Mix CD #44 - The Dancing Dolls Of Porcelain

Greetings fair wanderer. Come in and rest yourself awhile by the fire, yon minstrels shall strum you a most soothing roundelay.

That is to say, there's the 44th mixblog thing I've done. There's no theme again this month, I did think it might be a good cover and title for an all women blog as I've been fancying doing that theme for a while but, well, I didn't. 

Like the last blog, there's music from several countries featured, almost definitely Canada for sure this time. There's stuff from Denmark, The Netherlands, Australia, Japan, and Greece as well the usuals.
There's a few longer songs this time too, which is good for me as it means less writing.

I'll be starting work on the next blog (Just Some Kid On A BIke) in the next day or so and hopefully, I'll have it out on time for next month.

Until then, take care!
Cheers,
Luke
x

Tracklisting
Bitter Ruin - The Dancing Dolls Of Porcelain
Devin Townsend - Gulag
Woodshed - Til The Cows Come Home
Barb Wire Dolls - Darby Crash
ACxDC - Hipler Youth
Hilltop Howlers - Big Love
King Buffalo - Eye Of The Storm
Lovebites - Warning Shot
Caligula's Horse - Fill My Heart
Jukebox The Ghost - Under My Skin
Gin Annie - Damage
3 Headed Giant - Caught By Surprise
Crystal Knight - Sweet Dream Maker
The Dagg Nabbit Stubbs - Tractor Pull 
Flora Greysteel - Use Your Words
Crosslight - Fighting For What?
Lullwater - Fight Of Your Life
Frank Zappa - Trouble Every Day (Live)

 You can download the mix from HERE should that be your wont.

Mix CD #43 - Keep It Rollin'

I've written you a blog. The best blog. All the other blogs wish they were this blog let me tell you. I don't know where I'm going with that, sorry.

So yeah, finally, here's the second blog of 2019 and the first of non-themed music. Bit shoddy of me that. For those of you that are reading this via the Facebook will have seen my post about the delay but those that didn't, I've just not been properly online that much for the majority of February so I've not been writing much. I've done it now though, you can read it if you like.

There's a wide range of stuff on the mix this month, all of it is very good so please give it a listen. There's artists from a load of different countries this time too, it's all very multinational. There are bands from, obviously, the UK and the US but also Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, possibly Canada? I dunno. Anyway, enjoy!

The Holy Goats - Keep It Rollin'
Division of Laura Lee - Endless Factories
Kelly Buchanan - Slow Watches
The Menagerie - Slangorangutang
Bjorn Berge - Zebra
Neverland - Take Me Higher
Better Days - This House
Night Demon - Dawn Rider
Emme Phyzema - GEM
The Something Somethings - Dining On The Dead
Burn Our Hometown - Oh Donald
Vashti Bunyan - Window Over The Bay
Perkele - One Day
Deever - Only Enemy
Vredehammer - Spawn Tyrant
Electric Sensei - Aphrodite, Your Electric Sexiness
Diggeth - Let The Ancient One Sleep
Codename Colin - Friday The 19th
Super Zero - Nothing Done
Antibody - I See Them
Flummox - A Bundle Of Styx
Elder Devil - City Of Infinity
Blackbriar - Cry Of A Banshee

You can fill your heart with joy and enlightenment HERE

Cheers,
Luke
x

Mix CD #42 - Covers Vol. IV: Do Anything You Wanna Do

Hello and welcome to the first mix of 2019!

It's yet another instalment of cover versions because a) I like cover versions and b) it's a bit early in the year to have much current stuff to put on a mix, so I figured I could hide the fact it's all old stuff by doing a themed one.
There's a variety of stuff here but hopefully, you should like it all. I tried to stick to either a well-known band, a well-known song or a combination of both. In the cases where it's neither, it's because it's a dead good one, I promise!

As always, there's a Download link below the tracklisting, should you wish to actually hear the songs I've blabbed on about. I'll also stick links to the previous three cover mixes I've done if you're interested.

It'll be back to normal next month, Thanks for reading and all that!

Tracklisting
The Almighty - Do Anything You Wanna Do
Stavesacre - Burn The Witch
The Interrupters - The 11th Hour
Sir Hedgehog - Call Me
Neko Case & Nick Cave - She's Not There
Kathryn Williams - I Started A Joke
The Castor Troys - Runnin' Down A Dream
Paradise Lost - Small Town Boy
Refused - Voodoo People
Horrorpops - Rebel Yell (Live)
Gomez - Getting Better
Shaolin Death Squad - Death On Two Legs (Dedicated To...)
Hogwash - Save Me
Jade Bird - I've Been Everywhere
Andrew WK - Fly! Gundam
Napalm Death  - War's No Fairytale
Oceans Of Slumber - Nights In White Satin
Carter USM - This Is How It Feels
The Dresden Dolls - Pretty In Pink
Orphaned Land - Jeremy
Liv Kristine - Streets Of Philadelphia
Captain T - We Are The World

HERE's where you can download all the music, MP3 style.

Mix CD #41 - Top Albums Of 2018

Happy December folks!

For a true Music Nerd, December is a special, treasured time of year, nothing to do with either Jesus, Santa or family, oh no. December, the final Month of the year, is the time when we finally get to wave aloft our carefully crafted AOTY lists in a pompous statement of "The Music I Like Is Superior To The Music You Like" belligerence.

So then, here's my own pompous, belligerent list for you to coo appreciatively at. For a year that started out slow, it picked up pace considerably and there ended up being an absolute ton of albums this year. So much so that I had to extend my usual Top 20 to a Top 40 and there was still a lot of albums I was sad to see knocked out of the list. I could have easily done a Top 60 but you'd have got bored scrolling long before halfway.
It's been a particularly good year for Extreme Metal with more albums of that ilk than ever before appearing in my list, pretty high too. I don't know if it's just been a really good year for super heavy stuff or if my personal tastes have just changed a bit? 

For the first time this blog is a double and, as such, I've split it up into two halves so that it's easier to download.
I've also included a Spotify playlist for those that want it. I had to make a couple of minor changes due to availability but nothing that's going to ruin your day.

Like previous years, I've hidden the tracklisting of the mix(es) at the end to avoid spoilers, such as they are. 
The albums are below in reverse order, I hope there's some you agree with and/or some you'll want to check out afterwards.

I guess that's enough waffle, so long for 2018 and I'll hopefully see you all in January! 

Cheers,
Luke
x

You can download Part 1 HERE
You can download Part 2 HERE

You can listen on Spotify HERE

Attention Please Radio (my guest appearance)

My friend and former colleague, Eddie Carter gets mentioned fairly regularly in this blog, either as a reviewer at All The Time I Was Listening To My Own Wall Of Sound or as host of, the Alternative Music radio show, Attention Please on ne1fm, a station localised in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the North of England. I've been picking a record of the week on that show (a segment cunningly titled the Dunmore Record Of The Week) for a few months now.

Me (L) and Eddie (R)

We've often talked about it but a few weeks ago we finally got organised and recorded a show together. I've picked all but one of the tracks and chatted about each in between. It was a lot of fun to do and I'm pretty happy with the songs I chose.

It aired last night (Monday, 3rd Dec) but it's now uploaded onto Mixcloud so you can listen to it whenever you want, if you want. The songs played are listed below.

The intro song (Gloooorious!) plays under the first bit of chat and is pretty distracting but it's gone by Haken starts. You get to hear my mumbling, Yorkshire drone just fine after that.

Also, I forgot a few album titles, for which I apologise profusely. I'm an old man.


Listen to the Mixcloud stream HERE


Songs
Haken - The Architect
The Darkest Of The Hillside Thickets - Strange
Clutch - What Would A Wookiee Do?
The Cog Is Dead - Blood, Sweat & Tears
(One Band Double Feature)
Toehider - Go Full Bore
Toehider - Old, Old, Old
(80's Spectacular)
Robert Palmer - Johnny & Mary
The Regrettes - Red Light
Polkadot Cadaver - Last Call In Jonestown
Dog Fashion Disco - Magical Band Of Fools
Regurgitator - Crush The Losers
Kick Joneses - Battered And Bruised
(Eddie's Record Of The Week)
Antarctigo Vespucci - Freakin' U Out
The Boy Least Likely To - A Balloon On A Broken String
(Under The Cover)
The Baseballs - Chasing Cars
The Wildhearts - The Miles Away Girl
Agnès Milewski - Lucid Dream
Frontierer - Glitcher
The Gourds - The Way You Can Get
Muscle Tribe Of Danger And Excellence - Old School Blood Trial
Within Temptation - Faster
King's X - Fly

Mix CD #40 - My Slumbering Heart

Following the editing calamity last time, where I deleted half of what I'd already written, I was extra careful while writing the blog this time around. Not careful enough, it seems. I'd almost finished, just had the last couple of bands to type out, tried to delete one little typo and accidentally deleted the entire entry instead. Autosave kicked in instantly and I said some really quite bad words. 

I guess in the end it's worked out better as I've swapped a few things about and included a couple of songs that I hadn't in the previous draft too. Good songs.

Once again there's no theme, some new releases, some from old, revisited CDs and some miscellaneous shit. 

There's also quite a few from albums that are Free Download/Name Your Price on Bandcamp (Astronoid, Retirement Party, Cybernetic Witch Party, Sad Hill plus others) this month. I'd like to name my price as more than nothing on more occasions than I currently do but my money gets sucked away into other, more mundane things so, for now, I'll just have to listen to free stuff and feel a bit guilty about it.

Anyway, there's a ton of really great songs (in my opinion) on the mix this month so I hope you listen to/enjoy it.

Cheers

Luke

x

Tracklisting

Rilo Kiley - My Slumbering Heart

Hedshel - Drown You

Just Friends - Supersonic

T.S.O.L - Satellites

Beachbuggy - Touch My Stuff (You Can Die)

Astronoid - Up And Atom

Driven Serious - Ballad Of Bones

Janus Stark - Clique

A Sound Of Thunder - Charles II

Gama Bomb - Alt-Reich

Mitski - Washing Machine Heart

Thunderhead - Make It Hard

Sad Hill - Heart Attack

Black Mirrors - Lay My Burden Down

26 Miles Per Hour - Bullet Proof

Froglick - Skippy

Retirement Party - Are You My Mother?

Cybernetic Witch Cult - Sagittarius A*

Ty Tabor - Somebody Lied

Hugh Reed & The Velvet Underpants - Car Nicked

Alice Donut - The Son Of A Disgruntled X-Postal Worker Reflects On His Life While Getting Stoned In The Parking Lot Of A Winn Dixie LIstening To Metallica

You can download the mix HERE and read my ramblings below. Ta

Mix CD #39 - Kid In The 80's

And lo! They all did bear witness to the eventual arrival of a new and shining blog. As one they gazed upon its wonder and saw that it was the thirty ninth of it's kind, throughout its majesty lay a partial theme of sorts.

Yeah, this is the 39th mix, that's a bit late due to me losing a goodly portion of what I'd written due to the fecking up of Chrome not once but twice. It's not a themed mix, just the usual 'Here are some good songs, look!" Some of the songs are connected though and I shall now unfold the uninteresting tale of how so.

I love the photo I've used this month (just look at the mind-blowing joy on that kid's face! Also, I had pretty much all of that Star Wars stuff and it was ace) and the Mrs. Fletcher song seemed to fit it perfectly, so I stuck them together and here we are. The partial theme comes from the fact that I also had a few other songs waiting for inclusion that had geeky song matter, song titles or band names so I bunged a few of them into the mix as well. I did toy with the idea of doing a wholly Nerd based mix but there were other songs I really wanted people to hear so I abandoned that for now.

I hope you enjoy the songs, feel free to read what I've said about them and keep yourself alright,

Cheers,
Luke
x

Tracklisting
Mrs. Fletcher - Kid In The 80's
Adam West - We've Got Cake
Killing Heidi - Mascara
Thrashist Regime - Headshot
Kiefer Sutherland - All She Wrote
Edna's Goldfish - Trace Your Steps
Dreadnought - Transpiration
Thundering Asteroids! - I've Got A Thing For The Goblin King
30 Amp Fuse - Over The Hill
Bleachers - Like A River Runs
Sick Shit - Trichotillomania
Soup Or Villainz - I Can Teach You Magic
Which Witch Is Which - You Get What Anybody Gets
Morpheus Rising - Touch The Sky
Mudshark - It Won't Shine
Cloud Cult - Everything You Thought You Had
Amyl And The Sniffers - I'm Not A Loser
Tricklebolt - 1996
Bloods - Best Friend
Patterns Of Decay - Tricksy Hobbitses
Pence Eleven - Miss End Of The World

Let THE MUSIC flow through you, young Jedi

Mix CD #38 - I Keep Myself To Myself

Good Heavens, I'm on time with a blog update!

I'm sure you've been sat in the dark, incessantly clicking refresh for the last couple of weeks, awaiting yet another masterpiece. Well, here it is, the 38th masterpiece. There's a mix of new releases that I've been enjoying and older stuff that I have also been enjoying. Again, there are about a half dozen songs from CDs I rediscovered rummaging through storage crates in the attic, Stony Sleep, Soul Coughing, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and a couple of others It's been a slog, copying thousands of albums to iTunes but it's been fun too.

Have a read, have a listen and I hope you find something new/good.

Tracklisting
The Boy Least Likely To - I Keep Myself To Myself
These Wicked Rivers - Testify
War On Women - Divisive Shit
Street Dogs - Lest We Forget
Soul Coughing - Soundtrack To Mary
The Voluptuous Horror Of Karen Black - The Teather Penumbra
Twin Atlantic - I Am Alive
Sojourner - Homeward
The Crocketts - On Something
Smack Mammoth - Loner
Ophidius - Discerning The Transmundane
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Beautiful Zelda
Stony Sleep - I Only Love You For Your Saville Row Boxer Shorts
My Indigo - Lesson Learned
The Mark Of Cain - Call In Anger
Witch Fever - Toothless
Troldhaugen - It's Morphine Time
DNF - 3rd Degree Bernie Mac
The Winter Hill Transmission - Satellites
Sonseed - Jesus Is A Friend Of Mine

You can download the mix right HERE if you want.

Mix CD #37 - Earn Your Stripes

For the last few years, since I moved house, the majority of my CDs have been kept in crates in the attic. I had the albums I wanted at the time ripped to iTunes and never bothered with the discs after that. Over the last 4-5 weeks, I've been tidying up there, restacking stuff and going through all the crates of CDs, a lot of which it's been 10-15 years since I listened to them last. I've rediscovered old favourites, re-assessed albums I'd once passed over and even found a few that I had no idea I even owned.

During those last few weeks, I've ripped the CDs and added around a thousand more albums or so to iTunes. I was concerned that I was starting to run out of things to include on these mixes but, as you can imagine, doing this has massively bolstered my stockpile of songs to sift through. There's about half a dozen tracks of rediscovered stuff on this mix. Feel free to guess which ones.

I really like the album cover I've pinched this month, I think it ties in well with the title. Together they convey the message that the difference between a good soldier and a great one isn't just a skill and propensity to kill but to maintain some humanity and compassion as well.

Tracklisting
The Generators - Earn Your Stripes
Sasquatch - Seven Years To Saturn
Folly - The Weak And The Wounded
Kim Seviour - Fabergé
Snuff - Hey Boff
Marmozets - Like A Battery
Hundred Reasons - She Is Poison
Medulla Nocte - Problem To The Solution
All About Eve - December
Brad Sucks - Thanks For The Add
Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi - Hear The Air
Slugdge - The Chapter For Transforming Into A Slug
Elliott Smith - Memory Lane
The Bluetones - Marblehead Johnson
Dr. Frank - Knock Knock (Please Let Me In)
Fell At Ten - The River
Robert Johnson - I'll Believe I'll Dust My Broom
Cheap Heat - A Chip On The Shoulder
Skarlett Riot - Warrior
The Crimea - Someone's Crying

You can download the mix HERE if you want.
You can read fascinating little nuggets of ramble about each track below too. If you like.

Mix CD #36 - Welcome To Gunville

This mix was originally going to be a themed one, a contentious theme that you can probably work out from the mix title, which hasn't changed.
I started compiling songs that were both pro and anti-guns so as to try and be objective but then I got to thinking, I live in Bishop Auckland, a small town in the North of England and I spent the majority of my life in York, a small city in the North of England. I have about as much real knowledge on firearms as Donald Trump does about tiggy hido so it didn't really seem right for me to get involved too much. Also, I didn't want grief from either The Snowflakes or Team America World Police. Thusly, I bottled it. 

As I said, the title remained and a couple of the tracks but other than that it's now just an unthemed mix of music, both new and old, that I've been liking lately, as per the norm. Hopefully you shouldn't something you don't hate.

So yeah, here's the 36th mix, have a read, have a listen if you want and I hope you like it.

Cheers,
Luke
x

P.S. For what it's worth, I think there's probably a bit of room for compromise on both sides
.
Tracklisting
The Urge - Welcome To Gunville
Samarkind - Thru That Door
Master Boot Record - CLS.NFO
Eureka Machines - Let Me Tell You All About Myself
öOoOoOoOoOo - I Hope You Sleep Well
Million Dead - Smiling At Strangers On Trains
Not Scientists - I Don't Feel So Crazy
Echobelly - Pantyhose And Roses
Torche - Hideaway
NOFX - The Decline
Garfunkel And Oates - Happy Birthday To My Loose Acquaintance
For Love Not Lisa - Daring To Pick Up
Andy & The Odd Socks - Unique
Toehider - How Much For That Dragon Tooth?
Jackdaw4 - Deep And Meaningless
Bearsuit - Itsuko Got Married
[Spunge] - Ego
Owl John - A Good Reason To Grow Old

You can download the mix HERE should that be your fancy