23, 24, 25 BEST

I skipped doing an end of year music round up last year and the year before for various reasons but mostly because I'm not buying or listening to a hell of a lot of new music or newly re-released music any more. For what it's worth here's a couple of things I enjoyed in the last few years.

2023

Sepia Cat City - Moon Wiring Club

Holy Evil Sister - Controlled Death

2024

Road To Nowhere - CT57

Diamond Jubilee - Cindy Lee

Aeson Zervas - Aeson Zervas

Millbrook Memories - CT57

2025

Gruesome Shrewd/Grisly Exaggerated - Moon Wiring Club

With You Every Night - Ariel Pink

Danse Des Larmes - VÍZ

War Against The Lie - Susu Laroche

Per Tenebras Ad Motem - Controlled Death

So that's all pretty hauntologic, hypnagogic and darkly ambient gear. Dream-edelic.

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Old cds, records & tapes on the stereo in 2025
Geogaddi/Campfire Headphase/Twoism - Boards Of Canada

Moons Milk In Four Phases/Black Antlers/The Ape Of Naples - Coil

Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age - Broadcast & The Focus Group

Last American Hero/Genie Head Gas In The Tower Of Dreams/KFC City 3099 PT. 1 Toxic Spill/Star Digital Theatre/Flushpipe/Gecko/Kava Jar Race/iAsia - James Ferraro

Evol - Sonic Youth

Juju - Siouxsie & The Banshees

Maanam - Maanam

Nowa Alexandria - Siekiera

You're Living All Over Me/Hand It Over - Dinosaur Jr

Seventeen Seconds/Faith/Pornography/Head On The Door/Disintegration - The Cure

You Made Me Realise/Isn't Anything/Glider/Tremelo/Loveless - My Bloody Valentine

Treasure/Victorialand - Cocteau Twins

Mysterious Skin OST - Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd

Xuvetyn - Loveliescrushing

Boys And Girls - Bryan Ferry

Land Of The Lost/Follow Blind/Silver Sail - The Wipers

Emergency Third Power Trip - Rain Parade

Uninvited By The Clouds - The Church

Black Vinyl Shoes/Present Tense - Shoes

Black Sea/Skylarking - XTC

The Monkey Puzzle/Casablanca - The Saints

Automatic Midnight/Suicide Invoice/Audit In Progress - Hot Snakes

Songs About Leaving - Carissa's Weird

So it seems I've been mainly listening to music from the 80s and the 00s. Mostly all about the guitars whether that be jangly, dreamy, noisy, gloomy or gaze-y. Otherwise it was all about the haunted or hypnagogic psychedelic-electro-acoustic experiments.  

After Resident Advisor did a thing on the best electronic albums of the century so far I pretty much decided that had to be Boards Of Canada's Geogaddi even though it didn't even get on their retarded top 100 list. As much as I love my other favourites The Caretaker, Philip Jeck, Burial, The Focus Group, Panda Bear, Daft Punk, Gas, Pole, Rustie etc. Geogaddi to me seems to be startlingly outstanding by a long way. 

As far as the 80s go re-listening to Isn't Anything impressed me the most as I rarely revisit it unlike say Cocteau Twins' Treasure which I've never stopped playing for 35 years. Isn't Anything is surprisingly severely underrated by the new shoegaze kids who can't seem to get past Loveless even though Isn't Anything might be even more innovative and exciting. 

The suave nocturnal moods of Bryan Ferry's Boys & Girls was my second most played album this year after the new Moon Wiring Club epic. So smooth and sophisticated and Mark Knopfler makes an appearance.

Hadn't heard The Cure's Disintegration for 34 years and I was mighty impressed. I mean Robert Smith is always handy with his pop sensibilities and cold gloomy tones but Disintegration gets absolutely delirious in the best best possible way.

 

CT57 - Road to Nowhere

[2024]

A three and a half hour faux field recording of driving along listening to weird late night radio talkback segments amongst wonky vapourwave instrumentals, disorientating hypnagogic sequences and eerie hauntological ambience. The spawn of James Ferraro and the KLF cicra Chill Out. 

The Day the "Conducator" Died (An Xmas Song)

[2012]

From possibly the greatest LP of the 10s comes this stark, dark and somewhat sardonic tune. I'm not sure how Merry Christmas-y it really is but just wait for the the glorious ten seconds at the 7.20 mark where Jingle Bells is played by what sounds like some tiny tiny bells but I think is actually a glockenspiel. 

It's actually about brutal Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu who along with his wife Elena was executed on Christmas day in 1989. So for many that was a very happy day but not for ole Nicolae though, he had to face a mentally deranging episode of ontological insecurity then his brisk demise. The song depicts a delusional man shocked that he was being lined up against a wall so suddenly, wracking his brain as to what caused him to be in front of a firing squad. Yet to the rest of the world it was obvious.

There is a sense of glee when that ten second sequence of Jingle Bells comes in, a feeling of relief as the populace have taken vengeance after years of violent oppression and that perhaps the misery has finally subsided.

Happy Christmas!

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).  

SLOWDIVE: Unknown Treasures & Curios

Slowdive - Hide Yer Eyes [1993]

These first three tunes are absolute classic Slowdive unknown treasures from the Souvlaki sessions that ridiculously never got released. I mean it's unbelievable that after being cut from Souvlaki these songs didn't end up on an EP or a single in their own right or at as least b-sides to other singles, mental.

Guitarist Christian Saville wanted Hide Yer Eyes on Souvlaki and the fact that one of these bootleg versions was mixed by Ed Buller means it was in contention for inclusion. Neil Halstead ixnayed the track though on the grounds of it being too poppy and the quota of poppy pop tunes for the album had already been filled...

This stands alongside Alison and Machine Gun as one of their best pop moments. 

Slowdive - I Saw The Sun [1993]

Another Ed Buller mix which means this was almost included on the final track-listing of Souvlaki but the band pulled it on the basis of it being too much like The Cocteau Twins which is funny because... well have you heard the records Slowdive made before Souvlaki? Anyway this is pure Slowdive to me. The group at their best.

Beautiful pastoral psychedelia that floats off in a hazy breeze. 

Dreamy.

Slowdive - Silver Screen [1992]

We live in a crazy world where one of the greatest songs of the 90s never saw the light of day, only getting leaked onto the internet in the 00s. Fucking absurd. 

Starts out with buoyant fluctuating guitars that morph into fantastic eternally swirling waves of elation combined with irresistible nostalgic vocal hooks. Pure bliss.

Slowdive - Joy [1992]

Ok these next three are definitely oddities probably only of interest for diehard fans. They are interesting though and display what music Slowdive were big fans of. 

  

Joy is post-punk with a drum machine somewhere between Chameleons and New Order. I mean its called Joy for fuck's sake. This is pretty surprising if you've never heard it before. After brutal press coverage and ruthless record company rejections Slowdive lost their nerve and went back to their roots and musical influences looking for a an inspirational way out of the crisis they perceived they were in.

Slowdive - Stars That Shine [1992?]

I always thought Mercury Rev's psychedelic space rock freak-outs were influenced by Slowdive's more overwhelming blissed guitar journeys but here you've gotta think Neil had probably given Yerself Is Steam a bit of a listen and liked what he heard. I probably would have dropped this one from Souvlaki for being too much of a homage as consummate as it may be.

Slowdive - Bleed [1991?]

They never hid the fact that they loved The Cure and this one is an incredible tribute to their musical heroes. Still it's unmistakably Slowdive but that bass line might have perhaps attracted some attention from litigation lawyers for being a bit too close to The Cure's Fascination Street. While it may have been too derivative to put on any type of official record it's a whole lotta fun.

Slowdive

[2014]

How is it that when Slowdive reformed back in 2014 they were better than ever? I was gonna go through all my old Slowdive favourites, doing some posts on the early studio recordings of the first three EPs and debut album but these live videos are hard to go past. 

[2014]

The Coda Slowdive add on to their cover of Syd's Golden Hair became epic and was the highlight of their set. The waves and waves of swirling guitars gets to unbearably ecstatic levels then there's a lull and little ebb and flow then it builds up to bursting euphoria all over again.

[2017]

This 2017 gig is the best I've found so far. The 2014 to 2017 shows seem to be the best perhaps peaking on the 2017 tour. Whoever is doing the sound on this is a genius. Many have stated that this show should be the basis for a live album... I guess it could be a double live LP really. 

Slowdive will capture and envelop you with their all encompassing vaguely orchestral cinematic sound. They are on fire during this set and it's all highlights. Here's some highlights of the highlights: Catch The Breeze has never sounded better here. God I even like the Pygmalion tracks. This version of She Calls is astounding sky-scraping dark psychedelia. The searing melancholia of Golden Hair is even more epic than the above two versions if that's possible. The magnificent new and improved rendition of Slowdive will surprise you... I mean all songs are like 25 to 50 percent better. It's unfathomable.

Eternal - Sleep

Eternal - Sleep [1990]

Eternal did just the one single, the Breathe EP released by Sarah Records. On one side was the above tune and on the other side was Breathe and another less significant tune Take Me Down. 

Slowdive would take the Sleep blueprint and run with it. The singer and guitarist here is none other than future Slowdive member Christian Savill. For historic interest the Sarah seven inch was released six months before Slowdive's self-titled debut EP. 

Slowdive - Sleep [1992?]

For some reason Rachel wrote some new lyrics for Sleep during the demo sessions for Souvlaki so they had a crack at a remake. Despite Creation's rejection this is an incredibly successful new and improved version. Starts out in a low key fog but wait for the second half when it becomes epic with a soaring avalanche of bliss.

Careless Hands - Looking For A Secret

[1982]

Dreamy drumless Durutti damaged psych pop with a secluded windswept feel.

A fascinating one and done single that pre-empts a lot of what was to to come in British music like things on the fringes of dream pop/shoegaze, lost generation UK post-rock, hauntology etc. Looking For A Secret puts me in mind of Vini Reilly, Papa Sprain and maybe even Postion Normal. 

A pretty cool lost classic with a hint of the old Syd Barrett, John Martyn etc. and the ramshackle freedom of The Homosexuals.  

Here's a quote from Careless Hands' Brian Keaney taken from bandcamp:

What we were really interested in was musical exploration. Jim built a studio in his back garden, bought some multi-track recording equipment, and began experimenting. We wanted to produce something that was just for ourselves. We were undoubtedly very naïve but naivety and innocence were hallmarks of that time.

In my childhood, I'd been fascinated with the story of Aladdin. Now that fascination began to be reflected in the music we were making. Here was a story about a boy who transforms his world and enters the magical realm. That seemed to be exactly what was happening to me. For all sorts of reasons, I hadn't particularly enjoyed my childhood but now I had managed to step out of the everyday reality, to find a place where I belonged and where I had a kind of power.

The name we used for the band came from a song recorded in 1949 by a singer called Mel Torme. There's a line in that song that goes, "Careless Hands don't care when dreams slip through." That seemed appropriate since dreams were part of the territory we were exploring.

I had got married immediately after leaving college and by now I had a daughter who was afraid to go to sleep at night. She wanted me to be present in her dreams with her. That became the inspiration for a period during which Jim and I tried to recreate the shifting landscape of the night-time imagination.

Time Thief · Pale Saints

Time Thief - Pale Saints [1990]

The first Pale Saints song I heard. I managed to tape the video off Rage in 1990. I liked that they were peculiar compared to the other upstart shoegazers Ride and Lush. The impeccable arrangement of Time Thief  had alluring hints of menace deployed amongst the exhilarating tension and release dynamics and then those choirboy vocals added more spice to the unnerving vibe. 

 

Time Thief - Pale Saints [1990]

This was the video that interspersed clips from the creepy 1961 psychological horror film The Innocents with live footage of the band... er, the sound's a bit dodgy but well worth a look though, as it's an extravaganza of sound and vision synchronicity.

One of the best things about The Pale Saints debut LP was the finale one two punch of Sight Of You and Time Thief. The two songs run into each other and need to be heard together as the drama builds at the end of Sight Of You leading up to the exciting Time Thief intro. In the great tradition of other tunes that are connected with no gap and run into each other (which I wrote about here) like I'm Your Boogie Man/Keep It Comin' Love from KC & The Sunshine Band, Donna Summer's I Need You/Working The Midnight Shift, INXS' Face The Change/Burn For You and Palace Of Brine/Letter From Memphis by The Pixies. I'm sure there's many more examples...  Anyway I can't find a clip of Sight Of You and Time Thief together so...

Sight Of You - Pale Saints [1990]

Dreamy pop noise goes ecstatic! Anthem for the teenage shoegazers I was.

Sight Of You - Ride [1990]

Speaking of Ride they did a cover of Sight Of You for a John Peel session. It's passable but I kinda wish they didn't do the fade out because that racket they were whipping up at the end was the most interesting bit...

The Charlottes

The Charlottes - Beautify [1991]

This frantic pop tune smothered in squalling psychedelic noise is quite the exhilarating racket. A slice of prime shoegazery.

Classic noise pop/shoegaze that you might not know because they weren't on Creation or 4AD and didn't have s high profile publicity machine at their disposal. The Charlottes were top tier though, perhaps not as beloved these days because they had a towering dense heavy sound and weren't as ethereal as the other groups. Their second LP Things Come Apart released in early 1991 is a minor masterpiece as the five tunes on this post attest.  

The Charlottes - Prayer Song [1991]

They get into a classic kaleidoscopic pummelling groove here. Loud layers of ceaselessly swirling fuzzed out guitar bliss. Pretty awesome.

The Charlottes - Love In The Emptiness [1990] 

Ferocious and dense shoegaze that heads towards the gloomy but the band's bracing energy doesn't let that get you down. Pouting in the face of the abyss on this tranced-out mantra-rock classic. 

The insane and great drumming on all these tunes is provided by Simon Scott who would go on to shoegaze fame and fortune as the man behind the kit for Slowdive.

The Charlottes - Liar [1990]

The sensational clamorous pop thrills of Liar was like The Hummingbirds covering Dreams Burn Down. This was their glorious pop moment and chance at shoegaze stardom, that was not to be, a few months later they had broken up and become a footnote in shoegaze history.

The Charlottes - See Me Feel [1990]

They get into a frenzy on this frenetic fuzz and wah-wah monster. A barnstorming noise-pop triumph.