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Landed has some good stuff on it but yes Can did decline precipitously it's partly cos they went from recording on a 2-track, very artfully indeed, to using a 24 track studio or something of typically mid-late '70s ampleness. succumbed to the syndrome I call "Seventies stodge" where there's...

sorry that 'best of' was way more than 20 wasn't it by way of apology...

Worst Bonnie Tyler Kasabian Oasis (except for 'champagne supernova' and a couple of others) Sisters of Mercy i couldn't work up much acrimony - even the above, their existence doesn't bother me really - like I almost put Cream but I then thought, 'well a lot of people had the time of their...

Best 808 State A Guy Called Gerald Black Sabbath Buzzcocks Cabaret Voltaire Delia Derbyshire DJ Die DJ SS Doc Scott Echo and the Bunnymen Formation Full Cycle Gang of Four Human League Ital Rockers Joy Division Krust LFO Marcus Garvey Centre Niche Nightmares on Wax Pinch Pulp Roni Size Scritti...

initially I was a little thrown off by the classy gloss of the sound, that sort of Warner Bros post-Little Feat / Steely Dan session musicianship sound - very far from what I would be listening at that time. By the wonderfully free, born-to-sing way she sang, and the dance of the words, won me...

It was a famous, if infamously opaque, piece by Ian Penman about the Song - written in 1982 i think, the sequel to an early thinkpiece about torch songs. He critiqued the failings of postpunkers turned aspiring writers of Song - eg. ABC, Scritti Politti, etc - and then exalted Pirates as this...

It's a singular act of defecation more than a prolonged self-enshitenment, but all the members of Talking Heads - with the exception of David Byrne - did reform in 1996 as The Heads, releasing an album No Talking, Just Head, with the vocals handled by people like Andy Partridge, Gavin Friday...

I saw a Lee Perry live gig at Dingwalls in 87 or 88 that was fucking awful. the bloke i was went with said it was like going to see Johnny Thunders.

it got rave reviews, in Melody Maker for sure, elsewhere too was warmly received i think. a success d'estime if that's the expression - a critic-loved and cult-revered record, not a hit as such.

i think you would possibly expect something experimental from Robert Wyatt, given Soft Machine and also his first solo album The End of An Ear, his mystic scat excursions in Matching Mole etc i'm thinking more of that area where musically it's pretty palatable and very much in service to the...

"legend" may not be the operative word, but the way that Animal Collective have eroded whatever standing they had about 11 or 12 years ago is quite remarkable

i wish it could be said of Henry Cow that they shitted on their pwn leg end but they've probably acquitted themselves quite well

ooh got a good one - The Residents should have stopped after The Commercial Album

another from the same album

after a bunch of fetching singer-songwritery albums, Suzanne Vega - perhaps encouraged by the dancemix success of "Tom's Diner" - tried to get into beats and a vaguely alt-industrial tinged sound. In her context, an experimental move (not all experiments work, of course).

here the experiment lies less in the sound (palatable and polished if apt and effective AOR) than in the performance and expression sister of Catherine as in Home Alone, Beetlejuice, Schitt's Creek - kookiness runs in the blood

Roy goes voicescape-y

looping the Burundi drums, a baleful synth line - not what you expect from Joni

artists working within the intimate, confessional, soul-baring tradition, who veer off into unexpectedly inventive, non-acoustic or expressively weird directions it does my head in that Cat Stevens - Cat Stevens of "Peace Train", "Morning Has Broken" etc etc - released this track in early...

winner = Sheffield, edging out Bristol enduring music wise, Manchester is postpunk (but the output pales next to London), the Smiths, A Guy Called Gerald, a few 808 State bits, "Wrote for Luck", "I Wanna Be Adored", World of Twist, and then decades of nothing at all apart from Moon Wiring Club