The Fall – Ersatz GB - November 2011 November 13th, 2011

The Fall’s 29th studio album, in 35 years, finds Mark E Smith fronting a kind of amphetamine drone rock band. The 2011 model grooves on two or three chord riffs, pounding bass booms, and Eleni Poulou’s retro keyboard blips, like some ancient krautrock legend, but pin-eyed with punk intensity, spattered with Smith’s kaleidoscopic shards of…

Standup has grown up – but that doesn’t mean it is great literature - November 2011 The Guardian - By Brian Logan - November 13th, 2011

Standup is finally the big business the industry has hoped it would be ever since Newman and Baddiel played Wembley in the early 90s,” writes Stewart Lee (pictured) in his new book. He’s right, of course. Standups are everywhere now: all over the telly, topping bestseller lists, writing broadsheet newspaper columns and hosting chatshows. Oh,…

Dr Strangely Strange – Heavy Petting and Other Proclivities - November 2011 November 13th, 2011

Dublin Trinity College students Dr Strangely Strange’s 1969 debut Kip Of The Serenes is a whimsical acoustic hippy record in the vein of The Incredible String Band. 1970’s Heavy Petting, re-released with extra tracks, featured the psychedelic blues licks of future Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore, making for a cautious but compelling hybrid of fragile…

Anton Barbeau – Empire Of Potential - November 2011 November 13th, 2011

Anton Barbeau is one of those cult figures whose vast catalogue intimidates the merely curious. Helpfully, Empire Of Potential distils twenty years of lightly lysergic, hook-peppered, power pop into one package of eighteen insistent earworms, all hits in a fairer and better world. While fans will spot favourite omissions, like 2003’s scorching King Of Missouri,…

Harry Deerness – Harry Deerness - November 2011 November 6th, 2011

Harry Deerness’ debut was handed to me anonymously in a Kings Cross pub. On-line information says it’s one Kevin Cormack, sampling cassettes of home recordings given to him in Orkney by a professional carer, who found them in the home of her client, Harry Deerness. The album sounds like an old people’s home entertainer playing…

Loren Connors – Red Mars - November 2011 November 6th, 2011

Now in his sixties, Loren Connors has essayed, quietly and determinedly, an increasingly abstract solo electric guitar sound since the seventies, his prolific output of over sixty albums slowed by parkinson’s disease in the 90s. Though Connors’ recordings reside in the Blues Archive of the University of Mississippi, purists might be pressed to recognise the…