Typically there’s no theme to my short time as curator of the StyPod, because I’m a tardy individual and lacking in ideas strong enough to offer some kind of binding scheme to the three songs I’ve picked beyond the fact that a; I love them all and b; I’ve written something vaguely related to each of them lately.

Delakota– The Rock, [One Love]

A few months ago I wrote a Seconds column about this song, an unexpected moment of perfect future pop from the guy who used to play drums with early 90s English punkers Senseless Things (search around for their singles “Homophobic Asshole” and “Too Much Kissing”, both wonderful in wildly different ways). While Cas Browne was a formidable drummer, I don’t think anybody ever expected him to emerge from the rubble of his former group with anything like this. Almost anyone I’ve ever played “The Rock” to has loved it so much they’ve run out and bought the album it came from, 1998’s One Love, but these days it’s rather hard to come by. And so it seemed like a natural choice for the StyPod. Like I said in the initial column, although the whole song is lovely, it’s really all about one sound, the delicious, multi-coloured spiral trilling from the right-hand channel. The version we’ve included here for you is the full one from One Love rather than the shorter single mix.

[read Nick’s extended take on this song here, buy One Love here]

Bark Psychosis– Shapeshifting, [///Codename:Dustsucker]

This was first put up as a download on the Fire Records website earlier this year before ///Codename:Dustsucker was released; I’d say it was as a taster of the album, but Graham Sutton had already given people that by leaking most of the other tracks onto the internet 18 months or more ago. Female vocals and a high-end Lee Harris groove are absolutely destroyed after a few minutes by savage, acidic guitars and layer upon layer of meticulous, crepuscular noise, encapsulating Bark Psychosis’ second album as well as any one track lifted from its pages can.

[visit Sutton’s website here, buy ///Codename:Dustsucker here, read Nick’s review here, read Nick’s interview with Sutton here ]

Embrace– Too Many Times, [Gravity single]

Yorkshire’s finest and most maligned band demonstrate a different side to their sound on this b-side to the recent single “Gravity”, which showcases their oft-ignored tendency towards noise and shunts their melodic edge to the rear. Written on piano initially by Danny McNamara, the rest of the band fleshed it out into the spacerock-goes-r’n’b monster you can hear here, piling on jerking rhythms and savage jolts of guitar until psychosis sets in. Back in April when I heard unmixed tracks that would end up on Out of Nothing this was one of the real stand-out tracks, but they were probably right not to include it on the album—it’s so savage and off-kilter that throws everything else around it out of shape. Play loud.

[visit Embrace’s website here, buy the Gravity single here, read Nick’s review of Out of Nothing here, read Nick’s interview with the band here]