Free Range Music: Sex Pistols, Excepter, Under Byen

>> Before Never Mind The Bollocks..., before acerbic frontman Johnny Rotten had fully developed his ultra-snide and confrontational vocal persona, before his band had fully excised all of the flourishes that snotty punks would soon consider the licks of arsey careerists, the Sex Pistols recorded some demos. The recordings have been widely bootlegged almost since they were created. We seem to recall that punk/fetish wear impresario and Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren may have actually been behind some of the bootlegging, believing -- as many apparently do -- that the demos which came to be known as Spunk were superior to the beefier cuts released as the incendiary 1976 set Never Mind The Bollocks... And there is good stuff on Spunk, including a ripping version of "Nookie," a/k/a "Anarchy In The UK," as well as a bracing, throat-shredded take on "No Fun." AOL Music's got the record in its pre-release album stream corral this week; you can stream it at the link below.

Sex Pistols - Spunk -- Castle/Rykodisc

>> You can stream New York quartet Excepter's recently released inside-out electro-dub set Alternation right here, and we strongly suggest you do. The record, released July 25 on Kill Rock Stars/5 Rue Christine, is pretty remarkable. While we think the forthcoming Supersystem record, which also embraces elements of dub, is pretty good, we kind of wish it sounded more like the Excepter record.

>> We'd seen the name about the Internets at one blog or another, but it was an email from AAM that spurred us to check out 11-year-old Danish octet Under Byen, and we're glad we did. The band's Same Stof Some Stof is full of dark electropop and will be issued by Toronto's Paper Bag Records Sept. 24. Stream four of the new cuts at the band's MySpace tent here, and download two of the tracks directly from the band here. Sadly, the tune "Pilot" posted at the band's MySpace is not a Notwist cover, but despite that the song is pretty great.

>> This week's BBC Collective music feature looks at the new Lambchop record. We haven't listened to it yet, but the Collective is streaming a few cuts you might want to check out here.