People writing songs that voices never share...

picture: nevermore

London is bleak. After the colour and noise of December, the street are thin and silent. Who wants music in January? Not me. Everything sounds perky, gauche and too loud.

Listening again/iPlayer-ing again to Rob Da Bank's The Sound Of Slience, I was hoping for a nihilistic journey into beautiful nothingness. Two hours of dead air. Instead it was just some guy playing records. Vangelis, Debussy, Harold Budd, Aphex and Cage.

Silence is a contentious issue. A few years ago, Mike Batt - the Womble-bothering Frankenstein to Katie Melua's jerking, revolting monster - got into trouble when he credited a one-minute long silent "track" to Batt/Cage. Cage's publishers were up in arms crying plagarism of the composer's 4'33''. The dispute went to court. Cage's men even hired a clarinettist to (not) perform it.

London is cancelled till February. Don't exert yourself. Don't join in. Better to keep still and not make a sound. Just don't mention Cage.

Festive Frog-rock

Is this the most underrated Christmas song ever?



No scumbags, no maggots, no Radio 1 controversies here. Just good old Macca, Rupert the Bear and more frogs than a Frenchman’s Christmas dinner.

Although released in both 1984 and 1985 it never quite made it to the top of the sparkly Christmas number one tree but you don’t get much tougher competition that Geldof and his Band Aid chums, Wham’s Last Christmas and Shakin freaking Stevens!

Imagine a three year old Rory, still struggling to unravel the complexities of his new Transformer, being introduced to Paul McCartney for the first time. For all I knew back then he’d just won some tacky TV talent show and was riding on the coattails of Rupert’s fame (possibly the dullest kids character of all time?)

Anyway, I know a little more about Mr. McCartney now, apparently his group was quite popular for a time, but why don’t we hear more of this Christmas classic? Surely some festive DJ will answer my plea...

The Wednesday biscuit #2

Today I clocked three esteemed members of the music team lifting the lid on an empty biscuit tin, only to walk away with a groan/hmmphf. Let's call that a grmpf.


I on the other hand was lucky enough to find half of what can only be described as a gingernut in disguise. An oblong shaped no-namer, not your regular round Griffin or Arnotts kind.
Hmmm. Were these biscuits bought from an off-licence?

Nonetheless this half of whatever it was, left quite an impression. My only piece of advice to the manufacturers would be to give this baked good an IDENTITY. Dress it up a little! Make people see that there's something worth being discovered...


Which, tenuously as ever, leads me to prog doom disco act Chrome Hoof. As part of BBC Introducing (BBC's new music initiative) they performed a special session at Maida Vale studios in North London last night, filmed for Gilles Peterson's show on Radio 1. And there is no mistaking them.


Loud, grinding and glam, this 10 piece work their magic with fabric (see below). Incorporating a wide variety of instruments, violin, bassoon, sax, trumpet, guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion to create their menacing racket. Try Pre-emptive False Rapture , released earlier this year for more of a taste, or catch them thundering away at these UK shows in the next week.

Even though it looks like it.... no humans were poked with giant light sabers during the taking of these photos.

Bemused sequined moment?....


Use the force.... the disco force.

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.

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.