Icon Enterprises

iCandy

Infants Under the Bulb

Big Guitar Jackoff in the Sky

Tristwch Y Fenywod

Blodyn Gwyrdd

Keep, Repeat

The Final Act

Triple Fire

Art is Dangerous

I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed

Woke Frasier

Mondo Maleficum

Venus Ascending

Rampen (apm: alien pop music)

Planet Umbra

Look Familiar

A Long Beautiful Flowing Cape

Total Reality

Escalator Man

Tir Groupé

Love Is A Flame In The Dark

The Butcher

Hex Dealer

Sermon

Seggs Tape

desecho

Eyeballer

AGITATOR

SKULKER

Animation Cel

My Metronome

10 ILL SONGS

yellow shell

Class Living

Dead City

CASH BURN/RIDDIM DUSTER

KELAN - RIDDIM DUSTER

Manning Fireworks

Wristwatch

At Every Turn

Entwined

Hard Copy

Runway Runaway

The annual Heads on Sticks round-up is here! As always, never an exclusive list nor arranged as a hierachy of quality, but simply a collation of songs that's scored HEADHQ this year. Please listen in order, and if you like what you're hearing buy the tune or album! Thanks for the music. Tom (a fan)NOTE: WILDES' 'So Soft' is in the round-up but only availble on Spotify: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://open.spotify.com/track/5Ys8ZgiLprqtZpfF7PPQjb?si=0096f927d08e45ac">https://open.spotify.com/track/5Ys8ZgiLprqtZpfF7PPQjb?si=0096f927d08e45ac</a>

HeadsonSticks

Heads on Sticks 2024

Blind Taste Test

I'm So Bored With You

Quaranta

Dark Sword Angel

Blooming

Last Days On Earth

Goldie

Disig

Man Against the Tide

In The Wilderness

Gimme Little More

Grockle Vision

Salaryman

Immaturity

Comfortable

Australia Stops

Faceless

BÉTON ARMÉ - SECOND SOUFFLE EP

L'UNION FAIT LA FORCE

GOOD LUCK

WHAT A MAN

XYZoop

Flux

EP 1.0

Take You Home (On Time)

FALLOPIAN TUBE AMPLIFIER (LP)

THE TIN FOIL HAT BRIGADE

SAVED!

THE POOR WAYFARING STRANGER

Bending Hectic

Fiesta en el vacío

A3. 엄마 (avec Ji Min Park)

Nails

Council Rust

Super Snõõper

Fitness

Dragging the Needlework for The Kids at Uphole

Palangana

GAMES OF POWER

New Face Of Death

Good Living Is Coming For You

Good Living Is Coming for You

Vol. II

The Minotaur

Licking Orchids

Muzzle

Morreadoras y ya está

Ojos negros

Here's to the artists who scored my 2023! As ever, the round-ups are never a 'best of', nor an exclusive collection of all that's been on heavy rotation at HEADHQ but more a lovingly curated mixtape or compilation, a curated playlist crafted for coherence and journey in mind. Many thanks to tall the artists included, and to all that listen to the 2023 round-up, I hope you discover great music! Best, Tom (a fan)

Heads on Sticks 2023

W.A.R. In The Digital Realm

Cybernetic Super Soldier

Feed My Desire

PROCESS

AM I OKAY?

Rough Dimension

Live (In a Dream)

Reckless Randy

Gone Stealin

A Force To Be Rockin' With

Pucker Up

Rebirth/Return

Sucker

Vampire Club

Jenny Destroys Records

Transient Communications

Distant UFO Signals

Endure

LA Blues

Extreme

Avoid Heaven

VIOLENTS EP

ANDROGYNISTA

Baby Shack

Baby

Aren't You Gonna Introduce Me To Your Friend?

Who Wants to Fuck Me

PAINLESS

stabilise

Downtown

Kelan - The Rag

Ahora Aquí, Todavía No

The Isle of Barra

Bob Vylan Presents The Price Of Life

Take That

ETT - 098 - Mini Skirt // C​.​O​.​F​.​F​.​I​.​N - Split EP

C.O.F.F.I.N - Under Your Wing

Back Home

Sainted

Curtição Suprema Vol.2

Raposas Viciadas em Líquido de Freio de Carro

ARKHON

The Fall

Lovers and Addicts

Apathy Fix

Secret Agent Headcheese - Headcheese Gets Abducted

Leather Jackets Fast Bikes

Skrting On The Surface

Collating the end-of-year round-ups has become an annual fixture as seasonally traditional as dodgy eggnog and unprepared NY plans, a festive marker that truly signals the arrival of Yule Tidings an' all that. It's a welcome and joyous occasion each year when the time comes to recall the volume of new music that's made its way into my heart, and I'm repeatedly astonished as to how vital and enthused the global music community remains year after year. The vibrancy of new music is particularly remarkable when considering the political forces it's up against. I was fortunate enough to attend an Enough Is Enough rally in October and catch an impassioned speech by Equity boss Paul W. Fleming, rejecting the romantic trope of the 'struggling artist' and championing access to the arts and dignified careers within a routinely exploitative industry. While mainly representing members in the performing arts, his stirring invective against the disparity of class that plagues the creative industries was a sobering reminder of the state assistance that's ebbed away in the neoliberal wasteland, where our musical heritage is seemingly celebrated while the social provisions that helped it flourish (the dole, housing benefit, art schools, adequate Arts funding) are scorned. Along with streaming royalty rates and touring obstructions beset by Brexit, my hope for next year is that the Musician plays every bit of a role as the postal worker, the rail staff, the nurse and every other force within the great industrial action confronting corporate Britain and all its inequities. As always, the annual Heads on Sticks round-ups are never a perfunctory 'best of' but simply the soundtrack to my 2022 in all its ebbs and flows. Scoring my life in the way the artists featured have across the giddy highs and tumultuous lows of the year means any one of these 25 tracks will serve as a future portal to this time when the wist of nostalgia takes me. Merry Christmas, have a better 2023, and thanks for the music! Tom (A Fan)

Heads on Sticks 2022

WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear

Imposter

AMUSIA

Ya Bad News

Curing

Drip

badtime vol. 2

demonic boy

The Turning Wheel

The Future

Cong!

Leather Whip

1-2-3-4!!

2083 A.D.

Nerva Sky

Cybergang

Rabbit Wench

Executioner

Emergency Telephone

Right Behind You

ALBUM

Ton Cuir Noir De Merde / La flingue cover

Astro Tough

LaLaLa It's The Good Life

Midnight Train

The Wolves Of The Orangery

1984

Flag

Electric Drug Fuck Up

Green Fuckers

$0 EP

Southport Sharpest Weapons

REALITY!

HAYWIRE

Gold

Florence and Selena

Picking Up Ruby

Don't Get It Twisted

Side Part

Mortal

COMMUNION

On All Fours

A-Men

Consensual Hits

Cum Quick Then Die

RAWWR

Badeinsel

Are we really at the dawn of 2022 already!? Reflecting on the past 12 months of new music and where I was when collating last year's round-up brings home the enormous leap forward I've had in my wellbeing and enthused anticipation for new ventures ahead. While the artists that scored my 2020 served more like urgent lifebuoys as I thrashed in a swamp of anguish and uncertainty (apologies to those who were at times on the receiving end), the heroes of 2021 soundtrack a personal rejuvenation and excitement for life once again. Hoisting myself out of the 'funk' also meant switching Heads on Sticks to a 'reduced service', but with a new site and graphics revamp, I think it was worth it! I'm excited to go back to the heartbeat of the 'ead, which is the weekly write-ups I've had to intermittently forgo throughout the year due to moving from Bristol to London, as well as other personal needs for respite. The spare time also afforded me space to unleash the '﻿<a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://headsonstickschats.podbean.com/">Heads on Sticks Chats</a>' podcast, which I frankly love doing and endeavour to deliver many more! As ever, my round-ups are arranged by cohesion and journey, so please listen in order. Neither are they necessarily the 'best of', but simply the result of a painful whittling away to the mere 25 tracks I've set as my yearly number. Not only do I hope that you discover fantastic new music, but let it serve as a conduit to new love, revitalisation, the discarding of toxicity, and pastures new! I hope you enjoy it, I'm sure you will! Tom (a fan)

The official Heads on Sticks 2021 round-up!

Heads on Sticks 2021

I'm Not What I Was

Circumcision

ATOMIC

Mutant World

What can one say about this year that isn't stating the bleedin' obvious and centred in every end-of-year appraisal across every blog and publication out there? The COVID pandemic has dominated all spheres of life in such a profound way that even the cast-iron doctrines of unbridled capitalism screeched to a halt, the free-market fanatics themselves enforcing half the nation's workforce to pause their labour extraction. After years of Brexit bludgeoning and its resulting social division, the Coronavirus was an oddly unifying experience, cutting through the dichotomies of Leavers and Remainers and inadvertently ushering a feeling of collective experience and responsibility, a shared duty to each other long felt dormant after decades of Thatcherite atomisation. Everyone's lives have been struck with deep uncertainty, many stung by the painful losses of loved ones and near-unanimous despair at the political ineptitude causing further chaos.

Spending months in your own company, or trapped in problematic living environments, demonstrated just how vital a lifeline music is. The arts, long been neglected in the austerity wasteland and held with contempt from a grey and joyless, right-wing faction who abhor the empathy and imagination it fosters, was suddenly held up as the indispensable joy it always was, the deep, human need for creative expression and escapism breaking through the hollow priorities of a society dictated by unbridled capital. The sudden absence of live music and events wrought some urgent perspective on the preciousness of our creative spaces and independent venues, and did make one ask the question: had we taken it all for granted?

Late-stage capitalism rarely affords the time to stop and think, and the lockdown, so alien to our daily routines and established orthodoxies, unleashed a major space for deep, contemplation. The cultural reckoning against racial injustice spearheaded by the Black Lives Matter movement inspiring direct action against authority on a scale unseen since the civil rights era, but to be vigilant against clumsily wading into ineffectual social media campaigns that solve nothing (Heads on Sticks was guilty of this). The grim stats on streaming revenues for artists in light of the Spotify Wrapped rush have raised much-needed awareness as to how we can responsibly consume music that the artists we love spent time and money on, and to keep an eye on the venues who missed out on Arts funding and staying afloat on Crowdfunders. The systemic failure that enabled Trump his ascendency, and an emboldened Far-Right in the U.K., cannot be considered put to bed now that Biden is the president-elect, to quote Ocasio-Cortez, "you're not going back to brunch".

When artists have been the soundtrack to such a tumultuous year, the relationship one has with their work takes on an even deeper significance. The songs collated are the hopelessly personal, utterly subjective. Not some hierarchal 'best-of' or exclusive document of heavy rotation, but simply the 25 tracks which rattled around The Head's static ridden box. I hope you enjoy as much I did!

Here's to a fortunate 2021, and thanks for the music!

The songs which defined a year of pestilence, protest, and a helluva lotta Netflix, all lovingly collated by The Head! 

Heads on Sticks 2020