In 1980, Gong's Daevid Allen was at a loose end, and found himself in New York, hooking up with former Gong champion and producer Giorgio...

Karl Wallinger died earlier this week, far too young at 66. I'm not too familiar with his music, really only through one unconvincing...

One album wonders - bands and artists who recorded one album only. This NME article lists its top 21 of these, and there are many which...

This one is deep into the Canterbury Sound rabbit hole. Pip Pyle, who sadly died in 2006, aged 56, was drummer with Gong, Hatfield And...

John Lydon has been in the news today, doing some public racism for attention. But it's nicer to think of the times when he was relevant,...

I remember listening to PFM, touted as Italy's answer to ELP (a lazy comparison, although they were signed to ELP's Manticore label), in...

Now this is an odd one. I bought this 2CD set cheap on EBay a few years ago, without really looking at what was on it, but being aware of...

In Canterbury there used to be a half decent HMV shop. DVDs, t-shirts and nonsense downstairs, music on CD and vinyl upstairs. Assistants...

My daughter's boyfriend plays the bass, pretty well by all accounts. And his favourite bassist is Jaco Pastorius. I'd certainly heard of...

As previously mentioned, during my university years, XTC were probably my favourite band, and I was lucky enough to see them three times, including once helping them set up stage equipment, and can vouch that they were as normal and pleasant a bunch of blokes as you could hope to meet. After the band's farewell in 2000, Andy Partridge dug out some curios from the studio in the shed at the bottom of his garden, and released his Fuzzy Warbles series of 8 CDs. These consist of

Folk rock (let's assume for the sake of argument there is such a genre, and it's relevant to Oysterband) has always appealed more to me...

Having enjoyed his amusing book, detailing his life in show business, without ever exhibiting any aptitude or major talent, I picked up...

I'm cheating a bit now. Technically, I don't own this album - but I do own the 2CD set which compiles all three Only Ones albums...

If you wanted to step deep into the Canterbury Sound rabbit hole, you could do worse than visit Matthew Watkins' Canterbury Sans...

In the mid 2000s, David Sylvian collaborated with his brother Steve Jansen, and producer Burnt Friedman, under the group name Nine...

I've previously mentioned the old Liverpool Record Library opposite the cathedral, and how I'd be sent down there by my dad to pick up...

Colin Newman's fifth solo album comes during the second (1980s) period of Wire, and is much more electronically based than Wire albums...

I first heard Youssou N'Dour about seven years before this album was released, probably because of his work with Peter Gabriel. I hadn't...

When I was going through my World Music phase, trying to look cool and out of the mainstream, this was exactly the sort of thing I bought...

I wasn't aware of The Mutton Birds until I say them at WOMAD probably in 1996. A friend had spent some time in New Zealand and had...