Dimitar Berbatov, Hip Hop Bangers & The Light

I'm off to watch Cardiff City take on Fulham on Saturday and no this isn't a post about the Michael Jackson statue (though it better still be there when we go).

I'm getting a lift up in a Saab and to stop what happened the last time I was in one (I fell asleep within 10 minutes on the way to Worcester to watch Glamorgan play) and to bridge the differing tastes in the car, we're bringing ten tracks from our sixth form years; for us that's 2001 - 2003. Unity through nostalgia.

I went straight for some hip hop bangers - Pharoahe Monch - Simon Says, ODB - Baby, I Got Your Money, DMX - X Gon' Give It To Ya, Adam F & Redman - Smash Something - but that's pretty revisionist; my mate Huw was the hip hop head, I was into twee electronica and IDM.

A big influence at the time was The Blue Room and in particular Chris Coco's Ibiza By Day cover-mount mix for MUZIK. Aside from Manitoba (now Caribou)'s Dundas, Ontario the highlight is Schneider TM's The Light 3000, a woozy electronic cover of The Smith's There's A Light That Never goes out.

I've revised the ten tracks I'm taking; there's only a couple of hip hop bangers now but there still wasn't space for The Light 3000, as it's not exactly lad's on tour music, so I've posted it here.


[Right-click and "Download Document" for the mp3 of The Light 3000 by Schneider TM]

P.S. 2001-2003 was surprisingly good for music.

The Greatest Mix CD Of All Time

It is of course, Four Tet's Late Night Tales mix from 2004 and for a brief time you could download it for free.

And it wasn't some boo-urns bootlegger, but the man himself. Apparently peeved that Late Night Tales are releasing a re-mastered version on vinyl (they've countered that they're doing this with all their old CDs and he was informed in 2012), Four Tet shared a SendSpace link around (which has now been removed).

You can get a taste of the mix below or just buy it or don't buy it, I don't know but I do know it's a stunningly brilliant mix that is my go-to Sunday morning CD and has never been far from my stereo in the nine years I've had it.



Four Tet also posted a SendSpace link to the track he covered for the mix (one of the USPs of Late Night Tales mixes is that they feature the curator doing an exclusive cover version). In this case, he covered Jimi Hendrix's Castles Made Of Sand and it appears to be still available (NB - it's a WAV not a mp3).

The One That Goes Wom Wom Wom Wom Wom Wom Wom

UK Garage don Sticky has done a short mix for Noisey for some club night (they never included an embed option the buggers) and it's allowed me to find out the name of this tune.



And no, I don't Shazam, it takes the fun and mystery out of life.

P.S. Ignore the label, this originally came out in 1997 and is pure speed garage.

Deep Burnt

I've just got in from a 12+ hour day and I've got a can of Red Stripe on the go, so excuse me if this doesn't link up.

I fired up the laptop and checked in on Twitter, yeah I'm on Twitter - @CeefaxOfLife innit... hey, should I embed a stream thingy on the right of this page? What about Facebook? Been thinking about a fan page, but it might get too close to what I do at work and well, it might get pretty depressing... I mean, does anybody read this shit?

Anyway top of the Who To Follow list tonight was Irfane, who I've posted about before. This sent me spinning back to my Gilles Peterson days and I had to dig out Deep Burnt by Pépé Bradock, featuring as it did on his first Worldwide mix CD (which I may have burnt from Cardiff Central Library's copy). This guy has written far more in-depth about the brilliance and importance of Deep Burnt than I can be bothered or indeed am able to do, but if you want some beautiful deep house action then hit that arrow...



DJ Tenuous in-the-mix, in-the-mix, in-the-mix, in-the-mix, in-the-mix, in-the-mix, in-the-mix...

My 2p On The Mercury

Even though I vowed never to bother with the Mercury after 2008 when Elbow won over Burial... fucking Elbow over the landmark album that was Untrue; even Neon Neon and Radiohead were better choices yet they gave it to fucking Elbow, the soundtrack to every shitty slo-mo montage on terrestrial TV when they exhausted Sigur Rós' equally shitty back catalogue... fuck Elbow and fuck Sigur fucking Rós.

Anyway, despite the clusterfuck of five years ago I still take notice of the Mercury Prize and 2013 threw a few predictable ones up and neglected the best British album I've heard this year, which is Tomorrow's Harvest by Boards Of Canada.

I only own one album on the shortlist - well a dirty CD-R - and that's Disclosure, which is a perfectly serviceable pop-dance album that admirably annoys house purists but isn't anything ground-breaking or forward-thinking, quite the opposite in fact.

Rudimental's selection feels in the vein of Ms Dynamite and Speech Debelle's nods i.e. the desperate attempt to include the British urban scene/box-ticking exercise overriding any artistic merit (compared to Roni Size's and Dizzee Rascal's genuinely important and brilliant Mercury-winning albums).

The rest are just Fulham, y'know? I like Fulham but they're just... there... with one possible exception. With the absence of BOC, I'm going to side with Jon Hopkins - I've only (knowingly) heard one track but it is shitting brilliant...

GWTF 17: Reflektor

GWTF =  Go With The Flow

Arcade Fire's new interactive video for Reflektor is doing the rounds and you can watch and interact with it here if you use Chrome.

You can really hear the influence of producer James Murphy on this, though I'm not sure if I can hear David Bowie (some are claiming he's on backing vocals).

Update: The more conventional Anton Corbijn-directed video is now here...



Their forth album, also called Reflektor, is available for pre-order and if you get it straight from ArcadeFire.com, you get first dibs on tickets for their upcoming world tour.

And on reflection (yeah) that might well be David Bowie around the 5-minute mark.

Legion Of DOOM

IMAGE: Doom Mask by BazNet

Been on a (MF) DOOM tip for the past week or so.

Main thing for this was getting around to listening to the BADBADNOTGOOD megamix of DOOM tracks (you can download from Lex Records' SoundCloud page) that is the perfect length for my walk into town from the Bay.

This has been supplemented by reading this history of MF DOOM by Jo Fuertes-Knight (always had a thing for her since Girl Eats Food) and then this exploration of the rise of beat tapes on FACT. The latter tipped me off about the Special Herbs tapes, which has been my soundtrack for most of this week...



As you can guess, despite liking DOOM for a minute I'm not a bookfiend, so I'm happy to concede that there might be better entry points, yet I think that the BADBADNOTGOOD mix link above is a pretty good introduction to MF DOOM.

And remember - all caps when you spell the man's name.