It's that very special time of year, and so today's classic album is a festive treat from 1955 when Christmas was a simpler time, a nobler time, and indeed a simpler time. In Waldorf, Maryland that simplistic nobility took the form of Sousaphone music, and the Equine Sousaphone Quintet rode the quest of a very special Sousaphonetic wave for over six glorious months in the mid-1950s, before all four members tragically died in an incident of which nobody speaks. Their second visit to the studio saw this Christmas offering rush-released to a market that was ready, willing and able to listen to it. Bandleader and Sousaphonist Hubert Goossen is in fine form blasting out the bass notes on 'Santa's got the horn', while Sousaphonist Vincent Lowe and Sousaphonist Bill Hugo fill out the lower register parts.  The Festive Sousaphonic Medley Set, featuring Tubsworth 'Tubby' Dubbson on Sousaphone is another undoubted highlight and fans of the genre will no doubt recall

  It's a little-known fact that the very first album released this millennium was Precum's Throwing Circles, the follow-up to their little-known better-known debut 'Flangetastic'.  The decision to release the record at one second past midnight on January 1, 2000 in Tonga could've been a great publicity stunt, were it not for the fact that their label, Shithouse Records failed to actually release it anywhere else in the world for a further 15 months due to 'suboptimal planning' by the label's management team.  Throwing Circles finally got a world-wide release the following year and 'Suboptimal planning' was chosen as the title for their third and final album before multi-instrumentalist Tristan Greft quit the band, effectively sealing their demise.  Precum were, perhaps ironically, late arrivals at the Britpop party, and their Art Rock sensibilities are arguably not sensible enough, with tracks such as 'If you really don't want to go to

  Following their self-titled 1999 debut, Tenderthreat apparently disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, until they reappeared with this, their second appearance on a record, which appeared in shops in the Spring of 2002 and rapidly disappeared from the shelves as quickly as it appeared in the charts. But was everything as it appeared?  The fourpiece were firmly mired in the depths of angst-rock, and all but one of the songs were written by frontwoman Ellie Pelt during a three month stay at The Briary, a rehab centre of those addicted to pipe smoking. The raw emotion she felt at the time is as much in evidence as her famous oatmeal guitar, which can be heard fracturing into a million little oaten biscuits mid-way through the penultimate track 'Promises Crap'. The business end of the album also includes 'Day of the Plumes' in which bassist Hector H. Spang has a rare opportunity to perform lead vocals and doesn't take it. After disappearing apparently for the

  Fife native Ridley Styx is an interesting character, if an unassuming one, and his debut album doesn't quite tell the full story at all.  Before he even considered becoming the hottest, hardest rapper this side of the Firth of Tay, he made his living in crisps. Specifically the crisp megastores that were so popular in the Fife area in the mid-2000s.  Under his real name Duncan Farland, he spent four years working at Crispin Salt's Crisp Emporium, before becoming Assistant Deputy Manager at Chris McCrispington's World of Crisps, where his work was considered 'exceptionally adequate'.  But in 2014 he gave it all up to embark upon a recording career, armed with only a record deal that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on, and a packet of Cheese and Onion Ringos that wasn't worth very much more.  But five neoplatinum albums in as many years would suggest his particular brand of reformed crispy hip-hop was actually worth something. Probably quite a lot. O

  It's easy to dismiss the Pommes Frites as a bunch of one hit wonders from Chesterfield, simply because they came from Chesterfield and had only one hit single, but that rather misses the point. The album that gave us the seminal 'Down town' and other hits - and by other hits, I mean no other hits - shouldn't have failed to put the Pommes Frites on the musical map. And yet, it did. In that it didn't. Some consider their debut 'The passage of passing time' to be even better. Which it might've been. But the path of least resistance is to simply dismiss the Pommes Frites as a bunch of one hit wonders. From Chesterfield.   Lyricz "My home town Always brings me down And makes me frown You are a clown The shit is brown, In my home town, Which is a down town. A very down town. A very, very down town. A very, very, very down town."   Discographicalz The passage of passing time (1993) Rape Street (1995) Looms (1997)