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Chester Forfeit - Galapagos (1976)

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  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
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Modicum - Autoslave (2001)

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  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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Migraine - Death of Choice (1983)

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Forest Fire Citation - Chickadee (1988)

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  Obviously Forest Fire Citation are best known for their epic 1970s albums P. Bryan Twyne and the Pype of Wine and, of course, The Squirrels of Blame . One would have to be a completely idiotic retarded mindfuck not to know this really basic fact. However, like many of their folk-rock ilk, the band continued to record, release and perform new music long after their star had faded, and indeed are still active today, albeit with none of the original members on board, though drummer Reg Pegson continues to act as a sort of 'percussion consultant' to the group, even at the brisk old age of 104! Amongst their later catologue, 1988's Chickadee is perhaps the highlight. Their ninth album overall, it saw FFC reinventing themselves through the abandonment of traditional folk instrumentation, each member adopting instead a selection of home-made instruments, fashioned from household objects, kitchenware, car parts, cheesewire and so on. While this undoubtedly gives the record an &#
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Empty Stock Workings - Gurning on Empty (1975)

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  Everybody loves prog rock, right? I mean, even those who don't loves prog rock loves prog rock. Right? That was certainly the view in 1977 and indeed in most of the Western World became the law for a short period of time. Although their debut album sank without a trace - in many cases quite literally as 90% of the known copies were on board the ill-fated Girth Hound ocean liner when it tragically capsized in 1973 - Empty Stock Workings had been building momentum throughout the decade with their unique blend of vocals, instrumentation and songs. Arse Tea and its follow-up Poo Wine were both moderately successful records, before the arrival of Canadian guitarist David Carvery and keyboard player Jan Hospice allowed them to take their sound to new and experimental places. 'G on E', as it's affectionately known, opens with the 13 minute epic 'Temple of Messenger', composed largely by bassist Matthew Scrotum, while side two includes the band's biggest hit &#
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Gloryhole - Gloryhole (1990)

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  It seems impossible to believe that it's been almost 50 years since Gloryhole's debut album hit the charts, sending dancefloors everywhere into a priapic frenzy. That might be because it's only been 34 years, but even so, this Hi-NRG, ballsy beat-ridden bonanza feels forever lost; sucked into a timewarped gloryhole of its own, if you will. The pet project of New York producer Chase Brumby and electronics whizzkid Kizz 'The Whizz' Jizzworth, it's a full 12 inches of thick, hardcore, pulsating passion that penetrates deeply. Just five tracks fill the 72 minutes, and three of those are arguably extended remixes of the other two, but that's splitting stray pubic hairs. A seminal album in every sense, the opening epic Talk to the Glans pretty much defined the genre of 'Hard Bath House', such as it briefly was, while the sampled vocals on Too little, too late sparked a years-long debate on who the mystery singer might or might not be, or whether anyone
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Alton Sultan and the Returning Officers - Volume 5 (1960)

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  1958 was a big year for Jazz albums. With the release of Go , the Hipton Hipnotes put themselves firmly on the musical atlas and set themselves up for a lifetime of confusion with their rivals, the Hipstone Hiptones. 1959 was arguably an even bigger year, except in the ways in which it wasn't, obviously, as Alton Sultan and the Returning Officers emerged from the woodwindy shadows to release their first four volumes. But it was this - their fifth and final release - that set their legacy in liquid stone. Ironically none of the original 'officers' actually returned to make this record, with bandleader Sultan forming a new ensemble consisting of members of the aforementioned Hiptones and Hipnotes, many of whom weren't themselves entirely sure which of the outfits they had previously been in. None of that was to bother Alton Sultan who bravely wielded whatever instruments he could get his hands on in front of anyone brazen enough to play along with him - and the results
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