In many respects Bug Thief are a band out of time. They often sound as if they'd have graced the bill at Woodstock. But their music is not mannered or conceit.
Monday, May 18, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 68 Kvaertten Som Sprangde - Kattvals -
Listening to this countdown, one album a day as spring become summer is an almost unprecedented experience, I don't know many of these albums but am in awe of most of them. Certainly this.A freewheeling instrumental Psychedelic Progressive Folk album that is frankly hreathtaking. This is not music I ever imagined myself becoming so enraptured by, but it's happening
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 167 Prefab Sprout - I Trawl The Megahertz
Prefan Sprout; The Musical
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 34 For The Roses
For The Rosesis aparticularl favourite of mine. It feels tangled and troubled. As if some are going where they need to go. And others are getting left behimd.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,396 Gun Outfit
Gun Outfit occuply the same emotional territory as Allah Las, Mazzy Star and The Paisley Underground bands and the likes pf the Doors, Love and Buffalo Springfield. They live on the saddle and their records invite you to join them. Out in the prairie. Under the stars.
Latest album Process & Reality takes it's time and stretches it's spurs on the blanket on the ground. It all feels rather 2026. Rather Wes Anderson on the Range. But I ain't complaining cowboy !
Sunday, May 17, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,396 David Bowie - The Lodger
Great music is frequently an act of escape. An immersion in an alternative and more inviting reality . Such is the case. You are in the pages of Ballard, Bowles and Burroughs. And anything is possible.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 168 Rokyskopp - Melody AM
This is, how should I put it? Monumentally bland !
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 70 Gentle Giant - Octopus
Whimsical Athletic. Not so much for me this one. Though it has its twists and turns.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 34 Roses Blue
Young Joni is naturally quite different from middle aged Joni and slightly elderly Joni. It's only natural. But this makes it dufficult to assess the songs in this rundown. As if you are walking through a gallery playing tribute to a great artist where their paintings are not ordered randomly but in confusing sequence,
Anyway I love this song and if asked to order my own countdown of favourites would put it higher. It seems to warn listener against the appeal of the occult and supernatural. 'Sceptisism has rarely sounded this transendent.'
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 22 Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
Famously the album that either made ir saved Richard Branson. Memory us the strangest thing. For some reason I'm transported back to a garden in Teddington. I think the neighbours are playing this and Concorde is flying overhead either to or from Heathrow. A number of people who are important to me are still alive and I have more hair on my head than I do now,
Now Tubular Bells is playing again on my strereo. 40 years have passed but it's not very long in the scheme of things.It sounds rather magical ti my ears.Medieval. I particularly like the foolish effects and reverence for what is gone.. Generally it has a rather regal air. It only cost me a quid, plays like a dream and I probably play it once a year, I like it,
1967 Top 40 8th June # 29 Engelbert Humperdinck
Please release Engelbert Humperdinck and his dubuius sudeburns. It's been almost sixty years now,
Song(s) of the Day # 4,395 Mildred
I keep falling hard for new albums. Long may this contunue.This morning... Mildred. No, not Yootha Joyce. Morrissey acolytes. But Oakland, California's finest. That's saying something. There's always plenty happening in Oakland, California. But today it's Mildred. And their latest record Fenceline.
It's neat, reflective Amerucana.A little bit Sulver Jews. A little but Whiskytiwn. A little bit Mildred. 'Driving out to the orchard for a weekend job.' Down avenues Lined with memory and regret. And happiness. Laughter. With life.
It reads like well written Short Stories by Raymond Carver or John Cheever. Like a sit down meal with life veterans. Survivors. Refugees. Makes me feel like watching Sideways again. But I'll keep on listening to this. It's Sunday morning.. And this is beautiful.
Saturday, May 16, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 71 Dark - Round the Edges
Sorry Spotify haters ! I understand your argument but I have justifications of my own. I like listening to ludicrously obscure albums on my television set. This certainly wasn't an option when Dark Round the Edges came out in 1972 and I was a curly headed tot blissfully wrapped up in Chicory Tip and Newcastle United.
As for the record its creamy British Psychedelia, reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead.It was made in Northampton. It's apparenrly the 17th most valuable album ever made according to The NME. It's also quite wonderful !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 169 Johnny Cash - American IV; The Man Comes Around
These late Johnny Cash / Rick Rubin albums are extraordinary. A cast spell with Biblical dimensions.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 30 Jimi Hendrix Experience
Purple Haze still sounds impossible. A visitation.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 35 The Beat of Black Wings
Late Eighties Joni and it sounds it . All rather over egged production wise for me. The melody has a more-ish tug
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 23 Chicago- Chicago III
I have all the time in the world. As good as early retired at 60. With a flat full of light and a high ceiling which creates beautifuk acoustics, Surrounded by the books and records and meories of a lifetime. An opportunity to listen to music. Really listen to it. Live in the moment !
So I'm sitting here listening to Chicago III. From the back of one of my cardboard boxes where I store everything. Must alphabetucise the box it came from ! Chicago III came out in 1971 and was the bands third double album in three years..
Quality control is not of the essence subsequently. There are many bits that are pleasant. Tasteful. Allow you to ease back and let the whole thing wash over you. Then there are solos you fear will never end (worst of all are the drum solos which feel like someone is actually drilling inside your head). Most of the time it's chraming and spacey. It will go back in the box and may not get played for a couple more years, I wonder what will have happened to this sad folorn world in the meantime.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,394 Kevin Morby
'
'Welcome to the Badlands. Where the sky expands.'
I'm not a huge one for lists. 'This is going to be the album of the year.' It's better than this but not as good as this...' I suspect things will fall into place. And anyway I don't have a particular axe to grind. I'm not The Prime Minister of a large country. Or CEO of a major corporate player. I'm a sixty year old man sitting at my desk. Watching the world below through the Georgian desk window of my flat. Looking down at the Newcastle street where I live in the May sunight on a Saturday morning.At the people as they go about their day
But I'm listening to Kevin Morby's latest album Little Wide Open and it's really something rather wonderful. Spacious. A truly great American album in the sense that Fitzgerald and Steinbeck and Morrison and Updike used to write Great American Novels. Back in the day. When people had the time and desire to read such things. Plenty still do. This isn't over yet!
It's an incredibly literary and joyous experience and you feel like letting it spin and spin. Like you're out on that Great Mythical American Highway and you have nothing to do byt press your foot down on the accelerator and watch your troubles recede behind you in the toad behind in your rear view mirror,
It's thirteen songs long . Just less than an hour. It doesn't pack its punches. It's lean and trim. Rich with lines that hit you like the sweetest caresses with the sheer beauty and generosiry and abundance and joy and fear of the passage of life. Give it a spin...
Friday, May 15, 2026
Song(s) of the Day # 4,393 The Loft
I've had an emotionally bisy day. Sometimes circumstance dies this to you and you deal with it as best as you can. Still it's early evening now, I've put the day to sleep and I'm listening to The Loft's second album Badges as evening's fading light beckons.
The Loft are an interesting story in themselves. They reformed a couple of years ago after splittung in 1985 under the most dtamatic circumstances imaginable. They modus operandi us simple in essence. Twin guitars. The Byrds, The Velvet Underground, Television late middle age. Reflected wryly on the vicissitudes of live. The curveballs fate throws ys.
It's just short of half an hour of Glory and Beginning to See The Light. A few miles high on cruise control. It stays true to its script. Doesn't fuff a line or miss a beat. Blue Peter badges all round.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 36 Morning Morgantown
Near the start of it all. There's a purity here that's difficult to process.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 31 The Happenings
A New York vocal group in the slipstream of The Four Seasons.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 73 Banco Del Mutuo Sorcero - Banco Del Mutuo Sorcero
Italian progressive Rock . 1972. I imagine you own this. It has an irresistible tug. Close your eyes. The years fall away..
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 171 DJ Sprinkles- Midtown 120 Blues
Deep House. Great to lsten to. Ifid it difficult to write about.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 32 The Monkees
The Monkees had the best songs. The best writers, The best colour. They had a lot going for them that band.
Santana - Santana
You can use music for many purposes. I'm currently channeling it as something of a restorative. To take me back to times and spaces. Particularly childhood but not only . Places in my life which are increasingly distant in terms of time and frankly it feels, space.
I come from a family unit of seven. We've since been reduced to five and the loss of the two who have departed is still a source of pain and loss to the five of us that remain. That's not a negative conclusion to draw I don't think. Just a basic facet of life, A passage of experience you never completely come to the end of.
When I was nine my family moved from Nottingham to London. To Richmond Upon Thames to be precise. House prices had not exploded to the ridiculous degree they proceeded to. We moved into a cramped house close to Richmond Station, My three older siblings got the three bedrooms on the top floor as they were approaching their mid to late teens. My parents got the front bedroom on the first floot and my sister and I shared a room and I eventually moved into my own block bedroom at the back of the first floor a few years later when we moved beyond the au pair years and my sister and I got to the stage that we were relatively self standing. I walked my sister to school and back and my mum and dad could relax a bit.
The Sixties were not really completely over in Richmond in my area. The house next door was ours was home to a group of young people in their twenties and thirties who had an air of slightly grubby bohemianism about them, They threw continual celebratory parties late into the weekend nights, much I suspect to my mother's chagrin,
There were conspicuous squats all the way down Church Road the route I and eventually my sister and I and I took to my Infants School. A glorious walk for me from eight to ten to visualise now. All the way up Mount Ararat and right unto The Vineyard and the teeming scrum of childhood noise. Football,conkers, cricket when we used our fisted hands to punch a tennis ball past crouched fielders and run between brief wickets. The screaming riot of constant noise enveloping us in a cocoon of blissful and unrepeatable childhood. A passage of time to experience and then forever try to recover.
One of our teachers Miss Collins was a distinctly hippie type. I seem to remember her wearing a wig or at least having a glorious perm, a fair bit of pastel make up and she wore fabulous multicoloured costumes. Beads and flares. Scarves, Earrings. She followed no apparent curriculum but allowed us to paint and draw pictures all day. Write and tell stories and when she'd run out of ideas lead us out into the playground to play french cricket at the end of most days. Bliss..
These are incredibly hypnotic moments of lost youth and while writing them what's the soundtrack been ? I'm using to carry me back there to the secret garden that everyone can access if the moment and soundtrack are right.. If you set the conditions. Like some DIY ouija board.
Santana's first. It's a magical record pure and simple. A glorious freeform indulgence from distant history.A good six years before the period I've been documenting but it feels incredibly apt to describe just how exciting and freewheeling being that age felt from 1975 to 1977 for me and how it feels now reliving it in writing.
A period where a whole different set of values challenged the given ones and the idea of freedom was actively sought, explored, enacted and celebrated. This a record I've only recently bought a battered second hand copy of on a whim. I play it quite regularly and it always casts a spell. The lion's head on the sleeve describe the martialed. chaos and purest ecstasy of the album itself . It's cast its spell on me for the last couple of hours and guided my typing digits.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,392 Den Der Hale
Den Der Hale are playing at The Cimberland Arms this evening.I probably won't go. I have an early start tomorrow and a few classes.to make my way through. But I would like to be there.Den Der Hale are a Swedish Post Psych quintet. What Post Psuch might be is anyone's guess. It's more Psychotic than The Sonics? Even darker.than Sunn O))).
I like their current album Larking About though the title is somewhat misleading. It's hardly a skip through sunlit meadows unless perhaps the meadow is heavily mined. It's an incredibly.monastic recird. Imbued with light and thoughtful repose. I probably won't venture out tonight bit I sense I'll be missing something..
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 37 Refuge of the Roads
Joni reflects on age. She's by instincts a thoughtful artist with an eye on her place in history. This song was originally on Hejira but its recast here for 2002's Travelogue. The roads provide refuge for us all.
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 172 Sleater Kinney - One Beat
I saw Sleater Kinney around this juncture, They were propulsive. Righteous !
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 24 Spiritualised - Pure Phase
We're shifting towards summer. It won't get dark intil half past nine tonight. I've finished my tea and washed up the plates and now I'm listening to Side Four of Pure Phase by Spiritualised a double album from 1995.
I've had this record for a number of years, but I've never listened to it in iy's entirety until now. This is the way it should be listened to. The way it makes best sense. I'm fortunate in being able to crank up the volume pretty much as high as I wish. That's exactly what I've done. .
It's a great recird. It still sounds very much like the future even though it also makes clear which elements of Rock & Roll's past it most reveres; Stones, MC5, Kraftwerk, Neu! The Velvet Underground, The Stooges. Gospel and Soul. It almost sounds like a classical record in terms of its ambition and grace. 2001. It aims for the stars. Effortless. .
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 74 Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs
In some ways this should be a disturbing record to listen to because it's made by a deeply disturbed man who dropped off the radar pretty soon after its release. But it's actually a very easy record to listen to. What must have made it odd on release no longer feels particularly odd. It's alao too influential to even begin to measure. A key record for many, many artists who came thereafter. Ask Graham Coxon, Robyn Hitchcock and Peter Buck.Ask Pete Doherty.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 33 Walker Brothers
The Walker Brothers could sing the bus tumetable and it would sound divine. Here they sing The Ronettes and it will do.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 38 Night in the City
An immediately wonderful grasp om colour, melody and sunniness. Joni sounds impossibly fresh and exuberant here. But there's also a wonderful control. 'She sounds as happy as a lark.'
Song(s) of the Day # 4,391 Basement - Wired
Rough Trade are onto this and that's good enough for me. I went across the road just now and mentioned them to Nick the owner of the record shop and he put Wired, their latest album on and he agreed. It doesn't take much to get this stuff right. Intent, conviction. Drive.A vague alienation. But not too forced. You don't need to frighten the horses.
Wired isn't weird but it has plenty of independent fire md melody. And heart. .Basement are the best thing thing to come out of Ipswich since Kevin Beattie, They've reformed sporafdcally since 2029. This takes Pixies, Smoking Popes, Radiohead, Ulrika Spacek amd lots of other bands you've never heard of to wonderful effect
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 75 The Clash - London Calling
'Come out of the cupboard you boys and girls....'
It seems like a good time to listen to London Calling. I hear a lot of people diss The Clash . But this strikes me as frontline Rock & Roll.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 173 Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
Bill Callahan is a comforting artist. He goves you the sense that it's stull the Sixties bur with an added knowing dimension. Some of the lyricism here is extraordinary.
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1967 Top 40 8th June # 34 Petula Clark
This makes me think of my childhood. And my beautiful mother who had a great array of summer Sixties dresses. It's all sunlight and youth.,.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 39 You Turn Me On (I'm a Radio)
David Geffen asks Joni for a hit and Joni in tesponse is playful with the form.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,390 American Football
I've surprised myself by falling hard for American Football's self tutled fourth album over the last couple of days. It's spacey and grandiose. In The Smith and Radiohead's ballpark. Incredibly inventive and slightly remote and withdrawn. The band are pegged as Emo and hail from Urbana, Illinois. It makes sadness feel slightly stately.
Monday, May 11, 2026
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 40 Chinese Cafe
If you came of age in the Eighties you had a slightly awry perspective on a number of artusts. Elton Jihn, Springsteen, Bowie, Dylan and Joni. This was Joni in the Eighties. Looking back. Not what a twenty year old like me wished to do. As for Timeless Melody. In Joni's defence you'd have to say she's nothing if it an artist and paints the world as she sees it. As it is. Studious.Elegaic.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 76 Lucifer's Friend -Lucifer's Friend
The author if this list is Swedush aand naturally has a different perspective. I've never heard of Lucifer's Friend. Pn immediate acqyauntance they appear to be Deep Peoplessom.Actually they're from Hamburg. The record is ludicrous but bracing.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 25 Bang on the Drum - Songs From Play Away & Play School
The stuff of everyone's youth. At least those if a certain age. Roughly mine. Btian Cant, Toni Arthur, Derek Griffiths, Carol Chell Tony Ball et al. Talented people. Noteworthy musicians many of them. It's not as easy to keep young children as happy as you might realise.
I've enjoyed listening to this on repeat all day. We talk about childishness but is this as foolhardy or negligible as voting for Populists. Committing adultery or having a nasty spat? Frankly I know what I'd choose.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,389 Seefeel
Seefeel are a band that graced the pages of the Melody Maker every week in the early Nineties when I used ti buy it and The NME pretty much every week . They regrouped in 2007 and find themselves on the cover of the latest cover of The Wire. Not great for their bank accounts perhaps. But fortunately not all musicians are primarily guided by their bank accounts. .
Their new album Sol.Hz is elctronuc hiss. It sounds great In their early days Seefeel used to be loosely connected to the Shoegaze scene but now their sound is perhaps best described as electronuc, atmospheric noise.
This sounded most in place as I was listening late last night. It sounds huge too as eight becomes nine on Monday morning . 'Oceans fall and mountains drift.'
Sunday, May 10, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 174 Roddy Frame - Surf
'When i was young the radio played just for me. It saved me....'
Roddy Frame sad a poet's heart and a troubadour's stride. An artist's vision.
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