Happy 70th Birthday Stevie Wonder!!

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2021 - Year In Review Pt.2 - Albums

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Following the  first part of my 2021 review, below is a breakdown of my ten favourite albums of the year as well as a quick overview of songs which I enjoyed: Favourite 10 Albums of the Year 1. Blank & Jones -   Relax Edition 13 At the forefront of the late-90s rise in trance, the German duo of Piet Blank & Jaspa Jones turned to ambient thereafter with the release of their Relax series. This is the latest, a double album of chillout, tasteful funky house and balearic beats and a much needed tonic for lockdown despondency in 2021 - my choice for best album of 2021. 2. St. Vincent -   Daddy's Home A concept album about her father's return from prison, this album's real treat though is how Annie Clark recalls the atmosphere of early seventies downtown New York, the sleaze, the dirt, the funk. A melting pot of Lou Reed, Bowie, Steely Dan even Beatles (on the psychedelic Sun King-esque Live The Dream). 3. Cleo Sol -   Mother The singer in the mysterious...
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Neneh Cherry & The Daughters of The Wild Bunch

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I got into trip hop by accident. Brought up on Britpop, I'd never heard any until I randomly won Time Out's Best Albums of The 90s competition which included Massive Attack's 1991 classic  Blue Lines . Having belatedly thought I'd 'got it', I recently decided to explore it again to actually understand what happened and what I hadn't envisaged was just how vital a role women played in its creation and so to celebrate Mother's Day and International Women's Day (belatedly in true Bristolian fashion!), I'm going to showcase what Neneh Cherry and the ladies that followed did for the most exciting musical development to come out of Britain in the nineties. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away... existed The Wild Bunch, Bristol's most pivotal music group or rather posse - in the hip hop sense - were formed by (above from left) Grant Marshall (now Massive Attack's Daddy G), rapper Willy Wee, Nellee Hooper  and DJ Milo Johnson, after being in...
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THE 100 GREATEST B-SIDES EVER

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Little Labours of Love - The 100 Greatest B-Sides Like the English electric lightning that's features above on Suede's excellent B-side compilation Sci-Fi Lullabies , the B-side is a humble relic from a bygone era.  L eaving both a mountain of aural rubbish and a small but largely untold legacy of great music when artists dared to experiment, dared to take risks, dared to push themselves. B-sides were tracks that accompanied singles - or A-sides - and were their literal flipside, on vinyl or cassette that could be turned or flipped over. In the fifties and early sixties two songs could be recorded and radio would choose their preferred song to play and these became the single. So for example Bill Wither's Ain't No Sunshine was originally a B-side to the single Harlem before Radio DJs saw the obvious error and played the B-side instead. Examples such as these were purely down to chance however.  The idea that a B-side could be worthy of being taken seriously was perhaps ...
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