After the success of the debut album, there were a lot of songs kicking about from BBC sessions and singles, and a massive appetite for...

There hadn't been many all-female groups who weren't manufactured pop vocal acts before the "great punk revolution" of the late 1970s,...

I have a number of Sigur Rós CDs, which I've picked up in charity shops. I don't know why I decided they were a good idea, and after...

The second half of the 'two albums on one CD', this is one I owned on vinyl (bought second hand from Virgin) in the 1970s, one that no...

Another cheat. I actually own this as a 'two albums on one CD thing' alongside Slapp Happy's collaboration with Henry Cow, Desperate...

I like June Tabor, I like the Oyster band, so why wouldn't this collaboration be something I enjoy? I saw them do Love Will Tear Us Apart...

It Hugs Back came to my attention as the 'day job' of Matthew Simms, who has been guitarist with Wire for the last fourteen years. So,...

Another recent purchase. I didn't really need another Dead Kennedys CD, but it looked lonely in the Oxfam Shop. There's no surprises...

Nine Inch Nails are the brainchild of Trent Reznor. That was the sum total of my knowledge of the band before buying this at a charity...

Despite my teenage (and beyond) love of the so-called 'Canterbury Sound', it was a complete coincidence that I ended up living for 40...

This was the first Banshees album I owned (pretty much as soon as it came out), but I've listened to their first one, The Scream far more...

In 1978 it was "God save the Queen, she ain't no human bein'". Forty years on, Sons Of Kemet make a similar statement with more subtlety...

I pretty much got up to speed with all of Steely Dan's albums while at university, yet this, their final album before a 20 year album...

I had never heard of Silver Apples until this was the featured album on Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone. I hadn't heard anything like it, and...

I first came across Joe Zawinul in my teens when a friend lent me a Weather Report album, and certainly wasn't aware of his pedigree in...

OK, I'll fess up. When I bought this cheap on Ebay earlier this month, I thought I was buying their first Cherry Red album Degenerates. I...

I hadn't heard of Sauna Youth until they appeared on Marc Riley's All Shook Up, under the name Monotony, performing the song of the same...

The Ruts were just one of the host of second division punk bands around at the end of the 1970s, who churned out a couple of decent...

At the time I had Rush written off as one of those annoying metal bands from across the Atlantic, loved by people whose hair was longer...

Cale and Reed hadn't spoken for years until Andy Warhol's memorial service in 1987, but made enough of a connection to want to work...