Stereo Embers: The Podcast

"Fighting Fit"

For a little over a delicious decade the London band Gene put out four glorious albums. And since we're here and we have time, let me name them: Olympian, Drawn To The Deep End,
Revelations and Libertine. From 1993 to 2004, the band's resume just kept building: They were on the cover of Melody Maker and the NME the latter of who also gave them the inaugural BRAT award for Best New Band,
they headlined the Reading Festival, played Glastonbury, toured Europe, Japan and the U.S., logged top twenty singles, put out a killer live album called Rising For Sunset, sold hundreds of thousands of albums and played a legendary sold-out show with a full orchestra at London's Albert Hall. Behind the Welsh- born Martin Rossiter, Gene's crunchy blast of melodic muscle and poetic pounce made them one of the most unforgettable bands around but all good things come to an end and by 2004, the band called it a day. A one-off reunion in 2008 was the only blip on the Gene radar until now. Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Olympian, in October of 2025 all four original members of Gene reconvened at the Apolo in London and blew the place apart and sounding positively ageless. What happened next? Well, fans wanted more so more was given in the form of 2026 March dates in Nottingham, Glasgow, Bristol, Dublin and Manchester.

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"If You Go There I Hope You Find It"

Over the course of seven shimmering albums, the Paper Kites have elegantly moved from strength to strength. The ARIA-award nominated Melbourne five piece, led by singer/songwriter Sam Bentley, have quietly been lodging platinum record sales, registering millions of streams and playing sold-out shows across the globe. I saw them play a sold-out show here in San Francisco in 2016 and it was one of the most moving live experiences I've ever witnessed. It's hard to explain what it was like but the closest I can come is it was like an hypnotic flow of seamless folk that ran like a river from the stage and out into the night. And by that, I mean I thought about that performance--or, more accurately, I felt that performance on a deep and almost cellular livel for the next few weeks. From 2013's States to 2018's On The Corner Where You Live to their brand new one, If You Go There, I Hope You Find It, The Paper Kites have asserted themselves not only as one of the most consistent bands around, but also one that, impossibly because each album is so brilliant, just keep getting better. The new album is a stirring blend of indie folk finesses, poetic elegance and sonorous beauty. It's such a deeply affecting album, played with nimble grace, it may only be January, but we might already have our album of the year.

https://www.thepaperkites.com.au

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"Scala"

It's hard to explain everything Barry Adamson did before he was thirty. By then, his resume' was so packed with highlights it was hard to believe there was room for more. But there was. Like, a lot more. Let me explain. The Manchester-born Barry Adamson got his start in music in the late '70s by playing bass for Magazine, a band led by ex-Buzzcock Howard DeVoto. Adamson, who was briefly in the Buzzcocks himself, went on to play with Visage and Luxuria before joining Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Adamson played on legendary Cave albums like From Her To Eternity and Kicking Against The Pricks and from there, he stepped into the Iggy Pop fold and toured with Mr. Pop in '87. By then, Adamson was close to thirty and in many ways, that's the point where he really started to spread his musical wings, realizing he liked being on his own than being one of the guys in a band. From there, Adamson started to explore electronic and dub-fueled soundscapes and he moved effortlessly from strength to strength, releasing classic solo albums like Moss Side Story, the 1992 Mercury Prize nominated Soul Murder and his new one, La Scala. More on that in a minute. Over the course of his winning career, Adamson has played with The Birthday, Party, collaborated with everyone from Pulp's Jarvis Crocker to Billy McKenzie of the Associates, contributed to movie soundtracks like David Lynch's Lost Highway and done remixes for everyone from Depeche Mode to The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. His new album La Scala is the original score for the 2023 documentary Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise And Fall Of The World's Wildest Cinema. The film is a stirring and rousing homage to the legendary London arthouse movie theatre and Adamson's inventive score uses elements of jazz, funk and post-punk noir to detail the rise and fall of a building that meant a lot of people whose lives were saved by the freedom and spirit of life in the counterculture.

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"Unentitled"

It's hard to think of anyone who writes with as much tender ease as John Gorka. The New Jersey-born singer/songwriter has been doing just that since his first album way back in 1987. Over the course of nearly twenty albums,
including Jack's Crows, The Company You Keep, Old Futures Gone and his brand new one Unentitled, Gorka has gracefully asserted himself as one of the most vital folk artists around. He's traveled the world, he's played with Suzanne Vega,
Shawn Colvin and Cliff Eberhardt and he formed the folk supergroup Red Horse with his pals Lucy Kaplansky and Eliza Gilkyson. Unentitled is yet another winning entry into the Gorka discography--a stirring collection of songs like the elegant
"First Snow On The Mountain," the ruminative "A Light Exists In Spring" and the deeply assuring "Hope Doesn't Fall," Unentitled is filled with poetic and philosophical grace. And what I was saying at the top of the show is that Gorka is a thoughtful and humble guy who's generous, humble and kind. You're going to love him.

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"The Bus Routes Of South London"

The London-born Jah Wobble is one of the most legendary musicians on the planet. The celebrated bassist burst onto the radar with PiL, playing on the first two albums--Public Image: First Issue and Metal Box--both of which remain undisputed classics.
After leaving the band, Wobble stayed busy, playing in The Human Condition and on the Snake Charmer EP with The Edge and with his own band Invaders Of The Heart. Wobble left the industry for a few years working for a while with The London Underground--more on that in a minute--but in the late '80s a newly sober Wobble reformed the Invaders and they put out a string of winning albums like Rising Above Bedlam and Take Me To God. And from there? Well, from there, he just kept working with a list of impressive folks like Sinead O'Connor, The Orb, Ginger Baker, Dolores O'Riordan, Massive Attack, Gavin Friday, Brian Eno, Bjork and Primal Scream. Wobble has also put out a memoir called Memoirs Of A Geezer, which is such a great read, he finished his university degree at the University of London, wrote book reviews for the Independent, wrote a book of poetry, started teaching, played in a band with his sons, and played with the Chinese Dub Orchestra. This list only tells a percentage of the story; Jah Wobble is a man whose lane is not having a lane. He's one of the greatest dub musicians of all time, but he's also someone who's curious about the world and his curiosity has found him exploring ambient music, dance usic, post-punk, world music, dub, Chinese folk, English Folk, and industrial music. His album Old Fashioned Ways with reggae hero Ken Boothe came out in 2025 and it's a glorious and affecting listen. Meanwhile, his other 2025 album The Old North London Line is a proper sequel to The Bus Routes Of South London, where Wobble explores the cinematic and atmospheric sounds of the daily grooves that can be found between stops on the London tracks.

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Stereo Embers:

IG + BLUESKY: @emberspodcast
Email: [email protected]