The 2013 Listen To Me Top Ten - Nominations

As usual, my December show on Dandelion Radio will feature the Listen To Me Top Ten - a selection of my ten favourite bands or artists who've contacted me during the year and introduced me to their music, for which I'm very grateful.  The numbers doing this during 2013 were greater than ever so the ten selected came from a very large pool and inevitably form an extremely strong shortlist.

During the show, I'll attempt, with great difficulty, to put them in some kind of ranking order, but for now the ten selected bands and artists are listed below.  I'd recommend you check them out if you've not done so before, because they're all extremely worthy of your attention.

The nominations:

Burning Condors (Bandcamp)
Jude Cowan (Website)
DerTANZ (Bandcamp)
Dot Dash (Bandcamp)
Indidginus (Soundcloud)
Diane Marie Kloba (Website)
Labasheeda (Website)
Laurence Made Me Cry (Website)
Music For The Muted (Soundcloud)
Nac/Hut Report (Website)

A reminder again that you can vote for your own favourites of the year in the official Festive Fifty at Dandelion Radio here. 

Jack Hayter - Sisters of St Anthony (the final chapter)

It's been one of the more remarkable series of releases in recent years.  Audio Antihero, an almost absurdly prolific record label, not only had the solid good sense to put out the recent recordings of Jack Hayter, former multi-instrumental wizard with Hefner, among others, but to put them out in a 12-part series of subscription singles.  It's been like feasting on the most sumptuous banquet, served slowly, knowing that the next instalment is going to be at least as mouthwatering as the last.

Now we've reached the last of the releases and it's going to be like facing the end of a beautiful relationship.  The comedown will be difficult, though easier for knowing that this doesn't mean the end of the road either for Hayter or Audio Antihero.  If this series has proved anything, it's that they both have such great musical sensibilities that there's bound to be plenty more where this came from.  But that didn't really need proving anyway.  So in a way, it's more an au revoir than a goodbye, though the gap between this last meeting for now an the next one will be, for a while, fairly unbearable.

It's hard to pick out highlights from the 24 tracks because there hasn't been a single weak link in this remarkable chain.  'The Shackleton', perhaps, which Audio Antihero also kindly donated to our Into The Light compilation at the end of last year, or 'Farewell Jezebel', which brought Jack back together with old Hefner buddies Darren Hayman and Antony Harding; perhaps 'King of the Shale', which I suppose I loved so much partly because its celebration of the great Ivan Mauger reacquainted me with my childhood speedway memories, the surreal whimsy of 'O Dreamland!', or 'Sisters of St Anthony' itself, which features an excellent vocal contribution from Suzanne Rhatigan and which I've been featuring in my Dandelion Radio show this month.

But there's a case to be made for Jack having left the best till last.  The final single in the series couples the raw folk of 'Quotes' with the evocative spoken word track 'The Lab Technician and the Sexton'.  I've decided to take the unusual step of featuring both 'sides' in my May Dandelion show, which will start streaming from Wednesday.  Great releases demand their own rules, after all, and something great enough to provide such a brilliant finale to this amazing series provides an even better reason for disregarding normal protocols.  

The whole series can be obtained from the Audio Antihero bandcamp site and they're throwing the excellent 'Sucky Tart' EP into the package too. Which is highly fitting for a series that, just when you thought it was as good as it could get, kept pulling out something even more extraordinary.

Local Underground - Recorded at Rocker's EP Series

I'm a great lover of the historical accident that is the radio session.  John Peel introduced them into his shows in the late sixties purely for licensing reasons and they remained a feature of the Peel programmes right up to the end.  In latter years he'd schedule everything else in his show around the session tracks and deliberately not listen to them before they were being aired, giving them a particular eminence and status.  There are many bands (I'd venture Stiff Little Fingers, The Slits and The Only One for starters) whose finest recordings still remain those they recorded for the Peel show.

When Dandelion Radio came along, we decided the session was one feature of the Peel shows we'd rather like to continue, so we did.   For me, they've provided some of the most memorable moments of the station's history, highlights including the live set Errors recorded for Andy Morrison, the amazing mix Fun-da-mental put together for Matt Jones and, perhaps best of all, Tender Trap's session for Rocker's show in late 2011.

Rocker's been one of the more proficient session broadcasters at Dandelion.   He also has the distinction among our DJs of having the facilities to invite bands around to his house and record them at home - most of us, including me, rely on the artists to record themselves and send in the results.  He's now begun to put some of them out via his Local Underground label and the early releases are, predictably, an absolute delight.  They consist of  the excellent session from Leeds band T.O.Y.S. broadcast in March this year, and the memorable debut from Bristol's The Short Stories that appeared in 2012.

Soon to be released is the session currently being broadcast on Rocker's Dandelion Radio show for April, courtesy of the The Carbon Manual.   If you haven't heard it yet, give it a listen before the monthly schedule finishes on Tuesday - it's another fine addition to the series.

All the EPs can be purchased from the Local Underground site for a minimum £2 a throw - all proceeds go towards the running costs of Dandelion Radio, and therefore go right back into the pot for producing more great stuff like this.  But the best reason for getting them is that these are bands that deserve to be heard and, given the consistent excellence of Rocker's sessions over the last few years, I guarantee there are plenty more where they came from.

Postcode - The ZebrATP EP

I've spent so much time recently sulking about the demise of The Chasms that, I have to admit, I'd forgotten for a while the other excellent band who hail from the Isle of Man.  They're called Postcode and they've just released their best record yet.

Inspired by the All Tomorrow's Parties festivals, their ZebrATP EP is now available from the band's bandcamp site.  It's sees this already fine combo taking the kind of leap in quality you never know a group has in them until it happens.  With this release, Postcode have gone from an extremely likeable indie pop band to purveyors of the most glorious music of its kind I've heard this year.  I've talked elsewhere about indie rediscovering its radical edge in recent years, and this collection might be to 2013 what the Tender Trap album was to 2012.

What astonishes most about the release is its range.   This collection of seven songs is not merely a batch of mid-tempo indie rockers.  Opener 'Reds' has a caustic brilliance that the band will return to in the storming 'Pavilion Song'.  Sandwiched between them is the gorgeous, meditative 'Fairy Hill', complete with electric piano.  And we're not even half way through the EP.  The overriding feeling I get after listening to the whole collection is to ask myself whether that was really just seven songs.  So much is packed into the EP's tender frame that you feel you've experienced almost a double album's worth of material compressed into less than half an hour.  Closing track 'Goodbye Minehead' on its own comes out like an epic finale despite falling short of the 4.30 mark and has a plaintive brilliance that would enhance any festive fifty.

In fact, I've probably made a mistake reviewing the EP as a whole.  Each song deserves to be appreciated in its own right, considered and, if you will, dissected as the slab of classic indie it unquestionably is.  I'll leave you to do that yourself.  You can get a copy of one of the records of the year here.  It's name your own price as a download or just three quid to get a CD with bonus track.  

I'm playing the sublimely energetic-yet-fragile 'Sunfield' in my Dandelion Radio show in April, streaming from today and at various times during the month. It's the shortest track on the EP but seems to last for ages, perhaps because I keep putting it on repeat.

Mister Lies - Mowgli

Only just realised that this is my second post on a Chicago-based musician in a matter of weeks.   Not that there's much else, on the face of it, that's similar about the Diane Marie Kloba album and this, an electronic masterpiece from the Lefse label.  Beneath the surface, though, there's a common throbbing vein of experimentalism and a desire to probe and manipulate unconventional sonic soundscapes that makes the two releases fascinating a comparable with little else I've heard recently.

Admittedly this doesn't tell us anything at all about Chicago, but it does reveal something about Mister Lies, who released a whole raft of singles and EPs throughout 2012, most of which I've only just caught up with: all of them offered strands of enticing musical ideas that have built up to this, an eight track masterpiece that on the strength of only a few listens muscled its way into my top ten albums of 2013 (so far) list last month.

Now, you're about to hear (assuming you tune in) Mister Lies, the alias of producer/artist Nick Zanca, on my Dandelion Radio show for the first time, streaming from tomorrow at various times through the month, starting with an 11am (UK time) broadcast on Easter Monday.  That I've chosen 'Dionysian' to play from the album may be considered a little strange given my show's insatiable penchant for the new - this track, after all, came out as a single some five months ago.  There's a simple reason for this: the track's an absolute stormer and I'm angry at myself for not having played it sooner, so its appearance here gives me an opportunity to rectify that and also give you the best possible introduction to this fine album.

Not that you should stop with 'Dionysian', of course.  Other highlights on Mowgli include the expansive opener 'Ashore' and the evocative 'Hounded', which features a gorgeous vocal performance from Aleksa Palladino.  'Canaan', a mere snippet of a track at less than two minutes, manages to cram more into its truncated length than other artists could find in five times the length.  To say that it, like the rest of the album, punches above its weight is a massive understatement.

As with other tracks on the album, 'Canaan' draws on a guest performance, in this case a vocal and field recording courtesy of Julia Rose Duray.  I'm slightly ashamed to say I know little about Zanca's collaborators here, but he's clearly a man with perfect judgement because each contributor offers something slightly unique to every track while not detracting even slightly from the project as a whole.

Get a copy of Mowgli here and, while you're at it, bookmark the page and keep checking back.  Something this good has got to have plenty more to say in the future, and you're doing to want to hear it.

Top Ten Albums of 2013 so far...

Sitting here on a chilly Good Friday morning sifting through the dozens of excellent releases that have assailed my lucky ears so far this year in any effort to come up with the top ten albums of the year up to the end of March.  I don't know why I give myself these tasks, which invariably end up in a bad headache, but I do.  

By the time I get round to my year-end list you'll probably find that the order of this has changed a lot because it always does.  Anyway, for now, I reckon these are the best ten albums of the year so far.  Some I've reviewed elsewhere on this blog, some I haven't.  Some you'll have heard on my Dandelion Radio show, and a few will be appearing for the first time in my April show which starts streaming on Monday.  This is limited to 2013 releases only, so I'm afraid an excellent album like The Peach Tree's The Taint of Saidin, which came out right at the end of December, isn't ineligible - if it were, it would certainly be in here.
 
Anyway, here we go, and I would strongly advise you click on the links to go to the releases and listen for yourself, especially as a fair few of these are available for free and those that aren't are offering a life-enhancing experience at a remarkably low price:

10. The Moths Are Real - Serafina Steer (Stolen)

9. Mystical Weapons - Mystical Weapons (Chimera)

8. Filthy Huns - Filthy Huns (Not Not Fun)

 

7. Why Can't You Write Something Nice For A Change? - Tingle In The Netherlands (Nerve Echo)

6. Last Test - Dementio13 (Self-Released)

5. The Diary of Me - Laurence Made Me Cry (Self-Released)

4. Mowgli - Mister Lies (Lefse)

3. Angel-Like Contraction Reverse - Nac/Hut Report (Double Hallucinative)

2. Less Talk, More Oi! - P.F.A. (Self-Released)

1. Surge of the Lucid - Dissolved (Daddy Tank)

Not fair on the others really to have to compete with the Dissolved album, a release which revealed that even the great Daddy Tank label were still able to set the bar a notch higher in terms of quality and potential to blow the mind.  I still listen to it at every available opportunity.  Thanks to all ten releases - and indeed the many hundreds outside this top ten - for providing a fantastic soundtrack to what, so far, has been a very strange and interesting year for me.  Long may it continue.

Lee Negin - Lunar Collection

As will be clear from anyone who's either read this blog or heard my Dandelion Radio shows in the last couple of years, I can't get enough of Lee Negin.  There are some electronic artists who dabble in a form that, if you're not absolutely aware to its vicissitudes , will quickly swallow you up and drain very quickly any creative energy you once had so that you, very quickly, become stale and predictable.   Lee Negin is not one of those artists.

Negin expertly controls his sounds, never a slave to a rhythm or a preconceived idea.  Here, he moves dextrously between the sparse and atmospheric, as in the nine minutes plus of opening track 'Commute', to the rumbling intensity of 'Cosmic Ooze' while still able to step into the sub-tribal beats of 'Cheeze Sticks' when the mood takes him.  Throughout, snatched voice excerpts play around the beats like enigmatic satellites of sound with no pre-ordained orbit.  In Lunar Collection, even more than in other recent releases from this remarkable artist, you're never allowed to dwell in familiar surroundings for long.   The atmosphere around Lunar Collection is light, the hold of gravitational laws tenuous.  It makes for a listening experience that's as stimulating and challenging as it is enjoyable.

I've chosen the masterfully ironic 'Spare The Rod' to play in my Dandelion Radio show in April, which will begin streaming on Easter Monday.  The track winds loosely structured beats and sound patterns around snatched soundbites dictating moral strictures and battered American conservative mores, pummelling them purely with the weapon of expertly deployed sound structures.  In the universe inhabited by this album, no such simple-minded rhetoric can hope to survive: easy concepts are warped and mangled into obtuse shapes, and quite right too.

You've got to be an artist extremely confident in your abilities as well as highly proficient to put together an album this diverse and yet make it hold together as such a sublime whole.  Lesser artists would opt for a single style and hide behind its unifying mass, claiming thematic consistency as the greater good.  Lee Negin, as we've observed, is not such an artist.

Get a copy of the album here.  Then take it home and put it on repeat.

Hungarian Punk - I can't get enough

Regular listeners to my Dandelion Radio show will be aware that, for the last year or so, I've rarely been able to get through a three hour programme without playing something new from the vibrant Hungarian punk scene.

For some reason Hungary - and in particular Budapest - seems to have generated a whole slew of great bands who are combining the best of that original punk spirit with something a bit different and idiosyncratic and it's making for an explosion of hard-edged guitar music with qualities quite unlike those from anywhere else in the world.

There may be a reason for all this, but there's no point me speculating because I don't know what it is.  All I know is I keep finding punk bands, discovering they're from that part of the world and, in about three-quarters of cases (which is a tremendously high proportion), realising that they sound quite unlike any other band I've heard.  Which is saying a lot, because the vast majority of punk I find elsewhere tends to be uninspired, unoriginal and formulaic.  Why is Hungary different?

Maybe it's something to do with elements from an eastern European country that were prevented from flourishing fully at the time of western punk's flowering coming to the surface and fusing with an alien spirit to produce something new and different; maybe, as with Japan a couple of decades or so ago, the bands themselves have an unabashed raw love for what they do that's untainted by the cynicism you often find among British or American practitioners of what is, after all, a pretty well-mined seam of music; or maybe there's something about Hungary, something deeply immersed in its rebellious socio-economic spirit that came to life so dramatically in the fifties and which now resonate through the music of so many remarkable bands.

Whatever it is, its most consistently brilliant recent practitioners are probably Opus Null, although it's a close thing. The brash brilliance of their Alkotmanyos Anarchia album thrilled me even more than any other Hungarian album last year and their follow-up split release with Szijj Ferenc continued to showcase this remarkable band in all their unrefined, ragged glory.

But before I'd even discovered Opus Null, I was thrilling to the sounds of Amstatten Bedroom Punk, a band whose style has a more experimental and slightly darker edge, as displayed on their unpronouncably brilliant vxcfsxa EP which was followed up last summer by the even more experimental (with free jazz bonus track) Epische Krankheit release.   After this the varied Hungarian punk gems seemed to swarm in from everywhere - the existential sub-Joy Division mood pieces of A PART, for example, whose Tavol mini-album reached our grateful ears in September last year, or the murky thrash of Wormkids whose fascinating and sinister Inzen album remains, as far as I'm aware, their sole creative outpouring.


And it hasn't just been about Budapest.   Check out the excellent Youth Violence, from Savarra, whose anti-establishment diatribes come hard and fast in the speed-rush that is their self-titled EP, or Veszprem's P.F.A., whose Pigheart album from last year has recently been followed up with the, to these ears, strangely named Less Talk, More Oi album, which has firmly embedded itself into my heart as one of the best albums released this year and placed that band, for the moment, even above the venerable Opus Null in my affections.

It doesn't stop there.  Check out the surf-punk of Summer Schatzies or the off-kilter delights of R. Vomisa Caasi; and in my Dandelion Radio show this month, you can hear a demo from the full-on Back Off!! while coming up in April I'll be playing a demo from Mudpie, something from the self-titled Diskobra album and of course a track from the P.F.A. release mentioned above.


Mudpie

The great thing about all this is that I know there are still bound to be many more gems as yet undiscovered.   I look forward to showcasing as many of them as possible in forthcoming shows but, until then, check out the links in this article - almost all of them are available as free download - and get yourself acquainted with the most productive and fascinating punk scene for many decades. 

Origami Horses - Velvet Rock

 

I've always been a sucker for record sleeve designs that have a picture of a broken doll on the front.  Such images rarely disappoint and, given that the words on the front also include 'Origami Horses', the chances of this single failing to please instantly reduced still further.

I caught onto what was going on with this intriguing duo towards the end of last year, when their In Monochrome EP found its way into my ears and into my life.  I included them in my list of favourite new bands at the end of the year and we featured a track from them on our Unwashed Territories Into The Light compilation.  Now, their 'Velvet Rock' single is out, available from the Origami Horses bandcamp site and also via the Magnetic Eye label, who've had the solid good sense to pick up on the enticing vibes emanating from this quirky, engaging and surprisingly original outfit.

I say surprisingly because the raw materials that go into making Origami Horses are really quite traditional.  John sings and plays guitar and bass, while Matt drums.  What comes out of the other end is easily definable as a song and yet the collision of the elements therein come across like a mad boffin taking them into an illegal laboratory, dosing them with chemicals extracted from his collection of Velvet Underground, Seeds and Standells records, dusting them off against the hairs of his arse and throwing the results out of the window to reassemble themselves in any manner of semi-random and unexpected configurations.

'Velvet Rock' is no exception.   At heart it's an uncomplicated garage belter, but beneath the surface things happen that set the track well apart from other mutations of the species I've heard recently.  There's an enticingly manic quality to Matt's drumming, and as the tune proceeds John's guitar starts doing that thing where it appears to acquire a life of its own, careering off to copulate messily with the drums in some area of the stratosphere occupied only by them.

Or, if you prefer, this is an absolute stormer of a tune on which you can gorge mind and body in roughly equal degrees.  Amazingly, it comes in at under three minutes, leaving me to wonder, once again, at the strange dimensions of a rock and roll universe that can allow this timespan to cram so much into its relative brevity.  Not all bands can do this, of course, and most fail immediately or else disappear up their own arse trying to avoid their fate.  Origami Horses court neither possibility and can justifiably claim to have released the most remarkable single of its type so far this year.  Hear it in my March Dandelion Radio show this month and head over to bandcamp, or Magnetic Eye, or both, and grab a piece of it for yourself.

Glasgow Popfest 2011 - Paradise Reclaimed

I recall, back in the late eighties, going to a Cud gig with a friend who'd spent the previous six months immersing himself in folk and world music to the exclusion of almost everything else. After a fantastic performance that caught the band just at their peak, he said he'd rediscovered himself, and realised he was 'an indie kid at heart'. Although I can't claim the circumstances are exactly parallel, I left Glasgow Popfest with a similar feeling.

What the event - held between the 8th and 11th December in Heavenly on Glasgow's Hope Street - did was reaffirm just how exhilarating, unpretentious and downright entertaining this all too easily dismissed form can still be. Within seconds of entering the venue on Friday evening, I was swept up in the considerable frenzy generated by Spook School's opening set, so much so that when they gave out free homemade CDs at the end and announced they had only one left, it wasn't just the whisky I'd spent much of the afternoon imbibing that led to me forgetting my inhibitions and shouting for one with the desperation of a spinster reaching out for a tossed bouquet. You'll be able to hear a result of my successful lunge when I play a track from it in my Dandelion Radio show in January.

The moment was, if you'll allow, something of a microcosm of the event as a whole, because at its best indie pop is inhibition-loosening music. Manda Rin & The Rinettes more than captured Manda's early Bis form, her unmistakeable tenor squeal accompanied by tossed out ironic gestures that only come from a performer of her considerable pedigree and verve. Ditto Amelia Fletcher, headling Saturday night with Tender Trap and dishing out an object lesson in close harmonies atop gorgeously redolent guitars. The session they'd done for my colleague Rocker's show was my favourite Dandelion session of 2011, and this was even better, the new songs rubbing up against the old, melodic delight faultlessly piled upon melodic delight courtesy of one of the true greats of British indie.

And it wasn't just the veterans at the top of their game. The remarkable Standard Fare served strong notice that their upcoming January album is likely to be an early contender for one of the best releases of the year. Bubblegum Lemonade delivered wistful and sumptuous melodies of a rarely bewitching ilk, while Barcelona's Cola Jet Set's girl group harmonies and sprightly keyboard-driven head-rushes meant that even the considerable hand-clapping that accompanied their set worked perfectly, a further example of indie pop's ability to take apparently tired and outre elements and imbue them with freshness. My cynicism draining at every step, I was then dragged into the sprightly world of Madrid's Zipper, offering a sugar rush of C86 goodies spiked with a pinch of punk.

Such was the conveyor belt of wonders on display, it's hard to pick a band that stood head and shoulders above the rest, but I might be prepared to plump for the extraordinary performance of Edinburgh School For The Deaf, whose MBV/JAMC guitar pyrotechnics unleash something entirely other on the Heavenly hordes. With vocals mixed way further down than in their recorded work, the performance offered new perspectives on the band's sonic architecture, a characteristic of only the very best live bands, and gave the event as a whole just enough of a serrated edge.

Unfortunately, circumstances dictated that I couldn't stay for the Sunday and thus had to miss veteran headliners BMX Bandits and personal favourites The Electric Pop Group among others. Small indoor festivals like this are a treasure much needed in the UK music scene, and Glasgow Popfest 2011 shone brighter than most.

In my August show: Matt Stevens

Very occasionally you encounter an artist who works in a fairly familiar idiom but whose technique and output is so outstanding it raises him above pretty much everybody else and makes any attempt at categorisation ludicrous. So to call Matt Stevens simply a virtuoso guitarist would be like labelling Picasso 'a painter'. If you're going to put what Matt does in a box, leave the label off, put him in there with the great John Fahey and leave it at that.

Listening to Fahey on Peel shows many years ago, it always enthralled me that someone who, on the face of it, simply made instrumental guitar music could produce something so earth-shattering. Not until I found Matt Stevens did I encounter someone of comparable worth. I played a track from his 'Ghost' album in my show earlier in the year, and I'm following that with a live version of 'Moondial' in my August show, which you can hear on Dandelion Radio at various times throughout the month.

Other than Fahey, it's really difficult to compare the experience of listening to Matt Stevens to that of other solo guitarists. The thrill of the ride is much more akin to what I get from a Mogwai album or the adrenhalin rush of the much-loved Vert:x or The Chasms (incidentally there's a phenomal new track from the latter also in my August show). When you check out Matt's upcoming 'Relic' album on his bandcamp site, you'll find he's tagged it with labels like post-rock and even progressive rock as well as 'acoustic instrumental' and this is probably nearer the mark.

That someone holding no more than an acoustic guitar can take you somewhere so transcendent tells you much about the artist in question and also says something about the continuing thrill of truly great music, still giving so much after so many years. That the guitar in particular is not the spent force so many thought it would be by now is due in no small measure to people like Matt Stevens. We should cherish him and the fact that his kind inhabit the same planet as us.

'Relic' is available for pre-order at Matt's bandcamp site, and I note there are very few left. If you're one of the many who've got your pre-order in already, you're clearly a person of considerable taste. To others of considerable taste, or who aspire to be, I recommend you get across there right now.

Mark W

Five Years Volume Two, Track 12 - Magoo

Magoo - Call Out The Crash Squad (Dandelion Radio session)

Fuelled by a love of bands like Pavement and Stereolab, Magoo, from Norwich, arrived in 1992 and recorded seven John Peel sessions between 1996 and 2004. They also released recorded on Chemikal Undeground in the days when it was just about the best label in the world.

They continue to record and release fantastic music such as their new album 'The Continuing Adventures Of Magoo'. 'Call Out The Crash Squad' appeared in the session recorded for the Mark Cunliffe show in October 2009 as part of Dandelion's 'Peel Legends' month.

www.thesickroom.co.uk/magoo/index.htm

Five Years Volume Two Track 5 - Mind's Eye Dub

Mind's Eye Dub - Back To My Dub (Manwel T Mix 2)

Malta's Manwel Tabone runs the excellent Dubkey net label, featuring original roots reggae and dub compositions from a variety of 'house' artists.

Also from Malta, Mind's Eye Dub, aka David Magro, has been making Mediterranean-flavoured dub music since 1988, first as a member of the Mind's Eye reggae band and more recently recording under his current name in his own studio.

'Back To My Dub' is one of many collaborations between the two artists, all available, along with many other great tunes, for free via the Dubkey label.

http://dubkey.com
http://mindseyedub.com

Five Years Volume Two Track 3 - Darren Hayman

Darren Hayman - Loose Change (Composed by Valentine Leys)

Hefner's 'The Fidelity Wars' and 'I Love The City' were highlights of the cusp of the millennium Peel shows, and the two albums dominated the festive fifty in a way few have since.

It says much of their lead singer and songwriter Darren Hayman that Hefner were merely the beginning of a fascinating career with far too many highlights to mention here. This track is a collaboration with Valentine Leys, who sang 'No Different Girls' during Darren's recent 'January Songs' project. In return, Valentine suggested Darren sing one of her songs, called 'Loose Change'. Darren duly obliged, and he and Valentine have kindly allowed us to feature the song in this compilation. The kind of project of which Peel would have very much approved, we think.

www.hefnet.com