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