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C-86 vets Close Lobsters tell us what they've been listening to, watching & reading during lockdown

Scottish indie band Close Lobsters, who appeared on NME’s famed C-86 cassette, released Post Neo Anti — their first album in 32 years — back in February, and it picks right up where they left off. It’s a record full of jangly guitars, melodic basslines and big hooks. You can stream the whole thing below.

Unfortunately, the “Let’s Make Some Plans” band had most of their 2020 plans canceled, like everybody else, thanks to COVID-19. But we checked in with frontman Andrew Burnett to see what’s kept him entertained these last few months. He sent us a few lists, starting with a playlist of songs, including Bob Dylan‘s “A Murder Most Foul,” which he says “works equally well as a font for philosophical reflection and as an accompaniment to cooking.” He’s also been consuming “the transcendental poetry of Frank Ocean in its entirety.” The playlist also includes songs from Nick Cave, Sigur Ros, the late Andrew Weatherall, and more. Check that out below.

On the viewing front, Andrew says it’s been “movies with Margot Robbie starring in them — specifically ‘Birds of Prey’ but pretty much everything. All Hail Harley Quinn!”

As for reading, it’s been various works by Slovenian theorist Slavoj Zizek, including the “Hegelian/Lacanian analysis of the myriad rollercoasters” of Living in the End Times, and In Praise of Lost Causes which Burnett describes as “a Beckettian mantra of ‘Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better’…See also Dr. Cornel West on this very issue.”

Burnett is also “avoiding anything and everything the criminally insane UK Government have ever announced about COVID19 and Brexit. Vile deceitful inhuman incompetents. ‘Lower than Vermin’ as Aneurin Nye Bevan once put it.”

He also like BBC Radio 4 Series ‘The Corrupted’ (“a brilliant dramatization of the Thatcherite precursors of above incompetents”) and Gideon Coe‘s BBC 6 Music show, not to mention “Peanut M&Ms and yoga.”

Listen to Andrew’s Quarantine selections below.

CLOSE LOBSTERS – QUARANTINE MIX

Love & Best Wishes to all our friends in the beautiful America of Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson.

Andrew Weatherall & Sean Johnston – Bad Desire Remix

Frank Ocean – Cayendo
https://youtu.be/3uigizX6oKk

Big Fox – All I’m tryin

Sarah Harmer – Tether

Haim – Hallelujah

Nick Cave – Bright Horses

Have a Nice Life – Science Beat

Sigur Ros – Andvari

Bob Dylan – Murder Most Foul
https://youtu.be/Rkr6TVnGtAM

Special literary mention to Orhan Pamuk – Snow