Sunday morning listening: Resonance by Yumiko Morioka

Japanese ambient/new age piano music from 1987. Tranquil.

Friday afternoon listening - Tone Float by Organisation

Kraftwerk before they called themselves Kraftwerk. It doesn't sound anything like the Kraftwerk we know and love, in fact for the most part it doesn't really sound like music. Still, at least it gave OMD a title for their second album.

Original copies go for hundreds of pounds. Thank god for bootlegs.

Sunday morning listening: HMS Fable by Shack.

I've waited 25 years for this to get a vinyl release and it's finally here. With its glossy production and big choruses, it divided opinion amongst Shack fans, but to me it's their best album. It has Comedy on it - one of the greatest songs ever.

Vive Le Rock

It's safe to say that Adam Ant's Live Aid performance hasn't gone down as one of the all time greats. He was only allowed to play one song, so he chose his latest single, Vive Le Rock - a worldwide audience of 1.5 billion people helped it peak at 50 in the charts. Anyway, I thought it was great. It's parent album, released later that year, was mostly ignored. Rockabilly and garage rock weren't what the public wanted from him but it did, if I recall, get a rave review in Kerrang!

I bought it a few months later a a knockdown prices. It's still a slightly cheesy but fun listen.

Lament at 40

Happy 40th birthday Lament. This was my favourite album as a teen and is still up there now.

The sleeve design, by Peter Saville, featured a photo of Callanish standing stones (also where the video from One Small Day was filmed), which would stick with me as much as the music - just ask my daughter, who was named after them.

2023 Re-view

Some things I liked in 2023....

Four albums of modular perfection from FLC

Hamish Hawk live at Gorilla (and album). By far the most passionate and moving gig I've been to in a long time.

Johnny3snares. Harnessing the fun side of Aphex Twin

Adult DVD. Sandman Mancave was one of my tunes of the year.

This book

Jockstrap LP. An album from 2022, that I didn't get to spend much time with until 2023.

Cope's notes #5. The story of The Modern Antiquarian, complete with a set of new songs inspired by the book.

Teardrop Explodes boxset. A near definitive copendium of familiar, rare and unreleased tracks, spread over 7LPs or 5CDs.

Eno and Eno. Seeing their live at the Acropolis performance at the cinema was wonderful.

SMS reissue.

Ian McNabb channelling his inner Scott Walker on Hamilton Square.

Aphex Twin. Blackbox Life Recorder 21f made a strong case for Song/EP/App of the year.

The (final?) return of OMD

Ultravox's Quartet box set. Another high quality exhaustive box set.

Blur. Making a case for their finest album. 

They've moved on and so should we - there's no point in wanting another Parklife when you can just listen to Parklife.

Sunday morning listening: Grace and Danger by John Martyn

I suspect he probably made more money from Wet Wet Wet stealing a line (and title) from Sweet Little Mystery than he did from sales of this album.