Tag: music

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Frankencottage EP – Dark Mean

A hand-painted image of a cityscape, with skyscrapers in a row and their windows lit. There is a monkey standing on the middle building; that monkey is yellow and glowing. The background is a dark green with yellow spots that are reminiscent of stars in a night sky. An astronaut is in the top-left corner, with a airline connecting him to spaceship that cannot be seen. The band's name, Dark Mean, and the EP's title, Frankencottage, are handpainted in black within white triangles.

2009. I think I was still in the throes of grief as well as being continually sleep-deprived having lost my mother and been blessed with the birth of my child just over a year previously. I’d left one awful full-time job I’d been in for a year for another one that I ended up leaving around a year later. I was, as the saying goes, a hot mess.

Music was one thing that helped me during that period. A lot of what I was listening to sounded like the grief felt inside me. Mostly outside my main musical interests and all minor key with glimmers of something you might describe as hope. To this day there are albums that I can listen to and instantly be transported deep into that grief, which I don’t shy away from. There were happy and sad times, good and bad in extremes. They were a lifetime ago and still as raw as they felt then.

Music, I think, became a thing to blot out the noise in my head. So I’d trawl MySpace and mp3 blogs and throw on anything and everything. In some ways it was a great musical education into genres I’d likely have avoided or skirted around. Dark Mean would not have been on my radar, but I think there were probably adjacent enough to bands like Frightened Rabbit who were a firm favourite back then that they appealed. Indie-pop alt-country from Canada. Sounded like it was worth a few minutes of my time. Four songs and about 17 minutes in total. Sold.

I wasn’t really ready for the effect these simple lo-fi songs would have on me. They sound a little sad but also aren’t. They offered me a way out of the mire that grief had created. They put a slight smile on my face, one that had been lacking.

Four songs. Enough to get to know a band but not so many that you’ve time to be dulled by hearing them more than once. EPs need to showcase what a band is but have enough of a hook that you’ll play all the tracks on it. There is no room for bloat, for fluff or for duffers. EPs offer no forgiveness if you don’t have four tracks that match one another for catchiness or memorability. They’re the gateway to determining if you’re creating fans of your music or announcing that you’re not a band worth my consideration. Dark Mean can be forgiven the name, a ‘Spoonerism’ of the singer’s name, by delivering four songs of equal quality, all with the hook, the line but no sinkers.


I have a soft spot for songs that start with a decent drum beat. Happy Banjo is such a track. In fact, the drums are quite a driving rhythm so the plucky banjo that adds the texture to the song is surprising. Then comes acoustic guitar and harmonised vocals. Pedal steel completes the opening 90 seconds. There’s horns, too, which speak to the time in which this was made. The phrasing of the lyrics captured me, as did the melody with its leaps across the key in ways that caught me out and were unexpected. There’s a sparseness in the sense that the song has everything that’s required and no more.

And so I was thinking that the rest of the tracks would continue in this vein. Yet, the second track, Frankencottage, from which the EP takes its name has more of an electronica feel, with intricate basslines weaving amongst the guitar riffs. Keyboards add the aural umami, leaving the lyrics to sit in their more traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. Then, as you’ll hear, is the bridge that to me owes a fair bit to fellow Canadians, The Long Winters. This opens up a galloping rhythm that carries the listener towards the song’s finale. Where many bands might have faded out here, Dark Mean cut the cord. That’s it, done.

Lullaby, in contrast, returns to the simple banjo-plucked melody of the opening track. The lyrics feel more present here than on other tracks as it’s a quieter track with picked guitar and cymbal rolls bringing the texture. The words meant a lot to me as I was so tired, but also reminded me of many Glastonbury festivals with friends and the endless refrain on the Sunday night of ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead!” after days of naps and near psychosis from lack of sleep and recreational drugs. Like 2009, we survived those days. I also survived the grief. Somehow.

Which leaves the final song, China, to end this four-track EP. Piano leads here, with a distinct drum pattern hitting beats one and two, sometimes four. It’s these shifts that keep the ear interested, that lift this above the standard lo-fi indie so reminiscent of that year. The words float, a repeated refrain that becomes more instrument than lyrical. It’s a layer to catch your attention.

And then, well then it’s over. It hasn’t outstayed its welcome. In fact, I found that it made itself inviting and has become over the years since a visitor I am always happy to hear from.

The band dropped away a little following the release of their debut album, which came from the three main EPs they released (of which Frankencottage was the first) reworked and polished a little here and there. They arrived back in 2024 but were a changed band. A new sound. A different approach. One that didn’t quite hit me the same way. Perhaps, as I wasn’t grieving, Dark Mean were meant for a specific time in my life, a guide of sorts. Something that I can return to so that I’m reminded that these are episodes that one must endure, that form a huge part of who I am and yet you’d never have known had I not just told you.

I’m thankful for those four songs, thankful that I discovered them just when I needed to. That they remain as a doorway to that time. It’s what music does.

Dark Mean were never signed to a label. The EPs and their only album were all self-released. And, you know what, that’s okay. Music doesn’t need to appeal to the masses. It can change one person’s life and like all and any art, that’s what it’s about. This EP changed mine. Perhaps it’ll change yours?

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Everyone’s In Love And Flowers Pick Themselves – The Murder Of Rosa Luxemburg

When an album is described as ’emoviolence’ music with some math rock chucked in, then it gets my attention. What can I say, I have eclectic tastes. Anyway, Worcestershire might not be known for its avant garden scene, although it is the birthplace of Blanck Mass, as well as John Bonham and, er, Cher Lloyd, this is most definitely quite an avant garden album from The Murder of Rosa Luxemburg, a short-lived band who liked a concept in both band name and album. Which brings me to Everyone’s In Love And Flowers Pick Themselves, their debut from 2003, which was reissued digitally in 2019, on British DIY label, Undergroove Records.

Rosa Luxemburg was a political and socialist revolutionary brutally murdered in 1919 in Germany by an assassin who clearly didn’t like her writings on imperialism and its capitalist roots. From this 20th century ‘icon’ of socialism and communism the band took their name. So far, so sixth form band, you’d think. But you’d be wrong. Members of the band are extremely talented musicians, even if their output might not be to your liking. Yes, this is not toe-tapping, sing-a-long-a tunes, but it is a swirling complex of noise infused with melody and wrapped in sandpaper that still somehow manages to make you want to get up and throw some shapes.

Then we come to the album itself. Emo-length name? Tick. Literary concept? Tick. Yes, the album title, Everyone’s In Love And Flowers Pick Themselves, is from the e.e. cummings poem, ‘who knows if the moon’s’, but the well from which the band drink is rather darker in tone than the idea of a balloon that lifts you to a city where it’s always spring. Here’s what the band states as their artistic statement for this album:

“Now an old man and with the prospect of death looming, Victor loses all faith in religion and convinces himself that by building a house that cuts him away from society he can take on the superior role of God himself and avoid the concept of Death altogether. However, his disillusionment with his past life acts as a catalyst for his madness inside, where a giant cat and a giant dog fight for his conscience and whatever other life there is left in his naked and passive body. The inevitabilities of Time and Death cannot be avoided and Victor dies a roaming, misguided non-entity without the recognition he would have received through passing away in his past real life.”

Okay, bear with me. It may sound pretentious, I know. However, I’m convinced that there is humour here and even if you didn’t care to get the nods to historical assassinations and literary greats, the music would pull you in and then tear you apart leaving you to try and put yourself back together into some semblance of the person you were before. It bludgeons you with its intensity, of course, with its thrashy emocore new wave frenzy and constant seemingly chaotic time signature changes and barking vocals. But like a dog that’s never known love, if you approach it with care and really take the time to listen, it rewards you in ways that you wouldn’t have thought possible.

Take the track, Infernal Music, which I admit doesn’t sound like the kind of tune your grandmother will be asking you to put on five times in a row. This mixes avant garden electronic noises before shifting into guitar-based math rock, vocals ranging from typical hardcore punk shouts to what might be called ‘standard singing’. And then the whole thing breaks down into that sort of classical music inspired stuff made popular by thrash metal bands in the late 80s before finally shifting gear again into death metal and some sort of avant garden jazz noodling to end. It’s quite the journey, believe me.

Tracks such as Time And Death Invading The Arcadian Scene and Building (A House For Flowers And Lovers) take a more standard metal approach in terms of vocals, but the tracks stand out from your average long-haired throat-grunting band’s output through the rich and diverse useof rhythms employed to wrong foot the listener (in the best way). A mosh pit of exceptional quality would be created at their live gigs, of that I have no doubt; these heavy metal murmurations are exactly what this type of music is made for.

And then you’re suddenly yanked sideways by the melodic, almost electronic mathness of Ex Post Facto, which undulates beautifully in the same ways that someone like FourTet does with his songs. You’ll be left wondering what on earth their influences are, especially when the Zappa-Beefheartian oddity that is the final track, Venezuela Is Realised starts. While it resolves into coherence, its structure is anything but expected. The choice to include a fade out made me break out in a knowing smile. This was deliberate, surely?

And that seems to be the entire point of …Rosa Luxemburg’s music, to keep you guessing even as you’re completely enthralled (or driven mad by what may well appear to be nothing more than a cacophony). This is a band that was doing their thing without pandering to commercial tastes and corporate profiteering. To those who like their music to be arresting, different, shape-shifting and a tad odd, this will likely be your thing. It’s singular in its focus, uncompromising in its delivery. And at 29 minutes long it’s a short, sharp onslaught of the senses.

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Magpie – Stephen Fretwell

Stephen Fretwell songs are gentle, like a mother brushing a fringe out of their child’s eyes. They emerge from the hum of silence, almost unexpectedly, and yet they compel you to listen in the same way sirens turn heads on the street.

And so begins Magpie, the debut album from a songwriter who weaves words into stories that he then sets to music, most often his guitar occasionally accompanied by keyboards or drums. He doesn’t need accoutrements with lyrics as accomplished as his, nor does he need to adorn those words with anything other than the simple musical vehicles he’s chosen. It’s vulnerability captured and held down, perhaps against its will.

The album starts with a slight faint hiss of static before a single piano key rings out. Then the guitar comes in. This is how Fretwell seems to begin many of his songs. Delicately. Without fanfare. But he is a supermassive blackhole of music, sucking in everything from you towards his songs and swallowing your emotions. And there seems to be no escape from it, which I find is just fine.

In 2004, when this album first came out, this kind of music wasn’t entirely in vogue. Stephen’s work sounds more like it would sit well in the 60’s. I bought an advance copy of the CD, probably in Reckless Records, Berwick Street or one of the many other records shops that lined this particular London street back then. I think they’d suggested it was a bit like Damian Rice. And in a way it is (singer songwriter) and in so many ways it’s not.

I don’t know if this album was recorded live, but it has that feel. As if the songs were pouring out of Stephen like sweat from a dancer. They had to come out and we were just lucky that someone was able to bottle them up and sell them back to us. Bad Bad You, Bad Bad Me is an example of this. It’s not that it sounds unvarnished and roughly hewn; on the contrary, it’s almost perfect, like every one of the dozen songs on the original release (later versions brought additional tracks and live or demo versions).

He was 23 when Magpie was released. A fact that belies the voice and the weight of the world that seems to hang on his shoulders. The north Lincolnshire accent, underscored with a hint of Mancunian, occasionally making itself known, almost apologetically. The simplicity of everything is what makes each track so complex, akin to the best meal you’ve ever had that was concocted from five ingredients and no one has ever been able to recreate. (Except Fretwell has, in his later albums.)

These are shiny gems. Perhaps, given the title of the album, this was how they are meant to be? Plucked from their hiding place and collected, guarded by their owner but proudly shown off, too.

Yes, there is melancholy drizzled across this album. Songs such as Lost Without You and What’s That You Say Little Girl sound like they’ve been marinating in some long forgotten grief that surfaces and breaches, reminding you that you’re a human, one of billions who is but a tiny speck in the grander universe. And yet… and yet it is so personal, so compact that it’s impossible to comprehend how Fretwell’s emotional gravity can have had such an impact on you.

While Run was the song that brought him to a wider audience, thanks to it being used as the theme tune to Gavin & Stacey, a UK sitcom that I never did watch, for me Emily was the big hit from the album. It showcases Stephen’s exceptional songwriting abilities well, and it probably got played during some scene in Cold Feet or whatever the big TV show of the day was. However, the commerciality of the track doesn’t diminish the effect when he sings, “…just look at you… you’re a tragedy.” It’s surely designed to break you open.

This is how Fretwell’s songs work. They hold an entire screenplay that plays out in under four minutes. Cinematic yet gritty, they stay with you long after the final chord has ceased to ring out and the credits have rolled. You might even find yourself looking off into the distance, wistfully. Perhaps wiping away a stray tear and not really quite understanding what it is that has brought you to tears.

Stephen Fretwell often disappears for a while, shifting from the public’s gaze. He was missing in action for almost 14 years after being dropped by Fiction. His mailing list often falls into disrepair or is being held captive by bots and then resurrects itself now and again with news. And while he continues to write beautiful songs and releasing them on the excellent Speedy Wunderground label, finding a place to see them live is rare. This is probably right, though. As it should be. This is a talent that might fade if its brought into the light too often. Which is why it’s taken a global superstar like Harry Styles to entice him to the stage over two nights as part of his Meltdown Festival line-up at London’s Southbank.

The other thing to note is how Fretwell’s supposed Bandcamp actually sends you to a VPN site that wants to charge you £10 to download the album for free. This is not major label behaviour. I would suggest it’s a hijack. Shame. Perhaps this is why there is no vinyl version of this album available. Yet, if ever there was an album destined for this form factor it’s surely Magpie.

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Unspun Heroes Turns Three

I’m so late in writing this. Usually I write these in late March and post on 2 April, which is the official anniversary for starting Unspun Heroes. This year, though, I contracted a viral infection and spent just over a week in hospital followed by a week and a half of sleeping late and doing very little. I’m still recovering as May approaches, but this needs to be written so I’m sitting here at my desk and bashing out these words so that the past year is captured and the future can be mapped out.

If you’re interested in historical artefacts, you can read my Year One Retrospective back when it was all shiny and new, and catch up on the Year Two Retrospective when it was exciting and manic.

Right, without further ado, let’s crack on with Year Three.

Stay Healthy
I’ve mentioned above that this blog post has been held up by my being ill. However, there’s a broader story here that I want to address. I don’t talk about my personal health much, as it’s not related to Unspun Heroes, except in a recent email conversation I realised it was very much part of the origin story of this tiny record label project.

You can skip this ‘chapter’ if you don’t want to read some fairly rubbish info about the C-word.

The thought process began when people started posting about 2016 and what a shit show of a year it was for celebrity deaths. Bowie, Prince, Victoria Wood, and so so many more great names seemed to pass that year. It was also the year I was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer. Thankfully, after some major surgery and two years of treatment, I was declared to be cancer-free. Six years on, I was declared to be cured.

I was determined to do something that would leave a legacy of some sort. Not for bragging rights but a way to put something out in the world that might have a lasting impact to some people. That thing ended up being Unspun Heroes.

Around the same time as being freed from the perils of once nasty diagnosis I was given another one. This time a rare non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I don’t want to go into the details, but let’s just say my immune system likes to take a holiday most days and I’m on a variety of fairly nasty medications that make me incredibly tired and/or sick from the side effects. It’s manageable if I don’t overdo things, and with luck it won’t progress too quickly. However, it has had a detrimental effect on my ability to work these past two years. And it’s my earnings from my self-employed work that funds Unspun Heroes.

Turns out my health is very much linked to this project, whether I want to talk about it or not.

And that bit about not overdoing things? Reader, last year I overdid things.

Release The Good News
Okay, the scene is set. Against this backdrop, I did a lot of hard work in organising one of the most audacious releases I’ve ever attempted for The Experimental Pop Band. I had so many ideas when chatting to Davey Woodward that I really should have stepped away from it. These things came back to haunt me (although I wouldn’t change any of it).

One of the most difficult things with Unspun Heroes is it is just me. Simon. The person who does everything. And that person isn’t always very healthy. I think you can see why things ended up where they ended up.

However, despite all this, I pulled together a commissioned piece of art, a brand new piece of sleeve artwork, back and forth with a writer for new liner notes, paper printers, fabric printers, pressing plants, Davey himself (always a joy), a record label and their legal department, and the extensive mastering required to make the tracks sound great on vinyl. In short, I gave a lot of fucks about all the details – big and small – and created a new masterpiece of art to complement the art that I was already working with. Unfortunately, it cost a lot. Not taking into account my travel, the hours I put in, or other miscellaneous spending, the budget wasn’t just busted it was beaten into submission and left for dead in a dumpster behind a disused nightclub before being consigned to a shallow grave just off an obscure junction of a minor motorway. The upshot is that every sale loses me money.

All that said, The Tracksuit Trilogy by The Experimental Pop Band remains one of the best albums I’ve released so far. Even if I am constantly bombarded by people telling me it’s too expensive, some quite angrily suggesting I’m ripping them off.

I wrote three blog posts about the journey to bring this incredible album to vinyl for the first time. Part One talks about the album itself, while Part Two speaks to the new art and commissioned aspects of the release such as the bespoke riso print, and care label, which left Part Three to talk about the cost of doing it.

While I’d love to have sold more – or sell more – it’s almost enough that every single person who has bought one has emailed to me to say how amazing it is and that it’s worth every penny.

That takes me to late July 2025.

At this point I was already starting on the next release. Another one I was really excited to bring out for its vinyl debut. Living and Growing by The Felt Tips. I’d loved this album and the band’s singles for almost 15 years. Never managed to see them live, though. I’d written a blog post about this album and the band got in touch. Could we think about putting it out, they said. Easy answer.

And so, October’s release came about. It was a really full-on schedule that involved two gigs and a whole bunch of milestones that made it a little bit stressful. I was working on a huge piece of sustainability work for an entire industry (fashion, in case you cared) and on my evenings and weekends, and lunch breaks, I was organising stuff. I then drove to Scotland and back – twice – to get everything finished off and to see the band live in Glasgow.

While it was quite stressful, it was also brilliant fun. The band were just fucking ace humans from start to finish. I also got to commission my friend, Sean, of Hey Kids Rock ’n Roll fame. Every single piece of this release worked out exactly as I’d hoped. I am immensely proud of every album I’ve put out, but this one really brought a smile to my face from the moment I got a call with the band. It sounds amazing and the reviews really showed that together we’d excelled as a makeshift team. I also got to see them live twice, met some wonderful people along the way, and was showered with love by them and their friends and family.

By the time the year wrapped up, I was starting to feel the strain. I wasn’t well across most of December and January, so a needed a break. I made a decision that I would put out one album in 2026, to try and catch up on finding and delivering paid work and also to ensure I could afford to take a holiday. More on that release shortly.

Boxes, Boxes And More Boxes
Pressing and selling vinyl records means boxes. Lots of them. Each big box has three other boxes inside that contain the final records. Often I get a delivery of 10 or more boxes of vinyl which I have to haul in from the road to my house. Remember I tire easily and only have one lung to work with. It’s hard work. Enjoyable but hard.

Sales of all the releases have been good, but we haven’t sold out of anything. This is an issue. Why? Well, I pay everyone involved as soon as they’ve done their bit. Sometimes before. I put up a considerable amount of my own money. It’s quite a huge risk. The rewards come from selling every copy, so if I don’t sell every single copy then I don’t get my money back and there is no profit to share – or in my case, to put towards the next release.

Two releases are close to making a small profit. The third isn’t far off. One will never make me money. I’m playing the long game, which I knew would always be the case. However, I don’t have a warehouse (and I pay for a distributor to warehouse some copies). My home is filled with boxes inside boxes. And then there is the packaging required. Cardboard mailers of various types, envelopes, cards, ink stamps, tape… the list of things you need to ship stuff is mind-boggling. All of it takes up space.

Thankfully, my wife is very understanding.

Always Be Shipping At What Cost?
Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m not happy with Unspun Heroes. I love it. The money is not the motivating factor. There is no money in this game, particularly short-run vinyl releases that aren’t super expensive. I try my very best to keep prices low. Shipping is my biggest bugbear, because there is little I can do with that. However, I’ve been experimenting with a different provider and, well, I think I may soon be able to offer cheaper shipping to the US and Worldwide.

The EU remains a pain as some countries seem to add import and taxes even when it’s clear they’ve been paid, and Royal Mail makes that happen less often than others so it would be with caveats that I shift my shipping over to a new provider. If I do, that’ll probably be via Ampwall because of how they’re set up compared to the Unspun Heroes Bandcamp store.

As ever, anyone can get in touch and I will work out the most cost-effective way to ship to them. While I know it’s frustrating to be told you need to pay more for shipping than the album itself, I do not mark up the cost and I don’t include the cost of the ancillary items like mailers and tape, or the time it takes to haul parcels to the post office and queue up to send them.

What’s Coming Up?
Okay, this is the important part for many of you. When’s the next release?

This is a whole blog post in itself. I know what the release is. I wanted to press 500 copies, which would be a massive risk and probably the undoing of this whole venture (or the unspunning, if I can be allowed to invent the word!) and the end of this project. Instead I settled for a smaller run, but which increases the unit cost exponentially. Under 500 copies pressed not only invites a fee from the pressing plant, it makes the cost prohibitive for distribution.

This next release is to be a double album with a fancy pressing (marbled) in a gatefold sleeve. Already a bigger undertaking than any other Unspun Heroes release.

I’ve been very lucky that the label who put this music out have been super helpful. In fact, they’ve gone out of their way to remove as many barriers as possible. Sadly, at the time of writing there is one barrier than makes the reward so small it’s not worth doing. There is also a contractual element that increases the risk. Together they’ve made the release difficult to justify.

What does this mean?

I spent the time in hospital thinking about this. The easy decision is to stop. It’s been really good fun and I’ve brought five phenomenal albums out for their debut on vinyl. I can’t ignore the fact that finding albums that almost everyone doesn’t know and manufacturing it on a media that’s the most expensive on which to do it makes my business model dangerous. That’s always been the risk I’m willing to take. I bet on the long game. It’s the slow path that cares about the quality, the details and the end result. I’m still very good with that.

This new complication requires a rethink of how I finance releases. Certainly this next release.

I don’t have an answer to that. Can I find 150 people willing to pay for something that hasn’t even been manufactured? It’s a massive ask. I could do a ‘Kickstarter’ but I would lose 20% of the money raised in fees, making it more expensive and potentially loss-making before I even get to making the thing.

I’m working on some alternative ideas. Each has its pros and cons. What I’m trying to do is decrease the risk so that the final 80p per sale I’d likely make (yep, it’s that low) is worth it because I will have sold out (or got close to it and my upfront costs are covered).

I’ve also started looking at another release that I am more confident in. I can’t say what that is, but I’ll be having a meeting in early May about the possibility of licensing it from the artist. I think this might provide the catalyst for better sales. I will have an answer in May. Which brings me to my final thing to note about Year Three.

I’ve also got some ‘Unspundles’ available that mean you can walk away with two albums for what I think makes for a patently silly price. It’s like a sale but not one.

Oh, I also mentioned a zine some time back for Post 50 on this blog. I haven’t forgotten that, I just didn’t feel well or have the capacity to make it happen. I will do something but it’s not a priority right now.

Shout About It
I’m terrible at selling. I’m too nice. I don’t do enough promotion. I don’t hassle people at every opportunity. I don’t make videos and reels and ‘content’ that shouts at people across ‘every consumer journey touchpoint’. I know this.

PR is a difficult game. It costs. Sometimes about 15% of my overall budget. It often has very little effect on sales. In fact, reviews bring in more sales and all my reviews have been very positive. Yet, getting reviews is harder work – often I get told that a small reissue label isn’t going to sell magazines or bring eyeballs to a website. Not for artists that aren’t household names. There is also a lot of music being released that’s new and fresh and, well, there’s also another boxset from a massive worldwide superstar coming out.

I totally get that.

Over time I’ve seen sales increase. People often buy one album and come back for more. On many an occasion they’ve bought a copy of every release, or every special edition. I have a small and incredibly wonderful set of people who buy an Unspun Heroes release no matter what. I love this. I’m appreciative of anyone and everyone who buys, listens, shares and interacts with me. It’s always been about being part of a community than making a fortune shifting single discs in a cheap cardboard sleeve. It’s always been about caring about the music, having new liner notes written, quality inserts and decent mailers that protect the investment customers make.

That won’t change. It mustn’t. I might get more ‘salesman’ than I’d like to be now and again on my social media. I apologise now.

Looking Ahead
Aside from trying to work out what the next release will be and when, I’m thinking about new ways to finance this mad project. I’m open to conversations, for sure. Ideas, too. Maybe it is the end, but only when I’ve run out of possibilities – and there would be the likelihood that I’d resurrect things later anyway. This is the most fun I’ve had in a while. I’ve met some wonderful people, even if it’s only over email or via social media feeds. I would call many of these people friends.

I realise that large swathes of this post are a bit of a downer. But I think being transparent is the right way to go about it and, well, life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes it’s shit. Recognising that, and sharing the hurdles as much as the successes, shows I care. I hope so.

Finally, I want to thank The Experimental Pop Band and The Felt Tips for making Year Three of Unspun Heroes a success in so many ways. The fact that these people allowed some interloper to come in and take their art, trusted him to treat it well and never ask more of me than to get on with doing what I promised them I would. Which is, quite simply, to bring out their music on vinyl for the first time.

Thanks for reading.

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Mammút – Mammút

A band picture with all members hiding behind their hands. Over the top of this image are coloured rune-type lettering spelling out the band's name, Mammút.

Unfairly or not, when you think of Iceland you think of volcanoes, tectonic plates, geothermal energy, sending bankers to prison, and Björk. Not necessarily in that order.

Setting aside geographical and political decisions and focusing on the music side of things, there is a lot more to this nation musically than Björk. You just have to look. That’s not to dismiss the one person from Iceland that most people outside of the country can name, especially as she is ‘sort of’ linked to the group via the label which released their eponymous debut album. That label is Smekkleysa, founded by The Sugarcubes for whom Björk was the lead singer. Also, the singer of Mammút is the daughter of bassist, Birgir Mogensen, who was in a band called Kukl that was the precursor to The Sugarcubes. Following along so far?

Starting life as a three-piece, all-female ‘rock’ band, they won Iceland’s Battle Of The Bands in 2003. Let’s just pause for a second and think about that. The country has a Battle Of The Bands competition.

The country.

We have Eurovision.

In 2006, having expanded to a five-piece, their debut album was released. It has always fascinated me since I first heard them. I wrongly assumed that it was a Björk album I hadn’t heard, as it played after I’d be listening to her on a streaming service – you know how they find ‘things you might like’ based on your listening, well this was one such example. I was instantly hooked. The swooping vocals, the post-punk style guitar with some pop tendencies; the touches of percussion and piano that brighten up the mood, all of these things are what I hear as staples of the Icelandic music scene that’s broken out internationally. It could have veered into “IKEAmetal” territory, but the band keeps things the right side of that line. (By “IKEAmetal”, I mean that sort of music-by-numbers metal that is beloved of so many over-hyped metal bands from Scandinavian countries).

Mammút don’t play by rules. Take Gítarlagið for example, which has more in common with early Siouxsie and the Banshees than anyone else. There’s some neat percussive moments that catch the ear just before the vocals begin; there’s the bass note slide before the second chorus too. These details are so well thought through that while they are obviously intentional they are no less surprising and pleasing to hear.

While I wouldn’t call them a ‘pop’ band, there are songs such as Flottræfill, Faðmur, and Mosavaxin Börn that have a sound which could easily break the band into the charts outside of Iceland. More melodic, and sometimes quieter than most of the tracks, they showcase the songwriting and compositional talents of the band. The clapping on Mosavaxin Börn, for example, is just the perfect way to build into the punkier second half of the song and come out of it towards the end.

If there’s one thing that stands out beyond the music, for me, it’s the fact they’ve refused to centre the name in their logo. It sits lower down, slightly off-centre. I can’t say why it makes me smile, but it does. I like it. As with everything the band does on this record, it feels intentional, purposeful and a delight.

It’s fitting that they take their name from the Icelandic word for mammoth, because this is a HUGE piece of art for a debut album. Unlike the mammoth it’s, thankfully, not extinct (although it’s only available digitally and on CD). This means you can enjoy it and not just take my word for how brilliant it is. If you’ve not heard it before, I think you may just have a new band high up on your favourite list.

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Sides – Hotels

A black background in a square that has a black woman singing into a microphone in the centre. She has tattoos on her forearms. Red writing appears vertically in the top-left corner and horizontally in the bottom-right corner. This is the band name (Hotels) and the song's title (Sides).

There’s something delightful about stumbling across a track from a band you don’t know, a happy accident of algorithmic fate. And so it was in the midst of the early months of the pandemic when I was shielding from my family and all I had to keep me company was the online world. I listened to a lot of music that I might never have come across in those months, mostly via Bandcamp’s radio function (which back then was, permit me to say, a heck of lot better than it appears to be now).

One of the songs that sprang out of the Bluetooth speaker I had paired with my laptop was this one. A single from a Seattle band I’d never heard of, who describe themselves as Betty Davis collaborating with Joy Division on a James Bond soundtrack. A single that was indie R&B, that had a swing to it yet felt like a classic guitar band.

Doing some digging, it seems this is exactly what they were, prior to a drastic switch (or pivot, as the parlance goes) sometime around the 2018 mark. They were a typical indie band. And there’s nothing wrong with that. However, once the vocal talents of Adra Boo were brought into the mix and put front and centre, they took on a entirely new vibe of which this single is the first example.

I’m reminded of Baby Charles, who were primarily funk and soul but brought in the indie sound through cover songs (like the Arctic Monkeys classic on their one and only album from 2008).

The band really changed for the better, I think, with the inclusion of Adra’s vocal talents. As you can see in this clip from the online show, Bands In Seattle, where she trades vocals with bass player Blake Madden.

Hotels, the band, play their song Port Of Saints live on Band in Seattle.

Their song, Sides, has a more sultry ambiance than the more post-punk vibe of the video. It sidles up to you from its funk bass groove, hot breath on your neck. A slow burn of a song, but all the better for how it allows Adra to build up to her vocal climax. I particularly enjoyed the noir synths bringing a Portishead feel. Everything is pared back, doing exactly what’s needed in order to build up a ‘sensation’ that’s thrilling to hear.

And then the chorus changes things, with its tinkling of major chord brightness. An unexpected twist in what felt like a foregone conclusion. Without it, though, there would be no way to set up the middle eight, which leans heavily into an 80’s pop sound before finding its way back into the musical haunting that started it all via vocal acrobatics imbued with the grit and fortitude of someone who has seen things we can only wonder at.

It’s as perfect as a single can be. A spectacle for your ears. One that’s ripe for a vinyl release, perhaps. Listen via the embed from Hotels’ Bandcamp page.

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There Is – Jono McCleery

A black and grey image of singer Jono McCleery. Beneath this is his name and beneath that is the album's title, There Is.

I always enjoy it when a label that’s known for a very specific type of music veers into what, for them, might be considered leftfield, perhaps even the avant garde. Warp did so with the late Nick Talbot’s Gravehurst project, and Mo Wax with South.

Ninja Tune, one of the labels most synonymous with electronic music and founded by the duo Coldcut in 1990, also likes to step outside its main focus while remaining centred on its original motivations for being. Artists such as Fink have shown that even though their roots may have been in genres such as jungle or experimental electronica, as they mature as artists and their focus shifts, the label continues to support them. The label, via its Counter Records imprint, was also responsible for bringing a folktronica-style artist to my attention back in 2011: Jono McCleery.

I’d heard Jono’s self-funded debut while working in the advertising industry. Music was a huge part of my agency life and with a wide range of creative people around it it’s inevitable that different music gets shared or played in the studio late at night. Jono’s Darkest Light was one of those albums in 2008.

Fast forward a few years and I found myself on week-long creative sprint in the French Alps, off-season and in a chalet with about 12 others. My art director and I would often work to music, each of us playing an album the other may not have heard. I’d been gifted an early release copy of Jono’s album from one of the client services team whose childhood friend was Simon Green, better known by the moniker, Bonobo. This was an album called There Is, which was due for release a few months later. I’d not had a chance to listen to it, but took a chance that it would be ideal to work to.

It wasn’t. The reason was the best reason: this was an album that deserved to be listened to actively. And so we did. For almost an hour. It served as a reflexive exercise and ignited a love for Jono’s music that continues to this day.

It has electronic elements, including some glitchy beats, but front and centre is Jono’s gentle guitar playing and outstanding voice. It always reminds me of those jazz-inflected drum and bass tracks on chill out albums of the 90s. Opener, Fears, has that laid back, smoky club feel. Plucked chords against a snapped beat and double bass. And then Jono’s voice, all buttery and smooth, note perfect but emotionally charged and vulnerable.

McCleery uses his voice as an instrument. As the drums pick up, the strings build (bringing to mind Scott Walker), so he does what Robert Plant was able to do in the early days of Led Zeppelin – taking his voice beyond performance and words. And yet there is no warbling fanfare so beloved of modern day singers. It’s understated yet without it the song could be lacking. I’m always astonished by the fact that McCleery was deaf for the first five years of his life. It’s pure conjecture on my part, but I find myself wondering if he didn’t hear voices not as communication devices but as a melody? This isn’t just ad libbing, it’s texture.

Second song, Garden, feels the most commercial song on the album, with its synth backdrop and upbeat four-four beat, and yet that vulnerability that Jono brings to each song keeps it grounded in its jazz-folk electronica world and away from pop. Because, even when Jono does pop he takes the song to a new place, an unexpected place.

McCleery has form when it comes to covers. Across his entire career, he has recorded songs by other artists. Without fail they live up to, and in some cases transcend, the original. On There Is, that cover song is Wonderful Life which was originally recorded and released in 1987 by BLACK. I loved the original song, but McCleery’s version seems to reduce its bleakness and instead make it a more sensitive record. And that ability to convey darker emotions without the need to resort to desolation and despair, is a balancing act that he has down to a fine art. Nowhere is this demonstrated that on the track, It’s All. It feels like a lament, which could have slipped into something quite self-indulgent in the wrong hands.

Folk legend Vashti Bunyan makes an appearance on the song, Only. It’s a gentle lullaby of a song, played on piano and guitar, with searing strings that cut through behind the two singers adding a discordance and a shadow of sadness. I think it gives off the vibe I get from the album as a whole – that there is a sense of loss accompanying the songs. Although I don’t feel sad when I listen to the album, quite the opposite in fact. I find it soothing, like a balm on sunburn.

I’ve found solace in listening to to repeatedly as I write this piece, particularly against the backdrop of what’s happening around the world.

Raise Me, is like a softened gospel track. McCleery backs himself with his voice across the minute-long track. And then, finally, we’re delivered the penultimate song (on the original release), The Gymnopedist, with its film score qualities and more use of that exquisite voice as a backing instrument as the track opens into what appears to be an instrumental. The way it builds in layers at its halfway point is nothing short of astonishing to my ears you’re waiting in anticipation for the lyrics, which never come. It’s the perfect way to introduce the repetitive hypnotism of the stanzas sung in the final song on the album, She Moves.

There’s a meditative state this album puts me in. I feel relaxed, energised and yet also infused in some way with a pain and loss that is inherently human. In my head, credits roll. This is a film soundtrack without the visuals, which the listener provides themselves. Perhaps that happens to everyone with all their music choices. For me, this is the album that delivers sharp imagery, emotions and a longing for something that I can’t quite articulate to myself. Which means, all that’s left for me to do is play it again.

For reasons unknown, the album is not available on vinyl. Hopefully someone at Ninja Tune is sorting that out, or if the rights belong to Jono he’s willing to consider doing it himself. The following YouTube playlist contains all the album tracks and a bonus, plus an advertisement I cannot remove. Ignore that, or better still buy the album on Jono’s Bandcamp.

BONUS CONTENT
It’s worth stepping aside here to talk about McCleery’s cover of Ingenue by Thom Yorke (recorded under the name, Atoms For Peace). The only time I’ve heard this song done better is when Thom performed it live on the Jonathan Ross Show on the piano. Both versions are astonishing pieces of art.

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Dinky Honey – Bourgie Bourgie

A stylised illustration of a boat that has faces in the funnels. The words 'Dinky Honey' and 'Bourgie Bourgie' are written on the side of the boat. The background is yellow.

Talk to any fisherman and they will have a story about the ‘one that got away’. How they struggled to reel it in, that it was ‘this big’ and with each telling the space between their outstretched hands increases. This is my tale of the one that got away. It’s the album that I really worked hard to reel in but the line snapped.

Here’s my story.

Quite possibly, when you hear the words ‘Bourgie, Bourgie’, you think of the 1980 hit song from Gladys Knight and the Pips. However, some of you might be inclined to think of the band that almost was, in particular their unreleased album from 1984, Dinky Honey.

I wasn’t aware of this album until earlier this year when someone called Graeme bought some of the Unspun Heroes releases and emailed me directly. We got chatting, followed one another on BlueSky and swapped some album suggestions, albums we’d love to have on vinyl. Dinky Honey was one he mentioned and I was intrigued with the back story.

So I did some internet sleuthing.

Finding a lost album requires a combination of luck and persistence. Get that combination spot on and you can probably find a copy of any album, however obscure, out there. However, not only do you need to find someone who has it, you also need them to be able to digitise it and share it. Not everyone is open to doing that. Thankfully, this is a lost album that a lot of people want and I had something up my sleeve to help make the decision easy for the owner of the cassette tape.

Now I needed to find someone who could locate the band. More internet sleuthing let me to guitarist Mick Slaven’s email address and I wrote to him.

Now, if you put your email address on the internet you get a lot of junk mail. Like thousands a day, sometimes more. Mick gets a lot of spam emails, he explained to me in his reply. Somehow, though, my request made it into his inbox and he didn’t delete it. Mick told me the original tapes were long gone and that he had no idea where to get hold of the songs. However, he was in touch with the rest of the band and was happy to ask them about the possibility of releasing an album that had been hidden from the world for 41 years.

This wasn’t easy, but after sending some emails, I was able to get a digital copy of the MCA promo cassette, although one track had some terrible surface noise which required me to hunt down a specific track elsewhere. Once I had the entire album in digital form, I had a listen. Was it as good as Graeme had said? I prepared myself for disappointment.

It never arrived.

Bourgie Bourgie rose like a phoenix from the ashes of Glasgow’s Jazzateers who comprised Keith Band on bass, Ian Burgoyne and Mick Slaven on guitars, and Kenny MacDonald on drums. Only once Paul Quinn was installed as the vocalist, having spent time working with Orange Juice thanks to his childhood friendship with Edwyn Collins, did the band really come into their own.

And they really did start making up for lost time, rearranging some early Jazzateers‘ songs and then writing new tracks together. First up on Dinky Honey was Breaking Point, also the band’s first single.

A video made to accompany the song, ‘Breaking Point’ by Bourgie Bourgie.

So far, so very good.

I hunted down their other single, Careless and the B-Sides to both. Apres Ski, the flip side to Breaking Point, runs for almost eight minutes (although the album has a four-minute edit) and really showcases Paul Quinn’s vocal abilities alongside Ian Burgoyne’s and Slaven’s consummate guitar chops.

A video for Apres Ski, the 12-inch version, which was released as the B-Side to Breaking Point.

Careless is the more pop-oriented of the two singles, but that doesn’t diminish its quality in any way. It has the sort of sound that you’d expect to break through and land the band on Top Of The Pops, but sadly the single didn’t trouble the Top 40. At this point they went off to Germany to record the album that never was – well, never was more than a promo cassette.

The video made for the song ‘Careless’ by Bourgie Bourgie.

As I do with any album I’m interested in releasing, I listened again and again. The more I listened the more I started to love the album.

Yes, it was clearly an album from 1984 – although I’d suggest that it might not have been a big hit in the day, as it’s an album slightly out of time – too late for the early 80’s post-punk sound and too early (not to mention having proper guitar solos) for the jangle of the indie pop era. So I listened again and again. The more I listened the more I started to love the album. This was bad. I was building up anticipation for being able to release it.

Regardless, of my opinion on how well it might have done had it been released, it retains a quality that far exceeds that of many other albums from that time. Quinn’s vocal range stands out among his peers, and Slaven’s guitar solos weren’t your average pop-rock motifs. The rest of the band are far from in the background, either. Keith and Ian brought songwriting and arranging skills with them, and Kenny was no slouch with his technical studio skills and exceptional drumming performance.

Once I listened to the album as a whole, I started to wonder why they’d never made it big and, also, why they’d broken up before the album could be released. It’s not a part of the story I asked Mick about, although the classic ‘musical differences’ appears on many of the internet reviews of their songs.

The Jazzateers had already appeared in two different guises, releasing songs on Postcard and, latterly, being signed to Rough Trade and recording an album likened to The New York Dolls. Only after this period did they morph into Bourgie Bourgie and find their stride. Quinn fell back into recording with Collins for Alan Horne’s Swamplands label. The Jazzateers tried once more to find their place but their run of unreleased albums continued.

Sometimes the time isn’t right for a band. And sometimes the right time is many years later. For Bourgie Bourgie, I think that time is now. Sadly, it won’t be with Unspun Heroes, as obtaining agreement with the band has proved, even 40+ years after the album was recorded, too much and so the story ends here.

If you’re able to combine luck with persistence, just as I was, you’ll have the chance to listen to the great lost album of 1984. It’s well worth trying. And who knows, perhaps someone with better reach and connections than me will finally give this album it’s time in the limelight. I hope so.

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Tough At The Top – E-Z Rollers (Origin Unknown Remix)

A blurred scene of lights in what could be a nightclub. Above this on the black background is the band's name: E-Z Rollers. Underneath the blurred lights is the name of the track, TOUGH AT THE TOP.

1998. The very tail end of my clubbing days. A scene I’d stumbled into a decade before, having grown up in the middle of nowhere where ingesting mushrooms and hanging out were the norm. It was also during a time when free parties were happening in fields and woodlands across the south of the UK, many of which were within a few miles of my home. The repetitive beats of the acid house phenomenon weren’t really my thing then, being a thrash/death metal fanatic – although I liked the folkloric aspect of the fires and the frenetic dancing while on a mushroom trip – until I stumbled upon the other Metalheadz as I was part way through my degree in the early 90’s. Kemistry and Storm, early Goldie… all of these artists spoke to me in a way that ‘trance’ hadn’t. Photek, Jonny L, Grooverider, Fabio, Goldie… so many of these artists could be heard playing in my shared house in Dorset, or at club nights I DJ’d at now and again.

Moving Shadow was an imprint that became a beacon of exceptional quality music for me. It shifted me towards the more jazz-influenced side of the drum and bass genre through the likes of Drumfunk Hooliganz, Omni Trio, and E-Z Rollers; alongside LTJ Bukem’s Good Looking label it created the sound I most associate with the shift away from its Jungle roots. And it’s E-Z Rollers’ single, Tough At The Top that had a remix on the single release, a version that combined a bass rumble you felt as your body’s atoms were being shaken awake rather than simply via your ears with the soulful female vocal (used to great effect across the broader ‘dance’ genres).

Back to 1998. The night begins in the early afternoon. People congregate. Drinks are imbibed, perhaps some other substances illicit or otherwise. Hugs are shared along with joints. The music starts low until the volume rises to become a distorted mess through the tinny speakers of a home stereo system. (We later built our own speakers made with papier-mâché that allowed the bass to really come into its own. A story for another time.) The flutters start about 10pm and its time to move to the club.

This song, though, would often be put on just before we left, already dancing in preparation for the night ahead. The stabs from the synth, the flute bursts. Then the announcement, sampled from Cannonball Adderley’s intro to Why Am I Treated So Bad: Ladies and gentlemen, you know it… It’s time… The bass is starting to swirl as the horn blasts break through. The beat picks up and applause can be heard. So far, so classic drum and bass. You’re waiting for the vocal to arrive even as the track bounces along and the bass adds a little more squelch. And then, four minutes in it sinks back and softens and you’re informed that “it’s time to present to you, something strong”. And then the bass becomes a vortex, distending and rippling through you. Loud enough and you’ll feel it rearranging your bodily organs; I remember hearing it in a club once and there was a collective gasp as it kicked off and the room became a single heaving body of people on the dance floor, impelled to move as if a murmuration.

Finally, one last trill of the flute and a single wail from the horn section and it’s done. But it’s a remix that’s impossible to forget.

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My Obsession – Boxbomb

A hand holds a bunch of keys ona. chain. In the right-hand top corner is the band's name, Boxbomb and the title of the album, My Obsession.

There are albums that I’ve loved that I haven’t listened to in a long time. With so much music out there to listen to, it’s no surprise that older albums get pushed aside. And then you hear a song that renews that synaptic path in such a way that you end up on a mission to search up something you recall from a record buying session back in the mid-naughties.

The song you hear and album are linked by a voice. They’re not similar in genre, at all, but they share some sort of musical DNA that the singer imparts in tone and phrasing.More than a decade-and-a-half years apart and you can still spot it.

The song that renewed that pathway in my brain was an alt country song by The Dead Tongues called I’m A Cloud Now, which hooked me so hard I had whiplash on the first listen. You can view the video for it below.

The voice that jogged my memory belongs to Ryan Gustafson, and his previous band’s album I knew I’d played a lot. A quick head-in-a-cupboard search of old CDs and I’d located My Obsession, the debut full length album from Boxbomb. I think this had been gifted to me at the time, as I was working for a digital advertising agency that did a lot of work with record companies and one of their team passed it to me. Or perhaps I picked it up on one of my many forays down Berwick Street in London picking up promos. Whichever it was, judging by the state of the case it was played a lot.

Boxbomb had the same sort of spectral aspect to their work as Gustafson’s solo efforts 16 years on, but they were definitely – and defiantly – a kinda of late grunge rock band. My Obsession begins with Grey Sky, a song that is simple in its complexity, rather like Radiohead in their The Bends era, retaining a killer riff for the chorus that wakes up the listener and sets the scene. This is followed by the eponymous title track, which is something softer than you might expect that slowly builds through the vocal refrain before breaking into a harder guitar-driven riff. Reminiscent of bands like Headswim from the previous decade, with elements of Mother Love Bone thrown in for good measure. However, it’s Gustafson’s vocals that make this album an Unspun Hero.

Given the band’s initial EP, I think this debut album wrong-footed a lot of their fan base, being more introspective and relied less on the hard rock motifs that got them signed. It’s worth remembering that they were in their early 20s at the time of recording and you can almost hear their growth as the album progresses. They retain that rock-out-alt-rock-grunge vibe on tracks like Monotony but point towards a a bright future; however, it’s easy to hear why it was overlooked and, unfairly I think, lumped in with some of the dross of the era.

That voice, though. Especially on the run of songs from Good Boy through the alt country-tinged Let Go, Look Past and onwards into Get What You Pay For, which is probably the hardest emo-rock song of all. It needs the quiet piano of Worst Things to switch the tempo. These slower moments build into more momentous rock songs, but they are also the time where Gustafson’s voice really shines. Like VAST and others who were busy melding different rock genres together during this period, Boxbomb are not short of ideas and, in the main, execute all of them well.

Penultimate song, James Street, is something of an anomaly, being an acoustic ballad, the kind of song that gives you a breather at a live show. However, it plays out perfectly for the final song, Serotonin Sea – this is the song that sprung to mind when I heard I’m A Cloud Now by The Dead Tongues and the loop was closed. It the sonic juice that refuels you after you’ve had your emotions drained by what came before. And like all great final tracks, it makes you want to hear what comes next.

Listen to the album via the YouTube playlist someone has kindly set up, or on your preferred streaming service.

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Loftus – Loftus

A charcoal coloured record sleeve on which a gold square sits at the centre with a gold line surrounding it. On the gold square is an image of a jawbone. Underneath the square is a gold 'losenge' shape on the word 'loftus' in lower case.

I often come to bands at a point in their trajectory that isn’t the first iteration of that group, or the music even. I enjoy diving deep, not only into their back catalogue – if there is one – but also into their musical heritage and its various offshoots.

One of those bands I’ve been doing that with recently is Califone. I knew Tim Rutili had come from Red Red Meat (RRM), a more bluesy-sounding version of his studio project but ultimately similar in sound. I’d heard a few of their tracks. And yet, that experimental aspect of Califone’s music seemed a bigger leap from those origins. To my ears, at least.

How did Tim arrive in such a place? I naïvely assumed there were slowcore beginnings to this journey. However, I was blown away to discover he’d been part of Friends Of Betty, a one-album punk rock blues band from Chicago who were playing in the late 80’s. They recorded Blind Faith II and released it on vinyl and cassette in 1988 on Underdog Records. I’ve never seen their album in real life, where each cover is hand-painted and therefore unique – although the UK edition dispensed with this idea and went with a collage-style cover of a half-naked woman on a backdrop of blue sky and fluffy clouds. As far from Califone as you might imagine, but no less experimental it would seem.

This is what would become Red Red Meat. A clean, more acoustic version and more of a focus on that bluesy sound.

And this is where I think things got more interesting and the more liminal period between RRM and Califone brought about something that connects to the traditional American folk music while also bringing in the future through the use of sequencers and loops. So, yeah, banjo and samples might be one way to think about it; however, that’s not even close to the music Loftus would come to make.

Slowcore is perhaps most closely related to The National in a modern sense. It’s roots stretch back to the Grunge era, though, with bands like Codeine. A slowing down and more folksy way of making rock music. Rex is a band I’ve heard a smattering of songs from over the years through friends and friends’ stereos. They were contemporaries of Red House Painters and alike in the early-to-mid nineties and their drummer, Doug Scharin clearly loved to experiment with sound – an aside: Doug makes feedback music, a genre I dipped in to thanks to the five or so minutes at the end of The Smashing Pumpkins’ track Drown, which featured on the soundtrack to the film, Singles.

(Forget about Billy’s vocal whine, those last four-plus minutes of feedback are something special. But this isn’t about the Pumpkins and ego, this is about Loftus. Let’s get back to them.)

So, Doug’s band, Rex, happened to be on tour with RRM in the late 90’s. While the UK media was full Britpop (ugh!), under the radar bands from the US, in particular Chicago, were setting out on more interesting journeys. Experimenting in taking their slowcore roots and expanding it into the electronic landscape that the city of Chicago was famous for. Or mixing a musical cocktail of infinite dreams to suit multiple tastes. Inventing and innovating for their own sake while remaining indie enough for their audiences to dig it.

The Loftus Wikipedia page suggests that once the 1997 RRM/Rex tour was done, the record label execs from A&M Records had an idea to contrive a loose, experimental set of songs by pulling various members of each band together and giving them studio time to write and record. This kind of freedom provided by major labels sounds, to me, like some sort of magic land that simply didn’t exist unless you were a huge star.  

Regardless of the origin story, the idea of picking from a larger group of talented musicians interested in experimenting and seeing what happens is a solid one. The resulting Loftus album has breadth and depth for the listener, although what you might call ‘songs’ feature amongst sketches of sounds and sonic landscapes that pull ideas from drone, blues, country, electronica, and indie rock to form hazy, nebulous musical interludes, often instrumental. Almost like the musicians had jammed for a while and the resulting sounds held enough substance to be considered finished.

What this means is the Loftus album is like a piece of art, a concept that cannot be grasped in its individual parts and yet somehow makes a coherent whole. Fans of Royal Trux will know that feeling!

Tracks like the hypnotic King Carp in a Dan Ryan Ditch that explores loops and samples before crashing into your face like a speeding truck with its drums and noise, or more singularly focused tracks like the banjo-led Theme From Loftus Nine serve as gateways to the more ‘obvious’ songs such as Cake, or Stolen From a Rifle Clean Brothel. And then there are the songs that flit between both, such as Haywine which is catchy in an almost indescribable way.

It’s not ‘easy’ music that you can sing along to, or even hum; and yet, it remains a compelling artifact of its time, showcasing the liminal state through which Tim and his collaborators moved to become the acts we know today.

The album was reissued by Jealous Butcher Records on vinyl in 2013, with its screen-printed sleeve and hand-finished sandpaper and jawbone motif keeping that thread of unique art coming through that was present back in the punk blues days of Friends Of Betty. And you can stream it via the Califone Bandcamp page – which I recommend you do.

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The Unspun Heroes Zine

An image shows the front page sticker for The Experimental Pop Zine, which was a small zine accompanying the vinyl release of The Experimental Pop Band's fourth album, The Tracksuit Trilogy.

This is the 50th blog post. So, time for something a little different.

An aside before I start: while I was always hoping to have a blog post per week, when it became obvious it would be me, on my own, writing these things, I had to be realistic and so posts became more like once a month. They’re fun to write but it’s time consuming amongst all the other things I have to do in my life.

However, the blog also has a distinct purpose, which is to highlight music I think is deserving of wider attention. That’s it. The blog isn’t there to do much else. Although as the owner of said blog, I suppose I could change things. I choose not to and I have nothing to justify that decision, it just is!

Instead, I am going to be doing something a little different. A one-time-only event (for now) which is to produce a small zine. It’s a thing you can hold in your hands as I’ll be making a small selection of these by hand at A3 size folded down to A6, with something a little extra for you to make with your own hands. Maybe 5 or 10 of them, so properly limited. Then I’ll pop the written bit online as a PDF download a month or two after publication, which you can print at home on A4 and fold down to A7 (that’s a quarter of an A4 page).

Why am I doing this?
I had a lot of fun making The Experimental Pop Zine for the vinyl release of the The Experimental Pop Band’s The Tracksuit Trilogy. That was what spurred me on to make some more. Not all the time, and not for profit. Postage charges will apply because postage is expensive these days, but to be honest even if I never send one off that’s okay. I’m doing the zine for myself first and foremost.

They may become a now-and-again thing. They may not. They may include other people’s words, and they may only contain my own words. Right now, it’s just a thing to scratch a creative itch.

Anyway, what I can say is that I’ve started plotting out what will be in this zine. I’ve started to pull together some art direction ideas.

Now I’ve said it out loud on this blog I will have to follow up and actually make it. That’s how these things work, right?

What will the zine be about?
I have a list of albums, singles and EPs that I’ve not really stated publicly that I’d love to release. In some instances I’ve been in touch with some of the artists and conversations are ongoing. In many cases it’s not knowing if anyone else knows the album or artist, or would also want a copy on vinyl. So it’s also a way of seeing what resonates, or doesn’t.

Think of it like a set of tiny blog posts about some amazing albums, singles and EPs that are yet to find themselves imprinted on to a plastic – or bio-plastic – disc.

I’m doing everything I can to change that. Perhaps 2026 will be the year?

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The Tracksuit Trilogy Part 3 – Money Makes The Vinyl Go Around

Well, if it’s a trilogy then we need to have three blog posts. Having written about the original album in the first post, and then brought you ‘bang bang’ up-to-date on what’s different for the vinyl debut, now it’s time to talk about costs.

This won’t be a long post, but it’s also a part of the process that very few people talk about. And with this being the most expensive album put out on Unspun Heroes by quite a long chalk, I think it needs to be addressed.

Pressing vinyl is not cheap – and for runs below 500 it’s even less so. As a physical medium, it involves a lot of energy and different materials to make. And if you want to do it well, then making sure what you put in is the best it can be not only takes the skills of a professional engineer to remaster old tapes and digital files, it also means having a lacquer cut well so that the stampers made by the pressing plant will transfer the grooves to the finished product.

Not everyone does this. Some will skip the mastering phase and use CD files in production. Some won’t bother re-doing the artwork, or adding commissioning new liner notes, or even bothering with an insert. Some of these albums are £26 retail or more. I could do things cheaper by cutting out things like inserts and dropping the paper quality, or not redoing the album artwork so it doesn’t look like a poorly photocopied facsimile.

Ultimately, if you’ve listened to an Unspun Heroes vinyl release you’ll know that I care a lot about making them sound and look amazing.

The Tracksuit Trilogy is a special case for me. It required a few days of the engineer’s time to get it sounding the best it could possibly be. And that don’t come cheap. It made the manufacturing cost more than double and I did have a little bit of a weep when I got the invoice. Yet, having listened to it (several times now) it is worth every penny. It’s like hearing a new version of the album.

I decided to pay for the extras out of my own pocket, too. There is almost no profit margin after payment processing costs and Bandcamp’s fees are taken out. I’m actually losing money on each sale really. But I don’t want pity – any and every sale of anything I offer on Bandcamp is more than enough!

You see, I ensure everyone gets paid – those who write liner notes, the designer, Anthony, who works tirelessly for hours making minor amends late in the day, the printers and pressing plant employees, and in this case the artist, Renee, who produced over 50 pieces of work from which myself and Davey had to select two – for the sleeve and poster (signed for preorders).

It cost £35 per unit to do all that. For some perspective, it usually costs about £16 per unit.

So, while I understand it’s a big ask, especially when you include international postage costs, also know that everything has been done to the highest level to ensure when it reaches you it’ll blow your socks off. The extras are my gift to you for shelling out a lot more than I’d like to charge. It’s a work of art as much as a product you can enjoy. Money is a weird subject to write about. And yet, rather than shy away from saying what it costs to bring an album to bear (on average, it’s about £6k) I think it’s important that you know someone has bothered to put in the effort to make something sound, look and feel amazing. Something to cherish. That’s the love I say sits at the core of what Unspun Heroes does. Every time I sell one, I know I’ve found someone else who understands that.

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The Tracksuit Trilogy, The Experimental Pop Band: Part 2

You can read Part 1, which is a blog post overview of the album, here. Part 2, below, deals with the vinyl pressing itself and details some thoughts on the tracklist that the vinyl album contains.

For its debut on vinyl, the album was completely remastered using the original desk output from the sessions with John Parrish, and included were two additional tracks not previously released. Alongside these, a new set of tracks were discovered by Davey while rooting around in his garage, shed or attic (or perhaps all three) and these are included as a set of eight additional digital tracks, although one, Life (French Version) did appear briefly on the Special Edition CD from City Slang back in 2001.

This was the starting point for the reissue. However, in chatting to Davey I discovered that there were many aspects of the original release that he wasn’t overly happy with. The cover art was one. The final mix of certain songs compared to those around them was another. The lyrics weren’t quite right, either. So, we set about doing it as he would have wanted.

New Experiments
Cover art isn’t as easy to decide upon as you might think. We needed a concept to hang things on, so art direction was talked over first. Davey was a fan of collage-style artwork, which was useful as a friend of mine does exactly that as part of her practice. Renee Vaughan Sutherland is an Australian artist living on the south coast of England, and I got in touch with her with a brief, supplied her with mp3s of the album and left her alone for three months. She came back with 22 different options, from which we quickly shortlisted seven. A bit more chat and we had two we couldn’t choose between. One of these is the new cover artwork, the second will become a hand-printed poster (signed by Davey for all pre-orders).

New cover art for The Tracksuit Trilogy’s 25th Anniversary release on vinyl.
A photograph of the poster artwork that will be hand screenprinted and signed by Davey Woodward.

A second piece that is new is the fabric bag that holds the download card and some other pieces of ephemera that have been created for this release, such as a small handmade zine and some printed photos. Why fabric? The inspiration came from separate conversations with Davey and a good friend – once a writer for Smash Hits in the 90s, no less – Tristan Fitzgerald. The idea of making a fabric feature somehow relates to the tracksuit of the title. Shiny and polyester. And so Tristan chucked in some design ideas and one of these was taken forward and printed on recycled polyester. I did attempt to get it properly woven, but the cost for a small run was budget-breaking. Instead, I decided to create a care label, like the ones you get with washing instructions, and sew the bags myself. These are truly bespoke items that you only get with the vinyl.

The pattern used to print a recycled polyster fabric that will be made into a bag, lined with random vintage fabrics. These will be used to hold download cards and other ephemera.
The top half of the care label that will be sewn into the bag. These have been woven by GB Labels.

Yes, you might argue these are pointless additions (like some people consider an obi strip to be – superfluous and annoying) and perhaps those who think that might be right. However, the cost was minor and the idea of being ‘arty’ with this release and just doing something a bit mad and quite different meant once the idea was put out there it simply had to happen. Again, it adds to the limited nature of all Unspun Heroes’ projects, and provides those who buy the vinyl with a unique piece of work that you can’t get anywhere else. This is a feature not a bug.

Anyway, shall we look at the tracks?

Tracklist for The Tracksuit Trilogy
I’m sat listening to the test pressing of The Tracksuit Trilogy for the umpteenth time. It gets better every listen, which I find happens with every release. I like to immerse myself in the songs as much as possible, although I’m always playing my own releases months after they’ve come out.

With The Experimental Pop Band’s third album, the vinyl has the original 13 tracks and includes two additional bonus tracks – a version of one was on the special edition CD release from 2001, but the second is a previously unreleased track.

As the album is not available to stream, the only way to hear it is one of the test pressings, or from the original CD. That said, I’ve had the 15 tracks that appear on the vinyl remastered. Some from the original source, others from a master CD that was cut for City Slang and the band after the sessions wrapped. Because they’re all from different places, it took a lot of time and effort for Guy Davie at Electric Mastering to make this into something that was coherent, even though the music is eclectic in terms of its sound, ranging from straightforward art rock tracks to filmic soundtracks to disco-beats and trip-hop samples.

I thought it would be worth picking out some of the tracks to highlight the kind of music you’re going to get to hear if you buy a copy – vinyl or digital.

  1. Bang Band You’re Dead
    The use of samples kicks off this track, but as with all the uses of samples scattered across this album, they enhance rather than become a focus for the music. TEPB were always about making music as a band in the studio rather than just with a computer. It’s not Kid A, people. However, the film score quality of the songs is kicked off in style on this languorous, almost dream-pop track. The tone shifts right at the end, though, as the song morphs in the way that soundtracks do – there is a part of me that thinks Tarantino would probably select this song for one of his movies, were he still making them.
  2. Emotion
    Disco beats and a rise in tempo as the high hat hiss and thumping bassline bring a vibe that could best be described as unexpected. And yet, Davey’s cutting observations about the state of the world mean it’s less gloss and rollerskating-lycra-wearing dudes than it is a blunt take on the world as we entered the new millennium. Quite something when you consider where we’re at 25 years on.
  3. Narcotic Days
    When the harpsichord refrain begins, and the cymbal shuffle over simple synth chords, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re listening to The Velvet Underground with a different singer. There’s plenty of the Velvet’s inspiration in this album. The shimmering guitar is pure pop, though. But it’s not a song about upbeat things, as you’ll read when the song notes get published
  4. Hard Enough
    Post-punk guitar-driven noise. In the original mix, the vocals were low and the guitar was right in your face. The remaster remedies this by balancing the overall track, so Davey’s sardonic lyrics can be heard. It’s like The Stooges met The Fall and this came out of the session. Thankfully, on the remastered version you can turn it up to 11 and you’d be right to do so.
  5. Remember
    A hazy love song. But one that makes you feel like you’ve dropped several Tramadol® or whatever the equivalent drug is in your world. A morphine drip of a song. If you’ve never been stoned, grab some toast and laugh at nothing in particular while this plays.
  6. Somethingsaremoreimportantthanmusic
    Beats. A dark piano chord repeated. The words ‘First Love’ chanted. More slightly atonal piano. And then, wow, what a surprise when the Western soundtrack bit drops two minutes in.
  7. Satan’s Friends
    Fuzz and wah-wah. Like some sort of psychedelic jam session combined with a catchy bassline moment and full on metal vibes to the guitar solo. The drums crash and you’re pinned to your seat for two minutes. The violin brings in more of that Velvet’s sound as the song nears its crescendo. Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of Side One.
  8. I Like It
    A shopping list of reasons to love someone. But with that weird Davey Woodward twist. It’s a little bit grubby like I imagine dogging is. And imagining is enough for me, so thankfully this song makes it easier!
  9. All Hang Out
    If you’ve never been to Bristol and wondered what it’s like to mosey on down through some parts of it, then this is it. And done in the style of The Kinks.
  10. Casual Sex
    The beats are back and you need to get your dance pants on all while listening to the kind of thing that happens when two people get their pants off and bump uglies.
  11. The Bereaved
    A science fiction soundtrack springs to mind. Just before something happens that makes you jump out of your skin. Doctor Who might benefit from using it in an episode, for example.
  12. Alcudia
    And then we’re into sunny trip-hop pop. I song that makes you want to have a boogie around your kitchen while making cocktails for friends who’ve popped in. It’s got a sound that is immediately familiar and yet could be from any era. Destined to be a favourite track that you play loud just before you head out for the night.
  13. When The Music Ends
    The Magic Roundabout and any seventies sitcom with a thank you message over it. Or a Hollywood movie ending with the credits playing. The whistling is inspired. A fitting end to an album. Except we added two bonus tracks.
  14. (Life (Duet)
    A French film with a scene where the two bank robber lovers have a dance before the explosive finale. This is the song that plays in the background.
  15. L1
    A love letter to Liverpool written after you’ve spent a couple of days wandering round the city. The twinkling samples over post-Britpop guitars – the way the bassline comes in makes you think of a certain Essex band. It’s a sunny, singalong song, but has some punch that makes it pop more than just Pop songs tend to do.

And then the vinyl ends. However, a selection of songs are included in the digital download. There are eight more to listen to. One of these was later reworked into a new song, there are also two different versions of Life to enjoy and the final song that graced the 2001 Special Edition release from City Slang: The Experimental Pop Band Theme. If any band deserved to have its own theme tune, it would be this one. It’s a fitting end to a digital listening experience, I think.

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The Tracksuit Trilogy, The Experimental Pop Band

A person clad in black running up a ramp made of sand. The text, the experiemental pop band is written in red in the top right-hand corner. Under this is the title of the album, the tracksuit trilogy.

What do you remember of the turn of the century? Y2K. Dotcoms. New media. Free and easy money. The dawn of the computer age and, perhaps, the tech bro, maybe? A hopeful and optimistic era, still, even as the shine of Britpop faded along with that of New Labour. A new century, though. A time to reset and start again anew. Different. To do things unexpected.

Could the same be said of pop music?

Pop tends to be formulaic. It always has. A conforming style of music in many respects, although not always. I’ve said before that I consider The Cure to be a pop band, yet they conform in ways that are not mainstream. Few, though, take the pop sensibilities and throw out the rule book. Yet, in 2000, perhaps the most non-pop of pop albums was released. The band that did it weren’t shy of showing their workings either, as they called themselves The Experimental Pop Band (TEPB).

For their third album, The Tracksuit Trilogy – which is finally out on vinyl through Unspun Heroes – the experimental was turned up to 11. This is a truly eclectic album, and yet it has all the hallmarks of the same band even as it hurtles from disco-tronic beats to art rock guitars, sometimes within the same song.

In the original City Slang press release, the album was described as “Adamantly refusing to stick to one style, THE TRACKSUIT TRILOGY embraces a wild variety of influences, but somehow offers a unified collection of songs that are as innovative as they are entertaining.”

On first listen it sounds, to the unaccustomed ears, like a compilation. The second listen brings a coalescence that wasn’t as discernible on that first run through; by the fifth listen and beyond, you begin to understand how it all hangs together. The fact that Davey Woodward and his bandmates resolutely refuse to conform to the standards many people apply to the ‘pop’ moniker, while making what is undeniably pop music, could well be the turning point where genre fluidity really hooked itself into the public psyche. Or maybe, as someone said to me recently, it’s all just prog?

That ‘prog’ label is as helpful here as Yacht Rock is to anyone attempting to understand Steely Dan. A chocolate teapot in an album review: fucking useless. And it doesn’t do the album justice, particularly in the extended digital version available for the first time ever after previously unreleased and – quite probably – unheard tracks were unearthed in the process of bringing it all together for its vinyl debut.

Of course, the band had a pedigree for those ‘in the know’ thanks to cult band The Brilliant Corners. Chris Galvin joined Davey Woodward in forming TEPB before succumbing to that shitty disease that is cancer after second album Homesick, making The Tracksuit Trilogy the first album written and released after his untimely death – accompanying song notes reference this sad event, as they provided grist to Davey’s songwriting mill on certain songs.

I saw The Brilliant Corners at the tail-end of their run, in the early 1990s, gracing the stage at Reading Festival. While I was sad that I’d missed out on the previous decade – and many of their sought after singles which now command a decent price on the secondhand market – like others I didn’t have long to wait for TEPB to arrive.

From the get-go they proved difficult to pin down when it came to genres and peers. Weirder than Beck, as easy and fun to dance to as Prince, yet as abrasive as The Fall and as oddball as The Velvet Underground, they still made music that you could sing along to. They made the Pop so obvious there in the band name and yet so obviously overlooked by many. This is the musical equivalent of Ronseal before they came up with their advertising tagline then.

Besides that knack for a catchy melody, the thread that clearly runs through every track on this eccentric and quintessentially English record is Davey’s wry, sardonic observations of life on this planet. And while some lyrics snap you back to that pre-century fervour, much of it remains relatable to 2025. Certainly musically. It sounds fresh and new, almost as if the rest of the world has finally caught on and caught up.

The album debuts on vinyl on 25 July, 2025. A little over a quarter of a century from when it first came out, it’s a different beast in many ways – more on that later – and yet it remains as experimental as it ever was. Wayward but focused, serious yet playful, it’s as wild a ride now as it was 25 years ago. And like all mavericks, the distance between its original release means it should finally be recognised for the genius it is.

And with just 222 copies of the vinyl available, it might be the rarest of gems for some time.