march 2026

spur - salimata

salimata was announced on the we out here line up, so i gave her most recent single supastar livin a spin. it was a niiiice song, and it went straight on to sound service station. later i was round at josh’s and he was playing me some kjade (also great). i shazammed it for my own logs and it was like ‘feat. salimata’! so i went off on how good she was, and we put on her recent album, the happening. i lost it. pure beaming at everything. nodding with a real stank face on. everything. that lady marmalade riff just sauntering along. vibes and bass, keys, easy-osey flow. god damn. if you like doechii, you will loooooove salimata.

two of hearts - stacey q

as if i needed more ivory towers in my life, i’ve been watching two campus-based comedy dramas in one go: rooster on nowtv and vladimir on netflix. rooster is pretty funny, would recommend for a light 30 min laugh. vladimir is fantastic, i think. i read the book in the pandemic and remember being a little disappointed in something i thought i would love, but translated to the screen six years later, it’s got an extremely sexy cast, the politics of the whole debacle feels more nuanced, it’s funny, it’s beautifully shot. a+ from me. anyway, two of hearts is on the soundtrack. sounds fuckin good!

somewhere else - tomora

absolutely fuckin love this radio 1 dance anthems bullshit from one of the chemical brothers and norwegian singer-songwriter aurora. if this came out when i was writing my phd, i would have listened to it on repeat for like three weeks.

some punky bits:

• guard dog - snõõper

• unbroken - howling bells & juanita stein

devil woman - cliff richard

it is a year since my nan and da passed away within a month of each other. it is thus also a year since i spent a considerable chunk of the spring in shetland immersed in the grief sesh with the wider family. i had this urge to get right stuck back into a bottle of merlot and listen to a radio station of 70s rock hits. especially this, except that i couldn’t remember what the song was or who the artist was and so i spent about twenty minutes googling things of the nature of “she’s a something something woman 70s rock song” lmao. imagine my surprise to learn it was cliff richard! feel like he fell off disproportionately for someone who was so huge prior to my being alive.

lanchi biye - mulatu astatke & tilahun gessesse

this compilation, lost tracks: accra to addis, which came out in february, is solid gold. compiled by dj and selector afrocat from her travels and digging in ghana and ethiopia in 2024, it’s all deep cuts from legendary names, with an incredibly warm, tape-recorded sound, like this one by multatu astatke & tilahun gessesse. also loving mèkèyèrshin salawiq by alemayehu eshete.

frailed - flea

flea’s jazz album honora is out. it’s an actual gorgeous piece of work, thom yorke’s weird vocal cameo aside. everything i’ve learned about the work flea has put into this album and to becoming the jazz artist he has always kind of yearned to be has been so touching, and it’s clear he’s incredibly skilled as a musician and a bandleader. not that that is unsurprising, really, but it’s so nice to see and hear.

cleopatra y la serpiente - zombies

perfect wonderful amazing glam rock / new wave from madrid in 1980.

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sagherat assani - tinariwen ft. sulafa elyas

i talked about this briefly on my latest show but i saw tinariwen at primavera in 2013, which feels extremely cool looking back and at the time was a sort of little side note. they’d won a grammy the year before i think, so they were in some form of zeitgeist even for me, one of the whitest 21 year olds present (and that’s saying something). their new album hoggar is gorgeous tuareg sounds.

buggin out - life aquatic band

they’re from sheffield and they sound good! what more do you want.

me-dia:

new episode of sound service station. as well as the usual jazz, psych, folk, new wave, balafon etc, i talk a little about fiddle & accordion music, and play phil cunningham and aly bain. didn’t see THAT coming did you?

media:

• a piece on ‘sync music’, what they’re terming a new term for library music, at the new york times.

• the devo documentary on netflix. really really excellent footage and potted history of the band. the more i mull it over, the more kind of annoyed i am about their attitude to how countercultural they were. but also, the times, they have a’changed. the idea of being seen as countercultural but also being signed to warner music in 2026 is laughable; but then, there are so many more ways to release and distribute music now than there were in the 70s. BUT, all that aside, their cover of satisfaction is just soooo good it’s hard to stay mad.

• not entirely music-based but the northern ballet version of gentleman jack, lol. but it was pretty good! i’d never seen butch masculinity represented in ballet before tbh. crazy that’s still groundbreaking but there you go. quite sexy!