Unsung Podcast

In this episode of the Unsung Podcast, we delve into Vessel's 2014 album 'Punish Honey,' a unique blend of electronic music and modern electronica. We provide an overview of Vessel's career, touching on past albums and collaborative efforts. We discuss standout tracks like 'Red Sex' and 'Anima,' highlighting the album's haunting, ethereal qualities. We also reflect on Vessel's transition to scoring for films like 'The Northman' and talk about the importance of his innovative approach. We end the episode with a Nexus segment linking Vessel to cyclist Chris Hoy. 00:00 Introduction and Banter 02:09 Podcasting Challenges and Humour 03:12 Introducing the Topic: Vessel's Punish Honey 04:28 Patreon Shoutout and Admin 05:30 Concert Stories and Anecdotes 12:36 Social Media and Platform Changes 14:01 Deep Dive into Vessel's Career 21:00 History of Triangle Records 27:00 Early Releases and Order of Noise 34:00 Track Analysis: Order of Noise 45:50 Exploring the Synth Sound 46:52 Discussing the Northman Soundtrack 50:26 Diving into Punish Honey 52:37 Track-by-Track Analysis 01:03:02 Sidebar: Ozzy Osbourne and Rock Legends 01:17:17 Concluding Thoughts on the Album 01:21:17 The Nexus: Connecting the Dots 01:30:19 Call to Action and Future Plans

David Scott from Moni Jitchell joins us again this week as we round off our deep dive into the discography of Los Campesinos! We being picking up where we left off last week; in the midst of running through the band's discography. Mark then comes clean and says he actually took notes on the wrong album, before we all go down the rabbit hole of figuring out of Romance is Boring and/or Los Campesinos! are unsung. A small reminder that if you want to support the podcast you can do so via our Patreon. Not only will you get episodes early, you also get access to our Facebook group (aye we know it’s boomer shit, but we’ve yet to find a better way of mass communication) and you can have some influence on what we cover on the show. There’s also the option of our higher tier, the record club, where your money will go towards supporting independent artists that we think are truly unsung. If you want to learn more about Moni Jitchell, their most recent release is called Unreal, and you can get it here.

Guest time! In the first of two episodes we chat with David Scott from the band Moni Jitchell about Los Campesinos! and their third album Romance is Boring. In part one we go into a lengthy deep dive around twee pop, the band’s history and then begin to look closely at their discography, using the band’s own ranking of their first five albums as a means navigation. A small reminder that if you want to support the podcast you can do so via our Patreon. Not only will you get episodes early, you also get access to our Facebook group (aye we know it’s boomer shit, but we’ve yet to find a better way of mass communication) and you can have some influence on what we cover on the show. There’s also the option of our higher tier, the record club, where your money will go towards supporting independent artists that we think are truly unsung. If you want to learn more about Moni Jitchell, their most recent release is called Unreal, and you can get it here.

We've briefly touched on geek rock in the past - Weezer and Laeto spring to mind - but never in any detail. That all changes this week as we look at the genre through the lens of The Protomen. We also chat extensively about the band, their discography and their frankly brilliant homage to 80s rock.

Last week we spoke about the music of the sequels to The Crow (1994). We also spoke about the new crow film (The Crow (2024)), but we kind of cut it a little short because we didn't talk about the music of the new film. We do that this week before we dive headlong into the original soundtrack of the very first film in The Crow franchise. Not sure I can find a way to fit "The Crow" into this little blurb about our new episode on The Crow. So please enjoy this episode where we talk about the music from the 1994 film The Crow

Another episode where we're taking direct inspiration from something that we mentioned in an early show, we've decided to do two whole bloody episodes on the music of The Crow film franchise. In episode one we talk about the music from the very poor sequels to the original film: City of Angels and Salvation. Surprisingly, even though the movies themselves are fairly terrible, the soundtracks are actually really good! So we dedicate a bit of time to those two. We also talk about the place of The Crow in the wider pop cultural landscape, wondering whether it really was as popular as we seem to remember it was (subcultures are weird) before we talk about the brand new reboot The Crow. Which is... well, it's certainly not the worst of The Crow films, but that's not a high bar to clear... Fancy showing us some love? You can subscribe to the pod for as little as £4 per month on our Patreon: www.patreon.com/unsungpod

Usually, we like to space things out. You may have noticed that over the years, we'll do a metal album one week, then perhaps change it up with electro or something else. So, for us to do two post-hardcore/noise rock(ish) records so close together is a bit unheard of. But hey, what's the point of having a set of rules if you don't break them occasionally? We've been doing this show for a ridiculously long time. Too long, some might say. In those six and a half years (give or take a few months), we've managed to rack up a decent amount of subscribers. For some of our longest-standing subscribers, we give them the opportunity to pick a record for us to cover. This week, Todd Khul chose Face of Collapse by the Dazzling Killmen. We welcomed this choice, especially since it's a band Chris has also wanted to tackle for a while. So this week, we're diving deep into their short discography and offering some insights into their equally short career. Fancy showing us some love? You can subscribe to the pod for as little as £4 per month on our Patreon: www.patreon.com/unsungpod

Sound is a pound is always good fun. You'd be amazed what you can pick up for a quid in a charity shop. It's been about 18 months since our last one of these and frankly, we'd forgotten what albums we'd "gifted" each other at the end of the last episode. So Mark decided to pick two that he'd bought for Chris: Planet Claire by The B-52's (a strange compilation what was not released by the band's label, Warner Brothers) and Highly Evolved by The Vines. There's some surprises in this episode. There's also somethings that won't be surprising at all to long time fans. We'll leave you to figure out which is which...

John Congleton is a great producer, and as it turns out, also a great musician. The Paper Chase were, for many years, his only musical project and even as his star began to rise as a producer, he was still churning out unsettling, chromatic, occasionally catchy, often nasty music. Often described as a combination of avant-garde jazz, indie and punk, the band tick all of those boxes and much more. This week we're talking about their second album, Hide the Kitchen Knives which helpfully/frustratingly is only available on YouTube. An album so twisted that it actually gave Mark nightmares. We also talk about the band's discography at large and chat about why some albums never seem to make it to streaming platforms.

Long terms fans of the show will know that we've spent altogether far too much time talking about Britpop. And the bad news is that it looks like it's ABOUT BECOME ALL ANYONE TALKS ABOUT when Oasis announce their reunion. We recorded this episode before those rumours started to creep out. Funny how these things happen. Anyway, Mark fell into a Suede hole (sounds quite comfy, when you put it like that) after our episode on Baader Meinhof/Luke Haines and this lead to two realisations: 1) there's no way we could call Suede (or this song, really) unsung, and 2) we don't think they have an album solid enough to carry a full episode. This song though? It's a banger. Pure class. And we really wanted to talk about it. So we bent the rules a little.

A quick note of correct: we haven't done a Mojo covermount before. It was Uncut, but the audience for both magazines was/is broadly the same... Or so Mojo would have you believe. We'll be honest: the bag of covermounts is full of questionable CDs, so it was actually something of a surprise to land on something interesting. This Mojo covermount is, ostensibly, a history of electronic music. It goes all the way back to the 60s and includes in the mid 00s, when this CD was released. A strangely fascinating find, given that it was only released on the front of a magazine. From disco to house, ambient to jazz, this thing has a real selection of music that incorporates keyboards and synthesizers. It was fun to spend time with it, and we hope it brings something interesting into your life too.

A few months ago we covered Tanz, Grozny Tanz by Yacøpsæ and if you listened to that episode, we mentioned how we'd reached out to the band for some info. They didn't get back to us in time, but band member Stoffel was keen to hear the podcast, so we sent him a link to it. Luckily he was a fan, but there was a few points he wanted to clear up. After arranging a short Q&A with the input of our subscribers, we managed to pull together this wee episode based on his responses. The result is a fun, insightful episode on Yacøpsæ directly from the mouth of the band. Enjoy. We'll be back next week with some a lovely covermount!

Can you believe it was back in February 2020 when we did our Britpop mixtape? How wild is that? This week we're joined by Glaswegian musician Andy Isacsson, otherwise known as Luminous, who has picked this week’s record. We chat at length about his latest record, Precarious Karma, which took him about a decade to complete. We dive into the influences behind it, the reasons it took so long to finish, and much more. Then, we get into the business of talking about Baader Meinhof and Luke Haines. Unlike a lot of musicians, Andy opted not to release his music on Spotify. So you can check out his album here on Bandcamp. For Record Club subscribers, we’ve also added it to our catalogue. It’s pretty great, and we thoroughly recommend giving it a whirl. To wit. We always knew we’d come back to Britpop one day and we always suspected we’d do so via unorthodox means. Baader Meinhof by Baader Meinhof, Luke Haines’ sorta kinda first solo album, gave us a wee chance to do that. Not because it’s a Britpop record – it’s far from it – but Haines himself has proven to be quite a large figure in the history of that genre. He’s also got a massive discography. In this episode, we touch a little bit on The Auteurs, then very briefly look at Black Box Recorder and a minimal selection of his solo discography. Maybe next week we’ll escape from the 90s hole we seem to have found ourselves in, but I wouldn’t bet on it...

Is this a controversial choice? Quicksand's debut album Slip is widely regarded a classic, and in my quarters the band are seen as being hugely influential. So in many ways, picking their second album, Manic Compression, as an unsung classic seems like a no-brainer. On this episode, Chris talk about why this album is not just an unsung classic, but why it's also their best album. Healthy disagreements abound. What do you think is the better record, Slip or Manic Compression? If you're a spotify user, vote on our poll now!

Hailing from Ireland, Katie Kim is an artist who has demonstrated remarkable musical growth over the course of her career so far. Evolving from lo-fi folk to dark, experimental, haunting, almost ambient alternative rock. This week, we talk about her entire discography, before diving into her riveting fourth album, Hour of the Ox.

One thing that we find particularly fun about this podcast (most of the time) is re-appraising records from our youth. Taking a closer, critical look at something you were once super familiar with is often eye opening. Particularly if it's a record you remember liking a lot at one time but have since stopped listening to. Most of the time, it's a fun experience. And this episode on Eight Arms to Hold You by Veruca Salt is one of those times! Mostly. Chris was not super into this band when he was younger, but he did like this album a lot. In this episode we talk all about the band's career, before ending on the album in question. Dig in!

X Japan have released a proper studio album since 1996. They did release a soundtrack in 2016, and released the occasional single too, but as for a longer release? Nada. Zilch. Of course, some of this is down to the fact they essentially broke up and only reunited in 2007. In this episode, we'll be talking about their 5 studio albums. Chris' album choice is actually their 1988 debut, Vanishing Vision. So as usual, we'll leave the chosen album to last. Before that, though, we go on a wild ride through their discography. From what is perhaps their best album Blue Blood, to their most recent output, which is 1996's Mania. Buckle up - we're going deep on this one!

There's been a fair amount of ink spilled on X Japan over the years in certain media outlets. You can even find recent interviews with drummer/pianist/primary songwriter and Japanese megastar Yoshiki in prestigious publications like Time magazine. X Japan, however, remain something of an enigma on British shores. Sure, Yoshiki – a classically trained pianist with a background in drumming for the power metal band X Japan – can sell out the Royal Albert Hall solo, but X Japan themselves have never played a single show in the UK, despite being around for over 40 years. If you're a fan of power metal, speed metal, or Iron Maiden, there's a good chance you'll dig a lot of X Japan's music. But their relative obscurity here in the UK isn't the only reason we're dedicating two episodes to them. It's because the story of the band is absolutely wild, and in episode one, we'll delve into that story in detail. Next week, we'll take a deep dive into their discography. Grab a cuppa and let's dive in!

We knew this episode was gonna grow arms and legs when we realised that there are 27 Bond songs to talk about. So, now that we've dispensed with the history of Bond music, it's time to tackle every single one of these songs in chronological order. This doesn't include the original Bond theme from Dr. No (cause we discussed that at length in side A), but does include the two songs in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the two non-Eon Bond films, Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again. It's a lot to cover. So we approached it a bit like our covermount episodes, only we decided to rank each song from 001 to 007 cause how could we really pass up that chance? We also give a little bit, the tiniest smidge, of detail about each film its place in the canon and the critical and audience receptions for each film. And song, where appropriate. Ready? Shake your Martinis and let's get stuck in.

What if we told you that the musical history of James Bond is actually so much more interesting than the history of the films? And that's not knocking the history of the films - they're plenty fascinating too. The music though? Super interesting. From the theory and the cultural cache of the Bond song, to the near misses and the rejected tracks, we cover a lot in Side A of our look at the music of James Bond.

If it feels like the length of our episode are getting longer on average then you’d be correct. This is likely because we have lost all pretence of restraint around how comprehensive we are. This week, we’re joined by Scott Walker for the Shit You May Not Have Seen Podcast to do a fairly definitive overview of the band Biohazard. A band who are also quite unrestrained... Many would believe that there’s not a whole lot to say about Biohazard because pretty much all of their albums plough the same furrow. Turns out, there actually is a lot to say. Over 2 hours worth of things to say. The band are actually somewhat interesting in how they tried to change their sound over the years. Attempts that were so unsuccessful that the albums aren’t actually available on streaming platforms. There’s good reason for that - it’s cause they’re nu metal albums. Anyway, on this episode we dive deep into their catalogue and also chat about the NYC hardcore scene they came up in, and touch a little on how it evolved over the years. Big thanks to Scott for joining us and picking this album. You can find his excellent podcast here.

Here it is. Another whopper of an episode. But this one has lots and LOTS of contributors. From one time and former hosts and a bunch of your suggestions too, we tried to be as comprehensive as possible within our little sphere of listeners. Thanks for your contributions to this episode. It really made it feel like a communal affair, and that's an awesome feeling.

Steve Albini's impact on alternative music is undeniable. From the sheer number of artists he collaborated with to his unwavering defense of fair treatment for musicians, his presence continues to be felt. His anti-capitalist views on the music industry may not have always aligned with everyone's, but his convictions were never in doubt. This influence extended to his unique approach to music. Whether working on his own projects or lending his talents to others, he imbued every recording with a distinct character. So recognizable and sought-after was his style that countless engineers and artists have attempted to emulate it, yet none have truly captured its essence. The deceptively simple brilliance behind his approach will be explored in more depth next week. This week's episode dives deep into Albini's life, career, ethics, musical philosophy, and of course, the controversies that continue to surround his legacy.

This week, much like last week, wanted to provide a vault episode that was a contrast to Thursday, and you can't get much further away from Thursday than La Roux. Chris is a huge fan of this album and because Dave and Mark couldn't quite believe that, this record and episode continually gets referenced on various episodes. It's just so improbable, when you think about it. So it's a really good one to revisit. Hope ye enjoy!

If you thought we'd prattled on about the history of Thursday a little too much in episode one well we've got some news for you - part two is a BEAST. It's 2 hours and 15 minutes long. Why? Because that's the unsung way. We give their discography a thorough analysis whilst continuing to chart the band's history. We also hear about how Geoff Rickly once slept on Sean's couch, and even take a wee detour in No Devotion, too. An episode for the true Thursday freaks, and also one which contains some Bischoff-esque Attitude error booking (iykyk - wait til the end).

Turns out that Chris and Mark are big wrestling fans. Mark moreso than Chris, but still, probably something only die hard fans of the pod are aware of. That's not the reason we did an episode on Rick Derringer's Real American though (otherwise known as Hulk Hogan's theme song). It's because the song is great and comes with a pretty mad story. So yes, please enjoy this foray into one of our rarely visited alternate formats called Unsong.

As a die-hard Thursday fan, this week's guest comes right out the gates in explaining why Thursday he'll always love. And as it turns out, they're quite an easy band to love due to their ethics and overall affability as a band. Geoff Rickly himself often comes across earnestly and well in interviews, which is something Chris is keen to point out and dive into in the first part of this three parter. In Side A we chat about the band's history, their place in both the New Brunswick, New Jersey music scene, as well as their place in the early-00s emo scene as a whole. At the time, they were touted by some as being the next Nirvana but it was a label that never fit the band. We talk about all that, and their journey to becoming a major label act, in this episode.

Just over 6 years ago we came up with an idea. Well, Chris did, to be precise. What if we do an episode where we each pick an album and then put them head to head, with the public deciding which one is best. That's how our mixtape was born. Since then, it's kinda moved away the format of each of us picking an album and backing it, and started to become more of a deep dive into a specific genre or theme. But this is how it begun. Unsung was barely 6 months old at this point. Indeed, this episode is just over 6 years old as of the time of publishing. We've tried a few different things over the years. Changed the format in various ways and pushed it to see how it would break. This is one of the ideas that really stuck. This episode also makes a great companion to the nu metal focused covermount we did last week. It's also one of our most popular, and silliest, episodes. We hope you enjoy.

The covermount CD is certainly a relic from a bygone era. We actually have a bag full of them, all acquired through various means, none of them worth anything. But when was the covermount CD, or tape born, why, and what were the political and economic factors involved in magazines creating them, and artists getting on them? We break it all down in our episode on the history of the covermount CD with our good friend Crag Carrick, all the way from the land of Oz.

With the exception of Soul Asylum and the Presidents of the USA, unless you were seriously tuned into Kerrang! and/or alternative music in the 90s there are very few bands you'll remember, let alone recognise, in the back half of this CD. Bullyrag, Janus Stark, Pulkas, Cecil, Pissing Razors and Genitorturers have all vanished more or less into oblivion since the 90s. Genitorturers perhaps being a bit of an exception in that they're still going to this day. Grant, and the rest of the crew, are positively bewildered by the rest of this compilation. And very occasionally surprised.

This week Grant Donaldson joins us to talk about this Kerrang! covermount CD that came out during the hey day of nu metal. Turns out Grant is quite unfamiliar with nu metal so this was a real fun episode. In side A we talk about the first half of this CD, which includes the talents of Jerry Cantrell, Everclear, Bad Religion, Psycore and One Minutes Silence. It's all downhill after that, which you'll hear in the next episode...

Born from a fever dream, Mark had the idea to review records found in poundland. You used to be able to get some primo garbage for a quid. Sadly, you can no longer buy CDs in poundland but the memory lives on. To that end, we thought it'd be fun to revisit the first in our series called Sound is a Pound. And on episode one, we reviewed Onka's Big Moka by Toploader. Very funny stuff. Dig in.

We break down the usage of music in ads into four categories: best original ad jingles and songs, songs made famous by adverts, famous songs best appropriated, songs ruined by ads. We also hear from our listeners on their favourite and least favourite tunes in adverts.

Given the sheer amount of work we've done lately on the pod, we thought we'd do something a little easy and do an episode on music in advertising. Except, it actually turned out to NOT be that easy because, well, this is a pretty fascinating topic. In part one we talk about the history of music in advertising and pick a couple of examples.

We've been on a real run of pulling out shows from 2019 recently and it seems the trend is not gonna break this week. We decided that we'd double down on the heavy, dirty misery of Yacøpsæ and revisit our episode on Pig Destroyer. Y'know, a proper grindcore band.

It's time to get really grindy and real with the band's more recent material, which is very fast, brutal and dark. It's a bracing but also fun. This band have a lot of songs but it's all quite short, so you can really batter through their discography in short order. Joe also gives us some of his thoughts on the band and then we get to the nexus.

There's a fair chance you haven't heard of Yacøpsæ before unless you're very much in tune with DIY grind/powerviolence. One of the things we started this podcast to do was to shine a light on great bands were think are truly unsung. This band are one such example of that. They're very underground, and are very, very, very brutal. In part one we talk about the squat scene, the definition of grindcore, how it differs from powerviolence and dive into their large, unwieldy catalogue. As this is a genre we're mostly unfamiliar with, we brought in the expertise of Joe McGlynn, who you may remember from our Carcass episodes. He was in a band called Man Must Die, now in a cool hardcore band called Go Down Fighting, and is a host of Shit You May Not Have Seen podcast. Things get very weegie here too, so be prepared for some incomprehensible Glaswegian accents.

We're throwing it back to Sept 2019 on this episode, as Chris talks about an album he adores - Shaking the Habitual by The Knife. This was the band/act that Karin was in before they did Fever Ray and it is very very good indeed. Hope you dig this look back!

When we suggested doing Fever Ray after our episode on The Knife's Shaking the Habitual back in Sept 2019, this album didn't even exist. Indeed, Radical Romantics now takes the title of the most recent album covered on Unsung. Back in 2019 Chris would have picked their debut album but as you can see, that's now longer the album he thinks is the best... But before we get to that, in Side A we talk about the history of Fever Ray, a little bit about Karin themselves, and their first album.

And to wrap up our two episodes on Fever Ray we talk about Plunge before Chris goes deep on why their new album, Radical Romantics, is the best thing they've yet done.

The pandemic was still stalking the world when we recorded this episode, so you'll have to bear with the sound quality. It's decent, mind, but recorded remotely. Anyway, this was, until recently, our only flirtation with a Saddle Creek artist so we thought it fittings to bring this one out of the vault. We do talk a little about the label, Bright Eyes and Desaparecidos but not at any real length. We do go down the well on Cursive in a big way, though. So, enjoy!

THE CONCLUSION. Kyle's still alive. Barely. In side C we get to the point of this whole sorry triumvirate of episodes: to discuss Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. And the nexus. Of course.

Kyle's still with us in this episode, but he's dreaming about taking a bath. Which we kept him from. Sorry. Sadly, there was work to do. And that work is to continue our chat about Bright Eyes' back catalogue, covering everything from Fevers and Mirrors to Down In the Weeds, Where the World One Was.

This week we're joined by Kyle Wood, who creates music under the name of Lovers Turn to Monsters. He has chosen Digital Ash in a Digital Urn by Bright Eyes, claiming rather boldly, that it's amongst the band's best work. Which many fans would no doubt disagree with. In side A we talk a wee bit about Conor Oberst, his history, the pre-Bright Eyes moments and the first two Bright Eyes albums.

Calling in our good friend Crag from Australia, we chat about the covermount CD from a 1998 issue of Kerrang! The CD is called, obviously, Radio Kerrang! Vol. 5 and it has an intro from the Deftones and an exclusive Soulfly track on it. Remember how bad nu-metal could be at times? Well, it's all on display in this pearler of a collection. Relive it, or live it for the first time, in FROM THE VAULT episode 6.

On this episode we look at modern turbofolk. It's still hugely popular in some areas of the Balkans, in particular Croatia. So we dive into some recent examples from the genre and then take a wee peek into what the future of the genre might be.

Last week was heavy. We ended on a pretty sour note. This week is slightly better if only because you get to hear some actual music and we talk a lot less about war criminals. Operative word here being less; we're talking about Ceca this week which means we must talk about Arkan. After that we then get start to look at some of the other popular turbofolk artists that emerged in the late 90s and 00s, then

Turbofolk is heavy. Not musically. Thematically. You'll notice that, if you've made it through both episodes, that Side B ends with Weezer, so for this week's From the Value episode we thought, let's go back to that episode! The band have a massive back catalogue. One which has only grown since. It's a tough listen at times, but we did it. Rumour has it that Mark still hasn't fully recovered from the near lethal amount of Weezer he had to imbibe for this episode. And he's a fan! What's the half life of that stuff anyway? Who knows. Anyway. Let's go back to the Before Times of 2019 and chat about Weezer (White Album) by Weezer.

WARNING: This episode contains some pretty hideous shit. We play samples and quote some truly despicable lyrics. Now that we've laid the foundations for what turbofolk is and the environment from which it came, we talk about some actual music in side B. We looked at Rate Your Music's list of the most critically acclaimed turbofolk albums and decided to do a brief rundown of their music and their message. There are some real, grade A bastards in this mix. Literally some of the worst people to have ever walked the earth writing about terrible things. We bring these songs to your attention for a multitude of reasons, the biggest of which is that many of these songs have MILLIONS of plays on Spotify and some of the artists in question were popular in the 90s. Some are still popular now, too. History, it seems, has not been as forgetful about some of these acts as it could be. Anyway, on this episode we continue our fascinating journey into turbofolk.

Turbofolk is basically Serbian, and sometimes occasionally Balkan, pop music. It's something of a thriving scene these days - think eurodance with traditional Balkan rhythms - but it's origins are very, very murky. It came to prominence in Serbia during the Yugoslav wars in the 90s, and was heavily exploited by Slobodan Milosevic government. In fact, it essentially became propaganda, pushing a nationalist, often ethno-fascist message. Focused on chauvinism, gangsters, guns, obscene wealth and often racism, it's a fascinating subject that soundtracked some of the darkest times, and acts, in human history. In Side A we talk about the Yugoslav Wars and touch, very briefly, on some of the artists.