theartsdesk on Vinyl 85: Julian Cope, Art Brut, Heaven 17, The Mysterines, Sleaford Mods, The Wombles and more

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Mike Lindsay Supershapes: Volume 1 (Moshi Moshi)

Solo debut from Mike Lindsay, a founder member of tunng and also half of psychedelic duo LUMP. It’s a good thing when music is hard to describe. Opener “Lie Down” sets up the stall, a catchy but weird slice of poet-pop, wherein wonky dance rhythms, abstract jazz, lyrics about mundanity and shouts of the title phrase, including contributions from singer-songwriter Anna B Savage, add up to a wild frolic. With plenty of woodwind, lyrics about toast and Sunday roast, an inability to musically settle down anywhere “normal”, the album sometimes brings to mind those strange old children’s TV themes that Johnny Trunk used to reissue. However, it’s also too funky for that. The slower fare occasionally settles to pastoral jazz-folk but, usually, these odd wordy songs really do their own thing and, as well as being very different, it’s more-ish. Comes on bright “cucumber green” vinyl.

VINYL REVIEWS

Various Beggars Arkive BBC Radio Sessions Vol. 1 Boxset (Beggars Arkive/BBC)

Something special from Beggars Banquet, the gothy post-punk Eighties indie (though it began in the Seventies), which eventually became home to a wide range of styles. As is demonstrated by the new 500-limited-edition Beggars Arkive box. The idea is that those interested subscribe and receive transparent 12” BBC session EPs, with the whole box of ten available later in the year. They are all John Peel sessions apart from four One Live cuts from 2003 by unpindownable Brighton feminist alt-indie group Electrelane. But which other bands? Beggars’ original totemic acts are here, of course, Gary Numan, with his three-track 1979 Tubeway Army Peel session, and Bauhaus with a stately 1982 set. The other biggish name is The Fall with remarkably chipper Brix-inclusive guitar pop on four tracks, including “Kurious Oranj” and “Dead Beat Descendant”. Going deeper, we find a millennial session from Welsh psyche-folkers Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, which includes “The Lady and the Travelling Man” (I’m no expert but I don’t think is available elsewhere?); the skewed electronic freakery of Düsseldorf techtronic boundary-pushers Mouse On Mars, including “Schlecktron” turned into heavy metal riffery; Nineties Northumbland punks China Drum with their best-known tune, their cover of “Wuthering Heights”; Dave Callaghan’s post-Wolfhounds Nineties band Moonshake who, in a 1992 set, take his former band’s jagged squall and add funk; a really early Stereolab session featuring “Peng 33” from their debut album alongside early singles and EP oddments; and finally a 1984 session from The Folk Devils, a band who rode the period’s unlikely and short-lived crossover between folk, country and punk (which most famously gave us The Pogues and The Levellers). It’s a rip-roaring selection that showcases indie fare at its most freewheeling, loose and exciting.

Tristan Perich & Ensemble 0 Open Symmetry (Erased Tapes) + Moonilena Minnet (Monoton) + Kathy Hinde Twittering Machines (TBC Editions)

Three appealing releases of exploratory electronica of various kinds. First up is New York composer Tristan Perich with a work for three vibraphones and “20 channel 1-bit electronics”. Having no idea what the latter is, I Googled it. Finding a comprehensible answer proved tricky but the The University of California Press suggests, “One-bit music, generally considered a subdivision of chipmusic… is the music of a single square wave. The only operation possible in a 1-bit environment is the variation of amplitude over time, where amplitude is quantized to two states: high or low, on or off.” OK... But, for those not deep into studio jargon, the general principle is apparent from the album, wherein Perich works with French trio Ensemble 0. Their precise xylophonic patterns are gradually mutated into a brain-melting revolving head-fry. As background music it’s highly annoying, but focus on it, maybe even meditate into it, and it can be transcendental, even a little mind-altering. Moonilena is Marlena Salonen from Stockholm and her debut album, Minnet, takes sound in a very different direction. Rather then the meticulous recurring exactitude of Perich, the listener is cast into a foggy sea of gloop, of swishing, scratching, burbling and rumbling, but contrasted with empyreal tones. It’s a submersive sound which acts as doleful ambience, mustering, for this listener, notions of environmental ruination, with sonic glimmers of hope floating within. Those wanting Salonen’s own descriptions of each tune’s inspirations can find them here. Most intriguing of these three is Bristol audio-visual artist Kathy Hinde whose work, often in installation form, focuses on our precarious relationship with nature. She won the 2020 Ivor Novello Award for Sound Art for her performance Twittering Machines, which premiered in 2019. It is now available as a 12” EP. Richly mastered to plastic by Maja Ratka, its central conceit is John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” translated into Morse Code and back again, surrounded by field recordings of nightingales (and other birds), and blended into allsorts – music boxes, motors, singing bowls and much more, including, on the side B, a calmly rendered description of the chaffinch by the RSBP’s Peter Holden MBE. The whole thing is full-on, as much art as music, but richly rendered and ear-fascinating. Comes with three 12” x 12” Hinde art prints.

Sages Comme Des Sauvages Maison Maquis (Captane)

Ava Carrère and Ismaél Colombani are Sages Commes Des Sauvages (Wise As Savages). Other than that I can locate little useful information about them. This is their third album and it blends a charming mixture of French pop and bouncy global sounds. They swerve around between festival-ready jump-abouts, lightly touched with ska-like Balkan rhythms, and songs that are equivalent to Parisian street music filtered through a whole series of instruments that Parisian street musicians wouldn’t use. I wish the Brits dug this kind of stuff more, instead of autopilot Insta-grime-flavoured phone-pop. It would improve our festivals no end. Comes in a colourful lyric/info inner sleeve.

Still Corners Dream Talk (Wrecking Light)

How have Still Corners been going for over 15 years and I’ve never heard of them? Probably because they have a terrible, bland, unmemorable name. I don’t know why artists choose such names. That aside, their sixth album is a delight. The duo, fronted by synth-playing Brit singer Tessa Murray’s airy voice, backed by American guitarist-producer Greg Hughes, mingle twangy, widescreen David-Lynch-film pop with a hazed-out Lana del Rey wooziness. Apparently the songs are all drawn from the contents of Murray’s dreams. Fortunately, her dreams have memorable, longing tunes, faintly iced with light psychedelia. Comes in lyric inner sleeve.

Heaven 17 Penthouse and Pavement (Demon) + Heaven 17 The Luxury Gap (Demon) + Various Rusty Egan presents Blitzed (Demon)

Most bands with longevity have an imperial phase, followed by years (decades!) where they release music of mixed quality, some gems along the way, even the occasional return-to-form album. Applies to everyone from Motörhead to Duran Duran. Heaven 17, however, while a surprisingly ace live act, have just two great albums and that’s it. What follows, decades of it, just doesn’t cut it (though I have a soft spot for the single "Sunset Now"). They now reissue both those albums, their first and second. Penthouse and Pavement has had acres of print devoted to it. The 1981 album saw ex-Human League bods Ian Craig Marsh and Martin Ware team up with singer Glenn Gregory to move synth-pop forward. Within cover art satirizing then-rising yuppie culture, is music which added pre-techno funk to the formula, and stirred in lyrically wry socio-political commentary. It's been much celebrated. Rightly so, with tunes such as “(We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang)” and “Let’s All Make a Bomb” aboard. However, I’d argue that 1983’s bigger-selling The Luxury Gap is its equal. The songs aren’t as consistent, but the highs are higher, notably “Temptation”, with session soul queen Carol Kenyon’s belting vocal, a song that can set parties alight to this day. Also on board are three more whoppers, the machine drive of “Crushed by the Wheels of Industry”, a sequel of sorts to “Fascist Groove Thang”, and two smashing electro-pop slowies “Let Me Go” and, especially, the gorgeous ballad, “Come Live With Me”. The opening lyric of the latter, “I was 37, you were 17”, may trouble some, but it shouldn’t; this is a poetic story-song of sad, ageing romantic ennui, not a celebration of pervy old dudes getting it on. Both albums come with 12” x 12” four-page lyric/photo/info insert. Also in a synth-pop vein comes a well-pressed four LP set celebrating London’s seminal proto-New Romantic haunt, The Blitz Club, curated by its DJ, Rusty Egan. Anyone who’s met Egan will tell you he's one of life’s larger-than-life characters and will likely tell you he was responsible for synth-pop and the New Romantic movement, as well as many bands within it. Be that as it may, he was certainly a leader, along with the late Steve Strange, of the Blitz Kids of Covent Garden in that short 1979-80 spell. The club’s shadow over the decade that followed was long. The album is full of relevant classics by Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, Magazine, Yello, Gina X Performance and the rest. My quibble would be that there are already multiple very similarly themed comps boasting almost the same artist line-up (to name one, Nick Rhodes & John Taylor’s Only After Dark). This is partly remedied by the extensiveness of the set, leading to the inclusion of lesser-known cuts by the likes of The Regents and The Glitter Band. Comes with extensive sleeve notes by Alexis Petridis and previously unseen photos.

Sam Lazar Space Flight (Verve) + Flukten Flukten (Odin)

Jazz old and new. Organist Sam Lazar is one of jazz’s mysterious lost recluses who disappeared off the map sometime in the 1960s. Before that, the St Louis native had been a scenester who’d played with various bands throughout the Fifties. He never achieved any real success but his cult moment is the 1960 album Space Flight, an easy Hammond outing that sassily pre-dates Booker T and the like. The mingling of kitsch and groove is swingin’ and will bring a retro playfulness to the best late-night parties. Bringing things up-to-date, Flukten, from Norway’s prodigious jazz scene, arrive with their second self-titled album, featuring this month's most stylish cover art. With Hanna Paulsberg leading from the front on sax, Hans Hulbækmo on drums and Bárður R Poulsen on bass provide rhythms ranging from outrageous stop-start mania to fluid late night rolls, and Marius Klovning's guitar sometimes offers up no wave squonk and, other times, gentle strum. Between them all they negotiate, just right, between tricksy free jazz attack, semi-classical intimations, and lighter, warmer fare that offers a glimpse of sunshine.

Julian Cope Fried (Mercury)

Ex-Teardrop Explodes singer Julian Cope released two albums in 1984. The first was World Shut Your Mouth, reviewed in the last theartsdesk on Vinyl. The second was Fried. The latter stands up better in 2024, not down to the songs, which are great on both albums, but down to grounded, raw production from the late Steve Lovell. Unfortunately, World Shout Your Mouth suffers from a trebly Eighties sound. Fried also comes over as wonkier, Cope centred in his wannabe-Syd-Barrett phase, right down to the cover photo and the superb single “Sunspots” (which may or may not be a very loose tribute to Barrett’s “Octopus”). It’s an album of cherry-bright guitar pop flecked deep with late-Sixties, post-Sgt. Pepper Brit psychedelia (Lovell appears on recorder and Kate St John on Cor Anglais), melded to a dash of punky indie and topped by Cope’s warmly Scott Walker-esque vocals. Other highlights include “Reynard the Fox” which, back in the day, became a rampaging epic in concert, plus “Bill Drummond Said” and the contemplative “Search Party”. But, then, Fried is all gold. For my money it’s the best of Julian Cope’s many albums. Comes with photo inner sleeve and a large poster of him turtling.

Sleaford Mods Divide and Exit: 10^th Anniversary (Rough Trade/Extreme Eating)

Nottingham’s shouty, gutter-poet, electro-punkers Sleaford Mods had been around a few years before their profile blew up with the “Jobseeker” single. This album followed in 2014 and sealed the deal, containing three of their best, “Tied Up in Nottz”, “Tiswas”, with it sad synth lines, and, most especially, the “Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum”-goes-punk of “Tweet Tweet Tweet”. See them live some time. They far defy their ridiculous laptop and bloke jeering set-up. On record they also nail it. As ever, Andrew Fearn combines simple but effective bassline-led grungey repetitive electronics while Jason Williamson swearily offers a surreal collage snapshot of grotty broken Britain and its dismal Daily Mail greyscape. It’s appropriate that Cold War Steve provides visuals, as he’s sympatico. Comes on translucent red vinyl in photo inner sleeve and a gatefold featuring the Wire review of the album by Simon Fisher, and contains a white flexi (with a penis’n’balls on) with noisy banger “Git Some Balls”, as well as a small 10-page photo/info booklet.

Ana Frango Eléctrico Little Electric Chicken Heart (Mr Bongo) + Rǝhman Mǝmmǝdli Azerbaijani Gitara Volume 2 (Bongo Joe)

Two from the Geneva’s ever-entertaining Bongo Joe label. I recently saw sexy-as-hell Brazilian four-piece Bala Desojo at WOMAD, who reminded everyone that punch doesn’t need to be achieved via sonic weight. It can be delivered by wriggly sensual stealth. This is a lesson that Rio singer Ana Frango Eléctrico doesn’t need teaching because they have it nailed, as their reissued 2019 breakthrough album clearly demonstrates. I think they’re a “they” because they’ve expressed views in the past about their fluidity of gender, although they didn’t seem overly concerned at the time. For info purposes, though, they sing in a sweet carefree voice most would generally think of as female in tone. Sung in Portuguese, Little Electric Chicken Heart bubbles with ebullient samba-pop but has big Mika-style choruses upon occasion. It’s wonderfully loose and spirit-raising, always light, yet, yes, it gathers the listener in and holds them wriggling. Comes in photo/info gatefold. And, just to completely flip it, music also benefits from sheer density and attack. Such is the case with the music of Azerbaijani electric guitarist Rǝhman Mǝmmǝdli. He started his career as an accordion player but by the 1980s, in his 20s, he'd bought a Czech-made Jolana guitar, which he played as if it were a tar (the local long-necked lute), changing the tuning, blending folk songs and mughams (classical pieces), with a viscerally noisy insectoid-buzz guitar style, his own take on the fuzzed rock he was hearing from the west. The result made him a success at home and now Bongo Joe offer a battering selection from his archives. Theartsdesk on vinyl reviewed the label’s Rüstəm Quliyev collection – Azerbaijani Gitara Volume 1 – back in 2020. Only gave it a small review but, as is sometimes the way, I’ve kept coming back to its light-hearted restaurant disco band shenanigans ever since. Rǝhman Mǝmmǝdli’s music is much more abrasive but it has raw zing. Comes with a set of 12” x 12" background notes.

Mike Parker Dispatches (Field)

24 years ago, Michigan-born New York DJ-producer Mike Parker released the album Dispatches which now returns, pressed rich’n’deep over six sides of vinyl. At the time, it was ahead-of-the-curve, offering an especially atmospheric form of techno that sounded deeply submerged, a precursor to what would be happening in Europe a few years later. What’s extraordinary about it is not the linear forwward movement which techno, of course, has to have, but the depth, the levels one can wallow in, the layers of murky, echoing synthetic otherworld to inhabit. Parker is now a lecturer at New York State University (as well as running his Geophone label) but Dispatches may be his defining work, a stunning exercise in absolutely po-faced bangin’ that, well, doesn’t sound bangin’ so much as an endless head-spinning minimalist journey the listener simply disappears into, lost in its weirdly enjoyable grey-hued waters.

Msaki x Tubatsi Synthetic Hearts Part II (No Format)

“Zibonakalise” from the Msaki x Tubatsi’s first Synthetic Hearts album has been a regular on the sound system at theartsdesk on Vinyl Mansions since its release last year. Now a part two arrives, in the continuing collaboration between big-in-her-homeland South African singer-songwriter Msaki and Tubatsi Mpho Moloi from another No Format Records act, Urban Village from Soweto. As with the last outing, the album splits away from listener expectations, one moment offering up doleful cello-led meditations sung in English and the next, purest Afro-pop. It is, perhaps, nearer to a polished mainstream sound than last time, sometimes too sleek for me, with its earnest, shiny chorales, but it would be lovely if more of this music crossed over in the UK so one can only hope. Comes in info inner sleeve.

Art Brut A Record Collection Reduced to a Mixtape (Demon/Alcopop)

Now over 20-years-old, Eddie Argos’s indie-punkin’ Art Brut never changed their remit, revelling in his everyday overview on life, sometimes bewildered, often finding joy in small moments and little-regarded aspects of existence. The band are defined by his spoke-sung style, his open diaristic lyrics redolent of Jilted John crossed with first wave Eighties indie such as The TV Personalities. On this two record Best Of record collection, ranging from 2005’s “Formed a Band” to material from 2018’s Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s Rock Out! album, he bemoans everything from his love life to his “medicinal” predilection for desserts, all over simple new wave guitar pop. Weirdly once regarded as ironic and post-modern, due to the time and the place it arrived from, at this distance it mostly just sounds like witty indie fun. Comes on green vinyl in photo/info inner sleeves with Argos’s explanations for every song.

Man Man Carrot on Strings (Sub Pop)

This is an album that gives no indication what it is and what it might be called, except on the spine. The band name, after all, is represented as an ident of two lines of V-waves (of which there is a stencil enclosed, along with a 12” x 12” four-page lyric insert). Mind you, there’s a great image of the titular top-hatted carrot on the inner sleeve. But we’d better get to the music which, on this eccentric Philadelphia band’s seventh album, is an enlivened hotch-potch of widescreen multi-instrumental pop, fronted by mainstay Honus Honus, AKA Ryan Kattner. Something about these big tunes reminds of Paul Williams, he of The Muppets, Daft Punk and much else. It’s that kind of ballsy cheerfulness, not really rock but something fruitier and more theatrical, elevated by bizarre lyrics. “Cryptoad”, for example, is a nightmare-ish micro-detail steam-of-consciousness vision of being trapped at an after-party (“It’s Rimbaud CliffsNotes/Two tech bro’s on the lawn”). In another universe Honus Honus is a pop superstar. Comes on semi-transparent orange vinyl.

ALSO WORTHY OF MENTION

The Mysterines Afraid of Tomorrows (Fiction): The term "alt-rock" summons up images of mainly dreadful “heavy” American bands who are really about as alternative as Hootie and the Blowfish (eg Creed, Puddle of Mudd, etc). Liverpudlian outfit The Mysterines, however, fit the name properly. Their female-fronted, blurred post-grunge sound has an edge to it, a fuzz, and, on their second album, they’ve also nailed a set of crafted songs that hold the attention. I’d heard of them but never paid much attention before; imagined them the usual “indie” pants. They’re not. Sound like they’d be great live. Comes in art inner sleeve.

The Wombles Golden (Dramatico): This album celebrates 50 years since The Wombles had three hits at once in the UK charts. Prior to streaming, this was an extraordinary feat (at that time, it hadn’t been achieved since The Beatles). Those hits start this Best Of collection – “The Wombling Song”, “Remember You’re a Womble” and the now-faintly-dubious “Banana Rock” – and all their other hits are here too, alongside three rarities, the Beach Boys pastiche “Wombling USA”, Wellington’s solo M.O.R. non-hit, “Rainmaker”, and the children’s chorus-accompanied epic version of “The Wombling Song” that was used in the 1977 feature film Wombling Free. I bloody love “The Wombling Song”. It holds a special place in my heart. And the general Seventies-ness of this release is great fun. Comes in photo inner sleeve wherein Womble-meister general Mike Batt gives a short background to the contents.

Emilíana Torrini Miss Flower (Grönland) + Flo Perrin Clay (Clay Hand) + Bored At My Grandma’s House Show & Tell (EMI North): Three albums by female singer-songwriters who tangent away from straighforward categorization. Icelandic singer Emilíana Torrini, once a member of Nineties techno innovators GusGus, has maintained an alt-pop career since, albeit in the margins - solo, guest singer, songwriter for others – and her latest album speaks of one whose talent remains undimmed. Take “Lady K”, catchy pop to a machine-like cog rhythm, while elsewhere she speak-sings poetic enigmatics. There’s something of Kate Bush in there. Comes in lyric inner sleeve. Flo Perrin, a London singer with Iraqi and Belorussian heritage, mingles jazz shuffle and folkish elements with a quavering voice all her own. Her songs are personal yet one could also imagine them on an old-fashioned European cabaret stage as much as at a gig. Clay is her third album and will find a listenership. Bored At My Grandma’s House is the best artist name this month and it belongs to Leeds singer Amber Strawbridge whose debut album combines old school Lush-like indie with something grungier, all topped off with lyrics that are forthright, heartfelt and personal, delivered candidly. “You’ve got to work to earn my trust because I’m like a fucking closed box,” she sings, sounding both jaded and vulnerable, mopey yet aggravated. It’s a good look. Comes in art info inner sleeve on vinyl described as "mustard seed splatter”, which looks like someone had thrown up a banana milkshake with after eating sweetcorn

Iraina Mancini Under the Blue (Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve Reanimation) + Oracle Sound Oracle Sound Volume Three (Oracle Sound): For reasons too convoluted to mention, I recently spent an evening with Richard Norris, he of The Grid and much else. He gave me some 12” singles for theartsdesk on Vinyl to peruse. The two most recent are these. Norris is half of production unit Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve with DJ Erol Alkan. The pair “reanimate” “Under the Blue” by singer-DJ Iraina Mancini. I don’t know the original but their version is a delicious Balearic roller that gives off Groove Armada “At the River” vibes. Luscious. On the flip is Saint Etienne’s version of the same artist’s “Sugar High” which passes harmlessly but isn’t in the same league. Oracle Sound is also a Richard Norris project, each volume delivering a six-track hit of purest electronic dub, proper chill-out gear that sometimes adheres to a Lee “Scratch” Perry template but at others wanders off towards electronic spacing. One track on Volume 3, “Inner Communication”, even achieves a small level of chug. Marijuana music.

Madness Theatre of the Absurd presents C’est la Vie: Expanded Special Edition (BMG): I reviewed this album here, when it came out last autumn, making clear it's their best since the Eighties. It is also the venerable London band’s only chart-topping album. Now it reappears in an Expanded Special Edition. It’s here on theartsdesk on Vinyl due to a flexi disc of Madness playing The Specials’ “Friday Night, Saturday Morning” live in concert, and a zoetrope 12” EP (one of those that gives an animation effect when played under a phone-strobe). The latter contains five extra tracks, the melancholic human portraits of “No Reason” and “Long Goodbye”, both of which fit with the tone of the original album, while the lilting “I’d Do Anything (If I Could)” and more Nutty Boys-ish “No Sun” are akin to Madness-by-numbers off-cuts from their previous 21^st century albums. “Culture Vulture”, meanwhile, is an atypical spoken word-ish B-side-feel thingy that has legs. The book-style set also contains, a CD of the original album and a CD of the extra tracks, plus live versions of album cuts.

The Human Aerial Antenna (The Human Aerial): Back in the 1980s, in Northampton, there was a band/anarcho-collective called Reducer who were also a sound system. Their history is complex and varied – some insight can be gained in this interview. Founder member JD, AKA Hooly, goes by the name The Human Aerial, and now gathers together a seven-track EP of his solo material, culled from synth, tape loop and sample sessions between 1984 and 1995. They sound like what might have happened if On-U Sound had pursued its initial Tackhead Tape Time style noisiness rather than the various other directions they ended up going in. Voices swim about a murky gumbo of pings, burbles and punk-dub basslines, all of it edged with industrial crush. Comes with 12” x 12” art-info insert.

Various Global Underground 46: ANNA – Lisbon (Global Underground): I know Brazilian DJ Ana Miranda, AKA ANNA, from her monster techno cruncher “Forever Ravers” with Miss Kittin a few years back. But she’s had multiple tunes out on various labels, as well as remixing Depeche Mode, Orbital and more. On her mix for the venerable dance institution Global Underground, representing her adopted city of Lisbon, she doesn’t go near the gnarl of “Forever Ravers” but negotiates a passage, common to so many DJs large in Europe, between what we'd have once called techno, trance and house, ie she lays down big room feel-good 4/4 music with (mostly) just enough whiplash snap. This means running the gamut between the likes of the falsetto-vocalled chock-chock pulse of Mind Against’s “OnlyL”, featuring TSHA and NIMMO, the full pounding of Victor Ruiz’s “Eventide", and the electro-trance of Franky Wah’s extended mix of Yotto’s “Just Over”. On vinyl it’s unmixed, a generous package of 18 tracks spread over six sides of fat-mastered vinyl, with producers on board including Bonobo & Jacques Greene, Len Faki, Tao Andra and Paul Roux. The records are dark aquamarine, pink and deep purple in photo gatefold and inner sleeves.

X-Ray Ted Moving On (Bomb Strikes) + Elle & The Pocket Belles What’s a Girl to Do? (Freshly Squeezed): Two albums representing a very particular niche. Imagine you’re at a festival; it’s a sunny afternoon – or perhaps 3.00 in the morning – you’re full of cider and the rest, riding high, looking for the next sonic fix to have a dance. You come across a tent playing THIS STUFF. You don’t know who they are but their jolly, bright hip hop-touched stew seems like the best thing ever for 45 high minutes. Thing is, once home and you check the band out on Spotify it… just… doesn’t… hit… the… same spot. Bristol’s X-Ray Ted’s debut has been called “A perfect summer record” by Craig Charles, which says more than I can in fewer words. It’s EXACTLY the sort of thing Charles would play to one of his cheery every-weekend jollies. Redolent of kingpins of this stuff, The Allergies, it’s all massive soul horns, phat breaks and primary coloured party-feel songs. Elle & The Pocket Belles, on the other hand, are from the much-sneered-at-but-once-fun electro-swing side of things. They’re a burlesquey outfit, touting snappy retro dress suitable for all vintage occasions, but also boasting a set of original songs that channel the forties via a fifties showgirl aesthetic. It’s well done and arrives on transparent scarlet vinyl. I cannot dig this stuff at home but I've fallen for its like in those summer fields.

Paul McCartney & Wings One Hand Clapping (Capitol): In 1974 Wings, replete with two new members, Jimmy McCulloch and Geoff Britton, performed a live set in Abbey Road Studios as part of a prospective film project. The whole thing was shelved. It’s unclear why. The film turned up as part of a boxset in 2010 and, while certain songs have appeared in the past. Now the session is available, the main body of the concert over two records, plus an additional 7” containing six extra tracks, old rock’n’roll and Beatles cuts. The sound is beefier, more rock, than other Wings material from the time, but there is also a noticeable overuse of synthesizers on various tracks that spikes the sound with unnecessary FM radio cheese. Overall, though, Macca holding solid.

Myeye & JUICEBOX Psyche Gems (Jakarata): MC JUICEBOX, of rising Los Angeles hip hop outfit Figmore, gets together with Norwegian duo Henrik Norbakk and Simen Hallset. The latter pair used a new sampler to reanimate loads of old electronic sketches and bits’n’bods, turning it into a smushy stew of smeary psychedelic patterns over bonged-out beats. JUICEBOX brings to it his lockdown-stewed rhymes, urgent yet also very stoned-sounding, and the result is pleasingly warped alt-hip hop. Comes with a four-page 12” x 12” art/lyric insert.

Bolbec Victime De L’Aube (Batov) + Mamman Sani & Tropikal Camel Nijerusalem (Batov) + Sandman Project Where Did You Go? (Batov): Three from London independent Batov Records, a label which likes to explore music from all around the globe. French duo Bolbec consists of Rouen childhood pals Axel Concato and Barth Corbelet, who’ve both earned their stripes as supporting cast in other projects, the former as producer of Heavenly’s Halo Jones and the latter writing songs for Hollie Cook. Together they stew up convivial instrumental easy listening that draws from the exotica tradition, jazz-dipped, smiley and sunny, Hispanic rhythms running up easily against film soundtrack-ish frolics. Mamman Sani is Niger’s original synth hero. He has been making music for over 50 years. For this album he teams up with Berlin-based Israeli musician Roi Assayag, AKA Tropikal Camel. The latter provides electronic percussion over which Sani lays down airy grooves that, without the drums, would come over as rather lively flutey new age music. It varies from the Afro-song “Venusian Lady” to tunes that veer towards house rhythms. Pleasant on the ear but, as with Bolbec, doesn’t thrust itself forward. The best of these three is Israeli quartet The Sandman Project’s debut album Where Did You Go?. Led by virtuoso female guitarist Tal Sandman, accompanied by drums, bass and trumpet, they take music stylings and scalings of their region and playfully jazz it, stirring in Shadows-style twang, danceable passages, Indian flavours, and psychedelic phasing. The result is one helluva groovy album.

Skip James Today! (Craft) + Staples Jr Singers Searching (Luaka Bop): Two albums imbued with deep blues. Skip James was one of the original Delta blues musicians of the Thirties but his career never took off until he was rediscovered, ill, old and broke, when interest in the blues exploded in the early 1960s. Today! is his first set of recordings that decade and contains his biggies “Hard Time Killimg Floor Blues” and “I’m So Glad” (covered by Cream and Deep Purple amongst others, so at least he had a sniff of dosh before dying in 1969 aged only 67). James’s style sets him apart; complex acoustic minor key fingerwork plays off against his high-pitched mournful voice, and this album shows him as a master of delicacy compared to his peers, using solitude and quietness to great effect. Staples Jr Singers are no relation to the famed Staple Singers but a nickname given to long-lost gospel-blues family unit based around Edward Brown, RC Brown and Annie Brown Caldwell, from Aberdeen, Mississippi. In 2022 Luaka Bop reissued their forgotten 1975 album When Do We Get Paid, a gospel sensation unearthed, sending the remaining members of the family, who’d never been on a plane before, on a global tour. Now they’ve recorded a follow-up produced by Ahmed “Sinkane” Gallab. It retains their religious spiritedness but lathered in the bluesey wisdom and a certain funkiness. Age has given them an extra earthiness. It’s impressive. Comes with a small 20-page info/quotations booklet full of black’n’white photos of them

Stephen Pastel & Gavin Thomson This is Memorial Device (Domino): In 2017 music journalist David Keenan published his debut novel This is Memorial Device, an overview of a fictional-but-true-to-life indie scene within early-Eighties Airdrie in Scotland, told as an oral history by those involved and tinted with surrealism. This was adapted by playwright and academic Graham Eatough for a 2022 Edinburgh Fringe show that won the Fringe First Award. The soundtrack by Stephen Pastel and The Pastels' longterm soundman Gavin Thomson has now been expanded into a whole album which comes with a 12” x 12” sketch of the fictional band Memorial Device, signed by Pastel and his co-creators, and a four-page 12” x 12” photo/info booklet with ruminations on the whole thing. The music varies from thoughtful treated piano to synth burble and is sometimes overdubbed with voiceovers representing characters from the book/play. The highlights are two indie-punkin’ tracks recorded directly to cassette in 1981 by what I presume is a pre-Pastels band called The Unexpensive Superstars. I think that’s the case but it took me half a day on Google to work out what was bloody what with this ultra-meta album, and I’m still not sure…

The Police Synchronicity: 4LP Super-Deluxe Limited Edition Boxset (A&M/Polydor): Cards on the table, I was never a Police fan. What little I did think of them derives from their early career (“Walking on the Moon” is OK). But I also enjoy coming back, many years later, to music I never loved and seeing how I feel. Sometimes we become fossilised in the idea we don’t like something, so never re-broach it. We might find new dimensions if we did. Over 40 years later, then, time to plough through a four record overview of The Police’s final album, made when the three-piece were in loathing-each-other freefall and released in 1983. It sold over 15 million copies and gave them their biggest ever hit, the much-overplayed stalker anthem “Every Breath You Take” (as well as three other large singles “King of Pain”, “Wrapped Around Your Finger” and “Synchronicity II”). Alongside the original album, there’s a second disc of B-sides and bonus tracks, which includes the trite anti-terrorist rewrite “Every Bomb You Make”, and also live versions of older songs such as “Man in a Suitcase” and “Message in a Bottle”. Then there’s another four sides of unreleased alternate takes, out-takes and instrumentals. While there’s some interest in hearing the occasional very raw demo, such as of “Synchronicity II”, only the uber-fan really needs repeated almost-identical versions of, say, “Walking in Your Footsteps”. The records all come in photo inner sleeves and the boxset contains four black’n’white photographic prints of the band, and a 60-page hardback book featuring new interviews and archive material, amongst much else. After a deep dive, I cannot say I like The Police any more than before. Sting’s lyrics are, upon occasion, appalling, although it’s as much the faux-earnest way he sings them. Focusing just on the original album, it feels efficient, precise and crafted, rather than thrilling.

Various John Gómez & Nick the Record present Tangent (Mr Bongo): The Tangent Club at The Pickle Factory, down in darkest north-east London, plays home to resident DJs and renowned global crate-diggers John Gómez & Nick the Record. The club has been going for a decade now, though not always in the same venue, and now Mr Bongo celebrate with a two record collection in flyer art/info inner sleeves. Thought I’d adore this but, actually, it’s more of a cherry-picker. The pair’s ability to find original upbeat tunes from all over the world is undeniable but, to these ears, they’ve managed to find tunes from all over the world that have an Eighties soulboy feel, whether the from Spain, Africa or the Caribbean. There are, of course, whoppers on board that veer well outside this description, notably the percussive “Nira Gongo” by Conjunto Baluartes, pop-reggae opener “Si Phan Don Lovers Rock” by Thailand’s Srirajah Sound System featuring Molam Inteng Keawbuala and the stomping “Amek Amek” by L’Innovateur Djoe Ahmed Et Le Zoukabyle.

Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O TRUE STORY (Mushroom Hours x New Soil): South African trombone jazzer Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O’s second album is a more eclectically-disposed creature than his debut. It runs the gamut from celebratory Afro chorales to pieces redolent of Hugh Masakela to more ambient-classical-inspired shuffles to jolly grooves. The variety on offer provides a listening experience that’s approachable but not straightforward. One to listen to as a whole.

Flunk Personal Stereo (Beatservice): The appearance of Norwegian acoustic-electronic outfit Flunk, along with Nouvelle Vague and, to some extent, Senor Coconut, marked a millennial moment when it was lovely to hear blissed-out or oddball-tronic covers of classic songs. The whole idea pzaled quickly but Flunk’s version of New Order’s “Blue Monday” still holds up. It launched their career. Their third album, 2007’s Personal Stereo, like all their work, doesn’t overinvest in cover versions, but it does stick to their formula of fairlyland downtempo, given its character by Anja Øyen Vister’s ultra-cute voice. On the covers front, there’s a pared-back version of Depeche Mode’s “See You”, a collaboration that features a sample of Daniel Johnston’s “Dreams” and a couple of songs that give specific musical nods to REM and Pink Floyd. The originals, for those who have this rather acquired taste, are also likeable.

The Male Gays Be Kind EP (Chapter Music/Amour Fou): Bart McDonough and Guy Blackman are The Male Gays. The former was a high-up at Domino Records and now runs his own Amour Fou label, while the latter runs Melbourne-based label Chapter Music. Together, their debut 7” single is a three-tracker of queer-centric bedroom indie, spiked with a hint of pre-Beatles satire-novelty acts such as Tom Lehrer. The lead track “Be Kind” is an easy listening jolly while the B-side contains “Kill All White Men With Guitars” and “I’m Not a Punk, Babe”, lyrically pithy but too good-naturedly amateur to achieve real bite. Overall, throwaway but genial.

AND WHILE WE’RE HERE…

• US musician Damon McMahon – Amen Dunes – took a long break before returning with his seventh album Death Jokes. In the five years since he last put out a long-player he’s dived off the beaten track. Straightforward is no longer the way. On Sub Pop, this double “LOSER” vinyl edition, comes in gatefold on three sides of transparent pale aquamarine vinyl, the fourth side covered in etched lyrics, the whole package replete with a 12” x 12” lyric insert. The music melds electronic plonking and playful experimentation and tonal moods with a gothy bluesiness, vocals often loosely critical of what it is to be an American in 2024. It’s an interesting experiment that sometimes goes beyond that.
• Brighton singer-songwriter Bess Atwell’s last album, 2021’s Already, Always, was a grower, boasting quirky alt-folk songcraft. With help from producer Aaron Dressner (of The National), her new one, Light Sleeper, smooths out the offbeat and comes on like a hazier version of Taylor Swift’s Folklore/Evermore duo. It sounds more in-line with other musicians, and less individual, but, for all I know, this may offer success? Comes on lyric inner sleeve.
• Is “Natural One” by The Folk Implosion (from the film Kids) the only actual US hit single Lou Barlow has had amongst his many bands? Possibly. My research is not conclusive. He put that band to bed over quarter-of-a-century ago but now reunites with his original partner in the group, John Davis, for a new album of idiosyncratic indie rock, Walk Thru Me, which arrives on white vinyl in photo/lyric inner sleeve. The sound is quirked and original but the songs not immediate. Mind, the oddball blues of “Water Torture” sounds like it might have legs…
• Up in Glasgow Scottish-Japanese outfit Ari Tsugi have been creating waves, now captured on their debut album, Simultaneity on Rebecca’s Records/!K7. Their sound is original, a mingling of untrammelled brass/woodwind jazz, Japanese vocals (sometimes spoken), and airy progressive rock with a loose West Coast US feel.
• London singer Laurel Arnell-Cullen, AKA LAUREL, returns with a second album that steps away from her early bedroom indie-pop to a sound that channels 1989-era Taylor Swift with exactitude. It’s called Palpitations and is on Communion Records. The Swift reference is stylistic, the songs are hers and stand up as light electro-pop. Comes in photo gatefold on grey vinyl with an eight-page photo/lyric booklet
• It’s weird to think that US pop-rockers Cage The Elephant have been around for 18 years. They’ve consistently made solid music in a range of off-the-shelf styles but there’s never been much, aside from that, to get the teeth into. Some would say that’s a good thing. I’m not so sure. Their sixth album, Neon Pill, put together with pop super-producer John Hill, continues their mission, a set of tuneful, bubbly, smart, slickly catchy numbers. If you don’t believe me, just check out the bouncin’ title track. The whole occasionally recalls early Empire of the Sun. Comes on gatefold in photo inner sleeve with a lyric-backed poster.
• Fraser T Smith came up the long, old-fashioned way, working his arse off as a session musician for decades, before he hit the big-time writing songs for Adele and co-producing Stormzy’s breakthrough debut album Gang Signs & Prayer. His own solo debut as Future Utopia featured heavy-hitting guests, but his second is better. Django’s High on 70 Hz Records is gorgeously-produced, woozy psyche-pop-rock with his own vocals. It’s often delicious – just check out “Stars Align” for evidence – and comes on gatefold on creamy orange Biovinyl (ecologically sound) with a psychedelic poster featuring Smith’s thoughts on the songs on the back.
• Once upon a time, charity shops were wonderful places to find cheap, often excellent vinyl (in the early Noughties I picked up Sixties psyche-poppers Kaleidoscope’s rare debut album for 10 pence). Nowadays they’ve been stripped bare. However, what they still have in droves is the output of once-massive easy listening singers, staples of three inch thick “record collections” that sat by the “Hi-Fi” in suburban homes of the Sixties and Seventies. So it seems weird that Decca have reissued Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1967 debut album Release Me and 1968 third album A Man Without Love. Humperdinck was famously one of the only artists capable of challenging The Beatles’ sales at the time. Now, of course, his syrupy orchestral-Sinatra shmaltz simply sounds like a very long time ago, and not much more. Mind you, his version of “Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine in” a year or so later, and not included on these, is an absolute belter. Go find it at a charity shop near you…
• Acid Jazz boss Eddie Pillar explains in the inner sleeve notes of the reissue of Mother Earth’s second album The People Tree, that it was, in fact, their first album. The debut, Stoned Woman, was really a sampledelic jam whereas The People Tree was made a by a proper band. At theartsdesk on Vinyl Stoned Woman has been regularly played since its reissue. The People Tree, which arrives on photo/info double, the second disc featuring unreleased bonus cuts, has more fully formed songs, somewhere between early Paul Weller, early War and Brand New Heavies. It’s OK when it stays away from the latter.
• Norwich outfit Magnolia drop their debut 12” single, featuring the songs “Television” and “Feed Me”. Imagine Brighton punk-proggers Squid if their sound was more playful and showbiz. “Television” has elements of jazz, noise-rock and folk and is intriguing. The flip is more intense, free-jazz saxy, relentless and shouty, which is no bad thing either.
• Had Fin Greenall done what he did a few years later he might have been grabbed the attention Ed Sheeran did. He came from a background in dance music and approached trad singer-songwriting from that angle, as Sheeran did, albeit the latter gestated in the then-hipper US R&B netherworld. Greenall records as Fink and his latest, Beauty in Your Wake on R’Coup’D Records, is somewhere between Elbow and Cat Stevens. It comes with a 12” x 12”
• Hendrix Harris is a London producer-singer-rapper whose debut album, Awakenings on Naïve Records, mulches down slurry, blurry contemporary US rap with slick R&B traits and older soul singer stylings, plus a dash of Prince. There’s too much Drake-ish over-production for my taste, but there are also hints of alt-pop potential.
• The third album from London band Club Kuru is called Before the World, on Dog Holiday Records. It is redolent of Pink Floyd during that it when Syd had gone but before Dark Side of the Moon, that “Fat Old Sun” time. It’s mellow songmanship with slow-blowing guitar and a hazy almost-Balearic feel.
• Californian musician Serge Bandura AKA Earthtones likes keeping things very mellow. His last album, his debut, made with mbira player Kavin Nathaniel, was super-wafty ambience, but his latest, We Can Live Together on Wonderwheel Records, features some stauncher grooves with a selection singers from around the world fronting them. It has a deep house spirit but fused with global roots sounds.
• Daphne Guinness, scion of a dynasty, has made the most of her opportunities rather than just wallowing in wealth. In the fashion world, famously, but also firing out music. Her latest, as Daphne, with Bowie compadre Tony Visconti, is the album Sleep on Agent Anonyme Records, which is a bunch of plush, passable Goldfrapp-ish electro-pop that comes on gatefold in lyric inner sleeve.
• The fourth album from London nine-piece Nubiyan Twist is called Find Your Flame and sunnily continues their melding of jazz-funk and Afro flavours. It also features tasty guests such as Nile Rodgers and K.O.G. It’s a little smooth and jaaaaaazzzzz for my tastes but would go down well on a Love Supreme afternoon or similar. Comes in photo/info inner sleeve.
• Norwegian label Beatservice continue to make genially groovy electronica of the kind that put their country on the international map at the start of this century.  Momentary Bliss by Third Attempt, AKA Torje Fagertun Spilde, is very much in this vein, pleasant bubblers that are not so much dancefloor as living room head-nod.

FINALLY, FOUR THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN REVIEWED ON THEARTSDESK BUT WHICH ARE WORTH OWNING ON PLASTIC

Wytch Pycknyck Wytch Pycknyck (Property of the Lost): Best rock album of the year so far, which also happens to be a garage-psychedelic head-trip, and is reviewed by me here. On lyric/art/photo inner sleeve on green vinyl.

Kokoko! Butu (Transgressive): A bangin’ Afro-electronic rave-up from the Democratic Republic of Congo and reviewed by Mark Kidel here. Comes in photo/info inner sleeve.

Pepe Deluxé Comix Sonix (Catskills): Sixth album from the Finnish duo maintain their fusion of funkin’, analogue electronics and playful weirdness, according to Guy Oddy here. Comes on photo/art/lyric/info gatefold double.

Kneecap Fine Art (Heavenly): Guy Oddy also reckons, here, that the debut from cheeky Belfast hip hop trio Kneecap may be his Album of the Year. Comes with 12” x 12” photo/info insert.

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