#DOLLY MIXTURE UK

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

THE INDIE GIRLS OF YESTERYEAR -- THEY DON'T MAKE 'EM LIKE THIS ANYMORE, DO THEY?

PIC(S) INFO: "The toppermost of the poppermost" -- Mega spotlight on recently published shots of UK twee/pop punk/post-punk band DOLLY MIXTURE, c. 1980. 📸: @paulkellyfilm.

PIC #5: Gig/show flyer with THE USERS, THE SINIX, THE TRANSMITTERS, and THE FALL, performing live in Cambridge, UK, on May 26, 1979.

Source: www.picuki.com/media/3475736067237520561.

[spilladabalia]

The Dolly Mixture in Doncaster, 1981. Photo by & © Rich Gunter.

[bandcampsnoop]

3/9/24.

Sealed Records has been on a winning streak as of late. Their reissues of Dolly Mixture and Andy Stratton have been covered here, and recent releases of the Groucho Marxist label and now Twelve Cubic Feet are truly outstanding.

"Straight Out The Fridge" is a reissue of an early 1980s 10" from this London based group whose members were in many other bands including Solid Space. Really, Twelve Cubic Feet sound like a punkier Marine Girls with some of the swag of early Orange Juice. And the vocals really remind me of the great Vomit Launch and Life Without Buildings.

Finally, some of these songs have an early Flying Nun feel - think Look Blue Go Purple and/or Dead Famous People.

[pillsquad]

Dolly Mixture, UK punk / post-punk, early 1980s, via @sceneinbetween on Instagram

[daggerzine]

Rachel Love- Lyra  (The Cat Collects)

Yes, this is the same Rachel who used to be in the early 80’s UK group the Dolly Mixture (a favorite around the Dagger HQ). I discovered her solo stuff a few years ago (via 2021 Picture in Mind, though I’m not sure how long she’s been doing solo stuff) and it’s all been a terrific return to form. Very different from the Dolly Mixture as she forges her own path

This record was brought about by sadness with the death of her husband/ musical collaborator/producer Steve Lovell. Two of her kids play on the record as well and one of them, David Lovell, co-produced it with Rachel.

It’s the sound of dreamy electro pop with lovely cooing vocals, splendid guitars, synths and the like. With songs titles like opener “Without You,” “Sad and Lonely,” “I Lost Myself” and “Alone” (to name but a few) you get the idea of most of the subject matter, but as a whole Lyra also feels hopeful and pleasing to the ears. Musicians working through grief can sometimes offer us the biggest surprises.

It’s a beautiful record made during a very difficult time, but I’m so glad that Rachel and her co-musicians made this record. It’s an important one and also one of my favorite records of the year so far.

www.rachellove.bandcamp.com

[indieephemera]

Flyer from UK label Cordelia Records, listing releases for sale from their own label and from others they were distributing, circa 1994.

While I can’t recall how I stumbled across the Cordelia Records label, it must have been through their New Zealand connection in some shape or form. Here they list an entire section of releases for sale on the German Raffmond label, known in the 90s for issuing some of the more experimental Kiwi music of the time—less Flying Nun, more Xpressway. And in among the Terminals and Cakekitchen releases are those from some of the (many) bands of Cordelia main man Alan Jenkins.

But the real prize for me here was that Dolly Mixture 12″ listed for a mere £3. The band’s final release during their initial existence, The Fireside E.P. was a low-key, chamber pop coda. And it was only one of two Dolly Mixture releases—the other being their ultra-rare Demonstration Tapes double LP—that I had yet to acquire.

I most certainly sent my international money order and IRCs to the label without delay in order to grab that Dolly Mixture record... plus a few other Cordelia label releases while I was at it. Because, with a maximum international shipping charge of £6, why the heck not?

[urbanenemy]

DOLLY MIXTURE - Baby It's You

[still-single]

radio last for 2019

https://www.mixcloud.com/mosurock/heathen-disco-with-doug-mosurock-show-195-30-december-2019/

tracklist below. thanks to Mary Nisi for getting sick so I could do this.

Possible Humans - Born Stoned

Jeff Parker - Max Brown pt. 1

Grapefruit - Elevator

Pugh - Love, Love, Love

The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Bike Race

KVL - Bladewalker

Susan Cadogan - Do It, Baby

Sault - Pink Sands / Let Me Go

The Charlatans UK - Flower

Dadamah - Limbo Swing

Wayne Rogers - Waterside

The Prefects - Barbarellas

Hiro Kone - Fabrication of Silence

Lyn Todd - Devil Woman

Junior - Mama Used to Say

Quando Quango - Triangle

Automatic - Electrocution

Ruth - Polaroïd/Roman/Photo

Kuzu - Carried Away

The Society - You Girl

Davie Allan and the Arrows - Mind Transferral

Meat Beat Manifesto - Hello Teenage America

Ashwin Batish - Raga Rock

The Carrie Nations - Sweet Talkin' Candy Man

Dolly Mixture - Femme Fatale

Fred Anderson Quartet - Analog Breakdown

P.P. Rebel - Caretta Caretta

Shinehead - Rough & Rugged

Foster Sylvers - Misdemeanor

Blues Lawyer - For Keeps

Mary Lattimore + Mac McCaughan - II

Woolen Men - Ecstasy of an Ant

Sally Haze - Tell Me Everything

Zatua - Nun Vuelvas Mas

Linda Di Franco - T.V. Scene (Sensurround Mix)

Cocteau Twins - Lorelei

Burial - Loner

FACS - In Time

Visage - Fade to Grey

Tindersticks - Take Care in Your Dreams

My Bloody Valentine( - Please) Lose Yourself in Me

Pink Turns Blue - Walking on Both Sides

Blitz - Skin

The Springfields - Clown

Andy Stott - It Should Be Us

Chubby Checker - Stoned in the Bathroom

Willie Colon - Junio '73

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

FILE UNDER INDIE GIRLS, INDIE FASHION, VINTAGE STYLE -- NO TATTOOS, PIERCINGS, OR ENORMOUS SUNGLASSES.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on 2/3 of "forever toppermost" UK post-punk/pop punk band DOLLY MIXTURE, performing live somewhere in the Home Counties, UK, c. early '80s.

DOLLY MIXTURE was:

Debsey Wykes -- bassist/vocalist

Rachel Bor -- guitarist/vocalist

Hester Smith -- drummer

Source: www.picuki.com/media/3452899591949038804.

[bandcampsnoop]

10/13/23.

What a nice surprise. The Cat Collects is a UK label run by Jodie Lowther. This is a 4-way CD containing three songs each from Rachel Love (Dolly Mixture), 3am Again, The Cleaners From Venus and Jodie Lowther herself. Lowther does the artwork for the CD and has done covers for each artist on other releases (3 am Again have a CD on Subjangle).

Each artist has one track available here. And each artist represents a season - Rachel Love (spring), 3am Again (summer), Cleaners From Venus (fall) and Jodie Lowther (winter). Despite the fact that there are 4 different artists, there really is a common, relaxing sound to all the songs.

[faerystepsblog]

Shop Update. Tonight at 8 o'clock uk time. Minnie purses with gussets for filling up to the brim with coins or dolly mixtures. faerysteps.com #faerysteps #nevergrowup #fairytale #lovemyjob #happy #wonderland #maker #leather #workshop #smallbusiness #fairyshoes #fairy #leathergoods #artisan #woodland #ren #leather #purse #handmade #homilybag #alder #theborrowers #smile https://www.instagram.com/p/CNpkREpJFz1/?igshid=jam3yazx1ogi

[futuresandpasts]

Futures & Pasts | MRR #416

From Maximum Rocknroll #416 (January 2018): Criminally overlooked early ‘80s Texan femme-punk from Whoom-Elements, Ixna’s art-damaged crash course in Esperanto, the vinyl debut of Electrelane disciples En Attendant Ana, Hash Redactor’s demo that channels the Fall tumbling down a flight of stairs, and a new LP of economical DIY pop from Telepathic. 

When I think about growing up in Houston in the late ‘90s and becoming increasingly engaged in DIY culture and underground music, one of the things that’s most frustrating to me with the benefit of hindsight is how the involvement of women in Texan punk going back decades was never really made known to me. Discovering MYDOLLS in my early twenties (after I’d left Texas for New England, even) and realizing that there had been a female-dominated post-punk band from my hometown that I’d never known about was a revelation, and it was honestly one of the catalysts that pushed me into trying to uncover the secret histories of other punk and post-punk women whose work risks being lost to time. One of those bands is WHOOM-ELEMENTS, an all-female trio from Austin who regularly played local shows with many of the now-legends of the early ‘80s Texas scene (think BIG BOYS, DICKS, and the STAINS/MDC), and whose only proper recordings can be found on a two-song ESR Records single on from 1982 that has been criminally overlooked in the frenzy for KBD gems from the Lone Star State. “Of Love” is a starkly minimalist and wiry pop song with biting feminist lyrics (“you can’t handle the responsibility / of love”) cloaked in deceptively delicate overlapping group harmonies, while “Men in the Politics” follows in the tradition of late ‘70s UK femme-punks like DELTA 5 and the AU PAIRS who set their critiques of traditional gender roles against sharp, needling guitar lines and danceable bass-driven rhythms. There’s some clear parallels to be drawn between WHOOM-ELEMENTS and some of the other women who banded together in generally male-dominated local scenes across America to make their own stripped-down sounds skirting the line between punk and post-punk at the beginning of the 1980s, like CHALK CIRCLE in Washington, D.C., NEO BOYS in Portland, or MORBID OPERA in South Florida (to name just a few who have had their recordings reissued and newly appreciated over the last few years). It felt really fitting to finally track down a copy of this single while I was in San Francisco last month on my first real tour at age 32, doing something that never would have seemed possible to me as a teenage punk in Houston who had so few women performers to look up to in my own community.

IXNA were a duo operating on the fringes of the Bay Area’s experimental music scene in the early 1980s, and their sole release, a two-song 1981 single on the Dumb Records label run by DIY glam weirdo extraordinaire NOVAK, takes the art-damaged synth-punk of their local peers (think the UNITS,  LOS MICROWAVES, PINK SECTION, etc.) into an even more cut-up and flipped-out direction. “Mi Ne Parolas” has a certain level of notoriety as probably the only ‘80s post-punk jam with lyrics delivered entirely in Esperanto (everyone’s favorite international auxiliary language), with Marina LaPalma’s sing-song chanted vocals backed by some staccato guitar, throbbing bass, hallucinatory multi-tracked tape loops of a Chuck Berry guitar riff, and scissors that have taken the place of cymbals as a percussive instrument. IXNA turns to avant-electro darkwave in a TUXEDOMOON vein on the B-side “Ixna Portal Exo,” which takes the constructed language concept even further as LaPalma recites her lines in a totally self-invented dialect over a sparse synth pulse and haunting tape manipulations. From a time and place that yielded no shortage of total oddball post-punk obscurities, this is one of the best.

I had completely missed the debut cassette from Parisian quintet EN ATTENDANT ANA when it first appeared last year, but luckily it found a well-deserved vinyl reissue as a 12” EP this spring thanks to Canada’s Nominal Records. Songs From the Cave’s six songs all combine warm droning organ, propulsive rhythms and sweetly spectral vocals that betray a strong influence from ELECTRELANE’s synthesis of Krautrock and post-punk in the early-to-mid aughts, albeit with a looser, more shambolic aesthetic pulled from the pop-leaning wing of late ‘70s/early ‘80s UK DIY that included bands like DOLLY MIXTURE, as well as the frenetic jangle of the subsequent C86 movement. It’d be really easy for that particular formula to result in something that’s too twee by about half (I mean, one of the five members of the band just plays trumpet), but there’s a certain downer streak lurking beneath EN ATTENDANT ANA’s kaleidoscopic melodies that’s descended more from NICO-era VELVET UNDERGROUND or LOOK BLUE GO PURPLE than Sarah Records, thankfully. (Nominal Records, enattendantana.bandcamp.com)

Describing something as “the FALL stumbling down a staircase backwards” is a really good way to get my attention, so props are due to Goner Records for bringing the new demo cassette from Memphis’ HASH REDACTOR to my attention. It’s four songs of trebly, blown-out DIY racket of the highest order, with the sort of borderline unintelligible, caustically talk-shouted vocals that completely nail Mark E. Smith’s “too much speed chased with a couple of pints” paranoia. So yeah, they sound more than a little like the FALL, but HASH REDACTOR also take a few cues from the ramshackle lo-fi art-punk of SWELL MAPS (“Fish” could pass for a tape-decayed outtake from A Trip to Marineville), and if anything, I’m reminded of the very underrated IN OUT from Boston, who have crafted their own brilliantly disjointed American hex enductions in various incarnations since the early ’90s. When everyone kept enthusiastically recommending PROTOMARTYR to me over the last few years (“but seriously, they really sound like the FALL!”) and it always failed to click, this is exactly what I was looking for but never managed to find. (hashredactor.bandcamp.com)

After a few self-released cassettes and a split tape earlier this year with HONEY RADAR, Philadelphia noise-poppers TELEPATHIC (featuring current and ex-members of the fairly like-minded BLOWDRYER and READING RAINBOW) just released their first LP, with 19 songs in just over 30 minutes like they’re GUIDED BY VOICES circa 1994 or something. On Self Checkout, the trio references a whole spectrum of crucial DIY touchstones from the late ‘70s through the early ‘90s, hopscotching from nervously lean post-URINALS punk on “MTIC” and “Mental Masturbation,” to freewheeling Flying Nun-style pop accented with warbly organ à la the CLEAN on “Pretend to Multiply,” to a vintage Kill Rock Stars/K Records vibe with “Calculator.” The intertwining harmonies from guitarist Rob Garcia and bassist Sarah Everton, in particular, pick up some of the threads left behind by ERIC’S TRIP or TIMES NEW VIKING, both of whom shared TELEPATHIC’s knack for burying insistent pop hooks underneath a mess of distortion, fuzz, and primitive lo-fi punk clamor. (Third Uncle, store.thirduncle.com/album/self-checkout)

[urbanenemy]

DOLLY MIXTURE - New Look Baby

[afrobeatsindacity]

Afrobeats City Meets Yasmin Kadi

Ahead of her Charity Concert, Afrobeats4All we caught up with Afro-pop artist Yasmin Kadi to find out more about her latest single “No Drama”, her charity concert Afrobeats4All and when we can expect her to drop her highly anticipated album.  

Last month you released your latest single “No Drama” can you tell me more about the single?

The writing process was straight forward; I was working with a couple of producers called SOS. We got in the studio and I told them this is where I want to go and it was like we were on a level creatively. They started messing about on the keyboards and came up with the beat, I loved it and the lyrics just flowed out. The song was written in 20-30 minutes.

What was the influence behind “No Drama”?

The song is about a significant other who brings nothing but drama. “I don’t want your drama; take it to your mum. I’m not your babysitter”. A fun way to say please go away, I have my own thing to deal with.

You were born in Sierra Leone and had to flee to the UK at a very young age. What influence does Sierra Leone play in your music?

A huge part, I tend to write about issues over there and that comes into my music, I’m very proud to be a Sierra Leonean and I will always talk about that in an interview or on TV. I love where I’m from being, African and Lebanese and I think it’s a shame the world doesn’t see the beauty that lies in Africa. There is such a stereotypical view and preconceive idea of what Africa is about and so for me I like to say “look at me and what I’m doing”. This is Africa!

My music is a fusion of European and African but my roots are from Africa and it’s not just me, I am a small minority of it but there is so much more to Africa. I think it’s my job to help people see that. I strongly believe in God and I feel I was put on this earth to make a big difference in Africa, Sierra Leone and especially the UK because it has given me opportunities I might not have had. For example, I never thought that when I was a little girl running by the mango tree, I would be in an advert with Usain Bolt.

How did you get into music?

No one else in my family does music but I think I got into it because of my dad. Every Sunday or 2nd Sunday we used to go to the beach with aunties, uncles and cousins and whilst getting ready my dad would play music such as; Dolly Parton, Jimmy Reeves and Bob Marley and I think that is where my love for music comes from.

You will be giving back to Sierra Leone next month and headlining a concert called, Afrobeats4All in conjunction with Street Child. The concert is in aid of the flood victims in Freetown, can you tell us more about that and what we can expect on the night?

The show came about whilst the flood happened and I found myself crying for days watching how people were suffering and I decided to do something and put on an event funded by myself. I hired the Albany theatre, spoke to some Sierra Leonean artists and put together a team of people who are helping me. We have some really cool Sierra Leone acts lined up including Silvastone and we also have Lord Alfred Dubs (House of Lords) coming as well. Ben & Jerry’s are also sponsoring the event and will be giving out loads of ice cream to the audience. 

I just wanted to do something positive and show that even though that happened, we can still come together as one and have an event where people can have fun and at the same time actually help solve lives. We can still come together. Pull through this and find a positive side to it. I’m hoping to show that there is a silver lining in every cloud, there is always home.

Hopefully we can raise a decent sum of money with all proceeds going to Street Child. 

Why did you choose Street Child?

I choose them because they are an NGO Company and they are very transparent with their finances. They make me confident that the money will reach the people and they are one of the few people on the ground in Sierra Leone right now, giving much needed aid to the people.

Your music is a mixture of Afrobeat and Pop and Afro-pop has been popular this summer, how do you think African music in the UK is being perceived compared to maybe 5 years ago?

I think there is a massive change with the likes of Fuse ODG breaking through towards the commercial side and it is great for artists like myself and for other Afro-pop artistes but I think there is so much more talent out there in the genre but unfortunately a lot of us don’t have that platform onto the next level. A lot of us are doing well but we need the momentum to go onto that next level but ultimately we don’t have that exposure and it is a real shame, especially for women. For example, if you look at flyers for an Afrobeats Event, you rarely see a woman’s face on it and it’s like what in this day and age.

As a people we need to start that change but I think we will get our sound onto the next level.

2017 is fast coming to an end, can we expect an album from you before the end of the year?

That was the plan, at the moment the event is the main focus but I have a new single titled “Love You For Life” coming out soon followed by my album titled No Drama.

The album is a fusion of Afrobeats and Pop with two sides to it. Side One - “For The Feet” is African inspired with up-tempo Afrobeats songs and Side Two – “For The Heart” is pop ballads and love songs and it finishes with a song talking about not giving a damn and doing what you need to do to keep you happy.

No Drama album should be dropping in the next couple of months.

Thank you Yasmin for taking the time out to speak to us today, we wish you all the best in your career!

Click here to watch “No Drama” and click here to purchase tickets to Afrobeats4All

Follow @YasminKadiMusic on Facebook | Instagram | Twitter – www.yasminkadi.com

This interview was conducted by Shade A / Afrobeats City doesn’t own the image used.

[sarahwillustration-blog]

Candy or as we say in the UK sweets! These are Dolly Mixtures in a jar. . . #makingarteveryday #bardotbrush #gouachebrushes #createeveryday #foodillustration #handdrawn #illustratedfood #sweets #procreate #procreateillustration #procreateart #dailydrawing #illustration #illustrator #illustrationartists #digitalart #digitalartist #digitalpainting #womenillustrators #illustratorsoninstagram #art #artist #creativehappylife #artlicensing #cornwall (at Penzance, Cornwall) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtJHgzXnreS/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1mvc4rxxcprr

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

FILE UNDER: BASS PLAYERS, INDIE STYLE, MOD STYLE, MOD REVIVAL, INDIE GIRLS, POST-PUNK, VINTAGE STYLE, ETC...

PIC INFO: Spotlight on bassist/vocalist Debsey Wykes of UK indie/twee/post-punk/pop punk band DOLLY MIXTURE, c. late '70s (I think). How 'bout that jacket, though? What a lovely girl.

Source: www.picuki.com/media/3476104409120593108.