Light” (clever pop), The Heliocentrics “Infinity of Now” (psychedelic excursions aka Stereolab/Broadcast), no less than three Bob Stanley and Peter Wiggs’ compilations for Ace- “Tea & […]

I use some social media like anyone else, but every time I am tempted by Twitter, I back off. It just seems a paranoid medium, or at least I am certain it would make me paranoid. And what I have seen of Linehan […]

1 – The Woods – Sleater Kinney
2 – Tender Buttons – Broadcast
3 – Let England Shake – PJ Harvey
4 – A Ghost is Born – Wilco
5 – Venice – Fennesz
6 – Have You In My Wilderness – Julia Holter
7 – Burial – […]

It is customary to mention “The Beta Band Rap” as the opening track which undid most of the mystique they had acquired on the EPs.

Stockhausen’s fifty-year career seems to be mostly remembered for the early tape works, Gesang der Junglinge or Kontakte, which keep cropping up on compilations.

I find him exasperating because although he can write thoughtfully, as with his Guardian essay on the death of Thatcher, his self-fashioning as a sort of radical cultural guru is often embarrassing, even if I […]

The Electric Prunes album “Release of an Oath” was a studio project for David Axelrod and had none of the band who had previously recorded the garage-rock songs, so a bit misleading.

Mask wearing in public places is pretty standard here in Japan even at the best of times, and I wouldn’t rule it out as a safety measure, even if some people will go overboard. But there is some horrendous […]

Oh yeah, its retro-mania but I like it in these indoors days; 2 CDs seems about right. Add N to X were fun.

Thanks for those links. I was born some years after that ISB album and I rather like it (although ‘Hangman’s…’ is better), but each to their own. The Zodiac Cosmic Sounds album was bobbins though.

That travel ban (at the time of writing) seems BS: it really just applies to airports in the Schengen area, but cannot stop Europeans departing to the US from the UK and Ireland. It’s a way for Trump to blame the […]

I like this thread.

Slightly overrated third albums? At the time, the Happy Monday’s third, ‘ Pills ‘n Thrills and Bellyaches,’ was celebrated as their shift into the big time of dance-rock with DJ produce […]

To win an argument, I consider The Aerosol Grey Machine a non-starter (Peter Hammill solo-project, released only in the US as a contractual get-out when the actual band signed to Charisma) but this is a grey area.

Trout Mask Replica, of course.

‘154’ by Wire has been a difficult album for me to like in comparison with the previous two, but I now realise how extraordinary it is and how it anticipates so much music of the 80s. Self-consciously “difficult”, […]

I like the first line of that Love song at the top: it’s slightly perverse, and suits the fact that the lyric is in the character of an alarming gun-toter who kills things who are on his property (I do wonder if […]

Sad news indeed: of that generation of UK “Superstar” DJs, he often seemed the most maverick and surprising

Me too: I saw them support James (what was I thinking of?) at the Norwich UEA, and from what I remember thought they were boring- and I still dislike that first album anyway.

Tortoise are playing the Blue Note Jazz Club in Tokyo this week with two gigs a day: a “greatest hits” session in the afternoon and then a run through of the “TNT” album in its entirety. Wouldn’t mind going but I can’t.

I agree that the first EP is the best record they did ( shame that Bob Last won’t let anyone listen to it). This is Andy Gill’s version of a protest song- a dig at The Clash’s ‘Tommy Gun’ perhaps?