Writer Jon Dale has been published in Plan B, Signal to Noise, Dusted and Grooves among many others. He was also the author of the blog Worlds of Possibility until his pesky thesis got in the way (which he is undoubtedly working on right now).

Trash– On and On With Lou Reed, [On and On With Lou Reed 7”]

Bruce Blücher is one of those figures in New Zealand music that never quite made it to ‘known-legend’ status. Unlike, say, Jefferies or Russell or Galbraith, his music was never index-linked to the rise and decline of various aesthetic empires (Flying Nun, Xpressway.) Rather, he inhabited everything in a slightly obscure, left-of-field way, regularly firing out great songs as though it was nothing particularly special. His first band, the Alpaca Brothers, released an EP on Flying Nun in the mid 1980s entitled Legless, and I was sorely tempted to include the great “Hey Man” here instead. But the three Trash albums from the 1990s are all classics of their own kind, particularly the first, Gritt and Butts, though none of the albums contain a song quite as classic as “On and On With Lou Reed”, whose incredibly disinterested vocals and rolling train of guitars make it one of those undeniable New Zealand seven inch singles, from a time when the country was popping them out like so many ping pong balls. Also check Blücher’s great work with Peter Jefferies and Kathy Bull in Cyclops. I wonder what he’s up to now.

[buy On and On With Lou Reed here]

Opal– Grains of Sand, [Early Recordings]

There’s no record more deserving of reissue status than Opal’s Early Recordings, a record I had loved and held dearly on a shitty cassette for many, many years before the Toxic Dandy himself stepped in and supplied me with a beautiful, mint copy to perch atop my Kendra Smith shrine. Compiling Opal’s first two singles (although criminally neglecting the beautiful cover of Elizabeth Cotten’s “Freight Train” that sat on the b-side of the English issue of the “Fell From the Sun” 12”) and many previously-unreleased gems, Early Recordings is the defining document of the Paisley Underground. The team of Roback and Smith was one of the last to understand that psychedelic music was much less about the power of the wah-wah pedal, and much more about the stimulus of interior space. “Grains of Sand” is one of their finest moments and is hard to find in any format (it led their first 12” release.) Someone reissue this record now. I find a good judge of a music fan is their knowledge of Kendra Smith’s work.

[visit a short bio site for Opal here, buy Early Recordings here]

The Watersons– Christmas is Now Drawing Near at Hand, [Frost and Fire: A Calendar of Ceremonial Folk Songs]

Coil’s version of this, made available as part of their Equinox Series, was seriously charming, but nothing tops Lal Waterson’s vocalisation, from the Watersons’ mind-bogglingly great 1965 album Frost and Fire: A Calendar of Ceremonial Folk Songs. I had heard this, and was stopped dead in my tracks, many many years ago at a friend’s house, and was most pleased to step into my University’s library last week and stumble across a small cache of Watersons/Topic Records titles to borrow. I’m sure the nature of the MP3 format is going to render Lal’s astonishing voice a water-logged, warbly mulch of digitalia, but even if you get an inference of the power of this performance, that’s enough. In an interview with Ian Penman, John Balance of Coil stated of Lal’s performance that “Every time I hear it I cry, it’s so pure and emotional, emotive and lunar”, and you can hear why.

[visit an unofficial Watersons website here, buy Frost and Fire here]

Future Pilot AKA– Om Namah Shivaya, [Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea]

What better way to end the set than with a true devotional? If you ask me what the best record of this decade so far would be, I would be inclined to offer up Future Pilot AKA’s 2002 set Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea. Incidentally, I walked into my local record store a few months ago and struck up a conversation with the owner, one Vic Conrad, a man of near-impeccable taste, who described this album with one word: “HUGE”. It is indeed. And none huger than this track, voiced by Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian, with the full Future Pilot AKA orchestra behind him, guiding the music like a rag-tag assemblage of deckhands. Maybe the most benign record ever made.

[visit Future Pilot AKA’s website here, buy Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea here]