The Recollective: Recent Episodes
Charlie & Tom
Two (ex)-musicians listening to music, breaking down how it was made, what they love, playing some of their own music and sharing some of their own memories
Tom and Charlie are joined by their good friend Simon to discuss some of the sounds and songs they remember from the early '90s
We take a look back at the bills for Reading Festivals of 1991, '92, '93 and '94 and explore the bands whose names we recognise, but maybe weren't aware of their oeuvre. Tune in to find out who we selected.
Innuendo, filth, boundary-pushing sleazy, sleazy sex songs... selected and spoken about by two middled-aged English men. An oxymoron? Well, that's for you to judge.
This week Tom and Charlie are joined by a real, live American: Sean Fox. They discuss the album-oriented rock genre that became a staple of the 1970s and enjoyed a resurgence in the '90s
We get the band back together: Jim, Tom, Charlies Stix and Beall (at least one of whom is streaming from the heart of Berlin) to pen another love letter to the city that inspired us all in different ways.
Axe Gods, plectrum plunderers, slashers of the six-stringed beast... we're talking guitarists and guitar parts.
Tom and Charlie welcome Mark Sturdy to the virtual studio to discuss music inspired by and made in the great city of Sheffield.
The first of our love letters to the city of Berlin, a city that inspired many of our favourite artists and was the back-drop to Seeing Scarlet's album Laughter in the Dark
Go West... and you'll find Country Music... and so will we. It's not a genre we're experts in but we're beginning a voyage of discovery. Please join us
Songs don't always give up their best bits at the start, sometimes they build up over time. Others have propulsive, driving energies that move them forward. Sometimes they do both. Tom, Charlie and Jim pick their favourite builders and drivers
Tom, Charlie, Jim and Mick talk chords - sequences, changes... instrumentation and harmonies that create dynamic changes in songs... the difference between a chord and a key change. It's not as technical as it sounds, though we have a few sound issues of our own.
We continue our exploration into how songs change, evolve and morph into different versions of one another. We take examples from Bowie and Grunge and do a deep dive into one of our own songs, Music Will Save You to see how songs change over time
In this episode we consider how songs become different songs, how one song can change over the course of its life and how tempo makes a massive difference to the success of a song
Of course, we wish we'd written every great song we ever play, but there are songs that are perfect for the kind of band you are and the kind of music you play. There are songs that would suit your playing style or vocal range. And then there are songs you'd just love to play, over and over again.
We're in the mood for love! Tom and Charlie gloss quickly over another mammoth subject, giving a sprinkle of their own opinion laced with memories and a couple of personal tracks.
A continuation of the previous episode talking about bands in 'The Scene' - this episode features songs from Mystery Jets, Guillemots, Miss Black America, Battle, Librium and The Cling
For every musician and every band there's a scene: shared gigs, rivalries and borrowings. For us it happened in London in the early 2000s around rock and indie music. In this first episode on 'The Scene', Tom, Charlie and Stix look back on some of those scene setters....
Tom and Charlie dig into songs from talented individuals with great voices and a knack for a tune. They also discover that the term singer songwriter is hard to define - it's more than a single woman or man at a piano or a guitar, or is it?
Tom and Charlie chance upon a series of lists, drawn up in a pub, some time in 2001 (we think). They revisit the lists and the songs chosen almost two decades previously.
Tom, Charlie, Jim and Mick sit down to do their first listen-along and to kick off the new format they've chosen The Strokes' recent release, The New Abnormal.
Julian, Fab, Nikolai, Nick and Albert - they came to slap us around the face in 2001. And they stuck around for years after. In this episode, we talk about our favourite early Strokes tracks
People all over the world, join hands, start a love train. Head straight to the dance floor, whatever the genre and strut your funky stuff. Charlie and Jim talk about their favourite floor fillers, the songs, beats and grooves that get people shuffling, moshing, swooping, sidling, gliding and abiding.
Tom, Charlie and Jim listen to their favourite cover versions and discuss what makes a good cover. Are some songs heaters? How different do you need to make a song if you're covering it?
Tom and Charlie talk about a band that blew up in the early '00s. Behind the pop-up gigs, endless headlines, tales of make-ups and break-ups, drugs and debauchery there were some great songs and a visceral energy that was hard to miss.
Tom and Charlie transport themselves to the Seattle of the late '80s and early '90s and avoiding the two 'biggies' Nirvana and Pearl Jam, they explore the work of bands like Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Screaming Trees, Hole, Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots.
Tom and Charlie are joined by Charlie 'Stix' Layton formerly of Transparent Things, Seeing Scarlet, Stereo Dance Party, The Wedding Present, Art Brut, Librium... the list goes on and on. We share our most inspirational drum tracks and talk to Stix about his inimitable drumming style.
Tom, Charlie and Jim talk about the magnificent David Bowie and begin to scratch the surface of the great man's legacy. Starting with a recording featured on Bowie at the Beeb, they take in Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Lodger, Low, Let's Dance and even Labyrinth.
In this episode we talk about some of our favourite rock singers, their styles, techniques and idiosyncracies. A topic that's almost too big to tackle in a single episode we take in Chrissie Hynde, Anonhi, Bono, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, Roy Orbison and of course, David Bowie.
When Tom and Charlie went to university they met Jim. The three would collaborate on music projects for the next decade and beyond. Here, the three of them talk about their introduction to one another and their respective music collections.
Inspired by the Pixies' work in the late 80s, many guitar bands in the early to mid-90s would employ a dynamic of quiet verses, exploding into monster choruses. No more so than Nirvana. Tom and Charlie dissect some of their favourites and how these fed into their own songs
The word 'angular' entered the music lexicon during the period 2004 to 2006 (or at least it did for us). What does it mean and where did it come from? What are the characteristics of angular guitar songs and who were the pioneers of the sound? Tom and Charlie discuss the best proponents of the genre and how it influenced them
Tom and Charlie met in a gents bathroom at a girl's school in 1996. In this episode they discuss the music of 1996, what kids in Camden Town were listening to and wearing, the visual language of films like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet and The Fifth Element as well as music videos from Blur, Beck and Bush Pig... oh, no... we mean Spacehog
Tom and Charlie explore their memories of a very particular genre of 90s Indie, Britpop. Taking in the big four of Blur, Oasis, Suede and Pulp they also cover some of the more niche players while presenting their own homage to the genre, Holloway
Tom and Charlie make their first foray into remote podcasting by looking at some of the work of legendary producer, engineer and mixer Alan Moulder (and some songs that may actually have been produced and mixed by other people). The show concludes with a version of a song mixed by Alan Moulder for Seeing Scarlet in 2007.