October 2026
Five records listened to with eyes closed. No rankings, no algorithms. Just ears.
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01Juju
Siouxsie and the Banshees · 1981picked by Sergio
I open October back on the island opened last month with Bauhaus. Juju is the record where Siouxsie and the Banshees stop being a post-punk band and become the architecture of goth itself: John McGeoch's guitars drawing icy spirals, Budgie's tribal drums, Siouxsie commanding it all from above. 'Spellbound' and 'Arabian Knights' are among the finest singles of the era. I reach for it when I want something elegant and menacing at once.
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02Marcus Garvey
Burning Spear · 1975picked by Sergio
After King Tubby and Lee Perry, the dub-reggae island was asking for roots in its noblest form. Burning Spear's Marcus Garvey is exactly that: Winston Rodney's voice like a preacher's, the Black Disciples behind him, a whole album built on the memory of Marcus Garvey and on Black dignity. This isn't dub from the mixing desk — it's roots from the church: grave, hypnotic, political. I play it in the evening and it carries me somewhere else.
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03Betty Davis
Betty Davis · 1973picked by Sergio
This is the record I pull out when I want to wake the room up. Betty Davis — once married to Miles, and a far more radical musician than history admits — made a ferocious, dirty, flagrantly sexual funk in 1973, sung in a voice that snarls and claws. She was too far ahead, boycotted and then forgotten, and she's now a digger's grail. 'If I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up' is three minutes of pure insolence. Nobody else sounded like this.
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04Musik von Harmonia
Harmonia · 1974picked by Sergio
Harmonia were a krautrock supergroup without meaning to be: Michael Rother of Neu!, plus Moebius and Roedelius of Cluster, in a farmhouse at Forst. Musik von Harmonia (1974) is warm, pastoral electronics, motorik gone gentle — the sound of three musicians inventing the future in no hurry. Brian Eno called them the most important band in the world, and on 'Dino' or 'Watussi' you hear why. My early-morning kraut record.
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05Arbeit Macht Frei
Area · 1973picked by Sergio
I close on the home island, Italian prog, with the most extreme record that island produced. Arbeit Macht Frei (1973) is Area's debut, and it sounds like nothing else: jazz-rock, Mediterranean and Balkan music, electronics, and above all the impossible voice of Demetrio Stratos, capable of things the human voice shouldn't do. It's political prog, learned and furious. If PFM and Banco were the melodic wing of Italian prog, Area were its avant-garde. A record that still wrong-foots you.
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