Show Notes
Step inside the sonic time machine as this episode of In the Mix dives headfirst into the spectacular, high-contrast landscape of 1986. Globally, the year was defined by a sense of high-stakes drama and profound transition. The world watched in awe and heartbreak through major historical milestones like the tragic Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the chilling wake of the Chernobyl nuclear crisis. It was a time of ideological friction, the rise of the digital dawn marked by the birth of Pixar, and a thriving counter-culture movement pushing back against the slick, polished surface of mainstream society. This exact tension bled heavily into the art of the era, creating an underground and overground world that felt simultaneously volatile, romantic, and fiercely experimental.
Musically, 1986 was a fascinating crossroads where the glossy, heavily synthesized pop machine of the mid-80s clashed with a raw, brilliant explosion of indie culture and art-rock reinvention. While mainstream charts were ruled by powerhouse icons like Madonna and the stadium-sized synth-rock of a reborn Van Halen, an underground revolution was taking place just under the surface. It was the definitive year college rock, post-punk, and dark wave found their teeth; artists like The Smiths, R.E.M., and Depeche Mode were busy redefining the boundaries of alternative music by injecting pure emotion and sonic grit back into the landscape. From the pastoral studio battles of XTC to the pioneering Latin rock of Soda Stereo, this set celebrates the staggering depth of a year where pop, goth, indie, and arena anthems all shared the dial.
Broadcast 29 June 2026
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Fifty years ago this week, a small London label that had been going for barely two months released a two-and-a-half-minute single by a band called the Damned. "New Rose" came out on 22 October 1976. It's generally counted as the first record by a British punk band, it didn't chart, and it was on Stiff Records. Stiff had started that summer with £400 borrowed from the singer in Dr. Feelgood. Its first release, Nick Lowe's "So It Goes," cost £45 to make. Over the next decade the label gave us Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Madness, Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues, and it lost a fair few of them along the way. This week's New Wave Friday is Stiff's hour. We start in 1976 with the Damned and with the Saints, whose "(I'm) Stranded" came out in Brisbane a month earlier and on their own label, so they beat the British to it. We also pay a visit to Propeller in Auckland, another label that started on $400 and a hunch.
Two weeks ago, when Jarrett McCall counted down his favourite songs of 2015, one of them came from a four-track EP on a tiny London label, sung by a woman most of our listeners had never heard of. Laura Groves grew up in Shipley, near Bradford, with a radio mast across the road, and she has spent her career trying to bottle the feeling of watching its red light at night. She started out as Blue Roses, making hushed folk for XL Recordings at twenty-one, then reinvented herself in London with electric pianos, eighties synths and a voice that cuts straight through them. She produces most of it herself, releases it slowly, and has picked up admirers including Sampha, Bat for Lashes and the Cocteau Twins' own label, Bella Union. This week I've asked Jarrett back to make the case for her properly.
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This week we start a new series. Musical Musings: Sleeve Notes takes one album and goes through it from the sleeve to the run-out groove: what it means to us, what the critics made of it, the outtakes, and, when there's a fresh reissue, the new mix. First up is the Beatles' Rubber Soul, which came out in a newly remixed and expanded Special Edition on 2 October, and my guest is Ken. In late 1965 the Beatles came off the stage at Shea Stadium and had about four weeks to make an album for Christmas. What they made sounds nothing like Beatlemania: a sitar, a harmonium, Dylan and the Byrds in the air, and John writing about himself in code. It even had to fight Julie Andrews for the top of the British album chart. We'll talk about how each of us first met the record, including which Rubber Soul we had, since the American version is a different album. Then we go through it track by track. Ken plays The Word and I'm Looking Through You; I've gone for George's Think for Yourself and In My Life.