The Cravats – In Toytown - August 2012 August 6th, 2012

Roaring out of late ‘70s Redditch, The Cravats played neurotic Weimar cabaret art punk, spitting clipped satirical statements and blowing fog horn brass, whilst John Peel lamented his failure to make them famous. Here’s their first album, and all their early singles, a listening experience akin to being hit over the head, repeatedly and rhythmically,…

Various Artists – Trojan Presents Freedom Sounds - August 2012 August 6th, 2012

Just when it seemed there were no more ways to repackage Trojan’s vast back-catalogue of Jamaican sounds, Freedom Sounds’ five themed CD, 108 song celebration of fifty years of Jamaican independence radically recombines typical Trojan material. Disc 2, “Jamiacan Hits”, surveys the usual suspects, Desmond Dekker’s syncopated 007, Junior Murvin’s Clash-inspiring Police & Theives, and…

Charles Gayle Trio – Streets - August 2012 August 5th, 2012

Streets is the accusatorily sad-faced clown Charles Gayle used to portray during live performances, the name a nod to the free jazz saxophonist’s homeless years. Narrowly post-dating the first wave of hard blowing, ecstatic jazz, pioneered by Albert Ayler and John Coltrane’s final works, Gayle is unencumbered by associations, free to fly. Streets is an…

A show to have you rolling on the carpet - August 2012 Shields Gazette - By Paul Clifford - August 3rd, 2012

OFTEN described as the thinking man’s comedian or the comedian’s comedian – Stewart Lee is a performer with a strong, cult following, but has even more detractors. This was the third time I’ve seen him, and he has made me laugh uncontrollably every time. His latest show Carpet Remnant World pokes fun at his own…

Collected Press for ‘A Sound British Adventure’ – August 2012 - August 2012 August 1st, 2012

Miranda Sawyer – The Observer, Sunday 19 August 2012 For those who prefer their music clever and obscure, Stewart Lee took us through the higgledy-piggledy homemade beginnings of UK electronic music in A Sound British Adventure. I’ve heard a version of this story several times on Radio 4; Lee managed to make it seem fresh.…

Steel Pulse – Prodigal Sons, The Best Of - July 2012 July 29th, 2012

In the mid-‘70s, Birmingham’s Steel Pulse sold a dramatic live version of roots reggae’s studio bound sound to suspicious punks, and issued an astonishing debut of pressure cooked protest songs, Handsworth Revolution, bleeding flamenco guitar into deep heat dub-wise grooves. Five of that unsurpassed album’s eight cuts, and a b-side, feature here, along with some…