Bollock Brothers - The Lydons and the O'Donnells Family Album (1986)

It wasn't that I was avoiding the Bollock Brothers, but they had about them a sense of desperation which kept me from feeling like I needed to rush out and buy anything. It was only when I heard their version of the first Pistols album - covered track to track in its entirety with sarcastic Mike Oldfield samples and vocals from the bloke who shimmied up the royal drainpipe to the Queen's bedroom - that I realised, here was something too stupid to be ignored. It also helps that, as I've come to realise, musically speaking they were more or less Public Image Ltd as formed by a bunch of pissheads from the pub instead of Jah Wobble and Keith Levene. So the Bollock Brothers were often quite listenable. This one, so credited as to place the usual emphasis on once having stood next to Johnny Rotten at the urinal, turns out to be a collection of singles you didn't buy because it was obviously the Bollock Brothers under yet another fucking stupid name; also a couple of allegedly live things which don't sound significantly more haphazard than the studio material.

I said, also a couple of allegedly live things which—

Wait! Come back! We have guest stars!

It may well be Killing Joke's Geordie impersonating Steve Jones on the Ivor Biggun-esque R.U. Dirty, and the bass playing is good enough to be Youth, but I'm fucked if I can hear Bananarama's alleged backing vocals; and as for Tony James, Billy Idol and Johnny Rotten's dad, we may never know for sure.

But none of this really matters because, all novelty concerns aside, this is a pretty great record even if it gets a bit fucking stupid in places. You can tell they had a whale of a time recording this stuff, and they may not actually have intended to do quite so good a job as they did because it certainly goes beyond Public Image Ltd as formed by a bunch of pissheads from the pub, even to the point of sounding like its own thing. Had the Bollock Brothers never been signed, had they never conned anyone into releasing their records, had they been some band who'd put out a couple of C60s with crappily scrawled photocopied covers and then vanished, we'd now be paying hundreds of pounds for those tapes and there would be a Vinyl on Demand boxed set costing more than your house. Also, according to the press cuttings on the cover, the NME hated them, which is about as high a recommendation as can be had.

Blancmange - Irene & Mavis (1980)

By the time I was aware of this one having existed, I could no longer afford a copy so thankfully it's been reissued. I liked Blancmange a lot, although they seemed to work better as a singles band than at album length; and naturally I've always wondered about this formative obscurity reputedly recorded using pots and pans for percussion.

Typically for such a shining example of the is it supposed to sound like that? genre, it came in the mail just as the needle of my turntable picked up a lump of ominous gunk which somehow remained invisible to the naked eye, making the record sound as though my stylus might be fucked; and I played it at 45RPM, which is the wrong speed, although most of the vocals have been slowed down on the original portastudio recording, so everything except the voice had me wondering whether it was supposed to sound like that? Then, having cleaned the needle and bothered to look at the cover - which recommends 33RPM more or less as a serving suggestion - I got to hear the thing as intended, roughly speaking, and it seems it is supposed to sound like that.

It's an understatement to say Irene & Mavis is a far cry from the shiny synth pop to come being as it sounds like something from the median point between the Residents and Nurse with Wound. Those pots and pans were just for starters. Percussion could be anything from the aforementioned to someone thumping a wardrobe, the vocals are all recorded at double speed, and there's some apparent pleasure taken in tape distortion, wow and flutter and the like, which I'm fairly sure was deliberate. Even so, we nevertheless have plaintive tunes which quite clearly foreshadow Sad Day and I've Seen the Word drifting here and there, additionally evoking the melancholia of Eno's earlier ambient jobbies and inventing vapourwave on Holiday Camp even as those eventually sampled by Vektroid and her pals were still in short trousers.

I could stand to hear a lot more of this version of Blancmange.

Nitewreckage - Take Your Money and Run (2011)

Here's another pie in which Dave Ball had a number of fingers, and one which seems to have slipped under the radar, or at least under my radar. This is a shame because pretty much everything Dave Ball has had a hand in has been at least great, and usually essential listening. English Boy on the Love Ranch was another one and yet they too sank without trace, which I mention mainly so as to illustrate that there's been more Dave Ball out there than you may realise.

Nitewreckage were thematically and sonically closer to Soft Cell than the Grid - the other one we've all heard of - and distinctive for showcasing the vision of vocalist and cabaret performer Celine Hispiche who chats, sings, screeches, howls and croons her way through a series of terrifying stories of domestic abuse, sordid hook-ups, and emotional blackmail bearing only superficial resemblance to Marc Almond's stint on the same microphone, but delivered with equivalent visceral passion. The whole album feels like a night on the town in Soho - and a rainy night at that - which you're definitely going to regret, but with Hispiche putting on a screw face and doing whatever the fuck it takes to get through - as distinct from Almond's bruised innocence. Even with all those synths grinding away, there's an element of X-Ray Spex to this one.

Sorry - that's about as close as I can get to a working description, and I'm slightly puzzled that we haven't heard more of Celine Hispiche on the strength of this bunch. If it turns out that she simply exploded shortly after they finished the album, it really wouldn't be that difficult to believe. Take Your Money and Run is as good as anything Soft Cell ever recorded without it even being obvious that we have the same guy banging away on the piano. Also, their version of Bowie's Repetition makes the one on Lodger sound like the cover.

Ice Cube - Everythangs Corrupt (2018)

I've a feeling there should be an apostrophe in the title but I'm not going to be the one to tell him. I also seem to recall some internet mutterings about Cube having become persona non grata in recent times, which would at least explain why he hasn't been a regular guest on Sesame Street for a while - if they're even still making it, which they probably aren't. Maybe he stood behind Dave Chapelle at the supermarket or something. If it bothers you, maybe you could ask him. You could bring up that missing apostrophe while you're at it. I'm sure he'd be more than happy to address whatever concerns you may have.

I completely missed this one when it came out, his first in something like eight years possibly because he doesn't need to make rap albums to get by any more - which would suggest he only hits the booth when he feels it necessary to do so. This seems to be reflected in at least the last three being among the best of his entire career, so it works out well for all of us, I'd say. Unsurprisingly, our man had one fuck of a lot to say in 2018 with Trump in office and the rise of the Proud Boys and their like; and that which he had to say involves a lot of rude words and the sort of righteous fury which takes the paint off the walls, additionally suggesting those mumbling away on the internet probably weren't down with the Cubester in the first place, so fuck 'em.

Amazingly - because this being a great album really shouldn't be that much of a surprise - Cube does what he does best without it sounding like nineties nostalgia, spitting over Soundcloud-trap production as though it's the most natural thing in the world while still keeping the barrage of industrial strength stress as intense as it was on those early solo albums. Again, we shouldn't be surprised because I Am the West was great for exactly the same reasons. Even when we revisit classic west coast beats in That New Funkadelic it keeps swinging with the same natural confidence and no hint of marketing strategies. No-one combines outright menace with sheer joy quite like this guy, and lyrically he still makes the rest sound like wankers. If you haven't yet quite figured out what's wrong with the world today, it's all here and it's funky as fuck.