Justin Robertson took his Five Green Moons on the road last week for a trio of gigs, in Liverpool, Manchester and Todmorden. On Thursday night he was at Rainy Heart in Stretford, a new South Manchester venue with some fearsome speaker stacks, in a retail unit in what used to be Stretford Mall.
Five Green Moons may not be the most unlikely thing to have ever happened in the former Stretford Mall- that would probably be Muhammad Ali's visit in 1971. The three time heavyweight champion of the world was on a visit to the Stretford branch of Tesco (when it was Stretford Arndale) on a promotional tour for Ovaltine, a visit that had to be closed down by police due to the sheer number of people that arrived hoping to see the world's most famous sportsman. Ali was backed into a corner by an ecstatic mob and had to be rescued by the police. But, Five Green Moons may well be a close second to that.
Justin stands behind a bank of equipment- laptop, drum machine, synth, theremin, FX pedals- dressed in ceremonial robes, horned headgear and hood with guitar and e- bow. What follows is as much ritual as gig, a slew of influences fused into one- pagan poetry, the bass and drums of dub, weird folk horror, post- punk, gnomic lyrics about ritual, repetition, sense, form and beauty, fuzz and sci fi. It's a fully realised hour of music, no gaps between the songs, a one man excursion into rite and the occult via music, everything drenched in the space of dub- 'everything's a song in the sound world', he chants at one point, his right hand wafted round the theremin and the bass kicking around the concrete walls.
Towards the end he plays Boudicca, a track from last year's Moon 2 album (Brix Smith is on vocals on the recorded version, a presence from 1980s Manchester, The Fall being one of the main reasons Justin arrived in Manchester to study in the mid- 80s). Boudicca is a trippy collision of post- punk and dub, a celebration of the Queen of the Iceni, sung by Brix. After an hour of Five Green Moons ritual, of Justin's spoken word vocals, the rubbery bass, the skittering/ thudding drum sounds and Space Echo, the distorted guitar and FX, come to end. Justin holds his arms forwards bringing the invocation to a close.
This Chant Is God Voice is one of the prime cuts from Moon 2 and was a highlight on Thursday night at Rainy Heart. 'Repetition is ritual/ Form is beauty/ This chant is beauty'.
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 card said Into the impossible. I went with an instant response, The Drum by The Impossibles (the Andrew Weatherall remix from 1991). Ernie agreed and mentioned his 7" copy of the original by Slapp Happy from 1974. Ernie also had Peter O'Toole singing in The Impossible Dream in the 1972 film Man Of La Mancha. Walter went with Medicine Head in 1973 with a mathematical impossibility, One Plus One Is One. Anonymous consulted a search engine and got Into The Impossible by Saint Profane and another Anonymous (or possibly the same one) suggested Impossible by The Charlatans. Khayem came up with Kylie's Impossible Princess and Bon Iver's cover of Talk Talk's I Believe.
Spendid commented that there were several ways to take the suggestion Into the impossible and settled on Jessica Curry's So Let Us Melt, a computer game score that captures the 'impossible wonder of childhood... but comes closer to describing the aching loss of adulthood'. Indeed. Jessica's album is here- it's well worth your time.
I did wonder, as a response to Spendid's comments, if I should be resisting the temptation to go with gut instinct when turning over the card, not just go for a song or artist name that the card suggests, but be a little less literal and a little more more lateral- surely what Eno and Schmidt intended.
Today's Oblique Saturday card is this...
Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place
I slept on this. Extreme music is an interesting one. Artists that go to extremes are often admirable and worthy of our respect but they don't always make for fun listening experiences. I'm sure you can think of your own examples.
I often think of Gnod as an extreme band- a Manchester collective with a rotating cast of players, born from a scene in the 00s around Islington Mill in Salford. They work with sound and light artists to create fully immersive experiences. They have played at a night called Gesantkunstwerk (German word, translates as 'whole arts work'). They cite Kurt Vonnegut as being as important to their music as any musical influences. So it goes.
In 2017 they released an album called Just Say No To The Psycho Right- Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine (as statement even truer now than it was then- the psycho right- wing capitalist fascist industrial death machine is out of control in the USA right now). Gnod's music is loud, everything into the red, sludge powered psyche- rock. Maybe it's difficult to be extreme while making guitar music in the 2010s/ 20s but Gnod do it and do it well.
Early Husker Du- the Land Speed Record Husker Du- are extreme too, a live album from 1982 that flies through seventeen songs in half an hour, breakneck, amphetamine hardcore punk. By the time they hit 1984 and their double album concept opus Zen Arcade, they had an album that ended with the fourteen minute long jazz- hardcore punk instrumental Reoccurring Dreams. In between the two they opened 1984's New Day Rising with the title track, a coruscating wall of buzzsaw guitars,, breaking glass and thumping tinny drums, just three words repeated over and over...
I then thought about going into the industrial techno area, the 'full on panel beaters from Prague' (quoth Andrew Weatherall) of the 90s, the sound of a metal bin being kicked, or Belgian hardcore and Dutch gabba, dance music taken to its extremities. Weatherall himself visited this area with Dave Hedger as Lords Of Afford, gratuitously hardcore techno as heard on this 1994 remix of Steve Bicknell...
Taking the word Extreme literally threw up Extreme Noise Terror, the extreme noise band from Ipswich. In 1992 they appeared on stage with The KLF (a duo who definitely took things to extremes) at the Brits, a noise metal version of 3am Eternal that ended with Bill Drummond firing a machine gun (firing blanks) at the assembled Brits audience. Then they dumped a dead sheep outside the venue.
It occurred to me that extreme music can sometimes become a competition, a band racing to take their sound to the nth degree, the furthest point it can go. In 1989 Napalm Death recorded You Suffer, their speed metal/ grindcore reduced to a song that is 0.03 seconds long, released on 7". The lyrics apparently are, 'You suffer/ But why?'
The first half of the Oblique Strategy card is Go to an extreme... The second half is ...move back to a more comfortable place. I'm not sure I like the idea of music being comfortable- comfortable sounds dull and easy, like a sofa or a pair of elastic waist trousers. I've nothing against either, trousers and sofas are important parts of life, but I'm not sure art and music should be seen as such.
There's a fairly well known phrase, 'art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed'. Banksy has used it but it's attributed to Cesar A. Cruz and a 1997 poem with the same title, a poem about the horrors humans inflict on each other- imperialism, war, capitalism, bigotry- and suddenly we're back at Gnod again.
But comforting the disturbed is important, music as medicine and as a means of relief, as transportation. I know that music can do this- it's been incredibly important to me in the time since Isaac died in November 2021 and I've written before about a long Saturday afternoon, a week after his death, an afternoon where it seemed like it never got light and that it might go on forever. My physical symptoms were appalling, not least raging tinnitus. I hadn't been able to listen to any music since he died, nothing seemed to be what I wanted to hear. But I needed something that afternoon, if nothing else just to mark the passing of time and drown out the noise in my ears. I put on one of Richard Norris' Music For Healing EPs, probably the December 2021 release, two twenty minute ambient tracks and they did the trick, some aural balm, just enough to make an impact on me. I followed it with some ambient Americana by SUSS and somehow the music helped. A few weeks ago, to mark Martin Luther King Day, Richard released The Corn Is Coming, a four minute ambient track, made in an hour as part of the Mutual Defiance/ In Place Of War campaign. It's here.
Feel free to make your own Oblique Saturday suggestions in the comment box.
More from the archives of Snub TV, the BBC 2 early evening magazine programme that delved into the world of alternative and independent music between 1988 and 1991. In 1988 Dinosaur Jr pitched up in the UK touring their third album, Bug. Their 1987 album, You're Living All Over Me, is the purist's choice- punk, metal, folk rock, indie, alternative, guitar rock, full on distorted guitar solos courtesy of J Mascis coupled with his drawled vocals- a winning sound. Bug may not be as good an album but it does contain Freak Scene.
When Snub TV caught up with J, Lou and Murph it was miming to Freak Scene in the back garden of John Robb's house in West Didsbury, south Manchester, complete with a life size fibreglass fisherman and various plastic toys. Freak Scene was a song that seemed to cross the borders in 1988, a mini- anthem for those into all the different kinds of alternative music.
Like John Robb, Dub Sex were part of late 80s Manchester, if not widely known elsewhere. The members lived in the infamous Hulme Crescents, a 1960s housing scheme on the outskirts of town that by the 80s had been abandoned by the people it was intended for and had become another world inhabited by those who wanted to live outside the conventional world. Flats, walkways in the sky, flat roof pubs, open spaces, abandoned cars, a vaguely post- apocalyptic feel. I visited a friend who lived there a couple of times and walked past it often as a teenager heading up Wilmslow Road into town. It was not suburbia.
Dub Sex sounded a bit like Hulme looked- raw, concrete, intense. Vocalist Mark Hoyle was a northern version of Mark Stewart or Billy Bragg, 100% commitment. Industrial basslines, wire guitars, pummeling drums. In 1989 they appeared on Snub playing live at The Boardwalk, doing Swerve.
Probably the best song you've not heard before that you're going to hear today.
A post bringing together two artists from the recent past, who both released songs into the world of 2015/ 2016, a decade ago now, and who seem to have flitted in and out ever since.
First, Kid Wave, a four piece indie/ shoegaze band centred around singer/ guitarist Lea Emmery. Lea left her home town of Norkopping, Swden and headed for London, wrote some songs and sent them to Heavenly (who signed her). Under some pressure to do something or return home and pick up her studies Lea recruited a band with guitarist Matthias Bhatt (from Norkopping), bassist Harry Deacon and drummer Serra Petale. The sole Kid Wave album, released by Heavenly, came out in 2015 and was titled Wanderlust. Eleven songs, slow burning, fuzzed up psyche/ indie guitar with vocals by Lea, who sounds magnificently bored at times. For some reason Wanderlust was recorded in Stockport.
All I Want is a beauty, the sort of song that makes you feel like you're twenty one again, unencumbered, Ray Bans and a faded Levis denim jacket, Silk Cut and cassettes, you haven't been home for days.
Lea moved to Los Angeles and recruited a new band and not much happened until an EP in 2023 called Gloom (it looks like Lea and Kid Wave are London based again- or at least were in 2023).
In 2016 Paprika Kinsky,a singer/ musician from Lille, France, released a single Kids Of Your Crime. Driving synth/ guitar pop, slightly psyche, slightly motorik, sugar glazed indie disco, a tinny drum machine and chuggy bass with some sun dappled twinkly melodies on top. Slightly stoned on a sunny afternoon vibes- again Ray Bans and Levis and nothing much to do but loll about, listening to music, waiting for something to happen.
Paprika is an art school graduate and as well as music has made leather harnesses for FKA Twigs and Grimes. She seems to have dipped in and out of music, various electro- pop/ indie- pop one offs and singles, most recently Diamond Queen and Steady Lover, both out on Bandcamp in 2022, and then a five song EP also in 2022 called Young Broke And Fabulous. We're back to Levis, sunglasses, cigarettes and youth again aren't we.
At some point in the next couple of months Jason Boardman's Before I Die label is going to release an album by Hawksmoor called Am I Conscious Now? and I feel fairly confident in saying it will still be around at the end of the year and beyond. There's one track from it available to listen to, Ti Kallisti, at Bandcamp- a gorgeous, low key four minutes of piano, synth, space and echo. There were ten copies of a super limited vinyl version of the album but they've all gone (obvs) but don't worry, it'll be getting a full release soon- ish.
Exploring Hawksmoor's back catalogue is a joy. In October last year a two track single originally recorded in 2012 appeared on Bandcamp. The A-side is titled Life Aboard The International Space Station, an instrumental that drifts weightlessly for four minutes, acoustic guitar and electric guitar, keys, Mellotron, some bass and a Moog pedal called the Moogerfooger. Some patterns, sequences and refrains, orbiting gently. It's lovely and in dealing with the ISS, constantly circling above us at a speed of 17, 500 mph, revolving round the earth once every ninety minutes and giving the occupants sixteen sunrises and sunsets a day, its somewhat existential too.
The B- side has a title borrowed from J.G. Ballard, Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer, more finger picked acoustic guitar, more cyclical guitar patterns- there's something quite pastoral about it. It's a bit shy of three minutes long and I'd happily listen to a much longer version.
Ballard's story is taken from a compendium of science fiction short stories called The Disaster Area, first published in 1967. In Storm Bird- Storm Dreamer giant birds accidentally fed on new hormone fertilisers used in industrial agriculture have started attacking large animals and people. The story's main character Crispin survives a bird attack and then joins a volunteer force to defend the country against the giant birds. He develops a fascination with a woman living in a remote cottage whose husband was killed by a bird, ripped into pieces, which then flew off with their infant son. There's plenty more as you can probably imagine. What this dystopic story has to do with the tranquil, lilting Hawksmoor instrumental of the same name I'm not entirely sure.
One of my favourite cover versions- I Heard It Through The Grapevine by The Slits. In 1979 The Slits released their debut single, the exhilarating, spiky, punky Typical Girls. The Slits were original punks, London living waifs and strays who found themselves energised and then unleashed by punk. Dennis Bovell produced them, bringing some heavyweight reggae skills to their untutored, learning- on- the- job sound.
Their cover of I Heard It Through The Grapevine is a blast, off kilter dub punk, a version with entirely its own spirit and energy. Singer Ari completely re- imagines Marvin Gaye's impassioned vocal, turning it into something very different- the infidelity that Ari has heard about has empowered her, transforming the song.
Budgie played drums on their album and on Typical Girls but here the drums by Max Edwards (who played with Zap Pow and Soul Syndicate as well as on a slew of recordings with The Heptones, The Ethiopians and Augustus Pablo). The Slits version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine never quite does what you expect it to, it's got a life of its own, the hmmm hmmmm backing vocals are loose and the wayward rhythm keeps the listener on their toes, the bass and drums almost sliding around.
The number 23 carries some significance for me. Many of you will know that my son Isaac's birthday was the 23rd November and he died in 2021 aged 23. In the year following his death the number 23 started appearing in front of us frequently (I'm aware of confirmation bias and understand this was more liekly coincidence than cosmic but even so...). Eventually the three of us, me, Lou and Isaac's sister Eliza, decided in a fairly spur of the moment decision to all get a 23 tattooed on us. My 23 is on my left forearm and I see it all the time.
23 has a pop culture significance too- William Burroughs highlighted the 23 enigma in the 1970s, it's central in Discordianism, has a significance in KLF mythology and to Throbbing Gristle and it occurs elsewhere- 23 Skidoo. If you've been keeping up with recent celebrity news you might be aware of the controversy around David and Victoria Beckham and their now estranged son Brooklyn. David wore number 23 when he left Manchester United, possibly in connection to Michael Jordan. When Isaac was very young, a baby, we were at the fairly recently opened Trafford Centre, an enormous shopping centre on the outskirts of Manchester and a ten minute drive from our house. As we pushed Isaac in his pram along the upper deck a couple with a pram passed us heading in the opposite direction- David, Victoria and Brooklyn.
Four 23s have presented themselves to me in the last couple of weeks. Recently we found ourselves near the Trafford Centre again and called in at a popular fast food chain (don't judge me, we don't go there often but every now and then it fulfills a weird need)...
In the week either side of that a pair of musical 23s cropped up, the first was sent by my friend Ian, a nineteen minute long piece of soulful, minimal house music from the middle of last year titled Spirit Of 23 by Melchior Productions Ltd. It was new to me and very nice, a chilled and hypnotic way to spend twenty minutes.
The week after Ian sent that to me this came up via a friend on social media, a track from August last year by Auntie Flo (Brian D'Souza), Paradise 23, from his Birds Of Paradise album- Roland drum machines, vintage synths, birdsong, tropical ambient with grooves.
Then, to turn a 23 trio into a quartet, Jesse sent me the photo at the top of this post just a few days ago. Four 23s so far in January 2026- and having noted all these coincidences this post then mainly came together in my head while driving home from work last Friday... 23rd January.
Back in December I posted I'm Not The Man I Used To Be by Fine Young Cannibals and then more recently Madonna's Justify My Love, both songs driven by a very famous drum break- the Funky Drummer, a drum solo played by the legendary Clyde Stubblefield on James Brown's 1970 single Funky Drummer (actually from the B-side Funky Drummer Part 2). Digging into My Bloody Valentine's back catalogue over the last two weeks brought me back to a B-side from 1988 titled Instrumental No. 2, the flipside to a 7" single given away free with the first 5000 copies of Isn't Anything.
My Bloody Valentine and Madonna (with co- writers Lenny Kravitz and Ingrid Chavez) both built their songs around a short interlude track by Public Enemy from 1988's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. PE's Hank Shocklee denies that the drum break on Security Of The First World is a sample from Funky Drummer but both My Bloody Valentine and Madonna sampled Public Enemy- Kravitz denied it saying it was a drum break that was 'just lying around the studio'. Kevin Shields was getting into acid house in 1988 as well as developing MBV's guitar noise and there's a good argument that Instrumental No. 2 is the first indie- dance track, ahead of The Soup Dragons, ahead of The Stone Roses and ahead of Primal Scream. Admittedly Happy Mondays might want a word.
Anyway, the whats and wheres and who's firsts aren't what I'm here for today. I started piecing these tracks together and thought I'd try to get them and a handful of others to work together in a mix. Forty minutes seemed enough- there are literally thousands of songs that have sampled the Funky Drummer and hundreds of hip hop records including Boogie Down Productions, LL Cool J, Eric B and Rakim, Run DMC, Beastie Boys and NWA. In fact I might come back and do a hip hop Funky Drummer Sunday mix. But in the meantime, this one is those records above and a couple of others.
For a while Shadrach by The Beastie Boys were in the mix but it's a different drum break, more likely from Hot & Nasty by Black Oak Arkansas and I dropped Fool's Gold in too but it's not the same break either- it's a funky drummer but not the Funky Drummer. DNA and Suzanne Vega did make the cut but I don't think it's actually the Funky Drummer, it's more likely sampled from Soul II Soul, but it felt like it fitted.
It's probably worth remembering that Clyde Stubblefield, the man whose drumming is the Funky Drummer, got nothing more than the session fee as the drummer in James Brown's band.
Fine Young Cannibals: I'm Not The Man I Used To Be
DNA and Suzanne Vega: Tom's Diner (DNA Remix)
Radio Slave: Amnesia (Instrumental)
James Brown: Funky Drummer (Album Version)
Security Of The First World is from side two of It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, the greatest hip hop album ever made, Chuck D, Flavor Flav and The Bomb Squad writing the book on how to splice noise, funk and rap, politics, race and music. Security Of The First World is a one minute twenty loop, the Funky Drummer, a pulverising bassline and some bleeps, that changed music.
Kevin Shields sampled Public Enemy for Instrumental No. 2. The pitch drops a little and it sounds scratchier- maybe they sampled it from vinyl. Over the top Kevin plays ghostly guitar chords and layers of wordless vocals to create something that would inform later MBV tracks- Soon is surely born here.
Madonna's Justify My Love was a 1990 single, banned by MTV due to the S&M, voyeurism and bisexuality on display in the video. I wrote about it earlier this month here. Madonna and Lenny Kravitz wrote and recorded it in a day according to Lenny, very quick and in his words 'authentic'.
Also from 1990 is Sinead O'Connor's I Am Stretched On Your Grave. Sinead was a huge Public Enemy fan. The lyrics are from a 17th century poem, Taim Sinte Ar Do Thuama, translated into English by Irish poet Frank O'Connor and set to music in 1979 by Irish artist Philip King. Sinead's vocal is stunning, alone over Clyde's drumming. Some bass bubbles in, there are some drum crashes and at the end there's a dramatic fiddle part by Waterboy Steve Wickham.
In 1989 Fine Young Cannibals released I'm Not The Man I Used To Be as a single (the fourth from their album The Raw And The Cooked). They sped the Funky Drummer up and there's some house music in the chords and production. A song that bears repeat plays. Roland Gift was a star who reused to play the game.
DNA sampled Suzanne Vega's a capella version of Tom's Diner (from here 1987 album Solitude Standing though it dates from earlier, it's on a 1984 Fast Folk Music Magazine album). DNA played it over the drum break from a Soul II Soul record. DNA pressed it up and released it without permission and it took off. Suzanne's label A&M decided to release it officially rather than sue (Suzanne liked the version) and it became a massive hit. It's not the Funky Drummer but it felt like it fitted with Sinead and Madonna and the whole 1990 drum break sampling vibe.
Just to show that you can't keep a good drum break down, Amnesia is from 2023, a track by Berlin DJ and producer Radio Slave and a tribute to the Ibiza club Amnesia and partying under the stars in the mid- to- late 80s, something Radio Slave admits is a romanticised notion.
I was in two minds about including the source material. Funky Drummer was released as a single by James Brown in 1970, split over both sides of the 7" with Part 2 being the source of the drum break. This is a nine minute studio version, released on a 1986 album In the Jungle Groove- surely the source for many of the hundreds of artists who followed Public Enemy's lead after 1988 who sampled it.
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 will turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's card read Go slowly all the way round the outside and it sent me immediately to Malcolm McLaren and The World's Famous Supreme Team and Buffalo Gals, going round the outside and then to Slow by My Bloody Valentine.
In the comments box Walter agreed about McLaren and added Go Slowly by Radiohead, Ernie chipped in with some thunderous King Tubby dub and Dan suggested Studio's West Coast album and the circle on its front cover- and I really like the idea of the Obliques Strategy cards suggesting visuals as well as music.
Today's Oblique Strategy card is this...
Into the impossible
And it made an instant connection in my mind to this 1991 single by The Impossibles...
The Impossibles were from Edinburgh, a core duo of Mags and Lucy (whose debut single was produced by Kevin Shields, in a nice link to last Saturday's post). Their third single was The Drum, a cover of a Slapp Happy song from 1974. The 12" Mix was by Andrew Weatherall who took an already indie- dance facing take on the song and shook it up, seven minutes of everything and the kitchen sink, widescreen, indie dance psychedelia- jangly guitars, loping rhythms, chanted vocals, '1- 2- 3- 4!' and 'I've fallen... and I can't get up', breakdowns, looped guitar riffs, synths, whispers, la la la la la la la vox, and a drum loop that can easily segue into Andrew's groundbreaking remix of My Bloody Valentine's Soon (same year, similar vibe).
Feel free to drop your Oblique Saturday responses into the comment box.
Snub TV ran for three series between 1987 and 1989, shown on early evening BBC2 at a time when the channel had a dedicated youth slot which also included Rough Guide (essential viewing, hosted by Magenta De Vine and Sankha Guha) and in the early 90s Dance Energy. Snub covered the UK indie and underground scenes, catching bands live and in the studio, interviewing them and giving a glimpse into the alternative culture of late 80s. It was lo fi and informal and had some absolutely vital moments- The Stone Roses at the Hacienda as they were about to go supernova in 1989 lives long in the memory as does World Of Twist, rather less dramatically, being interviewed at Withington swimming baths, a place I knew very well from school swimming lessons and being our local baths).
Snub filmed Pixies at a gig in 1988 on tour with Throwing Muses, an incendiary version of Vamos. However many times you've watched this clip, once more never hurts...
Black Francis scrubs his guitar and switches between Spanish and English, David Lovering's backbeat is a lesson in breakneck drumming and Joey Santiago's guitar solo with beer can and feedback is so exhilarating it almost can't be contained by the small screen. After Joet stops, all Francis can do is scream 'aah!' several times before slotting straight back into whatever it is the song is about- moving to California, your daddy being rich and your momma a pretty thing.
The recorded versions of Vamos are slower but no less intense. It appeared first on Come On Pilgrim, 1987's Pixies debut on 4AD, an eight song mini- album presented in a distinctive Vaughan Oliver sleeve, a photo of a bald man with a hairy back. The Pilgrim version is from the band's demo tape, recorded in Boston in March 1987 and finding its way to Ivo Watts- Russell in London, owner of 4AD. There was no- one else like Pixies in 1988/ 1989.
Vamos turned up a year later, re- recorded for Surfer Rosa with Steve Albini producing the band, another slower than the live version take but with a very loud kick drum and some deranged guitar playing created out of patchwork of improvised shorter sections, bits of tape chopped up, turned around, played backwards and messed about with.
Number are Ali Friend and Rich Thair exploring and creating something different from what they do in their main band Red Snapper. Number do post- punk, dirty disco basslines, wiry guitars, drum machines paired with live drums, vintage synths and keys, with Ali's vocals and songs. It's a sidestep from Red Snapper's jazz/ trip hop/ sci fi blues. Last week Number released a remix of their song Amber by long term friends A Certain Ratio. Martin Moscrop, Jez Kerr and Donald Johnson brought their Mancunian dub/ funk to the song and it became this...
Amber is an infectious and funked up blend of Tomorrow's World sounds, 80s punk funk and soul, and chunky 21st century rhythms. The finale, a pile up of drums and percussion as Ali sings, 'heaven', and the synths rise with him, is rather wonderful and not a little uplifting. An early 2026 musical treat, one I've been clicking play on repeatedly. Highly recommended.
ACR previously remixed Number in 2020 on Number's debut Binary, a track called Wedge, and then Number remixed A Certain Ratio on Estate Kings, a track from ACR's It All Comes Down To This that was on Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 last year.
Amber is the opening song on Number's second album, Pollinate, out last week, their early 80s, Talking Heads, NY disco, punk- funk sounds spread out over ten tracks. It's followed by Let's Stamp On It, a funky dark disco/ electro wiggle. Other highlights include Discoid- a slinky, gliding, synth funk protest against capitalism and consumerism- and Rebel Corners- a lone guitar line in a world of echo and percussion. On Smoke In The Skies Number go 80s alt pop, the New Order- esque playing and production a brightly coloured counterpoint to lyrics about Gaza, Syria and Sudan.
There's loads more on Pollinate, something to enjoy round every corner, an album that's fresh, inventive and packed with tunes. You can listen and buy at Bandcamp.
A few weekends ago No Badger Required posted about My Bloody Valentine's 1988 album Isn't Anything as part of the weekly Almost Perfect Albums series. Isn't Anything is indeed almost perfect, the band finding their way towards the noise and sound that existed inside Kevin Shields' head- walls of guitar noise, half asleep vocals, loud guitars, distorted guitars, hazy, gauze- like guitars, woozy guitars that lurch sounding like a tape that's been stretched and is spooling out of control, a swooning, out of body trance inducing set of songs that was like little else in 1988. Noise as beauty.
Despite all of this, Isn't Anything isn't the follow up, 1991's Loveless. The recording of Loveless is legendary. It was recorded almost entirely by Shields with drummer Colm O'Ciosoig recording drum loops for Shields to work with and Debbie Googe and Bilinda Butcher largely leaving it up to Kevin after realising they were going to spend a lot of time waiting around in recording studios (Bilinda contributed vocals and lyrics). At first Creation were confident that the album would be recorded in five days. It soon became clear that wouldn't happen.
Shields worked his way through nineteen studios and a slew of engineers, circumnavigating London's various recording studios for two years. Alan McGee claimed it cost £250, 000 and almost bankrupted Creation. Loveless is an amazing piece of work, a record that stands in a field of its own. Desperate to get some product out and to give Shields the nudge McGee believed he required to complete the album, McGee got MBV to release four songs as the Glider EP in April 1990. The lead track was Soon, a highlight of late 20th century guitar music, a track Brian Eno said reinvented pop music.
There's a story that by 1990 Shields was giving his songs titles that were actually gnomic answers to Alan McGee's increasingly desperate questions about the album's readiness- Soon, Don't Ask Why, To Here Knows When, Sometimes, What You Want...
In February 1991 My Bloody Valentine released another four track EP, Tremolo. In reality Tremolo is a seven track EP, with three extra, untitled pieces of music but chart rules prevented EPs from counting for the singles chart if they had more than four songs. Shields added the three extras in between the other songs, untitled. The first track on Tremolo, which would also turn up on Loveless later in 1991, was To Here Knows When, surely the strangest song to ever enter the UK Top 30 singles chart.
Woozy ambient guitar music from the middle of the night, a gentle noise that is both soothing and a little unsettling. Play it loud, really loud, and it engulfs you completely. Loop it round and round on a tape and it becomes the centre of everything for the time its playing. The guitars were Shields' self- named 'glide guitar' technique, playing chords while bending the strings using the tremolo bar. Kevin said that despite what it sounds like, there's actually little in the way of FX pedals. Bilinda's vocal is barely there, sunk in among the layers of guitar sounds. It's as if they recorded a song and then took the song away, leaving just its shadow, the remains of the guitars and vocals. The ghost of a song.
The coda section, an untitled extra piece of music on the EP version but not the album version, is a different but similarly ethereal thing, lops of guitar and reverb. To Here Knows When wasn't just guitars- there are samples from a BBC sound effects album that created the track's bottom end and there may be a tambourine in there too.
On Tremelo this segues into Swallow, a song constructed around a sample from a Turkish belly dancing cassette, four minutes of the prettiest, most magical distortion over a drum break. A song that suggests a million things and creates something entirely new, the samples and drums providing some ballast for Bilinda's voice and Kevin's layers of glide guitars. It also sounds like Shields had been touched by acid house, had taken on board what Andrew Weatherall had given Soon with his remix in 1990. This also has one of Shields' extra tracks attached to its ending, a coda that shifts and spins, that has no centre and is all swirling, loose edges.
There were three more tracks on the other side of the 12", Honey Power, a third untitled coda and then Moon Song, each one an essential part of Tremolo, all linked but different. The Glider and Tremolo EPs and Loveless are the My Bloody Valentine legend, the result of Shields's obsessive pursuit to record what he could hear in his head alone late at night. Whatever it cost Creation, however long it took, whatever it did to the relationship between the band and the record company, it was worth it.
Popper's Theme is the latest two track EP from 10:40, the second in the Retro Fit series. The first Retro Fit was inspired by The Stone Roses. This one is built around a sample of the voice of the singer in a 90s guitar band, played backwards. The first version of Popper's Theme is a heavy duty monster, layers of synths and that vocal sample over some chugged up drums. The groove is the thing- all in service of the groove. The second, the Broad Gauge Mix, is faster, more intense, more electronic, spikier and a little lairier. Both are just what January needs to perk things up a bit. You can find Popper's Theme at Bandcamp.
10:40's reworkings of 90s indie/ guitar bands goes back a few years. This is from 2020, a dubbed out version of early Verve, a B-side from the first Verve 12" All In The Mind. Before they became radio friendly everyman balladeers Verve (no The, just Verve) were wild psychonauts venturing deep into sound and space, Nick McCabe's wall of guitars a storm crossing a languid Hendrix with shoegaze, all tone, reverb and feedback with the bass and drums whipping up a storm. On the 10:40 version of Our Way To Fall- One Way To Go (10:40's So High It Hurts Edit)- Jesse re- imagines our Wigan psychedelic mystics as sleepy, bass- led psychedelic dub pioneers. The space rock guitars shimmer and Richard Ashcroft's voice echoes through the haze. It's a like bathing in sound.
Sheffield's Crooked Man released a new album last Friday, Crooked Stile. It is packed with bangers, many of them well into long song territory. The second song on the album is Don't Leave Me This Way, eleven and a half minutes of electronic mayhem, a massive bassline and deeply soulful female vocal, turning the Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes song inside out, into a modern basement classic. The second half, past the six minute mark, goes off, the synths even more distorted, and after the breakdown at seven minutes it builds back up for an intense final few minutes.
As well as several Crooked Man originals there are two further covers. The first is also a long song, an eight minute version of Fleetwood Mac's Big Love warped into dark, epic, bouncy dancefloor manna- if Fleetwood Mac sounded more like this, I'd be more tempted to listen to them.
The album also has a long song with long term friend and collaborator Roisin Murphy, Projection, and finishes with a cover of a fellow son of Sheffield, Jarvis Cocker's 2006 tribute to the wonderful people that run the world, Jarvis' more polite Running The World re-titled by Crooked Man simply as Cunts. It's just two minutes thirty three seconds long but says a lot in that time. Donald Trump, and all who follow him, this one's for you...
Crooked Man's album can be found in full at Bandcamp. Here's the Jarvis original, a nineteen year old protest song that has lost none of its power or relevance.
'It's the ideal way to order the world/ Fuck the morals, does it make any money?'
In early December 2025 The Flightpath Estate DJs played warm up for Daniel Avery and Richard Fearless' Goo at The Golden Lion. Martin, Dan and myself played in rotation, three tracks on and then off. For a part of our set Mr Avery and Mr Fearless were sitting at a table near the DJ booth eating some fine Thai food, which added a little edge to our tune selection and mixing.
At 9pm the Goo pair arrived in the booth, Richard with an enormous box of records, and took over, going on to to play one of the best sets I've heard for a long time, four hours of huge dub techno/ techno/ acid to an ecstatic crowd of revelers. Hopefully, their set will show up at some point. Both sets were recorded so the link below contains us doing it live, mistakes and everything. 'Play some ambient stuff', was the brief, and that's how we started out- we got a bit beatier as the three hours passed. We were on a high after finishing, the excitement of warming up for Avery and Fearless and pulling off what felt like a good set giving us a real buzz. Our three hour set can be listened to at Mixcloud.
Tracklist
Adam
Pye Corner Audio: A Winter Drone For Christmas
Daniel Avery: Neon Pulse
Mystic Institute: Ob-Selon Mi-Nos (Repainted By Global Communication)
Dan
Daniel Avery & Alessandro Cortini: At First Sight
Bola: Forcasa 1
Death In Vegas: Chingola
Martin
Bomb The Bass: Darkheart (Sabres Mix)
bdrmm: Alps (Nathan Fake Remix)
Held By Trees: In The Trees (Ambient)
Adam
Aphex Twin: Zahl Am1 Live Track 1
Arrival feat. Kevin McCormick: Common Place (Thought Leadership Remix)
The Durutti Column: Fidelity
Dan
Skull: Crash
Pugilist: Conversion
Autechre: Lowride
Martin
abu AMA: B!n Ladens Funeral Fiesta
Saint Abdullah & Eomac: Organs Without Borders
Craig Bratley: Take Me To Bedford Or Lose Me Forever
Adam
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler: Secret City
Bert Jansch: Kittiwake
Sewell & the Gong: Communion Phase
Dan
Jonny From Space: Level Skip
Conforce: Void
Boards Of Canada: Hi Scores
Martin
Moby: Go (Jam & Spoon In Dub Mix)
International Noise Orchestra: Come Together
Eskimo Twins: Elegy
Adam
GLOK: Dissident (Leaf Edit)
James Holden: Blackpool Late Eighties
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 will turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's card read 'Allow An Easement (An easement is the abandonment of a stricture)' and I posted Strict Machine by Goldfrapp and Birge- Risser- Mienniel's improvisational track inspired by that Oblique Strategy card and named after it. Further responses via the comments took in Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out) by The Hombres from Ernie. Khayem suggested Take It Easy On Yourself by Jerry Butler. Spinoutz dropped in Billy Woods and Yolanda Watson's A Doll Fulla Pins and Jesse suggested Neighbours by Shack.
Today's Oblique Strategy card suggestion is this...
Go slowly all the way round the outside
I did wonder briefly if I should go slowly with this one, sit on it and wait, see what happened, but this song had already jumped to the front of my mind. 'Two buffalo girls go round the outside/ Round the outside/ Round the outside' had already started circling in my head...
Malcolm McLaren, Trevor Horn, the World's Famous Supreme Team, scratching (making me itch), square dancing, Rock Steady Crew, New York in 1982... what's not to like? Malcolm definitely had talent and on this record he showed it wasn't just as the owner of a clothes shop and as the manager of Sex Pistols.
I've been listening to My Bloody Valentine recently too- more to come next week- and the go slowly part of the Oblique Strategy took me to this from the You Made Me Realise EP, a 1988 game changer of a 12" single if ever there was one...
Slow is a grinding, disorientating stew, led by filthy, grinding bass with head spinning tremelo guitar noise on top and lyrics about licking and sucking and wanting it slow, placing 'my head on your hips' and how 'I'll make you smile'. I think it might be about sex. Which, I've just realised, links it to Malcolm's shop and to his band.
Feel free to pop your Oblique Saturday suggestions in the comments box.
Busy wasting time/ conducting research on the internet recently I found some pages from Sonic Death, the fanzine published by the members of Sonic Youth between 1990 and 1994 which ran to seven editions. It was written and assembled by the band with Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo especially involved and was riddled with Sonic Youth's DIY, scissors, glue and photocopier, punk energy. There are photos and drawings, interviews with other bands, reviews of obscure, underground 7" singles and albums, letters from fans accusing SY of selling out (they were on Geffen at the time), tour dates and updates, gig reviews, all the things that fanzine culture covered. Here are two front covers, from issue 5 and issue 4, Royal Trux and Sebadoh and much more...
Actual copies of Sonic Death rare as hen's teeth and accordingly expensive; second hand- copies at second hand sites are listed at hundreds of dollars/ pounds. Luckily, at Sonic Youth's own website you can download every edition, #1 through to #7 as pdfs. If you're really dedicated, find some low grade paper and a stapler, print them and read as physical artefacts. Even better, sneak them into work and run them off there. You can find them here. Time capsules from a vanished age.
Fanzines and music television were both high points of the early 90s pop culture world. Snub TV was a very fondly remembered BBC2 early evening programme covering late 80s and early 90s indie with videos, live performances and interviews. It was essential viewing. I had stacks of clips and episodes recorded onto VHS to watch repeatedly at leisure.
Sonic Youth appeared on Snub on 16th January 1989, thirty seven years ago today (not planned, a totally fortuitous coincidence I noted earlier this week when writing this post). There's a sense no one really wants to be interviewed and Thurston Moore stuns everyone at the end with a quote about punk rock and Sharon Tate that goes way beyond what the interviewer was expecting in a discussion about punk rock...
In 1992 Sonic Youth released Dirty, a double album that followed 1990's major label debut Goo. Dirty is loud and grungy, not sloppy grunge but punky grunge, noisy, experimental and chaotic but also with some very focussed and well arranged songs, produced by Butch Vig. Youth Against Fascism, 100%, Sugar Kane, Drunken Butterfly and Swimsuit Issue are all first rate and Dirty is an hour of Sonic Youth at their 90s best.
The UK release of Youth Against Fascism came with a version of Dirty album song Purr, one of the earliest songs written for the album, recorded at a session for BBC's Mark Goodier, half acoustic and very fine indeed.
Chris Massey's Sprechen kicks off 2026 with a new EP from The Thief Of Time, Chris' cosmic disco/ new wave band now joined permanently by Lady Lady (Sally Summers). The new single, Cosmic, is a decades old demo updated by Sally and Chris, all 80s synths, soaring vocals and sci fi dreams.
Cosmic comes with two remixes- one by WH Lung's Tom Sharkett and the other by Frederik Hendrik, a new Sprechen signing. Tom loads up big breakbeat, isolates the synthlines and heads for the rave at the end of the universe, six minutes of fun with a breakdown at four minutes filled with garbed voices and then a finale with laser beams and synths firing off all over. Frederik's remix is cosmic disco/ Italo house, builds slowly, achieves lift off, breaks down, re- enters, and then continues to fly. Find Cosmic at Bandcamp.
In 2024 Tom Sharkett's band WH Lung released their third album, Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates, a really well put together nine song set of cosmische indie, both atmospheric and with fully realised songs. The songs pulse with synths and guitars, motorik drums and soaring melodies, that sound like lots of other bands best bits and also like themselves. This song ended the album in fine style, a big emphatic, widescreen kiss off.
In 2020 an album of remixes of songs from Incidental Music was released including remixes by Kid Machine and Fijiya and Miyagi. In 2019 Piccadilly Records made Incidental Music their album of the year and the CD of remixes was a bonus disc for punters who bought the album at Oldham Street's finest record shop. The Fujiya and Miyagi remix fits in very well alongside the WH Lung one above and The Thief Of Time EP, all very cosmic.
Last Thursday's 1985 Big Audio Dynamite song- Sony from the debut album This Is Big Audio Dynamite- sent me back to the rest of that album and to the extras that came with the singles, the 12" mixes and B- sides. I remembered that the 2009 double CD re- issue came with a studio outtake, a song that didn't make This Is Big Audio Dynamite's final cut, Electric Vandal...
Don Letts on vocals, some lovely African highlife guitar lines, clattering drums and percussion and a la la la la la chorus part. It could have easily sat beside the songs on side two- A Party, Sudden Impact!, Stone Thames and BAD- without any problem and without causing an issue with vinyl running times. Maybe Mick didn't like it or maybe it was held back for a B-side and then never used. Who knows. Anyway, four decades later, it's a BAD deep cut worth hearing.
In 1990 Aztec Camera released their single Good Morning Britain, Roddy Frame's state of the nation address looking at the four corners of the UK after ten years of Thatcherism. The song was so like a BAD song in style that he told Mick, 'you will either want to sing on it or sue me'. The pair wrote it together within three hours of a conversation they had in the canteen of a London recording studio. Mick sings backing vox, the response lines to Roddy's calls. They must have had a go the other way round to because this version, unreleased officially, exists...
The four verses give a snapshot of the UK in 1990, Scotland and the Scots need for devolution, ten years of an English government they never voted for, Northern Ireland and the Troubles, Wales and population decrease and holiday homes, and then England...
'From the Tyne to where to the Thames does flow
My English brothers and sisters know
It’s not a case of where you go
It’s race and creed and color
From the police cell to the deep dark grave
On the underground’s just a stop away
Don’t be too black, don’t be too gay
Just get a little duller'
The 1990s and beyond would see progress in many areas of life- improved attitudes towards minorities, greater equality, much wider acceptance of homosexuality and disability. The backlash we've been going through since 20XX (when? 2012? 2016?) is in full swing, people emboldened to say things they wouldn't have even a few years ago, overt racism and discrimination once again a feature of public life. Depressing. Roddy's words don't even need an update in some ways, it's still 'race and creed and colour'. And Roddy's message in the chorus rings still true too, that these things are still worth standing up for- 'The past is steeped in shame/ But tomorrow's fair game/ For a life that's fit for living/ Good morning Britain'. It's the optimism of 1990 that has taken a battering.
A new single from The Orielles came out last week ahead of an album in March. The trio started out as teenagers in Halifax and are now seven years down the line, reaching the end of a self- proclaimed seven year cycle. I'll be honest- the first time I clicked play on You Are Eating A Part Of Yourself, it didn't hold my interest and the second time I played both songs (To Undo The World Itself is the B- side but it sounds very much like an extension of the first song) I was a little unmoved- but I made a note to go back and on Sunday evening something clicked with me and I really liked it.
There's not much there in a way, it's very stripped back, just a guitar loop, distorted chords and picked notes, and a heavily reverb drenched vocal. Eventually You Are Eating A Part Of Yourself dissolves into a wall of feedback, a Sonic Youth/ MBV style of haze, and it all sounds quite fragile but dreamy too- a half awake/ half asleep feel.
The second version, To Undo The World Itself, is more fully formed- the same guitar style/ sounds but some drums in the mix, the vocal more sung than spoken and the swirl and haze is louder and fuller. It sounds like it was played and recorded live, the three members in the room locked in. The band say its about catharsis, rebirth and reversal, and it feels like they're touching on reaching the end of a cycle.
It proves that it's worth going back to music sometimes. It would have been easy to have felt nothing on the first listen and then dismiss it. As it is, it definitely struck a chord with me on Sunday night and I'll look forward to the album, Only You Left, in March.
The last album they put out was in 2022, Tableau, double vinyl, experimental loops and guitars, improvisation, 1960s tape loops and 1980s Sonic Youth guitars, obscure jazz and dub space. And Brian Eno's Oblique Strategy cards too I've just read- which ties in neatly with my current Saturday series. An album to revisit. In 2020, there were remixes by Confidence Man (a superb version of Bobbi's Second World) and Eyes Of Others and before that, back in 2017, a debut album and three Andrew Weatherall remixes, the Heavenly Recordings connection again working for all involved. Chaotic, dizzy punk funk with rattly drums and trebly guitars, chants and shouts and a grinding bassline.
