Dear All, I've started a Substack for the lesser travelled corners of music, books, food and booze. Here I am on master crime writer Nicolas Freeling's lesser known - but equally brilliant - food writing... harrysword.substack.com/p/freeling-o...

RL in the morning www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLF-...

The older I get the more I dislike numerically ordered lists. I understand why publications/sites have to do it and the ‘engagement’ they inevitably drive but my god it’s silly.

I picked this up last year and it’s a brilliant, eccentric, charming book. Highly recommend.

Mark E. Smith's list of recs NME (15/8/81)

In this photograph John Travolta looks like an Albanian chef who has become successful via Instagram/TikTok due to a thin layered lamb flatbread concoction - taken to ludicrous grotesque extremity - and involving, in the final instance, a silver jug of ‘foaming’ goat butter poured from on high.

I thought Andy Burnham was running ‘in his bare feet’ at first glance. But he actually has unusual tan coloured running shoes.

"Well known as The Human League's mercurial and notoriously sarcastic synth tech from Sept 1979 to Apr 1980, Andy's debut as an artist in his own right sees him realise his own singular vision, fusing challenging electronic clatter, chilling found sounds and Japanese noise with a DIY punk aesthetic"

#nowplaying Faust - Blickwinkel This has - over repeated plays - become one of my favourite Faust records. Bandcamp link here: faust.bandcamp.com/album/blickw...

This looks like the press photo whenever you get an e mail from Mute.

#nowplaying Paul St.Hilaire- w/the producers Bandcamp link here: kynantrecords.bandcamp.com/album/paul-s...

The Winstons, a talented but relatively obscure band out of Washington, D.C., played funk/soul mix with a little infusion of gospel. Their 1969 song “Amen, Brother” was released as a B-side, but its drum break has given the group musical immortality as one of the most sampled riffs in history.

Incredible

It remains weird to me that this has become another culture war issue, so the left in both Britain and the US ignore a stunning abuse of power that has undermined faith in both government and science in league with a brutally-repressive Communist dictatorship

😂

In this photograph Nigel Farage and his partner look like leisure centre area managers arriving for an ‘unexpected spot check’ in a 1995 episode of The Brittas Empire, dropping Gordon right in the shit.

#nowplaying Blood Incantation- Absolute Elsewhere. SF themed progressive DM with ambient/krautrock overtones. one of the most important records in heavy music of the past decade. They’ve got a doc about it - All Gates Open- coming out soon. BC link: bloodincantation.bandcamp.com/album/absolu...

#nowplaying Voices From The Lake - II Shimmering, atmospheric, perfect techno from two masters of the form. Every bit as good as the first. Bandcamp link here: voicesfromthelake.bandcamp.com/album/ii

‘Why are you still on Twitter?’

Judging from the replies, an astounding number of people still cannot grasp that "taking all the prominent liberal and progressive voices and putting them on a remote island where no ordinary people or institutions interact with them will reduce the political influence of liberals and progressives"

Champion Beer of Britain to be crowned at Cambridge Beer Festival next Tuesday wb.camra.org.uk/2026/05/12/c... @camraofficial.bsky.social

#nowplaying Pigeon - Outernational Superb afrobeat/disco/motorik gear from Margate. One of the best albums I’ve heard this year. Total killer. Bandcamp link here: pigeon-uk.bandcamp.com/album/outtan...

Wes Streeting looks like a WW2 bomber pilot who was actually a terrible shit. ‘I seen to it’ etc

Counterpoint to this none-more-Bluesky bio: I’m here to receive and transmit ideas, jokes and opinions with people I trust. I’m not here to explain myself to random strangers who don’t know what I’m on about. Also: we all get to choose. Also: it’s ‘people who’, not ‘people that’.

VERY BAD AND OLD SINGER ‘SIR’ ROD STEWART THAT THEY TELL ME ISN’T EVEN A SIR AND THAT SELLS VERY FEW TICKETS FOR ‘SMALL’ VENUES ALSO, AND WHO SINGS HORRIBLY. IT’S A REAL SHAME FOR HIM.

'Never mind the rat piss! Just lie very still...for Christ's sake just let them crawl over you, then... They'll soon go away. They want food, not us...Now: you see that - over there! - *that* is a cormorant. Pass me the binoculars. It's twitching time'

'The Kitchen.' (1889) Maximilien Luce was a committed anarchist, witnessing the rise of the Paris Commune and its massacre; later in life, he was arrested on suspicion of plotting the assassination of French President Sadi Carnot. What a life. What an artist.

Remembering Lee Brilleaux on his birthday. Here are Dr Feelgood terrorising the French town of Pithiviers in 1976. The full clip is at youtu.be/8_QibKon2G4

My God that was fucking stunning. 50 years old and it wiped the floor with everything today. Breathtaking. There were trailers for a couple of period dramas (another ‘Sense & Sensibility’ and some new 18th century farce, both with silly camp acting and horrible lighting) and they looked utter shit..

shit eurotrash music just makes this better. the best of times www.youtube.com/watch?v=faYm...

I love Journey. ‘Live in Houston 1981’ is a killer *killer* show. youtu.be/RgJ7dBx_oCc?...

This just popped up on FB. Never seen this one before. What a fantastic picture of the great man

Interesting read. unherd.com/2026/05/cosm...

#nowreading - brilliant. Not a Maigrait. Man on train asked to pick up suitcase for a stranger (on a train)…

Rollicking, roistering heavy metal in the ancien method: chariotsoverdrive.bandcamp.com/album/the-en...

Mark Jenkins’ film about Cornish trawling is beautifully shot in grainy 16mm. Having grown up in Cornwall in the 80s and 90s, the beauty and poverty ravaged-bleakness of the county before it was Starbucked, Barratt-homed & Wi-Fied out of what felt like an endless 70s is well captured without..

Perfect.

When I interviewed Ringo back in 2016 I told him that my mum was from the same part of the Dingle as him. His reply? “Good for you.” #Charmer #DontEverChange

Intense ‘eccentric/legendarily ‘stubborn’ Manchester record shop owner who once ate every Primal Scream album - in order- in small pieces over a period of four years after an argument with Bobby Gillespie’ energy from Galloway here.

"If microtonal harmony and triplets mean nothing to you, you’ll hear that these fucked-up fairytales are groovy as hell, sometimes noisy, often enchanting, and that they do fascinating things with dynamics—teasing out euphoric shocks, tension-knotting crescendos, or quietly majestic meditations."

if I have to listen to the bloke on the holding message on the NHS transport line pronounce 'eligibility' as 'illegibility' one more time I'm going to punch a mile-wide hole in my own head

Imagine Cilla Black doing ‘freed from desire’

'Night Flats', Camberwell (c.1967) by David Hepher (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art)

“I hate living in squalor – I detest it! – but I can’t do the work I want to do and live in any other way.”

Pro-tip: don't let your house to a poet.

Al Cisneros & Chris Hakius' frankly fucking sexy (not to mention hugely influential) debut as Om returns for a 20 year reissue, fully essential gear FFO Sleep, Earth, Sunn 0))), Les Rallizes Dénudés, Father Dionysis Tabakis boomkat.com/products/var...

Simon Harris has such strong ‘compromised politician in a hard hitting/blackly comic 1989 Alan Bleasdale 3 part series for Channel 4’ energy.

This week’s portal has been put together by The Quietus stalwart Daniel Dylan Wray to mark the publication of Groovy, Laidback & Nasty, his deeply-researched celebration of the often under-sung musical history of Sheffield... #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/AN4A4cX