Custard Flux, Blaine Campbell and Blake Jones And The Trike Shop - I Don't Hear A Single Audio Extravaganza Volume 100 Live Specials

Welcome to the Fifth of our week long Audio Extravaganza Live Session Specials. Today we have exclusive sessions from Curvey of Custard Flux, Blaine Campbell and Blake Jones And The Trike Shop. If that isn’t enough excitement for you, we also have two exclusive recordings from I Don’t Hear A Single Favourites.

We begin with a song from Nick Frater. Who leads the way in bringing Power Pop to a new audience. His fourth album, Full Fathom Freight Train from last year was marked high up in many critics Best Of Year Charts. It was in the I Don’t Hear A Single Top 10.

Frater has already recorded a new album, Fast And Loose which will be released in the Autumn, marking his debut for the Big Stir label. He also is currently involved in a ground breaking Instagram project, called 59 Viganettes in which he releases a track each day, each being under 59 seconds. Today he provides a wonderful cover of Gilbert O’ Sullivan’s Alone Again Naturally.

For the past 30 years or so, Detroit’s Curvey has been the driving force behind the magnificent Luck Of Eden Hall. The band’s mixture of Psych and Prog with big hints of Pop has been a revelation. Custard Flux is Curvey’s largely electricity free project utilising traditional instruments.

The first two albums, Helium and Echo were in Prog Magazines Top 10 End Of Year Chart in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Both albums reveal the breadth of the man’s inventiveness. A third album, Oxygen has just been recorded and will be released on the 5th July.

This outstanding solo session reveals both the range of music that I Don’t Hear A Single covers  and the talent that Curvey has.

Los Angeles’s Blaine Campbell released his fourth album, Under The Tidal Wave in December of last year. Campbell is known for exceptional harmony driven melodic songs. I suppose you could frame it as Beach Boys Pop.

However Under The Tidal Wave reaches out far further encompassing many different styles in songs that beautifully arranged and sung. The album gently Rocks. Here’s a four song session that Blaine recorded for us pre-lockdown.

Bristol and Bath quartet Ulysses are a revelation with their mixture of Glam and Chorus led Rock. There is a real joy and wit that they bring to their singalong songs. Without ever taking themselves too seriously, their four albums offer up real earworms that are immaculately produced.

A breath of fresh air in what has become a po faced musical climate, the quality of the songwriting is overlooked in all the fun. The band’s latest album, On Safari was second in I Don’t Hear A Single’s Top 10 albums of 2019. Here they perform an exclusive Acoustic Version of a new song, Supply And Demand.

Fresno’s Blake Jones And The Trike Shop have been around since 1993, this five piece since 2005. Their fifth album, Make, is a joyous Art Pop listen. Indie in the truest sense of the word, they offer up great pop songs with unusual arrangements.

Imagine a Psych band playing songs that should be in the Top 40 and you’d not be far away. Highly original and now part of the Big Stir stable, the band play four songs recorded pre lockdown. Three are from previous albums, including Soft Rock Girlfriend from Make and Shake Your Dress is exclusively new.


Thanks as always to Jim Moody for his technical excellence. The details of our fourth special are below:


01 Nick Frater Intro
02 Alone Again Naturally
03 Curvey Intro
04 Extraordinary Man
05 Magazines
06 Custard Raga
07 Helium
08 Blaine Campbell Intro
09 Someday You'll Be Mine
10 Happy Faces
11 Shoutin' Dont Count
12 Surrender
13 Ulysses Intro
14 Supply And Demand (Acoustic)
15 Blake Jones Intro
16 Soft Rock Girlfriend
17 Shake Your Dress
18 Forestiere Gardens
19 Sun Up



IDHAS Audio Extravaganza Volume 100 Live Special 5



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You can still listen to Monday's Caper Clowns Session here.

You can still listen to Tuesday's Sessions by Spygenius and Chris Church here.

You can listen to Wednesday's Sessions by Nick Piunti, The Vapour Trails and Dolph Chaney here.

You can listen to Thursday's Sessions featuring Ex Norwegian and John Howard here.


You can listen and buy Nick Frater's albums here. You can find more about him on his website here .

You can listen and buy Custard Flux albums here. You can listen and buy Luck Of Eden Hall albums here.

You can listen and buy Blaine Campbell's albums here.

You can listen and buy Ulysses's albums here. You can find more about the band on their website here.

You can listen and buy Blake Jones And The Trike Shop's albums here. You can find out more about the band here.



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I Don't Hear A Single Albums Of The Year 2019 : Top 10

01 Norman - Buzz And Fade       IDHAS Review







02 Ulysses - On Safari       IDHAS Review

03 Nick Frater - Full Fathom Freight-Train       IDHAS Review








04 Mansion Harlots - All Around A Fairground       IDHAS Review

05 Bryan Estepa - Sometimes I Just Don't Know       IDHAS Review








06 The Junior League - Adventureland       IDHAS Review









07 The Brothers Steve - #1        IDHAS Review

08 The Armoires - Zibaldone        IDHAS Review








09 Ben Vogel - Whistling After Midnight        IDHAS Review








10 Pernice Brothers - Spread The Feeling       IDHAS Review







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Ulysses - On Safari

I joke about living in 1974 and if it was 1974 you could expect On Safari to be selling Millions. There's something wonderfully Glam Rock about the band, not necessarily the songs, although Looking For A Guru's Call And Response hits that nail on the head.

It's the attitude and vibe, the sense of humour, the feeling that this band spend every day laughing, every dong is an absolute riot. Take the funky 10cc Rubber Bullets era, Doctors And Nurses, delightfully silly, charmingly addictive and there's still the trademark chord and tempo changes.

The poptastic lead single, Dragons, showed us all what to expect and the fun never stops. That multi layered chorus still sounds ace. Why Aren't These People is great Piano Rock with a Billy Joel Don't Ask Me Why beat to a McCartney like stomper. The video for the new single tells you all you need to know about Ulysses.

Ulysses have been going for over a decade and a half and they've never lost the ability to provide joyous songs, without ever tipping into the Self Parody that hurts bands like The Darkness. The closing Calendar Street reveals, yet again, how well they do Toy Town Psych Pop. It may just be what they are best at.

Situation Man is a Follyfoot for the Sci Fi fan, Useless Love is Jigsaw Pop Rock, Let's Move is Chinn Chapman doing ELO. Pipers Chest again feels like a RAK single, Fuzzy Light is really Christie with a right old Jangle.

There's even a 45 second instrumental halfway through, a CD separation of Side 1 and Side 2 if you like. On Safari offers everything that you'd expect from a Ulysses album, but so much more. This romp will have you looking at the world in a far more positive way. No bad thing these days.

You can buy the album here and I'm sure you'll be able to listen to more there after tomorrow's release date.


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Ulysses - Law And Order

Any of Ulysses's three albums are essential listening. Seeing as we concentrate on the new, Law And Order could be their best ever and it knocks the socks off most of what's around. I'm told that I live in 1975's Pop And Rock excitement. Well if I do this is an ideal example wise. In a field dominated by the U S of A, it's always great to celebrate the better UK bands and Ulysses are certainly one of those.

This year promises to be the best IPO Liverpool ever. You can find details of the line up here. Click on the band names to find more details. You'll be reading more about the Big Stir bands over coming days, but it's also great to see the UK bands in the line up, many of which you'll have seen here and others that you will read more on in the coming months and weeks.




Ulysses are one of the bands appearing and I urge you to catch them. The Bath foursome's brand of Pop Rock gets a bit more rocky than a lot around. I like to think of them as a UK version of Somerdale and lest we forget they came up with one of my two albums of the year last year. Law And Order wears it's influences on it's sleeve without ever sounding derivative ir becoming a pastiche and these boys can play.

There's lots of references that can be made, the album as a whole though keeps dragging me back to Glam Rock. The Glam era is rightly lauded for making music fun and it was largely singles led. Bands struggled to make  albums as strong as the singles, there was a lot of filler and that probably explains why few albums of that era re lauded now.





Ulysses don't have this problem, this is an album and over half of it could be released as singles. The quality never lets up. In fact, my normal practice of embedding three tracks to give you a flavour of the album has been sorely tested. I couldn't narrow it down, so much so that I've gone for four examples.

Smiling reminds me of The Pushbike song, Lady could be Liverpool Express or Jigsaw. Crazy Horses Ride The Snake could be a lost Badfinger tune. Come On This City's Gone is so Thin Lizzy, Dirty Weekend, The Glitter Band and Typical Scorpio is all late 60's Psych Pop. How Long could be sung by Brian Connolly.






There are two versions of Yellow Sunshine, all they share is the same title, both are very different. The second is a cracking slab of 60's Psych, but the first is an absolute gem. It's a real Monkees 60's Pop romp, you'll soon be singing along. A special mention should also be given to the duet on Song That Has To Be Sung. Purson's Rosalie Cunningham duets on what is pure Buckingham Nicks.

I urge to listen to the whole album, you will be as enchanted as I am. Very few albums are such fun, you'll end up air guitaring the solos and singing the choruses. Law And Order is one of those special albums. You feel far better after listening to it and isn't that what music is supposed to be? If you don't appreciate that, you should just enjoy your Ed Sheerhan album and marvel at how banal it all is. This is how music is supposed to be heard.




You can listen to and buy the album here. I'd also urge you to catch the band live and you can find their future dates on their website here.