Sad to hear of the death of one of hip-hop’s unsung pioneers, Keith LeBlanc, creator of this landmark collaboration with black rights leader Malcolm X. 

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Andrew Weatherall’s remix of his own remix of St Etienne’s cover of Neil Young’s song is, to adopt football parlance, “A Mix Of Two Halves.”

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Anyone who’s ever had that sinking feeling as they get ready to go to work will empathise with this song. The title says it all.

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I was not immediately drawn to the new film Disco Boy; not until I read the reviews and saw it – driven by French techno producer Vitalic’s soundtrack.

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I’d never heard of The Bears until I began reading Richard Norris’s memoir, Strange Things Are Happening, and came across their debut single, On Me.

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Yesterday, as every good Catholic knows, was Good Friday – the counter-intuitively named day when Jesus was crucified. So it was only right and fitting that I spent the evening watching The Jesus and Mary Chain at The Roundhouse. And it was doubly appropriate that they finished their set with their cataclysmic anthem Reverence.

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This refreshingly primitive punk nugget by The Innocent Vicars is one of those lost gems that you unearth by chance. Or in this case because I’m reading the singer’s newly published memoir, Strange Things Are Happening (Adventures In Music).

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Is there a genre called jazz-dub? If there isn’t – or wasn’t – then I think it’s been invented on this tune. I can’t stop playing it.

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Black Uhuru were everywhere in the late ’70s. It seemed they would step into Bob Marley’s shoes after his death in 1981 – only for their lead singer, Michael Rose, to leave the group.

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Before he became a pop star singing sweet soul pastiches, Plan B was a hardcore rapper tackling social issues like the death of Damilola Taylor.

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