I had listened to some of Brian Eno's Ambient LPs before I was introduced to Harmonia and liked most of what I heard. When I first heard Harmonia's debut LP, Music Von harmonia, I immediately realised that it pre-dated Eno's Ambient by a couple of years, it being released in 1974.

Eno had done a bit of crafty lifting of material I thought, but I didn't feel too betrayed or bothered not being an Enophile. What I did feel though was an increasing euphoria everytime I listened to Music Von Harmonia, and that happened to be many, many times after the first hearing.

I came by this satirical rock semi-masterpiece while sharing a house with a guy whose taste in music and films was to say the least weird. In fact that is being kind. I remember entering our shared living room, blurry eyed one Sunday morning with tea and toast. My friend was watching a film of real autopsy's, but didn't think it necessary to warn me. He just gave me his usual strange giggle. This was the mid nineties when you had to send off to obscure holes in Amsterdam to acquire such films. One of his favorite bands was Bongwater, strange it has to be said, but good strange not gross strange. The two protagonists of the band had the credentials for good strange: Kramer, who wrote most of the music, had been in the weird, wonderful and fucked up Butthole Surfers, while lyricist and vocalist Ann Magnuson had specialised in creating odd ball characters as a performance artist in the New York underground scene.

Before There's a Riot Going On, Sly Stone had produced so many classic slabs of funk that he was likely to be forgiven anything by his adoring public. He decided to test this faith to its limit.

It might seem odd to be suggesting a mega selling album from a multi-mega selling band is an under-appreciated album. However, even though this weird, messy, low-fi, downbeat funk classic had an immense effect on so many artists it's possible that if any other band had produced it at any other time it may have wriggled into a corner of cultdom that even cults shied away from.

When you hear Cut by The Slits for the first time you may be duped into believing that you are listening to some early attempt at a punk/reggae crossover. Listen again and you'll notice that this is not even close to being a hybrid. The Slits were unique. Formed at the age of 14 when girl bands were becoming even less frequent, two of the members had been chucked out of their first band by Sid Vicious because they couldn't play. And they barely could play but the compensation was a stop start scratchy punk style that they used to emphasise and enhance lyrics that were so harsh, witty and provocative that they are scratched into your memory for a long time after.