Heads on Sticks Chats – Details, episodes & analysis

Last Chat of the year and it’s an absolute pleasure to feature Rotherham industrial mage Karl D'Silva! A stalwart of the avant-garde boasting collaborations with Vanishing and GNOD, debut album ‘Love Is A Flame In The Dark’ suffuses his penchant for abrasive, post-punk sonics with soulful, impassioned pop and has dropped one of the best and unique releases of the year!

Listen to Love Is A Flame In The Dark

Follow Karl D'Silva on Instagram, X, and Facebook

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest 'Ead 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

Chat #22 up, and delighted to feature minimal-synth stalwarts Xeno & Oaklander! Formed in the mid-2000s over a shared love of early coldwave electronic music, Sean McBride and Liz Wendelbo have been conjuring essential cuts of glacial and ethereal synthpop and forging a reputation for solely working with analogue machines and recording in single takes. One of the most vital forces in electronic music today, and with new album VIA NEGATIVA (in the doorway light) out next month, join us as we explore their first encounters with synthesizers, radical theatre, and exactly which Italian perfume their upcoming LP might smell like, enjoy!

Follow Xeno & Oaklander on Instagram, X, and Facebook

Pre-order new album VIA NEGATIVA (in the doorway light)

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest 'Ead 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

Thirteenth and final chat for this year and I'm delighted to have a natter with industrial smut trio Concentration! Responsible for some the most visceral, knotted, and puerile excretions of gutter-jazz, electro-punk, splatter-pop (and a reputation for head spinningly wild live performances), join us fresh from their latest 2LP offering ‘Aren’t You Going To Introduce Me To Your Friend?’ and get acquainted with their warped world of psychosexual fetor!

Follow Concentration on Instagram and Facebook

Listen to new album Aren't You Going To Introduce Me To Your Friend?

Watch the video for 'Grün im Gesicht', directed by Max Kelan Pearce

Read the Heads on Sticks cover of I'm Not What I Was

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for weekly write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest 'Ead 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

Anyone with a scant awareness of Bristol’s thriving counter-culture will have seen Max Kelan Pearce's grubby fingerprints all over it, whether they realise it or not. Behind a myriad of aliases and projects across experimental video work, arcane alchemy, circuit-fried electronica, and now unleashing a bruising assault of EBM enclosed in a wire cage, sink your teeth into the twelfth episode of Heads on Sticks Chats as we pick the brains of the 'Avon-garde' stalwart and discuss the musical ensemble Avon Terror Corp, Catholic guilt, political scandal, and Smurfs Go Pop! Enjoy!

Follow Kelan on Instagram as well as his other projects Slack Alice, Salac, and Bad Tracking

Listen to Kelan's debut album Downtown

Watch the video for 'The Rag'

Watch the video for The Pop Group's 'Zipperface', directed by Kelan

Read the Heads on Sticks word on Downtown

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for weekly write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest 'Ead 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

Coming in from Munich we got punk-synth-disco duo Wildes for Chat #11! Crafting some of the most piquant and unique pop styles in years, with last year’s ‘Rawwr’ EP stuck on repeat at HEADHQ, join us as we explore their avant-pop world and talk rock gods, The Atomic Café, environmental disaster, and goldenes Eis!

Follow Wildes on Instagram and Facebook.

Listen to latest single 'Leger in Schwarz'

Read the Heads on Sticks write-up of debut EP Rawwr

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for weekly write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest 'Ead 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

The Chats are back after a little June break and I'm delighted to natter with none other than New Jersey knucklepunk Reckless Randy! Lighting a fire underneath Ocean City’s puritanism with cloddish garage rock struts of boozin’, stealin’, and all manner of debaucherin’, crack open a cold one and discover the origins of the RR name, the brains behind the artwork, and a helluva lotta punk talk! Enjoy!

Listen to latest EP Neat Seeker 

Follow Reckless Randy on Instagram

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for weekly write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest 'ead 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

Ninth chat up with experimental synth conjurer and Haord Records stalwart Brian Esser AKA Cabo Boing! Spending the best part of 20 years fomenting some of the strangest and unique slices of alien and gelatinous electronic music behind bizarre costumes, join us as we chew the fat on Fairlights, the merits of demystification, and a passionate reappraisal of Devo's Shout! Check it out!  

Listen to new album Real Gems For Little Jewels

Follow Cabo Boing on Facebook and Instagram    

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for weekly write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest 'ead 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

Eighth chat served pipin' hot as we explore the universe of Lule Mental Butter! The brains behind I Know I'm An Alien (whose responsible for the freaky sound interruptions for the podcast!) and a litany of offbeat aliases and side-projects, join us as we explore the method and the madness behind his expert craft of cartoon synth-skronk and surreal examinations of late-stage capitalism! Check it out!

Listen to latest EP Manteiga Mental

Watch all of Lule's D.I.Y. music videos on YouTube

Follow Lule Mental Butter on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

Follow I Know I'm An Alien on Facebook  and Instagram

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for weekly write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest 'ead 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

Chat #7 and the first for 2022 takes us to the heart of Nottingham's queer club scene for a natter with electro-spunk duo Arch Femmesis! Captivating the Midlands with their intoxicating blend of psychosensual performances and seductive synths, join me as we dive in their world and talk religion, the joys of intimidating middle-aged men, and a lengthy gab on Divine! Enjoy!

Follow Arch Femmesis on Instagram and Facebook

Pre-order Violents EP and listen to latest track 'Madusa'

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for weekly write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest HoS 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!

Our sixth Chat takes us to the melancholy epicentre of Bristol's darkwave community with New Haunts! A gothic project that encompasses synthpop, ethereal coldwave and bouts of industrial clangour, join me as I natter to the brains behind the South West gloom conjurer Alice Sheridan about the spectral residue of old worlds, her new side project Strange Futures, and a lengthy discussion on Weston-super-Mare's ghost train! Hope you dig it!

Listen to New Haunt's latest album Still Dark Sky 

Listen to Strange Future's new single 'Visitor'

Follow New Haunts on Facebook and Instagram

Follow Strange Futures on Facebook and Instagram

Head to headsonsticks.co.uk for weekly write-ups on the latest releases in alternative and underground music, and keep up to date with the latest HoS 'appenings on Facebook, Instagram, and Mixcloud!