#NewMusicFriday 02/08/2024

A week of massive ups and downs. And all this against the backdrop of co-ordinated violence by right-wing thugs orchestrated by the shadowy (and not-so-shadowy) Far Right ringleaders, some of whom now unfortunately have seats as MPs in our Parliament, which still refuses to implement live fact-checking and calling out of lies. And the mainstream media continues not to call these people out for what they are. That’s actually why new music is so important, because no piece of music, especially of current music (and this has applied across the ages), is not political.

One of the massive ups was to welcome my old friend Stephen Bumfrey into our house, to share a few hours of water, tea, coffee and cigarettes with him, and to talk about what ails us in spirit and in soul, and about what makes us happy. And I was fortunate enough to persuade him to do a 10-minute piece with him for the show, despite my only having equipment which is vastly inferior to what he was used to at the BBC, and despite my extremely perfunctory checking of our sound levels before we actually started recording (played everything out in the end, including my rather flippant joke about the levels being fine). Even in this recording, you can tell he’s a superior radio presenter – and he taught me everything I know about radio, just about.

Anyway, those tracks:

Gemma Rogers – Death Knocked Up
Let’s Play Dead – Fire & Water (Ember’s Song)
The Standing Dead – Old Cramps T-Shirt
Grizelda Pughe – The Party
Magnolia – Feed Me
Sketchdoll – Sierra Echoes
Lying For Friends – Get Me Out Of Here
Brave New Broken Hearts Club – Be Made For Me
Ideal – Rote Liebe (1980)
Ideal – Blaue Augen (1980)
Broken Colours – Not Giving In
Yellowlees – Bottle
Neural Dance – Distress Signals
Slow Death – Best For You
Yassassin – Way Out Way In

For once, all the new records on this list (and, yes, I couldn’t resist slipping two brilliant old ones, rather than one, into ths show, because they’re just brilliant – and, just to make the point again, they actually have a lot of 1980s anti-nukes and anti-fascist rhetoric in them) are available on soundcloud, so stream them there, and let the artists know what you think. Because supporting and praising great new songs and artists is really important. To be frank, it’s the only way we can keep the torches of music and anti-fascism burning.