The Really Strange Record Club

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:21:34 +0100

Closing with some wonky foley LA beat stuff from Barney!

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:20:02 +0100

My favourite warm weather ambient LP…

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:49:29 +0100

Outernatipnal sounds from Jim!

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:36:21 +0100

Heatwave vibes from Ollie

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 21:01:47 +0100

Chris answered the call and brought us some dub!

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:40:39 +0100

A selection of (occasionally unrecognisable) covers from Josh.

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:44:23 +0100

And we’re off! Warming up with some classic Japanese house.

Next event - Thursday 9th July 2026!

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:33:44 +0100

Hello everyone,

Just a quick reminder that the next meeting of the Really Strange Record Club is one week away - on Thursday 9th July, 7:30-10:30pm, at the wonderful Dreamhouse Records on Francis Road as usual. We’ve still got a few slots available - so if you’ve got a record you’d like to bring along, drop me an email to reserve your 15-minute spot on the turntable.

Not sure what to bring? Have a look at the archives for some quick inspiration… And if you don’t have anything to bring, you’re more than welcome to come along, hang out and hear something new.

See you next week! Matt

PS If you’ve not yet checked out The Ditch - Leyton’s marvellous community radio station - now’s a great time to do so as the roster of original shows is steadily growing. RSRC regular Mark - aka DJ Stayhome - recently launched a wonderful new weekly show called Homestay - tune in, check out the archives and get involved over at ditch.channel.

Thu, 28 May 2026 11:53:16 +0100

Tonight! It’s the Boards of Canada listening party at Dreamhouse. Me and Chris are repping Really Strange Record Club by spinning classic Warp and woozy IDM in-store beforehand; tickets are sold out but you can hear the warm-up live on Leyton’s community radio station The Ditch from 8:30pm!

What We Listened To - May 2026

Sat, 23 May 2026 09:14:44 +0100

Hello everyone,

Thanks so much to everyone who came down on Thursday. It was a really beautiful night - lovely weather, great vibes and some of the wildest (and oldest!) sounds we’ve heard at a Really Strange Record Club yet. Scroll down for a full account of everything we listened to, and do ping any questions or corrections over to hello@reallystrangerecord.club.

The next event is on Thursday 9th July, 7:30-10:30pm at Dreamhouse Records. Get the date in your diary now and see you there!

In other news, me and RSRC regular Chris will be DJing classic Warp and woozy IDM as part of Dreamhouse’s launch celebrations for the new Boards of Canada LP this Thursday (28th). Tickets are sold out but god (ie wi-fi) willing we’ll be broadcasting the set on Leyton’s extremely cool community radio station The Ditch. Keep an eye on the RSRC website for more details later this week.

Speaking of The Ditch, you should definitely listen to Jon from Dreamhouse’s new show Dreamhouse Despatch, surveying cool new releases available in the shop. It’s a fantastic addition to a small but mighty roster of shows including my show Mostly Listening (Mondays, 8pm), Emmet O’Donnell’s crucial roundup of new experimental and electronic sounds The Weekly Digress (Tuesdays, 8pm), Derek Bonz’s wonderful ambient and dub-techno show Pausa (Fridays, 9:30am), pop-up live broadcasts from Ditch founder Adam Clarke and more. Tune in here - and get involved!

Finally, if you’re doing something interesting / cool / weird around Leyton or East London, drop me a note so we can add it to our new friends page. We’re building a scene, piece by piece - come and be a part of it!

Have a great weekend.
Matt

What We Listened To - May 2026 edition

I kicked off the evening with a slept-on Yukihiro Takahashi LP, and Joe Hisaishi and Midori Takada’s first LP as the Mkwaju Ensemble. [photos]

Yukihiro Takahashi - Wild & Moody
Mkwaju Ensemble - Mkwaju

Gus told us about a two-day digging session he did in a record warehouse in Singapore, before playing us one of the highlights - a tune that could potentially be Singapore’s first ever hip-hop track. [photos]

Dick Lee - The Mad Chinaman

Geoff’s selection was an absolute education - a cacophony of wild sounds played on ancient musical instruments, some literally thousands of years old. A listening experience that completely rewires your sense of history. [photos]

Musica Sveciae - Fornnordiska klanger (The Sounds of Prehistoric Scandinavia)
The Kilmartin Sessions: The Sounds of Ancient Scotland
Atrium Musicae De Madrid / Gregorio Paniagua - Musique de la Grèque Antique
Lukas De Clerck - The Telescopic Aulos of Atlas

Matt brought a selection of Mogwai-adjacent indie-psych 7”s from Scotland, including a track by a pre-Franz Ferdinand Alex Kapranos. [photos]

Mogwai - Sweet Leaf (from Mogwai / Magoo AA-side)
The Karelia - New Year in New York (from Glasgow EP).
Urusei Yatsura - Pachinko [live] (from Mogwai tour 7")

Dan brought along some oddball prog/psych/disco from France, before closing out with a synth classic. [photos]

Horrific Child – L’Etrange Mr Whinster
Jean-Pierre Massiera – Psychoses Discoïd (1976-1981)
Èlg - La Chimie
Space - Magic Fly

Paul played us three unrelated but beautiful records! [photos]

Clipping. - Dead Channel Sky
Mary Lou Williams - Anima Christi (from Mary Lou Williams)
Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy - African Skies

Mark played us some killer free-jazz cuts. [photos]

Archie Shepp – Blasé
Max Roach - We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite

Lasse’s records touched on Swedish hip-hop, Japanese house and a wonderful Finnish jazz track memorably sampled by DJ Shadow. [photos]

Pekka Pohjola - Harakka Bialopokku
Looptroop - Modern Day City Symphony
Shinichiro Yokota - Ultimate Yokota

Elise brought along an incredible oddity - a hypnosis record designed to help the listener give up smoking. We listened to the whole of “The Treatment” - we’ll check in at the next RSRC to see if it worked for anyone. [photos]

Peter Casson - Give Up Smoking With Peter Casson, The Master Hypnotist

Tom dropped an undeniable KLF classic. [photos]

The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - It’s Grim Up North

Ben closed out the evening in uncompromising style! [photos]

Tobacco - Sweatmother (from Maniac Meat)
Thomas Bangalter – Irréversible

Thu, 21 May 2026 22:49:31 +0100

An uncompromising closer from Ben. Thanks so much to everyone who came down! See you in July!

Thu, 21 May 2026 22:24:59 +0100

A KLF classic from Tom.

Thu, 21 May 2026 22:12:57 +0100

Elise hypnotised us into giving up smoking!

Thu, 21 May 2026 22:12:07 +0100

Finnish jazz, Swedish hip hop and Japanese house from Lasse.

Thu, 21 May 2026 21:33:48 +0100

Killer free jazz selections from Mark.

Thu, 21 May 2026 21:22:34 +0100

Beautiful selections from Paul!

Thu, 21 May 2026 21:04:33 +0100

A selection of oddball French psych/prog/disco from Dan.

Thu, 21 May 2026 20:50:17 +0100

Matt has brought a selection of Mogwai-adjacent Scottish indie-psych 7”s.

Thu, 21 May 2026 20:33:24 +0100

Gus claims this could be Singapore’s first ever hip hop record?

Thu, 21 May 2026 20:32:29 +0100

A selection of truly ancient sounds from Geoff!

Thu, 21 May 2026 19:45:52 +0100

Some deeper-cut Yukihiro Takahashi from me to kick us off!

Next event: 21st May 2026! Leyton community radio!

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:43:54 +0100

Hello everyone, hope you’ve all had a great week.

Next event - Thursday 21st May

Here’s a little reminder that we’re just over a week away from the next meet-up of the Really Strange Record Club. Join us on Thursday 21st May, 7:30pm-10:30pm, as always at the wonderful Dreamhouse Records on Francis Road, and we’ll hang out, hear some new sounds from across the globe, and share the treasures hiding in our record collections.

If you want to guarantee your 15 mins on the turntable - yours to fill however you like! - then please do drop me an email. Other physical music formats are welcome, but if you’re bringing anything other than vinyl then do give me a heads up so we can make sure we’ve got the necessary machines.

If you’re wondering what to bring, the recently-rebooted website is fully up to date with all the lists from previous events. We also noted at the last event that in our first three years of existence, no-one’s brought along any (a) Can, or (b) dub, which feel like big oversights. So if either of those are passions of yours, this is your moment to shine.

Any questions at all, please do get in touch any time. I can’t wait to see what everyone brings!

The Ditch - Leyton community radio

A quick heads-up for those who didn’t already know that Leyton now has an extremely cool community radio station called The Ditch, founded late last year by Adam Clarke, with a small but growing roster of regular and semi-regular shows. I’ve been getting stuck in and now have what you might call an RSRC-adjacent show on Monday nights at 8pm called Mostly Listening. Tune in at the website, check out the Mixcloud archives, and join the chat (or hit me up) if you want to get involved - it’s extremely DIY and great fun, and so exciting to see our local scene growing.

Semi-relatedly, I’ve added a Friends page to the website which I hope will grow into a little community noticeboard for people doing DIY / grassroots / weird stuff round our way. If that’s you, let me know!

Have a brilliant weekend, and see you on the 21st.

Matt

Next event! New site! New newsletter!

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:45:02 +0100

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). As usual, we heard an incredible mix of sounds from all eras and across the globe; and if you’re curious to hear what you missed out on you can find out RIGHT NOW on our…

New website!

That’s right, we’ve given the website a complete overhaul to make it much more complete/useful. You can now find all our listening reports in one place, including last week’s event and the long-overdue write-ups from September, November and December 2025. (Though weirdly, nothing from our second event back in May 2023 which I can’t find anywhere - if you have the tracklist lurking in your inbox please forward it on to me and I’ll post it!).

Going forward, this new site is much easier to update, which means you’ll get post-event reports much quicker - whether you’re reading them via the website or via our…

If you’re thinking this newsletter looks a little different, you’d be correct - this is the first mailout from our new newsletter system, built into the website itself. There are plenty of compelling reasons to leave Substack anyway, but their bells and whistles were also starting to feel like overkill for essentially announcing dates and posting lists of records. Hopefully it’s been a smooth transition to the new system, though there may be a few gremlins lurking - if you have any questions or concerns, please do email me and I’ll investigate. And of course, you can unsubscribe any time either at the link below or by emailing me.

New socials!

We’ve also got profiles on Bluesky and Mastodon and a good old-fashioned RSS feed in addition to our Instagram which means you can follow us for updates via whichever platform is most useful for you. And don’t forget the Whatsapp community for record chat and gig alerts from the crew.

New clubs!

Finally, I’m putting together a list of similar events in other parts of the country/world as I’d love to get a network of affiliate clubs going. So far I’ve heard of one other event in the UK and someone mulling one in Los Angeles… If you’re doing something similar, get in touch and I’ll post a list on the site. And I’m happy to share any intel with anyone who wants to set something similar up!

If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading - if you spot any problems with the new setup or have any feedback, do let me know. Otherwise, have a brilliant weekend (see you at the Ditch party in Leyton if you’re going) and looking forward to hearing what everyone brings on the 21st May!

Matt

What We Listened To - March 2026

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 20:58:28 +0100

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.

Jon Hassell - Vernal Equinox
Operating Theatre - Spring Is Coming With A Strawberry In Her Mouth
Balam Acab - See Birds (Moon)
Actress - selections from Hazyville
Slapp & Powell - Sex Drive from Valley of The Sun - Field Guide To Inner Harmony

Jen brought us the smooth sounds of 80s Japan courtesy of the amazing compilation - - Tokyo Nights - Female J-Pop Boogie Funk: 1981 To 1988.

Junko Ohashi - Sensual Night
Aru Takamura - 恋は最高 (I’m In Love)
Hitomi Tohyama - Wanna Kiss

Lasse brought some more deep cut Finnish joints - the first two of which were made by friends of his.

Cocknutz - Mut, Siis
Peu - I Am Me Without You
Jaakko – The Maker And Creator Of The Devil

Ollie made a strong RSRC debut with some truly out there Italian library psych, plus an Edan track that samples both of his other choices.

The Animated Egg - Sock It To Me
The Feed-back
Edan - Torture Chamber (Cut Chemist remix)

Matt M played some lovely cosmic beat tracks, before closing with an Italo stunner that he’ll be playing at his upcoming wedding!

Medasin - Always In A Hurry / Elevator Music
Sam Gellaitry - Escapism II
40winks - It’s The Trip
Shemale - I Wanna Discover You

Josh took us on another trip through his 7" collection with a collection of singles featuring musical legends in earlier bands or incarnations.

The Wind In The Willows - Moments Spent (Debbie Harry)
The Stripes - Ecstacy (Nena)
Nipple Erectors - King of the Bop (Shane McGowan)
Killjoys - Naive (Kevin Rowland)
The Beastie Boys (debut single with Kate from Luscious Jackson)
Inside Out - No Spiritual Surrender (Zack de la Rocha)

Will smoothed the vibe with some absolutely delightful funk, soul and rare groove selections.

Arnold Blair - Trying To Get Next To You
Sharon Révoal – Reaching For Our Star
Alice Clarke - Never Did I Stop Loving You
Jean & Trevor - Back Together Again

Tom brought us a great deconstructed beat track from his label Health Records - on a test pressing no less!

Bambooman & Kashmere - Supergod

Ben closed the night with two krautrock cuts from the brilliant compilation Berlin 61 / 89 - Wall Of Sound as well as a highly uncharacteristic Placebo b-side!

Faust - The Sad Skinhead
Placebo - Ion (from You Don’t Care About Us CD single)
Liaisons Dangereuses - Dupont I

A fantastic way to kick off the year - bring on the next one!

What We Listened To - December 2025

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:16:00 +0100

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.

Mozart Estate (aka Lawrence) - Come On Christmas / Vanilla Gorilla
Forrest Terry - Satellite-Love
France - Destino Scifosi

Josh treated us to a selection of festive 7"s that probably wouldn’t get a hearing on Magic.

The Ravers - It’s Gonna Be A Punk Rock Christmas
The Yobs - Run Run Rudolph
The Gonads - White Christmas
Hard Skin - Ding Dong Merrily on High (from Christmas Fisting EP)
Murder City Devils - 364 Days
Bomb Squadron - Run Run Rudolph / Police / If I’m Going To Die

Lasse played some more gems from the turn-of-the-century Finnish underground.

No More Ugly Germans - Educate The Masses
Katri Helena folk song sampled by…
Matti P - Save The King
Thage & Boogie B - A Few of My Favourite Things

Ben took advantage of the Dreamhouse CD player to bring us a selection of industrial from his car.

The Liars - Always Room on the Broom (track 1)
Einsturzende Neubauten - Feurio! (track 2)
Fluid Line - track 1 from Alternative Press cover mount CD