The thing about hovercraft is that they are simultaneously retro and a future that might still happen. Something out of a 1970s vision of tomorrow that never quite went away – an incredibly niche but oddly versatile technology, forever on the brink of a comeback. But it did make me wonder: when does a museum of technology stop being a museum and become a graveyard?

I’m not saying the collection was haphazard, but I did get the distinct – and possibly unfair – impression that at some point anyone in the country who owned a hovercraft had thought, “Well, we can’t keep this in the shed,” googled “hovercraft museum”, and sent it here. There were, frankly, more hovercraft than you could shake a stick at.

They range from the genuinely impressive to the gloriously eccentric, including stunt-battered machines used in a James Bond chase scene and a military craft actually used in anger in Iraq. There is also a noble attempt to teach you how these things actually work – the physics of lift, air cushions, and skirts – though if I’m being entirely honest I’m an arts guy not a physics geek and I walked away still somewhat none-the-wiser. Blast air at ground hard > physics happens > PROFIT! (or not as seems to have mostly been the case).

What really struck me, though, was the sheer, unadulterated DIY aesthetic of the early industry. For a long time, the hovercraft was the ultimate British shed-builder’s dream. On display is a model you could actually buy in kit form to assemble in your own back garden – which goes a long way to explaining why so many of these craft look like they were cobbled together out of spare lawnmower parts and hope.

And yet … stepping on board the giant shell of the Princess Anne was an incredible moment for me.

[Picture caption: The Princess Anne at the Hovercraft museum]

I have vivid memories of a holiday in Ramsgate in the late 1970s. OK – I say vivid memories. I have one vivid memory: standing on the beach, completely entranced by the cross-Channel hovercraft thundering in and out on the slipway. The noise. The power. The way they lifted spray off the water as if the sea itself was trying to get out of their way.

[Picture caption: Hovercraft Princess Margaret on the Thames]

I asked my parents about it afterwards. They confirmed we had gone on a holiday where my mum’s parents were with us. I have no recollection at all of my grandparents being there – but that hovercraft has stuck in my mind for nearly 50 years.

Which is how these things work, I suppose. I tried, in my turn, to pass something of this on to my own kids. I took them to Portsmouth a few years ago, with what I now recognise was an itinerary that was perhaps more for me than for them: the Mary Rose (still, to my mind, the best museum I have ever been to), HMS Victory (prompting one of them to observe it was lucky they hadn’t called it HMS Defeat), and then – crucially – a trip on the hovercraft across the Solent to the Isle of Wight for crazy golf and a look at the old 1938 underground stock that was then still running on the island.

[Picture caption: Hovercraft and a 1930s tube train in the same shot at the Isle of Wight]

A holiday designed almost entirely around my own interests, but how else are you supposed to turn them into nerds? The kind of people who will go to a museum and go “Gosh, I literally had that toy that is now on display as vintage”.

[Picture caption: A toy hovercraft at the Hovercraft museum that I used to also have as a child]

Back at the Hovercraft museum, there was one more thing that caught my eye. A Dalek. I posted a photo on Facebook and someone asked what a Dalek was doing in a hovercraft museum. I replied: “Hovering?”

Marc Almond, Crystal Palace Bowl, London, 6 Aug – This was the first time I have seen Marc performing since the untimely death of Dave Ball, and that added an extra poignance to the already emotionally gruelling Soft Cell songs he played. He seemed in fine form.

Gary Numan, Crystal Palace Bowl, London, 6 Aug – Playing a selection of songs on this tour that even I had to look a couple up as they are from his late-90s dip in fame, I had a brilliant time as ever and was right down the front and got far too drunk and over-excited. The 23rd time I have seen him now.

Seb Wesson, Junction, Cambridge, 20 Aug – I only caught a bit of this. Singer-songwriter with a beard and a bun. Can’t really recall much more than that, sorry mate.

Nik Kershaw, Junction, Cambridge, 20 Aug – I really enjoyed this – a couple of deep cut album tracks from the 80s and also a smattering of some of the better songs he has persevered with releasing in recent decades. He is very funny and self-effacing, with one-liners like “Who wants to hear a song that got to number 27 for one week in 1985”? Bless him.

This evening also featured the amazing moment where one young woman looked absolutely baffled as The Riddle unfolded, and my partner clocked her and said “Look, she’s frightened she’s going to catch the menopause from the rest of the audience”. There were definitely a lot of women of a certain age in the audience.

The Slow Readers Club, Wythenshawe Park, Manchester, 21 Aug – Rather like Ist Ist they are very much part of the Joy Division-to-Interpol-to-Editors sonic pipeline, which is pleasant enough live but I wouldn’t rush to listen to them at home when I can put Unknown Pleasures or Turn On The Bright Lights on instead.

Slowdive, Wythenshawe Park, Manchester, 21 Aug – I have not seen Slowdive for years and years and years and it was nice to hear some familiar old tunes again, although again I would seldom play them at home.

The Cure, Wythenshawe Park, Manchester, 21 Aug – My second Cure gig of the year and it was … gosh, can’t believe I am writing this … fine? I think I was just over-tired with the travel and didn’t really get into it.

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Roxanne De Bastion, 100 Club, London, 22 Aug – Very personable between songs, and trying to get the crowd to sing along with material they don’t know is usually a thankless task but she handled it deftly.

The Anchoress, 100 Club, London, 22 Aug – We got live debuts of some tracks from the new album and plenty of old favourites too, when I thought it might just be the new album in full.

Sparks, Cliffs Pavilion, Westcliff-on-Sea, 26 Aug – My boys!

Love Spells, Moth Club, Hackney, 27 Aug – Every now and again you get the chance to see something that suddenly looks like they might be a generational talent in a tiny venue. Love Spells was amazing. Get on it.

Seb Lowe, Wythenshawe Park, Manchester, 28 Aug – This quite rapidly went from me thinking “Oooh there’s something a bit Baroque rock/pop and Sparks-ish” about the first song I heard as I arrived at the venue, and then quite quickly I was going “Oh god I really do not want to hear a white man rapping over Libertines’ outtakes please make this stop”.

[Picture caption: Ummmm, no thanks mate]

Self Esteem, Wythenshawe Park, Manchester, 28 Aug – The third time I’ve caught her live, and as I always observe, it isn’t quite my thing, but she is a charismatic and compelling performer and it clearly resonates with the audience and I always enjoy it.

Pulp, Wythenshawe Park, Manchester, 28 Aug – Oh Pulp. Jarvis seemed to be making a lot of noises that this was their last big show “for a while” or possibly ever, which nobody wanted to hear; their comeback has been a 10/10 no notes experience of great shows and a very decent late-career album. I’ve seen three of their shows during this “phase” and I will be sad if I don’t get to see them again, but they were so, so good, he is such a showman, and this was very much a crowd-pleasing greatest hits. “Maybe this should be called ‘Do you remember the last time?’” Jarvis said. I hope not.

Last month was a proper epic, featuring Kylie Minogue joining Nick Cave on stage in Brighton, a three-day Ally Pally hat-wearing spree with impunity watching Wet Leg and Super Furry Animals among others, plus a 21-hour marathon day trip to Latitude for David Byrne and Talking Heads bangers. Dive into the full July roundup here, read the standalone Latitude post here, or browse all my previous one-line gig reviews in the archive.

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Animal Farm (2025), Andy Serkis – One of my kids showed some interest in this, so I went along with low expectations, and I still think it may be the single worst movie I’ve ever seen. If you squint you can sort of glimpse that someone pitched “It’s Animal Farm, but updated to be a warning about populist narcissistic leaders” at some point, but dear lord.

[Picture caption: Animal Farm (2025), Andy Serkis]

Wicked, Wicked (1973), Richard L Bare – Bar Trash at Genesis Cinema, Bethnal Green – Bizarrely, the duovision gimmick, instead of leading to potentially incredible scenes where you are watching the same action from two points of view at once, mostly meant you felt like you were watching two bits of the same movie simultaneously which nobody had storyboarded enough to see if they worked together.

Bar Trash, run by Token Homo, presents “Queer cult & curious cinema” in relaxed screenings with alcohol, a raffle, a quiz and lots of laughs – find out more at tokenhomo.com/bar-trash.

David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020), Spike Lee – Clearly not as essential as Stop Making Sense but still an enjoyable watch and an opportunity to tap your toes to some Talking Heads songs in a cinema.

Eating Raoul (1982), Paul Bartel – Bar Trash at Beer Merchant’s Tap, Hackney Wick – This was wickedly funny as Bartel and the formidable Mary Woronov murder their way through the local swinging scene, although I was a bit distracted by Chakotay appearing to cosplay as a 1970s Orient player at times.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? (1964), Ray Dennis Steckler – Bar Trash at Genesis Cinema, Bethnal Green – Just genuinely, horrifyingly, ludicrously unwatchable, even when being presented with the lovely Loose Willis doing hypnotism and wry commentary. Hashtag Ragequit!

[Picture caption: Loose Willis was much more entertaining than the movie]

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026), Jane Schoenbrun – Featuring the sexiest ever scene to be built around fried chimken, this is horny and mystifying and at times tense and at times laugh-out-loud funny and at times maybe it was all just a masturbatory fever dream?

Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Roman Polanski – Bar Trash at Beer Merchant’s Tap, Hackney Wick – Absolutely adore Mia Farrow announcing twice – TWICE! – in this that her new haircut is by Vidal Sassoon. She is bewitchingly watchable as you can sense her dread and panic growing and the realisation that she literally can’t trust anybody around her.

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Sunny Dancer (2026), George Jaques – It had a few overly mawkish moments, and some awkward bits of dialogue that felt they had been focus-grouped among teenage cancer survivors, but it also wore its heart on its sleeve. That heart was in the right place and I very much enjoyed Neil Patrick Harris doing his bit as the gratingly enthusiastic camp president.

Coyote vs Acme (2026), Dave Green – Never mind all the back-story to the movie’s production, I laughed a lot. I’m a sucker for cartoon slapstick, so having cartoon slapstick happen to real people is ace. And a bold move to build a movie around one of the silent Looney Tunes characters paid off for me.

Lady (2025), Samuel Abrahams – It sort of goes from being an over-the-top Alan Partridge style mockumentary into something altogether more full of magical realism and emotional nuance, while Sian Clifford is absolutely magnetic in the title role throughout.

Read more of my one-line spoiler-free reviews of everything I’ve watched in the cinema in the monthly archive. Last time out I wrote about animated Minion slapstick, the profound sadness of Blue Heron, bleak Welsh decision-making and a Soviet drag-crone Baba Yaga (pictured below).

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It is a free 24-hour music festival, which this year is raising money for two charities: Medical Aid for Palestinians and Safe Space Waltham Forest. I will be doing my electronica ghost stories at the suitably spooky time of 1.30am during the early witching hours of Monday morning.

I’d best get rehearsing …

Minions & Monsters (2026), Pierre Coffin and Patrick Delage – Perfectly cromulent non-stop action and slapstick that never lets up, doesn’t overstay its welcome, and includes some really lovely homages to early Hollywood moments.

Blue Heron (2025), Sophy Romvari – I went through an arc of being slightly bored, to then being somewhat puzzled by the storytelling trick, to being moved and in tears about the profound sadness that eventually seeps through every frame of this. I thought it was especially good at portraying how the noise and clutter of children and family life can be incredibly destabilising to adult relationships in ways that the kids themselves can’t possibly perceive at the time.

Effi o Blaenau (2026), Marc Evans – 100 minutes spent numbly watching young people with bleak prospects making terrible life decisions. Would recommend.

The Last Viking (2025), Anders Thomas Jensen – A Danish One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with some very funny laugh-out-loud moments but a really dark violent underbelly.

Vasilisa the Beautiful (1940), Aleksandr Rou – A Soviet-era fairy tale with a class-conscious morality message and Georgy Millyar putting in quite the turn as a blacked-up wizened old drag crone version of Baba Yaga. Some quite stilted performances in places, but also some impressive production design and effects for the time, it swashbuckled along, aided by the supporting cast including a bloke in a bear suit and a couple of puzzled-looking performing bears.

The Harder They Come (1972), Perry Henzell – Bar Trash at Beer Merchant’s Tap, Hackney Wick – Rightly lauded for being a kickstarter for the Jamaican film industry, and having a couple of banging tunes in it, it does lag a little bit in the middle. Also struck me as being structurally very similar to any number of Elvis movies – underdog with talent hits big city, gets the girl, has to fight vested interests to make it etc etc – although Elvis movies very rarely ended the way this did.

Bar Trash, run by Token Homo, presents “Queer cult & curious cinema” in relaxed screenings with alcohol, a raffle, a quiz and usually lots of laughs, but this was the day after the Berlin Pride van and knife rampage and joy was in short supply. Find out more about what is on next at tokenhomo.com/bar-trash.

Read more of my one-line spoiler-free reviews of everything I’ve watched in the cinema in the monthly archive. Last time out I wrote about spooky basements, the queerest of sci-fi cartoons (pictured below) and plenty of John Waters and Divine filth.

If you’d like these posts by email, without relying on whatever algorithms decide you should see, you can subscribe here.

Dave Pearce, Lytham Festival, Lytham, 4 Jul – Did a good job of whipping up the crowd in such a way that even a committed skinny-angry-90s-boys-with-guitars donkey like me recognised the bangers, which was exactly what was needed. TAKE NOTE CHRIS MOYLES WITH YR SNOOTY SARCASM FOR PAYING PUNTERS THAT I SUFFERED THROUGH LAST YEAR.

Scissor Sisters, Lytham Festival, Lytham, 4 Jul – Never really a fan beyond the obvious hits, but I saw Jake Shears supporting Duran Duran a while back and he was incredibly charismatic, so this support act was an extra reason to hit the north. And I still really like the obvious hits, although as my other half observed, there is something odd about such an out-and-out gay frontman also doing a show which at times really seems to objectify women in an uncomfortable way. Also, in among those iconic hits they smuggle in Let’s Have a Kiki, a track which is, frankly, a crime against music.

Pet Shop Boys, Lytham Festival, Lytham, 4 Jul – Awwwwwwwwww, the one billionth time I have seen PSB do their Dreamworld Greatest Hits tour, and I would go again at the drop of a hat. Adorable legends showing off the incredible breadth of their songbook.

Huge respect to this bunch who didn’t buy tickets but just had a party on their/their Airbnb’s balcony.

Lykke Li, Finsbury Park, London, 5 Jul – Not sure I’d go on stage being suffocated by a fishnet face-mask myself, but then her voice is so good and some of the songs so strong I guess that’s why Lykke Li has enthusiastic fans and I was just someone standing among them.

The Last Dinner Party, Finsbury Park, London, 5 Jul – I’ll say all these things again …

1. Their a cappella harmonies and multi-instrumentalism show they have music chops
2. A certain type of person obsesses over whether they are “manufactured” or an “industry plant” but without a doubt they have incredible stagecraft
3. I feel personally seen by the idea of “Posh-looking women in Victorian lingerie who sound like Sparks” but here we all are

Wolf Alice, Finsbury Park, London, 5 Jul – I saw them touring their first album and then didn’t pay much attention and then – BIFF BANG POW! BOING BOOM TSCHAK! – they are headlining Finsbury Park. Had a nice time in the sunshine, enjoyed the songs I recognised, slightly baffled about how they want to be *all the genres*. Fair fucks to them tho, it was a homecoming show and they live round the corner and put on a brilliant all-women-led bill.

A bit of a fiasco meant I think I heard a bit of DJ Less Than Human and saw a bit of Strange Futures at Hootananny in Brixton on 8 July – they were a gothy shoegazy effort with two bass guitars and rudimentary drums which I enjoyed – but I was too hot, tired and drunk to stay for either An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump or Madeline Goldstein, who had been the reason I’d got tickets. Too much FOMO leads to me trying to do too many things.

White Lies, Alexandra Palace, London, 9 Jul – I’ve said before that I love these Ally Pally outdoor gigs because they sell them – I think because of the steepness and the sightlines – at a capacity well under the number of people you’d think you could fit in, leading to it being really easy to get to the bar/toilets/down the front. White Lies played a condensed greatest hits and were great value. Plus it isn’t often you get to take a picture in which you can see yourself taking the picture …

… and while you often end up behind people taking photos, it is rarely one of the pro snappers …

The Maccabees, Alexandra Palace, London, 9 Jul – I don’t really know their stuff but I knew I liked what they sound like, and this did not disappoint even if most of the material was unfamiliar to me. Also I didn’t realise there were 1,057 of them.

Los Bitchos, Alexandra Palace, London, 10 Jul – Kind of like Los Lobos meets the B52s and Talking Heads, but pretty much all-female, all-instrumental and great fun party music.

English Teacher, Alexandra Palace, London, 10 Jul – Last time I saw them I was merely minutes away from somebody unexpectedly jabbing their finger in my ear in one of the more bizarre incidents of last summer, which rather undermined the whole experience. This time I got to really enjoy them, and bumped into them later in the day to tell them how much I had enjoyed it.

Wet Leg, Alexandra Palace, London, 10 Jul – What can I say? They are fucking brilliant and I love them.

Badly Drawn Boy, Alexandra Palace, London, 12 Jul – I’ve seen him three times at festivals and he has always been grumpy about something. I wonder if he is like that at his own shows?

The Beta Band, Alexandra Palace, London, 12 Jul – For some reason at the time everybody was buzzing about their initial flurry of EPs I never took to them, so this is the first time I’d seen them. Some of those tunes I have very much come to love, and they bought decent live energy to them.

Super Furry Animals, Alexandra Palace, London, 12 Jul – I’m so glad to have had a gap from seeing them and listening to them and so then being able to rekindle my love for them with a burning passion. An exceptionally good show.

So basically I spent three days out of four up at Ally Pally, and most importantly, with my partner away, I got to wear all the hats that annoy her with impunity.

I resisted the minger t-shirt though.

And then I made an ill-advised last-minute trip to Latitude Festival for the day. You can read the full write-up – featuring David Byrne, The Last Dinner Party, the words “monkey tits” and missing out on Steve Pretty playing seashells – in my standalone review here.

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Andrew Cushin, Dreamland, Margate, 25 Jul – Very affable chap being plagued by technical problems and seemingly having to make up his setlist as he went along.

Peter Hook and the Light, Dreamland, Margate, 25 Jul – With New Order touring with only Barney as the original member this all looks less like New Order/Joy Division karaoke and more like a valid continuation as time passes. Boundless enthusiasm for the songs from punters half-my-age down the front which was fun to see.

[Picture caption: Peter Hook being observed and enjoyed by a majestic gull.]

Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey, Dreamland, Margate, 25 Jul – He won over my partner who had previously expressed disdain for the Thompson Twins’ back catalogue, and you can’t say fairer than that. I am looking forward to seeing him headline later this year.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Dreamland, Margate, 25 Jul – With a couple of minor differences – Paul singing Secret as part of the encore to give Andy’s voice a rest – it was the same show as in Bristol last month and just as much fun.

Warmduscher, Preston Park, Brighton, 31 Jul – A great festival afternoon act who I have seen a few times, although they came across much rockier this time than the funkier version in my head.

Cate Le Bon, Preston Park, Brighton, 31 Jul – Boring to say it but all I knew about Cate Le Bon was that she wasn’t related to Simon. Chorus-drenched guitars did give it quite an early 80s feel at times though, and she clearly has singer-songwriter chops.

English Teacher, Preston Park, Brighton, 31 Jul – The second time I’d seen them this month, and I felt less won over somehow?

The Flaming Lips, Preston Park, Brighton, 31 Jul – It is, incredibly, 15 years since I last saw Wayne Coyne and company. And they made me feel like I had missed out.

Of course his voice has never been the greatest or the strongest, but that is beside the point.

I do genuinely think that when I saw them at the Green Man festival in 2010 my daughter was not yet a year old and with ear defenders on actually slept through the whole thing.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Preston Park, Brighton, 31 Jul – I’ve not really listened to the last few albums and find it hard to think about doing so, knowing what he has been through. Which seems mad, cos he has gone through it and made that music, but I watched the One More Time with Feeling doco and just found it all too raw. But he is an astonishing showman and live the call and response of lyrics like “Praise him till you’ve forgotten what you’re praising him for, then praise him a little more” hits as a moment when an atheist can enjoy that gospel feeling.

AND THEN WE GOT KYLIE FUCKIN’ MINOGUE.

I had to get back to London on the train so drifted back early and got absolutely fleeced by a corner shop for a couple of adult cans without noticing – FUCK YOU EXPA MARKET – with the sounds of The Weeping Song ringing around Brighton.

It was a bit late being published, but last month’s reviews featured some of my all-time favourite artists including Sparks (x2), Kraftwerk, The Cure, and OMD, plus a last-minute gig cancellation nightmare (that wasn’t OMD for once!) and the headliner I still just … don’t get. Dive into the full roundup here or find all my previous one-line gig reviews here.

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It was a lot of travel there and back from London – including an air-quotes “hilarious” interlude where I got separated from the coach taking me there and it had to turn round and pick me up – and I didn’t get home until 21 hours after I’d left the house in the morning. David Byrne, though, eh? Once in a lifetime. Here’s what I made of the day …

The four acts I really wanted to see

Adult DVD (Sunrise Arena) – I am fairly certain I first came across this mob via my ex-Uni mate and Leeds-based DJ Dan Lomax, who does fab little monthly mixes. They had a real punch live, with an aggressive singer goading a mid-afternoon festival crowd for not being warmed up enough yet. Dogs in the Sun is an absolute banger, though they could maybe do with a smidgen more variety in their set.

Dry Cleaning (Obelisk Arena) – I still don’t quite get them. When it comes together, like on Hit My Head All Day, it sounds great, and I love it. But most of the time it sounds like someone is listening to an instrumental post-punk album from 1983 in the background while leaving increasingly unhinged voicemail messages to an ex.

The Last Dinner Party (Obelisk Arena) – It was essentially the same show as I saw when they supported Wolf Alice, which was no bad thing at all. I ended up sandwiched between some over-enthusiastic fans singing and dancing to every word, and some very put-out hardcore David Byrne fans who were determined to keep a spot down the front but thoroughly disapproved of people enjoying themselves in the meantime.

David Byrne (Obelisk Arena) – He opened with a quiet string-laden version of Heaven and people around me kept on talking but once the set got going it was glorious. Yes, he had a couple of coughing fits and stumbled on the lyrics a couple of times, but those Talking Heads songs are immense, of the solo stuff he played a couple of them are things I liked and remembered, and the choreography of his entirely free-standing band is something to behold.

That one band that was a discovery

Brooki (The Alcove) – I nearly didn’t go and see them as I was flagging a bit at this point, but I am glad I did. Very sort of grunge-y with impressive soaring vocals, occasionally bowed bass guitar, and I definitely want to see them again.

Everything else I stumbled upon

The first thing I managed to get to see was The Adam Buxton Band (Second Stage) doing his silly funny songs about his dog, his wife, his phone charger and so on, then I went off to witness Clara Mann (The Alcove). She seemed like a beautiful singer, but it was very fragile and was being overpowered by noise from across the way, so I followed that noise …

[Picture caption: Clara Mann, The Alcove, Latitude 2026]

… that turned out to be The Dodge Brothers (Trailer Park) doing some fairly straightforward rock’n’roll with a proper double bass, in a bit of the venue that was full of parents propelling their kids around some activities while also getting to nod along and think “Thank God I am getting to see some music”.

[Picture caption: The Dodge Brothers, Trailer Park, Latitude 2026]

Next I went off the BBC Introducing stage, where acts were alternating between some open mic performers on the nearby Tiny Stage. I saw Ayanna Witter-Johnson (BBC Introducing Stage) who does soulful music with a really nice voice while also playing an electronic cello, and Tessa Rose Jackson (BBC Introducing Stage) who was publicising her new album that was all about death and grief, and who had a neat line in between-song banter.

[Picture caption: Tessa Rose Jackson, BBC Introducing Stage, Latitude 2026]

The open mic efforts? One was a white guy doing his own upbeat acoustic reggae tunes, and the other was a man wearing a fox tail who did a tribute to David Bowie. I saw the fox-tail guy – still with tail in tow – in the urinals later which was unedifying for everybody.

[Picture caption: Open mic man with a fox tail at Latitude 2026]

Other things I caught during the day were:

• Overpass (Second Stage), who I could see why people liked, but was a bit too much in the Stereophonics/Feeder/U2 mode for me to get excited about.
• Florence Road (Second Stage), Alice Phoebe Lou (Obelisk Arena) and Alessi Rose (Second Stage) have all merged a bit in my mind, although it did sound like I would have enjoyed Florence Road more than I enjoyed Dry Cleaning if I’d opted for them instead.
• I question Jalen Ngonda (Obelisk Arena) and his gentle soul being programmed in between Dry Cleaning and The Last Dinner Party. It just didn’t seem to make a coherent bill at all.
• I know they say “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all” – hence no blog post about Rod Liddle dying – but Nathanevans x Saint Phnx band (Second Stage) was fucking godawful. Imagine if Billy Ray Cyrus was Scottish, and decided to get into singing sea shanties in a Klezmer style. People were lapping it up. Wrong’uns.
• I walked by Ross Noble (Comedy Arena) just as he was performing the William Tell Overture but only using the words “monkey tits” for some reason.
• I went to see Shellectronica (The Apollo Stage), where Steve Pretty uses actual seashells to make electronica, which sounded fascinating, but it soon became apparent I was the only person in the arena not accompanying a child in some sort of educational effort, so swiftly departed.

Thoughts on being back at Latitude …

Time flies when you are having fun. At the Adam Buxton performance, the guy in front of me was wearing a t-shirt of the first time I went to Latitude in 2013, when I saw Daughter, Drenge, Everything Everything, the much-missed late Mark Lanegan and Kraftwerk doing their 3D show. I went on my own for the day and camped in the car park in a little one man pop-up tent. Oh the nostalgia.

The cunning Latitude plan of offering fractions of pennies for returned cups and cans had virtually every child between the ages of seven and 13 embarking as volunteer litter-pickers as a pocket-money opportunity, which was cute.

I do feel like there has been a loudness war between stages over the years I’ve been going to Latitude that maybe needs a rethink. I’m not sure you could watch any of the artier events being put on at the Waterfront stage without them being drowned out from two or three different sources. And I was sad to see it looked like the film tent had met its demise.

At the end of David Byrne, people were firing huge amounts of bubbles into the air and it was lovely. And then kudos to the Big Green Coach company who not only came back to rescue me in the morning, but let me swap onto a coach bound for Stratford on the way back, making my journey home a fraction easier. As the man says … once in a lifetime.

I went to a lot of gigs in July besides Latitude, including a three-day residency at Alexandra Palace wearing all the hats that annoy my partner with impunity, a gull supervising a legend in Margate, and Kylie Minogue showing up with Nick Cave in Brighton. You can find reviews of what I saw live in an absolute marathon of a month here.

It turned out to be from the executor of the will of Mark Smith, the singer, who had left me a bequest of archive material from our time in the band together. This was surprising for two reasons: first I did not know he had died, and second we had such an acrimonious falling out that he was the last person I would have expected to hear from – or to think about me.

But before all of that, there was a time when he was a very important person in my life. When I worked at Walthamstow record shop Note For Note, he gave me the keys to his flat round the corner, so I could spend my lunch breaks there while he was at work in town.

We would spend evenings pretentiously smoking Gitanes and planning for our band to rule the world. He – along with BBC2 and Channel 4 – introduced me to weird cult films, which is probably why I go to Bar Trash now. He – along with my parents and my Uncle John, who I still go to gigs with – introduced me to some of the most important records in my life, in the days before streaming. Pre-internet, he was the first person who told me there were missing episodes of Doctor Who, and could produce a typed list of exactly what had gone from the archive.

We spent so much time just hanging out, smoking and drinking and listening to and watching strange things. Everybody needs someone like that in their life.

The band came about because I was working a bit with a band called For Small Mercies, which featured a colleague of mine from the record shop, and Mark was their manager. He wanted to do his own side project, and I played guitar on some demos we recorded at Tinky-Tonk Studios in Walthamstow.

After For Small Mercies split, for a while The Mark also featured that other friend, and we did some promo photos as a three-piece. I think our only gig in that form was upstairs at what used to be The Chestnut Tree pub in Walthamstow. After that it was just me and Mark – I wrote the music, did the keyboard programming and played guitar; he wrote the lyrics and sang.

We played a few gigs in dives where it cost us money to play, and did some more recording. We made a track at Bark Studio with Brian O’Shaughnessy, which is where Loaded by Primal Scream had come together. It all felt like proximity to something bigger and that we were on the cusp of having a success.

It was a different time. Mark sent tapes to college radio stations in the US, and then we circulated the demo in the UK labelled as the “US radio edit”, implying it was getting traction over there.

We did a couple of recording sessions up in Wolverhampton with an engineer whose name I’ve half-lost, funded by a guy who wanted to manage us, who then brought Adam Williams, who had worked with Eurythmics, in to do the final mixes. We even made a video, which is still somewhere in my flat on VHS, quietly decaying.

[Picture caption: Photos taking during recording sessions and making the video for ‘Dawn Breaks’]

It didn’t last.

We fell out over money and equipment. We had lived together for a year, then I was living in Leeds at university, and by then more interested in the songs I was writing myself. It ended up in court – over a sum that seems trivial now, but didn’t at the time. It was unpleasant and really worrying for my parents, who received some quite threatening correspondence.

After that I saw him once more, at some esoteric electronic music event at the Barbican. I clocked him across the room and spent the rest of the evening carefully not bumping into him. He maybe did the same.

At some point later – still in the 1990s, I think – he sent a large box of cassettes and assorted bits to my parents’ house. No note, no explanation. It felt like an underline on everything.

And then, years later, he died, and was still thinking enough about me and those times to leave instructions for this material to come back to me. There are photos I don’t remember seeing, negatives, video masters, cassettes, a veritable nostalgia rush as I unboxed them.

[Photo caption: Printed lyric sheets from The Mark]

I don’t know much about what he did afterwards, beyond that he ended up doing some work and being in Weston-super-Mare and then Thailand with Peter Christopherson of Hipgnosis, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Coil fame. There is one Coil release that has a Mark Smith credited with artwork. I’m glad he got to do something in music and creativity in the end – he wasn’t cut out for the corporate design world he worked in when I knew him.

This all happened a few months ago. But I’m writing about it now because I went to see Power to the People: John and Yoko Live in NYC the other week, and it is exactly the sort of thing where I found myself thinking: I bet Mark would have gone to this too somewhere. Yoko sings Open Your Box, and I have got zero doubt I first heard it when he played it to me in his Walthamstow flat. Likewise, the John Waters’ movies I recently went to see again with nostalgic glee I definitely saw first when Mark showed them to me.

There’s no glossing over how badly our friendship ended. But it’s also impossible not to acknowledge what an influence he was at a crucial point in my life. It was a strangely heavy bequest to receive – a reminder that even if you can cut someone completely from your life, you can’t cut away their influence.

[Picture caption: A curiously prophetic lyric among the packages sent to me.]

[Picture caption: Some of Mark’s words about himself at the time]

Scenius, Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, 2 Jun – Sticking very close to the 1980s synth-duo formula, ironically while they were supporting Midge Ure if anything they tacked closer to the solo sound of his Ultravox predecessor John Foxx. Very enjoyable and very 1980.

Midge Ure, Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, 2 Jun – I think Midge had done himself a disservice with the way this tour was sold as featuring a musical journey and instrumentals because essentially it was all hits, the odd deep cut, and if your instrumentals are the Top of the Pops theme and the epic opening Astrodyne from the Vienna album it is hardly niche. I danced all night, without tears in my eyes, despite him playing the track Lament and reminding me it is 42+ years since I first saw Ultravox tour that very album.

Kraftwerk, Royal Albert Hall, London, 4 Jun – I’ve seen this show many times over the years now since I first saw them in 1991, and it never gets old. This time I was pleased to be able to introduce my son and my partner Melanie to it. We got last-minute standing tickets and then when we were at the venue got upgraded to stalls seats right by the side of the stage, one of the times I’ve been closest to them. They played a couple of things I’ve never seen before — Ätherwellen in full and a version of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, dedicated to Ryūichi Sakamoto — but mostly it was just the unique sound and presentation of Kraftwerk. The men machines forever, regardless of who is in the line-up.

When I saw them in Brixton in 2004, I did not know it would be the last time I’d see Florian Schneider live. But I guess, on this, my twelfth Kraftwerk show, I know it is sadly probably my last time giving Ralf a standing ovation at the end.

The Nightshift, Trades Hall, Walthamstow, 6 Jun – For my sister’s birthday party she and lots of my family went to the Trades Hall to have a jolly good bop to a very sparkly 80s cover band who were great fun and who, unlike Joanne Joanne, do play Rio.

Sparks, Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, 12 Jun – Easily the most Tory venue I’ve ever been to — there’s a Margaret Thatcher infirmary for Christ’s sake — and then support act the Chelsea Pensioner Singers freaked us all by opening their set with the fanfare It’s a Sparks Show, making me panic I had missed the beginning of the main event.

And what a main event it was. I got to introduce my partner to experiencing my favourite band live, they dug out some choice deep cuts, Russell had to do impromptu stand-up when the power failed during Beat the Clock, it was a gorgeous sunny evening, and the cocktails and beer flowed.

And we won bucket hats.

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Maxïmo Park, Chalk, Brighton, 17 Jun – God I love them now, and when I saw they were doing another round of their 20th anniversary tour calling in for a matinee show in Brighton ahead of England’s opening World Cup match I was just always going to be there. The venue was having a nightmare, with all the draft beer seemingly off for a while and having to be pulled through the lines, making it chaos. But I found a nice spot in the upstairs bit with a direct view of singer Paul plus a TV screen of the whole stage plus a speaker plus somewhere to rest my bottle of beer …

… and once the gig finished they put on the big screen …

England v Croatia, Chalk, Brighton, 17 Jun – GO ON THE ENGLAND!

Trueno, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, 20 Jun – Not my bag at all — Latin-infused hip-hop — but they certainly went at it with some gusto and I quite liked the energy.

Sparks, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, 20 Jun – Awwwwwwwwww, my boys in front of maybe the biggest, definitely one of the biggest, crowds of their lengthy career. I even splashed out for gold circle tickets to be close to them.

Gorillaz, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, 20 Jun – I just don’t get Gorillaz. I’ve always seen it as Damon’s side-project when Graham doesn’t want to make Blur records but people really, really love it? I felt like I was standing out like a sore thumb as the only dude in the golden circle standing there a bit bored, so I left early.

But I didn’t leave before the bit when Sparks guested, of course.

The Twilight Sad, Blackweir Fields, Cardiff, 24 Jun – Algorithms are constantly pushing them at me, and this is the third time I’ve seen them as a support act, I think, and still … it just doesn’t do it for me, sorry.

The Cure, Blackweir Fields, Cardiff, 24 Jun – The first of two Cure gigs for me this summer, it was so blazing hot but once the sun dipped behind the stage we had a blast. What a back catalogue, even when they dip into some of the less-favoured quarters of it — I’m sure we can all live without any songs from Wild Mood Swings — and I can’t wait to see them again. They didn’t play anything off the latest album though, which was odd given how well received it was.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Canon’s Marsh Amphitheatre, Bristol, 26 Jun – Boundless energy and unlimited hits as ever, in a beautiful setting.

I didn’t get to see either Barbados 99 or Dog Race at Paper Dress Vintage in Hackney on 27 June because as I went to activate the QR code as we arrived we found it had been cancelled. Surely not? So I went to their socials and found this …

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …

Molten Modular, The Lower Third, Soho, 29 Jun – I only found out about this show because this guy, who I’ve met at the Norwich EMOMs, was bringing his suitcase of modular bits to make mad acidic-tinged techno.

Globo, The Lower Third, Soho, 29 Jun – A somewhat weird 90s electronic band who I was obsessed by, suddenly and unexpectedly doing a gig in London? I had to be there. And I loved it — kind of hard to describe though. Art-prank-tronica?

If you think this year was packed, twelve months ago I was also seeing Sparks twice at the Eventim Apollo, Kraftwerk at Milton Keynes Bowl, and was down the front at an absolutely sweat-drenched, rapturous set by LCD Soundsystem (I’m 54, IDGAF), plus helping host an incredibly packed An Evening with the Fall night at the Walthamstow Trades Hall to raise money for Eat or Heat, and witnessing Nastazia Basil genuinely make hummus live on stage at the Windmill in Brixton as part of her act. You can take a trip down memory lane and read all those June 2025 reviews in full here or find all my one-line gig reviews here.

[Picture caption: LCD Soundsystem at O2 Academy, Brixton, last year]

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This month featuring: spooky basements, cursed wishes, alien conspiracy and plenty of John Waters and Divine (plus one of the queerest sci-fi cartoons in history).

Repo Man (1984), Alex Cox – Bar Trash at Beer Merchant’s Tap, Hackney Wick – I didn’t know anything about this except that Alex Cox was the Moviedrome guy, and so thanks to the time trumpet effect this was like watching a load of GTA cutscenes and was an absolute riot.

Bar Trash, run by Token Homo, presents “Queer cult & curious cinema” in relaxed screenings with alcohol, a raffle, a quiz and lots of laughs – find out more at tokenhomo.com/bar-trash.

Polyester (1981), John Waters – Bar Trash at Genesis Cinema, Bethnal Green – This is just such a funny movie and Divine is deliciously over-the-top in it, actually, scrub that, everybody is deliciously over the top in it, and it was being presented in the original scratch’n’sniff Odorama format, whereby you got to experience various indistinct but unpleasant smells at key moments.

[Picture caption: Token Homo explains how Odorama works]

Backrooms (2026), Kane Parsons – I took my kid to this and was worried my lack of knowledge of the internet lore behind it would be a hindrance but I thought it was superb – creepy, suspenseful, incredible production design (like Alice in Wonderland meets Willy Wonka except wrong), brilliant performances by the leads, and most importantly now I know what it is like for my arms to feel like a couple of fortnights in a bad balloon after a clarky cat.

Erupcja (2025), Pete Ohs – I enjoyed the lo-fi aesthetic and the stridently bored voiceover guy doing the linking narrative, and also came away thinking god it must be exhausting to date someone like Charli XCX’s character in this.

Ghost in the Machine (2026), Valerie Veatch – Does anything make a man feel older than watching a documentary where events you lived through – say the dotcom bubble and Web 2.0 – are explained as if to a 12-year-old because presumably most of the audience will have no recollection of these ancient things? No, is the answer.

I’m not sure that I learnt anything new, just had my idea that the whole US tech/AI sector is a massive environmental disaster/clusterf*** confirmed, along with the crushing feeling that inevitably we are all trapped on the same planet with it.

[Picture caption: An AI-generated still from Ghost in the Machine]

Pink Flamingos (1972), John Waters – “Please, Babs, come in and give me some eggs”. God, this notoriously ends with that scene but along the way is just a riot of colour, fun and absolute filth.

There is a fantastic essay about the film here on You Remind Me of the Frame:

“Take the scene where Divine eats dog shit. Divine does something that is perhaps the epitome of bad taste but enjoys it, sort of. It’s a mixed enjoyment, which overlaps the terms good and bad. That also plays into the audience’s reaction, as they are watching something bad, but they can’t stop watching. The bad tastes good. This challenges a note Susan Sontag makes in her famous work on camp: that ‘the connoisseur of Camp sniffs the stink and prides himself on his strong nerves’. Walters’ film suggests that one sniffs the stink because one enjoys it, not to find out if one can endure it.”

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Dracula AD 1972 (1972), Alan Gibson – Bar Trash at Genesis Cinema, Bethnal Green – An oddity that manages to neither particularly work as a vampire film, nor work as the erotically-charged on-screen fuckfest it is clearly yearning to be. No bewbs, for a start.

Time and Water (2026), Sara Dosa – Lots of beautiful footage and archive gems in this, which was a treatise not just on how the climate crisis is affecting Iceland’s glaciers, but on family, memory and grief.

Disclosure Day (2026), Steven Spielberg – My kid wanted to go to see this based off the trailer and then gave it a 4/10. I enjoyed it much more than that, although it does have one of the most ludicrously improbable chase/escape scenes ever committed to celluloid.

Harold and Maude (1971), Hal Ashby – Bar Trash at Beer Merchant’s Tap, Hackney Wick – What a life-affirming joy this film is, laugh out loud with a poignant ending for the ages. A truly deserved cult classic.

Obsession (2025), Curry Barker – This was obviously going to have something of the monkey’s paw about it, the glee of which was aided by the fact that Michael Johnston’s main character was quite an annoying whiny dweeb whose predicament you didn’t feel that sorry for.

Lesbian Space Princess (2025), Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese – This was an animated scream with lots of genuine laugh out loud moments, off-colour jokes, and was very, very, very queer, although felt more like three pilot episodes of a TV show smooshed together than a movie experience.

Read more of my one-line spoiler-free reviews of everything I’ve watched in the cinema in the monthly archive. Last time out I wrote about The Wicker Man, Romería and watching 13 Ghosts with the recreated the ‘Ghost Watcher’ gimmick of its original theatrical run (pictured below).

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