THIS IS A JOURNEY INTO SOUND

  It's not often i love a new album enough to play it on repeat - not since my late twenties any rate - but that's what happened when i put my Eco-vinyl copy of IDLES Crawler on the turntable. After the deliberate self parody of last year's Ultra Mono Joe Talbot and co. have taken a bold step forward: Crawler largely dispenses with the political sloganeering and post-punk moshpit anthems and reaches within for inspiration. Talbots' well documented 14 year struggle with alcohol and drug abuse, and his long road to recovery are the dominant themes here, in all their ugly details, but with a life affirming sense of redemption. The music is largely quieter and more measured too. Opener "MTT 420 RR" is a slow burning electronic textured track which represents the crash that saw him at his lowest point, the spare and eerie atmosphere over which Talbot recites the details in gruesome honesty.  "Car Crash" sounds exactly like just that: a minimalist dubby, g...

During the last great age of alternative pop and indie (1990 - 2010), loads of great  little bands popped up who, despite much acclaim from the music weeklies, never quite achieved the success of some of their contemporaries. One such band was The Long Blondes. A five piece formed in Sheffield in 2003, they traded in a brand of catchy, literate alt indie-pop, or to put it in singer Kate Jackson's words:    " Nico ,  Nancy Sinatra ,  Diana Dors  and  Barbara Windsor . Sexy and literate, flippant and heartbreaking all at once." Blondie were also an  influence on their sound and style. They also peppered their lyrics with references from  film and tv. They claimed to have all chosen an instrument and learned how to play it, lending their first few independent singles a rawer feel. The then unsigned band - Kate Jackson (vocals), Kathryn "Reenie" Hollis (bass/backing vocals), Dorian Cox (lead guitar/keyboards/principal songwriter), Emma Chapl...

Even if you live under a rock, the news that one of the biggest and greatest pop bands who ever existed are back! back! BACK! can't have escaped your attention. ABBA, who ruled the charts and airwaves from 1976 until their split in the early eighties, have reformed, with their first album of entirely new material since 1981s'   The Visitors,  and a virtual live experience to follow (basically, they had an arena built in London last year, where a "virtual ABBA" based on motion capture tech and made to look like the band at their 1979 peak will "perform" nightly, rather than put their 70-odd year old selves through the stress of touring.) The excitement and anticipation caused their new ABBA Voyage website to crash just hours after the announcement, such is the love for the quartet and their music. Two of the new songs have been put online, and they are ok: "I Still Believe In You" is a typical ABBA power ballad, a song about themselves and the bond ...

I'm not a fan of following the herd. If an artist, film, tv series, etc is huge or the current trend then my contrary tendencies will rise to the surface. There have been many times when a mildly successful band suddenly become huge and i will lose interest, or when, wary of hype, i won't get into them until the fuss dies down. But at the same time i want the things i love to get recognition. As i said, contrary. I have always steered clear of mass appeal, lowest common denominator stuff. I wasn't interested in Manic Street Preachers when they first appeared - and i still think Generation Terrorists is packed with filler - only to take interest during their next two albums which were less successful. And then lose it during their This Is My Truth...... era. When i stood in a record shop trying to choose who to spend my hard earned on that week i would rarely pick the current favourites, usually plumping for record that would, if lucky, be a footnote in the history of music....

For as long as there has been recorded music and a music industry there have been musical artists who, despite hype and promotion, have underperformed or sank without trace. Since i began reading the (now sadly defunct) music weeklies in the early nineties there was barely a week without a new band or solo artist being excitedly talked about as "the next big thing" . Before, during a and after Britpop this went into overdrive as record companies fought to sign the next Oasis/Blur/Pulp/Stone Roses etc, acts coming and going, sometimes without a sniff of chart success. On rare occasions bands would be declared "your new favourite band" before they'd even recorded a note! (Menswe@r spring immediately to mind.) Too often, a promising new act would be signed on the strength of a couple of raved about independent singles only for their new paymasters to demand changes to their musical style to make them more marketable to a mass audience: edges smoothed off, more expe...

  Any music fan who grew up between the mid-seventies and the mid-nineties, every amateur band who ever made a demo or rehearsal, anyone who sat in front of the stereo taping the UK Top 40 singles chart on a Sunday evening, or made a mixtape for a love interest or a friend. Anyone who owned a Walkman. They all owe it to the man in the photo. The man who invented the compact cassette, and changed the way music was not only listened to but the way it was shared. Lou Ottens, who passed away aged 94, was a Dutch engineer who was working as head of development for Philips when, irritated by the cumbersome and expensive reel-to-reel tape technology of the day, he began creating a smaller, recordable cassette that would fit in a jacket pocket. Unveiling his invention at the 1963 Berlin electronics fair, he changed the world. In-car cassette players, mixtapes, the concept of the playlist, boomboxes, and the first personal music player - the Walkman - all came as a result of his genius. Var...

Back in the late eighties people were told that their vinyl was outdated. Antiquated. Chuck out your dusty, crackly, scratched records, said the advertising folk, they belong to the past. No one will be making records in a few years. Get rid of it all and buy it all again on compact disc. They sound better! They're indestructible! They're the future! So that's what the majority of us did. Fast forward four decades and the trend has reversed: those same people are now re-buying their music collections on 180 gram half-speed remastered from the original tapes vinyl. I left school and got my first proper job at a time when records were disappearing fast from shops, but cassettes were still big sellers due to the still extortionate price of cd's. But like the majority of folks i bought into the myth that this shiny digital format was vastly superior to vinyl. It was certainly an improvement on cassettes, although you couldn't record onto them - that was a few years away...

It's fair to say that this has been a year that no-one will forget. The Covid-19 pandemic has altered the world as we know it. Lifes simple pleasures, such as going out for a pint, are no longer simple: when pubs and bars have been allowed to open, new rules such as ordering from your table, limits on group sizes. The music industry has taken a battering, with social distancing rules rendering live events impossible. Concerts and gigs are the lifeblood of the music industry, and many artists bread and butter: with revenue from recorded music, be it from physical or digital sales, a fraction of what it once was, the pandemic has put many a musicians and venues future in jeopardy. There have been some attempts to get around this: audience-free gigs streamed online have been popular, if without the familiar atmosphere of actually being there.  Most of the vinyl i buy is "vintage"; that is to say, it's old music. I tend to buy new releases on CD, as the cost of new vinyl ...

Listening to music on the move used to be a huge part of my life until a few years ago. As a naturally quiet and shy person i rarely made smalltalk with strangers, so putting in my earphones and turning up the volume was second nature to me. I grew up in the heyday of the Walkman, so from the age of about 11 i was rarely without one, although mine were always cheaper models - the ALBA brand springs immediately to mind! - and my clumsy adolescent hands meant that they often broke, so both walkman and headphones/earphones were constantly being replaced. In addition to this i was never without a stack of blank cassettes, recording from vinyl, the radio, and occasionally from friends tapes via the "magic" of high speed dubbing. Listening to music whilst walking to school or during my paper round meant i could block out the world, and bury myself in sound. My first pre-recorded tape was Schubert Dip by EMF, who i was a huge fan of at the time, and i listened to it constantly, obse...

Time. That mysterious force that propels us ever forward into the future, one moment at a time. That seems to be in endless abundance in your youth, but as the years progress runs away from us at what seems like an increasing pace.  The last 12 months have made me aware of this: the loss of my father, followed swiftly by the Covid-19 epidemic and 3 months of lockdown have flown by, and it's hard to comprehend that we are now in the final months of 2020. The familiar events that bookmark the chapters of a year - holidays, birthdays, festivals, sports competitions to name but a few - all cancelled or rendered meaningless, wiped from the pages as we have all hunker down to try and protect ourselves and our societies.  My main passion in life is music - cooking, reading, astronomy and travel also, but music first - and the epidemic has wreaked havoc on the industry. Gigs, tours, festivals all cancelled; release dates put back; music publications gone to the wall including long run...

As my journey into the world of all things Mod continues, so my discovery of and passion for music grows. The Modculture website, the Heavy Soul label and fanzine, Start! and Dedicated Follower fanzines, Totally Wired radio, not to mention various groups and pages on social media: these all contribute to my moducation. The amount of music, books, films etc - there aren't enough hours in the day to absorb it all! My tastes in music have always been fairly eclectic, but you can now add Jazz, Acid Jazz, swathes of Rhythm & Blues, sixties girl pop, French music, Soul, Freakbeat and Blues to the equation, plus all the bands associated with the revival since the late seventies, and more recent acts. Barely a week goes by without the postie bringing me more vinyl and cds. So much music, so little time! Of course, the one name who comes up frequently is the Modfather himself, Paul Weller.  A prominent figure in Mod since his days in The Jam, he has undoubtedly stayed true to the princi...