Icelandic freewheeling hippy psychedelia from 1972. It's only natural that records like this exist.. But it's a magical experience being directed to them.
Thursday, May 28, 2026
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 16 X Ray Spex - Germfree Adolescent
I can't think of a record that brings me so immediately and powerfully back to the teenage unwashed state which I experienced with such a thrill as X Ray Spex' Germfree Adolescent. I'm back in Richmond High Street. Stepping iff the 71 making my way home passed Woolworth's hormones running amok. The record's just a blast and an ummatchable document. The rush of it all. It's brimming with the lunacy and riotous noise of puberty.. And the ideas on the album are as startling and vital as they ever were.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 23 For Free
There's a purity in a song like this.Music like this serves a purpose. It takes you back to your safe place in a day when the sun is overcast or you get some bad news. It takes you back to a sunny day. A better place.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 158 The Horrors - Primary Colours
Shocking ! And not in the Hitchcock as in the classic dig your nails diwn your boyfriend's palm sense. But in the this is really, really piss poor car crash respect. The Cure meets Bauhaus meets the worst of The Scream OSTs. Go back to Drama School lads. Do not pass go. Ever again !!!
Song(s) of the Day # 4,405 Little Barrie
I liked Little Barrie's albim from last year Electric War. I like Gravity Freeze from now. It's full of funky bass runs. Drummers getting wicked. Crossing the tracks. We got to get back !
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 17 Only Ones - Even Serpents Shine
Some artists like a fine wine improve with time. Like the finest wine. Only Ones are such a band for me. They're deceptive. 'In the darkness and in the light' Fluidity savagery and tenderness. In equal measure. Sadness and somehow against the odds, survival. The tough streets of Catford and from there the tough streets of London. And off. To explore the world,
I only encountered them at university. Obviously that song. The one they're most remembered for but only one in a casket of priceless jewels. I tracked them all down in time. You had to work a bit harder then. But the search was richly rewarded.
Even Serpents Shine is nit Marquee Moon. But only Marquee Moon is Marquee Moon, This is a crafty cousin with dirty fingernails but a wicked grin. It diesn't play by Pink's rukes but Baudelaure's. It lifts licks from the Stones when it chooses but is a far far better record than anything The Stones were putting out at this point of time. It's Poet Maudit for the late Seventies set nd those that came thereafter. Just ask Pete Doherty.
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,391 Mike Oldfield - Ommadawn
When I came to Newcastle almost twenty years ago, I probably wouldn't have harboured thoughts that at 60 I would sit in my flat at 60 waiting for a jacket potato to warm in the oven for my tea while listening to Mike Oldfield albums and really quite enjoying them, But there you go.... I won't last the course but Ommadawn is not unpleasant.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 159 Hem - Rabbit Songs
Roots Americana. An astonishing purity and beauty.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 69 Skip Spence - Oar
If course this is Rock & Roll Cool Hunter's Grail. 'It's one of the most harrowing documents of pain and confusion ever made.' Therefore you're probably well advised to have it in your record collection.
Former Moby Grape guitarist Skip Spence had recently left. Bellvue Hospital following an attempt to attack band members Don Stevenson and Jerry Milled with a fire axe. This is his only solo record.
It's a wonderful record. One that creeps ip om and gradually spooks you. It clearly has a heavy heart and a troubled tread but its not a record whose legend has a longer shadow than it deserves. It sings the blues.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 24 The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Wealthy marriage equated to captivity. We wilt in the heat.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,404 Thee Marloes
'Love is the strangest thing,,,,' Scrub love for life. I've been working since eight on a screen. Almost five hours in all. Teaching, or more accurately in my case, trying to learn from students in Dussledorf, Amsterdam and Hamburg. I learned a lot. I hope they did.
Then I nipped down to my local library to seek some supplementary information. More leads. Diversification, never a bad idea. The case is never closed regardless of what Tom Verlaine thought, The one thing I know is I'm happy behind my desk. I never really plan to do anything else. Never back at an office. Back on the chain gang.
On the way back I nipped into the record shop acriss the road. A record sleeve grabbed my attention. That's what record shops are for. Surabaya. Indonesian outfit Thee Marloes second album Di Hotel Malibu. A reminder which is always welcome that the world is impossible exotic, and mystical.
I'm back at my desk now, The album is on and it's enchanting fare. Sultry, stuff to lure you onto the dancefloor and into a Seventies dream
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,392 Childish Gambino - Because The Internet
An hour well spent.It draws you in. The evening stretches ahead.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 18 The Monochrome Set - Strange Boutique
I probably play Strange Boutique ince a year and that's clearly not enough. The Monochrome Set came to prominence in a glorioys age; The Cure, The Only Ones, Gang of Four, Echo & The Bunnymen, XTC, Joy Division, Steel Pulse. Days when bands invented wirlds that you could step into and walh the streets of miraculous cities.
It was a great time to be alive.To be young, To experience these cities on Radio One during the evenings with John Peel, Kid Jensen, Janice Long. Peter Powell. And at the weekends Annie Nightingale. John Waters. The Monochrome Set had impossible charm. Exotic allure . You could listen to their songs and imagine it was the sixties and we would all live forever.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 23 Young Rascals
This was an impossible time. So many great sounds and songs and bands.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 25 This Flight Tonight
I remember Nazareth's cover from the time, Slightky scary. I probably had no conception of who Joni Mitchell was. That probably had to wait untul my NME reading days in the Eighties.
Ome of the most evocative songs about one of the most evocative and memorable experiences that life affords us. .Flying. Another chapter in the book I'll never write.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 70 The Byrds - Mr Tambourine Man
I live The Btrds. R.E.M. led me to them and I have severl records. But not this. Perhaps I need this. It came out in the year I was born. Perhaps it's playing here!
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 160 Lift To Experience - Texas Jerusalem Crossroads
Wondrous messianic record from an Austin, Texas band named after a Louis Malle movie.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,403 Sussurus Station
Sussurus Station, Mythomania, A Portland, Oregon Electronic Duo with a touch of Mariachi Mexico in the mix. . Their sixth album and first for me. Thanks Darren.. Trying to feel free and a little less alone according to this, Sailing for the distance horizon. Works for me.
Monday, May 25, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 161 The Decemberists - The Hazards of Love
The Decemberists have always appealed to me wuthout ever completely winning me over. This may be my loss.Oddly, during the course of the album the lead singer seems to transmute into Mark Morris, lead singer of second wave Brit Poppers which was a rather odd turn of events. I warmed to the record increasingly as it span. It began to come on like an amiable Arcade Fire..
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 61 Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
This is an album you're supposed to like. Liking it marks you out as a thunker. A reader. A cineaste. I like it. It's got a winning glow of dread. .And some decent tunes !
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 28 Down To You
You bruah against a stranger and you both apologise.'
Court & Spark has a flow. I;ve bought it recently and I keep playig it as it has a warmth and space. An appreciation of light and colour. The moment,
Song(s) of the Day # 4,402 Aretha Franklin
Life is a miracle. Best not to try to ratonalise it..Swim in the river of existence. Music is the best way I know to experience the sheer joy of being alive. Realise how lucky you are and experience the moment, If you're not fully cogniscent of your good fortune look at the news. Go to your bathtub switch on the taps.
Lady Soul by Aretha Franlin is a miracle. The way Aretha and her co-vocalists syncioate and verbalise. Chatter. Gossip. Swoon. Sigh. Soar. It's beyond words. Move into the next song. Move into the new day.My book about the miracle of Lady Soul and what makes it tick can wait for another day.. I have a bath to run.
Sunday, May 24, 2026
1967 Top 40 8th June # 24 Dusty Springfield
Everybody you could possibly want is in this chart.Those were the times.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 62 Karen Dalton - In My Own Time
This is a different approach to a different hillside. A new kind of sadness. A quite extrairdinary woman with a sad and lonely narrayive but an extraordinary bittersweet beauty. Sometimes .
the pitching verges on the unhinged but generally this deserves all the garlands.
.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 29 Paprika Plains
Paprika Plains is seventeen minutes long pretty much. But I'm game. It's rather a slog.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 162 The Pastels / The Tenniscoats -Two Sunsets
Boho Heaven. Tea and cake at Rennie Mackintosh Wilow Tree Cafe, gazing down at the soft daylight of Buchanan Street below. Dreaming of Kyoto.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,401 Radiohead
I've just had an extraordinary weekend. Every weekend seems extraordinary these days. Every day seems to be. I suspect it's just the age. Terrible things happen. Wonderful things happen. The world spins and we wonder how.
I listened to Radiohead's Moon Shaped Pool this morning on my TV. I'm lisening to OK Computer now in the evening on my laptop. In between I've been to church itself an incredible experience if light and peace to calm a congregation trying to find peace in their own worlds.
I've had a tech mini crisis which has arrived to a satisfying narrayive like a Raymond Carver short story achi eving poetic closure and now I'm sitting here typing this as OK Computer plays and the sunlught shines in refracted patterns through my blinds. They all lived happily ever after.! .
You wouldn't know it listening to Radiohead generally I think Radiohead most of all take the pulse of these last thirty years.ehey're not my favourite band but you can't help but have the upmost respect for them. They seem to understand the tenor of the times better and more consustently than any other band of these momentous and bewildering tines.
This age of anxiety. These days of miracle and wonder. The times when Andy Warhol fifteen munutes if fame comment surely became reality. 1984. Brave New World 'You watch your feet for the cracks in the pavement,' Uptight! Uptight !
Saturday, May 23, 2026
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 63 Brian Eno - Before & After Science
I could buy lots of Brian Eno albums. There's am overpriced copy of Taking Tiger Mountain in a rack in a Record Shop around the corner from me where I'm sitting now that I can feel tugging at me. My need for ownership.
Instead of pulling on my jeans and going out to experience the thrill of purchase I'm listening to Before & After Science on my television . I feel that Eni would appreciate this. He's that rare thing. A reasonable millionaire. An enlightened man.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 19 Ezra Furman - Transangelic Exodus
I likes me a bit of melodrama. Perhps not in my life so mych. But I'm always rather prone to an emotional skirmish blaring from my record player.Tansangelic Exodus . Purple vinyl spinning. 'Don't tell my mu, Din't tell my dad. I've been driving dowm to LA wuth my baby...'
It pays its dues to Shangri La's and Jimmy Dean. The New York Dolls. Springsteen. . It takes you somewhere. You can see the cliffs. Feel the waves. All you can ask. .
Song(s) of the Day # 4,401 Ed O'Brien
Simetumes it's great when a fine goup splinters. You get more for your money. The individuals within the band start putting out albums of their own and the plot thickens. The harvest is enhanced. Our general lot is improved. Take Fairport Convention . Take Can. Take Kraftwerk. Take erm The Beatles.
Take Radiohead. It's Saturday mirning and I find myself at my desk listening to Ed O'Brien's new record Blue Morpho.. O'Bruen has made a series of videos where he talks about how the record was brought firth by crisis. It sounds like Radiohead. It sounds like those who Radiohead picked up the banner for and forged onward. Nick Drake, Krautrock, Egypt. The Heavenly Choir.It's a deft, magical record. The eye of the storm....
Friday, May 22, 2026
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 163 Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Bavarian Fruit Bread
Bavarian Fruit Bread does what Hope Sandoval has done since She Hangs Brigthly. Comfirtably Nymb for those who prefer The Velvet Underground to Pink Floyd. I am not being snide. I love the record
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 30 Cactus Tree
Relationships as ownership.
Song(s) of the Day # 4,400 Lucky Break
My Lucky Number's 4,400. I'm done for the day and heading out for Friday night Lucky Breaks debut made it is playing on my television and the sun is streming through the window. All is calm in the world.
This is a record that charts those important years. Nineteen to Twenty Three and all its uncertainty and enotional vortexes. It's not an album that paves a new road .Lana meets Mazzy Star meets Liz Fraser. But it walks its road with a glacial stride.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 25 Troggs
Troggs trod the elven path. They lived in the Top Ten of the singles chary in 1966. Slipped a little in 1967 . And didn't chart thereafter.
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 64 Agitation Free - Malesch
Obscure but highly revered Krautrock album. Psychedelic and Arabic by turns. A whole new sunset
Thursday, May 21, 2026
1967 Top 40 8th June # 26 Traffic
Paper Sun is one if the mist beauriful songs that I know. It's all youth and magic,
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 65 The United States of America - The United States of America
The world has changed. We must accept that. The world will continue to change. We must embrace that. This album had a high hip quotient in the Eighties when I was busily tracking this stuff down. It's almist impossoble to umagine what the world that inspired an album like this was like. It still sounds incredibly uncompromising ,It explore duffernt pathways to the sun. Thrilling,.
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 164 Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
They were the Kings of Leon. By 2007 they were shooting to the stars . But I'd rather lost interest in them which I don't imagine concerned them. Sometimes you spend some time with a band and their trajectory shifts out of your orbit.
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 31 Song For Sharon
With Joni you can't help thinking about the people she write about as much as the songs she wrote. Her albums are populated with lives which rise and fall. Ebb and flow,
Song(s) of the Day # 4,399 The Lemon Twigs
The Lemon Twugs hail from Hicksville, Long Island.You couldn't make it up. Look For Your Mind their latest LP is their seventh in all. It sounds like several albums they have already put out. The twig it seems have no desire to become a branch. Meanwhile as the record spons it seems clear 1973 is reluctant to become '74.
But the 1973.The Lemon Twigs inhabit is stranger still. It harks back with endless yearning to the Golden Age of jingle jangle. 1965 to 1967 where The Beatles, the Rest of the British Invasion kicked in .The likes of The Left Banke. The Cryan' Shames
What The Lemon Twigs do on latest album Look For Your Mind , they do very very well. It's not a very different album from others they've put out, They're working on a seam. But it's also decidedly unadventurous .Firmula It never makes a break from the pack breaks out of the straightjacket of the records they clearly venerate and heads for true greatness. .
You never quite believe that the girl who's breaking their heart is actually flesh and blood or that she diesn't have a perfectly valid response to The Lemon Twigs entreaties. The 9 to 5 was ever an actually a 9 to 5. It's a conceit evidently. It's so jingle jangle tastic Still, The Lemon Twigs are heading back ti my home town and they're playing a bigger venue from last time. Why should they care about my reservations, Good for them.
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
The Soul Searcher - The 50 Greatest Joni Mitchell Songs # 32 Man From Mars
Joni had a cat called Nietzsche , He ra
an away this inspired this rather lovely song,
Top 100 Records - SublimMedia # 66 Popul Vuh - Hosianna Mantra
I've taken off Dizzee Rascal and put on Popul Vuh. The mood has changed. I peel a tangerine. It's a classical mien sddemly. This is a band that took their name from a Mayan manuscript. So they're a lot smarter than me and I'm immediarely grateful that they made this and I'm listening to it,
This came out in 1972 and suddenly it feels like 1972 again. This is quite extraordinary. You don't get this sensation from listening to a Mott The Hoople record
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 165 Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner
I'm listening to Boy In Da Corner for the first time. It's 23 years old. It's pretty good. Funny. Sharp. Urban.
250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 20 The Skids - Days In Europa
You can't fault The Skids for lack of ambition. This, their second album. Songs to sing on the way to the match. On the terraces. On Friday night wuth a bevvie. It was of the tomes and they were rousing ones. Top of the Pops was great every Thursday night for five years. Turbulent political times. Here was another great band to align with. To put on when you got hime from school and waited for your tea when mum and dad got home. A deceptively thoughtful rollercoaster ride for teenage hormones and black sheep thinkers.
Produced by Bill Nelson. He helped moved the band's sound on to the point where they sounded like an impressive leggy 800 metre runner coming off the final bend and pressing for medals in an Olympic Final behind Coe or Juantorena. The original sleeve was quickly withdrawn and replaced after a furore about Nazi imagery. It was something many flirted with although it was evident Skids followed the right line. I was deeply besotted with Working For The Yankee Dollar. I haven't listened much to this but I certainly will do. The whole thing sounds fighting fit. coming up to fifty years on.
1967 Top 40 8th June # 27 Jeff Beck
This reminds me of a moment. December 1983. Just back from The Soviet Union on a College Trip. Mount Ararat Road in Richmond. A gathering of young women. And me for some reason, A girl enthusing about how this was the best record ever. And playing it again and again. .
Song(s) of the Day # 4,398 C.O.L.A.
Drinking a Cola, listening to C.O.L.A.'s latest; Cost Of Living Adhustment. Aren't I just the Post Punk, Punk. It's a cool album. Cure meet Wire in Toronto at a Surrealist Exhibition.
.
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Best Ever Albums - 2,000 - 1,001 - 1,394 Deep Purple - Burn
This is very much the world I'm immersed in at the moment. A sub reality. from 50 years and more back, given the Sublom Medoa countdown I'm experiencing.
Deep Purple and Burn from 1974 fits right in to this mood. It's teeming wuth irc and elven narrative and meaty riffing !
500 Greatest Albums of the 2000's # 166 Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
Pause for thought. We are as far away from the first couple of Arctic Monkeys albums as The Sex Pistols were from Elvis. I don't have particularly strong feelings either way about Arctic Monkeys. This is jolly energetic. Gathers momentum at a certain point and feels like getting drunk for the first time. or losing your virginity. But then you realise this is truly compelling narrative with elemnts of Greene and Fleming, the Kitchen Sink Angry Young Men novels and films.
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