Shot the cover photo for Grey Streak’s second mixtape of cut-n-shut, deconstructed Scouse rap, Transport for Liverpool City Region.
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Monodoriviera – La Laguna Dei Bei Sogni
In a distant parallel universe only accessed by smacking your head really hard on an angular rock after losing control of a rented quad bike on a Mediterranean party island, Mondoriviera is a household name, his music videos in regular rotation on the flat-screen TVs poised in the corner of those beachside cafes that advertise their assorted meal deals with dubious faded photos plastered out front.
His new album, La Laguna Dei Bei Sogni will only further his success.
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Voice Actor – Good Luck
Woke up with a headache this morning. So far I’ve drank two cups of coffee, a cup of tea and a pint of water, and I’ve eaten two slices of cheese on toast, four chocolate chip cookies and a handful of blueberries. I’ve still got a headache. Not sure if this new EP from Voice Actor is helping or making things worse.
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Dean Blunt, Elias Rønnenfelt, Vegyn – “RIP MY BRO”
Posted for posterity before it’s lost to the abyss. Respect to the hard working YouTube channels who document this stuff.
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IRL SPORTS MAGAZINE
Got a fairly extensive interview in preeminent art / sport / culture magazine IRL SPORTS, talking about spending too long making a Super 8 riding video, my love of Jem Cohen’s Fugazi documentary and the positives and negatives of the north west of England – along with a selection of photos taken over the last decade or so.
Cheers to SJ Hockett for the feature – worked with them a lot back in the Oi Polloi days trying to rinse the measly ‘marketing budget’ on whatever daft shit we could think up, so it was cool to catch up once again in the print realm.
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Great Area – Love
Three new ones from Great Area. Took my mind a minute to work out what was going on in that last track. Respect to Arthur Lee. Respect to taking-without-consent. Respect to reflections in the windows of apartment blocks.
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The Crying Nudes – DJ
no need for capital letters, song titles or wack ‘artist bios’ – 13 minutes of majestic downer introspection from the crying nudes to listen to as that cup of tea goes cold.
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The Black Lights
Had a brief excursion to Blackpool flogging zines and other rare detritus at the Black Lights. Cheers to Bound for the invite and anyone who bought anything or stopped by to shoot the breeze.
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Grey Streak – Faith in One City
Shot the cover for Grey Streak’s new mixtape of deconstructed Scouse rap, Faith in One City 2008. Listen now via Never Sleep.
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Belle Vue Shale – Sam Waller
AVAILABLE NOW FROM WORLD FORCE ARTIFACTS – BELLE VUE SHALE BY SAM WALLER
Back in 2013 I spent the summer watching the speedway at Manchester’s Belle Vue Stadium. I’d lock my bike to the gates outside, pay a tenner and wander round the historic greyhound stadium with an Olympus OM10 camera round my neck and a Yashica T4 in my jacket pocket while the brakeless 500cc motorbikes drifted through the shale.
The racing was an obvious spectacle, but what stood out even more was the culture around it, with fans knitting their own Belle Vue Aces jumpers or pinning badges to every inch of their jacket. I don’t know when speedway peaked in England but it felt like it still really mattered to those who turned up—and in even the quietest area of the stadium you’d find someone stood by a tree or a pile of old tyres scrawling down the scores in a notebook.
Belle Vue Aces moved down the road in 2015, and the last time I rode my bike past the greyhound stadium it had been flattened. This book is about what used to happen there.
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Dean Blunt – ancnt grz ’22-25
Shonky Neil Young samples… vocals ripped from WWF Diva entrance music… no song titles in sight… in the year 2026 ‘Dean Blunt-esque’ is lazy shorthand for pretty much anyone doing things slightly differently, but the man himself is still way out in front.
The best current music is found in Mediafire zip folders.
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World Force Artifacts at Black Lights – 28/06/26
Going to be at the Bound book fair at the White Hotel’s Black Lights festival this Sunday in Blackpool’s Winter Gardens Atrium. Should have zines, books, prints and various other rare artifacts dredged from the shoe-boxes.
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Lola Hammerich – Going About My Day
If you’ve been lucky enough to have seen Fine play live over the last year or so you’ll be aware that her touring guitarist Lola Hammerich is a big part of why those songs sound so good. Here’s a perfect song about swimming and riding bikes around Copenhagen with the perfect Billy Corgan circa Pisces Iscariot guitar line at the end (and the perfect shotgun sound effect).
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Erik Kramer – Where the fish are as fine as the color of colors
As far as ‘liminal spaces’ go, the ferry terminal is a much overlooked but particularly potent zone of transient pergatory. This recently reissued tape from Chicago’s Erik Kramer — perhaps unintentionally I should add — perfectly captures the atmosphere of these stations out by the water, instantly transporting me back to damp afternoons in the late ’90s, waiting to make the crossing over to a Scottish island.
Crockery clatters as half-drank teacups are cleared off the table. The rain lashes down on the plexiglass windows. A CRT mounted on the wall struggles to show the local news as the wind outside beats against the aerial. There’s a few old boardgames stacked in the corner along with a small shelf of travel books, Tom Clancy novels and a dog-eared paperback of Gary Snyder poems. And somewhere in there, there’s music.
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Cooper B. Handy – Cardinals
Listened to this at least six times this morning already. Cooper B. Handy is a true modern master.
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Delroy Edwards – It’s Happening (To Me)
Two and a half minutes of back-alley scuzz courtesy of Mr Edwards. Anyone got a copy of Hangin’ at the Beach they want to sell me?
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Stunners – Stunners
Context is overrated. I’ll take a nine minute World Music instrumental randomly uploaded to Youtube over some drawn out ‘album cycle’ any day. File this one next to Yakub, 1995 Epilepsy and Miserabella.
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Secret Places of the Lion – Saturn Fern
Music is a cheap way to travel. I’ve never been to Arizona, but this new/old tape from Mass-based zoner Secret Places of the Lion certainly sounds like how I imagine the remote sections of the Copper State to be (even if it was recorded in an apartment in New Haven), spiralling long-form guitar work like the circling of vultures in a sun-scorched sky.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Steve Thomsen’s desert spelunkings lately, and the nine tracks here scratch a similar wide-open itch — conjuring a powerful mirage that’s most definitely worth chasing down.
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Tabi Tapes 22 – Arsenii
If you drive around with the same tape on for long enough, sooner or later, at least for a few seconds, the audio coming out your speakers will perfectly match up with the events that are happening on the street.
The gentle new-age sounds compiled on this fine tape probably weren’t intended to soundtrack a man in an Ashton side-street waiting patiently, keys-in-hand, for the shutters of his supplement shop to roll-up so he can start the working day, but they certainly do the job well.
