Oi! from South East London,

V: Radio Time is here again, but also Event Time:

First up, solo ones. I’m going B2B with Marie Malarie TONIGHT (23rd) at Dalston Superstore for Dolls Vs. Twinks. I can’t find the flyer anywhere it isn’t clipped brutally by Instagram and I have an app on my phone that literally locks me out of that app 95% of the day. We close the basement so come and wriggle.

The Superstore-related collective I am part of SPIT also rides again this month on the 26th. Contractually unannounceable headliner, Skintern and Spike plus Jordan Hearns and Josh Quinton DJing upstairs after the gig. Tickets up now. As ever, these tend to sell out so don’t sleep!

Finally, our band RUBBER returns to full capacity on 31st January for Mystery Planes at Walthamstow Trades Hall. We play with Midnight Mines, <3 and Major Trauma Sound System running inbetween sets. There is a Facebook event(!?) for this show, so I’m assuming we are capturing an audience of peoples’ conspiracy-crazed aunts. We play upstairs, which I think holds about 40 people? Should be funny. See you in thine pit.

B: Glad to start the year with a two hour show - room to breathe, the full Repetitive Strain 'nominally punk' experience, a moment to remember how the faders work on my part.

A couple of concessions to the tidal wave of 2016 nostalgia (why look back? I have better glasses now) in the form of Violence Creeps' Soft Cell cover - that band was my everything this time last decade, pure idiot anthems to file alongside contemporaries Good Throb, Cold Meat and Q - and Vic's Bowie double was a treat, especially as I have been looking to expand my repertoire of 12" single remixes and 'track two of CD single 3' techno/electroclash delights. The internet is the new rock and roll…

Listen: Voices Radio • 18.01.26

01. Saint Etienne - Like A Motorway (Skin Up, You're Already Dead)
02. DJ Pitch - Motorboat
03. Laurel Halo - Airsick
04. Teresa Winter - Love Crime
05. Ciccone Youth - March of the Ciccone Robots
06. Artifical Go - Playing Puppet
07. Station Model Violence - Heat (Single Edit)
08. AICHER - Constriction (andereBaustelle Version)
09. Dame Area - Si No Es Hoy Cuando Es
10. ANMON - BassFatigue
11. Eraser - Overdrive
12. Tricky - Overcome (2009 Remix)
13. Rising Damp - Innovation
14. Liquid Liquid - Optimo
15. Violence Creeps - Sex Dwarf
16. Dry Rot - This is a Forest
17. Thin Lizzy - Sarah
18. Shit And Shine - PARKPLATZ 84
19. Paranoid London - Fields of Fire
20. CUBE 40 - Bad Computa
21. Yuu Miyake - Wanda Wanda
22. Alexander Robotnick ft. Stefano Cocco Cantini - Love Supreme
23. Talking Heads - Pull Up The Roots
24. Maxime Denuc - Function Music
25. Ability II - Pressure Dub
26. David Bowie - I Can't Give Everything Away (Farewell Mix)
27. David Bowie - Fame 90 (House Mix)
28. Actress - Shadow From Tartarus
29. Suppression Field - Central Belt Gothic

You can hear the show on our Mixcloud and Soundcloud. Links to tracks available on Bandcamp can be found on our Buy Music Club.

We will be broadcasting live again on Voices Radio next month on Sunday 15th February 2026 at 20:00 UK time.

I Am A DJ, I Am What I Play

Chiming in from a welcome return to the sauna this week, shoulders re-elasticated and brain slightly smoothened. I spent a colossal amount of time this month listening to several of the musical fallow periods of one David Robert Jones. He’s gonna be big, this guy! Aside from coveting the incredible jacket he’s sporting in this MTV interview with Trent Reznor, this also led to me delving back into one of my worst addictions: the music documentary.

I’ve become convinced this format is – now – one where art is bled of every last thing that is good about it. Bowie is no different, having had about 5 that are either made by a guy he told he hated to his face (lol), or contain a presenter from Robot Wars. I think back to watching the Jeff Buckley documentary that contains his hands growing additional AI fingers, or one of my most hated films of all time – Montage of Heck (ask me about it some time). The makers of these things should not be respected, they are lower than dogs (n.b. this newsletter is not speciesist).

I saw Dave in person one time, in cravat-lesbian-haircut heritage act relitigation mode in 2004. He still made weird choices, such as playing the Nine Inch Nails one the dads didn’t want to hear and turning Heroes into a semi-dorky classic rock song. We all make mistakes. I actually love that Nine Inch Nails one. My mistake at the time was probably being 16 and not really taking in the full experience that he was playing Sister Midnight.

I was thinking about all this in the context of the passing of time – perhaps partially reading 2011 Sean Bonney on Rimbaud, perhaps finding out Power Lunches is now a momo restaurant. Little column A, little column B. Less confusing than when the latter was momentarily used in a plot point on Top Boy, I suppose. I have several thriving plants now and no alcohol problem.

The new Station Model Violence that Ben played on the show is something I’ve been strangely touched by. Returning to the passage of time: Retiree is 16 years old, and I wake up with residual shoulder pain now. I’d imagine RE: SMV it’s partially a matter of perfect timing. I heard its unwaveringly seasick Eno-lurch at the precise moment I’d spent two days listening exclusively to Lodger (about those unhealthy life decisions). They remixed that one after Bowie died, but it’s supposed to sound like a gutter in my opinion.

About that gutter: I speak on being in that enough maybe. It’s rarely changed, and frankly I can’t really say it any better than Bonney did in 2011.

^{This is the situation. I ran out on ‘normal life’ around twenty years ago. Ever since then I’ve been shut up in this ridiculous city, keeping to myself, completely involved in my work. I’ve answered every enquiry with silence. I’ve kept my head down, as you have to do in a contra-legal position like mine. But now, surprise attack by a government of millionaires. Everything forced to the surface. I don’t feel I’m myself anymore. I’ve fallen to pieces, I can hardly breathe. My body has become something else, has fled into its smallest dimensions, has scattered into zero. And yet, as soon as it got to that, it took a deep breath, it could suddenly do it, it had passed across, it could see its indeterminable function within the whole. Yeh? That wasn’t Rimbaud, that was Brecht, but you get the idea. Like on the 24th November we were standing around, outside Charing Cross, just leaning against the wall etc, when out of nowhere around 300 teenagers ran past us, tearing up the Strand, all yelling “WHOSE STREETS OUR STREETS”. Well it cracked us up. You’d be a pig not to answer.}

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Keep Circulating The Tapes!

I am trying to keep more of a record of what my Cultural Highlights are this year, after a decade-plus of buying a diary, putting some gig notes in the first couple of weeks, and then forgetting completely once the Six Nations comes round. So far, I've been to two gigs, one film and one play, and I'm going to see Blue Velvet this evening, so I'm taking that as a win against hibernation.

Speaking of hairy beings wishing they were asleep for most of the day: the RSC My Neighbour Totoro play is a beautiful melancholic treat, armed with a dazzling array of bunraku-meets-Jim Henson puppetry. Always worth remembering how a Ghibli can tease you in with bucolic visuals and then go, surprise, it's about grief!

If there is one aspect of 2016 that I remain proud of, it's that I formed a band for First Timers, the decade-plus manifestation of 'yes, you can do this, here's how, see you on stage?' that has produced a wealth of bands and expanded on what a DIY band looks and sounds like in the capital. Ten years of actually playing an instrument, mostly avoiding tinnitus, and being able to say I've been to cities across Europe (although I will need to revisit them having only seen a petrol station, a venue and the Polish version of a YHA hostel.) - all started there.

Anyway, it's back for 2026 and as ever, I encourage you to give something a go. Look at the criteria, ask your friends, think of a good name that you will not be embarrassed about when it's on a hundred T-shirts, and apply by Sunday 22nd March. I gently suggest that you need to book a practice before opening an Instagram account.

If anyone has any good leads for where to get large seven segment displays, I am all ears and have been watching too many videos about soldering. See you next month!