This won't be the first time for me to say this, but I don't really know who this JC Chasez is, though someone told me he was in one of these late-90s American boybands.

Anyway, his song Some Girls (Dance with Women) is fantastic. It really works its way into your head, and it's not like the lyrics are particularly subtle (he has some similarly restrained titles for songs on his album). No, in fact, the key theme to the song is that, as the title indicates, "some girls dance with women knowing that it gives them attention", presumably from…

So yes, I'm drinking whisky. It must be time for that elusive last.fm update. This evening finds me listening to a track by London's The Vichy Government, described somewhere on the net (maybe it was Wikipedia) as a "casio nihilist" band. Yes, the brogue of Jamie Manners competes with the, er, Casio keyboard of Andrew Chilton to glorious non-effect. I've tagged it "meta-pop", because it is pop music but abstracted and pared down.

In How to Become a Cult Figure, our narrator contemplates his path to this elusive goal while "looking for a crash course in global domination".…

I rarely update in this any more. One entry a month is about average, but really it's because I only ever do it when I'm a bit drunk, on my own and something I really like is playing. So here I am, and those conditions are fulfilled.

The Incredible String Band it is then. My mother used to listen to them once in a while, and being a teenager, I was astounded. What rubbish, eh? Retrogressive 60s hippy claptrap, thought I.

Anyway, fast forward some years, and I still only have one of their albums, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (1968).…

They'd probably flinch at being referred to as a South London band. They're not, after all. But these days 'south London' is just a byword for being more cutting-edge than you. Like 'Shoreditch' also is. Maybe they're more of a Shoreditch band, anyway.

That's beside the point, because Operation Wolf are the band that popular culture has been preparing you for. Not necessarily the most proficient, but they have the musical smarts where it matters – in crafting perfectly piercing short essays about identity and performance.

That would be indie identity and power-pop performance.

After all, their overpowering musical thematic…

I remember the first time I listened to Biogenesis. It's packaged as a lovely 3" CD in a gatefold sleeve, part of the "Cinema for the Ear" series on the French electroacoustic label Metamkine.

So this first time I listened to it, was on headphones lying on the couch with all the lights turned off and it just seemed the perfect way to experience it. I've done it again that way – in fact, it tends to be my favourite way of listening to a lot of drone music.

"Biogenesis" has a wonderful, and not particularly surprising, organic…

So now, like all the mopey "alt.country" singer-songwriter lovers out there, one of my favourite American bands of the past few decades has been Songs: Ohia (and Jason Molina's follow-up/spin-off project, Magnolia Electric Co).

I always liked them best when it was just Jason Molina's guitar and voice with minimal accompaniment, like on their Didn't It Rain album, or (my favourite track of all) "The Lioness (Didn't It Rain Translation)" (the version from the split 7" with Scout Niblett). The way his voice sounds so brittle and filled with emotion really gets to me, when I'm willing to be…

It's been over a month since I've been here, but I'm ready to tackle what's playing right now. Or perhaps I am not, for what I know of This Mortal Coil is merely that the words that form their name are from the famous soliloquy in Hamlet. I don't know how many people are behind their music (though if I were inclined, I'm sure I could easily find out). Their version of Song to the Siren in fact seems to feature Elizabeth Fraser as vocalist, so whether it's typical of their output I have no idea. None whatsoever.

I…

Now, really, you all know who Chris Knox is, surely? He's been pretty damn-near fundamental to the development of NZ music since the late-70s. He's recorded or drawn the cover art for most of those seminal 80s Flying Nun bands, and as Toy Love and the Tall Dwarfs he's been a part of some important NZ bands himself. He also does film reviews, draws comics, and pops up on NZ TV every so often. Plus, he's recorded music as a solo artist.

I remember back when I was a student of classics in NZ, my American lecturer (educated at Berkeley:…

Sometimes I try to remember what I love, what I really loved (back when it was on the stereo a lot, a good few years back) about The Doctor Came at Dawn. And I put it on and think, OK, Whistling Teapot (Rag) is great and always gets me warbling along, but it's quite a dour album full of sombre tones and it makes me rather sad.

Right now, though, making my way through my single-malt whiskies and feeling a bit sad for myself (no, worry not, it's just a passing mood!), I realise just what this album's for,…

I said some time back, while discussing Side-Mounted Scum Suckers (that great band that never was, ahem), that I'd written an entry on Birchville Cat Motel. Well that was wrong; I hadn't. So now I'm putting that right.

There's not much I can really tell you, though. I grew up in Wellington, New Zealand, and I'd be lying (blatantly) if I told you that I'd also grown up with the music of Campbell Kneale. It was only in the last few years that I started hearing any of this stuff, but when I did, seeing Birchville gigs was one…