06/12/2025
WIN a vinyl copy of Music Saves (Worthing)'s album of the year and a Music Saves Mug (ideal for hot mulled beverages this time of year!)
With recent personal circumstances wasn’t sure if I’d get chance to do my album of the year promotion for charidee (dont like to talk about it mate, not ‘alf etc) but thankfully managed to get it together 🙂
So in yet another tumultuous year on this ball of confusion there are always many honourable and well deserving organisations who I can support, but I'm often drawn towards the work that the local homeless charity Turning Tides Ending Local Homelessness do. Thankfully I've never found myself in a situation where I don't have a place to feel safe and secure and where I can build my life from, so I think the work they do remains massively important at a very visibly local level.
So as with previous years, I'm asking people to donate a minimum of £2 - so head over to www.turning-tides.org.uk, send me a screengrab of proof of donation and your name will go into Santa's sack to be drawn out on Monday 22nd December. If the winner is somewhere around Worthing vicinity, I'll drop it off before Christmas - if you're further afield will be with you at some point!
So, my favourite album of the year is...
Antony Szmierek - Service Station At The End Of The Universe
Why? Well, sometimes an album can come pre-loaded with your own personal preconceptions of what it's going to be like - an anticipation and hope it will be as good as you hope. I had never heard of Antony Szmierek before I got the promo cd in the post, but being a big fan of the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy TV series the album title piqued my interest then with a love of brutalist architecture the fun cover of the Pennine Tower from the M6 service station in a snowglobe similarly had me intrigued.
I immediately loved the album and it's one of those which has stayed on my 2025 playlist on my iPod in the car, surviving the cull of titles throughout the year and one I would continue to go back to. I'd been mulling over from earlier in the year if this would end up being my favourite album of the year as usually something from so earlier in the year is usurped by some more recent fresher delights.
Musically, it's a variety of things but really I say it's an indie dance album - I can't put my finger on it, but it's always made me think of some early 90s dance music coming out of Manchester - maybe where baggy was crossing more into rave, but still spidery guitar riffs scattered over the top of the beats. There are aspects of The Streets to it - it has that "low budget" (ie not some arena EDM thing) rave feel of something like "Weak Become Heroes" on some tracks with a positive life affirming approach. There's something akin to Underworld too, in Szmierek's stream of consciousness documentary style lyrical snapshots which bring to mind Karl Hyde, though his delivery though falls more under the subdued laconic mumble rap of someone like Loyle Carner. Thanks to this album I've learnt about the stockport pyramid (a former huge glass pyramid bank building, now housing an Indian restaurant!)
There's a feeling of a journey through the album, like a post rave drive heading back home, that weird atmosphere that exists while driving on empty motorways and dark country roads at night, the strange melancholia of brightly lit but empty service stations in the blackness, passing strangers starring in their own films, heading to their own destinations, of driving as the sun comes up and seeing the world of roadside graffiti tattered message banners hanging from bridges as the world emerges back from a half remembered or half dreamed journey.
He's playing at Rockaway Beach in early January, so if you're heading there maybe this might prompt you to check him out.
Hope you can support this competition and any promoting of the competition (as social algorithm remains in the toilet) would be great as would hopefully mean more support for Turning Tides!
