Competition Time

Below is a picture of Sophie Ellis Bextor engaging in her favourite pastime, writhing around in confectionary (NB. Sophie usually favours a bath of Maltesers, but on this occasion she had to settle for a light sprinkling of Hundreds and Thousands).

Why is she doing this? To promote the value of childhood memories, of course. (?!?)

For your chance to win something completely brilliant, all you have to do is answer this question: How many Hundreds and Thousands is Sophie rolling around in? The person who guesses closest to the actual figure takes home the bonanza.



Answers via the usual means (ie. poorly-punctuated Facebook message).

GOOD LUCK.

Lookalike Of The Week

Peter Hook/Shadrach Dingle

Paging the Fashionistas!

Do you like these things?

:: Haircuts
:: Indoor scarf usage
:: Wearing your sunglasses not just at night but pretty much all the time
:: Preposterously brilliant electronic music

If you answered ‘Yes’ to all of the above, you might just be hip enough to delve into Kitsuné Maison’s latest fashionable outing - Compilation 5 - out next month. The album is rather brilliant, and marks a defiant return to the form shown by the mercurial Compilation 3 after the frankly-underwhelming Compilation 4.

It features, amongst others, MIA, Alan Braxe, The Teenagers, David E. Sugar, Late Of The Pier and - hello - Fischerspooner, in full-on mellowed out mode. If you can’t wait until February to buy the album you can download a minimix previewing all the tracks by visiting this page here. Hurrah.

Seven Day Soundtrack

All the good shit this week.

David Jordan - Sun Goes Down
David Jordan has been knocking about for a while now, although to be honest we’ve been fairly oblivious to it all. It has taken ‘Sun Goes Down’, a massively bonkers bit of baroque gypsy psychfolkpop, to bring him to our attention. The video is good because it features a popstar actually behaving like a popstar and - ladies - a topless chap on drums. Hurrah.

The Long Blondes - Century
If you have seen The Long Blondes’ choruses or know where they are, please contact the band IMMEDIATELY, as they desperately require their swift return.

Avenged Sevenfold - A Little Piece Of Heaven
Avenged Sevenfold are a band who make a type of music - metal - beloved of people with excesses of hair, piercings and tattoos. This, from their latest album, is a fairly ridiculous System Of A Down-style waltz/ballad/thrash/Godknowswhat that brings to mind scenes from Tim Burton’s Batman. As such it is amazing. Goes on a bit though.

Various Artists - Digital Penetration
A chance and welcome return to our disc drive for 2006’s Album Of The Year.

Lykke Li - Little Bit
With this sweet ‘n’ curious Scandipop love song (“for you I keep my legs apart”, bless), the young Swede dubbed as the new Robyn/Annie by everyone everywhere has ensured that we ‘Lykke’ her not a ‘Little Bit’, but actually quite a lot. Ahem. Sorry about that.

Lykke Li - Everybody But Me (Christoffer Remix)
This reminds us of something but we can’t think what. The plinky bit in the background definitely sounds like something else. Whatever, it’s a million kinds of amazing.

Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
Did you see Alexis on The Culture Show this week? Expect the mole-in-a-spaceage-poncho look to hit Topman in time for the onset of Spring. In the meantime listen to this beautiful little ditty, the title track from their upcoming album. It has to be said they did a bloody good job of hitting all the right notes considering they had no lights on.

Video Of The Week

Few people make better videos than Feist. There was that Bat For Lashes one with all the bicycles which was quite good, but it still would’ve been better with our Leslie at the focal point.

Given that, it’s no surprise that she's has pulled it out of the bag once again (by ‘it’, we mean ‘an amazing video‘. And by ‘pulled’, we mean ‘filmed‘. And by ‘out of the bag’, we mean ‘in a field by the looks of things‘).

The moral of the story? Feist has filmed an amazing video in a field.

You will also be pleased to know there are plenty of pyrotechnics. And by pyro… (that’s clearly enough of that).

Look out for the amazing punchy dancing around the 2.30 mark.



9/10. Bonus marks are awarded for the use of fireproof gloves and boots, to make sure Feist’s hands and feet don’t go on fire. Remember: safety first. Never return to a barrelful of lit fireworks.

Thriller Minute

‘Thriller‘, the biggest-selling album of all time, is twenty-five years old.

Other things that are twenty-five include:

:: The NES (like a Wii but not as good)
:: Return of the Jedi (like Attack of the Clones but not as good)
:: Fraggle Rock (like Lazytown but not as good)
:: Holly Valance (like a popstar but not as good)

Traditionally, 25th birthdays are celebrated with a weekend away, lots of drugs and, in the UK, a boozy telegram from Prince Harry.

Not so for ‘Thriller’, whose quarter-centenary is being marked in a unique and special way, befitting of such a staggering and culturally-important artefact.

They’ve roped in Fergie.

Yes, to celebrate the landmark, Michael Jackson’s people have dusted him down, wheeled him out, secured any loose bits and propped him up alongside several of today’s biggest stars, on various re-recorded ‘cuts’ from the album.

So, which other musical luminaries will be joining Fergie in commemorating twenty-five years of Jackson ‘n’ Jones’s masterpiece? Let’s have a little look, shall we?

:: will.i.am!
:: Akon!!
:: Curtis ‘Half A Dollar’ Jackson!!!

Truly we are blessed. Never have such visionaries of modern music, such obvious heirs to MJ’s throne of pop prolificacy, been available on one disc. Not since ‘R&B Yearbook 2007’, anyway.

There is also a Kanye West version of ‘Billie Jean’, notable for the audacity shown by its producer in remaking it as a Kanye West song, by Kanye West, for Kanye West and featuring Kanye West. Clearly, that’s how Quincy should have done it in the first place.

The album will be out sometime this year and bits of it are floating around YouTube as we speak. Go and have a listen, if only to witness the embarrassment of Stacy Fergie Ferg The Duchess Fergalicious Ferguson straining her non-too-supple vocal chords all over ‘Beat It’.

Fraud Monday

SPECIAL! REPORT!!
Clubland has found itself not so much ‘arms aloft’ as ‘up in arms’ recently, over claims that New Order’s Peter Hook has been playing pretend when it comes to his DJ sets.

Hook, a regular fixture in the Haç-been (credit to Gary Ryan for coining that gem) set - intent on stifling Manchester’s cultural development for their own monetary gain - apparently turns up to a gig, pockets his 4000 Euros, then whacks on a pre-mixed CD for the crowd to lap up.

If what Hook’s accusers are claiming is true, the CD is usually a Mixmag covermount.

Now we’re no DJs ourselves (we can barely work a tape deck), but in the clips we’ve seen, he does look something of a confused sod, stood there marching on the spot and arbitrarily hitting buttons behind the decks.

Let’s look at what others more qualified than us (ie. random YouTube users) have to say:

Snipes digtbk: “Good work if you can get it“.

Adds skunkisgood, more bluntly: “what a complete fucking cock lol”

Laughs djdjdjdjdjhaha: “mixed cd job wat a rip off doin a tiesto lol”

Bleats mathieu7777: “Respect people! This man is the WORLD'S MOST INFLUENTIAL BASS PLAYER of all time. He's aloud to do whatever he wants“.

Reasons b1rrell: “good tunes tho has to be said”

Is he DJing? Do we care? Probably not, on both counts. But next time you see a flyer that says PETER HOOK (NEW ORDER) and you hear the beep, think of the fun you could be having on Supermarket Sweep.

View all the ‘Hookgate’ evidence here.

I fly like paper, get high like planes

So, the video for Paper Planes is here, resplendent in all its gun-blasting, barrel-cocking, register-chinging glory. MIA even finds time to throw in some dancefloor-tastic gun fingers, which is not something you see on The Hits every day.

It starts with some paper planes (do you see what they did there?) flying towards Manhattan, and features MIA dancing about in some sort of sandwich van, waving cash around and then going to a little mini market-type place, possibly to stock up on supplies for her van.

Enjoy.



We’d say it was about a 7/10, but if you would quite like to sleep with MIA then you’re probably going to think it’s closer to a 9, ‘cos she’s in it loads.

Dark disco dancefloor drama

Listen up!

Macabre electropoppers and hyg faves Modernaire will be playing a gig in Manchester next month, supporting something called ‘Flamboyant Bella’ (which we thought was the title of a Mika b-side to be perfectly honest).

The gig is on February 11 at the intimate and up-a-lot-of-stairs Academy 3. Given that the band haven’t played these parts in ages, and might not again for a while yet, you would quite literally be stupid not to invest in tickets.

And now, for a nice picture of Modernaire:



Amazing.

The photo is by Vicki Churchill, FYI.

World's Number One Human improved by remixers

The bold and unexpected decision by Kanye West’s record company to stick out the Chris Martin-heavy ‘Homecoming’ as a single in the UK may not be such a loss, as the track it replaces (‘Flashing Lights’) is - a bit like the rest of Kanye’s ‘Graduation’ album - not as good as it should be.

HOWEVER.

What we will miss is a series of rather good remixes that had been ‘lined up’ for the ‘flipside’.

The Dan-O remix of ‘Flashing Lights’ attacks the track with scissors and sticky tape, dismantling and then reassembling it in a way that is, we are reliably informed, both ‘old skool’ and ‘analogue’. The Mano remix does similar things, but spoils it by morphing into a Craig David b-side after a promisingly ravetastic intro.

Pick of the bunch really must be the bonkers DJ Rashad (Juke Jams) remix, which adds healthy doses of both tempo and stupidity to proceedings, breathing life, fun and countless booty-shaking opportunities into the listless original.

You can listen to that remix here.

It is very good.

Please don't stop the music

What’s been getting us into a big dancey lather of late?

Rihanna - Don’t Stop The Music
Good Girl Gone Bad’s most dancefloor-friendly (watch out for an amyltastic backing fade-up after the one minute mark) moment is getting a single release, with a video that sees its star looking more the effortlessly-sexy superstar than ever before. Not sure it needs all that clapping though.

Hercules & Love Affair - Blind
Antony Hegarty (minus his Johnsons) provides guest vocals on an energetic bass ‘n’ strings workout, which sees H&LA dish up NYC-style disco that is more high camp than a tent and several wigwams atop the Empire State Building.

Taio Cruz - Come On Girl
The latest single from surprisingly-not-American Taio Cruz is a massive electro banger, with mile-high walls of synth, beats sharper than Stephen Fry on speed and a guest spot from Luciana, who does her usual thing but better over a few bars in the middle. Ravey.

Sebastien Tellier - Sexual Sportswear
Slinky Gallic goodness that is sexy and thrustworthy despite being more understated than a Lilliputian whispering the word ‘subtle‘. An album, produced by robot-headed knob twiddler Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, is out very soon. It is very good.

Neon Neon - I Told Her On Alderaan
Listen to this and think of a young Corey Feldman blasting down the street on a stickered-up Chopper, wind blowing through his adolescent hair and any worries a million miles away. Do this twice a day and you too will soon feel like Corey, only without the compulsion to waste your talent on a series of drug binges and poor career moves.

Goldfrapp - A&E
Alison may have ditched the hotpants for big old admirals’ hats (?!?) and stepped out of the glitterball‘s shimmer, but her crystalline voice remains intact on this sweeping, autumnal epic that is more ‘Felt Mountain’ than ‘Supernatural’. Welcome back and thanks for not going shit.

This woman is going to be huge

Here is the video for word-of-mouth marketing sensation Adele’s new song, ‘Chasing Pavements’. A beautifully-choreographed piece of floor rolling, if ever there was one.



FYI, ‘chasing pavements’ is what people do when they are drunk and try to run. Sensing an imminent fall, they decide, quite rationally, that the only thing to do is to speed up and somehow run ‘through’ the fall, giving the impression that they are chasing the pavement.

For The Record

The Eleven Best Albums Of 2007

1. Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future
2. Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
3. Girls Aloud - Tangled Up
4. MIA - Kala
5. Sophie Ellis Bextor - Trip The Light Fantastic
6. Feist - The Reminder
7. Dragonette - Galore
8. Robyn - Robyn
9. Jamie T - Panic Prevention
10. Rihanna - Good Girl Gone Bad
11. Britney Spears - Blackout

The Six Best Remixes Of 2007

1. Kate Nash - Foundations (Metronomy Remix)
2. MIA - Bird Flu (Crash Berlin Remix)
3. Remi Nicole - Go Mr Sunshine (Punks Jump Up Remix)
4. Mika - Love Today (Patrick Wolf Remix)
5. The Cribs - Men’s Needs (CSS Remix)
6. Klaxons - As Above So Below (Justice Remix)

Nine Amazing Songs (And One EP) By Ten New Bands In 2007

1. The Ting Tings - That’s Not My Name
2. Frankmusic - Confusion Girl
3. The Real Heat - Hearts Not Innit
4. Daggers - Money
5. Modernaire - Velvet Never Dries EP
6. The Clik Clik - My Dunks
7. Vampire Weekend - Mansard Roof
8. Elle S’appelle - Little Flame
9. To My Boy - Eliminate
10. Grace - Stand Still

Top Three Songs We Should Have Mentioned In The Singles Of The Year List

1. Klaxons - Golden Skans
2. Sugababes - About You Now
3. The Enemy - It’s Not OK


And that’s your lot.

The HYG Singles Of 2007

10) Unklemjam - What Am I Fighting For?
Sounding for all the world as if it had been beamed to this planet from the year 3000, and with a video costing upwards of four million pounds, you’d have expected this peerless robopop to have fared better in the charts, wouldn’t you? Yes you would.

9) Calvin Harris - Acceptable In The 80s
Doing significantly better saleswise was this 1980s/2080s crossover from Scottish producer (NOT popstar, as he kept reminding us) Calvin Harris. Bubbling away like musical Fizz Wiz, this smash soundtracked many a neon-clad night out.

8) Architecture In Helsinki - Heart It Races
Or, what happens when a bunch of Australians throw a microphone around a kitchen and ‘come up trumps‘. ‘Heart It Races’: part steel-drum symphony, part Muppet chorus whimsy; wholly unique, sunshine-specked fantasy.

7) Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
Not just one of this year’s best singles, but probably one of the century’s best by a solo female artist. Wino’s painful descent into personal hell was accompanied by this, a mournfully bleak soul epic so heartbreaking it sliced through even the most hardened of aortas like a cheesewire cello string.

6) Kate Nash - Foundations
After a wobbly (read: bloody awful) start to the year with ‘Caroline Is A Victim’, K-Na turned it all around by releasing the decade’s definitive break-up anthem. Critics scorned Kate’s mockney couplets (“bittah/fittah”), confusing ubiquity for a lack of class. The fact is, this song says more about the disintegration of a relationship than a million Dear Deirdres ever could.

5) MIA - Boyz
Punching out of speakers like a cross between a carefully-orchestrated Bollywood musical and a battle royale in a musical instrument shop, ‘Boyz’ cemented MIA’s status as the world’s most colourful, creative and cutting-edge solo star. Aided and abetted by co-producer Switch, Ms. Arulpragasam came up with the year’s most devastating dancefloor assault, and how we thanked her for it.

4) Dragonette - Take It Like A Man
‘Take It Like A Man’ - as with most Dragonette songs - starts out as a seductively sexy slow groove, with bass guitar and breathy vocals combining to set the tone. From there, the track quickly ascends into a playfully-teasing bridge, followed by - BANG - a massive eruption of melody that splashes great big explosions of chorus all over your ears. A musical orgasm if ever there was one, that this song didn’t peak at number one is a crime.

3) Groove Armada - Song For Mutya (Out Of Control)
Groove Armada struck gold with ’SFM (OOC)’, another production unafraid to embrace the power of the Giant Fucking Chorus. It was exactly the sort of huge-sounding, balls-out, ‘BLOODY WELL LOOK AT ME, WILL YOU?’ number that Mutya should have been releasing by the bucketload. Sadly she thought otherwise, and by the time the shockingly-underwhelming video came about, not many people cared. Sob.

2) Rihanna - Umbrella
What can be said about this tune that hasn’t already been said? Probably that it is rubbish, but since it is not rubbish, why anyone would say that is beyond us. ‘Umbrella’ was 2007’s ‘Crazy’, but better. The intro alone sent people into fits of teary-eyed glee. A timeless tribute to the beauty of friendship and everlasting love, it also birthed the year’s craziest dancefloor move: ladies whipping out their rain-based accessories for a mid-chorus twirl. Amazing.

1) Robyn - With Every Heartbeat
Great pop music moves you not only to the dancefloor but also deep within your soul. It makes you smile. It makes you cry. It makes you feel warm inside and afraid of nothing. It can break your heart, or save your life.

To do all of these things at the same time, as ‘With Every Heartbeat’ - a cathedral-sized masterpiece that sounds like nothing else on planet Earth - does, is something rarely ever seen. That Robyn and Kleerup managed it with such understated and heartfelt elegance only serves to make it even more special.

The HYG New Year Honours List

2007, believe it or not, wasn’t entirely terrible. In amongst the not-unfounded doom and gloom stood a few glimmers of hope - beacons shining hard against the slew of distinctly average boredom-inducers we faced on a daily basis.

These awards honour those beacons, all of whom continue to fight the good fight against mediocrity (by being mind-bogglingly amazing, or, in some cases, preposterously bad) and therefore deserve our thanks, recognition and sex.

Women Of The Year
The Real Heat. Foul-mouthed, filthy and fucking brilliant, sisters Suki, Shaka and Zaza impressed not only with their shit-hot tunes but also with effortless confidence, charisma, style and humour. Role models like these don’t come along too often.

Man Of The Year
Timbaland. His editing skills might leave a lot to be desired (‘Shock Value’ clocks in at four minutes longer than the audio book of the Bible) but his production abilities far outweigh a tendency to overdo things. This award celebrates Timbo’s two years atop the superproducer pile, a tenure that has birthed solid gold classics like SexyBack, Maneater, The Way I Are and countless other mini-masterpieces. Well done that man.

Band Of The Year
Klaxons. Brilliant album, fantastic live shows, perfect aesthetic: Klaxons are a band apart, on a quest to bring us their own unique vision of… well, we’re not quite sure, but whatever it is, it’s bloody exciting. Take note, denim-wearing nonentities of the indie variety.

Club Of The Year
Winner: Clique, Manchester
Honourable Mentions: Keys Money Lipstick, Get Girl. Kill Baddies. Save Planet., Contort Yourself, Sex With Robots (all Manchester).

Comeback Of The Year
Britney Spears. In ‘celebrity’ terms she never went away, but musically, ol’ Britters had become about as relevant as any of the 79461 news stories printed about her private life were. What better way to remedy this than by making the album of her career, drafting in a string of top producers to come up with storming nowpop bangers like ‘Toy Soldier’ and ‘Piece Of Me‘? None, obviously. Least of all child abduction.

Haircut(s) Of The Year
Foals. Full marks for effort, chaps.

Best Use Of An Umbrella In Pop
Winner: Britney Spears
Runner-up: Rihanna

Best Lyrical Dodge Of The Year
“I’ve been oversubscribed with relationships”
- Calvin Harris gets euphemistic about being a slut.

The Year’s Best Gigs
1. Klaxons
2. Human League
3. Hadouken!
4. The Long Blondes
5000000. The Thrills

The ABOUT FUCKING TIME Award For Chart Recognition
Robyn

Trend We’d Most Like To See The Back Of
HUGE SCARY FALSE EYELASHES (Sugababes, Girls Aloud). Arghh!

Least Called-for Revival
Baggy, as brought to us by Brummie bores The Twang.

Most Convincing Argument For The Closure Of The Record Industry
Winners: Scouting For Girls / Pigeon Detectives
Runners-up: The Twang

Lifetime Achievement For Services To Mediocrity
Razorlight

Best Pop Telly Of The Year
Winner: The Simon Cowell episode of Star Stories
Runner-up: The bit where you text in your name to the music channel and they show a load of sex positions at the bottom of screen that you can attempt LOLLOLOLOL!!!!!!! :S

Blog Of The Year
‘Your very own’ hip young gunslinger, of course.

Website Of The Year
Popjustice

Film Of The Year
TRANSFORMERS!!!!!!1!!

Month Of The Year
February

Date Of The Year
14th July

Food Of The Year
Wagamama’s armadillo-shaped rice thing (NB. not actual name).

How Did Lil’ Chris Do This Year?
Christopher ‘Christ’ Hardman started the year fresh in everyone’s minds as the cheeky young chap responsible for a brilliant (although no one thought so) album full of glistening powerpop nuggets. Then came silence.

A few months later, Hardman released the entirely listenable ‘Clothes Off’, only to see his single’s thunder stolen by some godawful American types, and it limp into the charts in the mid-70s. Crestfallen, Chris made a charming appearance on Celebrity Scissorhands, which saw various celebs having large blades grafted onto their arms, in the style of the Johnny Depp vehicle of similar name. Chris was last seen being interviewed on ‘Nuts TV’ :(

Mystic Vic Predicts…
Hadouken! to buckle under the pressure of being a bit different and release a rock album with some keyboards stapled on, having studied one too many Tom Morello ‘licks’.

Top Tips For 2008
Last year we plumped for Mark Ronson and Jamie T. Can’t win ‘em all.

This year, we are ‘getting behind’ The Ting Tings, who will undoubtedly take their blissful art pop on to bigger and better things (if ‘That’s Not My Name’ isn’t subject to a massive re-release at some point, we will… be wrong about that); Foals, who are obviously going to be huge this summer (even with a Hummer-less album) and Adele, but really we’re just copying everyone else with that one ‘cos we’ve only heard the one about pavements.

Anyway. Other things we would quite like to see go massive this year include: Daggers, The Clik Clik, The Tigerpicks, Modernaire, Elle S’appelle, The Real Heat, Dragonette (finally), Frankmusic, Rye Rye and our bank balance.