Unsung Podcast

This week we dive headfirst into the land of heavy metal, Finland. In what originally started off as an episode on the Oranssi Pazuzu album Mestearin Kynsi, we quickly realised that we had a two parter on our hands. So this week, we're using Oranssi Pazuzu as a lens through which to view  the Finnish music scene. In the episode, we take a detour through the history and culture of Finland, explorin...

In this episode we explore the eclectic stylings of the band Karate. We break down their shift from post-hardcore roots to embracing jazz influences, focusing on the standout album 'In Place of Real Insight.' And we get there, in the usual fashion, by chatting extensively about their back catalogue. We also theorise that perhaps Karate fans may have split into two camps when they moved the focus a...

This week our pal Jan Alkema, drummer of the bands The Drum/China Drum and Compulsion returns. This time here's here to discuss the story of Compulsion. We cover the band's history, its ups and downs, and some behind-the-scenes stories. We hear about Jan's journey from joining The Amazing Colossal Men to Compulsion's battle with record labels, relentless touring, and eventual disbandment. Along th...

In this episode, we take a journey back to the 80s to explore Device's only album, '22B3', the choice of this week's guest co-host, our antipodean based pal, Crag! We delve into the album's rich synth-pop-rock sound and discuss why it remains an underrated gem. The key member of this act is the overlooked, yet all time great pop rock songwriter Holly Knight. She was the mastermind behind many icon...

In this episode we dive into a lesser-known compilation from Dundee, 1996, titled 'After the Storm', which was created to raise funds for 18U. We explore the tracks, uncovering a mix of genres from 80s power ballads to 90s dance and country influences. There's a lot of colourful and, shall we say, sometimes questionable, musical efforts showcased in this CD, and as ever we humorously navigate the...

In this episode of the Unsung Podcast, we delve into Vessel's 2014 album 'Punish Honey,' a unique blend of electronic music and modern electronica. We provide an overview of Vessel's career, touching on past albums and collaborative efforts. We discuss standout tracks like 'Red Sex' and 'Anima,' highlighting the album's haunting, ethereal qualities. We also reflect on Vessel's transition to scorin...

David Scott from Moni Jitchell joins us again this week as we round off our deep dive into the discography of Los Campesinos! We being picking up where we left off last week; in the midst of running through the band's discography. Mark then comes clean and says he actually took notes on the wrong album, before we all go down the rabbit hole of figuring out of Romance is Boring and/or Los Campesino...

Guest time! In the first of two episodes we chat with David Scott from the band Moni Jitchell about Los Campesinos! and their third album Romance is Boring. In part one we go into a lengthy deep dive around twee pop, the band’s history and then begin to look closely at their discography, using the band’s own ranking of their first five albums as a means navigation. A small reminder that if you wan...

We've briefly touched on geek rock in the past - Weezer and Laeto spring to mind - but never in any detail. That all changes this week as we look at the genre through the lens of The Protomen. We also chat extensively about the band, their discography and their frankly brilliant homage to 80s rock.

Last week we spoke about the music of the sequels to The Crow (1994). We also spoke about the new crow film (The Crow (2024)), but we kind of cut it a little short because we didn't talk about the music of the new film. We do that this week before we dive headlong into the original soundtrack of the very first film in The Crow franchise. Not sure I can find a way to fit "The Crow" into this little...

Another episode where we're taking direct inspiration from something that we mentioned in an early show, we've decided to do two whole bloody episodes on the music of The Crow film franchise. In episode one we talk about the music from the very poor sequels to the original film: City of Angels and Salvation. Surprisingly, even though the movies themselves are fairly terrible, the soundtracks are a...

Usually, we like to space things out. You may have noticed that over the years, we'll do a metal album one week, then perhaps change it up with electro or something else. So, for us to do two post-hardcore/noise rock(ish) records so close together is a bit unheard of. But hey, what's the point of having a set of rules if you don't break them occasionally? We've been doing this show for a ridiculou...

Sound is a pound is always good fun. You'd be amazed what you can pick up for a quid in a charity shop. It's been about 18 months since our last one of these and frankly, we'd forgotten what albums we'd "gifted" each other at the end of the last episode. So Mark decided to pick two that he'd bought for Chris: Planet Claire by The B-52's (a strange compilation what was not released by the band's la...

John Congleton is a great producer, and as it turns out, also a great musician. The Paper Chase were, for many years, his only musical project and even as his star began to rise as a producer, he was still churning out unsettling, chromatic, occasionally catchy, often nasty music. Often described as a combination of avant-garde jazz, indie and punk, the band tick all of those boxes and much more....

Long terms fans of the show will know that we've spent altogether far too much time talking about Britpop. And the bad news is that it looks like it's ABOUT BECOME ALL ANYONE TALKS ABOUT when Oasis announce their reunion. We recorded this episode before those rumours started to creep out. Funny how these things happen. Anyway, Mark fell into a Suede hole (sounds quite comfy, when you put it like t...

A quick note of correct: we haven't done a Mojo covermount before. It was Uncut, but the audience for both magazines was/is broadly the same... Or so Mojo would have you believe. We'll be honest: the bag of covermounts is full of questionable CDs, so it was actually something of a surprise to land on something interesting. This Mojo covermount is, ostensibly, a history of electronic music. It goes...

A few months ago we covered Tanz, Grozny Tanz by Yacøpsæ and if you listened to that episode, we mentioned how we'd reached out to the band for some info. They didn't get back to us in time, but band member Stoffel was keen to hear the podcast, so we sent him a link to it. Luckily he was a fan, but there was a few points he wanted to clear up. After arranging a short Q&A with the input of our subs...

Can you believe it was back in February 2020 when we did our Britpop mixtape? How wild is that? This week we're joined by Glaswegian musician Andy Isacsson, otherwise known as Luminous, who has picked this week’s record. We chat at length about his latest record, Precarious Karma , which took him about a decade to complete. We dive into the influences behind it, the reasons it took so long to fini...

Is this a controversial choice? Quicksand's debut album Slip is widely regarded a classic, and in my quarters the band are seen as being hugely influential. So in many ways, picking their second album, Manic Compression, as an unsung classic seems like a no-brainer. On this episode, Chris talk about why this album is not just an unsung classic, but why it's also their best album. Healthy disagreem...

Hailing from Ireland, Katie Kim is an artist who has demonstrated remarkable musical growth over the course of her career so far. Evolving from lo-fi folk to dark, experimental, haunting, almost ambient alternative rock. This week, we talk about her entire discography, before diving into her riveting fourth album, Hour of the Ox.

One thing that we find particularly fun about this podcast (most of the time) is re-appraising records from our youth. Taking a closer, critical look at something you were once super familiar with is often eye opening. Particularly if it's a record you remember liking a lot at one time but have since stopped listening to. Most of the time, it's a fun experience. And this episode on Eight Arms to H...

X Japan have released a proper studio album since 1996. They did release a soundtrack in 2016, and released the occasional single too, but as for a longer release? Nada. Zilch. Of course, some of this is down to the fact they essentially broke up and only reunited in 2007. In this episode, we'll be talking about their 5 studio albums. Chris' album choice is actually their 1988 debut, Vanishing Vis...

There's been a fair amount of ink spilled on X Japan over the years in certain media outlets. You can even find recent interviews with drummer/pianist/primary songwriter and Japanese megastar Yoshiki in prestigious publications like Time magazine. X Japan, however, remain something of an enigma on British shores. Sure, Yoshiki – a classically trained pianist with a background in drumming for the p...

We knew this episode was gonna grow arms and legs when we realised that there are 27 Bond songs to talk about. So, now that we've dispensed with the history of Bond music, it's time to tackle every single one of these songs in chronological order. This doesn't include the original Bond theme from Dr. No (cause we discussed that at length in side A), but does include the two songs in On Her Majesty...

What if we told you that the musical history of James Bond is actually so much more interesting than the history of the films? And that's not knocking the history of the films - they're plenty fascinating too. The music though? Super interesting. From the theory and the cultural cache of the Bond song, to the near misses and the rejected tracks, we cover a lot in Side A of our look at the music of...