More Intimacy

Bloc Party keep on surprising us with this new album. First they announced that Talons would be joining the CD release's tracklist (between Zephyrus and Better Than Heaven), now they've revealed a pair of new bonus tracks. If you're the kind of Bloc Party fan that complained about Flux being too dancey then wait until you've heard Your Visits Are Getting Shorter. It's basically 4/4 garage! (Or maybe 'bassline', if you like that term.) But don't worry, indie conservatives: Letter To My Son has a lot more in common with the band's first album.

Bloc Party - Talons (mp3)
Bloc Party - Your Visits Are Getting Shorter (mp3)
Bloc Party - Letter To My Son (mp3)

No-one died

Steve Coogan has been on tour lately with his brutally titled Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters show. Its reception has been lukewarm to say the least, but this is a reminder of how incredibly funny Coogan is capable of being:

Friday procrastination

How's this for dedication? I'm taking a few minutes out from my gruelling grooming schedule to draw your attention to some music. Tonight I'm headed to a psytrance/breakbeat/jungle/techno night. We can be fairly sure that none of the following songs are obscure enough to be played there, so I'm giving them a listen whilst I get myself vaguely ready:

Friendly Fires - Paris (mp3)
Digitalism - Pogo (Shinichi Osawa Remix) (mp3)
Metronomy - Heartbreaker (Discodeine Mix) (mp3)

This is TERRIBLE

'I know you like electro', says a brand new E4 Music-botherer called Master Shortie. Well of course he does, and so does the A&R guy who patched together such a lacklustre single and video. This is music-by-numbers at its very worst. The checked shirt, the 'skinny jeans' references, the beat that sounds a little bit like Banquet by Bloc Party (but not enough to necessitate royalties) - it's all there. It won't surprise you at all to learn that Shortie spent some time at the Brit School. Hopefully this doesn't wash with those who've experienced nightlife first-hand.

But I worry about the Skins generation. At the risk of sounding completely ancient, when I was about 16/17 you could go clubbing with a fake student card and/or some unconvincing facial hair. Now we're all forced to carry around a passport or driving licence - even those of us who couldn't possibly be underage. But that's another rant waiting to happen. My point is that sixth-formers now have to spend more time tasting nightlife vicariously. If all you really have to go on is stuff like Skins and Hollyoaks, you're likely to be carrying around all kinds of misconceptions about clubbing by the time you hit legal adulthood.

You might even think that commodified drivel like Dead End sounds cool. Worrying times ahead...

Double Garage Wednesday #3

This week's tracks were both produced by Architechs. They were never the most prolific producers, but their bootleg of The Boy Is Mine was a landmark release for UK garage as a whole. It was one of the first big 2-step songs, and probably the first of its kind to sample a full-length R&B vocal. Body Groove was their big chart hit from 2000. It still puts me in a really good mood whenever I hear it.

Brandy and Monica - The Boy Is Mine (Architechs Remix) (mp3)
Architechs - Body Groove (mp3)

Intertextualité #4

I'll be honest, Southern hip hop doesn't usually do much for me. But I'm a whole lot more interested if you throw in a well-chosen sample and/or enlist the services of Outkast. There are certain aspects of André 3000's wordplay that only he can get away with, like making 'glad it's night' sound like 'Gladys Knight'. Thanks to 3000's intro and a sample from Willie Hutch's soundtrack to The Mack, UGK's Int'l Players Anthem is a brilliant track. Big Boi from Outkast also features, by the way. He tends to get overlooked when his more flamboyant partner is present, but the chopped/screwed line 'ask Paul McCartney' is definitely a highlight.

The video is good fun too.

Willie Hutch - I Choose You (mp3)
UGK feat. Outkast - Int'l Players Anthem (mp3)

Lightspeed Jaxx

Dev Hynes first came to our attention with the preposterously-named Test Icicles, but since they split in 2006 he's been doing big things with his current project Lightspeed Champion. And now he's teamed up with Basement Jaxx to make My Turn, a track from the duo's Planet 1 EP. It's a wonderful fusion of acoustic guitar and a chunky bassline, with allsorts in-between. Dev's lyrics are gorgeously simple, as illustrated by the 'word cloud' from Wordle.

Basement Jaxx feat. Dev Hynes - My Turn (mp3)
Basement Jaxx - Twerk (mp3)
Lightspeed Champion - Salty Water (mp3)

Five decent tunes by bands that you're not supposed to like

5. The Rakes - When Tom Cruise Cries (mp3)

I don't know what happened to The Rakes. 22 Grand Job used to get played in all the indie clubs, but now their name is like Voldemort to the wizarding community. Maybe their last album was too overtly political, I don't know. But this tune is class. Look out for the mobile phone interference mid-way through.

4. The Pigeon Detectives - I'm Not Sorry (mp3)

When these lads first got famous there was nothing wrong with liking them. They were probably the most energetic act to grace the music festivals of 2007. A bit of bad PR about a wet t-shirt contest later, they're more FHM than NME. (Maybe more Nuts and Zoo than FHM.) It didn't help that their second album is almost completely shit, I suppose. But I'm Not Sorry is a massive tune. If the singles market was still relevant to the over-12s, this would have been at the top of the charts for a long time.

3. The Kooks - Eddie's Gun (mp3)

By all accounts, Luke from The Kooks is loathsome. Once you've seen him interviewed, it's hard to feel sorry for him when you hear the songs that were inspired by how he loved and lost Katie Melua. But you've got to have some strange admiration for a man who sings about erectile disfunction, haven't you?

2. Razorlight - Vice (mp3)

Johnny Borrell is a kind of loathsome that Luke Kook will never become. That's because not only does Borrell think he's a musical genius, but he also thinks he's the new Bob Geldof/Bono/Jesus (depends on the amount of coke he's had). As part of his plan to save the universe, Razorlight's new music is nothing but insipid. But their first album had some great upbeat songs. It's one of those albums that got crafted over a number of years of touring tiny, sweaty venues. More bands should take a leaf out of The Cribs' book and stay that way for longer.

1. Coldplay - See You Soon (mp3)

Let's be honest, these days Chris Martin is nearly as much of a hate figure as Blair and Bush. But before he got a Hollywood girlfriend and named his child after fruit, Coldplay made some genuinely nice music. It was delicate, sad, quiet music. Many said it was depressing. Then all of a sudden he wasn't a virginal student, so he was singing about nothing in particular (with the help of a terrible, terrible rhyming dictionary) and showing off some terrible dance moves. It's a bit like how Oasis had nothing to say as soon as they were off the dole. Ah well, See You Soon is still lovely. It's like Fix You with the twat-factor cranked down from eleven to two.

Double Garage Wednesday #2

There's quite a laid-back feel to this week's selection. The first track is a remix by Groove Chronicles. Their deep, atmospheric sounds are very similar to what Burial is producing now. The second track is a pretty remix of a pre-crack Amy Winehouse tune. It might be the only time she's really done social commentary. Enjoy!

Myron - We Can Get Down (Groove Chronicles Remix) (mp3)
Amy Winehouse - Fuck Me Pumps (MJ Cole Remix) (mp3)

The lighter side of the global financial crisis is here:

The Brokers With Hands On Their Faces Blog

I heard it was created by Vince Cable himself.

Intertextualité #3

Reading Festival 2008 should go down as one of Bloc Party's most triumphant performances so far. I took this photo when they'd just come on stage, I think - it was just before my friend and I made an effort to get right down the front. We did have a much better position, but we made a strategic pre-set trip to the toilet. We could have both held it, but there was little entertainment to be had from The Raconteurs' encore. Anyway, enough about our bladders. We'd seen Bloc Party play the same stage in 2007, but this time it was dark and they'd only just released their third album, Intimacy. The timing of that drop was a masterstroke. They opened the set with Mercury - cue lots of audience participation on the 'eh eh eeh' bits - then later they silenced us all with the brand new track One Month Off. You're always hearing new music at festivals, but it's something special when it's coming from a band who you've been listening to for years.

A couple of days later, once I'd scrubbed off five days' worth of festival dirt, I heard Ion Square for the first time. It's a beautiful album-closer and I loved it straight away. If you haven't already heard the song, I'd advise you to get hold of the album first. Once I'd given the whole thing a couple of listens I read Kitty Empire's Guardian review. (Why do we do that?) It was going alright until she claimed that Ion Square 'is basically I Still Remember all over again, but with machines'. Well I still remember how annoyed I felt when I read that comment. Both songs are about desire and retrospection - of course they are - but Kele is clearly telling a new story that details a much more grown-up relationship. For a notoriously shy frontman, he gets surprisingly frank about it. But there's still some coyness left; although he sings the f-word, he also quotes a poem by e.e. cummings:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Bloc Party - Ion Square (mp3)

Ready for the weekend?

I took this photo last year in Haad Rin, Ko Pha Ngan - wish I could be there tonight! Instead I'll be drinking cheaply at a mate's house, then maybe clubbing later on in Nottingham. Hope you've got good things planned for your weekend. Maybe these tunes will help you on your way:

Fun Lovin' Criminals - Loco (mp3)
Jon Cutler feat. E-Man - It's Yours (mp3)
Ali Love - Secret Sunday Lover (Sebastien Leger Remix) (mp3)
Black Kids - I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You (The Twelves Remix) (mp3)
Basement Jaxx - Mere Pass (mp3)

Intertextualité #2

It's the most tragic superband of all time! Not really - I'm lying through the medium of collage. But did you ever notice that Mark Ronson interpolated a large chunk of this Motown hit into Winehouse's Tears Dry On Their Own?

Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - Ain't No Mountain High Enough (mp3)
Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own (mp3)

Double Garage Wednesday #1

The idea behind this strand is that when it's mid-week - when you're tired, bored, grumpy - it might be nice to get nostalgic about some UK garage music. Or maybe you don't have a clue what I'm talking about here, in which case you're probably in for a treat.

MJ Cole (aka Matt Coleman) made some amazing UKG. He engineered the first of this week's tracks about a decade ago. The second is his re-working of a house classic by Masters At Work. Stands up well against the original, don't you think? There's a stereotype that every garage producer lived in a towerblock and made his beats using nothing but a PlayStation, but MJ Cole was classically trained on the piano and the oboe. Unlike most of his peers, he was able to make plenty of room for live instrumentation in his music. As a result, I think, his back-catalogue has aged really well.

Ramsey & Fen feat. Lynsey Moore - Lovebug (Original Mix) (mp3)
Masters At Work feat. India - To Be In Love (MJ Cole Vox) (mp3)

Censorship is for c*nts

Apart from listening to her music, I hadn't been paying a great deal of attention to M.I.A. After all that talk of retirement, why would I have? Then Paper Planes ended up on the soundtrack to some film called Pineapple Express. So far the single has flown (see what I did there?) as high as #4 in the US Billboard charts. All of a sudden it looks like M.I.A. has a big opportunity to reach a much wider audience. Personally I'd really like to hear another album from her. Her messages are great. The beats are fun without compromising on richness, and vice-versa.

But here's the problem: MTV absolutely butchered Paper Planes. This is old news, to be honest, but I'm ranting about it because the censored video has only recently been getting UK airplay. M.I.A. was understandably livid when the edit first dropped, saying 'I WILL NEVER CENSOR THIS SONG' on her YouTube channel last December. But someone else did, and now it's stuck. There's still a lot of infectious elements in the song - from the sample of The Clash's Straight To Hell to the 'swagger like us' lyric that almost every US rapper has been sampling over the summer. But they got rid of all the gunshots! Apparently we the public are far too stupid to understand the sound effects as anything other than a glorification of gun crime.

The massive, massive irony is that this kind of paranoia is exactly what the song tries to highlight. I pity the suit-wearing pillock who put two and two together and came up with 'OH DEAR GOD, IT'S AN IMMIGRANT WITH GUNS!'

I was thinking of posting the butchered version as a point of comparison, but here's some unadulterated stuff instead:

M.I.A. - Bird Flu (mp3)
M.I.A./Diplo - Pop (mp3)

Intertextualité #1

Intertextualité is the wanky title that I’m giving to a series of posts about songs that reference other stuff. To start things off I’d like to point out that Richard Ashcroft loves a bit of William Blake. And it didn’t start with Love Is Noise; he was also doing it way back in 1995 on a track called History.

The Verve - History (mp3)

London

I wander through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
Every black’ning church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear;
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

The Verve - Love Is Noise (mp3)

from Milton

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear - o clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

The Cribs

Last month I went to Madrid. There was a guy working at the hostel who used to knock on all the doors mid-evening and tell everyone that he was leading a bar-crawl at about 10pm. We went out with him twice and he never took us to more than one bar each night. It was obvious after the first night that he was just doing this to meet girls, so we went back a second time because it was, to be fair to him, a pretty good way of meeting girls. Anyway, we were sitting in this grotty bar and talking to some girls from Barcelona (also from the hostel) when the guy decided to ask us to tell him some good British bands to check out. I was completely smashed at this point, but I managed to write down 'The Cribs' on a scrap of paper.

I really hope he looked them up because I couldn't be more evangelical about The Cribs. In case you don't know them, the Jarman brothers hail from Wakefield, England. Ryan (lead) and Gary (bass) are twins; Ross (drums) is their younger brother. They're an intense live experience: never polished, usually intoxicated and always undisputed champions of catchy 3-minute pop songs. Oh yeah, and this year they somehow got Johnny Marr from The Smiths to join them full-time. The four of them are currently working on what will be the band's fourth studio album. Here's a taste from each of their previous ones, plus a Smiths cover:

The Cribs - You Were Always The One (mp3)
The Cribs - Mirror Kissers (mp3)
The Cribs - Girls Like Mystery (mp3)
The Cribs feat. Johnny Marr - Panic (Live at the NME Awards 2008) (mp3)

AILP is born!

Well, I finally got round to it. I'd been meaning to start a blog for a while; originally I wanted to make it all about music, but I've decided to throw some written and visual things your way as well. I hope you find it entertaining.

Here's a poem that I wrote a couple of weeks ago:


There were people in a line: painted lashes
Lies that glow - cosy and cheeky - and sad
Trickling chins, cider falling past knees
Shins, soaking into feet, drilling pancreatic
Throbs and all of this rattled in memorium
While the grease on my face itches long-distance

You eat cheese and feel corroded, pudgy cheeks
We'll never look so gaunt as when we first walked
And we spoke with gravel on our lungs
And in our hearts we were gripped and numb
Our eyes had never been more open
You'll never access this without feeling guilty

She fumbles and pieces cracked porcelian together
The Lego of my teeth, the sympathy of black trees
There were fields: rich and without fuel, stranded
Nervous and musty, sliding through the services
Conditioning the air and with crooked fingers
We never quite lose the aches in our temples

Moped journeys that we never made. Boxes of your things
Traces of your nights, ephemera in pockets, monarchy
The nose that you rub with blind anticipation
Please never arrive and we'll drink the sofa dry
Digital green displays, subterranean soundtracks
Your eyes burrow tunnels and we forget what we ordered