A year in music: six random things

Am I falling into fancy fragments? Yeah, could be (see below). Anyway, in time-honoured fashion (a few recent years worth of time anyway) here's my annual random things blog. Miscellaneous music-related stuff from the past year, all awkwardly gathered under a few ungainly headings I've just er, invented. In years gone by I've managed to dredge up a comparatively strong group of eight things for this blog. Last year it was seven. This year all I could cobble together was this distinctly weak half-dozen. Decline.

Best thing found in the street 

These days I'm always finding things in the mean streets of London: paintings, books, plants, useful-looking (?) pieces of wood, Soundcraft FX 16 II mixers, and ... CDs. Without question the standout find of 2025 was a large Morrisons bag of CDs (99 in total) left on the pavement in downtown Hackney. Like so much rubbish! This comprised about 70 good-quality classical recordings, alongside 30-ish nu-jazz and latin albums. The latter I didn't much like (keeping just a couple), but the classical stuff was decent (Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Purcell, Telemann etc) and my classical-loving partner decreed we should grab a stash. Yeah, the Morrisons Archive was quite the find. Meanwhile, the cast-offs were duly packed off to my local charity shop - er, shouldn't the Morrisons shopper have done this in the first place? Anyway, a few months later I found a Waitrose bag of CDs, also in Hackney. What is it with supermarket bags and cast-off CDs? This time it was approximately 30 albums, some distinctly good (Stereolab, Colin Stetson, Liliput, Sparklehorse etc). Anyway, I now have an important request: in future, can people in east London with supermarket bags of CDs they want to leave in the street please pre-notify me? I'd be obliged ...

A bagful of classical: part of the Morrisons Archive

Mundane purchase which was actually er, distinctly non-mundane 

Mundane because I buy secondhand CDs in charity shops just about every week, but this little group of CDs (total cost £2), acquired in a charity shop one lost afternoon in Coventry, was of such high quality that it surely deserves a special mention. (No?). And just think of the out-of-control egos among this lot: Don Van Vliet, Cale & Reed, Miles Davis, Bob 'The Grouch' Dylan. Verbal sparring. Fights. Life-long grudges. Amazing scenes ....      

Six classic albums every serious music-lover must own

Best clothing merch encountered

Not being a big fan of musical merch (well OK, cheapish CDs hawked by bands at their gigs can be alright, or badges, for which I admit a slight weakness), one oddity of 2025 was that I went to a DJ night at the newish Henge Brixton pretty much entirely on the strength of Kuntessa's excellent Esselunga t-shirt in this promo pic (blog here). I must admit I didn't overly like the mostly latin stuff she played on the night, but I did ask her about the t-shirt and discovered she'd made it out of ... a bag. Yep, a supermarket bag. Esselunga being an Italian supermarket chain, roughly Italy's Tesco. Yeah man, it was DIY in action! 

Kuntess pictured on her way to do the weekly shop

 

Music listened to, new and old

Having breezed through an unfeasible amount of music this year, here are a few of the things that stood out. Or at least some stuff I managed to retrieve from my increasingly faulty memory:

Zoya Zafar, You Meant Nothing, Too - the sound of heartbreak?

Olive Hatake - emotion-drenched electro-pop

Franklin Fuentes, If Madonna Calls - legendary house diss track

Autocamper, What Do You Do All Day? - jangletastic pop; also good heard live

DJ Haram, Voyeur - urgent, clamorous electro

Glenn Gould, various Bach (Sony 2/CD) 

Laundromat Chicks, Sometimes Possessed - winsome pop from Vienna

Lobby, Nightdriving - righteous slowcore 

Euros Childs, Chops - Gorky's-tastic Welsh pop, via an old 7" I picked up this year

All Cats Are Beautiful - nice synth-pop 

My Gay Banjo, My Gay Banjo - really nice country-pop

Joy Division, Dead Souls - via the murky footage of them at the Manchester Apollo on 27 October 1979

Strange Devotion, A Demonstration Of Devotion; another one also appreciated live

I Jahbar, N0 F4ke Kiss - mutant future dub weirdness

Busted Head Racket, Go Go Go! - in yer face egg punk from Newcastle, Australia 

Snooper, For Yr Love - more egg punk which er, doesn't take itself entirely seriously

LP Gavin, Trials, Tribulations, Deliberations, Pratfalls, Reprieves, Etc - engaging slacker pop

Mon Nobi, From Hearts & Marginalia - woozy lo-fi bedroom pop

Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee - hypnagogic pop (apparently)

GoodMostlyBad, Een Klap 001 - pulsing electro-pop

Speed Plans, Final Sentence - pummelling Pittsburgh hardcore

Aya, Off To The Esso - manic fractured-pop stuff 

Melter, Holding Court - excellent new wave-y pop (also good live) 

Starter Car, various (see their Bandcamp); also enjoyed them live

Jacket Burner, Tonite EP - super-direct garage filth

Obelisk Grove, Beyond - ethereal loveliness (nice video here)

Split System, On The Edge - epic pop-punk from Melbourne

Lone Striker, Blip - lovely haunted pop singalong

Jeffrey & Jack Lewis, City & Eastern Songs - still sounds good

Hole, Live Through This - ditto

Pigbag, Dr Heckle And Mr Jive - a secondhand album recently bought (£2.99) and played a fair bit 

Josephine Foster, Domestic Sphere - she still sounds like no-one else

Eddy Current Supression Ring, All In Good Time - top-notch garage rock from Melbourne

Helmut Walcha, various JS Bach toccatas and fugues (photographic evidence here)

Matt Robidoux, Background Corn - experimental audio-manipulation pop 

Riva, Unfold C - two-hour techno set

Bruce Gilbert, Radio On (Remix) - the essential accompaniment to Chris Petit's amazing 1979 film

Tee Vee Repairmann, Only A Memory - super-melodic indiepop

Felt, live in Stuttgart, 5 November 1987 (very clear bootleg)

Laurie Anderson, Big Science - needs no introduction; played this year because I got the tape

Laura Logic, Pedigree Charm (as per this blog)

Silk Cuts, Tell Me It's Not True - C86 indie given a 2025 makeover

Yeasayer, Henrietta - especially the euphoric final two minutes

Withered Hand/Pam Berry, New Gods - six minutes of folky beauty

Scared To Get Happy: A Story of Indie Pop 1980-1989 - hours and hours of indiepop loveliness (see blog)

Most unlikely instance of music appraisal

This was my rock music-averse partner departing - momentarily - from her life-long attachment to baroque classical music to pronounce Buzzcocks' Breakdown (from Spiral Scratch) "not bad", while also saying she "liked" Boredom. Coming from someone who had no idea that "Buzzcocks" was anything other than part of the name for an unfunny TV programme, this was ... unexpected. Anyway, I think this couplet best sums up my reaction to her left-field opinionising: If I seem a little jittery I can't restrain myself/I'm falling into fancy fragments, can't contain myself ...

Most tedious music-related list compiled 

Despite often saying I hate lists, I always seem to end up doing them. This year was, I suppose, a big year for list-making, including rather massive - and horribly time-consuming - full "audit"-style A-Z lists of all of my CDs, 12"s and seven-inch singles (and I'm also currently doing one for all my books). And to be clear: the compiling of these A-Z lists has been completely necessary and not at all obsessive or compulsive in any way. Meanwhile, another possible contender for (most tedious?) list of the year might be the one I did on ten fairly notable gigs I've missed down the years. Yeah, great times not had.  

Meanwhile, of course, this six-item blog is itself another music-related list. Not necessarily a very interesting one though.