My name is Stephen, and I have a penchant for kitsch pop songs like I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper, Rasputin, Ça Plane Pour Moi and Kool in the Kaftan.
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Fear and Loving in Heaton Park – Cloudy, with frequent golden showers
Having reached his mid-forties without attending an open-air festival, Stephen James assumed that The Stone Roses’ Heaton Park gig would be a baptism of fire. He was half right…
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Uncle Weird’s Weird Jukebox – Part One
I can really bore you with this thing about eating in BeneLux pop from 64-68. The Eurifans sang about eating mustard, Het Pocomania sang of the benefits of eating parsley with a very straight face indeed, daddy-oh and then there’s this track by Ruud Knolraap & The Sweet Vegetable (Knoolraap being a turnip).
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Sunwølf – Beyond the Sun
The titles should give the nature of the music away; Morose Land, Solar, Inertia… redolent of the size and overbearing physicality of nature itself: of watching the world go by, of not bothering to waste words or gestures
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Mere – Mere
It’s safe to say that on record, Mere make music that relies on atmosphere and turns of phrase, moody extempores that sort of promise that something will crystallise very soon.
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Heroin In Tahiti – Death Surf
I suppose you could say it’s the music Mizutani would perform if commissioned to record a summertime special soundtrack.
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Boutros Bubba – Ridiculous Wrists
They were always a strange proposition. Gnomic is a good word for them, from the daft crab walks the singer, Vreselijk Ongeluk (Dreadful Accident), used to perform onstage, to their eye popping artwork
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Rooie Waas – Het Is Maar Een Constatering
The sound at times isn’t too far off Young Gods, especially the opening few tracks; though the music is more punk, more make-do-and-mend, created from sort of electronic debris found down the Kringloop.
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Cutthroat Convention – Gunfight@the Gates
So there you have it: a rush of noise if ever there was one. This one minute attack the band has perfected is pretty tremendous, there is a plan in all of this, despite the idea that this record is of the moment.
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Borngräber & Strüver – Clouds
Immediately you know this is a release endowed with some High Magicke as well as a ridiculous amount of confidence
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