Disco Love Exchange

If you need some funky as fuck disco in your life, then get you ears round Pam Todd & Love Exchange's Let's Get Together.

8 minutes just isn't long enough.

Greg Carmichael is on production duty here. Carmichael, a highly influential yet slightly unsung US producer, worked on some beautiful disco records in the 70s, before heading in more of a club direction through the 80s, inspiring many house producers that followed. Check out this rundown from The Vinyl Factory for a handy intro to his output.

Let's Get Together was the second track played on the latest Floating Points show on NTS, where he went back-to-back with Jamie xx. Seems like everyone is streaming this at the moment, and you should too, as it's a solid two hours of quality music featuring ESG, David Byrne, The Black Dog and Armand Van Helden.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs Everywhere Where Where

Is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' mighty, marvellous, magical Maps the most influential song of 21st century?

Someone at Popbitch certainly thinks so, and makes a thorough case using music theory and stuff. You know notes and keys and the like. Beyoncé, Kelly Clarkson and the godawful Black Eyed Peas have used bits of it. You learn something new everyday.

Strangerer Things

Volume 2 of the Stranger Things soundtrack was released yesterday (Friday 19th August 2016) and it still seems that it is an Apple only thing, available via iTunes and Apple Music only. You can preview it below...



Rather cheekily it's the volume with the extended version of the theme tune, AKA the main reason people are streaming/buying it.



If you don't Apple like me then in the meantime there's the playlists of Spotify or DJ Yoda's rather fun mixtape...



See also: Stranger Things & The Sea of Sound

Big Bright Art, Long Passionate Popcorn

On Monday I went down to The Waiting Room at The Tramshed with Plus One Loo to see the unveiling of Swci Delic's whacking great installation for the cafe/bar...

Diolch hiwj i bawb ddaeth lawr ir @waitingroomcardiff yn Tramshed neithiwr. Diolch i @gareth_potter am y chatsen / Q&A hefyd. (Teimlo bach fel this is your life) Big thank you to all who came down to the launch @waitingroomcardiff, Tramshed last night. Thanks to @gareth_potter for the chat / Q&A too. (It didn't half feel a bit like this is your life) #waitingroomcardiff #swcidelic #tramshed #tramshedcardiff #cardiffart #barart #celfcaerdydd

A photo posted by Swci Delic (@swcidelic) on Aug 16, 2016 at 2:54am PDT

It was a nice evening, an inspiring evening, and I just love this painting. It's vibrant, kinetic and it's got my old manor slap bang in the middle of it.

I hope to admire it again soon as there's a couple of decent looking gigs coming up at The Tramshed in the next month or so including, The Jesus & Mary Chain on Friday 2nd September and a Hacienda night featuring Marshall Jefferson next Friday.

Anyhow, on the way back home and after a few pints of Bad Apple (and a Swci Delicious cocktail), I tried to hum Me, Myself & I by De La Soul, as I saw a poster for their show in Newport a few weeks ago. Yet the cider kicked in and it turned into 20 minutes of an increasingly passionate version of Popcorn by Hot Butter.

There's a rather quaint old website that lists the hundreds of versions of Popcorn, some with equally quaint assessments of the merits of consequent covers.

FYI Hot Butter's Popcorn was the biggest selling single in France in 1972. More alarmingly the Crazy Frog version was the sixth biggest selling single in the country in 2005. Mange tout.

So yeah, Swci Delic good, shouty versions of Popcorn less so.

The Estonian Model

Anyone after an Estonian disco cover of Kraftwerk's The Model from when the country was still behind the Iron Curtain?

Thought so...

Tornaado are behind this wonderfully wiggly version that was recorded in 1979 and DJ Scientist drops it during his Soviet Disco mix for The Vinyl Factory...

Fantasy Morning

11.30am.

At 11.30am this morning (Saturday 13th August 2016), Gameweek 1 of Fantasy Football and Draft Fantasy Football begins. I've been tweaking and shuffling, a little confident. This smidgen of confidence is soon completely crushed, as guaranteed starters are shunted to the bench, offloaded to Italy (particularly perilous in Draftos) or are just utter dogshit.

But right now they are world beaters, league destroyers, my beautiful bastards until 3.01pm.

Here's some songs called Fantasy...

Breakbot - Fantasy (feat. Ruckazoid)

Mariah Carey - Fantasy

Earth, Wind & Fire - Fantasy

And, why not, some drums falling down the stairs from Squarepusher...

I came very close to naming my Fantos team Dial Squarepusher, one for all you Victorian football and IDM fans, but went with Ol' Dirty Barnsley. I'm Rumpy Pompey in Draftos, as the league requirement was for sex-based names. I was initially Jizz Richards and seriously weighed up The Frottagers. I am 31.

I may need to do some more tweaking, so for now, godspeed and good luck to all players. And never forget, Draftos > Fantos, I just didn't seem to have any songs called Draft.

Koes Plus Cut Chemist Minus Shazam

I mentioned yesterday that I've not heard much that's blown me away during the last couple of months, as I've sailed through mixes and NTS shows on Mixcloud.

That was a tiny lie, there's been a couple of things. One that's sure to make my end of year list of best things I've heard is when Teki Latex dropped the Benny Hill Theme 15 minutes into his Hard & Fast Mix for Overdrive Infinity.

Another is the closing track to Everything is Everything's Suncut show which featured Quantic and Jurassic 5's Cut Chemist.



The tracklist of the show is incomplete but good old Google came to the rescue. I simply did a voice search on the S4 and they pinpointed it as Kelelawar by Koes Plus.

Shazam ain't got shit on this, honestly Shazam has never identified anything I've tried to used it for. But Google knows Indonesian pysch rock when it hears it. And I didn't even have to use an app. Here's my data Google, you're welcome to it.

Image: via Wikimedia Commons

Stranger Things & The Sea of Sound

The main theme to Stranger Things is my jam. Thank flip someone has spun it out for 10 minutes of moody 80s-ish electronic bliss.

I'm not the only one going ape for this soundtrack, as Lakeshore Records are rush releasing two volumes of it. The first comes out digitally tomorrow (Friday 12th August 2016), with a physical release to follow in September, and Gorilla Vs Bear have collated streams of three tracks from it - Kids, A Kiss, and She'll Kill You.

The perfect original soundtrack for bike rides and monster hunts. Volume 1 available Friday. Volume 2, 8/19. pic.twitter.com/ifA1X57Gvy

— Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) August 10, 2016

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of S U R V I V E are the guys behind the music in Netflix's cult summer smash. And Netflix needed a smash, as the finger was on the cancellation button in Ceefax Towers. It's been a while since they've had anything close to an essential series (I'm struggling to think of any since Breaking Bad) and the less said about their movie selection the better. Netflix to the head indeed.

Anyway it's been a while since I've posted but I've not slipped again, I haven't got lost in the podcast tundra, save for bingeing on Athletico Mince. It's simply that I've been listening to lots of mixes, lots of NTS shows on Mixcloud and the like. Yet I've not heard anything that's really blown my socks off. It hasn't helped that I've also not been on my laptop much either. I'm sure there's been some great stuff out there, both Metronomy and Aphex Twin have put new music out after all, but popular music has slipped past me this summer.

TBH recently it has felt like the waves of new music have become too much and it's impossible to sail through them. Instead it's simply easier to float on with mixes and TV soundtracks... I've been on a boat today.

#gondola #newport #transporter #transporterbridge #bridge

A video posted by Sammyfax (@ceefaxoflife) on Aug 11, 2016 at 4:37am PDT