January

Barry Adamson – Scala!!! (Mute)

Finally arriving after the screening of the critically acclaimed documentary film of the same name, ‘Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits’ is the soundtrack to the notoriously renowned cinema based in London’s Kings Cross which spanned the breadth of the creative years from the 1970s to early ’90s. The film was released in 2023 and premiered at the BFI London film festival.

The 22-piece track list delves into the subterranean, weird world of the Scala cinema which witnessed eye-popping film programming, with double-feature screenings, all-nighters, live performances and showcases for risqué avant-garde turned legendary filmmakers like John Waters, Russ Meyer, Derek Jarman and David Lynch.

The release opens on the beating drums and acidic surf rock guitar of the opening title track and onto the estranged harpsichord and percussive shuffle of ‘Scala Posters (Mondo Bungo)’. The ‘Jazz Devil’ maestro inserts a lot of his own feel and personal influence into the release as seen in the 1930s swinging brass of ‘Babs Johnson is Divine’ – citing the protagonist in the Waters classic ‘Pink Flamingos’ – and the cinematic electric guitar fusion of ‘Iggy and Lou and Mick Rock Too’.

A multi-instrumentalist and genrelist as Adamson is there’s electronic experimentation in the track list too such as in the Numanoid alien terrestrials of ‘Acid Celluloid’, the industrial tribal march-beat of ‘Barry’s Iranian Embassy Blues’ with its squelching ectoplasmic ethereality and then the Kraftwerk inspired ‘Spandau Politics’, with short pieces like ‘Pink Narcissus’ conjuring up the dark armpits of sex, drugs and what’s no one’s business goings-on in the auditorium.

The bossy tones of ‘Jane’s Day Out in Court’ with its prominent drum pattern and curdling guitar is another highlight on the release while the memorably sticky floors of the cinema are best portrayed in the Velcro croaks of ‘One of Us / Sticky Floors Atmos’. The cinema sadly closes its doors in 1993 on the legal fiasco over Stanley Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’ with the classical piano and cello bow out of ‘The Party’s Over’ – cue the boozy big band end titles. A crisply produced time warp machine back to the glory days of a cultural institution.

‘Scala!!!’ is out now on limited edition coloured vinyl, CD and digitally.

The Damned – Not Like Everybody Else (earMusic)

The band’s personal tribute to the late Brian James, this mostly ’60s covers release opens on its main single ‘There’s a Ghost in My House’, aligning frontman Dave Vanian’s colourful yet gruff vocals with the original R. Dean Taylor (1966), but backed with harmony and featuring boozy guitar it’s quintessentially The Damned’s (as seen throughout the track list), which is the objective that a covers album should always aim for.

Second single, ‘Summer in the City’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful (1966) jumpstarts on estranged keyboard notes and then the playful skip of crooner depths meets a fuzzy guitar solo alternating with organ trills, with its rhythm only being a tad too clunky compared to the glossy flow of the original. The Creation’s ‘Making Time’ (1966) hits the airy vocal highs of The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ while ‘Raw Power’ Iggy and The Stooge’s ‘Gimme Danger’ (1973) is the angstiest track on the record; Vanian’s swaying vocals up against Paul Gray’s cellic, woody basslines, Monty Oxymoron’s glassy organ waterfalls and, for contrast, a soaring prog rock solo.

Captain Sensible sings alongside Vanian for Floyd’s ‘See Emily Play’ (1967) which carries the English folk delicacy of the original with playful classical piano keys and an interlude of fairground and cosmic noise. Title track ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ is vastly improved from the crudely heavy Kinks’ 1966 B-side; placed around the centre of the album, it hones the stomp of the raison d’etre of punk rock in the year that celebrates its 50th anniversary with the beating heart of original drummer Rat Scabies back in the seat.

The Yardbirds’s ‘Heart Full of Soul’ (1965) has a skin prickling garage-psychobilly guitar solo with shuffling drumbeats conjuring up Spaghetti Westerns (to which Vanian’s vocals are well inclined) – one of the most beautiful covers on the release. The ten-track list closes on a punky version of The Lollipop Shoppe’s 1968 single ‘You Must Be a Witch’, with ripping guitar exploding into drum bashings, and then the glam rock waltz of The Stone’s ‘The Last Time’ (1965) meshing into a ‘live’ finish recorded from the band’s reunion shows with James where he’s fully honoured. A better album than their last studio even for the heritage of its track selection, vocal diversity and quality instrumentals, tinged ownership and of course…Rat Scabies!

‘Not Like Everybody Else’ is out now on limited edition coloured vinyl, CD and digitally.

Jah Wobble + Jon Klein – Automated Paradise (Dimple Discs)

The pair’s first joint studio album on this label in their collaborating history follows hotly on from Wobble’s 2023 solo studio album, ‘A Brief History of Now’, which was also produced by guitarist Jon Klein of Banshees heritage. As is a rising theme now across all artist outputs these days, covering global chaos themes such as ravenous consumerism, climatic destruction, political polarisation and digital takeover, the release is a gloomy glimpse into a world gone mad.

Opening on single ‘Fading Away’ sung against a lone synth key, the narrator looks down on a burning planet as he escapes in a technology-ridden future; Wobble’s musings, backed by Klein’s own vocals, tragically declare that “algorithmic inventions cannot dry my tears”. Continuing in the vein of Wobble’s last solo album with a thumping bassline, the chaotic clatter of ‘Make It Stop’ is a frenzied treadmill rant on the worst consumerist-driven aspects of our lives, where there’s “a million faces staring at their phones”, also commenting on the technocratic age of AI where machine and man have merged. It crescendos and ends on Wobble screaming in despair. Protest song ‘Who Wins?’ deliberates on the futility of party politics in a globalist controlled world where politicians are mere puppets on strings; Klein’s see-sawing razor sharp guitar turns into a strangling solo – an apt song for the current times where people must unify and speak truth to power.

‘Read Between the Lines’ focuses on Wobble’s spiritual outlook of embracing samsara via his preferred spoken word format, with his son John Wardle on tribal drums and Klein’s trilling almost oriental-electric fusion guitar. The title track of the album is an instrumental reggae drift, to clear the air before the chaos resumes in the punk rave of ‘Terminal Terminal the End’, where the world is an “automated paradise built on shifting beds of ice” amongst Klein’s screeching noise feedback, with Wobble rounding off the track with a gloating “Hahahahahahaha fuck off!” to the system. Cooling the jets, the track list closes on the soothing jazzy ambient city soundscape of ‘Brockwell Lido’ (contrasted by the bitter dual society of previous track ‘Endless Sky’), with Klein’s guitar floating above the bassline and snowflake keys extinguishing the heat.

‘Automated Paradise’ is out now on vinyl, CD and digitally.