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I missed the 2024 deadline for a Top 10 because I struggled to recall 10 things musically that gave me a lift. I came up with five and gave up. I saw a bunch of live stuff that really gave me the shits so that doesn’t count. Says more about me than the music scene.

Although I could put together a list of 10 excellent music things this year, I thought I’d take a different tack and go all academic on you because the thing that has been most on my mind this year is all the bands hating on Spotify and jumping off it. Partly because of its piss poor payment to, and chronic exploitation of, musicians.

Spotify isn’t alone in this. Although at the bottom end of pay per streams they are in stellar company with YouTube Music, Apple, Amazon and Deezer. But the main reasons artists are boycotting Spotify is because of Daniel Ek’s investment in Helsing, a German AI drone defence company. Purportedly established to boost the defence of European Democracies in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The long-unavailable second album from biker-metal band Angus Khan — “Angus Khan II: The Wrath of Khan” — is now available on Spotify. Angus Khan was a collaboration band between L.A. punk rock n roll acts The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs and B-Movie Rats that recorded one 2009 album (“Black Leather Soul”, also recently reissued in Spotify) before breaking up in 2012. But not before making one final album that has sat on the shelves...until now. 

The sound was biker metal meets glam rock meets ‘70s hard rock boogie and it’s all there in spades on this unearthed sophomore opus. Listen here.