BEATS OF LOVE

65. Shout (Extended Remixed Version) by Tears For Fears

CUTTING WELFARE during an economic crisis to cost tax cuts for the very richest in society.

Mis-recognising your own little backward looking country for a superpower and then peddling all that trickle down bullshit. Slashing workers' rights to create even more profit to stash away in overseas tax avoidance schemes. Slating communism but quite liking the idea of forcing most people onto a minimum wage. Sorry, living wage.

U-Turning on animal welfare reform, clean air, sewage cover, and water quality, to concentrate solely on making money. Laws and rights are so fucking yesterday. Unsurprisingly, windfall taxing us to create a windfall for your mates. Growing nothing except your own narcissism. Collectively, a Himalayan sized growth.

Shorting the pound for hedge funds whilst making even more people sleep in hedges. Fighting fascism in the 20th century then congratulating fascists in the 21st. Free marketeering but clean ignoring the market. Heralding in a fresh new age of austerity like it's a good thing. Despite most people's pay already falling well below inflation and signifiers of abject poverty visible just about anywhere. Well, anywhere outside the Westminster bubble.

Upholding democracy to justify the world's blood on your hands, still whilst imposing this, is the cruelest of your undemocratic experiments yet. A week is a longtime in politics. Listening to Truss's many successful multifaceted attempts to be unpopular, an eternity. The Queen got out quick after a simple handshake.

Nothing even matters anymore. The circus remains, the clowns keep changing, but the script never does. Welcome to the collapse. Insane.

BEATS OF LOVE

64. I'll Be Gone by David Budin

WHILE IT feels like a natural progression to see Paul Hillery curating back-to-back compilation triumphs lately, NTS releasing a companion piece of equally brilliant, meandering loner-folk is a deeply welcome surprise.

Compiled by Bruno Halper and Samuel Strang, the compilation focuses predominantly on private press releases from the US and UK's golden age. Lovingly mastered by Geoff Pasche at Abbey Road, it sounds absolutely tip-top. 

I first discovered the joys of a 45-rpm LP with The Cost of Loving and Lazer Guided Melodies and have loved them ever since. Bravo. Some braver folk could take out 30 quid and dare to buy better, but not me. These sounds satisfy in a deeply soulful way. They linger and live with you for a good while and none more so than this absolute peach of a tune. 

That mournful flute is to die for. It may have started as a promotional track for a New York coffeehouse, but it has transformed into modern-day medicine for surviving today's troubled world. If that makes these DJs modern-day medicine men, then I am happily addicted. I could bask in its pastoral elegance forever, or at least until the next truly inspiring compilation lands at my door.

BEATS OF LOVE 

63. Roseblood by Mazzy Star

MORE FOLK rightly voted for Royal Mail strikes than Liz Truss. 

Her dogmatic belief in trickle-down economics is totally wrongheaded and morally bankrupt. It's not fucking rocket science; for trickle-down economics to work, pay has to be at least equal to the cost of living.

If the war in Ukraine has hiked up inflation to 40 year highs, then company profits need to be at a 40-year low to support folk through it.

But most MPs and all the mass media boffins think this is insane, which should make folk question whether or not their antiquated form of communication is still fit for purpose. It's not by the way.

Inertia, the fallout from watching the most boring political standoff in history, has probably caused the Queen's death. Antiquated form of communication has duly become the new normal on my telly. I actually quite liked the word solemnity, but after a week of its ridiculous overuse, I'll die happily, never hearing it uttered again. Ever.

We'll probably all age dramatically watching a very thick queue of people for days on end. Well, those of us who are daft enough to not switch it off.