The Korgis - The Korgis

The Korgis sprang from the remnants of their rather wonderful first band, Stackridge - an eccentric '70s group somewhere between spaceships, folk reels, dragons, and them Beatles. As a duo (James Warren and Andy Davis, looking dapper on the cover), they achieved moderate pop success - you'd recognise their much covered classic Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime (forgive the link orgy, they are all great though). This is their debut, released 1980, which I can't stop listening to.

Billy Bennington - The Barford Angel

Sometimes, music does this funny thing to me where it makes me feel suspended - out of time, outside my own head, halfway between laughter and tears. I suppose you'd call it being moved, but I don't think it's as simple as that. It especially seems to happen with music with a real sense of past and place. If that sounds like nonsense, allow me to introduce Billy Bennington...

Micachu & The Shapes - Never

All hail Micachu, with her drawling urchin voice and clattering percussion! Revel in her lack of regard for ordinary song structures! Swoon when she decides to plop a soaring chorus in amongst the mess of treated guitar and unfathomable noises! Bop to the warped grooves she crams onto her new record, Never!

Marcel Khalife - Dreamy Sunrise (1985)

This record is a prime example of my plucking something from a musical tradition I know nothing about. For me, part of the fun of listening to Dreamy Sunrise has been trying vainly to relate it to the musical conventions I know, which has been a glorious failure. In 1985, the Lebanese oud maestro Marcel Khalife seems to be working in a tradition where pop and classical never got divorced, which makes for some lushly orchestrated, accessible Arabic sounds.