Next Event
Next event! New site! New newsletter!
Hello! Quite a lot of news to get to, but I’ll put the biggest / most important announcement up top - the next meet-up of the Really Strange Record Club will take place on Thursday 21st May 2026, 7:30-10:30pm, as usual at the wonderful Dreamhouse Records on Francis Road in Leyton. Put the date in your diary right now and we’ll see you there. Thanks to everyone who came down to our event last week - I think it was our biggest crowd yet, including a couple of spectacular RSRC debuts from new friends (and I hope future regulars).
What We Listened To - March 2026
A capacity crowd braved weirdly strong winds to descend on Dreamhouse Records for the very first Really Strange Record Club of 2026. We had some amazing debut appearances, immaculate vibes throughout and of course some incredible musical discoveries. If you have any questions or corrections to the list below, please do email me! I opened the evening with some selections to mark the arrival of spring, before veering off into early Actress and neon new age.
What We Listened To - December 2025
As with last year, December’s session had a non-compulsory Christmas theme, which we’d more or less abandoned by the end of the first hour. I opened things up with some Christmas-adjacent cuts from the Yellow Magic Orchestra extended family, along with an 8-bit IDM take on a festive staple and then a selection from 2025’s best accordion record. David Sylvian / Ryuichi Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours (from Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence OST) Saitone - Sleigh Ride (from Holy 8 Bit Night) Yukihiro Takahashi - Open The Door (from We Will You A Merry Christmas) Walt McClements - On A Painted Ocean Nick brought us an outsider Christmas gem and a truly transportive slab of French drone-rock.
What We Listened To - November 2025
I opened things up with a selection of 80s art pop and global experimentation. Laurie Anderson - Bright Red Tau Ea Lesoto - S/T Coldcut - Haruomi Hosono remix Jean Michel Jarre - Zoolook Various Artists - Methods of Dance compilation Tom A brought us some deep electronic zones and tones. Prins Emmanuel Miet Warlop & Micha Volders – ICCHĀ Rich took us on a wild trip into the outer reaches of extended saxophone technique.
What We Listened To - September 2025
September’s RSRC might have been one of the most wide-ranging meet-ups yet, taking in everything from deconstructed hip-hop and deep-cut machine funk to soap opera themes and even a record by a Welsh wrestler. For reasons of both legibility and efficiency, I’m experimenting with a slightly less verbose format for these write-ups - comments and corrections welcome! I topped and tailed the night with some obscure machine funk from Lou Reed’s 80s rhythm section and the euphoric alt-pop of Kate NV.
What We Listened To - July 2025
I opened proceedings with Hochono House by the legendary Haruomi Hosono - a playful self-cover album in which Hosono revisits his late-70s songs with a minimal electronic palette. I followed with selections from El-Mir’s incredible Malik Adouane compilation, showcasing his hi-energy raï jams in a Eurodance style. Matt switched gears with three tracks from The Foreign Department by Astrel K. Tom A took us into an electronic space with The Hour I Want by A Special Occasion, Mind in Camden from Enchante, a classic bit of longform deep house from DJ Sprinkles & Mark Fell and a slab of intricate protest d’n’b, Here comes a fucking startup campus by Mark.
What We Listened To - May 2025
I opened this blockbuster session with some selections from Wrong Way Up, the collaborative album between Brian Eno and John Cale from 1990. I’ve always loved the contrarianism of these two titans of experimental art producing a plasticky synthpop album - but have a look at Pitchfork’s deep dive to see how demented the creation of this smooth, airy record actually was. Rich followed with the Pan Machine album by the Ebony Steel Band, Kraftwerk classics reimagined by a full steel drum band; a reminder that you can recontextualise the Kraftwerk back catalogue in an almost infinite number of ways and those melodies still shine through.
What We Listened To - March 2025
I kicked things off with a side from Awa Poulo’s Poulo Warali, a gorgeous 2017 album from the Malian singer on the always-reliable Awesome Tapes From Africa label. Afterwards, Ben stepped up with Sleepy For Life, a melancholic slide of retro-acid by AAAA from 2018’s Acid Avengers 010 release. Then we looked back to, in Ben’s words, “a time before John Carpenter was a genre” and Gatekeeper’s magnificent, crushing Optimus Maximus from 2009 before closing out this set with Pussy Galore’s 1988 cover of Einsturzende Neubauten’s Yu Gung from 1988’s Sugarshit Sharp.
What We Listened To - December 2024
December had a non-compulsory Christmas theme that was reflected in some but by no means all of the records we played. We opened with a track I brought along - an excerpt from Tuluum Shimmering’s hour-long psyche jam based on Linus and Lucy from the classic Peanuts Christmas soundtrack. Tom kicked off with the gothy Swedish synthpop of Troth’s Blood In My Hair (2022), before moving onto the exquisite Lift You from Moin’s You Never End (2024) - a glorious slice of math-rock-meets-spoken-word.
What We Listened To - October 2024
Tom kicked us off with Bruce Haack’s Electronic Record For Children from 1969, taking us back to a time when at least part of the intended audience for wiggy electronic weirdness was kids, via the somewhat harrowing Spiders. Then we enjoyed the strangely affecting MIDI-folk of Thomas Bush’s Old And Red (2018) before finishing with an outsider classic from Ireland, Michael O’Shea’s self-titled album from 1982 in which he conjures up some dark and deeply percussive soundscapes from a homemade zither-like instrument constructed from an old door.
What We Listened To - May 2024
Last night the Really Strange Record Club met at Dreamhouse Records to make a beautiful May evening on Francis Road a little bit weirder. And as the drinks flowed from the newly-inaugurated Dreamhouse bar, we enjoyed some truly amazing sounds. First up was Gareth, who took us back to the new wave of British heavy metal with the 1980 compilation Metal For Muthas - notable for the inclusion of two early mixes of Iron Maiden’s songs Sanctuary and Wrathchild, their first appearance on EMI ahead of their debut album later that year.
What We Listened To - March 2024
It was another evening of weird and wonderful musical discoveries at Dreamhouse Records last night as The Really Strange Record Club met for the fourth time. We enjoyed some truly incredible music gathered from around the globe and from the deepest recesses of Leyton’s most adventurous record collections. Tommaso opened proceedings with Safe Inside The Day, the title track from Baby Dee’s 2008 album on Drag City that boasts an all-star cast of collaborators including Bonnie Prince Billy and Andrew WK.
What We Listened To - September 2023
What a night! It was a capacity crowd for the third meeting of the Really Strange Record Club, as Dreamhouse Records filled with old friends and new eager to hear some truly out-there sounds. It was probably also the widest and wildest range of records we’ve listened to at an event yet. Josh opened with a pair of 7-inches that had a distinctly local flavour - Football, Football by Orient FC (1974), and Fantastic’o by The O’s & The OK Band (1978) - two songs by our local club Leyton Orient, the latter released in the run-up to their epic FA cup showdown against Arsenal.
What We Listened To - March 2023
What a brilliant night that was. Thanks so much to everyone who came down to Dreamhouse Records last night and made the inaugural meeting of The Really Strange Record Club such a special evening. It was fabulous meeting everyone, and the range of music you all brought with you was truly extraordinary. As promised, here’s a recap of what we listened to… Phil kicked off the evening with a couple of 12” singles by Fetus Productions, from the Auckland post-punk scene of the early 80s.