'feels like i'm in love' is gonna be a pretty big part of my life for some time to come, it would seem..

well i talk about, talk about, talk about, moving

it's ok i know nothing's wrong

it'll be very worth your while to check out 'fallin' by jay-z which is on his myspace at the moment. weirdly i've only just gotten into this song despite owning american gangster for a over a year. the production is pretty timeless isn't it, could just listen to it forever. fallin'

oh no seems like i'm fallin' oh no fallin' oh no seems like i'm fallin' oh no fallin' oh no seems like i'm fallin' oh no

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new kanye stuff ISN'T that good so let's stop pretending it is for the sake of it. sounds like a bad chromeo record.

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got the benga album as a treat, only stand-out track on first listen is this, but more may become apparent on further listens. it's cool being back home where i have no music at all, you just get sucked into the same few pieces of music over and over again.

-------------------------------------------

keep drifting back to the first song of this collection here. that guitar sound is such a mystery to me, it's just everywhere, seems to comprise of no real chords or notes, it's just a fluid, gentle wind blowing through the whole record. the vocals are beautiful too, so wobbly, the lyrics stocky and singular with big pauses, the opposite of the guitar.

it was dinnertime and they wanted to roast my spine, amazin'

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i bet you've been wandering around for weeks now, wondering what i think of vampire weekend, haven't you? well, this blog is all about helping people, real people, people like you, so let my help put those thoughts to rest.

i like 'em, yessirido. when i first read about them i thought they'd be awful. i mean, they sound pathetic in print; ivy league rockers revive paul simon with afropop sounds. but they genuinely work the african pop sound in a way that isn't shameless copying and somehow also isn't the dreaded phrase in music, a 'modern interpretation'. vampire weekend's stuff lies somewhere in the wonderful middle, and everything-the muffled keyboard, the bitty awkward guitar, the yelping-sounds like a really good west african record, but it's not, it's better, or just as good.

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current mango snapple bottle has a picture on the label of a mango with legs and arms writing 'i will go mad' over and over again on a blackboard. don't know what this means, don't want to.

dougie blog

comment on a youtube music video:

"for some reason,this song should be in a iTunes commercial."


this says something about where we are right now

the galaxy

the star-dust, that is whirled aloft and flies,
from the invisible chariot-wheels of god

i've always loved you gotta give to get by el perro del mar, but everytime i hear it i think how perfect it would sound at the conservative party conference. it's so in touch with what tories are about right now; clean-cut and nice, but with a centre-right sentiment of earning your keep.

"are you a claimer or a contributor?"


----------------------

smartest kid on the block mike has got a blog now. i havent read it yet because i'm busy at the moment, but have no doubt it will be excellent so feel i can safely recommend without reading it.

i havent been sleeping, er, at all this past week, except in two hour shifts at 8 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, so i have a quick rest before uni then a quick rest before going out/doing work in the evening. people say four hours is a fine amount of sleep, but i'm struggling with having it divided up and am probably going a bit mental. current reactions include my teeth feeling constantly wobbly and an incessant feeling of stuffy warmth. it'll be over soon.

i mention this because in a dream i just had the idea of writing a spoof version of wittgenstein's tractatus logico philosophicus called 'tractatus no philosophicus', which is a version of the tractatus containg no philosophy and just being page after page of blank paper. in the dream and shortly afterwards in a haze i thought it was the greatest idea ever conceived by a human being and wrote it down, before sleeping for a bit more. i've just found the note. it's scrawled on the side of the front page of the guardian and simply reads, 'tractatus no philosophicus-mitchell and webb'. i think i had the idea that for some reason mitchell and webb needed to be involved in order for it to become a success. i'm not sure what part they would play, though they seemed crucially important at the time in implementing my plan to release a book with no words.

what a fragile thing it is, sanity.

rip odetta, what a voice

what are you, in love with your problems?

listening to 77 has never made so much sense

to return to a path that we've walked before and which joe shamelessly copied a while ago, here's the proposed cabinet from the clarkson for pm group:


"PM - Jeremy Clarkson
Chancellor of the Exchequer - James May
Foreign Sec - Richard Hammond
Home Sec - Al Murray
Deputy PM - Hugh Grant
Trans Sec - The Stig
Health Sec - Jonathan Ross
Education Sec - Stephen Fry
Defence Sec - Boris Johnson
Trade Sec - Simon Cowell
Culture Sec - Peter Kay
Excise and Customs - Charles Kennedy (obviously)
UN Rep - Michael Palin
NATO Permanent Rep - Gordon Ramsey
Head of BoE - John Cleese
Policy Coordinator - Stephen Merchant
Minister to EU - Rowan Atkinson
Chief of Defence Staff - Dick Strawbridge (google image it)"


what i like most about this is the way that boris johnson pops up as defence secretary. he's a real politician, and yet the idea of him holding such an office earnestly turns up in a parody...

"i'm wearin' awa, john,
like snaw-wreaths in the thaw, john..."

"now i'm back on the streets,
knee deep in concrete..."

"According to Pink, her biggest influences are Bette Midler, Janis Joplin, Steven Tyler, Bad Religion, Mary J. Blige, Bob Marley, Billy Joel, Indigo Girls, Don McLean, 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G"

this is easily one of the best things ever written

is there any music less primal than that of primal scream?

there are holes in what we do

wiley apparently got stabbed the other day. its worth heading over to his myspace to check out the comments he got from people after this got out

http://www.myspace.com/eskiboywiley

"lol wiley u ded?"

it's halloween, and everyone looks awful. some people, though, are genuinely just out to scare people. theres someone on the ground floor sporadically leaning out of her window and screaming at passers by, and two guys just, essentially, attacked me (in a playful way though, like they do with rape at public schools). i've never been interested in the tacky dressing up (and then just going out dancing as usual) side of halloween, but this is the kind of halloween activity that i appove of. i really like the idea of a festival that celebrates fear. not terrible, life-destroying fear, but playing on the small, irrational fears that people have-the dark, loud noises, surprises. it's something worth doing at least once a year.

to add a bit onto what i was saying about solipsists not long ago, two solipsists i know have been bonding quite strongly recently, over how they both must be correct

this will have to do as my joke about solipsism. it is pretty funny to be fair

HELLO I'M YOUR NEW NEIGHBOUR

the altered/forgotten lyrics are what clinches it

"the hills are groaning with excess"

albums which i'm listening to with mental hunger right now:

minutemen-double nickels on the dime
joanna newsom-Ys
the knife-silent shout
cap'n jazz-analphabetapolothology


Ys is playing a MASSIVE part in my life again, i don't know why. its so amazing, it's gotta be remembered as a highpoint of early 21st century music in jimmy carr nostalgia shows yet to come. there are so many fantastic moments in it, like the parts in sawdust and diamonds where it swells up and get panicked and just, beautiful. and theres a moment when youre really listening to it that 'only skin' just hits you with its brilliance, its usually about 12 or so minutes in, where its been going, seemingly endless and constantly original, for SO long and you just suddenly realise where its taken you with its flurry and lyrical imagery and the soft, bird-like warble throwing your thoughts around as you try to keep up, and think 'god, this is really something special'. cos it is.

----------------

"your girlfriend tries to act shy around me"

"millenium kids we're too cold, no pity"

wiley

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if talking heads were a book they'd be the tractatus. so clean, so acute, so completely lacking in self-interest or indulgence.

"my heart writhes in its own blood", was a lyric i heard and read tonight. i thought it was one of the best things i've heard since i came here and i've heard a lot of things since i came here.

its from some bach piece, about jesus.

-----------------

talking about classical music about jesus, richard dawkins writes in somethingorother about how good it would have been if scientists had commissioned the classical composers, not the church, so you would get mozarts 'symphony of a supernova' and such like instead of just focusing on nativity plays. an interesting idea.

imagine if the zutons really were always right behind you

vanity and presumption, DAPPER


hey hey hey hey

"I am becoming everything I used to hate but I, I can't go back now"

this isnt relevant to my life or feelings at the moment, so please dont think that it is. i just think its an amazing lyric

the way ozzy goes, "i love you!", in sweet leaf must be the best recorded version of that phrase ever. better than any other time anyone's said it in any film, music, television, anything. its just so panicked, a desperate but fully assured and confident yelp. john darnielle said about black sabbath in his excellent book about them, 'they sound like the guys who stand at the back of the party and never dance'. that is EXACTLY what black sabbath sound like.

i love a lot of the production on master of reality, it was when sabbath became incredibly negative and awful, and the riffs got really slow and doomsome (doomsome almost certainly isnt a word but it sums it up well). its like that middle section of sweet leaf, about 1:20 in where the mid-range single note riff is layered over the crunchy chords, and it sounds like the most dismal, dream-crushing thing ever. in a good way, not in a snow patrol way.

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while i'm on sabbath might as well also say that 'supernaut' is one of the best uses of the guitar ever. that call and response bass-to-guitar riff, beautiful.

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someone asked me what music i liked the other day and i said 'well when i was a teenager i was really into early punk music' and she laughed and said 'when you were a teenager?' and i realised that i'd talked about it like it was years ago, and felt a little disturbed.

recently ive been getting back into punk though. it began when i was sent a fanzine in the post that i subscribed to all those years ago when i was a teenager, and it came in the post and took me totally by subscribed. i was charmed by its beautiful, diy simplicity and thought 'this makes sense all over again'. so ive been getting back into it all. bought an album by nation of ulysses which i'm slowly getting into, but the main area of interest right now for me is, once again, cap'n jazz.

i remember the first time i heard cap'n jazz's cover of 'take on me', and i immediately just wanted to do something. it felt inappropriate to sit around after hearing it. tim kinsellas voice is just so beautiful in such a brozen way.

i'm also massively into 'snake rap' by a band called 'snakes' too, who seem to scarcely exist at all.

also the frumpies

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heard the BEST BUSKER EVER the other day. most buskers assume that what people want to hear is oasis songs and 'imagine', but it really isn't true. then i saw someone on saturday that changed all this.

i was out walking the streets of the silver city and i heard this crunchy, arrhythmic guitar solo coming from around the corner. i went to check it out and saw this guy in a trench coat and baseball cap with a stratocaster sat on a practice amp, slumped over his guitar, playing the main riff to 'sweet home alabama' and 'sweet child of mine' over and over and over again, in a tense, squeaky, scratchy way, all totally solo and unaccompanied-no loop pedal or drumtrack-occasionally pausing to play a trail of horrible bends which constituted a solo. in other words he played guitar EXACTLY like i used to play at gigs. the reason i got into the whole bend-heavy style from johnny thunders is cos it sounds so sarcastic and is so easy to turn into a mess, but this guy had mastered it.

i'm not being ironic or facetious at all, i genuinely loved this guy and wanted to tell him. i gave him £2.

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the jonas brother can fuck off

from last.fm:

Right now, all over the world…

1,155 people are listening to Coldplay – Violet Hill

104,810 people love Newton Faulkner

really makes you think

and as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention

david byrnes new show looks a lot like stop making sense. in the past few years david byrnes picked up his game so much. all of his 90s music is really just bad, but in the 21st century he works a lot better, its a time that suits what he's all about. glass, concrete and stone.

i live with a solipsist, someone who believes he is the only thing that exists. i was trying to think of a joke about this, but i cant. i bet woody allen could.

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heard a child say 'humdinger' today and it filled me with joy.

theres a pub here in aberdeen called 'the illicit still', which is such a lovely use of words.

---------------------------

bit pissed off at burial revealing his identity cos of the mercury awards and then not turning up, so he sacrificed it for nothing. i loved burials anonymity. he once said that only about five people knew he was burial, and presumably they must have been industry people, so not even his family or friends know, which meant that burial could have been ANYONE i knew, and i loved that idea. in a way he was like a real life superhero, someone doing great things but taking no credit for it, just another member of the moving masses like everyone else. big shame.

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heard 'i believe in you' by kylie in a shopping centre the other day, and god ive never heard a song fit a situation so well. its that chorus, its sounds SO perfect tumbling through the stiff, stagnant air and around the soulless white walls of a shopping centre. genuinely amazing moment

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also saw a pub here in aberdeen called 'filthy mcnastys'

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x

i cant believe how much the guy from that beggin' song sounds like steven tyler, everytime i hear it (which is a lot) i momentarily think aerosmith have had a hit single, which of course they have not

i was gonna say something about how its also unlikely that aerosmith would collaborate with a rapper, but its actually not...

advert just came on the radio that began with, "hi, i'm hugh grant, and i want to talk to you for a moment about dying"

if ever a sentence cried out to be sampled more than this...

i'm really into this that fucking tank set right now if anyone fancies downloading. i'm momentarily sick of house and so its sort of filling in for the house sets that i used to listen to, in a lot of ways its pretty similar

russell brand is just the benny hill of our generation

i'm gonna breathe a new lease of life into this blog, and try to return it to its original intention which was to write casual, frequent posts off the cuff rather than my old myspace blog which took time and attention to write on. the revolution starts today.

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in past months i've sort of been binging on records, buying way too many at a time and it removed the excitement from buying records so i've deliberately forced myself to return to how i approached records when i was younger, whereby i want a record for a long time before i get round to buying it, giving a real (though now artificial) sense of apprehension before i get to listen to the record. so this week i bought two records i was desperate to own, the first is jimmy cliffs classic reggae soundtrack album 'the harder they come', and glenn gould performing bachs final masterpiece 'the art of the fugue', first on organ then again on piano.

glenn gould is easily one of my favourite classical pianists, along with rubinstein (who everyone loves) and kempff. one of the best thing about glenn gould is that he hums whilst he plays, which obviously the piano microphone picks up, but he doesnt hum the actual melody of the piece, so youre hearing him hum his sort of view of the overall structure of the music rather than the actual music, if that makes sense, which puts you into his mindset about the music. it also sounds really creepy which is great, he sounds like a real freak.

---------------------------

for some reason the idea of nuns voting seems surreal

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back from leeds which we all agreed would be our last ever, for different reasons. for me its that i cant take the central motivation behind leeds, which for all the people that go seems to be that its a weekend to lose yourself in a field and cause havoc and perhaps see bloc party whilst you're there and i cant take it anymore. i didnt really want to go this year but everyone said 'yeah but you dont really go to a festival for the music' and i just kept thinking 'why the hell not?'. i think a lot of the people who go to leeds dont go for the bands and i cant stand being one of those people. this really came to light during the ting tings set, which i left after a few songs. you could actually see the lead singer struggling with her own mediocrity right there onstage in front of us all, like katie melua you could see it in her eyes that she knew she wasn't really anything. but no one really seemed to care, being in the crowd just felt like nothing, there wasnt really any good or bad anymore just music either being on or off and when it was off people applauded. the whole event had this atmosphere of people saying 'we should probably go see the ting tings now' and it upset me. for the first time ever, it put me in the mindset of the kind of people who just listen to the top 40 no matter what it has in it and nothing else and i didnt really care about anything anymore, it was shit. i eventually ended up like i always do at gigs that i'm not enjoying where i start fantasising about bands i do like and how heavenly they are, and just phase out the music in front of me.

i did see some good bands though. chromeo were good though their records are awful, which is the exact same reaction i had to we are scientists last year. i also enjoyed that fucking tank. these two bands sum something up about my attitude to music in relation to leeds; i really enjoyed bands that were either extremely 'left-field' or extremely pop-oriented, but rejected the bands that lay somewhere in the middle, trying to straddle both, which is what leeds, most of the bands that play there and the NME is all about and they all fail miserably at it.

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a lot of people at leeds had rave whistles and glow sticks and other things like that. i knew as soon as i first saw people using these things years ago in a club in warrington that i would never use them. what i love most about clubbing and dancing is that you are absorbed into a crowd and its more about the collective movement of the crowd than the individual; you're not really a person anymore, instead you're just part of something. to be like that for a few hours a week is a fantastic thing but glowsticks and rave whistles are peoples way of trying to return to focus back to the specific individual, where instead of people paying no attention to anything they are paying attention to them, and i think that's a really shitty thing to do.

is it so much to ask that you just shut up for a bit?
--------------------------

on the side of a ride at leeds i saw the phrase, "putting the fun into the fair". this is EASILY one of my favourite uses of language ever and i think it may become a catch phrase of mine or the title of my autobiography. it can be interpreted in so many ways. honestly love it.

"five thousand volts and it's your own fault!"

why do japanese imports of albums always have bonus tracks on them? is there a significant reason why japanese people get more music than us?

i was in a french restaurant today and of course they played accordian music because that is the only music ever created and listened to by french people in their entire history. in french restaurants its ALWAYS accordian music, in spanish the obligatory flamenca backround music, in indian restaurants bollywood. this made me wonder what they play in english restaurants abroad. status quo?

oh its the last time oh its the last time oh its the last time oh its the last time always the last time

werner herzog describes auctioneering as 'the poetry of capitalism'

i heard that estelle song american boy today and a weird feeling came over me, that sort of 'blast from the past' feeling. i think that american boy was so incredibly overplayed when it came out that now it sounds like a distant memory even though its only been around for a few months. weird.

----------------

hate the bit in that scroobius pip song where he goes '...just a band' over and over again. what the fuck is it you want from us?????

like a flower in the overgrowth falling, falling to pieces

someone threw themselves in front a train i was on yesterday and everyone around me got on their phones and angrily complained about how it would make them late, so i found the event distressing on more than one level. after it happened i tried hard to grasp onto the thoughts flashing through me about it. i began to realise that when the guy heard our train coming around the corner, he must have started to prepare himself for death, take in his life breath, think his last ever thought. the sound of our approach was the signal for the end of a mans life, so i was part of something that was going to kill someone. i found it hard not to be affected by that.

but a lot of people around me weren't affected at all, so maybe i'm just overthinking the whole thing. a woman near me complained that he 'could at least have tried it at night'. this got me thinking that maybe he did deliberately do it in rush hour to make people like this woman think and take notice, or perhaps just to annoy people like this and disrupt their lives as much as possible, and i agree with both these decisions.

he didnt die, though. he was arrested and taken away. i got this image in my head of this man at his lowest point being taken away in a police car as we, the instrument of his intended death, glide passively on. we werent doing anything wrong but somehow i viewed the train as the villain in this story, perhaps because no other one was apparent. i think the whole thing that upset me about what happened was that the world just kept moving onwards after it had swerved to avoid this man, which needed to happen and i'm wrong to want anything else, but my instincts told me that we should somehow pause for longer than was needed to drag him away from the tracks, which is illogical.


"to mourn the dead is to mourn those who were never born"

school's question time tonight which i didnt bother to apply for, but wish i did when i saw that the young panel member was a very right wing ukip member who at one point said, "i dont know anything about iran, but the whole thing needs to sort itself out" and subsequently made it painfully clear throughout that he hadnt read a newspaper and didnt know anything at all about politics. is this really an appropriate ambassador for my age group? also iain duncan smith got all the claps from the audience, further compounding my worry about how right wing everyone my age seems to be these days. for example, the reaction to david cameron's zero tolerance on knife possession was really positive from the audience, when i thought kids would be more understanding of people who'd been drawn into carrying knives, but i guess everyone's been sort of sucked into the whole 'yob' rubbish, even people who come into contact with them on a daily basis and know them personally...

i dunno, i think the whole 'united youth' thing died with nirvana (or perhaps rave) and there's never really been a general attitude of young people since then-we prefer these days to divide into intensely different groups that bitterly hate each other. but if there is a general consensus of my 'peers' (shudder) right now, it's certainly conservative which as i've said before doesnt make any sense to me.

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i've always found marvin gaye's 'sexual healing' an intensely creepy track-imagine someone seriously saying those words to you-but now i've heard hot chips version and it's suddenly made brilliant, as is the case with anything.

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i sometimes like to pair songs together than i think are connected in some way and listen to them next to each other. at present i've done this with 'this year' by the mountain goats and the classic 'destination unknown' by alex gaudino. i know it sounds weird but i think they're both very similar songs. both are about breaking away from the ordinary, which in the case of the mountain goats is a staple subject, and for gaudino it's all about not individual freedom, but instead moving away from present monotony in huge groups, an army even, even if they're not sure what they want, they're still gonna flee towards their utopian haven (the dancefloor)

first line of 'destination unknown': "i left my job my boss my car and my home"

first line of 'this year': "i broke free on a saturday morning, i put the pedal to the floor"

i generally like to listen to 'this year' first, as it sort of makes a story-a guy starts off by just driving away from his life but is gradually joined by thousands of others as the marching rhythm of destination unknown kicks in.

will young is just the smartprice rufus wainwright

Saw a guy today wearing a t-shirt that read, "you can read this while i suck on your tits."

I suppose it was one of those classic witticisms that works on a lot of different levels but I must say I failed to get even one.

why are so many kids thatcherites these days? i dont understand any of it. i can understand being quite conservative when youre old and out in the world and you want a party that'll take care of the middle class, but god knows why anyone would turn to them before they're 21. also they're all so bloody obsessed with thatcher, they're always going on about how she was the most brilliant person ever with the same kind of grins on their faces that people have when they're talking about how much they love gok wan or jimmy carr, and how 'fabulous' they are. you dont find that in left wing kids, they dont go around always talking up clement attlee or roy jenkins as if they're the most beautiful person to have ever existed. why is this? the only logical conclusion to draw is that all thatcherites have mental problems and need a parental figure/fuhrer from whose proverbial teat they can suckle self-respect.

either that, or they havent properly thought about it, which is usually the case.

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i had a very productive trip to 'zavvi' today so will write about something proper VERY soon

a really odd moment in the house of lords today, when two members on a back row suddenly embraced each other very briefly, then went back to sitting normally in silence. i'm probably one of about 8 people in the world to know it happened.

i know i'm shit and you're all annoyed and i will do some big posts about what's inside my mind soon, if not later tonight.

kids...

"there's a young conservative leader inside k-holing his face off"

Your Disco Needs You

WHY HAVE I ONLY JUST BECOME AWARE OF THIS NOW

It must be the most triumphant hook ever! Ignore the verses, the verses are irrelevant. They only serve to reinforce the quality of the sample. It's the gayest, most inspiringly anthemic chorus ever. It's the working man's 'Something Good 08'.

Also the bits where kylie joins in with the hook oddly reminded me of piaf. She does the wavering, gutsy vibrato which edith was famous for and excelled at.


disco, disco, dis dis disco, disco, disco, dis dis disco


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!it's good!!!!

recent david byrne blog post works quite well as a surreal short story:

" I’m in a shopping mall, in the food court. From around the corner, some distance away, I can hear the sound of throbbing rock and roll guitars. No distinct rhythm or melody, just a low ominous churning rock and roll growl, getting slightly closer. The others in the food court seem to know what it is, and they stand up, abandon their half eaten chicken salads and burritos, and begin running in the opposite direction of The Rock and Roll Monster.

I do the same, but being unfamiliar with what it is, I have what I think is a smart idea. I head into a boutique and run in and out between the racks and display cases towards the staff entrance in the back. I go in, and sure enough there is a hallway that leads to stairs I can take down and out of the building. The stairs lead to a small alleyway, where a few of us convene. We breathe sighs of relief — we’re free and clear. Whew. I guess we outsmarted that thing, whatever it was. I never even saw it.

Now, somehow, I’m back in the food court or some other public part of the mall. Once again I hear the ominous thrum getting closer and louder. Some people run, but I’m too slow this time. Here it comes from around the corner. It’s twisting and turning, snaking down the central aisle, like a giant serpent. It seems to be an endless tube of clear plastic, about four feet in diameter, and filled with giant versions of either those translucent cups you get at a water cooler, or the ones you get when giving a urine sample. Only these cups are so large they almost fill the writhing plastic tube, arrayed one behind the other. It’s as if it is some weird, enormous intestine made for a school science project, but on a too-large scale. It has that homemade, ad hoc, do it yourself vibe. But it wriggles and slithers as if it is alive.

Somehow, in this dream, I am terrified, but I am also aware that the Rock and Roll Monster takes many forms, and all of them share this quality of looking homemade and rudimentary, yet somehow animated, these pedestrian objects coming to life."

the only thing more embarrassing than a parent bollocking their child in public is a child bollocking their parent.

edith bowman just pronounced 'feminine' as 'femme-nIne', with a distinct 'I' sound. So she's crap at being a radio dj on every level-she has no real passion for music and also can't speak english.

aint no party like a mountain goats party

why are people grudgeful?

last day pranks: the ultimate in middle class teenage ungratefulness? i think the whole idea of last days pranks is a pretty spoilt one; essentially, one of 'i've got all i need from you and you cant punish me anymore, so now i'm going to show you how much i actually dislike you/ruin something/upset you in whatever way is most effective and hilarious for my friends'.

clearly, all teachers want from a last day is to see their students leave and go into the world as mature, responsible people that they've had a hand in creating. and to spray graffiti, get drunk, vandalise in general or personally insult a teacher not only flys in the face of that, but specifically and deliberately upsets the very people we owe everything to.

hating your parents and teachers is such a typically middle class thing to do. its an attitude born of not appreciating what you have. schools give so much for so little return and i think the whole idea of getting out of control on the last day is essentially just saying 'whatever, fuck you anyway' in return.

they wont have the last laugh.

I saw the bbc philharmonic perform prokofiev with the leeds philharmonic tonight. being a conductor must be one of the best jobs in the world. It's like being a ships captain in a storm, with the ship being the audience as the conductors tries to subdue this swelling sea of sound, letting it crash onto us then sweeping it back away, totally absorbed in the task and nothing else. They do often have a real 'mad destitute' look about them, you can just imagine them at the helm..

Another great thing about tonight was that leeds town hall is one of those fantastic halls that are more like cathedrals than theatres; the far dome was painted deep blue with stars, and the main chamber was white with cherubs holding up the balconies, angels holding up biblical quotes and an ornate ceiling. It had the same 'heaven on earth' feel as a cathedral does. I'm fascinated by religiously inspired art: cathedrals because people really believed they were building a house for god, an equal of paradise itself, and religious symphonies because the composers were trying to channel the actual voice of god himself. Only absolute perfection was appropriate for such mammoth tasks. This motivation doesnt exist anymore, which is fine and i'm glad no one properly believes in god anymore, but now people are only expressing themselves, not the glory of god (or, rather, the universe, which was what they were really trying to convey but they just didnt know it). And that's a shame. But a lot of things are a shame, it doesn't mean it should be different.

Anyway, this cathedral-like atmosphere and heavenly music was compounded by a dove who sat at the top of one of the arches, its head tilted slightly towards the orchestra, listening intently. The depiction of god on earth has of course always been a dove, so it was quite symbolic. Like we were all in a painting of our own.

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It was also nice going to leeds town hall cos alan bennett often wrote about how important that place was to him and it was interesting to put a face to a name.

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Joe informs me that its impossible to read this blog in China. I'm a real enemy of the state!

remember the horrors?

"big red mush contorted with the animated delivery of constant speak"

-Mark E Smith's autobiography has odd chapters of prose stuck in randomly which embarrassingly are better than both the actual book and all his lyrics of the past twenty years.

i aim to get properly into gospel music very soon

girl gives brain, girl gives knowledge

whoa, lil mama's back (for those of us who ever knew she was once here). and shes gone serious. this is a world a way from 'lip gloss' but just as good. i love that wailing sample in the backround. such a powerful track-"i guess i'll never make a difference", love that bit. it's weird that the musicians i love are increasingly getting to be my age or younger than me and are capable of really worldly stuff like this.

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lyric of the day:

"you move it to the left,
then you go for yourself"

-harlem shuffle

from paris to berlin, in every disco i go in

Jeeeeeeez, just aint nuttin like the start of summer, eh gayboy? Everyone's in such a good mood, it's unstoppable. I wonder if violent crime goes down around this time. Probably not. Well, almost certainly not. Worth finding out though. Actually that's not true either. Just forget it.

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Anyway, enough nonsense. Wearing my rolex came out on cd on monday, so yesterday i went to HMV to buy a copy. Only apparently they dont sell singles anymore. So i bought one online, a big version that comes with 7 remixes. But then i got worried that this wouldn't boost wiley's chart performances, cos i once heard that singles with more than four tracks dont count. And so i considered getting the two-track version as well. But then i didnt.

Point is, i care about this. It's the first single i've bought since 'Something' by Ash when I was 10. Cos i like wiley, you see, and i like the song, so it really works out that i should buy the single. He just deserves this so much. It was weird going out to buy the single. It felt like voting. Which, actually, i guess you could actually say was what singles were in the olden days when kids had just the amount of pocket money to buy one single a week (as i did).

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The other day in oxfam someone seriously came up and asked me, 'do you have richard hammond's latest?'

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I've just found out mark ronson's supporting jay-z when i see him in july and i'm looking forward to it in a perverse way cos it'll be an opportunity to see what, if anything, mark ronson actually does.

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I saw dead poets society the other day. An alright film, but i think we've all now seen enough about stiff conformist schoolkids learning the beauty of the arts, havent we? What i really want to see is a film about a bunch of art students and young actors having a world-opening epiphany as they learn the beauty of consumer capitalism.

great

wiley's always last to mc on collaborative tracks like this, it's weird. he's always the one who sums up what those before him have said, and makes everything nice and clear.

worth going to james' blog to check out his unbelievable crystal castles remix. i'm not really that big a fan of crystal castles but he's added the lightfoot-or, as i believe he is now called, 'Deus'-touch to it. James is so good at that euphoric sound and he's made it a really great track.

Also james sent me this a few weeks ago. He said its just a bit of fun which says something about his talent. It's a remix of a marvin gaye song and it's amazing.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/63ncwj

I just love the way it's so cut up and looped that it sounds like all the instruments are sort of gasping.

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Really been listening to this song a lot recently.

It's a remix of a song by jay-z from the blueprint. The original features the high-pitched soul vocal (i love any song that has a helium soul vocal, even 'lonely' by akon) as well but this one takes it so much further and makes it stunning.

The verses arent even that good on this song but thats just not whats important. Whats great about this song is the sample; that beautiful voice. The way it sometimes randomly goes 'do you BELIEVE?', and the 'oh no's, the 'you dont know's, sounding really desperate, all trapped under this really forceful flow. The feminine quivering beneath the masculines overbearing agression.

'You dont know what you done to me, done to me, done to me, done to me...'

best thing heard tonight, coincidentally said by same person as 'luxembourg' comment from a few blogs back:

'I'm only seeing one of you and that's just not enough.'

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You can get UB40's new album free with the daily mail tomorrow.

i'm really not in the mood to go out tonight but i've just put on Wearing my Rolex as a 'getting ready' song and it does work magic. It's way its just an endless series of ascending notes, boosting your mood as the pitch goes up and up. As you've probably noticed, i'm fascinated by the journey music takes you on a night out, from getting ready to the club to coming home to the hangover, and wearing my rolex clearly now has an integral part in my routine.

Move it like you stood in something nasty

Joe asked me to fill up his mp3 player entirely with my music for his trip to China, essentially asking me to dictate what he listened to for three months. I was pretty honoured by this faith in my taste so took the whole thing very seriously. I knew from the beginning that i was going to completely ignore joe's taste, in a non-obnoxious way. Firstly, i dont really have much belonging to joe's taste and secondly i thought it would be refreshing and interesting for joe to have someone elses music as his form of escapism abroad. Would my favourite songs become as important to him if they were all he had? Anyway here is the list of the songs i put on it, amounting to 128mb exactly. It's not exactly my 'desert-island-discs' list, more of a list of songs that i feel sum up the various types of music that i love and the genres i'm most interested in. But there are, however, some pieces of music here that are indispensable to me and undoubtedly some of my favourite songs ever, and i absolutely love every song here.

Midnight Special-Leadbelly
Those Dancing Days-Those Dancing Days
We Love-Juergen Paape and Boy Schaufler
Song 4 Mutya-Mutya Buena
Milk Crisis-The Go Team
Party & Bullshit-Notorious B.I.G
The Beach Party-Hot Chip
Pomp & Pride-Toots and the Maytals
The Good Thing-Talking Heads
Beware of the bird-Justin Martin
Speakerphone-Kylie Minogue (should have been a single)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Earnest-Vegetables
The Old Landmark-James Brown
Who's Knockin (Benny Benassi remix)-FB feat Edun (there will be a blog post about this soon)
Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)-Jay-Z
My Cube-Lucio Aquilina
No 4 in F Minor(Winter)-Vivaldi
Shake a Leg-Roll Deep
The Wand of Youth, Suite No 2, Op 1b, VI 'the wild bears'- Elgar (Amusingly this turns up on joe's mp3 player as 'The Wand of Yo, Elgar')
Wanted Man-Johnny Cash
Remember the Days-Roll Deep
Special Rider Blues-Son House
Since You've Been Gone-Aretha Franklin
Life of Locomotion-National School
After Laughter Comes Tears-Wendy Rene
Effect and Cause-The White Stripes
Funky Town-Lipps Inc
Girls (Kanye remix)-Jay-Z
Going to Georgia-The Mountain Goats
Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?-The Mountain Goats
All Good Things (Come to an end)-Nelly Furtado
Popcorn-Gershon Kingsley
Naive Melody (stop making sense version)-Talking Heads
Le Chant du Pirate-Edith Piaf

So yeah-no punk, no girl groups, no metal, surprisingly. I'm not sure why these types of music, all of which have at some point dominated my life, just didnt turn up. Sad, in a way.

Some songs which would have turned up if i'd had the internet last week and thus the ability to rip them from youtube:
Body Movin' (Fatboy Slim remix)-Beastie Boys
I Wanna Dance with Somebody-David Byrne
Hot Stuff-Donna Summer
Something Good 08-Utah Saints (i considered putting only this on the mp3 player but thought that maybe, maybe it would get tiring after three months of nothing but. still not sure though)

oi,

my internet's down (i'm writing this at the library) and will be for a week so i wont be blogging. so, to sum up what i would be saying if i could blog:

Something Good 08

k, see ya in a week

x

i'm not really gonna comment too much on the whole jay-z glastonbury 'controversy' cos on the whole its totally pathetic but i will say that it's symptomatic of the current pop culture that people are shocked and appalled by jay-z despite the fact that he's been around for about twelve years. are they so stuck in the past, so attached to their guitar bands that someone like jay-z can genuinely shake things up? not got enough to think about, my friends...

it's reasurringly typical of noel gallagher to rise up from nowhere and be the official face of this boring, ideological conservatism. the phrase he used-"if it ain't broke, don't fix it"-pretty much sums up why all his records are so shit to me.

all i'll say is that if noel gallagher had any real say in what music was allowed to get somewhere and what was "just wrong" i'd kill myself pretty quickly.

i love it in r&b songs when the singer pronounces 'friends' as 'freh-ee-yehnds'. i love putting the word 'yeah' in with the word 'friends'.


urghhh i think too much.

work it, work it, work it like you need the money

you know what i hate and love all at once? that awkward half hour or so that you get just after you enter a club, where you just havent started dancing yet. i hate it cos its awkward, obviously, but i also love it cos it reminds me that we actually take dancing seriously. the people that walk into a club and instantly start dancing are, i think, the real 'dancing-for-the-sake-of-it' type of people-insincere dancers, who arent doing it for the music, but for the ability to say they've gone out dancing that night or to pull someone. either that or they're really fucked. but with me, it takes a while for me to fully warm to the music, even if its music that i totally love. i have to take time to let it soak in and get myself comfortable, and my 'starting off' dance move is one that (in no way deliberately) makes me look like i'm really getting ready for something-rubbing my hands together as i gently rock back and forth. i always do this move for about ten minutes at the start of every night before i can start to really get to work, i can't help it-it just happens. and it really makes me feel good, it makes me realise that my body's taking this music really seriously, it can't just snap into it at will, it needs to work up to it, like its a really important event. and, as i'm beginning to say all too often, there's a beauty in that.

but yeah, sankeys was amazing last night. the heavy rain outside and the remote location of sankeys gave it the atmosphere of it being some outpast in which we were collected to escape the elements. or at least it did to me. a real 'we're in this together' sort of attitude last night. those weird occasions where people just come up to you and shake your hand were even more common last night. i dunno, it just felt a lot more cosey last night. and i had a really tough time deciding between upstairs and downstairs because they were both so equally good. downstairs was playing clicky, fast electronica whilst upstairs went for big beats and bouncing basslines. a tough decision for anyone to make.

it was good, really good.

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why dont you waddle your fat ass over to colours and wizards, a blog started by james lightfoot, a man who's forgotten more about music than most will ever know. i always love talking about music to james, and i know his blogs are gonna be just as good. he properly loves music, like me, but unlike me, his writing doesnt consist of flowery emotional waffle, he sticks to the essentials.

it's good, really good.

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partner in pop rosie got me onto this remix of something good by utah saints (remix by high contrast). it's unusual for me to get into anything with a breakbeat but i do really like this.

every time i hear something good 08 i like it even more. it's sorta like 'call on me' but even better-a pure, perfect club song that simply consists of an endlessly danceable rhythm backing one serene, awe-inspiring vocal sample which is repeated over and over without ever getting tiresome, every time it comes around it's like a hug from your best friend.

i just know that somethin good is gonna happennnnnnnnnnnnn

in liverpool tonight, saw vauxhall nova full of chavs blasting out 'hurricane' by bob dylan.

it's always surprised me that 'take my breath away' by berlin never turns up in house mixes. it really has everything we house fans love-clean, crisp, minimal beat, the bass gently riding over it and then it all finalised with the obligatory sweet, over-produced soulful vocals. i know its nowhere near as cool as 'i feel love', but it wouldnt take too much sprucing up to get the same reaction i feel i love does on a dance floor-ie one of purest joy.

the first time i ever heard 'i feel love' on a dance floor was probably one of the best moments of my life, no joke. it was the dance tent at leeds on saturday night and i'd had two days of fun, sun and friends and then this beautiful moment occured. two hundred people, white light shining through their water bottles, with their arms outstretched, singing the word 'looooovvvvvvvvvve' at the top of their lungs as they dance and grin at each other. i mean how much more do you want?

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that footage of the olympic torch going through london is crazy! it looked so epic, one person holding this flame, desperately trying to keep running as people fall down around their feet and clamber to knock him down. it looked like a classical painting. it reminded me of that misfits song about the presidents body lying in the street, for some reason. just a complete loss of control on what should be a very ordinary occasion.

..usually drink, usually dance, usually bubble..

Say, I played one of those wiis the other day. Good fun, but i'm actually mentioning it for a reason. We were playing this table tennis game when, all of a sudden, this really good house beat drops. The music builds as you keep a rally going so you end up fighting to keep the beat and it leads to you getting really into it. What a great idea! More games should use music as a prize.

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How much of a tune is 'wearing my rolex'? Me and fellow wiley-phile oli are divided over it, but i'm strongly pro-rolex. So wiley can write a floor-filler! It's just so lovely to see wiley finally receiving success-he's everywhere i look/listen recently-that i dont really care how or why. It'll probably mean wiley turns into a dizzee, a person who's got to where he is on the back of mildly interested teenagers who go for the 'new thing' regardless of whether its high or low quality (essentially, people who bought nu-rave), but i dont think that matters. If wiley does get on top, it'll be amazing. Special things will happen (maybe scene kids will get into 2-step!). I think dizzee was never interested in being anything to do with grime and everything he did was an effort to break out and become a big rap star which he now has done. But everyone always goes on about how wiley is grime and so it'll be so interesting to see what he does if/when he's on t4 (it occured to me recently how often i refer to t4 in my blogs and reviews and genuinely worried me-it's cos i sort of see it as a perfect example of faceless, mediocre, cynical and uninterested music journalism).

One of the great things about wiley is this sense you always get listening to him that he's a great person who's just really trying. And so it's fantastic to go on youtube and see all these comments saying 'bigggggg' or hear him on radio 1, cos i know that something's finally happening that will be making wiley happy, after all these years of work and struggle.

But yeah, the songs amazing. And not such a sell-out as people claim. It's still pretty odd-just those four notes over and over and that incredibly simplistic beat. And i think in terms of style, it's pretty much a one off. The other stuff on the myspace is like the standard wiley riddims-weird, raw, clean-cut chaos. And it's all great stuff too. He's on a new high lately, you can hear the optimism in his voice, and i really really wish him well.

up to the light, sun rays pass straight through

the sun is shining beautifully and i've flung open all my windows and put fear of music on, letting the clean, thin sounds breeze in and out of my room.

favourite thing heard at party last night:

"fucking luxembourg, sends me west. its no fucking country to me. fucking luxembourg, its just a city and some pissing fields. its barely even a fucking princi-fucking-pality."

beeper

i bloody love that 'beeper' song by sinden but hate the version with the girl mc. the thing i loved about the original was its repetition, just that rolling bassline groove endlessly swiping around the room. but with the mcing on it, its almost turned into a typical verse-chorus-verse pop song, which sort of ruins it as thats not a structure that fits club songs that well. its a shame cos its a pretty fit song that easily makes what i call my 'ultimate party good time baby love playlist'*. which i may soon type up.





*i've never really called it that before

burial

james recommended 'untrue' by burial a while ago and, cuz i respect the bruv, i gave it a listen and 'liked it'. today its genius, which everyone has tried to get across to me, hit me and, as talking heads put it, nothing is better than that.

its place is clearly in the early morning-sun rising, post-club, glasses of water, tired eyes, ears ringing, broken memories of the night you've had. everything is muffled, the music a darkness from which ghostly faces lurch out then fade back into. everything is fractured and distant here, you're alone on a flat, minimal plain. fragments of rave music wheeze out from its remains, beats skitter across the landscape, clouds of bass swarm overhead, vocals try to talk to you but they're unclear, uncertain and hard to decipher.

its brilliant and i need to hear it after a night out, lying in bed in total darkness as it rocks me to sleep.



also, new template for this blog. i like it a lot more than my old one that had that pointless random number in the top left corner. i really like the whole minimalist, simple circle thing you see these days on everything from album covers to cook books to wallpaper. the backround on my phone is one of circles shifting from purple to white and back again and it, rather pathetically, genuinely makes me happy.

and if anyone's interested the subtitle-'every day i wake up'-is a jay-z lyric. i'm very fond of double meanings in books and music, and that's one of my favourites.

also watched stephen hawking master of the universe today. my reaction to astrophysics is always one initially of awe but then, as the scale of what they are talking about becomes clear, sadness. what gets me is the university folk they have on there, all so clever, so brilliant. it dawns on me that i will soon be at university, in the english and history departments, reading books on trivialities whilst they across the corridor concern themselves with questions that all religion, art and science has tried to answer for thousands of years. the statistics given are just so incredible that in the face of them nothing else seems to matter. when they explain how small our planet is relative to the universe, all i can think about is how little a ramones album is relative to the universe, and how it would never have affected it if it didnt exist. what i initially found inspiring i soon find depressingly belittling.

it makes me feel all the more inadequate because the art i love the most is art concerned with trivial things: alan bennett plays where biscuits are symbolic, the fall writing about trucks, talking heads songs about paper. if i listened to the epic pomp of iron maiden perhaps i wouldnt feel so bad.

i think everyone in this increasingly secular world, where there are products to save you the bother of cooking rice, is constantly worried about the risk of wasting their life. and stuff like this always makes me feel that i am wasting my life, that anything i ever do will not be as important or significant as the ultimate findings of these experiments into the start of the universe. i find it difficult to believe that a book on the literary traditions of paradise lost (and there are so many) counts for anything next to this. but then as the dazzle of the figures fades, or rather i once again forget just what exactly they mean, i am back in the real world, and in need of the art i cling to in order to understand it. and it occurs to me how much more real this is to me than anything i saw on the program. the professors on the program by comparison seem lofty and even pretentious. my thoughts reverse and its their lives that seem to be a waste of time in the face of such greatness of expression. and thus, music and writing once again restore me to balanced levels. my amazement at the physicists never truly goes away but it is now equalled by my amazement at the music i have and the people i know and the the things i read. music is nothing, but theres something consoling about that. it's carefree and it doesnt matter and thats a beautiful thing. the physics is amazing and important but no one will ever properly understand it-its not stuff our minds can ever truly visualise. our bodies and minds have evolved for simpler things-community, speech, relationships-and those are the things i find myself most comfortable learning about. i disagree with oscar wilde; we shouldnt be looking at the stars, we should be looking in the gutter. innit.

new raconteurs album described as 'dylan-meets-stones' and i couldn't be less interested.

i dont like it when people scream 'marry me!' when someone does something quite well.

ok i've calmed down now and i admit i was probably too passionate in my hatred of the last post. i'm ill and fragile and it was just such a bad song that it got me really annoyed. also i'd just gone totally crazy on pop/r&b cds and so was probably a little biased against the indie scene, which to my discredit i am in general. i do of course love some indie-hot club, the young knives, arcade fire etc, but its the marc bolan/gang of four-esque stuff that really gets on my nerves.

also one thing i was worried about immediately after i published was that i seemed like i was raging against indie fans, which i totally wasnt. its the musicians i despise, not the fans. i'm really against this view that people who listen to shit music are shit people and so i just wanna make it clear that thats not what i meant.

but still, clocks are awful and i stand by my comment that music like that is some of the worst made yet.

anyway, i got a REALLY good 'house megamix' from that shit book shop, the works, yesterday for 20p!!!!!!!! it features one song in particular that i love, which i'll talk about later when i've found it on the internet so you too can witness it.

on the subject of dance-dance music, loving this song a lot at the moment. its hectic and crazy, yet with a really uplifting sound to it, and a pulse that you want to go on forever-everything that makes a club song great. i have yet to hear it in a club or at a party, but i bet it'd be great, one of those songs that gets strangers nearby to put their arms around you, and they're the best. its just that kate bush sample, so messed up, it sounds like shes gasping out her last words, in a good way.

incidentally 'wuthering heights' by kate bush is getting a lot of plays from me lately. no honestly.

also getting a lot of attention recently:

'after laughter comes tears' by wendy rene
'speakerphone' by kylie
'slow' by kylie
'i see a darkness' (will oldham cover) by johnny cash and indeed most of the album that songs from
'SOS' by abba
'beware of the birds' by justin martin
'the beach party' by hot chip
'detroit' and 'let me think about it' by fedde (taking it back, kids, alllll the way back to 2006)
'destination unknown' by alex gaudino (as above, revisiting these house tracks after james played them at a party and i just thought 'yes, this was good, this makes sense all over again')



did you see those photos of prince charles visiting bob marleys house in jamaica and playing the bongos? why does he do these things? who is he trying to impress?

"the conventional is now the experimental"

thinking about pop music today, i realised something. theres been a shift, somewhere in the last ten years, where pop music is now a more genuine form of human expression than rock music is. rock bands are all so obviously designed and fake nowadays (kooks, muse, fratellis etc), all singing about what they hope the kids will like, whilst a lot of the pop groups of the moment, like girls aloud or you could even say britney, are talking about their own lives ('piece of me' by britney is amazing by the way, i stand by a lot of the things shes done recently-i thought the head shaving incident was an amazing statement-and i love that track a lot). and girls aloud singing about getting your frock on and getting pissed with the girls on a weekend. pop music's so direct, so melodic and accessible in contrast to the directionless, boring and oh-so-often patronising rock music that slathers around at the moment.

i was just thinking about this when, bang, as if from nowhere, this came on the telly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQViQPs-Np4

it sums up everything i want to say about how shit rock bands are at the moment. this music does literally nothing for me. there is music that i dont particularly like but i can still go 'yeah, i get it, just not my thing right now, still good though' eg drum n bass, david bowie, justin timberlake, amongst others. but this music i see nothing in. it goes straight through me and yet it drives me crazy. this track manages to contain all the things that i hate about it: the dull, uninspired guitar work treading the tired old rock band format; the completely meaningless, unimportant lyrics; that fucking top hat being the one gimmick that is needed so they are vaguely identifiable from the fratellis (but doesnt the fratellis guy also wear a top hat); the mild, shallow interest in 'vintage' things that goes no further than saying "i'm into vintage"; the same old boring 'man on the street' style of singing; the chorus about some girl who was a bit upsetting at one point in his life, the generally cynical lack of effort and they confuse punkish honesty and free-spiritedness with casual laziness and a lack of interest.

i hate it, i hate it so much. i dont like to get angry about things but this honestly is, in my opinion, some of the worst art that has ever been made and it upsets me that people are saying 'yes, this is enough for me to be happy with'

and when these fucks talk about music, they always say stuff like "well we've always loved the kinks" in the same joyless, uninspired way. god i really hate these idiots...sorry for going on.

it's amusing and great that we've got to a stage where commercial, processed-beats ridden pop music now has considerably more soul and pulse-raising melodies than music made by a garage rock band.

when did music lose its meaning? there is nothing inspiring about this shit. even the video is completely awful, a mish-mash of senseless sketches that mean nothing, to no one. i know that everyone my age hates nirvana and thats fine but i still reckon kurt was the last person who knew what the fuck to do with a guitar. no one since kurt cobain has had any real idea of their own about how to approach the tired old horse of rock. in a way this was because nirvana were all about how old and constricting rock music had become. when kurt would give up on songs live and just take the piss, they were my favourite bits, cos he was breaking out of the mould and leaving it all behind. incidentally nirvana are the only grunge band i've ever really liked, the rest of it is all either pretentious noise (mudhoney) or scuzzy misery-rawk (pearl jam), so i'm just talking about nirvana, not grunge, which was on the whole pretty negative miserable music.

when did musicians stop caring about the constant pressure to keep the quality up?
when did people start ripping off post-punk and why?
when did the smiles and laughs on musicians faces turn into smirks?
when did irony become acceptable in not only fashion but also music?
when did 'trash fashion' become acceptable?

music is so beautiful. more than any other form of art, it is a way of directly connecting two souls, instantaneously. when someone sings to you right, you understand everything about them, you're best friends for a minute. it makes you realise the inherent beauty in the world around you. people put music and their favourite songs in the most important parts of their lives-their weddings, funerals, sexual intercourse, even suicides are all done to music. it matters to people more than anything else. it's played in lifts and shopping centres because it makes the people there feel better. it is a current that runs under society. doesnt it say something about humans that 99% of our songs are about love (or lack thereof)? it's the only thing in the world other than a person that can wrap itself around you. Music's amazing, it's my favourite thing. i have 'wasted' my life and failed many exams that i shouldn't have failed because of my listening to music constantly and i just get honestly upset by mediocrity like this. it just pisses on everything that i love and hold dear and i want it to die.

today i overheard someone say,

"i only read mills & boon. if its not mills & boon i'm not interested."

can you imagine actually living such a life?

every foals song, the same.

also, just now i got an email with the subject line 'New in hip-hop: Barry White'

i went to a keele open day recently and was naturally told that the student radio system was 'amazing' and had won awards. i was expecting something totally appalling but have just started listening to it and it actually is amazing. i'm pretty sure that i must have just caught it at the exact moment when its most perfect for me. this show that i'm listenign to now, broadcast thursdays 22:00 to 00;00, has so far played some un-named microhouse (its frustrating at first, but theres also something kinda exhilarating about hearing a great song on the radio and it then slipping away from you forever, makes you appreciate it all the more), some burial and autechre well as some hip-hop and a lovely r&b track with someone whispiering 'you are my only flaw'.

i'm pretty satisfied, its been an amazing playlist so far. its kinda weird cos its a playlist that seems to be of the kinda '3am post-club' type where you jsut want things to be soft, but its on at 10pm, i guess cos thats the latest this place broadcasts. lol. if you wanna check it out (though i have little doubt that at all other times it plays the feeling and adele/duffy over and over again) then the link is http://www.kuberadio.com

WHEN I SAY 'B.I' Y'ALL SAY 'G'
WHEN I SAY 'R.I' Y'ALL SAY 'P'

an urgent appeal

i need to find this r&b song. it was pretty high in the charts about a year ago, it was played on the hits a lot, and it was based around this crazy, all over the place clarinet sample witha woman singing over it. i really really want this song but cant think of any way to find it. does anyone know what i'm talking about?

i remember this cos i finally found out that the song i keep hearing and wanting on classic fm when i'm in oxfam is this. it's always a great moment when you finally get hold of a song, and i'd been hearing this for weeks as the radio is always on classic fm in oxfam. i dont really mind this, but i hate the way the emphasis is always on how you should 'relax'. i dont really understand this view people have of classical music where its always 'relaxing'. it can be the most rousing and inspiring of music, and its heartbreaking to have a station like classic fm where everything has to be smoothe and lovely. i hate being told to 'relax' at the best of times, but especially when i'm being told to 'relax' with music.

there are things i like about classic fm, though. i love it when kids ring in with requests, as they are invariably terribly smart kids who are learning the piano or something and so know exactly what they want and request precise, obscure pieces unlike most of the adults who request 'theme from lord of the rings' over and over again.

on the subject of classic fm, today i swear i heard some elderly woman phone in for a request and say 'my name is problem'. now, whether or not she was intentionally quoting wiley we'll probably never know, but nevertheless: cool.

"we are the fall, from the depths of your monstrosity"

can you imagine what a wonderful place to live in the world would be if mark e smith narrated those m&s food adverts?

hands from the distant past

This morning in manchester, i finally visit the church of the holy name of jesus on oxford road, which i'd heard was spectacular and indeed was, even with unfortunate renovation work going on. The long line of students queuing for confession after a friday night was an amusing sight.]

Anyway the only reason i mention this is because in the church as in most churches there is of course a war memorial. Feeling my sense of duty to 'pay my respects', i head over and try to contemplate the nature of their ultimate sacrifice and all that stuff. Trouble is i've never really been able to do this. At moments such as this, and also during two minute silences etc, i've always found it very hard to focus. It's not due to an easily distracted mind or a lack of appreciation on my part, I just find it very difficult to think about things such as the wars. I have no experiences that could lead me to understand the times they went through, its just a huge, dark chasm of imcomprehensible sacrifice to me.

The way war memorials are never helps either. If it was a statue, or a painting, or a poem, i'd be able to get inspired. But the fact that its just a list of names, faceless and empty, means I have nothing to link me to the past. ANYWAY, just as I was thinking this and getting annoyed at myself for being so shit i scan down the names and see my own name. Shit scarey, and instantly locked me into the reality that of course as an 18 year old boy, i probably would have been drafted and sent off back then-it would have been me. An incredibly surreal moment, that shook me a fair bit and got me thinking about what it must have been like-at last.

It must be hard being a donkey, or a cow, and having a fundamentally miserable face all the time despite being a perfectly happy and contented animal.

That's literally all I have to say right now. Sad, isn't it?