It’s officially the beginning of Spring and the clocks are going forward. Losing an hour of your life to the ether might seem like a bad thing, but when you consider how that time might have been spent - flicking through Freeview while eating crisps, probably - it isn’t such a loss.
To celebrate the end of March and the start of lighter days we are announcing our...
...wait for it...
TOP SEVEN ALBUMS OF JANUARY - APRIL (ALSO KNOWN AS WINTER) 2008
Hurrah!
1. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark 2. Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair 3. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular 4. Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree 5. Laura Marling - Alas, I Cannot Swim 6. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours 7. Girl Talk - Night Ripper
There are probably some others too to be honest (like The Whip, for example - ‘last minute Ed.’). Nevertheless, all the albums on this list (with the possible exception of number seven) are well worth some of your pounds. If you can’t be bothered with ‘artists’ and ‘albums’ any more, the best compilation of 2008 so far is Kitsuné 5.
:: Long Blondes ‘newies’ :: Crystal Castles ‘faves’ :: MIA ‘covers’ :: Cribs ‘remixes’ :: etc etc etc
As ever, it’s all very good and yours for the princely some of no pence. What more could you ask for? Maybe that the mix be introduced by Steve Lamacq - in which case - BINGO.
Get on it, as literally no one has said for the last ten years.
The original video for Toca’s Miracle by Fragma was a prime example of early-noughties context-free flesh flashing. It wasn’t exactly gratuitous, but it did manage to tie footage of generously-bosomed ladies running around in short skirts kicking balls at each other to a song whose lyrics bear absolutely no relation to indoor sports, five-a-side or otherwise.
Let’s remind ourselves of it.
Harmless enough, was it not?
Fast forward eight years and someone has done a (rubbish) remix of the track, attached to which is a frighteningly poor promo. In it a woman is seen, clothed, mouthing the words of the song. Refreshing that they sourced a wardrobe budget and didn’t just go down the route of getting a load of Nuts girls with their tits out, you might think.
HOWEVER!
Seconds later, all the lady’s clothes have fallen off and she’s shown dancing for the pleasure of a grinning suitor - who looks not entirely unlike a rapist - presumably because THIS IS WHAT WOMEN DO, or something. It’s a depressing concept, and the latest in a growing line of clips featuring utterly inexplicable arse-baring. Clearly, a lack of imagination is afoot.
The good news is that the new Panic At The Disco album is quite good. The even better news is that they’ve kept their ludicrously lengthy song titles. Here are some favourites:
:: ‘That Green Gentleman’ (Things Have Changed) :: ‘Form A Mountain In The Middle Of The Cabins’ :: ‘The Piano Knows Something I Don’t Know’
Nothing there to quite rival ‘London Beckoned Songs About Money Written By Machines’, which is probably why the band have shored up the tracklist with a pun:
:: ‘Folkin’ Around’
HURRAH!
The bad news about Pretty Odd is that, owing to the mellower new ELO-meets-The Beatles sound, songs are now less likely to dip into random techno interludes. In fact, there isn’t a single one on the entire album.
Here is the video for ‘Young Love’ by Mystery Jets. It is not often we feature indie music for cardigan-wearers on this blog but we will make an exception here for two reasons.
1) the video is very good 2) it features Laura Marling.
FYI Laura Marling is, despite being essentially a folk musician, entirely amazing.
Many thanks to DJ and friend of the blog Mat Payne, who sent us this not-at-all-Babelfished translation of the lyrics to ‘Je Veux Te Voir’ by Yelle. We’re particularly fond of the line “you are naked under your apron”.
Cuizinier with your little sex surrounded by red curls I can’t believe you can think that you are wanted I can’t understand it even in the dark, even if you keep your PJs tight Even if you guard your bathrobe wich looks like an old T-shirt Keep your shirt on, it’ll limit the dammage, asshole
I want to see you In a porno film In action with your cock Shaped like a potatoe or a fry To find out About your anatomy About your cousin Teki And your fetish gear
Cuizi, what is Your favourite position? Your Olympic performances But you do nothing orgasmic You are naked Under your apron Ready to draw your sword But tough luck
You dream of a neon Hummer Designed by Akroe But you have no license You always take the metro
Superstar for a night, your life’ll return to normal No need for sunglasses to hide yourself, nobody recognises you anyway Your green card is waiting for you This is not lip service I’ve managed to make you One with my scanner Entrance is free tonight It’s the only way to make us come Hey girls you're going out? Yeah, we’re going to chippendales We had not planned to spend the night with you jokers We want to see pecs, guys hung like bulls
Your posters of Lil’ Jon cover those of Magic Johnson You’re way to skinny to slam dunk
Cuiziner, it’s you who I want to see Who I want to see tonight Being ridiculed by a girl who raps better than you My 10 fingers are not enough not enough to count all of them in the room All these girls with my hairdo who know what you’re worth naked
Lately we’ve been going pretty mental about Leeds-based purveyors of shiny futurepop Heads We Dance, a band who seem destined for glitterball greatness. But what do we know about them?
:: They have been remixed by Frankmusic :: They take their name from a Kate Bush Lyric :: They are all fairly attractive
In other words, not much, really. We spoke to them recently in an effort to find out more and the following words represent what was said during that conversation.
Hello Heads We Dance. Please tell the viewers how you got together. It was all Pete’s doing. Having decided that he wanted to form a band, he realised that he’d need some people to be in the band with him. So he built Tom from a mixture of human and mechanical parts. Then he built Yoni and Becky and - voila - Heads We Dance were made.
Dr. Frankenstein would be proud. How would you best describe your music? Someone once called it custom-chromed aerodynamic pop, which seems to fit the bill.
If you walked in on Trevor Horn and Timbaland having a fight, whose side would you take and what would you do to make sure your man won? We'd wait until they had beaten each other to a bloody pulp, and when they were both weak like newborn kittens we'd capture them and lock them in our basement. They are both our production heroes so we'd make them give us tips on how to improve our drum sound in exchange for scraps of food.
Finish this sentence: “Head We Dance, Tails We…” ...form a focus group to discuss the feelings of envy we harbour towards everyone who got heads.
If people could hear only one Heads We Dance song before deciding whether or not to like Heads We Dance, which Heads We Dance song would it be? 'You Are Never Alone With Model 21'. Not just a great pop song but a great pop song with a key-tar solo! It's up on our Myspace.
You literally cannot beat a bit of key-tar. Have you ever been inside a castle? Our studio is actually inside the castle where Mary Queen of Scots was briefly held as a prisoner before she was later moved to the Tower of London.
Very ‘historic’. What colour is Friday? Black and Gold. Because Friday stole our colour scheme.
Thank you very much Heads We Dance!
Heads We Dance play at Keys Money Lipstick, tonight (21st), Star and Garter, behind Picadilly train station, £5/£4 flyer.
Exceptional clubbing blog Northern Nights has alerted us to the existence of a new MIA-featuring track coming out of Angola. (FYI Angola is not a type of wool used to make jumpers but actually a country in Africa).
The track in question is by Buraka Som Sisteme and features not only everyone’s favourite politicised rapper but also DJ Znobia, Saborosa and Puta Prata in a sexy ‘n’ sinister racket that is the most threatening-sounding thing you’ll dance to this month.
We failed our GCSE French oral examination because we told our teacher that we lived in a house with some milk and cheese, and that we’d bought our parents from the “super marshy”.
So the lyrics to ‘Je Veux Te Voir’ by Yelle are a complete mystery to us.
Despite the breakdown in cross-lingual comms, we know a slammin’ hipster banger when we hear one. This is one:
As you may know, one of the entries in this year’s Eurovision: Look, Just Fucking Pick One competition was ’It’s You’ by The Revelations. It was good, in a 60s girlgroup sort of way, but sadly it did not win - that bin man off X Factor was ‘given the nod’ instead.
This is probably because - as the chorus of their song suggests - The Revelations were too busy thinking about you (you‘re all they think about everyday, see) to focus on winning the contest.
Here are five things The Revelations might want to think about instead of you.
1) The other vowels - a, e, i and o. (SORRY).
2) Global Warming. When out shopping, the band’s Louise Masters often requests that her groceries are ‘double bagged’, a practice which is killing not only dolphins and fish but also the planet as a whole.
3) ‘Puppet Chancellor’ Alistair Darling’s first budget. The Revelations are well-known in their hometown for cruising around in a gas-guzzling 4x4, making them taxation losers.
4) The Pipettes. There are lessons to be learned here.
5) Places to store their old clocks. The Revelations own the second largest collection of antique timepieces in the northern hemisphere, ranging from pocket watches to grandfather clocks. “Knowing where to put them is a headache”, admits Annika.
The sun came out this morning, which must mean that summer is on the way.
Or something.
Anyway, even if the above statement is complete bollocks (and it is), here are some songs we’ve been listening to that make it feel a little bit truer nonetheless.
Natty - Cold Town This acoustic guitar-flecked reggaepop number sounds a bit like Remi Nicole but with far less awkward social commentary. Despite this, the track reeks of factor 40 and is bound to go down well on those days when our nearest star shows its hot yellow face. Sunshine rating: FOUR SUNS (OUT OF FIVE).
Santogold - LES Artistes (XXXchange remix) The Spankrock man’s reswizzle of Santogold’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs-tinged ditty injects things with a distinct MIA flavour, upping the temperature by 400 degrees and bringing to mind lazy days spent guzzling warm beer and cold burgers at hazy patio parties. Sunshine rating: THREE SUNS.
Heads We Dance - Love In The Digital Age This summer fruit-flavoured banger, brought to us by new Leeds band Heads We Dance, marries classic eighties vocals to a brilliantly sunkissed electro backing that sounds like spending an afternoon dancing to Daft Punk’s ‘Homework’. On a beach. Sunshine rating: FIVE SUNS.
We like songs as much as the next listener but there is no denying that they tend to go on a bit. Many are the times we’ve put an MP3 on only to get bored and replace it moments later with another. This is why we should never be allowed to DJ.
Because long songs are shit and rubbish, indie label Filthy Little Angels are putting together a double 7” made up entirely of one-minute tracks by 16 different acts, including one by The Star Fighter Pilot, aka Martin Bryant.
His contribution, ‘Stalk Tonight’, is a brooding rant based on a twitchy electro backing and creepy Daft Punk-esque double-tracked vocals. As far as songs about following women around go, it is up there with Tom Jones’ ‘Delilah’ in the massively disturbing stakes.
It also features two choruses and a siren. You can hear it here.
In other short song news, The Ting Tings recently took the unusual step of contributing to an NME covers CD with a song that is a) not a cover and b) 46 seconds long. Those crazy Ting Tings, what will they do next?
As you probably know there have been about 3, 461 pitchbend-tastic funky house tracks released during the past eighteen months, something for which the blame lies squarely with Bodyrox and Feat. Luciana.
The latest effort, Wiley’s ’Wearing My Rolex’, sees the former Roll Deep man ‘getting in on the act’ in a spectacularly Cheddar-laden fashion, with a slinky synth backing and vocals about drinking, dancing and letting strangers wear your watch (??!)
Basically it’s a massive club banger and radio and telly are ‘on board’ so you can expect it to be huge. Have a little listen here. (Bring a Blue WKD.)
Sadly, this will be my last column for the fine blogular establishment we’ve come to know and love as hip young gunslinger. I’m being shipped out in favour of a new reminscifeature which is starting soon. It doesn’t bother me though, because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed telling you all about my favourite old records, and anyway, there are new Maximo Park albums to get on with and write!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The last song I intend to tell you about is ‘Forgive’ by Burial. It seems fitting, because listening to this stunning piece of audio music always makes me reflect about endings and sad partings and that bit in Doctor Who when Rose was on the beach and David Tennant wanted to say he loved her but she disappeared and he didn’t have a chance.
You may not know this, but ‘Forgive’ is actually the result of Mr. Burial applying a load of filters to the track ‘Girls’ by Death In Vegas, which is the wishy-washy one they always use to advertise Wales or Ireland or whatever.
The extra studio fuckery gives things a far more harrowing reading, and makes you think less of Dervla Kirwan and more about getting the nightbus home in the pouring rain, pilled off your bonce and full of warm feelings for the pisshead who keeps falling off his chair.
I would heartily recommend you seek out ‘Forgive’ (via legal means, musiclovers!!!!!!) and play it repeatedly until your heart and brain both melt. Then go out and buy a Maximo Park album, and see the similar levels of sonic bravery we bring to the industry.
Their album ‘dropped’ this week. You’ll be pleased to know that it’s a deliciously rich melting pot of disco caramel, comprising the entire history of dance music in a 45-minute set recalling the best nights New York, Manchester and Berlin ever had.
Which is certainly not something you can say about the average release.
Mixing disco, house, pop and other, the album lilts silkily between soul-restoring floorfillers and reflective electro laments, taking care to ensure both are as life-affirming as each other.
Basically, it is brilliant.
In other news, Hercules and Love Affair recently remixed Goldfrapp’s ‘A&E’ single, giving it a dirty bass ‘n’ bells treatment full of doom-laden drums and huge great stabs of synth that crash into the track like waves hitting a storm-torn seafront. It, too, is more than worthy of your aural consideration.
That Mat Payne’s been at it again, this time mixing it up for the NLLR Mixtape Project.
NLLR - No Love Lost Records - is a label founded by Lee Norman Williams. The eponymous mixtape project was launched last November as a celebratory sideline, embracing mixes and mixers from all spectrums of the dance music world.
Mat’s mix is the 28th in the series, and is available through his Facebook group, which not only features pretty pictures and free mixes, but also an excellently-written blurb.
Further details of the NLLR Mixtape Project can be found here.
This is the new video by Justice. Like their last one, it’s been put together by people who probably spent a lot of time around crayons when they were young.
As if hurried along by our recent plea, Hadouken! have got off their arses and announced details about their debut album. It’s out at the end of April and it’s called…
…‘Music For An Accelerated Culture’.
First impressions of which are a bit ‘FUCKING HELL NOT EVEN THE PRODIGY WOULD TITLE AN ALBUM THAT APPALLINGLY‘, but, y’know, it could be a grower.
In other news, the band have got a new song out soon. It’s called ‘Get Smashed Gate Crash’, a mournful, string-laced lament to the devastating effect global warming has on cows (the heat makes them run through gates, trees need to be cut down to make new gates, we all die etc). It signifies a deeper Hadouken! and is sure to win them new fans.
Not really. It is a song about getting wasted and having sex. Again.
The X Factor Tour juggernaut rolled into town at the weekend and we sent along a spy to give us full details of what shit went down. Rumours at street level were that Leona Lewis would be making a guest appearance on the night, but these turned out to be untrue. She was far too busy being a success to bother with bollocks like this.
The photos our man took are not only amazing (almost up there with our own in-house efforts) but also tell the story of the night in a sort of picture-based form. They are coming up, but first, here is the story of the night IN WORDS:
ON Futureproof: “Laughable. Embarrassing.”
ON Niki: “Really good singer and very funny. The crowd warmed to her.”
ON The Rubbish Auditionees: “The wheeling-out of that little Oriental woman is bordering on being exploitative now. I hope she’s got a lawyer.”
ON Rhydian: “He seemed to be in an otherworldly trance during his performance, like he had his mind on something else. Maybe he’s locked his cat out and just remembered. He did about four songs, including a sailor-suited rendition of Go West. Good singer but weird.”
ON Hope: “…”
ON Same Difference: “Sarah is unbelievably fit. They did that one with the beds and all the jumping on the beds and then people run across the stage and that. I wasn’t really listening, I was looking at Sarah. They are very touchy-feely for a brother and sister. There’s definitely something going on there…”
ON Leon: “Fucking shit but at least he didn‘t cry.”
Before the show, giant images of Kelly off Coronation Street were projected into the arena.
A happy crowd, but not one immune to being ripped off. “It was £3.95 for a cup of beer”, notes our reviewer, incandescent with overpriced hop-fuelled rage. “A CUP, mind - not even a bloody pint. I was basically sober.”
Clearly not that sober.
X Factor Tour, then: better if you leave before Leon‘s bit.
If you think Mother’s Day is a chore, think of Jesus. Think of the resentment Mary feels towards him, the illegitimate offspring of a non-consensual congress with God; think of the shame and inadequacy etched on Joseph’s face as his step-son arrives for tea. “Oh, you brought flowers again… Jesus Christ”
Think about the forced pleasantries over the dinner table, which culminate an hour later in Mary drunkenly snapping and being restrained by Joseph as she rants at Jesus about ‘bastard’ this and ‘duty’ that and how she never wanted him in the first place.
It’s rubbish being Jesus.
These are some of the songs we’ll be playing to our mum on Sunday in the hope of avoiding being branded a colossal fucking accident.
ABBA - Waterloo This is not exactly ABBA’s best song but it does reference Napoleon and have a short man in a hat urinating in the background of the single sleeve. Which is not the sort of thing you get with the average ‘Pigeon Detectives’ release.
Cockney Rebel - Come Up And See Me Did you know? The title of this song by bendy-voiced Steve Harley and co. also doubles as the most commonly-received text message by students from mothers nationwide.
Roxy Music - Love Is The Drug Our mum loves this one. She better not start about Bryan Ferry though or else it’s getting skipped straight off.
Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting This violence-based classic tells the story of a brutal street brawl against a backing of tight disco bass and eastern strings. If Quentin Tarantino had any bollocks he’d have used this for the Crazy 88 scene in Kill Bill Volume I.
Bachman Turner Overdrive - You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet Here’s something that you’re never gonna forget - your mum and dad HAD SEX to make you.
Anita Ward - Ring My Bell This Lameé-drenched disco monster sounds like a roller disco inside a massive helium balloon, which, if you think about it, would probably be the best thing that ever happened anywhere. Wonder what our mum would make of current glitterball flarepushers Hercules and Love Affair?
U2 - I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For Nobody’s perfect.
hip young gunslinger is a blog that bangs on and on about amazing music. Our strict 'NO SHIT OR BORING TUNES' policy means the genre-net is cast pretty wide, but generally, if you can fuck, fight or flail wildly across a dancefloor to it, we'll cover it.
Most of the time we're too lazy to upload MP3s but if we do and you're some sort of record company 'employee' type who wants rid, just give us a shout.
It’s officially the beginning of Spring and the clocks are going forward. Losing an hour of your life to the ether might seem like a bad thing, but when you consider how that time might have been spent - flicking through Freeview while eating crisps, probably - it isn’t such a loss.
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