UndergRound Up of the Year, Part 1....

So here we are again, planet earth somehow (HOW?!?) managing to remain intact for yet another revolution around the sun - while we all anxiously hope for a genuine revolution here on the (Under)ground (Up), as those with Spectrum 48K mindsets seem determined to knuckle drag (indeed, bomb) us back into the dark(er) ages, barbarianism over civilisation. Imagine waking to find that all the resources, all the energy, all that precious human ingenuity that's being wasted on war and oppression was suddenly being used for good, to help us, to preserve us, to save us (from ourselves)!

The Fall of The Rebel Angels - Pieter Bruegel The Elder, 1562

….one can but dream on while Braw guides our faithful 5 or so readers through the past 12 months-ish of favourite irregular non-pop culture 'go-to's that keep the mental plates spinning (well, just about). Hard to think that '75 terrorizors JAWS and 'Salem's Lot (and another notable thing) hit the big (Hawaii) Five-Oh this year, clocking up a whopping half century! Where does the time go? So, sit back, wayyyy back, brace yourself for a burst of brackets (these ones) and let the pundown begin (with a middling-aged start to a piddling middle and a frankly steaming end)....

This year's big screen hitter was MARVEL's Fantastic Four ....years too late to save the house of mouse's ideas! Or, indeed, the Fantastic Four(th attempt after so many so-so fanchise misfires), Agent Rob definitely looking fourward to this genuine outing, but.... but.... somehow it just never really hit the expected Baxter Building heights, all the loving retro design work squandered on pretty iffy effects, the towering Galactus coming up short - we'd rather he looked like the comics and not Finchy from The Office, thank you - while the less said about the Silver Surfer's senseless sex switch the better. If they'd had the actual balls to go for boobs and bald, played it all out weird alien androgyny then perhaps they might have, er,  pulled it off. As it was.... 

Hats off to the Thing!

I mean it! Hats off! What a terrible look!

Even kiddie fave The Thing, the one, er, thing Rob was sure they'd get right, somehow landed a little off - Rob just couldn't get his head around the stupid hats he was wearing around his head! - the whole, er, thing winding up a watchable yet (un)fairly pedestrian affair - the overall team casting didn't even hit the usual MARVEL mark, with no one really standing out or feeling like the best fit for their comic counterpart....

Far better in the emotional stakes was the slow-burn Bob Trevino Likes It. Sure, Rob hummed and hawed for a bit, shuffled uncomfortably in his seat as the same old US indie flick schtick played out across the screen, but in the end there's no doubt this subtle, overlooked gem would bring a tear to a glass eye....

Then there was Dune 2, which couldn't help but come off as a second best wannabe art-house opposite to Furiosa - Anna Taylor-Joy even briefly crops up in the dusty desert - the washed out waiting, the glum sunshine, the emotional tedium and overblown visuals making for a verrrry long haul all across the sands....

With virtually no worthwhile 'big on the small screen' television to speak of this year, Rob instead raided the Archives of DVDoom , those fillums that score high on the Brawtometer, to enjoy such fair as Studio Ghibli's deeper cuts - Only Yesterday, Ocean Waves, Grave of the Fireflies - as well as cult draws - After Hours, Stoker (from Braw fave Park Chan-wook) The Dead Zone, The Neon Demon (from Braw fave Nicolas Winding Refn), Donnie Darko, Flickering Lights (from Braw fave Anders Thomas Jensen)....

....while checking out Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress - notable as it's down at heel dithering double act inspired STAR WARS' R2D2 and C3PO - and, Luca$ again, THX1138 - The Director's Cut (which is actually a dreadful Special Edition style hatchet jobbing of ropey CGI into the original film)....

....and how could Rob not mention Jacques (Mr. Hulot) Tati's Trafic, last partially seen on VHS over 35(?!) years ago, a wonderfully subtle slice of Gallic charm that motors along quite artfully - nothing pedestrian about it! (A big Braw thanks too to Talking Pictures TV for screening a clutch of his fringe French fancies, Playtime and Parade). Honestly, how could you choose just one of these posters?

And as per last year, the local charity shop was always worth a browse, offering up plenty of 99p (or less) bargains, some 'one-watchers' others 'finders keepers' from 70's classics - Thief, Two-Lane Blacktop, Mean Streets, Night Moves (RIP the great Gene Hackman), The Sting (RIP the racing Robert Redford) - to curiocult-ish films - Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Encounters At The End of the World (from Braw fave Werner Herzog) Fast Times at Ridgemont High, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, The Liquidator, Quadrophenia, Gregory's Girl, Spinal Tap (RIP the riffing Rob Reiner)....

....through to copious world cinema gems - The Wages of Fear, Kumiko The Treasure Hunter, Red Cliff, Time and Tide, Wings of Desire, Burning, Black Book, Tekkonkinkreet, La Grande Vadrouille, Jamon Jamon, The Returned - and retro boyhood faves - Oh, Mr Porter!, The Vikings and Jason and The Argonauts....

And there was even precious (Christmas) time for Rob to put his worn feet cosy side up and indulge in some of his snowy fairest of favourites - The Fearless Vampire Killers, Noi Albinoi, Together, The Thing, Where Eagles Dare - wintry films that never fail to warm the heart.... 

....and while we're at it, it'd be rude not to mention the very rude Jez Jerzy: Nie Dla Dzieci! (Not For Kids), a fairly decent attempt to bring the underground hedgehog (and Poland) jerking and jiving into the third-ish dimension....

....aside from the eternally shining Bedazzled, what about, The Wrong Box - just look at that glittering gold cast! - featuring a surprisingly warm turn from Peter Cook with Dudley Moore delivering at his humble bumbling best in this witty slice of sixties silliness. Rob even slogged his way through the career slush that is Santa Claus: The Movie, scratching likely his last Dudley itch with this fantastic looking North Pole (for 1984!) piece of myth over (supposed) mirth, Moore reduced to gentle mugging in a film of two sluggish halves (that ends in a resounding 0-0 draw). Funny (not) how a film that attempts to attack consumerism and mass production stoops to the very worst of American product placement by prominently featuring McDonalds and Coca Cola. (Rob then followed this up with the late Dud's fave composer, the spirited wonder of Bach's Christmas Oratorio....)

The Muppet Show: 40 Years Later – Dudley Moore - ToughPigs

Then again, thanks to ITVX, there was the first season of The Muppet Show to enjoy with, surprise surprise, Moore guest starring alongside a musical robot that could emulate, and thus replace, any band. Hmm, sound familiar? As well as Dud it was also nice to see episodes with  John Cleese*, Peter Sellers and, geez, to see you nice, Bruce Forsyth. A 'Britcom' invasion Stateside indeed....

*While fellow former Python Eric Idle ended up on Braw's naughty list thanks to this quote, "I was 16 or 17 when I went to see the [60s satire revue] Beyond the Fringe, and it just changed me. Those people - Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett - changed the way we looked at the world we were living in." And what of Dudley's contribution? Still, Rob had to pass up a free ticket to catch Idle's 2025 tour, so all's fair....

And so it came to pass, Ncuti Gatwa's blink and you'll miss it tenure as Doctor Who coming to an abrupt close (only there were definitely no Weeping Angels, just rejoicing trolls), with an unholy CGI jumble, old school Omega turning up and, er, eating the revived Rani before being obliterated back to where he came from - truly top drawer stuff scraped from the bottom of the writer's barrel! And what about Susan, plopped into the fan-tease-tic mix only to, um, then completely disappear, hung by a plot thread. Cracking (over)stuff. Time for a Lord to "rest". Still, watching on iPlayer the whole thing loops back to the episode 'Rose' so maybe it's a sort of RTD infinity loop, round and round and round, again and again and again. But as to whether the horrorshow(runner) is over...? It certainly seems, as the Di$ney deal vanishes into the vortex, that RTD remains wholly committed to, well, what remains of his version of Doctor Who, y'know, now that he's basically writing it for himself!

Omega suffers the same shoddy CGI fate as 2024's Sutekh

There's a great quote from Alwyn W. Turner's book Terry Nation (The Man Who Invented The Daleks) that sums up NuWho (indeed any modern reboot)'s problem perfectly - “Had he consciously set out to create an enduring myth for the age of the mass media, it simply wouldn't have worked.”

Thankfully Rob could wash his mouth out with a return to Classic Who, now exploding into 1970's colour with the arrival of Jon Pertwee's all-action Doctor - nice to see him seemingly fresh off his last job, sporting a necklace and tattoos in the glorious opening HD of the wonderful Spearhead From Space. The show may be earthBBCbound, but the universe is still expanding at a great rate, with sooooo much to enjoy here, Rob revelling in a crushed velvet purple patch of previously unseen peak Pertwee! Why, there's more U.N.I.T., Autons, Axons, Silurians, Sea Devils, Ogrons, Draconians, Sontarans, Peladon, Three Doctors! – the stars, great galaxies and cosmos  slowly aligning (in front of and behind the camera) all ready for Tom Baker's era to thrive. It's so constantly inventive you can forgive the occasional shouty villain (hey, Omega), exteneded earthy setting, atonal incidental music, or stretched six-parter – the hilarious Police Squad-esque gun battles of Colony In Space spring to mind – or continuity slip “A wine after my own heart.”, from the wonderfully time loopy Day of the Daleks....

And then there's the excellent support from Liz Shaw, the amazing Jo Grant and the arrival of Roger Delgado's scowling The Master – funny how the Third Doctor spends a lot if his time munching sandwiches, pulling comedy terror faces and slagging off The Brigadier's “blow it up” policy only to buddy up with Roger at the crucial moment, just as the nefarious plot holes threaten to go unstoppably awry. And it's so strange, with the benefit of hindsight, as the show switches up for Pertwee's final season – it feels like Tom Baker's already in the building with the time-tastic tunnel titles and Sarah Jane Smith making her debut. It's hard to imagine seeing this fresh for the first time week by week and not even knowing that it was going to get even better in 1975...

...and it does, Tom Baker blowing the bloody doors off the TARDIS from the get go, the high quality never really letting up across his first three years at the controls (The Brain of Morbius aside - good as it is, it perhaps leans too heavily into its Gothic influences), with the Planet of Evil a tantalising glimpse at how (in)credible Who would have looked if shot entirely on film. (And, hush, but Rob has to confess he's not a huge fan of Sarah Jane Smith, finding her a bit 'wet', a poor man's Jo Grant? – and do remember, just to put things into perspective, Rob is a poor man)....

Then quite suddenly, after the opening excellence of Horror of Fang Rock, series four wobbles around all over the place, super steely Leela suddenly comes over all feeble in the half (good idea) and half (craply realised) The Invisible Enemy, while stories like The Sun Makers, Underworld and The Invasion of Time are as flippin' floppy as Baker's broad brimmed hat.... By the time you're watching Sontarans clumping up the back stairs - evidently there's no lifts in Gallifrey, while the TARDIS one doesn't work - you begin to question just what all the retroactive fuss is all about....

In 2025 Sunday became the scene of “event” tv, a back to the old school weekly episode of Twin Peaks (accompanied by a welcome single malt), one of the greatest shows of all time, equal parts silly and sinister, warm but undercut with menace, a show that seems to embrace the cheese of American television while probing at a dark belly underneath – is it celebrating the fact or laughing at it, who can say, as characters turn on a dime, the gentle amusement giving way to uncomfortable ideas. There's no doubt it still chills in and at all the right places. Of course, it's no secret that David Lynch hates the second season of TP and to some extent he's right - you could say the final nail in its coffin is when a boom microphone appears in the top of a scene between Audrey and Ben Horne in episode 13.... 

And, fittingly, for Braw's final outing, Rob finally got around to Twin Peaks: The Return. What a seachange! Gone is the original's warmth (and much of the woozy music too), the show stretching out into a chilly American widescreen of scratching, repetitive atmospherics, unf'lynch'ing in its sex, violence and swearing. It's almost become its very own televisual dark doppleganger in a sense by abandoning the myriad personal dramas of the original - that'll be the daft (but engaging) dynamics of S2 being jettisoned for a more linear though no less off-the-wall tale, Agent Cooper bumbling around and slow blinking like an AI Stan Laurel while returning characters are drip fed to us episode by episode. It's hard to shake the SNL skit vibe as out of shape actors squeeze into their old costumes and have an awkward bash at delivering their stilted dialogue (as the closing dedications to the late Killer Bob, Albert and Major Briggs trickle in). Still, there's a joy in seeing the original cast return, the second episode being a particular highlight as Laura, Leland and Sarah Palmer and the (not as freaky now) One-Armed Man backtalk in the Black Lodge, while James and - woo hoo, the joy! - Shelly hang out in The Roadhouse bar....

But Rob's always been a firm believer in letting the original creators (soarly or gloriously) f*ck with their IPs as per Lucas (STAR WARS), Ridley Scott (Alien) and even, sort of, George Miller (Mad Max), people with genuine vision at whatever (the) cost. Anything's better than the results of clueless fanboy wannabees farting out tepid soft sud reboots, missing all the easy targets to the satisfaction of, well, no one....

Comedy ruled the (air)waves otherwise, from the tech-titters of the always on point Silicon Valley through to the artful situation-subversion of It's Garry Shandling's Show, The Larry Sander's Show, and Arrested Development, and UK cult comedic curio Snuff Box, leaving little time or space otherwise for either the (wearing a bit thin) concluding seasons of Homeland, the slyly watchable Sneaky Pete - Giovanni Ribisi at the head of the ever-crissing double-cross of a well assembled ensemble - the ambiguous motivations of The Night Of, or another turn from Miami's favourite serial killing series Dexter: Original Sin....

Having clocked out of Obi-Wan Kenobi after a few episodes Rob finally dipped his toe into the world of fan edits to see if the trimmed down to a movie version had The Force with it. In a sense it does, albeit a distinctly TV movie one, with shades of Episode IV, apes of Episode II's hunt for ? and a good grizzled turn by (a better suited to the role) Ewan McGregor. Sure, the hits are all very easy targets (that land perfectly as planned), but by ending on "hello there" it cannot fail but raise an affectionate fully circular smile....

Spinning out from comedy to the live stage in 2025 were firstly Tim Minchin, mildly but now firmly on Rob's radar after an evening that tickled everything from the funny bone to the broken heart, and secondly Inside No. 9, making a fantastic switch to the live arena in the old dab stage hands of Pemberton and Shearsmith....

Well, The Doomsday Machine permitting - who knows how many empires have risen and fallen since you began reading this post? - Braw will return in late February to cover a year in music, books and comics in our second half. In the meantime - and time is goddam mean! - here's a nice slice of early techno from Union Jack, a definite comfort in these beyond hellish times....

Union Jack - There Will Be No Armageddon

Brawvert Alert!

Tales of Unearthly Science Fiction

Brawvert Alert!

The Collected BRAW!

Brawvert Alert!

The Collected Evil Wee Comics

Brawvert Alert!

Gently Does It.... :The Collected Rob Miller

Brawvert Alert!

The Big Book of Paddy "Pudsy" Morris

UndergRound Up of the Year, Part 2....

 

"Music is back!", they screamed (while most penniless artists cried, a UK based musician absolutely raking it in with an on average 14K earnings a year). That's right, in 2024 sales hit a 20 year high - but kind of not actually really if adjusted for inflation and streaming and all that - so the shops and Spotify are quite happy to clean up.... as well as all ye olde "legacy artists" still (re)punting their 20-30-40-50 years + wares. With all that in mind, let's keep things moving forward thinking with, er, Braw's UndergRound up of all things, erm, kinda pretty much legacy artist, um....

First up The Orb had a fairly quiet 2024, cropping up for a joint (ahem!) tour with Ozric Tentacles and yet another hardcore fan fleece in the (admittedly quite beautiful looking) Orboretum, curated by the one and only (perpetual dawning member) Alex Paterson, a man well versed in dressing mutton like lamb, especially in this case, the (very best, early) tracks truncated for reasons of space and much of the rest of it given over to their particularly anonymous and superflous Kompact era. What about Orboring, perhaps the better title?

 

Still, when all else fails Rob always defers to the advice of the wonderful The Orb Music & Remixes Facebook group and thus finally properly stumped up for two of Paterson's more recent side-projects, Seti by Sedibus, a warm, organic, semi-ambient stunner with (back) on point samples and Enter The Kettle by OSS, a mostly lumpen 4/4 techno stomper that fails miserably by comparison. It's sprightly, sure, and better reveals itself in part over time, but of the 8 tracks it's a similar split of 4/4, half (mindless floor) filler and half fine (enough)....

After his successful 'redux' of Cydonia it was high time Rob got around to mapping and exploring the vast soundscapes of Orbvs Terrarvm, making good use of the 2008 2cd version to cook up a similarly satisfying reconstructed alternate take. In fact, the mixes on the second cd are mostly far superior to the album versions - they have a certain space and clarity often denied the claustrophobic, overstuffed initial release - so with a bit of reordering, and the inclusion of Montagne D'Or from the BBC Sessions 1989-2001, he made a wonderful travelling companion to their '94 peak....

So it was therefore left to System 7's 777 and Power of Seven to plug this gaping black hole, Miquette Giraudy's shimmering synths and Steve Hillage's stuttering guitars more than a match for the lower reaches of the Ultraworld.... that Thrash, Paterson, Keogh and Glover are all guesting surely helps. Close your eyes (always helps!) and 'Ship of the Desert' could be an adventurous early Orb outlier....

System 7 - Ship of the Desert

Oh, and how's that for a connection as Steve Hillage was also to be found setting the controls on The Charlatans' third album, Up To Our Hips, another record that was subject to creator 'curation' in 2024, a certain Tim Burgess hoping, "the expanded edition allows the listener a never before sneak peek behind the curtain at a record being made by a band in crisis." Apparently. As, for a start you can't really tell this from peeking at any of the extras and, as you can imagine, this release still trails miles behind Rob's own super deluxe of 2023. If anything it seems The Charlatans were not so much in crisis in 1993/4 as unable to tell which of their songs were in fact the best. If you ever had the chance to set a record in definitive stone for the future Rob doubts he'd fill up a second cd with weaker versions of the superior non-album tracks - Subterranean still sparkles but the excellent You and Everybody is subject to a step back, a half-baked demo which is a waste of vinyl, the Easy Life (a fairly pedestrian track in itself) b-side being far superior and not some tinny sounding workout. As well as the welcome Hammond surge of the hitherto unreleased Full of Culture, perhaps set aside as the guitar/organ interplay is still a little clumsy, yet to settle down, there's nice alternate run throughs of Feel Flows and Stir It Up, a trailing b-side that even 30 years ago had more life and urgency than much of the album proper. In addition we have airings of a near-grinding Out , it's not nearly as weedy in its official capacity as Rob remembers, just trimmed down to its detriment, and Withdrawn, tho the already out there session of Up To Our Hips is superfluous compared to the demo*, what with its better "Angels" chorus and genuinely affecting stoned whoosh....

The Charlatans - Up To Our Hips, You & Everybody and Subterranean demos

(*hardcore 'Charlafans' might be interested in also checking out the delightful demo version of Feel The Pressure, tucked away on the second cd of Forever: The Singles, the choppy guitar (and so much more) lost in the completely overcooked, or indeed overcoked, album version. Still, Tim does kind of apologise for steering Up At The Lake in that direction in his autobiography....) 

Photo by Derek Phillip, Manchester 1989

Another UTOH out-take (the last?), Dardanella, is to be found on The Charlatans' own sprawling best of, A Head Full of Ideas (Deluxe Edition) which, a little like the lavish Acetone box set of 2023, is worth the entry price alone for this colour picture of late drummer Jon Brookes thrashing away at his kit (as per the b/w cover of debut single Indian Rope)....

Keeping with the Manchester connection, if ever there was a surprise waiting in the musical wings in early 2024 then it had to be wholly unexpected partnership of Liam Gallagher and John Squire, the guitarist renewed and unleashed after 20 years (pretty much) inactivity, ditching the downbeat, the weary and the reflective questioning of his solo albums in favour of lyrics with a more wry and familiar (and populist) ring, seeming to have recovered some of his anthemic qualities and found a comfortable middle ground between the chime of the Roses debut, Second Coming's rocky bombast and the more Beatles-ish songwriting that characterized The Seahorses. 

"Welcome back, to the land of the living...."

Of course, if anything required quite an adjustment for Rob, then getting used to Liam's "big" voice as they stormed through a more overdriven sound than the Stone Roses ever had, the powerhouse stadium scraping vocals and lashes of guitar, while not ever feeling too far from that band. It's easy to imagine several of the songs filtered through Mani and Reni's glorious rhythmical dynamic and coupled with John Leckie's spacious production - no doubt it would have made a very respectable third coming (with about 5 years more polish, ahem). Overall it's a little too verse, chorus, verse, chorus, guitar, chorus in structure throughout, but with Squire's subtle, slow-burn songsmithery at work it's a triumphant return after 20 years away. Indeed, poor old Ian Brown must be fizzing (in a typically defiant and somewhat churlish manner) at the "what could have beens" of 2017's creative has-beens.

And, as a final thought, how about the frightening fact we're now as far away from OASIS as they were from The Beatles when they started out. Hmm....

Similarly, Goth behemoths The Cure - pretty much a genre all to themselves - unleashed their much anticipated Songs of a Lost World, which finally arrived after 16 years (of latterly teasing), a huge sprawling sweep of emotion, like watching your last sunset, bathed in glorious warmth as the light fades and a cold, unstoppable darkness creeps into your bones.... A strange record with a magnetic pull, hard to resist such is the overpowering weight (or should that be wait?) of it, a critically impervious monster of an album that moves glacially, all consuming, and one that never fails to put an increasingly-creaking Rob on an existential edge....

In spite of the comedown from Stuart Braithwaite's pill-poppingly pointless autobiography, there was a definite rewarding resurgence Rob-side for Mogwai's discography in 2024 - are they a "legacy" act, given they seem to have a loyal following, a vitality and anticipation about them and people still buy their records? They're certainly not caught in a cash cow milking cycle of anniversary tours and deluxe/expanded edition reissues....

Mogwai - Every Country's Sun (live on KEXP)

They're also the only act, maybe GY!BE aside?, who have truly gone the post-rock distance, from the Scot-snot upstartin' somethin' of their fearless (Satan aside) Mogwai Young Team to the icy atmospherics of Happy Songs (f)or Happy People, or the hammer home of Mr Beast, to the simmering threat of Zidane, right on up (yeez) to 2025's top 5 album, The Bad Fire. Although they seem to have lost their knack for memorable titles, that joy jumped the shark several albums ago, and truly (monu)mental tracks - nothing these days slams home like early tracks Helicon 1 or Summer - but their strength, as recent records tighten up and become more consistently album-y(?), as they settle into a middle-age of slow-burn, is that on any given day, on any given album, a track, hitherto perhaps passed over, will sidle up and emotionally sucker punch you, leaving you breathless on the floor. Only a few months to go until Rob checks them out to see how they fare live in '25....

Mogwai - Black Spider 2

RIDE's Interplay arrived sounding just a little bit different, with a stripped back sound, tho Andy Bell and Mark Gardener never sounded so youthful, so much like themselves. Of course, there's the typical RIDE rush of the soaring Portland Rocks, a recapture of that early shoegaze sound arriving with a catchy jolt of instant misty-eyed nostalgia....

DIIV's Boiling a Frog seemed to take previous album Deceiver's woozy (and best) moments (Lorelei) and stretch them out over a whole record, while sticking to their strange remit of having utterly terrible album covers (their debut aside). Unfortunately this frustratingly vague approach sees much of the record drift off – the minimal riffs and melodies don't really catch, the lyrics are lost and at (the best of) times it simply seems to hark back to the previous record's edge, so indeed why not just listen to that?

DIIV - Soul-net

The big question is how would it (and the band) land in a live setting (at SWG3, no less - "Scotland's Worst Gig x 3" or "Surely the Worst venue in Glasgow" by a long shot, with sludgy sound and rubbish views of the stage)....

Elsewhere Rob enjoyed early Underworld, London by way of the charity shop and  Cafe del Mar, to immerse himself in the incredible layered and rippling warm synth washes of Second Toughest In The Infants (and to an extent their debut Dubnobasswithmyheadman), surely peerless in the genre of classic techno 'builder' as tracks morph and weave together creating a fantastic journey. Other than that, there was plenty electronic joy in the slinky minimal acid techno of Plastikman's Musik (and to an extent his darker follow up, Consumed), the pastoral folk-no of Ultramarine's United Kingdoms and (to an extent their prior Every Man and Woman is a Star), and the gloriously Global Communication-esque ambient-ish outings of one half Tom Middleton's Lifetracks and the other half Mark Pritchard's Under the Sun (and to a certain extent his shorter follow up, The Four Worlds)....

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but Rob can't deny when he stumbled across the above record online, the sleeve of Dinosaur Jr's spiky Farm, he was sold (or indeed bought). Add to that the shuddering stoner sprawl of Bardo Pond's Lapsed and Amanita, the modern love (as in Arthur Lee) shapes of Arial Pink's Haunted Graffiti's Before Today, the crisp sparkle and 'in the room' vibe of Canyon's chest drumming Canyon s/t, the boozy sticky floor bar-room b(r)awls of Japandroids Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock, the super soar of Magazine's keyboards on Play (and Play+), the torch lit candles of (other Slowdive incarnation) Mojave 3, the surprising quality of Mansun's 'underrate it or overhate it' Little Kix, the angular indie jabs of Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights, an album finally hitting home and painfully so....

Interpol - Untitled

And there's always (tea) time for MF DOOM's gassed drawls, his own distinct brand of hip-hop in the supervillain shape of the holy “quinity” of Operation Doomsday, King Geedorah, Madvillainy, Viktor Vaughn and MM..FOOD (with a hefty side salad of his Special Herbs for very good measure)....

After much stargazing Rob settled on Quark, Strangeness and Charm as his Hawkwind homeworld, touched down by its move away from their early speed freak outs into a more melancholy space-rock mood and being a blatant sucker for the sweep of its sf tinged lyrics. Thanks to Atomhenge there's a nice 2cd version that, with a bit of i-Tweaking, yields up an equally satisfying alternative take....

If there was one band that's guaranteed to have Rob buying into Record Store Day then surely it has to be Acetone, who offered up a blistering '98 live set (on clear vinyl in a numbered trifold package.... yawn!) as their 2024 offering. Then again, queueing for hours to only be told, "we asked for that but didn't get it" by one shop before traipsing over to another who didn't have it but could get it for a deposit.... who then phoned to say they actually couldn't.... so Rob hurriedly bought it online.... only to get a call after it'd been despatched to say, "hey, it's on its way". Long story short is Rob momentarily ended up with 2 copies (the 2nd of which he sent back). Even shorter, the insult to people that regularly buy records that is the hoary old major label takeover coloured (or not) vinyl reissue pishue known as RSD can quite frankly kiss Rob's Assetone....

Bandcamp threw up plenty of treats this year too, from the return of The Aliens with a sort of wistful retro-rave (see below), to Off land's tingling, spacious ambient, thru The Longcut's angular post-00's yelp, to the yawning vibes of Los Halos, to the shimmering techno sunrise of Capitol K.... and never forgetting the drone blanket of Scotland's Fordell Research Unit and the clattering post-everything of Boobs of DOOM.... and even a new album from Agent Rob's own musical (misad)venture in the push and pull guitar melding of The Mind Robbers....

The Mind Robbers - Tank Town

A mere day after last year's 'myoosik' round up dropped Rob headed off to the (Glasgow) Barrowland Ballroom to catch Slowdive (capably supported by the amiable, easy London quartet Whitelands, all nifty 'nugaze' shapes, nimble guitar and impressive, propulsive drumming). Slowdive themselves took things up a considerable (and surprising) notch, Rachel Goswell proving to be their secret weapon - she looked like the happiest person there, all wide smiles and gentle, expressive dancing/moves, totally at odds with the scene's general (ie. male, affected) spaced indifference. While perhaps lacking RIDE's killer bombast, there's something undeniable about the band, a soulful and truly affecting emotional core beneath the skyscraping songs, one that reaches deep and resonates. (For Rob there's also a strange tinge of melancholy, knowing that the late Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst loved the band but sadly didn't (have the will to) live to catch this vindicated and exceptional second incarnation.)

September saw Rob head off highly anticipating a near rerun of 2022's concert by Godspeed! You Black Emperor again at the Barrowland Ballroom. Sure, it was more politically pointed than last time around - any tour backing an album called "NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD" has to be - and, yes, it was ridiculously loud and unbelievably good, (oft called) "end times" music documenting the last gasp of humanity - think despairing footage of wildfires and destructive industrial processes - while acting as a breath of life-affirming fresh air, both brutal and beautiful. Who'd imagine stark footage of a small bird bobbing on a branch to a thunderous soundtrack would be so affecting? So is this "new dawn" music perhaps, a band doing everything they can to reach us, to shake us up, to get through to us. Indeed, Rob came away thinking nothing more than the fact that music could and can, that it should, change the world, and, y'know, maybe, just maybe, save it.... 

Those of you paying attention earlier (and who have made it this far!) might be wondering if DIIV managed to pass muster live this time around? Last spotted on these shores just before the pandemic hit it was business as usual for the tight 4 piece, with gurning rhythm guitarist/goblin Andrew Bailey front and centre yet again - evidently he hasn't changed his "medication" since the QMU in 2019 - only this time the song lyrics were projected on to his twisted features, allowing Cole to play to the side(line). "Hi, I'm Zachary Cole Smith of critically acclaimed indie band DIIV and I approve this message", intones a poor actor likeness on the video backdrop. Indeed, the pointed 'prominfomercials' that screen between songs - the band will endorse anything from your product to your corporation or candidacy - seem a little at odds with the vague leanings of the music, the singing barely audible (intentional?), buried in the middling venue's muddied mix (unintentional!). Still, no doubt they gave it their all - no deceiving Rob it was another 5 star performance in a (SWG)3 star venue....

There was even a little time to enjoy a few music related books in 2024 too, with Future Days by David Stubbs being one, although, a willingness to experiment, to ignore the before and deconstruct the present aside, the lack of real rock and roll characters did make it something of a little hard work (a bit like the genre itself). Still, if ever a quote summed up the creative process and lifespan, this excerpt fits the bill perfectly.... 

...says (Irmin) Schmidt (CAN). 'What makes, I think, a piece of art, whatever, paintings, sculpture, music, literature - it defines a historical moment. It's made, say, in 1971. What makes it last is that when it succeeds, it's because of a presence of mind that includes in it future possibilities.'

'There is a phrase from [French writer] Paul Valery - in an interview, when he was asked about inspiration. The first phase comes from "up there", and the rest is shitty work. There is the potential. And then it is about concentration, to get to the essence.'

Future Days by David Stubbs

And, hey, what about Vic Galloway's Songs in the Key of Fife, a deepdelve into Fence Records and all things The (aforementioned) Aliens and The Beta Band (also seen slowly and joylessly disintegrating in various studios while making Heroes To Zeroes in their Let It Beta DVD documentary), a sort of how not to DIY it lesson in crumbling mental health and teenage psychosis. An absorbing but bleak book....

Then again, it turned out The Aliens returned - though not with a 3 hour ambient version of Luna as mooted in Songs In.... - while John Maclean's just about to unleash his second film Tornado, and - deep breath! - The Beta Band themselves are back for an evening with.... in the autumn. Geez Louise good things come in threes (a bit like their EPs)....

Betas documentary aside, 2024 kicked off big time with The Clash's excellent, enlightening and enthralling Westway To The World, as well as The Charlatans in Mountain Picnic Blues - good enough, but it just lacks a 20 minute coda of how the band regrouped, assimilated new keyboardist Tony Rogers and carried on recording (and somehow doesn't quite reach the same frightening emotional intensity of the loss as their shiver-inducing segment in the Rockfield Studios documentary). Then we had The Stone Roses in Made Of Stone, their early career summary pure (fools) gold, hidden in among the footage of their so-so Third Coming. Finally, how about CSNY trolling their way around America in Deja Vu, genuinely shaking out the (President) Bush-era with their contrary and provoking (and correct) political stance.... 

Book-wise it wasn't that smart a start to the year with mis-fires like Good Omens - oh dear, Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Apocalypse (2 horsemen out of 4, sorry, as Rob gave this up half way through, unable to slog through to the end (times) - and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, another chore where, like the much derided lunar “loonies”, Rob also gave up half way through the revolution.... Sorry. It took William Boyd's thrilling Gabriel's Moon to get things back on track, with a side dip into his early fish out of water farce, Stars & Bars to get things going....

....while Desperation and The Regulators, two great back-to-back reads from Stephen King/Richard Bachman, made for strange unsettling books, putting the same cast of characters through fantastical and decidedly leery situations with some truly memorable scenes and under your skin descriptions that linger long in the mind. Top drawer stuff....

 "Yep, and there is no gravity, the earth just sucks."

Braw fave Billy Connolly meanwhile swapped being windswept (and interesting) for a bit of Rambling Man (indeed, rambling, man) while showcasing his late career diversion into art - he doesn't like the look or term 'cartoony' unfortunately - in The Accidental Artist. Still, always cheering and inspiring stuff from The Big Yin....

With all things Dudley Moore exhausted, Rob has resorted to reading biographies of Peter Cook in order to wring every last drop out of this dynamic and dysfunctional duo - for instance, in his final moments Dudley listened to his own Songs Without Words album. The downside is, well, in Judy Cook's Loving Peter she makes a pretty good case for us not to. For all his comedy godfather genius, etc, there's no shying away from the fact he was a horrible, repugnant person who only became more so as he got older, before he drank himself to death and put everyone out of his misery - likely only Richard Prior is several rungs above him on the comedian's risible human being ladder.... The book may purport to be written from a place of love and devotion, with the best of intentions, but boil it down and it's nothing but a brutal, bare bones hatchet job....

I find a solicitor in London, but he seems very absent-minded and chaotic. He makes arrangements for me to meet him, Peter and Peter's formidable show-business solicitor, Oscar Beuselinck, in his Soho office. When the day of the meeting arrives, we sit and talk in a windowless conference room. Peter has just come from a Private Eye lunch and is very much the worse for wear. He looks terrible, with unwashed hair, a T-shirt that doesn't cover his beer belly, a creased linen jacket and stained, crumpled trousers. He sits smoking a cigarette with one eye closed to help him focus on getting it in his mouth. After an abortive discussion about money he stands up and swears loudly at me. I notice that his flies are undone. When he sits down again, he appears to fall asleep.

Loving Peter: My Life with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore by Judy Cook and Angela Levin

Dudley Moore - Beethoven's Colonel Bogey

So, pull up a chair and grab a cuppa as we enter the final stretch. Yep, you too can be just like Frank Miller's (ridiculous) Batman in The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Years ago, on first read, Rob went in with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, time has been as unkind to DKII as it has been to Rob and it transpires it is truly awful, with half-arsed artwork and unsympathetic digital colouring that cannot paper over the yawning cracks. As laughable as the panel above may be, it is in fact one of the few that looks like some time has been spent on it - it has a tatty, energetic intensity to the inking that is sorely missed elsewhere. Indeed, looking into reviews of the b/w (original art) version it seems as if Miller didn't bother drawing any backgrounds at all, this sloppy shortcoming simply shored up by the crude colouring....

And what better time to revisit Alan Grant's wonderful Strontium Dog: Portrait of a Mutant, perfectly bookended by John Wagner's (more recent but no less impressive) The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha: The Dogs of War. With so much of 70s and 80s culture crushed underfoot by modern scrutiny (and accepted values - see above!), what is particularly impressive is that these and many other 2000AD works of the time have not dated - you'd be hard pushed to pick them apart and critically cancel them these days, a testament to how much these guys were ahead of the curve, how expertly tuned in and at the forefront of everything....

Other comics included Sean Murphy (by way of Sergio Toppi, as indeed we have Frank Quitely by way of Jean Giraud 'Moebius') turning his more than capable hands to Batman in the White Knight tpb. The storytelling may be a bit variable at times - some scenes startle while others are reduced and a mite confusing, but overall it's a mighty effort. (Bonus points for setting it outside of the dreaded DCU continuity too, as we all know that's a load of needless modern comics rubbish that no one in their right mind should care about)....

There was also the absolute indie-astonisher Blankets by Craig Thompson as well as the gentle underground sharpness of Paul Chadwick's beautifully rendered Concrete. Rob's already blogged about his admiration for Mills and O'Neill's amazing Marshal Law, but here's a special mention for the stunning Deluxe Edition of several years ago, the whole damn thing in one big, bad package. Or how about former comics laureate Dave Gibbons sprinkling 80's b/w magic over Who panels in Panini's most welcome The Fourth Doctor Anthology. "Anyone for a jelly baby?"....

And what nicer way to wrap up than with an appreciation of arch art humourist Heath Robinson, who bubbled back up on Rob's radar in 2024. Indeed, there's something of the aforementioned Frank Quitely's earlier, underground work, in Robinson's eternally funny and inspired works, the same mastery of the fine line and expert caricature-isation....

A huge loss in 2024 was Kris Kristofferson, who died age 88, one of the original outlaw country artists. (It's also double frustrating that Rob intended to use a beautiful family tribute here that he now cannot find online, so this paltry embarrassment of and acknowledgement will have to do, sorry. Tho there's something edging close to the sentiment of it here>>, "He was a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford, a defensive back, a bartender, a Golden Gloves boxer, a gandy dancer, a forest firefighter, a road crew member, and an Army Ranger who flew helicopters. He was a peacenik, a revolutionary, an actor, a superstar, a sex symbol, and a family man.")....

Cinema also lost one of its true visionaries - and we're not talking self-appointed modern unimaginative and stylistic crapouts like J.J. Abrams or Zack Snyder - with the sudden death of David Lynch at 78. Is there anyone who travelled further out on screen, who married the sublime and the ridiculous with such chilling and unnerving effect? With a (long overdue) rewatch of Twin Peaks finally on the go at last - maybe Rob'll get to series 3 after all! - it's amazing how memorable the mood of the show is, the brooding atmosphere, the latent discomfort, how scenes begin almost farcically, dipping into televisual cheese at times, before the rug is gently pulled from under you to show the dark heart at work, all helped by the suspicious wood panelled warmth, the sheer intensity of the performances (Grace Zabriskie!) and the simply stunning, immersive music....

"I can see the pub from here!"

Autumn saw Rob & Co. head off to Dundee, the (spiritual) home of D.C. Thomson & Co., where he caught up with long lost childhood friends such as Oor Wullie, Desperate Dan and Minnie The Minx (and a little Lemming for good measure)....

More kind words and acknowledgement (from The Herald) following the sad loss of Braw talisman John G. Miller in early 2024. Our lengthy tribute, timed to coincide with his 70th birthday, can be found here>>

Not that Rob's been entirely idle, as John left hundreds of pages of artwork to be sorted, collated and collected, meaning 3 new books should emerge (at some point). There'll be a second A5 John G. Miller Scrapbook (120 pages), a further A4 The Collected John G. Miller, Volume 4 (110 pages) and a final A5 comic book gathering together his recent work/project in the shape of John Stark: Secret Agent (120 pages)....

"I get high because the world is cruel and people are lonely. I work so that I can buy drugs that make people seem kind, friendly, free and beautiful."

Samotari/The Loners

As per every year these round ups end with a few of Rob's favourite moments from time gone by and (somehow, against all odds) in 2024 there were joys aplenty, miraculous, precious minutes plucked from the depths of despair. There was Bill Pullman powerfully breaking down in indie dramedy Igby Goes Down, Bill and Ted meeting their elderly selves in (the otherwise worthless) Bill & Ted Face The Music, the 'copy machine beat down' from Mike Judge's perfectly judged Office Space, the 'greatest love of all' scene from the totally, beautifully bonkers Toni Erdmann, the 'Memory Gospel Dancers' hitting all the right emotive notes in the offbeat Southland Tales....

Climax - Opening Dance Scene

....then there's the jaw dropping, body popping opening scene to Gasper Noe's bad trip dance troupe shocker Climax, or how about being blindsided by The Dukes of Hazzard just driving along in the rain, a sudden reminder that their world, that Rob's world has been and is now completely gone, vanished in a forty year flash....

"Peace is not peace if it's a truce with evil."

Tin Star('s sadly completely dud), Season 2

or just watching Marty Feldman looking out over the balcony of his newly acquired Hampstead home on a crisp, foggy morning in the 1969 BBC documentary One Pair Of Eyes. Or why not end on modern artist supreme David Hockney wearing a badge that says "End Bossiness Soon", as it couldn't say "End Bossiness Now" as that'd be too bossy....

"A ship in harbour is safe, but that's not why ships are built." 

Fremont

And so it goes, you come in on your own and you leave on your own.... Thanks to Verve for playing us out.... See you in the next one (have a good time). This is Agent Rob, over and out....

The place was hot! So very, very hot! He hurried. And he wondered as he sped, the gauge rising before him: What had it been like on that day, Whenever? That day when a tiny sun had lain upon this spot and fought with, and for a time beaten, the brightness of the other sky, before it sank slowly into its sudden burrow? He tried to imagine it, succeeded, then tried to put it out of his mind and couldn't. How do you put out the fires that burn forever? He wished that he knew.

Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny