Surprise! Part two of our Biffy episode is available a few days early, as we look to go ahead with ‘Mothership Connection’ by Parliament this Friday. The gloves are off in this episode as Chris finally gets to the root of his deep seated disdain for the band, we talk about this album, where it sits in the context of their discography, and the weirdness of their fame. We also get a bit philosophical as we ponder how they could have been a big important rock band but instead have become the Britis...
Aug 20, 2019•54 min•Ep. 85
Alongside Fritz, Crag is one of the podcast’s biggest donors. We planned to have him on the show sooner but it proved somewhat difficult to organise on account of him living on the other side of the world. But a recent trip home meant we were able to tie him to a chair for a couple of hourswhile Chris gave it both barrels on Biffy. Sadly, due to a bereavement Weaver wasn’t able to join us, but Crag was in fine fettle and what followed was a two part exploration on the band, their back catalogue,...
Aug 16, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 84
In many ways, Pitchshifter are an anomaly. Initially staggering onto the scene in a maelstrom of pseudo-Minestry inspired industry metal, although somehow heavier , they were every bit the equal of their early 90 metal peers in terms of sheer ferocity and ambition. But as they progressed, changing vocalist and embracing a multitude of influences from drum and bass, dance music and more, they begun to shed their one-dimensional skin in favour of something more dynamic, interesting and, perhaps ab...
Aug 09, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 83
“Flash in the pan” style genres are a distinctly modern creation. Once born from message boards and chatrooms, they’re chucked into existence on social media and furiously lapped up by the music press. Every magazine, website, blog, podcast and channel is keen to shape the tastes of thousands, and embracing such fanciful “microgenres” can reap immense short term benefits for any outlet that appears to be on the zeitgeist. And sometimes, just occasionally, these things crossover into the mainstre...
Aug 02, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 82
Like every genre, hardcore has evolved over the years. From its snotty beginnings in the 80s to the present day, it’s been welded to just about every genre and subgenre of punk rock you can imagine. In this episode, we dedicate a little bit of time to talking about melodic hardcore, the bastard offshoot of hardcore, punk and emo. Oh and we talk about Witness by Modern Life is War. A “foundational text”, as Mark puts it, for this kind of music. It’s an album which has influenced a crazy number of...
Jul 26, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 81
And now we get to the heart of the matter. The very meat of the discussion, if you will. Sonic Youth have a huge discography that, like nearly artists with catalogues of such size, varies wildly in quality. Yet someone, even towards the tail end of the career, they will still able to produce an album as cohesive and consistent as Rather Ripped. After some more discussion around what “cool” is, and how Sonic Youth are still considered as such despite their increasing commercialism, Chris gives us...
Jul 23, 2019•50 min•Ep. 80
We’re back in action this week as Chris finally pulls the trigger on Sonic Youth. Behind the scenes he’d been deliberating doing this record for a while, but the time has finally come to do it. The episode turned out to be a lot longer than we anticipated - I mean, the band have a lot of records and a huge legacy - and we barely even scratched the surface of their discography, instead devoting more time to discussing their impact on music and culture. That’s why we split it into two parts. The v...
Jul 19, 2019•51 min•Ep. 79
With Mark currently undertaking a road trip of the American Deep South, Chris and David thought this would be a fine time to talk about their own road trips, discussing some of their favourite tunes from playlists of old. They even trade some cool tour stories too, which is definitely worth the listen alone. And in true Unsung fashion Mark even finds some time to phone in his own comments. So this week, each of the lads take a turn at picking five songs that they feel are perfect road trip playl...
Jul 12, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 78
Purveyors of fine Southern Fried prog rock, Mastodon, are one of those bands who have slowly grown in stature with each album. Over the years, their sound has evolved, but the musicianship has remained nothing short of breathtaking. It’s rare you find a band that can play like fuck and continue pushing the limits of what they can do as their career progresses. Some will argue, as we do in this episode, that their earlier, heavier stuff is better, but that appears to be the minority opinion if re...
Jul 05, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 77
When one considers the “golden age of hip-hop”, Public Enemy are rightly discussed as vital element of it. It’s a vitality that’s both earned and odd, as their acerbic, caustic, antagonistic, overtly political message may seem at odds with the kind of content their contemporaries were discussing. Yet when viewed as another facet in the rise, and dissemination, of the black culture that PE and their kin were at the forefront of in the late 80s, they can be viewed as part of a more complete pictur...
Jun 28, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 76
O HAY Because we chopped this in two we decided to drop it on Tuesday instead of Friday. SURPRISE! In keeping with the usual “Ask a question, we’ll give the answer” theme of our Split 7” episodes we’re answering another question. This time, it’s one posed by Chris: who would be the worst band to tour with? It gives him an excuse to tell some of his own touring stories, which we think is the secret reason he chose this topic, but we’ll let him off with it. There’s some interesting choices in here...
Jun 25, 2019•40 min•Ep. 75
This week David had an urgent family emergency and couldn’t join the proceedings, so we thought we’d shelf our Public Enemy discussion until his return. With Dave (mostly) out action, Chris and Mark decided to give the general listening public a little taste of what we offer our subscribers. Our Split 7” episodes is where you, the fans, give us a topic and we talk about it. This week we’ve chosen two, one by Mr. Ricky Stewart and one that we chose ourselves. Ricky’s topic was to see if we could ...
Jun 21, 2019•52 min•Ep. 74
This is…three weeks late? We apologise. In our quest to offer you PREMIUM CONTENT at ROCK BOTTOM prices we’ve slung together the second episode of our new feature Sound is a Pound. This week, David takes the reins and dives deep into the Poundland catalogue to produce something which one can definitely describe as an album.
Jun 18, 2019•18 min
If, like the people on this podcast who are not Chris (i.e, most people), you fuck with Google and Search Engine Optimisation, you would know that Google likes it when you type a blog post that’s over 250 words. So now you know why that sentence above exists.. Seriously though, this week we’re discussing Italian jazz rock maestros Zu. Zu are an incredibly talented band. Since their first album 1999 they’ve gone onto create some of the most avant-garde jazz/rock music that you could imagine. It's...
Jun 14, 2019•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 73
We haven’t done a mixtape in a wee while so we thought fuck it, let’s do something completely different. This week we’re talking about the soundtracks from films that were commercial failures. There’s some surprisingly fertile ground in this genre, with some great films being considered box office flops, and some terrible films having great soundtracks or scores. The three of us take very different routes on this episode which one could definitely describe as good, bad and ugly. Chris chose the ...
Jun 07, 2019•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 72
Weezer are a hard band to like. We need to get this out of the way immediately: The Blue Album and Pinkerton are near flawless records, but there is no chance they will get nominated for inclusion in our discography. As Weaver states in this episode, if it were ten years ago then perhaps Pinkerton could be considered Unsung, but it’s now universally recognised that it’s equal to, if not better than, The Blue Album, so that’s a no go for us. It’s been a while since we did a big/popular artist, an...
May 31, 2019•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 71
SURPRISE! Here’s a brand new thing that we hope to make into a new thing. Inspired by random nonsense found in Poundland, we’ve decided it could be entertaining to see what music we can get for exactly One Great British Pound. We will then do a slightly humorous super fast Unsung-lite review of the album in question before deciding if it’s worth keeping or heading straight for the nearest rubbish bin. In Poundland, you sometimes get something good (if you dig hard enough you can actually find so...
May 28, 2019•19 min
Whilst D’Angelo’s R&B stylings weren’t exactly traditional, or even reflected the popular sounds of the time, Kelela makes him sound positively contemporary in comparison. Indeed, on her debut release she takes the Contemporary R&B rule book and throws it right out of the window. In fact, one could argue that she barely gave the damn thing a passing glance before she hurled into the street. Kelela’s music occupies far more esoteric, darker territory. Yes, there might be hints of 90s R&am...
May 24, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 70
If you’re of a certain age, like your three esteemed hosts, there’s a fair chance you’ve heard the name The Eighties Matchbox B-Live Disaster. The smashed their way into the music press with this, their debut album, and a reputation for chaotic, enthralling on stage antics that captured the attention of music lovers and press alike. They also happened to pop onto the scene at the same time as a bunch of scuzzy garage rock bands, of which they sound absolutely nothing like. They arrived with the ...
May 17, 2019•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 69
And now, for avid fans, we present part 3 of our interview with Benjamin Power/Blanck Mass. After two weeks of talking about Blanck Mass and Ben’s career, it’s now time to talk about music that Ben thinks is underrated. There’s some great, obscure, interesting choices and discussion in this episode around the album’s he’s picked, why he’s picked them and what he loves about them. We also recommend checking out episodes 1 and 2 on the links below. Part 1: https://www.unsungpod.net/episodes/in-ses...
May 10, 2019•57 min•Ep. 81
As is tradition for our interviews, we’ve broken it into three parts and this is no exception. On part two Ben talks about the genesis of Blanck Mass, the method behind some of the music and the boys go on a deep dive of the Blanck Mass back catalogue, taking in as much ground as they can. Ben talks about some of the stuff he says is his favourite and things that encapsulate what Blanck Mass really is. They also touch on some of the collaborations Ben’s been a part of and so much more. Mark is a...
May 07, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 80
It’s taken more than a bloody year for us to arrange our second interview, but we did it! We promise not to wait so long for the next one. Promise. This week we sit with producer and musician Benjamin John Power, best known for his work in Fuck Buttons and Blanck Mass. In part 1 we talk early life, early influences, the health of electronic music, broken washing machines and sordid rap-metal pasts. Also, Chris raps. Which is a true feast for the eardrums. Mark is sadly absent from this episode a...
May 03, 2019•51 min•Ep. 79
Grindcore is what happens when hardcore punks start listening to thrash and decide to slam both together and go faster. It’s extreme, uncompromising and sometimes overwhelming. Pig Destroyer are all of these things and more. Their third album ‘Terrifyer’ is often heralded as a landmark metal album. Many say it’s one of the most important grindcore albums ever written, whilst OG grindcore fans think it’s just not dirty enough. Spoiler alert: we agree with the former. We discuss the genre’s origin...
Apr 26, 2019•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 68
Manchester Orchestra have been a band since high school. Which means Andy Hull has been making music, touring and selling actual goddamn records for around half his life. He’s the same age as a couple of us (not Chris) and it really does make you think about what could have been if us three music lovers hadn’t dicked about for so long and just sold out years ago. But alas, that was never in the cards. This week we’re talking about Manchester Orchestra’s third album, and major label debut, Simple...
Apr 19, 2019•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 67
Indie darling and savvy industry operator Santi White has been involved in music than you might think. Formerly and A&R rep for Epic Records, she’d been producing and writing songs for other artists for years (as well as kicking around in a punk band for much of the early 00s) before her debut album dropped in 2008. The result of all that time working behind the scenes meant that Santi emerged with a polished, considered and eclectic record that belies its debut album status. Is it perhaps t...
Apr 12, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 66
At some point, some journalist somewhere decided that “celtic fusion” was a genre, and subsequently placed the music of Martyn Bennett in it. What does it mean? Well, your guess is as good as ours. We can safely say though that Bennett’s fifth and final album ‘Grit’ is definitely a genre fusion of sorts. We’ve dedicated a fair amount of time to discussing Scottish artists and albums on this podcast, but we’ve yet to touch on traditional Scottish music. Martyn Bennett is very much from a folk/tra...
Apr 05, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 65
We return to our regularly scheduled programming this week as we tackle a punk album which is difficult to categorise. A Wilhelm Scream originally started off as a skate punk band in the mid-90s, first under the name Koen before releasing two albums as Smackin’ Isaiah. As members rotated in and out the band’s sound started to change, and come the early 00s the band eschewed it’s old name and started to move away from skate punk entirely. If we were to take a stab at it, you could probably call t...
Mar 29, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 64
This week we’re joined by friend of the pod Dr. Jason Costello, as we take a slight diversion for the usual format and discuss algorithms, Spotify and the future of music. It may come as a surprise to some people, but algorithmic music has been around in various forms since the 1950s. The first instance of computer-generated composition dates back to 1955-56, where Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Issacson at the University of Illinois used a high-speed computer to create the Illiac Suite . The piece ...
Mar 22, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 63
We retreat to Scandinavia again this week, this time travelling further north than ever before in order to meet Goat. Whilst the band (allegedly) come from the Arctic Circle, the music couldn’t be further from the frozen north in sound. A strange fusion of psychedelic rock and afrobeat, ‘World Music’ plays like a 60s throwback. All at once intoxicating and rousing, it’s an assured debut by a mysterious, talented band. There’s everything from Can to Parliament found in here, alongside influence f...
Mar 15, 2019•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 62
Once we’d finished our lengthy diversion into the Satanic territory of black metal, we thought we’d change direction entirely and cover another hip hop album. Cue Chris’ mild bemusement at such an alien genre. We briefly touched upon Danny Brown in our El-P episode, as he’d appeared on a Run the Jewels song, thus giving Mark his usual lazy nexus link. The truth is though, whilst David and Mark both immediately agreed upon this album when the suggestion of doing another hip hop was floated, furth...
Mar 08, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 61
