BEATS OF LOVE 

186. Time and Space LP by Shrinkwrap 

ROBERTO GAVE me a casual heads-up about Moon Safari, and I made it my entire personality. 

I never scored the elusive promo cassette, but hearing it successfully blew my mind to pieces. Loved the spacey, house-adjacent vibes of their early stuff, but I didn't think they had this kind of womb-level masterpiece in them. When they packed out the Ritz just a year later, I was genuinely offended by how popular my private musical obsession had become.

Now, history is repeating itself. Delia kindly sent over the files for Shrinkwrap’s debut long player, and it has delivered the same shock to my system. They’ve taken the down tempo dub-house-disco of their earlier work and let it marinate in proper studio time, fuelled by the burgeoning scene sprawling all around them. The result is a double album that finally gives them the runway to flex their full potential. 

The opening tracks deliver head music of the highest calibre. Beautiful Thing is an absolute triumph; the vocal floats atop a warm, intoxicating tapestry of sound, weaving through the instrumentation with effortless brilliance. It leaves a visual afterglow reminiscent of a sun-drenched afternoon, just before the trumpet sweeps in to clear the air. The album then accelerates into a cerebral funk, driven by arrangements that are deeply sophisticated yet entirely accessible. The undisputed centrepieces, 54 Blues Pt. 1 and 2, offer a wide-screen cinematic experience, evoking the rain-soaked, melancholic film classics of the 1970s. Echoes of this era haunt the entire record, especially the dizzying, dramatic interplay between strings and strumming.

Even the meditative, spoken-word tracks Calm Your Mind and Time and Space, styles popularised during the ambient house era, flow seamlessly without feeling like awkward audiobook intermissions. It is a shared vision brought to life, leaving me with the metaphorical sensation of sand between my toes. 

Honestly? I don't want to know how they did it. Keep the wizardry behind the curtain and let me obsess in peace. Air gave me my first womb-level masterpiece; Shrinkwrap just gave me my next.

https://deliarecordings.bandcamp.com/merch

 BEATS OF LOVE 

185. I'm Free by The Who

MY COMEDY career died the day I tried to live-stream my brain. 

I used to get laughs from accidental, blurted out thoughts. But then I watched Peep Show, got arrogant, and started over sharing on purpose. Turns out my "unfiltered genius" was actually just tedious. The town of Shaw has only ever produced two real geniuses: ET and Rob.

ET played bass for the unsung heroes of the local scene, The Rainkings and One Summer. Conventional wisdom says bass players should be dull, but he breaks the mould; a genuine, old-school rock and roll character who nearly steered Bingo Jesus to mainstream success. There is zero pretense to him either. Whether he is enjoying a liquid lunch or cranking the stereo at 3:00 am, he doesn't try to be eccentric. He just does strange as a matter of course. He’s got a massive heart, too; I once watched him slip a twenty-pound note into the palm of an old schoolmate down on his luck. Not every town gets a local legend like that.

Then there is Rob, a complex enigma. He read literature at Keble College, Oxford, before somehow winding up in the same warehouse where I worked. I was instantly drawn to him the day I saw him at his desk, swirling spilled coffee with his finger, wearing a perfectly ambivalent smile. His sole act of kindness toward me was proofreading my fanzine submissions, a task he dispatched in minutes, gracefully erasing my endless errors. We used to play golf together until he became significantly better than me, at which point he abruptly quit the game and took up running. He still runs today, leaning heavily forward with his mouth agape, looking like a man who has just punished his body for twenty miles.

Now, the two of us sit in the same care home on Sundays. Half-smiling, half-drowning, we watch our loved ones slowly fade away, undoubtedly harbouring quiet fears about our own futures. I still want to ask him to write a book. I am certain it would be nothing short of brilliant.

Looking back, my biggest mistake wasn't trying to live-stream my brain; it was believing that brilliance had to be performed. True genius, like ET’s effortless rock and roll heart or Rob’s sharp, enigmatic mind, doesn’t need a digital stage or an intentional spotlight. It simply exists in the quiet, unscripted moments of life.