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Unsung Podcast

If there was a definitive discography of classic albums, what should be in it? Hosts Mark Fraser and Chris Cusack, plus the occasional guest, discuss and dissect perceived classic albums to decide which albums would make this list. We also interview amazing artists, do genre deep dives and throw a journalistic lens on musical topics you might not know much about.

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Exploring the Magickal History of Coil (Part 1) w/ P6 from OMO, Desalvo, Stretchheads and Security

Coil have a reputation for being genuinely difficult: ritualistic, transgressive, the kind of band you approach the way you'd approach a locked door marked "occult correspondence, keep out." So it's a bit disarming that this episode opens with hand-written Christmas cards from Jhonn Balance and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, sent to a teenage psychiatric nursing student in Paisley who wrote to…

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What Does the Explosive Reaction to King Tut's and DF Concerts Tell Us About the Growing Sense of Injustice in Grassroots Music?

If you've been tuned into the news around the Scottish grassroots music scene at any point in the last few weeks, you'll likely have seen there's been a bit of controversy brewing around King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow and their owners, DF Concerts. Following a piece published in The Bell , where numerous people spoke out about the poor terms that King Tut's offers to emerging artists, various…

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IN SESSION: Jonzip from The Zips Talks About the Life and Times of Being in Glasgow's First(ish) Punk Band

This week we sit down with Jon Zipp of The Zips — one of Glasgow's original 1977 punk bands — for a conversation that doubles as an oral history of Scottish punk. The Zips' story is a strange and charming one. Formed in '77, gigging by '78, split by the end of 1980 after two small-run EPs — 500 copies of the debut, sold out in six weeks — the band lay dormant for over two decades until a record…

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FROM THE VAULT: Split 7" - Our Perfect Festival Line Ups

We reach into the vault this week to extra an old bonus episode that has a fairly unique format we liked to called the Split 7". In this episode, we talk build our own festival line ups. ORIGINAL SHOW NOTE We’re going to be 4 years old soon and for pretty much every single week of those 4 years (with the sole of exception of around this time last year when a technical issue made us lose an entire…

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IN SESSION: Mark Davyd from the Music Venue Trust Talks About How PRS for Music Refuse to Show Artists The Money

In this interview, Mark Davyd, founder and CEO of Music Venue Trust, mentions the "famous" and famously misattributed Hunter S. Thompson quote about the music industry. It goes "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." It's now common knowledge that Thompson didn't…

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IN SESSION: An Interview with the Lord of the Logos, Christophe Szpajdel

You might think you don't know Christophe Szpajdel's work. You almost certainly do. The Emperor logo. The Metallica Mankind clip. The Rihanna lettering that went a hundred feet high at the MTV VMAs. If you've spent any time near heavy music, his hand has been on things you've stared at without knowing his name. This week we sit down with the man known as Lord of the Logos — Belgian-born,…

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Are Cabaret Voltaire Britain's Most Pioneering Electronic Act? (Side B) with P6 from Stretchheads, Desalvo and OMO

In our previous episode, we went deep into the history of Cabaret Voltaire and their importance to UK industrial and, latterly, dance music. Now, we follow the trail we laid therein by taking a journey through the band's extensive discography, really fleshing out how they went from a Sheffield attic in 1973 to a Patagonian field site recording lizards for David Attenborough. Along the way, we take…

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Are Cabaret Voltaire Britain's Most Pioneering Electronic Act? (Side A) with P6 from Stretchheads, Desalvo and OMO

Cabaret Voltaire are no one thing. Depending on which corner of the internet you found us from, you might know them as the caustic Sheffield noise act who preceded post-punk, the sinister electro-industrial outfit with a penchant for evangelical samples and anti-fascist agitprop, or the dancefloor-adjacent act who fetched up on Factory's Belgian satellite label and made something close to club…

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Did Hollywood Kill Jóhann Jóhannsson?

We don't often cover classical or neoclassical music, as it’s a wee bit out of our wheelhouse. But that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy it—often, our entry into that world is via film soundtracks. Jóhann Jóhannsson is a perfect example, having scored some of the most iconic films of the last 20 years. However, that’s only part of the story. Jóhannsson also released a series of acclaimed solo records;…

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Rock and Roll Killing Machine by Drowningman

This week, we're talking about two things we think are quite interesting. First off, we chat about the early mathcore/metalcore band Drowningman and reflect on why they never quite reached the heights of their peers, such as Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan—bands they often found themselves touring with in the late 90s and early 00s. While that story is compelling in itself, Drowningman can…

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FROM THE VAULT: Corollaries by Lubomyr Melnyk

This week's episode is another FROM THE VAULT as we travel back to one of our (sadly) many episodes that were recorded during the pandemic. This one is actually a condensing of two episodes on the weird/genius/odd/interesting music, and personality, of pianist Lubomyr Melnyk. Enjoy! Chris has been chomping at the bit to do this Lubomyr Melnyk album for a while. In fact, some may even remember that…

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