Yet another Jandek recording from 2009.This one has got electronics on it,so it's quite unique in the Jandek canon. Also Susan Alcorn appears again making weird noises on her pedal Steel Guitar. If that don't make you wanna hear this double CD then there's something wrong with you....well...maybe not? It's a good one though. Here's that tit (I notice he has two of them) who regularly threatens the safety of your much valued scribe He's the fat one on the right,meeting his hero......I wonder if this was taken in 2009?...still waiting for the Vancouver release.He says he's gon ..read more

More Cambridge indie pop via Southampton from a time when things seemed perfect, but on the evidence presented here, wasn't. .....which as i've mentioned several times before is a kind of perfection? Trouble is, this nostalgia trip very accurately recreates the sound and feel of the black hole that was left behind by the great fizzle out of yer Punk Rock. There was nothing left to populate the event horizon except a sliding slagheap of middle class studentia playing uneventful Indie-pop...the Uneventful Horizon as one calls it. With only Shoegaze,Twee, and Ron Johnson to assist i ..read more

One of a few Cambridge compilations from Peeved Records, unfathomably based in Southampton? It kicks off with some mannered Indie Pop by, according to Discogs, one of the 96 other bands called "Spike". If that was out of a hundred it would correlate with the fact that 96% of all bands in the UK sounded exactly like this in 1985 to '86. Marking the era when everyone had a Portastudio, nice equipment,and knew how to use it. As a result everyone sounded the same. It was all 'well played' ,enhanced with cheaply available effects unit,and they all thought they were gonna 'make it'. The result i ..read more

Trendy Turtles were definitely going for that elusive Cherry Red contract weren't they? Only rarely does one find Twee Indie Pop arse to elbow with a rowdy Oi groop,especially as both forms of music are long dead. The Oi Polloi don't sound very likely to harbor any signs of being women trapped in a Skinheads' body, but then again Gender politics were thankfully absent from the minds of the average Teenager,or Yobbo in those 'simpler' times around Christmas 1982. Gender Dysphoria was just a technical phrase in a psychologists handbook. Nowadays, one would rule out the existence of a Trans O ..read more

Are you having a good time? I'm having a real good time 2. Was it really this good in October 1982. I seem to remember 'OCT 82' appearing on the swastika bedecked sleeve of that Bad Seed EP by the Birthday Party....everything went downhill from there unfortunately, especially for crooning Goth Gargoyle Nicholas Cave.Whatever happened to him?....Don't ask! Second in the "Real Time" series of Unlikely records Compilations gives us proof that 1982 was better than you think, as the Post Punk snowball rolled on down that hill into the oncoming neo-pop lava flow of synth duo's and silly clo ..read more

Ay Up?  That bloke (Robert Cox) what done "Felixstowe Rocks" is also the brane behind that unlikeliest of record labels otherwise known as "Unlikely Records", from...you guessed it...Felixstowe!? The label was well known for handing out these compilations for free at gigs. Largely featuring Robert Cox in his various guises. The catchphrase being : "You Don't Know What You'll Like Until You Hear It!"....which, in my experience isn't entirely true. There were countless times I knew I'd like a record purely going on Artwork,and any number of those dodgy reviews in the music press fr ..read more

If you thought Darkthrone were the epitome of Zero-Fi Black Metal,then you......understandably....haven't heard Mütiilation. A French(!!?) Black Metal outfit who released a bunch of cassettes in the mid nineties,until they were fished from the muddied pond and honored with a release of  one of their many unreleased albums on Vinyl and CD. It still sounded as if it was recorded in an oil drum rolling between lanes on the M25 london orbital,but you could charge money for this!....a career beckoned until,band leader, Meyhna'ch.....as he called himself, probably Cedric Arna ..read more

  Whereas someone like,...say...Jandek,has a vision of life as a grim pointless reality; our Norwegian buddies in all those Death/Black metal groups,live in a fantasyworld almost as life unaffirming and silly as a Christian UFO Death Cult....but with better music. Especially when its as lo-fi as this jolly jaunt into the permafrost of the arctic Tundra of  Metal. They think they're frightening us but their ,frankly, daft, game of thrones world is nowhere near as Horrific as the life as portrayed in any Jandek recording. That Scot Walker album with Sunn(((o is probably the way to ..read more

Another Live Jandek from the homeland of American music recorded in 2009 (again). Enough to make the Grand Ole Opry spontaneously combust.....so no bad thing. On this outing we find one of spontaneous music's legends in Ladonna...er... Smith.....no relation I guess? Ladonna who played on all those batshit crazy Davey Williams records. And still scraps the viola in a complementarily warped fashion...as in both warped like a record,and warped like a mind. One would love to see Jandek do a surprise appearance at the Grand Ole Opry one day,eh kids? Here,we are treated to a singing Jandek avoidin ..read more

While we is on the subject of Japan, I realised there is someone else who begins with 'J' that's been overlooked recently,and certainly never drives on the correct side of the road musically speaking. Jandek innit? He's got a new studio album out which sounds like a lot of his post - 2010 live output.but without the sparse applause.  Its improvised,no vocals, no credits, no info,so i can't verify if it actually was recorded within the last 15 years. So no proof of the carrot topped bard's continued existence on this planet. I presume that the cover art is a photograph of the Representat ..read more