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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  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 ...

  When Nub first collapsed onto the scene in 1995 with their self-titled debut album, they defied categorisation.  Even Professor Bertrand C. Treband, head of band categorisation at the University of Oxford Institute of Categorising famously failed to categorise the band, eventually reducing the options to 'post-post-punk' and 'pre-post-post-post punk', both of which were rejected by all four members of the power trio. By the time they released Pissinfectant , they had settled on a more defined sound that, while still essentially uncategorisable, could at least be categorised as 'not actually very good'. Not that this mattered to their legions of hardcore fans, most of whom were equally not very good at their jobs, lives or relationships. And it was to this sense of failure that Nub appealed - loudly. This second album was literally recorded in the hope that it would fare worse than the first. Tracks such as 'Mob-handed pipe jockey' and 'My invisible...

  It is perhaps the greatest irony ever to befall the much-misunderstood electro-proto-funk-o-lectro genre that Morecambe duo The Repeat Offenders failed to release a follow-up to their 2007 debut, Loon Bran. Some might argue that it's not just an irony but an outright tragedy that the three-and-a-half Moog synthesisers used on the album now lie abandoned and gathering moths; Richard Ralts and Colin McCrombie having long since turned their back on the music business and sworn to never lay down another beat for the rest of their lives. But this music was a product of its time. Strangulated, condensed, some might even say deeply unpleasant to listen to. The opening track 'Versatile Log' does away with any pretence of tonality, rhythm or other such trivial conventions, while the 13 minute epic 'Rupert done toilet' was described by McCrombie as "trivial noises, performed and recorded in a critically important way". Other artists - Elf Conversion Syndrome , Cam...

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...