Who, what, or indeed who is Mononym? Is Mononym more than just a mononym? Is he, she, or it somehow actually less ? These were all questions we were asking in 2017 when Shades of pain was on everyone's playlist, whether we wanted it there or not. How many times could we lie fallow, basking in the breezy opening track Invert Sugars before we felt very, very annoyed that we had done so? How long would it take before we realised that Angeleek consisted of no lyrics and only one chord, and even that was a simple C Major? The mononymously-titled one later revealed himself to be former Nub keyboard warrior Douglas Hemp, but by then, of course, the musical damage had already been done. And still there were more questions that remained seriously unasked. We had to wait until last year for a second Mononym album. Was it as good? No! Was it better? Again, no, and that should be implicit in the fact that it wasn't as good! But Mononym has a decent record when it comes to defying logi...

  "If I've learned one thing from 27 years in the music business it's that you can't just go around biting people on the leg" - the words of Plinth Drummer Nobby Cobworth, shortly before his death from Psoriasis last year. It would be easy to dismiss such characteristic outbursts as mere attention-seeking, but if anything Plinth were a band that should've sought more attention, and such much-sought-after attention would've been richly deserved. Cobworth first met guitarist Ron Broth and bass player Andy Whelks in the mid-1990s when the duo were working in the Dragon, Wagon and Flagon pub in Droylsden, and performing as Chocolate Sikh every other Friday with singer Hattie Latimer. He convinced them that success was imminent, so long as they changed their name and let him join the band. And had a flexible definition of the word 'imminent'. Also, Hattie wouldn't be allowed to sing, but had to provide sexual services. A demanding set of request...

Released only last year, the third album by Austrian vox-pop pioneers Twolips has already become something of a modern classic. Maybe even a classic classic, but of the modern kind, obviously. 375 builds seamlessly upon the selflessly egotistical ramblings of their previous efforts, 324 and 326, to deliver another bout of what can only be described as 'incurable sonic thrush'. Bursting onto the scene in 2020, the duo cared little for convention, politeness or indeed personal hygiene, and it was perhaps this mono-mindedness that allowed them to come up with three albums in as many years. If 'as many' is actually four. Gunter Cunt and Shabric Shamanson were no strangers to the business, of course, having previously played vertical synthesizers in Samovar and dogSodomy respectively, but the latest album takes things to a new level. Quite literally. Though not, of course, literally. The standout track is probably 'Crab Scandal', which packs more oscillatory ...

  The name Lemuel Strongtrout may not mean a lot to you, but it means even less to Strongtrout himself, who has spent much of the past 50 years trying to escape it. A member of Toronto psych-prog outfit Mit Avec in his late teens, he recorded one album with them as lead singer, before all his bandmates tragically died in a series of murders that he himself definitely didn't commit, and for which he had a series of watertight alibis. Strongtrout left his native Canada - with his head held high and reputation unsullied - to lie low for a while, and, in time, to record the seminal 'Galapagos' album, released under the pseudonym Chester Forfeit , which made him an international star and indeed an unlikely sex symbol. With its capricious licks and plunging fuck-funk basslines, it was a record that literally everybody owned in the late 1970s, and under some jurisdictions non-ownership was actually punishable by imprisonment. Forfeit had the world at his feet - at his foref...

  6a Froob Glebe. If that address means nothing to you then you have to ask yourself some pretty searching questions, for it was in this modest flat in Llandudno that Barry Gluto and Tag Jaggings first experimented, both musically and sexually, as a pair of harpsichord-obsessed teenagers. Simple, catchy tunes and relatable lyrics about Orthodontics and Barry's mothers recipe for Chicken Rigmarole - indeed this was their original band name before they settled on Modicum - saw the pair become the darlings of the burgeoning 'Welshpop' scene. Their self-titled debut from 1999 may not have been up to much, but then people had Millenniums'n'shit to be worried about. The release of 'Autoslave' in 2001, however saw Modicum become a household name. By the time they released their third album in 2004, they had long since moved out of Froob Glebe and into a series of mansions. They embarked on a worldwide tour, supported by Rictus Thumb, and the sky seemed to have no...

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