Bruce Haak - I Like Christmas

[1981]

The marvellous moog maestro with the ultimate CHRISTMAS ditty. Probably my all-time favourite. An absolute vocoder robot vocal banger! So upbeat it's euphoric. This was part of a split single Bruce Haak did with Tiny Tim and it's a great shame that every household doesn't own a copy. 

Holidays are lots of fun
In winter cold or summer sun
But for me there's only one
Day like Christmas

People smile a special way
Love and gladness fill the day
That is why I'll always say
''I like Christmas''

Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Merry Merry Merry Christmas and Merry Christmas!

No More Christmas Blues - Suicide

Hey Lord - Suicide [1981]

Suicide are here to spread some Christmas cheer. 

Nice.

No More Christmas Blues - Alan Vega [1981]

If you thought Hey Lord was a laugh just wait for this one. The hilarity continues. I actually think this is a deranged Suicide classic with their signature down and out in New York city vibe with monosyllabic snarls of barely articulated sentiments. I don't get that this tune is credited to just Vega because it has the same Martin Rev backing track as Hey Lord so... anyway Merry Christmas!

James Ferraro - They Dont Know Its Christmas

[2021]

I haven't checked out new James Ferraro music for like twelve years or so. I missed this one when it came out on Christmas day back in 2021. They Don't Know Its Christmas is some sort of neo-classical electronic Christmas music jam. Nowhere near the mind altering deliriousness of peak Ferraro but it's pleasant enough while it's playing with all of its fake frosty ambient bells, fake choruses, wintry synths and faux holy minimalism. Lonesome Christmas melancholia... 

What happened to this guy? For five or six years he was one of the greatest, most vital and unusual musicians on the planet, running the underground. In 2009 alone, he released sixteen innovative solo albums and they were all pretty good, over half of which were mind blowing epic ambient-drone-noise hypnagogic pop sound-collage extravaganzas.

James Ferraro - Star Digital Theatre: Movies For P.T. Cruisers [2009]

This is not normal music. At the start it might not sound like much but wait until you're about twelve minutes in then tell me how you're going when the bubbling off kilter psychedelic ambient stasis starts getting delirious. Twenty two minutes in and the frenetic tribal new age starts becoming unhinged. Thirty minutes in and the electronic arcade synth-waves are going barmy and zig zag-y... and that's just the first track... 

Vince Guaraldi Trio - My Little Drum

[1965]

Classy Christmas classic.

Cocteau Twins - Frosty The Snowman

[1993]

Suitably Cocteau-y and also pretty faithful.

Merry Christmas.

Orange Appled [1986]

They had a bunch of tunes with bells in. So Cocteau time is always Christmas time.

Those Eyes, That Mouth [1986]

Hard to go past this tune from the same ep. I mean this is absolute peak Cocteau Twins right here. All out bliss out!

Al Jourgensen - It's Always Christmas Time

[2009]

Ministry do a Christmas song and I like a very lot! 

Like Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie guesting with Ministry to cover Flock Of Seagulls' Space Age Love Song but with new Christmas lyrics.

Merry Christmas.

It's Always Christmas!

Sorrow - The Final Solstice

[1999]

Rose McDowall again. I don't know if this is a Christmas song but it sounds like one so... Happy Christmas.

It's pretty crazy that this recording was originally just put on a cdr which was given away at a gig because actually this is a pretty incredible far-out ambient folk trance with atmospheric pipes, strings and bells all twinkly and covered in snow. Then Rose's vocals are multi-tracked to the hilt becoming an overwhelming dreamy snowflake kaleidoscope choir. 

Coil - Christmas Is Now Drawing Near

[1999]

Immigration policy that then decides to include the enemies of previous immigrant groups is a fucking dumb idea. We all knew this in the 20th century but somehow in my lifetime politicians and bureaucrats have allowed it to happen in the name of globalisation so we can all (pretend to) be one man. So here we are with a fucking imported holy war on our shores because we can't have discrimination. We can't even discriminate against people who want to kill us! That would be Hitlerian! This retarded suicidal empathy will be our demise and it's upon us... 

There's some pretty fishy stuff surrounding this entire horrific event. Why the fuck is Australia being used for this foreign conflict... 

Expand government powers in Australia in ...3...2...1.... Less freedom for all!

Goodbye civil liberties, Hello more restrictions, censorship and surveillance for you! It's for your own safety man.

Happy Christmas everybody.

Oh the song... this is Rose McDowall guesting with Coil, singing a ye olde British Christmas carol in a haunting folk style. 

Spellbinding.

Children Once Were You · Arthur

[1968]

One of these lost guys from the 60s who slipped through the cracks before he got to be known. Introspective folk pop at its finest. 

I'm feeling this song today... a lot.

Arranged and conducted by the legendary Don Randi and produced by Lee Hazlewood all in a tastefully understated manner. 

Lovely.

Children once were you
Children dressed in blue
With hat and gloves, and mother's love
Children once were you, once were you

A little boy plays with his toys
A tiny lass, her doll in joy
But that's all changed, and rearranged
But children once were you, once were you

The years slip quickly past
This day here may be your last
I'm looking in, your child again
And children once were you, once were you

MOON WIRING CLUB ~ GRUESOME SHREWD

[2025]

Entropic memory wave-forms smudged to infinity.

This week the new epic three hour Moon Wiring Club possible masterpiece Gruesome Shrewd/Grisly Exaggerated arrived. It's a double cd & cassette combo pack. Like a further extension of their already pretty unmoored 2023 LP Sepia Cat City, this is Moon Wiring Club at their most sprawling and stretched out. The off kilter samples and loops are deformed to new and unprecedented relentlessly elongated extremes here. Amongst the disorientating psychotropic eeriness sometimes there are even fizzy ecstatic bursts. 

To paraphrase Mr Hodgson (the man behind MWC) himself this three hour magnum opus is a "corroded sludge-adelic ambient slurry"

It's all so psychedelic and insane... all backwards and forwards, chopped and slopped, and woozy and wonky... a sensory dislocation. 

The signature haunted and hallucinatory disembodied voices are malformed and contorted to unforeseen levels...

Anti-logical prolonged loops of random vhs textured electro-acoustic dub experiments....  smeared-out tunes freed from the constraints of time so discombobulating and busted... you start to wonder are they still music at all?

Hop aboard the mind melting altered state of Gruesome Shrewd/Grisly Exaggerated the only sonic trip worth taking in 2025. 

Slowdive 1991

Slowdive - Spanish Air [1991]

Many didn't but I loved Just For A Day in 91 and it stills sounds great today with the added extra of crushing bittersweet nostalgia. 

Spanish Air is supreme goth-wave dream-gaze. You forget that Slowdive influenced Low but it's all here in this Simon and Garfunkel go goth epic. 

Slowdive - Celia's Dream [1991]

Like a slowed down slacker attempt of the Cocteau Twins aesthetic. The waves of dream waves get satisfyingly rapturous when they go into overdrive at 3.24.

Slowdive - Primal [1991]

Epic. 

Guitars, guitars, guitars!

...and cellos.

Sometimes Slowdive's early technique of having all the faders all the way up all the time worked.

A wild ride of atmospheres somewhere between brooding and blistering. 

Haunting yet heavenly.

A relentless incandescent swirling maelstrom surging to the stars (not their shoes).