Tim Wheeler, a peacock and a black taxi.

Being a web monkey for the BBC can lead you to some very strange places. I once stood on a high stool for over an hour filming an Ash gig while simultaneously bracing myself against the tide of moshing teenagers who were crashing against me like the surf on the Atlantic coastline. I also spent a week driving around Northern Ireland with a crazy man called Nigel in a black taxi that looked like a cow!

This week though, from the comfort of my eighth floor London office I came in contact with a young Wisconsin songstress called Stephanie Dosen. Delving deeper it was easy to discover that fair Stephanie grew up on a peacock farm and played early songs to her pet swan and fox.

Dosen obviously felt this was all a little mundane and banal so she packed her bags and headed off to an abandoned dog food factory to record debut album ‘A Lily For The Spectre’, and spend a few months being haunted by those unfortunate enough to fall into the grain silos during the 1920’s. Maybe this goes some way to explaining why the poor girl is so pale… seriously Stephanie, go outside, the sun won’t hurt you.

All makes the whole ‘broke my leg, wrote some songs’ Kate Nash story sound a bit dull doesn’t it.

Anyway, if you’re wondering what peacocks, foxes and swans like to listen to you can check her out on BBC 2’s Later… at 11.35pm on Friday or equally on the ghost friendly website just after.

The Wednesday biscuit

Our magical self-replenishing office biscuit tin replenished itself (or did it?) with 'Nice' biscuits today. The plain sugar-crystal coated kind that spelled BORING to me as a kid, for a lack of patterns, colours, fillings etcetera. They also, funnily enough, remind me of Terry Donovan (Jason Donovan's dad) as he once had a hissy fit in a convenience store that my mum was babysitting for a friend because he wanted a packet of 'Nice biscuits' on their own... like this:


As opposed to having to 'fish' his Nice biscuits out of a variety pack like this:

A welcome reminder to us all that variety packs are for SCUM not D-grade celebrities.

Anyway, I digress. Today's Wednesday biscuit, as plain as it is.... made for a perfect accompaniment to Jaymay, aka 26 yr old New Yorker Jamie Seerman's debut album Autumn Fallin'. The obvious comparisions with Leslie, Regina et al. must be a little boring for her... So I turn to the 'Nice' biscuit as a way to describe her blood sweat and tears, her craft, her passion!

Music/biscuit compatibility: 8/10

Characteristics: Plain, slightly sugary but not sickly sweet.
Aftertaste: Pleasant yet disappears quite quickly.

Jaymay will be playing at the Whitechapel Gallery this Friday 30th of November as part of the 'Open City' residency which explores music related to a city, (hers being the Big Apple). She'll also be supporting Okkervil River in the UK soon.

It's Pete Tong all gone

Radio 1's Essential Mix has soundtracked the UK's Friday Night pre-clubbing, vodka and ironing for an astonishing 14 years. Each week, Pete Tong mixes up 2 hours of banging house, techno and trance. If you wanted a snapshot of what's happening in clubs across the country you could do a lot worse.

However, the dulcet tones of the host have rather irked the Tongless website. In fact, Tongless have taken such a dislike to our Pete that they've started recording their own doppelganger essential mixes - exact copies with identical tracklists.... only with no Tong. It's no small feat when you consider that 70% of the Essential Mix is made up of unreleased tunes and white labels. Talk about gratitude.

Feeling Guilty...

...about downloading music for nothing?

Here's two ways to restore your good karma.

(via Metafilter)

Skeletons In The Closet

At first glance this might be an entry in one of those 'worst album covers of all time' lists that litter the interweb, but no...it's weirder than that. One of these men is Billy Joel, then half of prog-metal organ/drums trio Attila. For the full grisly truth and more skeletons in closets, visit Metafilter.

The Angelic Organ of Evil

This recent Radio 4 documentary was one of the best things I've heard on the radio for ages (and one of the best titled programmes ever). It dealt with the strange story of the Glass Harmonica, an instrument that was actually outlawed in parts of Germany because it was considered dangerous to listen to. Benjamin Franklin invented it, Franz Mesmer used it to hypnotise people and Mozart even wrote a piece for it. it's got to be one of the weirdest (and least portable) instruments ever outside of Harry Partch's world. Sadly the doc isn't available to listen to online but there's tons of info at Wikipedia.

Anyway, here's a taster of what it can do. Spooky. Disclaimer - if you feel any ill effects after listening, don't sue us.

Underground, overground...

With interest in dubstep continuing to rise, some sort of mainstream cross-over was inevitable. Burial's debut (a mere 12 months old) made it into the Guardian's 1000 Albums To Hear Before You Die and rumour has it that this year's biggest anthem Benga and Coki's Night is getting a vocal version courtesy of Dizzee Rascal, which is sort of interesting in itself, given Dizzee's move from lurching E3 grime to a more hip-hop, US-facing sound.

Interesting then, that the latest example of the sound's mainstream potential was spotted by the Independent Online, a hitherto unsuspected voice "pon road". Even more interesting, that the latest embodiment of the Croydon sound is, er... Britney Spears. On Nov 9th, the Indy reviewed her album Blackout as:

"...a flimsy retread of tired, old-hat electro grooves that young trendies desperate to appear hip will doubtless call "dubstep".

With pleasing speed, 2 days later"young trendy" Prancehall identified Spear's track Freakout as this year's firin' dubstep anthem. He's joking, but you see the point: it's all there - the sparse, 2-step beats and now-ubiquitous bass wobble. See for yourself. Honestly, it's no wonder, some people give up altogether.

For dubstep of the, non-head shaving/custody wrangling variety, head to Mary Anne Hobbs' Breezeblock show. Everyone else: Spears is here.

Me and Mr Jones

One of the perks of working for BBC Music (apart from bumping into Melvyn Bragg in the lift or encountering someone dressed as Pudsey Bear in the gents toilet) is getting to hear stuff you'd never come across otherwise, and sometimes even having your precious muso-snob preconceptions overturned. Last week I found myself in the BBC Radio Theatre for a live broadcast of Radio 3's Jazz Line-Up. First on the bill was trumpeter Sean Jones. Mr Jones is a Lincoln Centre (er, sorry, Center) alumnus; from poking around his website I'd pegged him as one of those shiny, technically gifted, well dressed but kind of anonymous jazzers that roll off Wynton Marsalis' production line every couple of months. The music samples sounded polite, overproduced and sort of...dull. So I wasn't expecting much.

But sheesh, they were (to use proper jazz parlance), cookin'. Or even smokin'. And though to a Home Counties reared white middle aged baldie like myself the concept of 'cool' is a bit foreign, these guys definitely had something. And Mr Jones can really play the trumpet; loads of notes, sure, but all the right ones and in the right order...

We'll be putting some of that set on the Radio 3 site from Dec 3rd...but till then, here he blows...

818 State Constitution

Welcome to 818 State. This blog is run by four wizards who drive a magic bus powered by mountains of spaghetti . . . wait a minute . . . in fact, this is the blog of BBC Music Interactive, a team that has the privilege to sit at the hub of the BBC's world-beating music production teams, promote their work through www.bbc.co.uk/music and occasionally pitch in and help make some of it happen. Highlights from an ordinary week at BBC Music include a fascinating Pink Floyd documentary on Radio 2, Richard Hawley in 6 Music's hub, loads of Radio 3 broadcasts from the London Jazz Festival, an extended interview with Radiohead on Radio 1 , a typically eclectic line-up on Later featuring Manu Chao, Kano and James Blunt(!) and a fantastic new documentary series on Brazilian Music. Feeling a wee bit envious yet?

As well as peeling up the corner of the BBC's own music, um, doormat, we will also be offering you glimpses into all that's new, wonderful, weird, relevant or utterly pointless in the world of web music that we have the somewhat odd privilege of calling our second home. (Think of this as a slightly draughty holiday home in a picturesque part of the world which is struggling under the effects of rapid development brought on by an influx of nouveau-riche tourists. Or something.)














And we'll even occasionally indulge ourselves by ranting at indecent length about what's pressing our personal music buttons at the moment. (For me, it's all about Luíz Gonzaga after a screening of Brasil, Brasil at the Brazilian Embassy where a fabulous performance of one of his songs by a man in a funny T shirt on his front porch transported me from a very rainy Wednesday night in London to the arid north of Brazil . . . tune in on BBC Four tonight and you'll see what I mean.)

See you soon.