Spare Turkey are due to release their 4th album 'Going Flaccid' next month, 15 years after their 2007 debut, and more than 2000 years after the birth of Christ. This may or may not be relevant, but then isn't that the point? Really? A band that releases an album once every five years only needs to be relevant once every five years, ideally around the time when the album is released. But relevance has never mattered to Spare Turkey who continue to ply their effortless fusion of pub-rock, techno beats and Victorian cradle-songs with consummate quinquenniality.  Anyone expecting a live gig will be disappointed - they have performed live only once in all of history - but those unfamiliar with the band could do a lot worse than check out their 2012 effort 'A-Hole in a K-Hole' which broke new ground, refurbished the ground that had been broken, and then broke it again, in the words of guitarist Paul Flounce, 'for the shitting hell of it'. Bassist Len Kenson, now...

    It's very rare for me to review 'contemporary' music, what with me being old, dead, and made up, but sometimes a debut album comes along that literally shakes you back into life with its sheer debutness. One such relentless debut in 2021 was debuted by Mongolian songstress Pecky Yin and while this is technically her third release, it's the first release to be released outside of the street markets of Ulaanbaatar, where debut releases retail at prices well North of five shillings. And they don't even use shillings in Mongolia, except when buying Pecky Yin albums which may or not be debut releases, obviously. If that all sounds monumentally confusing, you probably shouldn't listen to Your conscience is gay . It makes a musical statement as bewildering as it is powerful, and as statementlike as it is musical. The question isn't whether or not you actually like Mongolian folk music - it's whether you even believe in it or not. And if you do not, why not?...

     Seattle-based Lesbian grunge outfit 'The Cunts' released vaginal quantities of music in the early 1990s, some of it actually quite listenable if you turned the volume down to -11.   Having acrimoniously fallen out in 1995 following a dispute about 'feminine products' and bassist Laurie Yell's involvement in the notorious dildogate scandal, the original lineup did manage to reform for one last Sapphic hurrah in late 1998 and split up for the last time while this, their final album was being recorded.   Indeed, several of the tracks were recorded with only one or two members present in the studio; drummer Courtney Gebärmutter had to play several lengthy solos just to remind other artists that The Cunts were still, technically, making an album.   Eventually, with none of the other members wanting to contribute anything further, a lineup of session musicians were brought in to finish the record, hence the name. To this day, Lead Guitarist Juli...

    There is much to admire about spoken word artist Jerome Dupont. His lyrical poetry, his unrepentant Frenchness, his determination to circumnavigate the globe travelling only on rail-replacement bus services. But most admirable of all is perhaps the way in which he relishes the societal scorn of his complete disregard for all forms of convention - including the convention of disregard, or to put it in his native language, la limace. To date, Monsieur Dupont has released 14 albums of his own and appeared as a guest artist on a further 37 - some achievement given how widely he is despised among those who admire him. The sixth of his solo recordings, known only as 'The Yellow Album' consists largely of abstract musings about croissants and urination, set against the backdrop of Ambient soundscapes in eccentric Gallic time signatures. That doesn't mean it isn't tres bon, of course, but it really isn't tres bon.  As the Yellow album celebrates it's 30st anni...

  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 ...