(The Burgers - Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield 06/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)
Depending on when you read this (and the analytics suggest my posts gain most visits midweek), I'll hopefully have enjoyed seeing either French-Belgian combo Coup Dur at 95 Mary Street in Sheffield, or else Spratleys and Panixphere at the Brudenell in Leeds.
Ideally both, though three gigs in a week might be a bit of a liberty, if not an outright dereliction of familial duty. Naughty daddy.
The photos shared above come from the first of those three gigs in a week, the four-band feature at Sidney & Matilda last Sunday which I trailed on these pages a short while before. And yes, that is a puppet drummer you can see.
Believe it or not, Sunday wasn't the first time I'd seen a punk-pop band from the other side of the world with a percussionist made of cloth.
However, whereas Yumi Yumi's "drummer" Tom was a teddy bear unavailingly tasked with getting the drum machine he was sitting on to work (I wished I'd photographed it at the time), Drummy Burger from Beijing-via-Glasgow headline act The Burgers actually moved his arms along broadly in time to the music.
I was reminded of those sunglasses-wearing, guitar-wielding novelty flowers from years ago, only in puppet form and with one leg missing, apparently stolen. Having shown them some footage of the gig, my kids want to set up a charity fundraiser to buy Drummy a new leg. They're all heart.
The Burgers, the only act of the quartet new to me, were a great find, energetic, righteous, and evidently not above baiting Joe Strummer. A fun finish to a top evening, one earlier graced with a typically winsome/charming/hilarious half hour or so with All Ashore! (do write in if you can answer for them the mystery of why nits never travel from your head to your pubes) and the terrific, inventive pounding of Duck.
The last-named haven't appeared on this blog half enough, all things considered - and not since the first List back from its hiatus (q.v. List #237). Further fresh output is apparently imminent, and the set indeed closed with a newie, having previously taken in a touching cover of Dolly Parton's The Bargain Store.
For now, it's a pleasure to include 2020 track New Super Power, a defiant railing against society's attempts to make women of a certain age to all intents and purposes invisible, and also against the notion that a lurch to the ideological right is inevitable once hitting that sort of age. Cue much clapping in time and chanting back of "no I won't go" to this one by all of us present, who indeed aren't going anywhere.
(Duck - Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield 06/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)
***
Getting to the venue in time to see Pink Opaque play again would have rendered it a yet more fabulous evening - my apologies, Danielle and Pete.
I still got to chat with them both variously about football, Only Connect (I'm not sure how many of this year's intake of teams would trouble Danielle's mighty Francophiles), Grimbarian-themed space missions, Skep Wax Records and how-the-hell-are-our-kids-so-old-now, however, so it's all good.
Some of that chat with Pete concentrated on their latest solo incarnation Mariner 9, a name surely not arrived at by accident given Pete's Grimsby roots, and an electronic project blessed with joyous washes of Jean-Michel Jarre style synths and wide-eyed optimism, as evident in the track I've included this week.
Some of that chat with Pete concentrated on their latest solo incarnation Mariner 9, a name surely not arrived at by accident given Pete's Grimsby roots, and an electronic project blessed with joyous washes of Jean-Michel Jarre style synths and wide-eyed optimism, as evident in the track I've included this week.
Pete and Danielle's stance on AI use in music is of course a matter of record also, either or both of the duo having taken aim in such as the Pink Opaque track Bringing Back the Humans and a number of social media posts. It hardly needs stating, therefore, that We Love You from the Moon similarly contains no traces whatsoever of anything arrived at via a large language model, generative chatbot or similar. No way, no how.
Compare and contrast with one Jovanka van Wilsdorf, who as one half of turn of the century German duo Quarks created four studio albums of warm, inventive electropop of a kind not a million miles removed from what I see and hear some of my Sheffield friends producing to the present day.
However, in researching Quarks members' subsequent history ahead of this week's inclusion of the engaging, twitchy Schneider TM remix of Fallen, I discovered that Jovanka has since picked up the AI baton and run further with it than most.
"A creative AI consultant, speaker and initiator specializing in social robotics", her website notes, going on to highlight variously her work as musical director of concerts performed by an AI-driven robot; as the co-creator of DIANA, the self-claimed first ever AI Song Contest; as a prolific public speaker and lecturer on AI songwriting and production; and so on.
The subtitles of some of her speeches - muse and monster; between hype and horror; good bot, bad bot - suggest that Jovanka isn't necessarily indifferent to the wider ethical concerns of AI, and her attempts to create and consolidate a "female AI" are broadly compatible with her other initiatives such as the creation of a Female* Producer Prize in conjunction with Music Women* Germany (note, by the way, the asterisks - the Gendersternchen or "gender star" used in Germany to signify gender inclusivity, thus opening up this award to trans women also).
Not wholly unimpressive when written down like that, and for the greater part certainly a more virtuous, empowering use of AI than draining dry another reservoir just to produce a pub quiz poster or picture of present day you with a 1980s hairdo.
Even so, is this music? Ought it count as such? Really and truly?
***
Very much not created with AI - and arguably too idiosyncratic and multifaceted for AI to have been able to build it even had the likes of Suno been a thing way back in 1989 - is this week's choice of A Loved Album, This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! by Pop Will Eat Itself.
One member of my trio of all-time favourite albums, alongside Skywriting by The Field Mice (q.v. List #238) and one other that'll feature on these pages before the year's out, it almost singlehandedly blew away my ignorant belief of hitherto that studio albums were incapable of sustaining the excitement and interest of either a 7" single (and it was 7" singles back then) or a well put-together compilation.
It was described on release as more of a sound collage than an album by the likes of Trouser Press, and the use of short, linking pieces to maintain a continuous flow of sound - a technique adapted from the previous year's touring mates Public Enemy - only served to harden that impression (whilst also making jabbing down the pause button at the precise split second when making mixtapes for mates that bit trickier).
It was, and remains, an album designed to grab your attention from the word go, and hold it unrelentingly.
For a work so heavily indebted to, and continuously knowingly referencing, assorted sci-fi films, comics, books, musicians and so on, it nevertheless maintains a generous, inclusive feel throughout. If you possess a sound working knowledge of the output of, say, Alan Moore, Isaac Asimov, Mantronix, Gilbert Shelton, Rod Serling or The Jungle Brothers, here is a band who speaks your language and proves the point over an entire album. If you don't (and I don't), you're more than welcome to enjoy the thrills and innovations as an equal anyway.
Can U Dig It? (the single with which they finally cracked the UK top 40) and Wise Up! Sucker have long since featured in Lists, and with so many other highlights on This Is the Day... there was zero temptation on my part to repeat either. I'm surprised I've let you go this long without any iteration of Def Con One, mind, and that matter is rectified here alongside three other inclusions.
(With the release of This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!, so began years of me drawing the various Designers Republic PWEI robots, monsters, spacemen, etc. all over virtually every single school book or folder - doubtless to the exasperation or befuddlement of the teachers and lecturers who had to handle them. This example is from off of an A-Level maths folder in 1992, hence the Bulletproof! lyrical quote. I've loads more somewhere in the loft).
***
By the time This Is the Day... was released in early 1989, a thrash band by the name of Panixphere had already been in a fitful existence for almost six years.
Originally conceived as a live-only entity by Bic Hayes, later of Cardiacs, Levitation and Dark Star, it's taken the small matter of 43 years for the stars to align sufficiently for Panixphere - nowadays coalesced into a trio of Bic and Cardiacs/Ad Nauseam buddies Jon Poole and Bob Leith - to put out their debut album.
Hence, at last, Gods and Zeros, released in July and enjoyed by me continuously since.
That Panixphere has gone through sustained periods of inertia over the past four decades is putting it mildly. The band had previously been at its most active in the early 1990s, with Bic then flanked by none other than Tim Smith himself and the soon-to-be Cardiacs duo of Poole and Leith. After which, not terribly much happened in the life of this act for around a quarter of a century, but plenty in the lives of the other associated bands mentioned.
Three tracks written by Jon in this period (including Angleworm Angel, available on Gods and Zeros under its original title of Perfic) ended up in some form or other on Cardiacs' Sing to God magnum opus in 1996. More Money Than God, meanwhile, was written by Tim at the same time as Perfic, but has never appeared on record in any form, until now. It's a genuine pleasure to include it here this week.
Having had almost half a lifetime to keep the diary clear, by the way, will all three current Panixpherians be present for their dates alongside Spratleys this month? Alas, no - Jon's gone off touring with Adam Ant...
Blimey I can go on.
Had we better just move on to the other highlights? You may also like:
KIM DEAL - Nobody Loves You More (2024)
COMET GAIN - You Can Hide Your Love Forever (2001)
WINDY & CARL MEET OPTIGAN CONSERVATORY - Conductor (2026)
THE RAPTURE - Get Myself Into It (2006)
KNEECAP - Parful (2024)
EUROTASTIC
RIGHEIRA – Vamos a la Playa (1985)
COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
CUD - Magic (1990)
MASSIVE ATTACK & TOM WAITS - Boots on the Ground (2026)
AFTER THE FIRE - One Rule for You (1979)
DUCK - New Super Power (2020)
- New or recent fare from Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conservatory, Kiwi Jr (bringing to mind the same Rockford Files theme Minimoog stylings of such as Boy Genius's Old New England), SILVERWINGKILLER and four-plus minutes of pure, anti-Trump invective from Massive Attack & Tom Waits (or Sexy Tom Waits, as you'll recall The Yummy Fur referring to him as).
- Far from the only example of cheery music meets heavy subject matter from the 1980s, as Italo Disco duo Righeira discuss the dropping of the atomic bomb.
- The sole UK top 40 hit for rockers-turned-new-wavers After The Fire, though an English language cover of Falco's Der Kommissar would subsequently do better still for them in the US. The loon you can see on drums is one Ivor Twidell (later Iva Twydell), soon to leave on an ultimately unavailing attempt to make a greater breakthrough as a solo frontperson. Where is he now, one wonders.
- Carl Puttnam of Cud still looking ridiculously young in the promo for 1990's Magic, already their tenth single and the final one before the leap to a major label and a degree of chart stardom. Seeing them live at the Leadmill in Sheffield as part of their 2012 "Jubilee" tour was one of Linda's and my earliest date nights out; the band were great, certain lairy misogynistic elements of their fanbase, not so much.
KIM DEAL - Nobody Loves You More (2024)
COMET GAIN - You Can Hide Your Love Forever (2001)
WINDY & CARL MEET OPTIGAN CONSERVATORY - Conductor (2026)
THE RAPTURE - Get Myself Into It (2006)
KNEECAP - Parful (2024)
EUROTASTIC
RIGHEIRA – Vamos a la Playa (1985)
COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
CUD - Magic (1990)
MASSIVE ATTACK & TOM WAITS - Boots on the Ground (2026)
AFTER THE FIRE - One Rule for You (1979)
DUCK - New Super Power (2020)
(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)
SNUGGLE - Dust (2025)
SNUGGLE - Dust (2025)
READERS WIFES - Bitch at the Brits (2003)
SCIENTISTROCK
MARINER 9 - We Love You from the Moon (2026)
A LOVED ALBUM: Pop Will Eat Itself - This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! (1989)
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - Def Con One
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - Inject Me
KIWI Jr - World Like Polly (2026)
HIGHSPIRE - Slowbeat (2002)
THE RESEARCH - The Hard Times (2005)
MANASSEH - Skenga (1999)
SILVERWINGKILLER - Shang Film (2026)
A TANGLE OF JANGLE
THE STARLETS - Rocking in a Shy Way (2001)
THE FEELIES - Let’s Go (1986)
TALLY HO! ft ROSE MELBERG - I Never Will Marry (2012)
(No video for the Tally Ho! track. Please click on this Bandcamp link)
DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
QUARKS - Fallen (Werden wir alle in Grossen Spiralen aus dem Himmel gespuckt Mix) (Schneider Tm Mix) (2000)
GRAEME QUINTON-JONES - Humoresque (1968/2013)
PANIXPHERE - More Money Than God (2026)
RED HOUSE PAINTERS - Mistress (1993)
PYE CORNER AUDIO - Electronic Rhythm Number Three (2010)
A LOVED ALBUM: Pop Will Eat Itself - This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! (1989)
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - The Fuses Have Been Lit
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - Not Now James, We’re Busy…
IN LOVING MEMORY: Derry Brownson
EMF - They’re Here (1992)
