Long-time Ninja Tune associate DJ Food, steps up once again for Solid Steel Radio duty and delivers with the third of his Future Shock mixes. Taking in the Human League, both the Doctor Who theme and the Imperial March, Boards of Canada, and Black Devil, this is well worth an hour of your time...
The highlight for me comes early in the mix when Strictly Kev drops the beautifully named Datashat in with their cover of Grandmaster Flash's The Message...
In light of this news, there's one song that will do, and that's the new single from Bristol's Idles called Well Done. As well as Berry, and whoever the fuck Tarquin is, Trevor Nelson also gets a shout out which is always a good sign.
Back to Bake Off for a second though, I got not one but two Guardian news alerts on the same day about it switching to Channel 4. Now it's a nice break from the alerts of bombs going off and black men getting shot in 'murica but were two updates necessary?
It might just be the thing that tips me over the edge and give up on the news altogether. I know I should be an active citizen, I should engage, challenge, be informed but I can see why people don't bother. Touching on Adam Curtis' Oh Dearism, it feels like 2016 has been a tsunami of shit times and that if I want to be happy maybe I should just stop reading the news, chuck some good tunes on, go for a walk, bake some fucking bread.
I've already detuned Radio 4 in the kitchen. I couldn't face yet another politician not answer a simple fucking question, instead engaging in all this newspeak, all this hot air rather than give a straight answer. I can see why they do it though.
I was watching Get Shirty last night, a great documentary about the rise and fall of sportswear company Admiral (designers of the iconic Welsh strip of the 70s). They had footage of someone from Thatcher's government explaining to the recently sacked seamstresses and other factory workers that they really should just suck it up. I think the line was if you really want to see the breadline, I'll take you to Africa. I'm sure the Tories still think this but hide behind the spin and dazzle of PR. Maybe for some it's better to have this charade. I'd rather the people in power were honest to our faces.
So that turned into a bit of a rant. Just make sure you listen to Well Done by Idles and buy it in a couple of weeks. And watch whatever the BBC makes to replace Bake Off. Or watch Bake Off on Channel 4... who gives a shit?
The Cyclist is one of those rare beasts for me in that I found out about him purely by him popping up in a mix series I'm into.
The thing is I only tend to give something a spin if I know something of the artist, a remix here, a production credit there. But The Cyclist? The first time I head of him was when he did FACT Mix 498 and the second time was yesterday when he popped up with Dummy Mix 453.
But other than that I've not seen or heard anything. And it's odd as I'd have thought his murky and muffled mixes would have raised his profile a lot higher. If he keeps chucking ESG and Throbbing Gristle early into his mixes, I think it won't be long till more people sit up and take notice of his Tape Throb thinking.
This week's listening has been all Pangaea and Conformist, as that what I'm reviewing for next month's Buzz Magazine. Preferred Pangaea so here's what I said...
Head Hessle honcho Pangaea finally gets around to dropping a début album and it has been worth the wait. Releasing singles and EPs since 2007, In Drum Play takes in everything Hessle Audio stands for, with 50 minutes of weirdo techno, electronic exploration and bass blowouts. This is an album that fidgets and fizzes with energy, that clearly knows its onions and bangs when it wants to. The warped funk of closer DNS is the highlight of a LP of many.
I can't find DNS online ATM (the album is out October 14th) and I don't want to be that guy, so here's More Is More To Burn...
It's available till 4am on Saturday 8th October 2016 and features tracks from Vince Staples, Burial, ESG, Quasimoto, Shabazz Palaces, FlyLo, DOOM, basically everything good.
The track that stood out the most, as in stood out like a sore thumb, was this glorious racket from Rough Trade signed Girl Band.
Yowzers. Yeah, Paul was one of Thom Yorke's selections.
Despite them not meaning shit to me after they gave the 2008 prize to Elbow, fucking Elbow, instead of Burial, I still keep an ear out for the shortlist. And have a moan that the album I like didn't make it. This year that's Bwana but its unconventional release might have disqualified it TBF.
Cardiff Bus uses a different four letter word every day as a security measure on its app.
Monday's was OOPS. Apt as the app is pretty balls most of the time. Anyways it meant that I had Oops (Oh My) by Tweet (feat Missy Elliot) in my head most of the day...
I know it's not an original sentiment, I mean Bump & Grind have rinsed a successful club night out of it in Cardiff for years, but damn early 00s R'n'B was next level. Seriously, I think people will be name-dropping the productions of Timbaland, The Neptunes et al for years as a key influence and inspiration, the way that Motown has always been held in high regard.
How is this the first time that Missy has come up on the blog?
A bumping mix from Lone got me through the drizzle on the walk to work on Monday morning, so you know it ain't half bad...
Recorded as part of Dutch festival Dekmantel's podcast series, I was switched on to this by Pitchfork and their mixes of the month feature. As with everything on Pitchfork, they use overly flowery language and a TL;DR approach to writing, but it's worth wading through to find gems like Lone's bumping set. So if you fancy a tidy hour of great house music then get on this.
As an aside I've never got the 'rave revivalism' tag that is always thrown at Lone, if his stuff has nostalgic touches then I think it shows he knows his onions rather than being a retrograde step or a regressive sign.
The small town Americana, the missing persons, the ambiguous endings and the amazing scores, the comparisons between Stranger Things and Twin Peaks are obvious, inevitable and ubiquitous.
This has now reached its zenith with Prom Queen knitting the signature iconic theme tunes to both shows together in this super synthy reworking...
Alright, Sunday night, kicking back, everybody looking at the quarterback!
Well almost, we're within a gnat's crotchet of the start of the NFL season and that means scouring NFL UK to see how much free to air American Football there'll be on in the UK.
It looks like it's slightly up on last year with the BBC having highlights from Week 1 rather than from halfway through the flipping season like last time. It'll be in the post Match of the Day slot on Saturday night. Hopefully it'll be a repeat of a programme shown earlier in the week, otherwise they'll be waiting a full 6 days to show highlights from the previous Sunday's action. Which would be shit.
As far as I can tell there's also live coverage of the London games, aka the International Series, which includes a game at Twickenham for the first time, as well as the Super Bowl.
Sadly the podcast Americarnage, my main source of NFL info, is on hiatus (just as I bought a t-shirt) but there is a kind of family friendly incarnation of it on Talksport 2, imaginatively called The NFL Show. Nat Coombs presents and Iron Mike Carlson pops up as a contributor, and his intro music is Johnny Cash's version of I've Been Everywhere...
Marek Larwood has turned up on The NFL Show but there's been no sign of Hollywood Dan Louw or Producer Harry as of yet...
A Llantwit Major-based music blog for things post-punk, electronic and a little bit left of centre, with second-hand cultural musings, third-rate sociological stabbings and very rarely the odd mp3.
I also write the odd album review for Buzz Magazine and used to present Amser Electroneg on Bro Radio.
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