PLAYLIST 2026 - No 20 - Edge of Saturday Night by The Blessed Madonna & Kyle Minogue

Edge of Saturday Night by The Blessed Madonna & Kylie Minogue

Well, it seems The Blessed Madonna can call upon some pretty big names to bring their talents to the service of her dancefloor. Here it's Kylie,who is no stranger to this sort of electro woofer busting disco banger. Here she is slumming it with this very noticeably mock sleazy looking gay crowd, whilst Kylie is trying to look a bit more bedraggled, wrecked and edgy than is usual in her own videos. 

Goodness knows what this song is about, making everyday a Saturday and getting plastered perhaps.  I mean this woman is 58 and can't possibly do late night clubbing anymore, she needs her beauty sleep. Otherwise liposuction and the porcelain doll like tragedy of Madonna's pension years beckons. This has some very uplifting beats, providing a more than pleasing way to spend three minutes and thirty one seconds with this enduring legend.

PLAYLIST 2026 - No 19 - Mercy by The Blessed Madonna Ft Jacob Lusk

Mercy - The Blessed Madonna Ft Jaccob Lusk

In the seemingly long hiatus between the Gabriel's first album and its follow up, Jacob Lusk has been appearing to find time to do quite a bit of feature vocalist spots, mainly with Moby, but also here with the DJ The Blessed Madonna. This is a disco music at its most classic, and Lusk's voice gives it all the diva gloss you could hope for. I mean, if you had the opportunity to have that voice 'do your little ole song' you'd grab it with both hands wouldn't you. And The Blessed Madonna does not fail to fully embellish it with glitter..

PLAYLIST 2026 - No 18 - Crisps by Getdown Services

Crisps by Getdown Services

This track from their first album Crisps, is still on my morning shower playlist. Getdown Services music, is hewn with authenticity, which largely comes from Josh Law, the main songwriter and production ideas man. Though the ethos of this junk food obsessed band, is a collective one, shared between Law and his best mate Ben Sadler. As friends from childhood, there is sense for the in joke, boyish foolishness and what larks they get up to, about them still, even though they in their thirties. They don't remotely mind they're overweight and will happily perform with their shirts off. Crisps, is one of those songs that you can't quite pin down what it's about, there is a certain scattergun quality in its lyrical direction and wit, but the well turned phrase is one of their distinguishing qualities - 

It's a good job it's not a competition mate, or I swear you'd fuckin lose it - I'm having a party and your not invited, I'm building a castle and your not getting in, it's Mott and Bailey - Your not the enemy, your somewhere in-between a childhood dream and a pyramid scheme - I'm thick as shit, I'm not, but I look it, I got apps, I got a phone and I know how to use it, I got audio books.

They musically draw from quite a wide pool of styles, anything 80's or 90's rock or electro. There are times when the elliptical nature of their lyrics and delivery evokes the stridency of Mark E Smith & The Fall.  Law, increasingly has this air of world weary pathos about him, and looks like he's been on one too many benders lately, whilst Ben Sadler appears to just love the larking about. Considering the gig schedule they keep up it's no wonder they've got bags under the eyes and look tired.

PLAYLIST 2026 - No17 - Tone by Arto Lyndsay

Tone by Arto Lindsay

This summer it has definitely been the season for Arto Lyndsay. Exploring the 'bossa nova period' in his back catalogue has been quite a constant.  And with every week the algorithm on You Tube throws me some new musical morsels to try and chew on and ravenously gorge. Hence how I hit upon this sparky gem called Tone, from his 1999 album Prize. The parameters stay pretty much the same, his quiet almost whispered top vocals, effortless laid back and cool, with an unruffable ease, tripping over it's deceptively simple, yet artfully, constructed gently Latin rhythm. Tone has moments of when the soft soothness of this, dramatically breaks away from lilting, into a harder edged flat drum sound, half high hat, half phased, accompanied by the fluttering twitter of a synth drone.  I just find this totally addictive. And currently it's the source for making everything all right in the world.

2026 PLAYLIST No 16 - Alviverde by Jun Miyake & Arto Lindsay

Alviverde by Jun Miyake & Arto Lindsay

If you have seen the film Pina about the work of the choreographer and performer Pina Bauch, you will instantly be familiar with this tune. I , however, re-encountered it recently through my rooting about in Arto Lindsay's back catalogue, and You tube's algorithm did the rest. It is such an addictive tune, underpinned by that spritely double bass riff and the scattering percussive rhythm that dances around it propelling the music onwards. Over the top of this Arto Lindsay does his usual laid back oh so effortlessly cool singing. It is currently on repeat play on my daily music list. 

2026 PLAYLIST No 15 - Simply Are by Arto Lindsay

Simply Are - Arto Lindsay

Currently excitedly rattling through the back catalogue of Arto Lindsay's music. I first encountered Lindsay in his 1980's New York No Wave phase as the extremely freeform noise guitarist in DNA and Lounge Lizards. That sophisticated type of angular noise and art jazz that Lounge Lizards personified, has since led him to bossa nova and samba rhythms and a style of gently expressive jazz singing remeniscent of 1960's Brazil. Born and brought up in Brazil, Lindsay does have an instinctive feel for the form, which enables him to push the musical envelope a bit further than you might expect, And what's more make it work. Music reviewers struggle to place him, so basically compose a list of rag bag terms some of which might fit -art pop , bossa nova, tropicalia, jazz pop, experimental rock. Undoubtedly he brings all his art rock noise baggage with him, so it takes a few delightfully surprising turns. There is a sonic adventurousness here, unique to this style of easy on the ear Latin inflected jazz. And I am becoming quite deeply obsessed with it. Simply Are, is probably the most accessible song from this period of Arto Lindsay, taken from his third solo album Noon Chill released in 1997. I love his style of smoothly dead pan low key singing, it is so laid back and chilled.

2026 PLAYLIST - No 14 - Cursive by Mandy, Indiana

Cursive - Mandy,Indiana

Based in Manchester or Berlin, Mandy,Indiana have this stance that they appear to be coming from another world entirely. Their music is pretty uncatagorisable. There is definitely a debt of inheritance from the whole Manchester scenes of old. I'd say post punk more generally, in its melding of different genres into a cohesive whole. A commitment to pushing at boundaries that reminded me of early Faust, and it is that seventies German experimental rock/electro/Stockhausen/improv vibe I largely settle on. This performance of Cursive on Later...with Jools Holland, has the customary vocals in French from Valentine Caulfield. Not speaking French, I can't tell you what she's singing about, a lot of it sounds as if it might be nonsense lists of associative word play. But it moves along a great propulsive groove. That breaks at the end into guitar playing that sounds like he's scratching nails down a sheet if metal. Very Test Department like. I think I love them.

2026 PLAYLIST No 13 - You You You by Arab Strap

You You You - Arab Strap

Just when you think Arab Strap's career Renaissance might have peaked, up turns this new track. An album Half Told Tales is to follow on 4th September. So we will have a while yet to bask in the glow of this caustic little gem. The music rumbles along in the background in a deceptive electro disco until a menacing guitar like a travelling express train breaks the dissociated cool with unsettling ease, then a descending trills of notes, and ends with a series of monumental crangs. Meanwhile Aidan Moffat intones his mordant word smithery, bemoaning the hole in his shoe, but as the song progresses grumbles increasingly about his state of bodily deterioration in explicit detail. Until he lets his rage off the leash, it's not just at what he's become, but what the world has become, with protesters being treated as terrorists, the false faith in AI as the saviour of no one. And as part of a music business now completely beholden to the internet, how can any of us escape becoming hypocritical simply by association? So this is punchy stuff. Not afraid to broach some of the controversies and conundrums of our age. It's utterly brilliant.

I've got a hole in my shoe that lets in rain

And another new lump in another vein

I've got pills for breakfast every day

To keep my pains and fears at bay

I've got a portly paunch I just can't shift

I feel undesired, dismissed, adrift

My get-up-and-go is long gone

And the days keep dragging on.

I've got a hole in my head that can’t be filled

Time is never spent, it's only killed

I'm always bored, it seems nothing excites me

My own limbic system fights me

I've got watchlists I'll never watch

And pruritus scroti in my crotch

I've got a seething sadness in my soul

That might just swallow me whole

As the tyrannised unite and fight

There’s a fiery frog in my throat now

From all that singing: Bella ciao!

I've got my day in court that can't be missed

'Cause the government claims I'm a terrorist;

I fear for my son, I fear for my daughter

But in this world of slaughter

And if you're streaming this song on Spotify

Then we both fund weapons-grade AI

But if it wasn't here, then how would you hear it?

We're over a barrel, but we don't have to cheer it

I don't know what the fuck to do

When hypocrisy reigns and nothing is true

And nobody pays for abhorrent behaviour

Fuck these demagogues cosplaying saviours

Lyrics Arab Strap 2026

2026 PLAYLIST No 12 - Go Fuck Yourself by Fat Dog

Fat Dog - Go Fuck Yourself

One of my favourite tracks of last year was Fat Dog's, All The Same. With no signs yet of a new album, Go Fuck Yourself is a stand alone single, for now at least. The album Woof was a bit of a patchy affair. But Go Fuck Yourself with it's Euro disco backing track is a delight. No way a track with that title is ever going to get the airplay it deserves, but it is really a beauty. One gets the impression Joe Love the lead singer could be a bit of a miserable git, his songs do seem to have a studied hostility and stroppy indifference at the core of them. Not a hint of humour or self deprecation. Fat Dog appear to have a high turn over of band members, losing bassists and drummers with some frequency. The rock- klezmer- techno of the first album, has morphed now into something which remains addictive, but has perhaps less original things to say musically. Love also appears, like Getdown Services,to be not afraid of flaunting his Lad Bod.

2026 PLAYLIST No 11 - Radiator by Getdown Services

Getdown Services - Radiator

This duo from Minehead, have been ploughing a very particular furrow for a few years now. The rapport between them is similar to a comedy double act. They've been friends since childhood, and there is a mutual affinity and love here for making affectionately barbed music together. With this song Radiator, and a storming appearance on Later with Jools Holland, I think they are about to step up another notch in their visibility and popularity. 

Getdown Services, aka Ben and Josh, are authentically who they are, nothing about them feels manufactured, squeaky or clean. These are Lad Bods, with spare tires and a bouncy over intoxicated energy.  Radiator is an idiosyncratic song about being caught in a cramped room where you can't turn down the radiator. Their songs are often about such small insignificant details of ordinary life and the culture that surrounds them.  The lyrics are witty, acutely observed, pointedly satirical and frequently profane. Meanwhile the dance groove of Radiator infectiously grinds on with great gusto, and finishes with Josh playing a truly demonic cacophony on his guitar. This was the moment I fell in love with these guys. 

Though they have echoes of the langerous and laconic qualities of John Cooper Clarke and Alex Turner, they are very much their own thing. It could be easy to dismiss them as a novelty act, but that would be doing them a real disservice.  Don't take their lack of seriousness for shallowness, there is a lot of depth here if you look for it. What they are producing is enjoyable music, that possesses a great life affirming verve, which also keeps a keen eye on what can be lovingly lampooned. They are also clever wordsmiths to boot. Currently my band of the moment.

2026 PLAYLIST No 10 - Focu 'Ranni by Rosalia

Rosalia is currently touring the world with her performance of LUX. To coincide with this, three tracks previously only available on the CD/Vinyl version have been added to the digitally available download. LUX - The Complete Album, is of course purely a marketing device. But putting that to one side, the three tracks Focu 'Ranni, Jeane, and Novia Robot are welcome additions. 

Rosalia - Focu 'Ranni

I can see why they might not make the grade for the first edition of the album. There are similar themes, some are great, some not quite great enough. After all LUX is a long album already, stuffed with 15 tracks clocking in at nearly 50 minutes. Could it bare three more tracks, making it over an hour in length, without overstaying it's welcome?  However. I have become rather obsessed with the track Focu 'Ranni, it's just such a beautiful melodic ride she takes you on, into which the startling exultation of a choir of treated vocals give you this unexpectedly invigorating chorus. 

Rosalia's voice is her weapon, that she pierces your heart with. It's such a joy to hear it being employed with all the soft delicacy and subtle nuance she is capable of, on Focu 'Ranni. I've had moments of being enraptured by it, her voice erupts from such depths of feeling into expressiveness. Focus Rani appears to concern the all consuming fire of love, and this can be interpreted either as a terrestrial or a spiritual love affair, which she's debating whether to entirely surrender herself to it. Continuing the religiously inflected intensity that runs through out LUX. It's a marvel.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

2026 PLAYLIST No 9 - Trinidad by Geese

Geese - Trinidad

The opening track of Geese's Getting Killed, Trinidad, is a barbed wire infested cacophony that is up their with the early work of The Birthday Party for something scary heading your way. It starts off innocent enough with a gently voiced blues fired admission that ' I try ', sung repeatedly, but then the car crash begins. Cranging guitars angle grind through some metal, and Cameron Winter starts loudly declamining like someone demented that 'There's a bomb in my car'.Yeah, this is not your average bit of easy on the ear indie, this has nerves of steel, and the brawn of devils. As he admits to murdering his family and then driving away. I love this, mostly because they dared to open their album with this, which makes the rest of it seem a beautiful stroll in a park, by comparison.

2026 PLAYLIST No 8 - Au Pays Du Cocaine by Geese

Geese - Au Pais du Cocaine

Geese appear to have landed in the catagory of becoming the much lauded saviours of guitar based music - 2026 edition. Which is probably the sort of albatross most bands would not want strung around their neck. That they have achieved a level of success without fully capitulating to the mainstream music industry, is a tiny bit miraculous. However, with the album Getting Killed they have broken big, because this album is really just too damned good. It's their fourth, and judging by a cursory check through of their back catalogue, it is indeed a seismic shift in their overall sound and originality. What first caught my attention was this -Au Pais du Cocaine. It's a plaintive song, goodness knows what it's about. Drug or love addiction take your pick. Cameron Winter's flexes his vocals,  channeling a Rufus Wainwright vibe, which gives any song it graces a quality of world weary languor. But whatever this song is, it's compulsive listening. Can't quite get to through day without a touch of it.

2026 PLAYLIST No 7 - Sherpa by Angine de Poitrine

Sherpa - Angine de Poitrine 

Now at first glance you might be thinking, what's with the gimmicky black and white dotted costumes, makeup, the golden triangle insignia etc. This all feels rather too contrived, its weirdness feels arch, a novelty, a bit of Dadaist theatre, does it not? This is the experimental rock duo Canadian group Angine de Poitrine, formed six years ago. Their nom de plumes are - Klek the drummer and Khn the micro tonal guitar and bass player. They recently released their second album, but have suddenly become something of an internet sensation. Like progressive rock in the seventies, or Avant guarde jazz, the guitar prowess with its mathematics and microtonal execution, brings out the inner nerd in a lot of chaps. 

Their music is built out of repetition, of layering guitar lines over one another, sometimes shifting delightfully into atonality, the microtones etc, that suddenly erupt into a straight slab of rock or jazz riffery.  Occasionally there's a sonically altered vocal like a Star Wars alien. There music has an insane driven quality. When they hit their full stride they are an irresistible force. As I watch them I think - would this feel any different if they weren't dressed in so avant guarde a fashion? And the answer is yes, but the music they produce would remain interesting. You might start to take this far too seriously. The presentation may feel deceptively a daft parody, but it is consistently in a dialogue with the music. Weirdness meeting weirdness. It is complimentary.

I think its best to conceive of the costumes as all part and parcel of an elaborate performance art piece, and the music as radically anti any convention or musical genre you might want to bag them in.  Sherpa, with it's Arabic tinged chord sequence is about as strikingly original as they come. It is quintessentially them. Angine de Poitrine, in case you were wondering, is French for Angina Pectoris. Chest pain in other words. Whether they will surpass this brief moment of internet fame, and have legs longer term, who can say? Will these masks eventually have to come off?

2026 PLAYLIST - No 6 - I Had A Dream She Took My Hand by James Blake

James Blake - I had a dream she took my hand

The second track to be released from James Blake's upcoming album Trying Times, I Had A Dream She Took My Hand, is on the surface, one ravishingly simple song. With its fifties doo wop style backing singers shimmying deeply within the mix. It is, nonetheless, infused with Blake's characteristic plaintive vocals, and fish tank orchestrations. This has the feel of something that is both contemporary and the evocation of some dreamy nostalgia that exists only in the post modern imagination. Following on after The Death of Love, this bodes well for the album, that he himself is already trumpeting as his best.  

I Had A Dream She took My Hand, takes place in this imaginative fantasy of a love affair that may or may not yet be happening in reality.  But given it's literal musical echoes of both past and present swirling around in its pool of yearning, this song luxuriates entirely in its internalised state of cultivated intoxication, which visualises a love requited. In the hands of a less sensitive artist, it might these days appear unconsciously creepy. But Blake's pure vocal lines maintain a healthy line of dreamy innocence, of an uncomplicated love seeking a hand to hold. 

2026 PLAYLIST - Beam Down by Scientist (1981)

This is such a fine piece of Dub, from its 80's golden era. I've been rather addictively playing it all week. Taken from the album Meets The Space Invaders, Beam Down opens the proceedings. Scientist was a true innovator in a very crowded field of Dubsters, in that he was prepared to go that little bit further than everyone else would. On Bean Down, it has this ambling almost gently walking rhythm over which the hardest most explosive dub is being executed. At points you are just hearing the dub, the tune has gone, completely buried under the riotous cacophony. Almost pure noise for noises sake, avant garde dub of a peerless variety. In amongst my more contemporary pieces, this three minutes plus stands the test of time. Dub is ageless.

2026 PLAYLIST - No 5 - God, Protect Me From My Enemies by SAULT

 

Every now and then, and usually unannounced, SAULT releases a new album. Initially the albums were numbered, these appear to have have gone beyond needing curating their sequence. Unless that lit match is meant to be a 1. You do sort of know what to expect with SAULT, some beautifully arranged soul, that reflect and reinvigorate the past and current music of the black experience in some way. Their producer/ svengali/ facilitator -Info, has found himself in some deep shit a lately over the non-repayment of a huge loan from Little Simz. Good as this track is, it does feel a little low key and safe. Even the title could be interpreted as defensive.

Here after a few albums that digressed from the successful SAULT formula so far, they return to it, but in a slightly more sparsely and less lush manner. God. Protect Me From My Enemies, is a slick sinuous song, sung by Cleo Sol so keen heartedly, and succeeds in gently ingraining itself in your psyche. I've heard other tracks from the album, and this appears by far the best. From an admittedly cursory listen the rest lack the zesty fire and exuberant excitement of some of its predecessors, but this one gem is welcome none the less. 

2026 PLAYLIST - No 4 - For All Our Days That Tear The Heart - Jesse Buckley & Bernard Butler

I'd not heard Jessie Buckley's voice before,, What a revelation that is. Boy her singing has got a captivating punch to it. A mesmeric tone, with a dextrous command of vocal expressiveness. An almost uncanny ability to make the most minor of vocal pause or inflections, very telling. This collaboration with Bernard Butler, once upon a time the guitarist from Suede, is the title track from an album packed full of similarly heart renching songs. The album was made three years ago and it is an absolute beaut, I highly recommend seeking it out.

2026 PLAYLIST - No 3 - The Death of Love by James Blake

I really don't know how he does it. Ostensibly the form and approach to James Blake's music appears on the surface not to radically alter much, but somehow he manages to still conjure it to sound fresh and innovative. He has this way with a ravishing melody though, and the soulfulness of his voice, carries any song a long way. Particularly here, on The Death of Love, which may sound like it's a broken hearted love song, on one level, but on another it appears to be bemoaning the parlous state of the times we live in. This video. has him lying, unmoving in bed gazing at himself in the mirror, which is a very cogent metaphor for our visually self obsessed civilisation. Amusing Ourselves to Death, indeed.

2026 PLAYLIST - No 2 - When It's Cold I WantTo Die - Moby ft Jacob Lusk.

This is an old tune from Moby's 1992 album The Story So Far, that over the decades has become something of a slow burning classic apparently. Here he has produced a special arrangement with sparse keyboard and strings, further embellished by the beautiful lustre of Gabriel's lead singer Jacob Lusk's voice. The tune itself is quite extraordinary in its pared back simplicity, with an effect that is quiet and utterly haunting. Consumed as it is with a chest full of bleak melancholy and regretful ennui. At times you wonder if this is going to take you anywhere else, to do some dramatic rising flourish at its peak. However, When Its Cold I'd Like To Die, holds you steady and spellbound by the fragility with which the orchestration supports Lusk's intonations. It cups a tragic delicate beauty in its hands.