Sunday 16 December 2007

8.23

So I'm musing on the best release this year and I narrow it down to a toss up between the Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam, a strange avant garde pop/electronic hybrid (with some of the best screaming I've heard this side of Headbutt) and Jeffrey Lewis's 12 Crass Songs, a folked-up set of those early 1980s anarcho-punksters, Crass, when a friend calls round and lends me Jeffrey Lewis' back catalogue. So they are now ripped and awaiting scrutiny on my iPod this week and I decide to search for some Jeffrey Lewis stuff on YouTube and I stumble across this - an anti-folk masterpiece telling of the history of New York punk rock by the man himself. Well worth 8.23 minutes of anyones time!

Friday 7 December 2007

This is what a year sounds like

Once again it's been a poor year for hip hop but other than that there's been some great music happening. This list has been played to death on the Dubdog iPod while pounding the route to the day job, in the kitchen while cooking and washing up, blasting out of the house and car stereo and gracing the G5 while busy kerning.

A Silver Mt Zion - Horses In The Sky +
Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Amon Tobin - Foley Room
Arcade Fire – EP, Funeral, Neon Bible
Beirut - Beirut
Big Youth - Dreadlocks Dread
Bjork - Volta
Blondie - Best of
Box of Dub – Dubstep and Future Dub
The Broken Family Band – Balls, Hello Love
Buzzcocks - Product
The Chemical Brothers - We Are The Night
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip – Thou Shalt Always Kill ep
Bluegrass - Compilation
David Bowie - Lodger
Digitalism - Idealism
Edwyn Collins - Home Again
Geoff Berner - Whisky Rabbi
The Good The Bad And The Queen - The Good The Bad And The Queen
Gorillaz - D-Sides
Grinderman - Grinderman
Half Man Half Biscuit - This Leaden Pall
I Roy - Musical Shark Attack
The Jam - The Gift
Jeffery Lewis - 12 Crass Songs
Johnny Cash - The Legendary Sun Recordings
King Creosote - Kc Rules OK
The Kinks - Something Else, The Village Green Preservation Society
LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
Leadbelly - The Definitive
Lou Reed - Berlin
M.I.A - Kala
Magazine - Real Life
Malcolm Middleton - A Brighter Beat
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Richard Hawley - Lady's Bridge
Robert Johnson - The Complete Recordings
Robert Wyatt - Comicopera
Seasick Steve - Dog House Music
The Strange Death Of Liberal England – Forward March!
Tunng - Good Arrows
Ulan Bator - Compilation
UNKLE - War Stories
Well Deep - Ten Years of Big Dada
The White Stripes - Icky Thump

Thursday 6 December 2007

Phishing bleeped

I was phished last month. Bastards. They managed to whip £50 out of my account before the Co-op noticed and cancelled my card. I only noticed when I had my card rejected ordering some train tickets online and I then checked my bank account. Luckily, my card was stopped before INDIRECT TELE SERV also tried to take a grand out of my account, that'll teach me to click on a link in an email. Anyway, the point of this entry is not to bore with tales of my financial troubles but more about the Co-op's complete lack of knowledge of electronic music. On phoning my bank after checking my account, and agreeing money had been stolen, my customer service operator asked if, other than the unknown payment to INDIRECT TELE SERV, whether Warp Records was a genuine company! (I'm a fairly regular customer of Bleep, Warp's download store). Fine I thought, this guy's not into Big Dada releases, fair enough. But then when he put me through to their fraud department they asked me exactly the same question. Then, today, I got a form to fill in from the Co-op and again, it asked me if money going out of my account to Warp Records was a genuine purchase. I wouldn't mind but the Co-op are based in Manchester, a stones throw across the Peak District from Sheffield, for Cabaret Voltaire's sake!