Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was What wouldn't you do?

I went down a road of asking all the big musical questions and ended up with The Cramps asking about pussies and dogs and Buzzcocks asking why they can't touch it.  

Out in the Oblique Saturdays community there were a huge range of responses, a playlist with something for everyone. Al G went with Betty Boo, Spencer gave us Benedict Drew, Mrs G threw in Rage Against The Machine, Prue Leith offered up Tool (their second OS appearance), SRC gave us The Associates and their mantra for life ('If you can't do no good, then sucker, don't you do no harm'), Jase came with Mark Lanegan and Ecstasy, Passion And Pain, JC suggested Malcolm Middleton and Paul Haig, Rol offered Pet Shop Boys, Beerfeuled gave us Rick Astley, C suggested The Bangles and Frankie Valli, Ernie had Gina Birch's stilettos, Khayem arrived with Boney M and Half Man Half Biscuit (they don't often crop up together), The Swede dropped in with Frank Sinatra and Count Basie and Chris Yardley came with a fear of potholing and The Jesus And Mary Chain. 

Thank you everyone.

This week's card from Messrs Eno and Schmidt says this- You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas.

Thanks Brian and Peter. I'm not sure how to take that. The whole blogging lark is largely using my own ideas and churning out daily posts. Back in the mid- 2000s when I first started reading music blogs (the Golden Age of Music Blogging) I began frequenting The Vinyl Villain and Acid Ted, satisfying my twin searches for digital versions of 80s indie and 90s acid house. I used to frequent several blogs that are long gone- STX's Audio.Out was a goldmine for Weatherall and similar and Spoilt Victorian Child was good for guitars. Ripped In Glasgow was essential. Drew started up Across The Kitchen Table, London Lee's Crying All The Way To The Chip Shop was very good and Davy H's The Ghost Of Electricity was an eclectic source of tunes. Song For Toad. Seventeen Seconds. Dusty Sevens. Planet Mondo. There were others that I can't even remember the names of now. 

All of these people were writing music blogs and suitably inspired at the dawn of 2010 I thought I'd do the same, post a song a day for a year and see how it went. My own ideas included posting plenty of Andrew Weatherall, various Manchester and Factory related acts, and try to feature songs that had stories attached to them. There was a long running Friday series, Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night that began after a guest posting at The Vinyl Villain, where I wrote about Wayne Walker's classic 1956 song All I Can Do Is Cry. 

All I Can Do Is Cry

In the early days there was lots of 60s garage, regular Half Man Half Biscuit posts and a lot of Wild Billy Childish. The first Andrew Weatherall post and the very first Bagging Area post (1st January 2010) was pretty obtuse- an idiosyncratic and one off track from 2002 by Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood as The Black Balloons called Fowler's End. 

Fowler's End

But enough of this self- congratulatory navel gazing. Here are some other ideas...

A Good Idea

Sugar in 1992, Bob Mould churning up loud guitars with a summer drowning, channeling Debaser's bassline and taking Husker Du's wall of noise into the charts. 

The Better Idea 

It's Immaterial in 1986, a sumptuous and vivid backing track with one of those It's Immaterial half spoken word and half sung vocals about suffering and surviving. 

Jennifer Has Some Strange Ideas

Timothy J. Fairplay has made loads of really good solo records, vintage synths and drum machines with descriptions such as Stasi House and Dungeon Module. He's a lovely bloke too. Jennifer Has Some Strange Ideas is from an EP in Hoga Nord in 2017 called Mindfighter and is typically inventive and engaging analogue synth electro fun. 

Finally, Parquet Courts in 2012 with no ideas other than some rather lovely, shambling indie rock...

No Ideas

As ever, feel free to drop your own responses to the Oblique Strategy into the comment box- You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas.

Johatsu

Johatsu is a Japanese word which translates literally as 'evaporation', a word that describes those people in Japan who voluntarily, purposefully disappear from their lives, who leave their jobs and families and just vanish. It became a phenomenon in the 1960s and accelerated into the 1990s as Japanese society became increasingly debt reliant. Some people vanish on their own. Others employ the services of 'night movers', companies that exist to help people vanish without a trace. For whatever reason- debt, unhappiness, feeling trapped- thousands of Japanese people have deliberately disappeared. 

Johatsu is the title of David Harrow's new album, released this week. It's a beatless, ambient/ instrumental album created with piano, keys and modular synths, with layers of ringing drones, synth chords and notes, a full sound that lifts it beyond being ambient wallpaper. Some of the thirteen tracks on Johatsu evoke the feelings that the evaporated people might feel, before or after their act of self- disappearance. There's also a sense that these tracks are part of the ambient environment, a reflection of feeling and life and not merely the soundtrack to it. There's an unease about them, a disquiet, and also the suggestion of tension waiting to be released. Some of the titles are very Johatsu- As It Ends, The Night Movers, Between The Cracks, One Room, No Loyalty. Some are more oblique- Ace, Eel Pie. This is the album's opener, 60s...

No Loyalty comes towards the album's end, Japanese sounding instrumentation among the ambient analogue synths. In the end it's difficult to know where one's sympathies lie- with the disappearers, the Johatsu, or the people they leave behind. There aren't any easy answers. David doesn't provide any either but the thirteen tracks on Johatsu are highly evocative and a very complete piece of work. 

Johatsu is out on London label No Beats Aloud and can be found here. 

Rolling Down The Hill Snowballing Getting Bigger

I'm in the middle of a run of gigs throughout October and November. Mike D at Manchester's Albert Hall two days ago,Tuesday night, is going to stand out as a definite highlight, an hour long, life affirming blast of b- boy/ punk rock energy from Beastie Boy Michael Diamond and his young band The 5D. They appear on stage after a taped announcement about Mike D and his musical exploits and kick into Hello Brooklyn, the opener to a set peppered with songs from his solo album Thank You and some Beastie Boys classics. Mike and the band additionally make wearing pink sweat shirts and joggers look like a very good idea.

The songs from Thank You sound huge live, the six piece band hitting it with guitar, very loud bass, drums, samples, synths, keys and laptops, throwing themselves around and having the time of their lives. What We Want is loud and brash and is followed third song in by Looking Down The Barrel Of  A Gun, Beastie Boys own brand of punk rock from 1989's Paul's Boutique. Albert Hall erupts. 

Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun

The Beastie Boys, three best friends from their teens, pulled off something really special. They could have been a brief controversy, a flash in the 80s pan. Instead they retreated and regrouped, resurrected themselves and became the best band in the world in the mid- 90s, a smart and savvy trio, tongue in cheek and taking the piss but also deadly serious- they knew that this stuff matters. They could switch effortlessly from punk to hip hop, from stoner rock to funk, the three way wordplay a kaleidoscope of references, and they made several albums that are head and shoulders above the rest of their 90s peers- after Paul's Boutique came Check Your Head, Ill Communication and Hello Nasty and then in 2004 To The 5 Boroughs. Mike D and Ad- Rock lost MCA/ Adam Yauch to cancer in 2012 and the band and the music went with him, until recently when Mike made Thank You. 

Two of the most powerful moments on Thank You come at the end of either side of the record and both are played tonight. I Don't Care comes halfway through, an acoustic guitar and drums and Mike singing about pressure and responsibilities and trying to cope with people's expectations. The other is the album's title song, Thank You, which closes the set, an emotive look back at his band's early days- 'We were just kids/ Figuring it out'- recalling being in New York clubs aged 16 and beginning to make music and finishing the song saying thank you to his friends, 'Thank you for having me'. It's not nostalgic or mawkish, it feels real. 

In between Mike and The 5D smash through the exuberant stuff- Crypto, Switch Up, Secrets Pt I and II- and some Beastie Boys songs- 3 Minute Rule, Body Movin' and a raucous Remote Control, a seven man ball of energy and fun. The solo songs and the Beastie Boys songs become one and we lap it up, dancing and arms in the air. 

At one point Mike makes a brief speech about Manchester and it's musical lineage and starts listing bands in his nasally NY twang- 'The Hacienda, Factory Records, Joy Division, New Order... Quando Quango, Du- rooti Column...' And there you have the crate digging, music loving Beastie Boys, Quando Quango mentioned before many more famous sons and daughters of the city. Members of 5D start shouting suggestions, 'Happy Mondays... Stone Roses.... The Fall!'. About to start the next song, Mike stops the band- 'oh yeah... The Smiths!'

The encore is just two songs, a massive sounding cover of Delta 5's Mind Your Own Business and finally, from 1992's Check Your Head, So What'cha Want. It's been a lot of fun, it's been loud and alive and full of energy and feeling. Thank you Mike D. 

Mind Your Own Business

So What'cha Want

Random Fall Song Wednesday

A song by The Fall plucked randomly from a folder named The Fall on my hard drive, several hundred songs in total. 

Wolf Kidult Man

'Wolf kidult man/ Wolf kidult son/ Where is your mum? Your power is gone'

From Imperial Wax Solvent, the twenty sixth Fall album, released in 2008, following 2007's Post Reformation TLC, an album made following a bust up that led to the band walking out on Mark E Smith during a US tour. The sample is from The Twilight Zone episode Printers Devil. 

Once There Was No Time Just Once

A Certain Ratio at Band On The Wall on Saturday night, the end of a tour where they've played a pair of their 80s albums in full, Sextet and Force- something they've not done before and won't do again. They start with Sextet, their third album, released on Factory in 1982 when they were young men in their early 20s. Martin Moscrop tells us just before the end that revisiting these songs and albums forty years later has been a strange experience, getting themselves into the heads of the 21 and 24 year olds who made them. The recent tours have seen ACR play a mixture of songs from their recent albums and 'the hits' (favourites I suppose rather than hits). Tonight there will be no Shack Up, no Won't Stop Loving You, no Do The Du. A different ACR experience. 

Sextet doesn't sound like a forty five year old record as played live. They start with its first song, Lucinda, minimalist post- punk jazz/ funk of 1982, Martin on drums, Don on slap bass, Jez centre on keys and bassist Viv playing guitar and singing Martha Tilson's vocals, the 1982 monochrome Lucinda in blasts of colour (like Sextet's vivid orange and green sleeve). The rest of the album is brought to life with Don back behind the drums, Viv on bass and Martin swapping between guitar, percussion and trumpet. The trumpet is the key sound on many of the songs, Martin transporting a 70s Miles Davis sound, two note refrains, to early 80s and mid 2020s Manchester. Knife Slits Water is full sounding punk funk and Rialto is urgent and alive. Jez introduces Waterline, added onto the end of the first set, as 'Andy Weatherall's favourite ACR song' and the band push and pull its weird, off kilter funk around, funk rhythms and jazz atonality with their Thin Boys punk attitude. 

A fifteen minute gap and ACR come back for Force, the 1986 album with Jez's vocals and lyrics more central. 'I didn't like Force when it came out', he says, 'I didn't know what these songs were about... I do now'. 

Force was ACR moving towards a more commercial sound, a dance rock/ jazz hybrid with verses and choruses, the chillier, bleaker themes and tones of their early songs now coloured in with splashes of mid- 80s fluoro. Only Together and funk bass epic Bootsy open the second set, Mickey Way- a long time fan favourite- is another jazz trumpet funk tune, Martin's trumpet and the synths and keys all ascending as the bass slaps and twangs away. Force was the first ACR album I bought in real time on release, so it's always been a big one for me. ACR playing it tonight doesn't feel like mid- 80s nostalgia or a revivalism, it doesn't particularly evoke 1986. Manchester's changed beyond recognition in the four decades since then. The band aren't the people they were then. Nor are we. These are those songs, redone for now. 

And The She Smiles is dedicated to two much missed women, Denise Johnston and Danielle Moore, and then the Force set is expanded with album's title track (not released at the time) and The Runner (from 1986 but originally released on Italian label Materiali Sonori as the Greetings Four EP). Both sound great, hyperactive and driving, busy but cut through with the Factory feel. 

The Runner

They finish as they usually do with the Manc- Brazilian percussion workout Si Firmi O Grido, all those cowbells, congas, whistles, drums and bongos bouncing around the old venue's walls. 

A Certain Ratio have released new versions of Sextet and Force. Sextet has been reworked by The Emperor Machine, 2026 updates of 1982 songs and Force has been re- issued in alternate versions, never heard before. The Joy Of Sextet is here and Force Majuere is here. 

Monday's Long Songs

In 1992 Underworld released Mmm... Skyscraper I Love You, a 12" single as good as anything else that came out that year. Skyscraper is a thirteen minute tribal/ techno/ progressive and ambient house tour de force with Rick Smith's synths and Darren Emerson's drum programming the perfect music backdrop for Karl Hyde's stream of consciousness mutterings and non- sequiturs. Hyde started the words on a plane coming in to land at New York. 

'Thirty thousand feet above the earth/ It's a beautiful thing'. 

He added more travelling round the city at ground level, a seemingly disconnected series of impressions and sketches. Porn dogs and Elvis and a little whipped cream. 

They moved music ahead with this release and 1993's album dubnobasswithmyheadman and sound like no one but themselves. It was a time when music felt as if it was in a constant state of progress and innovation. As well as the thirteen minute spectacular that also takes up much of side one of their 1993 masterpiece dubnobasswithmyheadman there were two further versions on the 12".

Telegraph is seven minutes long with a woman's voice saying the title and laughing. Bleepier and tougher, the tempo faster and into trance territory

Mmm... Skyscraper I Love You (Telegraph 6.11.92)

Jam Scraper is nine minutes, a bleepy synth squiggle over the top of those long Blade Runner synth chords and Karl's bending guitar note providing a long slow intro, anticipation that doesn't take off until two minutes in when the kick drum really starts to thump. 

Mmm... Skyscraper I Love You (Jam Scraper)

 

Thirty Five Minutes Of Ambient/ Folk Guitar Instrumentals

Not the catchiest title for a Sunday mix perhaps. The photo is of the Mediterranean Sea, taken from the beach near Nerja in the summer. As Storm Austen batters its way round the UK I can't help but think I'd much rather be in Spain. 

This mix came together via a post over The Swede's blog featuring a folk guitarist called Henry Parker whose EP The Dark Peak is a set of contemporary folk instrumentals on acoustic guitar inspired by the Peak District. The song Eowestre Clough sent me back to the Bert Jansch album Avocet, a 1979 set of acoustic guitar folk instrumentals, that I also picked up on via The Swede's blog, Unthought Of, Though, Somehow.

Playing the two tracks back to back led me to the rest of the set, thirty five minutes of guitar based, folk and ambient tunes, mainly from recent releases but with Bert Jansch opening it with a song from his 1979 album Avocet. I meant to include a Thurston Moore instrumental but forgot. Sorry Thurston. 

Thirty Five Minutes Of Ambient/ Folk Guitar Instrumentals

• Bert Jansch: Kingfisher
• Henry Parker: Eowestre Clough
• Andy Bell and Masal: Tidal Love Conversations In That Familiar Golden Orchard
• Kieran Hebden and William Tyler: Secret City
• Jamie Lidell and Luke Schneider: The Story of Your Life
• Robin Guthrie: Coming Up For Air
• Sewell And The Gong: Patron Saint Of Elsewhere

Avocet came out in 1979, Bert Jansch at his best with an album of instrumentals inspired by British birds- all the song titles are named after birds, Kingfisher, Kittiwake, Lapwing, Bittern, Osprey and the twenty minute title track Avocet. Danny Thompson plays bass and is a huge presence throughout and Martin Jenkins plays fiddle. It's a bit of a late 70s gem, totally out of step with everything going on in 1978 and 1979 and in a way is timeless as a result. Much of it sounds like it could have been recorded at any point between the 1960s and this year. 

Henry Parker's The Dark Peak was new to me until this week and I've been playing catch up ever since. Sadly the vinyl is long since sold out so the digital will have to do for the time being. The Peak District is a place we visit fairly regularly, the national park between here and Sheffield. Parker captured some field recordings out in the Peak in March 2025 including some of the birds that Bert Jansch was writing about. The EP is a solo tribute to the moors and the wildlife and those wild, solitary places. You can listen/ buy here. 

Andy Bell and Masal have an album out this year, an ambient/ psychedelic work called Common Primitives. A previous one, Tidal Love Numbers, came out in 2023. Both have been compiled into a double disc vinyl set recently on Sonic Cathedral. Andy brings his guitar and Masal bring their analogue synths and harp. Tidal Love Conversation In That familiar Golden Orchard is from Tidal Love Numbers- mesmeric, folk/ ambient crossed with cosmic jazz. 

Kieran Hebden and William Tyler's 41 Longfield Street Late 80s came out last year, one of 2025's most listened to albums round here. William's guitar playing and Kieran's laptop and production in a Yin Yang situation. Spider Ballad is the final song from the album, a collision of synth drones, acoustic guitars and noise. 

Modular synth player and tape experimenter Jamie Lidell and Nashville pedal steel guitarist Luke Schneider released A Companion For The Spaces Between Dreams a year ago, experimental instrumental psychedelia born from their discussions about creating a soundtrack for Lidell's own ketamine therapy sessions. Luke's pedal steel guitar is a wonky delight on this track, the notes bending and shifting deliriously. Inner voyage music

Robin Guthrie's Bandcamp page is a treasure trove of tracks he left off other albums or which never saw the light of day for whatever reason. He's released two beauties this year, Cherokee and Coming Up For Air- the latter is on this mix, a gliding, sparkling piece of ambient/ post- Cocteaus shoegaze guitar music from 2015. 

A year ago I was deeply into Sewell And The Gong's Patron Saint Of Elsewhere, a seven track album of pastoral, cosmic, Balearic folk that still sounds as fresh a year later as it did last autumn. 

It is my wife's birthday, fifty five today. Happy birthday Lou. x

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was Get your neck massaged.

Which didn't spark too much initially in me by way of responses. Eventually I got to Oneohtrix Point Never, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Love Corporation. 

Out in the field the Oblique Saturdays team pitched in with the usual array of inspired choices- JM suggested Reef and The Sweet, Her Palid Reflection came up with Cosey Fanni Tutti, Jake (bouncing back to the previous week's big rooms) gave us Paul Horn, Al proffered Wu Tang, Trail Of Bread suggested The Wedding Present, Devo, Prong and an unsafe for work track from Khia, Mrs G went with Elvis, Chris Yardley offered up a Roxy Music remix, Rol went for Stevie Wonder, The Swede wanted Shriekback and The Pretenders, and Khayem gave us Echo And The Bunnymen.

Broke My Neck

This week's Oblique Strategy from Mr Eno and Mr Schmidt is this- What wouldn't you do?

1. Vote Tory. 

As Meatloaf said, 'I'd do anything for love but I won't do that'.

I could probably add more items to that list but the question posed on the card made me think of other musical questions. How does it feel to feel? What have I done to deserve this? What time is love? Why are you being so reasonable now? What's the frequency, Kenneth? What's my name? What for? What is love? What is house? What does your soul look like? Where is my mind? Where have all the flowers gone? Why can't I be you? What's going on? How soon is now? What's all this then? What have I said now?  How far can too far go? What's inside a girl? What do I get? 

Can Your Pussy Do The Dog? *

Why Can't I Touch It? **

That's enough questions for the time being. Maybe you can come up with some answers. As ever, feel free to play along in the comment box. What wouldn't you do?

*I think Khia has the answer to this question.

** And this one. 

Autumn Reached For Her Golden Crown

A couple of weeks ago we walked at Edale in the glorious October sunshine, too hot with our coats on and sat on the grass on this hillock to have a drink and admire the view. Since Wednesday night in South Manchester it has been pouring down, cold and the pavements are covered in the brown sludge of fallen leaves. It seems that autumn has finally arrived- not the golden crispy day autumn that we all like to think of autumn as but the real autumn. 

In 1969 Nick Drake recorded this song for his debut album Five Leaves Left...

Time Of No Reply

Time Of No Reply didn't make it onto that album and wasn't released until 1987 when an album of outtakes came out, named after that song. I bought it unheard after reading a review in Melody Maker. It's funny to think it's nearly forty years now since I first heard them. I'm not sure all of the album hit home with me immediately, it took a while for some of those songs to embed themselves in me, partly as I just wasn't really listening to English late 60s folk at the time- I'm not sure why the review made me buy it given it was outside my usual frame of reference for 1987/8 but I'm glad I did. 

Rider On The Wheel. Black Eyed Dog. Time Of No Reply. Imagine having songs that good and not including them on your albums. 

Time Of No Reply starts like this...

'Summer was gone and the heat died down/ And autumn reached for her golden crown/ I looked behind as a heard a sigh/ But this was the time of no reply'

.. and it's been running round my head all week. 

Reminiscences

I've been living with the new Dexys Midnight Runners album, Love, for a couple of weeks now. It's Dexys's seventh album, produced by David Holmes and released on Heavenly, and is apparently part of or maybe the final word from Kevin and Dexys. The last song on Love, My Life In England Part 2, in which Kevin exhorts the people of England to 'rise up' over swelling strings, finishes with Kevin saying, 'Goodnight'- which could clearly be taken as the last word. 

The album starts with My Life In England Part 1, a re- recording of an already existing Dexys song, one where Kevin tells his family history, his parents emigrating from Ireland to Wolverhampton and then moving to London, his mum's love of singing, Irish parties where rebel songs were sung, and the accents of the West Midlands and North London, and features Kevin's joyous singing of the chorus- 'My yi yi yi yi yi-yi-yi-yi , life in Eng- er- land'. 

In between the two versions Kevin and Dexys spin and dance around eight more tales of love. Once A Man, Twice A Child is a eulogy for his Dad and the time they spent together when his Dad was a very elderly man. Kevin's relationship with his father was a difficult one and this song seems to be a musical reconciliation. Holmes' production is deep and warm, sympathetic to the songs. Kevin knows what he wants to sound like and the songs are big and soulful, emotive, sometimes sentimental and lyrically very much a taking stock. Kevin sings about aging ('I used to wonder do old people fancy other old people? Now I know the answer', he sings) and about family, grandchildren, romance, grief... all the big stuff, all the lessons learned. Kevin Rowland is and has been a singular voice in British music since the late 70s and (although I can do without the Christmas song), he has earned the right to do what he wants. 

The song You've Got The Love was Love's second single and initial digital copies of the album bought at Bandcamp came with a David Holmes remix of the song. Homer's remix has now been released in its own right along with a pair of Steve Mac mixes. The Holmes remix is a joy, looped drums and bass and snatches of vocals, a track filled with dancefloor urgency, Balearic chords and a joie de vivre summed up in the song with the line, 'you've got the love that I need...' 

I saw Kevin's autobiography out on paperback recently so I've been reading that at the same time. It's called Bless Me Father and his relationship with his father is never far from the centre of the book. Kevin's entire life, from childhood, has been one wracked with anxiety and insecurity. He didn't always realise it was this- as a young man he was angry and lashed out at people, let them down, behaved in ways which confused and upset them. He thought his father was permanently singling him out for criticism. He fell into a life of juvenile crime, multiple court appearances and family arguments. Reading Kevin's story I couldn't help but feel that if he'd had someone talk to him properly, some counselling as a teenager or young man, he could have been saved a lifetime of internal pain and relationship strife. 

Kevin doesn't seem to have particularly enjoyed any of his time as a pop star, the period between their breakthrough with Geno and Young Soul Rebels and then the huge hits with Come On Eileen and Too- Rye- Ay, seem to have been fraught and miserable, constant arguing and second guessing, not trusting people, self sabotaging, falling out with band members and pushing them away. He describes his life in vivid and frank detail- at times you wish he could be a little less candid but I guess it's all part of the process of writing it. His description of his cocaine addiction is horrific. In the end there is redemption, relief, recovery, and some self awareness, a coming to terms with the anxieties and issues which have plagued him. That book and this album very much work as a pair, a reflection on a life that has been all over the place at times but that has given us some amazing songs and only now he's much older has he achieved some peace. Through it all though, he acknowledges towards the end of the book, it has often been that music is the thing that has saved him. 

Reminisce (Part One)

The Beautiful Kids On The Coast

Kim Deal's debut solo album Nobody Loves You More came out two years ago next month, an album I didn't pick up on until the end of year lists started to mention it- and then when I got a copy, I fell in love with it. Kim's voice and guitar playing, the breezy nature of some the songs- some of them indie rock, some bossa nova, some with horns- and the personal and clearly heartfelt nature of others, won me over on the first play of it. I went back to it recently and found that I still love it and that it's one of those perfect little albums, eleven songs in under forty minutes- turns up, sounds great, does its job. 

The title track comes in with a burst of strummed guitar and then throws you off a little, sweetly sung with an string quartet backing, and then goes all bossa nova pop in the middle. 

Nobody Loves You More

On Coast a trumpet and trombone parp away and the song sways about, lost in itself. Kim sits on a bench by the sea, looking out and reflecting. 'Abandoned plans for the good times', she sings and, 'Clearly all of my life I've been foolish', but, as she sees the young people playing in the surf she relaxes into the moment, watching, 'the beautiful kids on the coast'. 

Coast

Belfast Two Pack

A double serving of musical goodies from Belfast for Tuesday. First comes Black Bones (Timmy Stewart and Aaron Black) and an EP with Bradford producer Miles J Paralysis where they take two tracks each over two sides of a 12". Timmy is a Belfast veteran, cutting his teeth with a residency at David Holmes' Art College and since promoting various nights of his own around the city. Black Bones have released a slew of tracks in the last year, dark and thundering electronic music with dub and techno always close to the surface. On the Black Cross EP they serve up Psychic Rain Dance, slo mo industrial rhythms and acidic synth wobbles with bursts of unintelligible vocals, and Low Voltage Dreams, an even slower slice of atmospheric dub techno, with insistent percussion and a bassline that bangs at your front door and demands to be let in. 

Miles pitches in with Twilight, serious industrial acid house with ominous vocal samples, and Two Up, a more minimal ambient techno sub- bass dive. The payoff line at the Bandcamp page (where you can get vinyl and digital) is, 'Weapons grade DJ tools for the margin travelers', which is good but I don't think you need to be a DJ to enjoy this quartet of tracks. They work equally well as home listening or out on the move. 

Deeply Armed are a Belfast band I saw them play at The Golden Lion earlier this year and I really enjoyed the single they put out last year, The Healing. They have returned with Black Ice, a confrontational and swaggering song that rides in on a bassline that sounds so close and so live, that the bass guitar itself could right there in the room with you, bass amp speaker overloaded and vibrating while singer Michael sounds like a young Ian Brown. 

The EP comes with two remixes, one a stripped down, skeletal outing by Sleaford Mods Andrew Fearn and the second a reworking by Mad Professor. The Mad Professor Cold Black Dub is a monster, the song turned inside out, the bass guitar unanchored and a psychedelic dub blur of FX throwing the rules out of the window. Everything- vocals, chords and bass- sounds like someone playing PiL's Metal Box from inside a washing machine in the next room. Get all three here. 

It Looks Better From A Distance

From decades old psychedelic veterans Mercury Rev at The Ritz on Friday night to two young and unknown bands on Saturday night at Low Four on Deansgate. Low Four is a recording studio/ gig space, two connecting rooms with a bar. We were there on Saturday night to see Wing!, an artist/ band recommendation via Daniel Avery that Martin from The Flightpath Estate picked up on. I wouldn't say the three of us were the oldest people in the room but we were in the top four and there was then a large, several decades gap to the rest of the crowd. The support act, Surprise!, were ridiculously young, two young men and a young woman, two guitars and keys, occasionally drum machine and three way vocals. When they clicked, the three singers all in unison with the softly strummed guitar chords, they had a definite sound, reminiscent of The Orielles quieter moments. 

Wing! are from South London and are also very young, a little older than Surprise! I think, in their mid- 20s maybe. Wing! are built around Adam Swan and his laptop, layers of ambient techno chords, wordless vocals and noise. In the room on Saturday night Adam stands on the left, headphones on, bringing in chords, music and static drones from his device. In the middle is Kai Charlton, laid back but nimble bass guitar work and occasional synth, and on the right drummer Joe Killick who is a revelation, a seriously good drummer who manages to sound both like an 808 brought to life and a very real human being who can switch from jazz to techno in an instant. 

Post- hip hop, post- rock, post- techno, post- trip hop post- everything.... they make a massive, entrancing sound, beat driven electronic music with nods to jazz, instrumental hip hop and Detroit. They've had a few EP releases. This is It Looks Better From A Distance from earlier this year which sounds like Tortoise and Carl Craig getting it on at a trip hop night. 

Wing! were very impressive on Saturday night and went down well with the small but enthusiastic crowd. The sheer force of the live sound- layers of atmospheric laptop textures and the kick and swing of the drums- was very persuasive. 

They've played at the Green Man festival and won the Green Man Rising award. Last year there was an EP at Bandcamp called Missed It Just the Once, four slices of rhythm heavy instrumental music that sound like samples and loops played by a live band. Get it here. The Worth Scanning For EP came out this year on Memorials Of Distinction and is at Bandcamp here. 

Explodes Like A Fractal, Pops Like A Light Bulb

Mercury Rev are touring to celebrate twenty five years since the release of All Is Dream, an album that came out on the day of the Twin Towers attacks. 2001 is a long time ago now and in some ways All Is Dream doesn't seem like an album that's a quarter of a century old although the time it was released into was a different world in all sorts of ways. I can distinctly remember buying it in September 2001, an album that for me was in the space between Isaac being in hospital a lot (two bone marrow transplants in 2000 and a year in isolation afterwards) and Eliza being born (2003). It got played a lot in that time. Revisiting it recently, it struck me that it's as good as 1998's Deserter's Songs, the album that is uaually held up as their masterpiece. The band had planned to record All Is Dream with Jack Nitzsche but he died just before they were due to begin and in part they attempted to record what they thought he might have done with the songs. They were also down to a core of singer Jonathan Donahue and guitarist Grasshopper. 

The support act at The Ritz on Friday night was former Bad Seed Mick Harvey with Mexican singer Amanda Acevedo. I only caught the last three songs of their set but the last one, built around a Mick Harvey one chord rhythm guitar clang, had the DNA of The Bad Seeds running through it. They have an album out, Psychedelia In White, which might be worth checking out on the basis of what we heard. This song as far as I know wasn't played but comes from a 2024 Mick Harvey solo album and is very touching, a tribute to those from his youth who have gone. 

When We Were Beautiful And Young

Mercury Rev start out with some psychedelia, a Ravi Shankar cover, as is their way. Donahue prowls the front of the stage gesturing to us, 60s beatnik cap and reefer jacket, every inch the poet/ frontman. They don't do the obvious thing and play All Is Dream in full and in order, but dip in and out, pushing that album's orchestral sounds, fever dream poetry and psychedelic chamber rock to the limits. From Deserter's Songs they play the quirky The Funny Bird and follow it with a surging, dark Hercules, All Is Dream's closing song, which is segued into There's Always Been A Bird In Me (from last year's Born Horses). The songs all flow into each other, no gaps between them. Donahue breaks off from the mic to conduct the group, arms waving around, throwing the music from side to side, leaning ver the drumkit to encourage the drummer. It's theatrical- there's something about Mercury Rev that always reminds me of 1940s Disney, the overblown symphonic melodies, the weirdly trippy Fantasia psych and at times the singer could be the 1940 Fantasia film version of Mickey Mouse, dressed as a 60s beatnik, breaking off from throwing shapes and conducting his colleagues into forlorn vocals. 

Lincoln's Eyes is a treat, powerful and spooky, overblown chamber psyche that halts suddenly on the line, 'comes to a dead stop', a jump scare even though you know it's coming. 

Lincoln's Eyes

They go from there into a long cover version of The Modern Lovers' She Cracked. After that they lose me for a while with a section where they play a medley of Dream Of A Young Girl As A Flower, Patters and Runaway Raindrop (none from All Is Dream), their 1940s cinema/ psyche going prog including a drum solo, and finishing with Donahue throwing in the Tears In Rain monologue from Blade Runner via a children's voice changer toy. 

They recover for the ending, the final four songs a Mercury Rev masterclass, Grasshopper soloing and the band (two synth players and the krauty drummer) on fire. They summon all that early 21st century energy and darkness with Tides Of The Moon...

Tides Of The Moon

...and then hit us with two Deserter's Songs classics, Holes and Goddess On A Hiway, both sounding glorious, before finishing with All Is Dream's magnificent opener The Dark Is Rising, a song that I can clearly remember listening to back in autumn 2001 (and since) and being affected by it more than once- it finishes with Donahue singing the line, 'I never dreamed I'd lose you/ In my dreams I'm always strong', centre stage, foot on the monitor, arms raised either side of his head in mock body builder pose. 

The Dark Is Rising

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy suggestion was In total darkness, or a very large room, very quietly.

I responded with bands I'd seen in large rooms- Lou Reed, Nick Cave, The Charlatans, Bob Dylan, Beastie Boys and Prince, and also with Jamie Xx and John Talabot. 

The Oblique Saturdays community chipped in with Gram Parsons, The Deep Dark Woods, Fatima Mansions, Cave In, Rage Against The Machine, The Youngbloods, Bonnie Prince Billy, Idlewild, Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls, The Twilight Sad and The Durutti Column. Thanks to Ernie, Rol, Chris Yardley, Al G and Mrs G, SRC, C, JC and Eddie Largely Anonymous. 

This is Pauline Murray and The Invisible Girls in 1980, Martin Hannett on production, Vini Reilly in the band and Peter Saville on sleeve art. 

Screaming In The Darkness

This week's card says this- Get your neck massaged.

I mused on this for a while and came up with nothing much.  I decided to engage my housemates (wife and daughter) into the Oblique Saturdays world and said to them, 'I'm going to say a phrase and I want you to tell me what song or songs it suggests.' They responded as follows-

Wife- 'Nothing'

Daughter- 'Nothing'

Wife- 'Stress'.

Stress Waves

Oneohtrix Point Never in 2010. If you're stressed it's good to try to find ways to relax. Here come Frankie...

Relax (Sex Mix)

Listening to relaxing music helps too, especially music with a vocal sampled from a relaxation tape. Maybe Love Corporation can assist. 

Palatial 

Feel free to drop your own responses to Get your neck massaged into the comments box. 

Post script: Spencer sent this to me earlier this week. I'm adding it here as an Oblique Saturday extra. It's from an interview Brian Eno gave in 1980

'The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation - particularly in studios - tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you're in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that's going to yield the best results. Of course, that often isn't the case - it's just the most obvious and - apparently - reliable method. The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, "Don't forget that you could adopt *this* attitude," or "Don't forget you could adopt *that* attitude." 

The first Oblique Strategy said "Honour thy error as a hidden intention." And, in fact, Peter's first Oblique Strategy - done quite independently and before either of us had become conscious that the other was doing that - was ...I think it was "Was it really a mistake?" which was, of course, much the same kind of message. Well, I collected about fifteen or twenty of these and then I put them onto cards. At the same time, Peter had been keeping a little book of messages to himself as regards painting, and he'd kept those in a notebook. We were both very surprised to find the other not only using a similar system but also many of the messages being absolutely overlapping, you know...there was a complete correspondence between the messages. So subsequently we decided to try to work out a way of making that available to other people, which we did; we published them as a pack of cards, and they're now used by quite a lot of different people, I think.''

Nocturnal Stealth Mode

Techno albums as tributes to much loved cats are thin on the ground- the genre has been expanded a little by the release last week of The Adventures Of An Amazing Boy Cat by M- Paths, out on Mighty Force. Across thirteen tracks M- Paths explores the range of electronic sound- techno, drum 'n' bass, ambient and vocal samples, all expertly brought together into a whole. 

The first track is just seven seconds long, the cat of the album's title saying 'hello'. It's followed by M- Paths revisiting his own Emotivated track, a Kennedy sampling track from December 2025, the former President's, 'we do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard', speech accompanied by headspinning electronic melodies and thumpy techno. The eight minute Forever In Our Hearts is a centrepiece, a vocal sample FXed and chopped up and laid over sleek, gliding Berlin techno. On Boy Cat's Nocturnal Stealth Mode the drums get tougher and distorted, dub space and scratchy synths sounds competing with more cut up vocals, sometimes not much more than syllables and parts of words dropped in. 

Sirens arrives, disruptive and in your face with rapid fire drums and speaker bothering bass. Towards the end of the album Climbing rides in on a machine rhythm and skittering synth FX that dance across the top, layers of sounds repeating as snares fire off and clatter away. Climbing (Part 2) brings the drum 'n' bass drums back with more sampled speaking voices and intense synth squiggles. At the end Play & Rest calms things down with some ambient techno chords (briefly) before the drums kick in. After a couple of minutes, the drums disappear, the ambient chords resurface and then it fades to static and the sound of waves hitting a pebbled shore. A most satisfying ending. 

The album can be found at Mighty Force here.

Nayar

Four years ago Tigerbalm released an album called International Love Affair, a record in love with the possibility of sounds from other places, a trans- continental dance record combining London with Bali, Africa, New Zealand, Brazil and Morocco- house music and global sounds jammed together in a completely organic sounding way by Tigerbalm (Rose Robinson). Apart from anything else, it was a massively fun album. Riad De Lister sounds like Tom Tom Club pitching up at a 21st century basement party in Dalston. 

Riad De Lister

A remix album followed with new versions by a slew of artists including The Emperor Machine taking on Riad De Lister and then by way of return Tigerbalm remixed The Emperor Machine on an EP of tracks from his Island Boogie album (that also included a pair of Hardway Bros remixes). Tigerbalm's remix of La Cassette with Severine Mouletin on vocals, is day glo, sci fi/ Afro- pop, dub disco. Impossible not to enjoy. 

La Cassette (Tigerbalm Remix)

Between that release and this autumn I lost touch with Tigerbalm's music but found it again recently. By happy coincidence Tigerbalm released an album in June this year, Bubblegum Discos, that opens with this infectious and vibrant piece of futuristic Latin/ synth pop, Nayar (recorded with Napoli resident Giorgio Lopez). 

Nayar originally out as a single in July 2025 and was followed by two more singles- Pura Vida and then Coco Makako. Those and the rest of Bubblegum Discos can be heard/ bought here. 

Queer The Pitch

Rich Thair has a main job in Red Snapper, a role as a member of Sabres Of Paradise live band, a spin off duo with Sabres bassist Nick Abnett (Spraycan) and a Red Snapper offshoot called Number with his long term musical partner Ali Friend. You'd think all of this would keep him busy enough but he also has a solo project, Dicky Continental, based out of his studio Buntys in Swansea. Dicky blurs trip hop, dub, soul and breakbeats, an urban and after hours sound. The first album Un... came out on Acid Jazz in 2023. Last year he had a track on Sounds From The Flightpath Etstae Volume 2 and this year has released a single and been involved in some remixes, all leading up to a new album, Queer The Pitch. 

Queer The Pitch came out recently on Margate label Ramrock. Dicky reunites with singer/ songwriter Jo Sims (from Un...) on opening song The Grain, an echoey, breakbeat affair with crunchy drums and an acoustic guitar, and vocals that drift in and out. It works very well as a lead in and sets up what comes next. Across the rest of the ten tracks that make up the album Rich provides the musical backdrop for a range of young vocalists, singers, rappers and poets- Tia Zakura, Ioan Omar, Laila Woodward and Asher Carroll, drawn from a local youth project and talent pool Rich leads called Future Blood. 

Tia Zakura's laid back, easy delivery doesn't hide the personal nature and unsettling feel of the words- Rust is coming from an uneasy place, examining the world and Tia's place in it, being young and black in 2026 Britain. 'Thoughts drive me insane so I've just been thinking thinking', she says on Rust. Tia returns on the summer single Hostile Environment, a fantastic dub/ blues spoken word/ poetry track. 

Big Red Button marries live jazz and trip hop with Ioan Omar's voice. His voice is also on the fractured hip hop of It Was Just You and the synth bass and electric piano, soulful sounds of Flying. Asher Carroll sings on Take A Deep Breath And Let Go, a cinematic song that suggests a world of underground clubs and basement cafes. On Yeah We Do there are seagulls and a long horn note, drums and the voice of Laila Woodward, who brings a folk/ ambient hypnosis and haunting to Queer The Pitch. 'Save your soul for another day', she advises. 

Pirate Love arrives halfway through Queer The Pitch, a tribute to pirate radio with fuzz bass, strings, FX and a rare groove radio sample, and the alubm finishes with Sweet Equity, a late night jazz/ blues track, more cinematic sounds with bass by Andrew Wal Coughlan, to whom the album is dedicated. 

Rich has pulled off something really special on Queer The Pitch, a showcase for some young and emerging talents- singers, songwriters, rappers and poets- whose voices and words find a home in and among the experimental and evocative tracks Rich has created as Dicky Continental- 21st century, South Wales, dub/ spoken word blues. 

You can find Queer The Pitch at Ramrock's Bandcamp page and at Dicky Continental's website. 

Luster

Back in April 2025 4AD released an album by Irish musician and songwriter Maria Somerville, an album called Luster. At the time I slept on it a little, not giving it the time it deserved (despite a couple of people raving about it to me. Then, about a year ago I caught up and became mildly obsessed with it. Now, a year on I go back to it every now and then and find something new in it every time. 

Maria is from Connemara, Ireland, and picked up singing and playing guitar at an early age from family members. She uploaded some songs in 2013 and got some attention and then self released her debut in 2018. She got a show on NTS radio (a station who are very on the ball with leftfield and non- mainstream music, DJs and selectors) and she would weave field recordings and spoken word tracks into her selections of folk, ambient, shoegaze and dreampop. This in turn seems to have fed into Luster, an album which found its way to the right home with 4AD. 

In just under forty minutes Maria pulls together the sounds mentioned above- folk, ambient, shoegaze, dreampop- with some seriously emotive and affecting music, songs that have an indefinable quality but that also speak straight to you. Most of them, I don't know what they're about as such, but I feel as if I know exactly what she means. 

There's something mythical about the songs on Luster, something otherwordly and in tune wiht the elements and nature. Halo sounds like its coming in from out at sea, drifting in on a sea mist- a gauze of drones and FX and an unseen choir, an abstract ambient/ shoegaze sound that the words seem to appear out of and then disappear into. 

Halo

On Trip the metal strings of the guitar chords clang away, coming roughly through the amplifier and an Irish folk influence is there, part of the vocal melody, a nod to the past. 

Trip

Monday's Long Songs

Walking in the woods and meadows round the River Mersey is one of our local rituals. There are a some well worn paths and across on the other side of the river the Riverbank Cafe, set up during lockdown and still thriving today. The sausage rolls are highly recommended. But if you stray off the path a little and head down towards the Urmston part of the meadows there's a maze of tracks and paths that wind their way round a couple of riding centres, fields with horses and semi- derelict caravans and a farm. It was walking down there a few weeks ago that we came across this entrance to a half submerged chamber. 

No, of course I didn't go in. We all know how those films finish. Makes you wonder though. 

A pair of Monday long song releases for your enjoyment today, one from Brighton and from San Francisco via Leeds. Brighton DJ and producer Gordon Kaye has been playing and making music since the mid- 80s. This year he's released three singles- Galactic Ride and Garbage In Garbage Out were the first two, now joined by a third, Something Real. 

Something Real is the pick of the bunch for me, an eight minute long cosmic chugger, synths and drum machine providing a deeply addictive acid house/ sci fi backdrop to the dreamy vocals (courtesy of Gordon's daughter Gabriella, singing of neon planets and silver shadows, midnight rhythms and laser rays). A piece of summer sounding psychedelic Balearica for October. Get it at Bandcamp.

Over at Paisley Dark Marshall Watson has an EP out, Tougher Than Disco, two new tracks and four remixes. Never Coming Down is eight minutes of slo mo, acidic chug with echo drenched voices low in the mix. The remixes come from L.A. Dysto who pitch up the beats and the tension and Mr B.C. who brings the warp factor and delay- and then the big chords. 

The second track is Mesmerise, seven minutes of acid house hypnosis led by a post- punk/ indie bass guitar, some spacey synth notes and a trippy vocal from Alona. Remixes are by Viper Patrol (stripped down and thumpy) and Airsine (machine funk). Find all six tracks at Paisley Dark's Bandcamp page.