After 13 years of (almost) daily updates, it is with a certain amount of relief that I can announce that Doklands is no more. It's been tremendous fun, and I value those people who I've met along the way, but after so long it's going to be so refreshing to not have opinions about everything. May each and every one of you enjoy yourself as much as ( Read more... )

Here's the young Roky Erickson with the 13th Floor Elevators with their garage classic You're Gonna Miss Me. There are so many great elements to this song. One is undoubtedly Erickson's harmonica playing, a violent shriek that follows his singing without respite. Then there's the famous electric jug playing of Tommy Hall. Yes, that juddering ( Read more... )

In 1984 Van Morrison was in the middle of a journey that was to take him through Scientology and Theosophy and into a turbulent relationship with religion that has never seemed to go away. In other words, he was just about the least cool man on the planet. Did I know that at the time? Did I buggery, I just wanted to hear his new album, A Sense ( Read more... )

Some bands are metal but only one is literally metal. Compressorhead are Fingers, Stickboy and Bones, a band of actual robots. They get guest vocalists in to do the tricky singing part, which in my book is a bit of a cop out. It must be possible to get a set of horns and some weirdly resonant sheet metal to handle that end of things, surely? ( Read more... )

Here at Doklands we've heard a fair bit of Ernesto Gonzales, codenamed Bear Bones, Lay Low. His 2019 release Ses Kondi might be his best yet ( Read more... )

I've held back on sharing Derek for many years because (a) it could fairly be described as terrible and (b) this rip of it sounds as if it was recorded off the radio. Still, I remained obsessed with this stupid song for years. It's from the deliberately naff school of '80s indie music, halfway between messthetics and naff; songs made as an art ( Read more... )

Do you want to listen to the of the best histories of punk in a single performance? Jeffrey Lewis's punk timeline is a bit sketchy at times, especially when he draws it through the weird folk and freakout bands of the 1960s but he can be forgiven just about anything for his dry delivery and the fact that he performs part of every single song he ( Read more... )

Look, I'll be honest with you, I just don't get the Gentle Stranger aesthetic. Are they the soundtrack to an invisible dadaist theatre troupe? Are they a improv DIY jazz trio? Are they a live sampling jam band? I don't know and have to treat each new moment they bring with bewilderment, trepidation or exhilaration. Things seem marginally ( Read more... )

I am so sick and tired of being the only person I know who listens to Jamie Harrison's music. I'm also sick of how many different Jamie Harrisons there are out there, and I want mine to grow gargantuan and consume all the others. MY Jamie Harrison is the folk singer, the one who plays quirky tunes that sound as if he's trying to make all his ( Read more... )

I loved The Clash as a teenager. Not trying to claim there's anything special in that, I think it was pretty much obligatory to do so. But as the years went on they started to sound a bit iffy, their politics seeming more and more like clothes to be worn to suit the occasion. Really badly cut clothes at that. It was when one of their dreariest ( Read more... )