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 was- Tape your mouth.

I plumbed for the recently released Tom Waits and Massive Attack single, Boots On The Ground, a song I've returned to many times since, Tom Waits' mouth taped, both the disgust in his delivery and his words and the sound of him breathing. 

There were as usual some excellent suggestions from the Bagging Area massive- Cryptoliz opted for the Bulgarian State Television Female Choir, as beloved by 4AD's Ivo Watts- Russell and as heard here singing Erghen Diado. 

Rol went with Radiohead's Gagging Order, Ernie with Julie Fowlis and Joe Dolce and Al G with Deerhunter.

This week's Oblique Strategy card is this- Short circuit (if eating peas improves virility, shovel them into your pants)

Sound advice from Eno and Schmidt. 

Pass the peas. More peas. Fred Wesley and The J.B.s. 

More Peas

I dunno if Fred Wesley and The J.B.s' peas improved their virility or indeed if they shoveled them into their pants but this is very much music that struts, 1973 funk that could potentially cause accidental pregnancies. 

This is an ALFOS favorite, one I've heard go off in The Golden Lion, courtesy of Secret Circuit. Maybe not virile but definitely sexy. 

Jungle Bones (Tiago Mix)

Late To The Party

A new release from Irish artist Def Nettle and a song that pushes a lot of post- punk/ 80s alternative and indie buttons, The Party. Built on top of punchy drums and a prodding bassline, there's accordion and flecks of guitar and singer/ frontman/ songwriter Glen Brady singing of being late to the party, acrid smoke and moving on. Lots of echoes of The The, Fatima Mansions, The Cure and other literate 80s indie- pop. 

There's a remix by Andy Bell in his GLOK guise which strips the song down, adds throbbing electro bass and percussive clacks. Andy drops the accordion melody back in among blips and bleeps and the vocal comes back sounding even more alienated than before. It's a murky and dark but energising piece of music, the sort of thing you hear in the street late at night, suddenly coming out of a briefly open door that leads down some stairs to a basement club, where there are lights flashing and the unmistakable smell of dry ice. 

You can find The Party at Bandcamp. 

More At Ban Ban Ton Ton

I've continued writing some guest posts at Ban Ban Ton Ton, the Japan based Balearic blog run by Dr. Rob. I say Balearic, Ban Ban Ton Ton's remit runs far wider than that. Since the start of February this year I've written about these four albums.

Jason Boardman's second compilation of obscure post punk and dub cuts, music from the outer fringes of the early 1980s. ...And The Native Hipsters open the album with the surreally brilliant There Goes Concorde Again, low fi, DIY post- punk recored onto 4 track in a band member's bedroom. 

No One's Listening Anyone 2 is a trip back to a time of invention and inspiration, the swirling creativity that was thrown into the air by punk, giving everyone and anyone who had an idea the confidence to go out and have a go. It was also a period with an ever present threat of nuclear war, economic recession and warmongering, clinically insane leaders... hmmm... You can read my review of No- One's Listening Anyway 2 here. 

In March I reviewed the latest album by Craven Faults, an ambient outfit who make music inspired by the post- industrial landscape of northern England, a world of engine sheds, derelict mills, paths and cobbled streets walked by people from two hundred years ago. Craven Faults are dark and immersive, an experience. My review of Sidings is here. This is the fifteen minute long track Far Closes that ends the album. 

A month ago I wrote about the latest album by Thought Leadership, a mysterious Stockport based guitarist who has released three album now, each one named after a suit from a deck of Tarot cards. The latest one is called IV Of Cups and indicates that Thought Leadership is showing no signs of running out of inspiration or ideas. IV Of Cups has ten new guitar led ambient/ instrumental pieces, all named Roman numerically from XXI to XXX. It's a joy of an album, inventive and hypnotic, some obvious influences worn on its sleeve but very much its own thing too. My review of IV Of Cups is here and the album can be found at Bandcamp with some vinyl still available here. 

Most recently, two days ago in fact, Rob posted my review of the new Pan* American album, Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane, an ambient/ electric./ acoustic tribute to travel- physical travel by airplane and the kind of metaphorical travels we can make at home, transported by music to another place. It's also a response to the decline and death of Pan* American's parents so there's a third kind of travel involved and referred to, the passage from life to death. Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane is by no means a depressing or downbeat album though, it's an album of possibilities and of taking flight. You can read my full review here and listen to the album at Bandcamp. 

Gorilla Head

At the end of March I went to see Ladytron play at Gorilla. The tickets were a gift, courtesy of friends who couldn't make it. I tend to think of Ladytron as a relatively recent band but they formed in Liverpool in 1999 and have released eight albums since 2001, the most recent a few weeks ago. Gorilla was rammed to the rafters, a little unpleasantly so. Once inside the venue (and it's a small venue anyway) the only way to move was if someone else moved. Making our way to the bar was a feat in itself and once there there was little chance of moving any further forward. 

The band played twenty songs, set up with the two female members, Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo, at the front of the stage- Helen sings most of the songs, the archetypal cool front woman, and Mira playing synth/ guitar and singing on a handful of songs. When Mira sings they become more angular, sounding like a Bulgarian Stereolab. When Helen sings, they snap into sharp, futurist synthpop mode. 

Behind them founder member/ songwriter Daniel Hunt plays bass/ synths, there's a human drummer and another synth/ keys player. The songs from the new album Paradises follow in the electronic- synth pop vein they're known for and early on this single, Caught In The Blink Of An Eye, stands out- dramatic and urgent, slow burning synth with the drummer adding masses of extra oomph. 

Old favourites Seventeen (their breakthrough from 2002) and Destroy Everything You Touch (from 2005) are saved for the end of the set and the encore. There's some audience- band interaction, Daniel joking about the heat onstage making everything 'moist' and all the songs, new and old, are well received. Just wish it hadn't be so packed in there. 

More recent, closer to home and slightly less packed out, Justin Robertson appeared at Head last Thursday promoting his latest novel The MineralTail. Head is just up the road from me, a twenty minute walk to Stretford and is a bar/ space in a former branch of Barclays with the bar being the surviving bank counter and some of the late 60s modernist design features still intact. It's a low key and welcoming place with 70s geometric wallpaper and assorted pieces of furniture. 

Justin promoted his second novel The Trial Of Jonah at Head a year ago and returned with his third- The MineralTail, a cosmic tale of the greatest three piece rock 'n' roll band ever formed (in this case, a trio of a megalithic stone and two dogs), the greatest album ever made and the longest song ever recorded. Following on the heels of the semi- autobiographical time travelling story The Trial Of Jonah, it's an irreverent, freewheeling tribute to the redemptive powers of music and of sound. 

Justin reads a couple of passages and does an in- conversation with our host Stephen, who delves into the book's creation myth, the Buddha nature of dogs, 'Satan's flaccid jingles' and we take a headlong dive into the magical psychedelic world of pan pipes and bagpipe jazz.   

The MineralTail has an album to accompany it, the soundtrack to the novel. There's a fifteen minute sampler at Soundcloud- motorik space rock, ambient dub ritual and rocking cosmische. Listen here. 

Tape 05

The return after a thirteen year gap of Boards Of Canada last week caused a ripple in the internet continuum. It began with some VHS tapes and cryptic posters and then continued on Thursday with Tape 05. 

Boards Of Canada have often dealt with a certain sense of unease and Tape 05 fits in with that- ghostly synth sounds, the rattle of TV static, voices that you can't quite hear clearly, the feeling that something's not quite right, the ghosts of the recent past lingering- cults, 70s TV preachers, adverts for obsolete products, railway stations where trains no longer stop, news radio broadcasts from thirty or forty years ago somehow returning to the airwaves. Nostalgia, hauntology, psychgeography, a promised future that never arrived, all wrapped up in a three minute piece of ambient music. 

Back in 2005 Boards Of Canada released The Campfire Headphase. The Japanese edition of the album contained one extra track, Macquarie Ridge. It is ridiculously beautiful and affecting in a specific way that electronic music can be- waves and shimmers of synth, backwards drums, piano, the hint of choral voices- a kind of ethereal, psychedelic, elemental music.   

Monday's Long Song

Back to work after two weeks off and back to 1992 for today's regular weekly long song with an epic version and fine example of the art of the remix- Thrash and Greg Hunter taking Killing Joke's gothic/ post- punk 1980 single Requiem and turning it into something entirely new, an eleven minute trip down the river, a dub techno version of Apocalypse Now! and the mission to find Colonel Kurtz.

A Floating Leaf Always Reaches The Sea crosses borders and ignores boundaries, a constantly evolving, living entity with squelchy synths, bubbling bass, crunchy drums, dub echo and space and Geordie Walker's guitar beamed in like a transmission from a dying star. 

Requiem (A Floating Leaf Always Reaches The Sea Dub Mix)

Fifty Minutes Of A Mountain Of One

A Mountain Of One recently called time on the band, a four piece that in two bursts of activity, once in the 00s and then again in the 2020s, made some beautifully sunkissed psychedelic Balearica. They produced a sound that had a tinge of darkness to it, songs that had been left out in the sun too long and was now a little feverish, the result of a night out on holiday that ended up in a strange place that you could never find again. There are echoes of 70s and 80s bands, of weird Europop summer singles, of psychedelia and late 80s/ early 90s acid house, of guitar bands lost in the outer fields at summer festivals, yacht rock where the yacht is taking in water. 

The group put out three albums (2009's Institute Of Joy, 2022's existential Balearica Stars Planet Dust Me and a 2023 Ricardo Villalobos remix of SPDM), a compilation (2007's Collected Works) and various EPs and singles, which provide rich pickings for a mix- this one has a nice flow to it I think. 

Fifty Minutes Of A Mountain Of One

• Here Comes Nothing
• Innocent Reprise
• Surrender (Generalisation Dub)
• Star
• Star (GLOK Starlight Dub)
• Stars Planet Dust Me
• Ride (Time And Space Machine Remix)
• Can't Be Serious

Here Comes Nothing is from Collected Works, a 2007 CD that compiled the five songs from EP1 and the five from EP2 plus two extra ones- Here Comes Nothing and Brown Piano (which was also a single). Acoustic guitars and electric ones, swirly production, piano, wordless backing vocals- a heady stew. 

Innocent Reprise is from EP2, released in 2007- a psychedelic folk instrumental with a solid dance groove and some lovely guitar and electric piano melody lines. The choppy, fuzzy rhythm guitar part towards the end is nicely frazzled. 

Surrender was on 2022's Stars Planet Dust Me, an eight song, double vinyl downtempo masterpiece, one of my favourite records of that year. In 2024 Damian Harris remixed Surrender with his Midfield General hat on bringing some dubby funkiness. 

Star is from Stars Planet Dust Me, one of the key tracks on it. Laid back with a soulful vocal and an 80s Mediterranean beach bar piano part. Loafers, no socks, Euro- hippy braids and bracelets. Andy Bell's GLOK remix is a superb drawn out dub version, electronic drums and chuggy rhythms, the female backing vox recurring and the bass and FX reverberating all over the place. 

The Stars Planet Dust Me album's title track was an appropriately cosmic excursion, choral vocal and organ, very spaced out production and wide eyed questions. Proggy. 

Ride was a 2008 single and opening song on the Institute Of Joy album, and was remixed by Richard Norris during one of his Time And Space Machine phases. Ibizan acoustic guitars, rattling percussion and propulsive bass with Richard Norris setting the psychedelic space rock controls for the heart of the sun. 

Can't Be Serious is from EP1 from 2007, off kilter 80s Balearic pop with a distorted spiraling guitar solo, and a vocal that answers its own question.