Not Only Teardrops

Well I've just about recovered from Eurovision.

The years backing Denmark (the low point being Ronan Keating's ballad) finally paid off last Saturday. By paid off I mean the annihilation of my liver, thanks to the drinking games at the heart of our soiree. The Eurohangover morphed into the Eurocold.

It was so bad that instead of singing this...



I insisted on singing this...



Amongst many other atrocities.

Holden On All Week

Aside from finally getting over the hype, embracing Kendrick Lamar and smashing Swimming Pools (Drank), the track I've been listening to the most this week is (James) Holden's wibbly and choatic bumper Renata.



There's been a lot of love for the Daphni remix (one of Dan Snaith's nom de guerres - his most well-known is Caribou) but I'd stick with the fantastic original.

Paranoia In A Day

This was very close to being a Go With The Flow, as Chance The Rapper's Acid Rap mixtape has been doing the rounds this past week or so.

Yet the track that has grabbed me is positioned apart from the album, yep it's on the second track but twenty-seconds of silence after Pusha Man.

I'm of course talking about the hazy and miasmatic Paranoia, produced by Nosaj Thing.



Simply stunning, especially as it seems it was knocked together in a day.

Some Of The Reasons Behind My Complete Lack Of Musical Talent

I've always been surrounded by music and on the whole, I've only been a consumer of it. We always had two radios on in Kent Street, usually both on Galaxy 101, though my first real music awakening was watching Keith Flint flaying about in the video to Firestarter on TOTP.

My mum bought me a guitar when I was 15, which I barely played and LC gave me a bass guitar at uni, which I never played.

The closest I got was messing around with Dance eJay 3 and the in-built sound files of Windows 98, followed by cack-handed attempts to make ambient electronica with a cracked version of Fruity Loops and demo drum machines and basic synths; it somehow always ended up as banging techno. I think the files are still on a tower PC in my grandparents' spare bedroom in Falmouth.

I've always had a passion for music but because I hadn't picked up an instrument by Year 7, Mrs. Murphy, my music teacher in high school, didn't bother with me or anyone else in my predicament. That's not to lay the blame solely at her door; there's nothing stopping me getting back into it, apart from my apathy... and complete lack of original ideas, but if I had someone like Mr Price-Thomas or Mr Hopkin, who were brilliant Physics and Maths teachers respectively, doing Music at my school, I might have stuck it out or at least picked up music-making software a lot earlier.

If I'm honest, I would've learned a lot more and been more inspired if my school had just played this to me every lesson for three years...



Ha! And after five years of doing this, I've finally fallen to the adage that every music writer is a frustrated musician.

P.S. It's well worth following Now-Again Records on SoundCloud, their page is crammed with amazing music.

First Thoughts: Random Access Memories

Finally there's an official stream of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, available through iTunes.

Admittedly I'm saying this after one quick listen but I think Random Access Memories is a grower not a shower; there's clearly lots of interesting little things and every tiny detail has been wrangled, if not strangled, over. Yet aside from Pharrell's contributions, the bumpin' Doin' It Right and the quite frankly fucking insane Giorgio by Moroder, the album struggles to grab one by the balls.

It'll also perplex anyone who earnestly uses the term EDM, with the widely reported disco influences supplemented by soft-rock and prog-rock touches; I'd say some of it sounds like The Eagles if I had actually listened to any of their songs aside from Hotel California, while some of it sounds like Pink Floyd if I had actually listened to any of their songs in full.

So yeah... still gonna buy it though.

A Half-Arsed Look At The Music Of Tunisia

I was in Tunisia last week.

I was sat on the balcony of our hotel room on the sixth floor, watching the swallows swoop and pink tourists, strapped to the back of speedboats with parachutes, floating. I felt wonderfully isolated.



[Right-click and "Download Document" for mp3 of Leaf House by Animal Collective]

Apart from a couple of thumping French party tracks with accompanying dance moves (one of them I can only describe ineloquently as "doing a spaz shuffle") and panpipe versions of mega-selling ballads, I didn't really hear any music. A trawl of the in-built radio in our room revealed a uniformity of sound, though of course this is down to my uneducated ears regarding Mezwed music.

The most interesting thing I did hear was at a zoo. As part of an "Authentic African Experience" there was a Tunisian folk-band, consisting of a bendir, a tabla-like hand-drum that was kicking out some mad rhythms and a mizwad, this bagpipe that appeared to be made out of a boar's head, with two horns protruding out of the nostrils. A quick look around Sousse's medina for the instrument was sadly fruitless.

When The Going Is Smooth And Gold

Ever wondered what Telex would sound like if they were more Abuja than Antwerp?

William Onyeabor's When The Going Is Smooth And Gold is a good indicator...



As heard on Andrew Weatherall's latest 6 Mix

Digging Gravez

I wrote a quick review of Hooded Fang's new album Gravez for TheSprout, after enjoying Tosta Mista for Buzz last year and this of course...