in love with these times, in spite of these times

2012-01-28T00:45:00.001Z

Azure Blue "Rule Of Thirds" (Matinée Recordings)

Around the turn of the century, there was a seam of wonderful indiepop coming from a smallish place called England, which our friends from Matinée Recordings mined for us by releasing fine records from Harper Lee, Sportique, the Windmills, the Would-be-Goods and others. Yet centres of gravity shift, as the tectonic plates beneath them grumble and crawl, and a decade or so on it is the ever-fertile pop breeding ground of Scandinavia which provides the label with some of its blue riband artistes. Following the achievements of Northern Portrait, Champagne Riot, Cats on Fire and - not too long ago, but too long ago, if you get me - Electric Pop Group, the latest ensemble to make their Matinée bow are Azure Blue (the new project of Tobias Isaksson, ex-of Irene and Laurel Music).

Appropriately enough, "Rule of Thirds" parcels Azure Blue's labours into nine sleek little songs. Grant McLennan cover "Fingers" is an astute choice of opener, immediately placing Azure Blue within a grown-up pop tradition, thus informing appreciation of the rest of the album at the same time as paying due tribute to the late G.W.'s easy way with a song. It's followed by "The Catcher In The Rye", which delivers on many counts (one of which is that you can scrawl it on a compilation tape tracklist straight after former Matinée signing Airport Girl's "Salinger Wrote"), but also that it sets the guitar-pop influences hinted at by "Fingers" alongside Tobias' obvious fetish for synthpop, with a result that will have you dancing up the skirting boards. Indeed, "The Catcher In The Rye" is the first of three standout should-be singles which, for our kroner, illuminate the album with its pearliest dew drops (drops) of palpable pop promise: the others are "Little Confusions", which pots a declaration of unswerving romance into less than three minutes, and the neat, poignant and tart "Two Hearts", an unerringly catchy marriage of synths and strings.

Over the album as a whole, Azure Blue switch to more contemplative musical moods too, and manage to flit between sounds as diverse as early OMD, Celestial and Orange Cake Mix, even channelling Albinoni for good measure on a couple of songs, while still finding time for a liberal use of samples to break up the flow a little. It's clear their devotion to synthpop is sincere, and on "Little Confusions" and "Dreamy Eyes" (which comes into its own during its final, instrumental flourish) there's even some Hook-high bass which brings back memories of 80s New Order or the Cure. And "Rule Of Thirds" ends in just the right way, too, with "Chesil Beach" affixing Harper Lee-like melancholy to those swirling synths as it searches, longingly but hopelessly, for an upbeat lyrical coda: instead of Keris looking out across the Channel in "William Blake", this is Tobias standing on the Dorset shingle, watching his memories float away on the English tide. There could be no better way to say goodnight, Irene.

2012-01-20T13:41:00.007Z

Hulaboy "Fuck You, We Love Us!" (Milk and Alcohol)

In a world which, mystifyingly, has concluded that neither Boyracer or Hula Hoop are in its pantheon of all-time greats it must come as no surprise that the blended version, Hulaboy (despite a stellar catalogue, including releases on both Harriet and 555) are also strangers to Grammies and platinum discs. Happily, this has not stopped Stewart Anderson and Eric Stoess (for it is they) from serving up superb vignettes of kitchen-sink melodrama over the years, with songs from recent records such as "When Owls Cry" and "The English Mindset" still setting our hearts on fire, even if not the harder-to-melt hearts of the Great Record-Buying Public. And much as the rather off-the-wall names of this EP and of its constituent tracks do their best to throw you off the scent, the good news for those of us that have previously succumbed to their charms is that "FYWLU!" sees Hulaboy as dark and as pretty, as lyrically intriguing and as moving as ever.

EP opener "Western Mark E. Smith" is typical: its story seems slight (this is a conversation about a conversation, a misunderstanding in a bar) but it's as true-to-life and engaging as any Anderson confessional, with a keyboard intrusion into the choruses which recalls the Boyracer of "Punch Up The Bracket", say. Next, "I Find Your Topsiders & Beard Amusing" again belies a seemingly random title by unfolding another touching, skittering lament while guitars gently meander in and out of the chorus, sprinkling a little indie magic here and there in much the way of Huon or the Wedding Present at their more thoughtful ("Saturnalia", say), with Eric's voice always threatening to break down a little, trying to salvage hope from a grey dawn.

The accelerator pedal hits the floor for the crashing "I'm Not From Louisville, I'm From LaGrange Motherfucker!", which could be a stunt double for any of the pacier songs on "Sunlight Is The Best Antiseptic", as Stewart launches into familiar tangles of hurt and miscommunication amid the rampant guitars. A little calm is restored when Eric re-emerges on vocals for another tune, "Oh Lord. CHUKKA!" (see what we mean about the song titles ?) which is, quite literally, a list of regrets - in case you hadn't clocked the Hulaboy ouevre by now - but its whispered candour and eye for an original line makes it as plaintive as anything else they've done. Oh, and secreted amongst the quartet of Hulaboy originals herein described is a fifth track proper, "Not An Orange Juice Cover": it is our solemn duty to confirm that it is, indeed, not an Orange Juice cover. It is a cover though, and of one of our all-time favourite 80s hit singles.

We sometimes wonder whether good "indie" as we used to know it exists at all today. Has the Man redefined it out of existence, or is it still 'out there', but just failing to register, to prick the senses in the way it used to in those days when a new 7" could seem crucial to your life ? But then you hear records like this, which are unmistakably "indie" in every sense of the term, and realise that there *are* still gems out there: it's just that they're hidden, perplexingly, almost beyond discovery. So it would almost spoil the thrill of the hunt were we simply to direct you here to download this, but we will, not least because any donation you choose to make will go to the best of causes.

2011-12-31T12:55:00.003Z

home

music is rotted one note, soiled despoiled and sullied by chancers and charlatans, played by grinning poseurs, curated by an uneasy alliance of sunday supplement bores, fickle fanboys and youtube spivs, consumed as an afterthought via supermarket queues, reviewed in thrown-away throwaway thirty word pieces. it aspires to be being played in kfc, or to soundtracking a supremely meaningless "aspirational" advert for some unnecessary consumable... an idiot joy showland that perfectly captures, and unendingly celebrates, the blandest excesses of capitalism rather than fighting them to the messy death. a smarmy guardian piece in the spring mocked sarah's manifesto to be part of "the great jigsaw of feminist and socialist revolution", no doubt in stark contrast with the nobler aspirations of a newspaper that backed the new-rightist lib dems, that lavished its 16 front pages and a whole supplement upon the year's ultimate frippery, that devotes its sports section to about five football clubs and lazily drapes its music pages with the usual broadsheet second-guessing of what its shallower readers might imagine is "cool" this week.

"fanzines, mixtapes, word of mouth and trading demos was soon phased out / for downloading albums in their scores, reducing music to ones and noughts... corporate sponsorship on venue walls"

surely music doesn't *have* to mirror, in its creation, execution and marketing, every single failure of these unenlightening, quickfix times: there are plenty of glorious realities out there aside from the quotidien drinking and violence that we co-opt as a society to escape the endless swathes of beige being daubed across popular culture by battalions of eager-to-please marketing graduates. why *can't* art reflect those early year greys, sheens of snug cold, fresh air dancing about yr face... or hazy mid-eve flickering darkness, shot through with the carousel of headlights circling the roundabout, shining whites in the evening air, a glow of shopfront neon, the moon casting its decorous shadow down over the lone high-rise ?

"this is it / i can find no words to describe our love / it's priceless"

and so "clang of the concrete swans" comes on and i find myself teary - whether with sadness, joy or relief they can still do this, i'm not sure - but it's their own "english electric lightning" for the new decade, and we must hold on to these moments, these songs, these celebrations of our confused times and mixed-up heads. i cue up "the boy who loved brighter" and it exudes warmth: so sweetly and beautifully done, it's both a tribute and a triumph. i put on "battle hype" and am blown away by the whole thing - the execution, the conceit, the confidence, the skill, the swagger - it's dazzlingly audacious, dizzyingly epic.

"vowels as clear as church bells" peals out, the remote viewer gone belle epoque, and i swear it would light up the union chapel: yet it's also as warm and intimate as grandma's front room. i dig out "summer promised me too much" (from a jiffy knitwear creation, ha) and it sweeps me away, like early hood doing "byron", or the edsel auctioneer at their prettiest and fuzziest. i unleash the on fell singles 'pon unsuspecting, lucky *lucky* turntable and they're extraordinary, blissfully dancefloor-hugging yet undeniably affecting: the sound of modern glossy pop high-fiving unassuming downbeat indie, of the funky lovingly nuzzling the lo-fi. i immerse myself in "broken" and glow as bristol and london's finest dubsteppers combine, and wow myself with the realisation that sometimes you can listen to what you thought were soundless moments; to a backlog of fuzzy cityscape memories; to the headlights of those passing cars as they light the raindrops on the nightbus window.

"you never told me, simon / about the 40-carat scum / at newquay train station"

i unsheath "ersatz gb" from its unkempt sleeve with no little trepidation, but as the record revolves and magick happens, i entertain the thought - not without a certain sadness - that barely a handful of new bands can muster the itinerant energy and rumbunctious panache of this fiftysomething man on his thirtysomethingth album. (and what a track record: even now, i still fantasise about raiding the ashmolean and christening the messiah stradivarius by playing the m.e.s. violin part from "papal visit"). i listen to the unvarnished, anger-strewn stomp of "rock and roll is full of bad wools", and it strikes me that it's the most scholarly commentary on our riot-hit isle that i've encountered all year.

i glory in the mere existence of jakarta's individual distortion, who deliver a messy breakcore beast which diffidently melds grindcore, hip-hop beats and jungle called "your band doesn't sound like sarah records", but then spit out, from nowhere, "farewell": a song that begins as chaotic cybergrind but suddenly switches down and before you know it, has enveloped you in in warm, soapy suds that channel blueboy, alcest and ted maul into the most gorgeous, touching, instrumental pattern. as long as this can happen, the x-factor will never win.

"a sleeping bag and a ten man tent / i send dem man hiking"

i hold to my heart the other records this year that bucked the trend. the new wave of grime that appeared from nowhere just when i had given up on the genre (although of its progenitors, it's probably only the disarmingly genial kwam mc who i'd be feel comfy sharing a quick san miguel with). or the resurgence in *positive, political* and - in that way - old-fashioned cobweb-despatching hardcore that was summed up by straightedge bands making some of the singles of the year and a boston h.c. outfit delivering one of its standout albums.

"10,000 lawyers dead on robertson / it felt good to just kick back and look at them / and we were fucking laughing at them"

thus i bask in the sure knowledge that - as none other than hoary black metal grizzlers venom observed this very year - punk's not dead and that though it's evolved into different styles, each with labels that try to mark themselves out as untainted sovereign territory (grindcore, hardcore, crust, deathgrind, powerviolence), the best of each genre coalesce in a haze of beautiful energy on my stereo, creating music that is just thrilling and urgent, proving that the label doesn't matter, it's the sounds they make... all else is redundant, like debating whether a beautiful poem is a sonnet or mere quatorzain... witness the finnish grind classicists who distil a six-part, 16 track concept album about human weakness into well under half an hour; witness the supergroup from japan, new jersey and texas (!) who summon up, rather than merely play, a shrieking record which spanned twelve tunes in as many minutes, each hanging on grimly for dear life, like haikus in a hailstorm; witness (and cower before) the remarkable musical *event* that was wormrot's "dirge"...

these are the moments that our little fanzine is (was ?) for.

as for singling out individual chansons from this merry miasma of heady noise, and to name but several doozies plucked from a fecund wider field, i would certainly entreat you to investigate the magnificent cannonades that were scapegoat's "no release", death toll 80k's "no escape", looking for an answer's "no compasion", weekend nachos' "you could exist tomorrow", noisear's "the last spark of resistance" (noisear are all the ron johnson bands. all at once), despise you's "bankrupt social code", coke bust's "degradation", hatred surge's "brutal tyranny", sss's "the kill floor", lock-up's "accelerated mutation", beartrap's "nailed shut", ampere's "bullshit sloganeering", the rotted's "surrounded by skulls" and sidetracked's "full circle": those should give you some tantalising insight into the sonic carnage being justly wreaked by plectrum-chafed electric guitar strings across this earth right now.

"sarandon will never be unreasonable... we expect everyone to have an equal billing / except for us"

i love the way that cultural references linger in the ether and then knowingly rain down the years: how the flats single, merely by dint of being a scenester-friendly remake of thrilled skinny's "it's a good doss", is still better than anything dan devine's dad's label released after about 1989. i smile and wince alternately through violent arrest's "fuck off", for while barely up with their greatest moments, i treasure the irony in it somehow sharing both a studio and a producer with brighter's indelible "christmas", surely its polar opposite.

"you could have been a grime saviour / but all you saw was the paper, and became a grime hater"

hell, i savour so many musical moments provided in 2011, all the biiig tunes, from d-beat to d-step, the sonorous peal of eski bars, of serious low frequencies, of new adventures in minimalism, of invigorating japanese indie-pop, of earnest norwegian hardcore, of bilious colombian grind, of dark, darting guetta-baiting techno from italy, belgium, japan, bosnia, ukraine... of export-quality premium swedish jangle, of boombastic lurchstep, of the obligatory manic jump-up, of bubbling cauldrons of blippering intrigue from the london 'burbs. i salute some fine scouse thrash, some urgent and rattling powerv., some wonderful indie-pop, some searing notts hip-hop, some glowing new york new-wu and a resurgent mobb. i roll out a carpet of respect to a black techno master who sprinkled gold dust on his remixes, and to a fellow german who continues to lead the way both with his own productions and with his minimal-tech label. and how i wish with all of my brittle, not-so hollow heart that every single one of these people and bands could play the upcoming popular music festival of london (plus, in wormrot's case, take up a residency at the hangover lounge).

"i'm back, i'm a criminal / 28 weeks inside, it's minimal"

i relish the reality that most of the great singles and albums of the year were available on vinyl, thus yielding both to stylus crackle and to sensuous human caress.

and i revel in the fact that wu-tang are on the same label as peppa pig.

ahem. i hope you had a great year. i had a great year, despite having had once again to embrace my inner 4th division. for me, 2011 was "the year of enjoying music", for that's what you can really do when you're not writing about it. fwiw, as we can't shake the habit, our (strictly unannotated) lists of the best singles and albums of the year are where you might expect to find them.

anyway. happy new year. and remember: life's not about the haters, the fakers, what's trending or what's selling. it's all about stolen kisses, and other little victories.

2011-09-11T02:02:00.006Z

Singlish Scheme

Saturday night back in ever-salubrious Stockwell (an old hunting ground of mine), and I'm in the Grosvenor on Sidney Road, one of those neat and largely unruined pubs that always make me feel a little more... clubbable. Last time I ventured here, 'twas to see the ever-mighty Horowitz, and a cheery indie atmos thus prevailed, but tonight the vibe is very different: it's 90% a black-clad metal crowd, 9% bemused-looking old man locals, and then me.

The girl handing out flyers won't condescend to offer me one, remarking "you don't look like you listen to Gorgasm" as she swooshes by. I'm hurt: I could explain that, fair enough, I don't actually listen to Gorgasm, because at the moment I'm more into strains of grindcore, the hardcore end of powerviolence and maybe a little bit of deathgrind rather than Gorgasm's entertaining and earnest but um, pedestrian goregrind, but what she *really* means is that I'm not wearing appropriate "uniform" (partly this is because I've come straight from a kids' birthday party) and so I can't be one of them, with my lack of long hair and band t-shirt and visible tattoos and piercings, and perhaps she thinks I'm sitting here in the Grosvenor tonight labouring under the illusion that I'm about to see Coldplay or something.

It's disappointing, because over all those years of turning up to gigs in suits I'd found "metal" (for want of a better word) crowds most accepting of all, more so even than indie-pop, but now I feel a little lost and left out. The whole point about metal is that it's not cool, it's never been fashionable, and it should never be about "fitting in": surely that would defeat the point, its attraction for those who *don't* fit in, who sit awkwardly with musical conformity ? I sigh inwardly, nurse my Amstel and make a mental note to step up my support of the ongoing battle against false metal. Luckily, Wormrot are playing tonight, and they will soon be raising my spirits sky-high, largely by virtue of proving that they are the best band in the world right now.

When the set begins, there are barely 40 or 50 people in the room. I suspect in part this is because the Grosvenor must be one of the most thickly soundproofed venues in town: from the front of the pub you can't hear the racket created by even the loudest band in the back room only twenty feet away, so it's perfectly possible not to notice things have kicked off until your mates come to fetch you. Having slunk in, unwanted, from the bar my head start allows me to grab a decent spot, only a few feet from the stage, albeit right by the wall and being faced down by the huge speakers. Before too long though the room has filled, as punters sheepishly filter through from the main bar: the word is spreading, and it feels like a couple of hundred in here now. There's no room even for standing, so some clamber on to tables at the back. Front centre, a recognisable moshpit has been birthed, and it's a whirlpool of pure chaos, the kind of dancing that's pretty much indistinguishable from fighting. Hey, maybe I am too old and square for this after all.

Rasyid provides the noise: as lone guitarist in a bassless trio, much rests on his shoulders. For the half-hour or so of Wormrot's set, we mostly see the back of his shaved head, his body contorting and his fingers filling the room with peals of guttural, breakneck power-chordage while he keeps a weather eye on Fiti, the drummer and Rasyid's partner in creating Wormrot's juddering, cascading rhythms. Fiti is responsible for pacing proceedings, and *driving* the songs forward: orchestrating how they stop, start, canter, gallop, crash and then restart, normally all in the space of half a minute or so. He has an almost childlike demeanour, clearly enjoying himself hugely whilst he happily knocks seven shades of shelter from his drumkit. Arif sings: his growl may be primal, but his manner between songs is friendly and enthusiastic, with the shapes he throws onstage recalling Lee Dorrian or the young Barney Greenway. Fiti and Arif are both wearing Phobia T-shirts. Of this we approve.

The songs are... *the songs*. Joyous battering-rams of openly pilfered grind and bruising sweat-heavy breakdowns that charge out from the blocks and never labour. "Spot A Pathetic", "Talk Shit Holocaust", "Murder" (introduced as an "old song", it being from those dim dark distant days of 2009), "So Fierce For Fuck", "Principle of Puppet Warfare"... the hits *rain* down, including heartwarmingly healthy chunks from this year's album, "Dirge", a record which saw them break through from promising ("Abuse") to... well, very near perfect; that saw these unassuming young men furnish a stupefying and heady 25 tracks in 18 minutes and the only way I can portray the feeling as it first teemed and tumbled out of the speakers is that it was as if blossom hailed down, as if the falling leaves from London planes could swarm and almost suffocate you, as if the dancing summer breeze could surround and shake you, as if the early morning dew could rise to a torrent and topple you. "Dirge", as well as being the least aptly-named LP in world history, is an album which you must have if you're a lover of grindcore, or punk, or metal, or rock music, or possibly just of music altogether, and because of all the hype around Wormrot and the huge reaction to it, it's an album which you can *download for free* because so many thousand versions were ripped by tune-hungry kids around the world that Earache thought they might as well just give in and share the record's belligerent JOY with everybody. And getting back to this evening, Wormrot finish the same way "Dirge" finishes, with "The Final Insult", and it's a fitting denouement, a grandstanding instrumental to bring the mosh one last time. Arif shakes out his bottled water in triumph, and I'm proud to catch some on my brow.

Outside in the early autumn air, under a black sky, I can gather my thoughts. Now there are a couple of criticisms that can be fairly levelled at Wormrot, so let's acknowledge them (NB "that's not music, it's just noise" is not one). Firstly, that they're derivative. Well, yes: each ingot of their sound has been cast before, although they're frankly way too young to be Napalm copyists (they wouldn't have been born when "Scum" came out!) and they've actually been listening to Phobia, Magrudergrind and Insect Warfare, which musically must be closer reference points. But we would hardly like Wormrot so much - and to be honest they would surely not be quite so celebrated - if they weren't doing something great, and at least faintly original, with that template. The way they furiously compress the song arrangements, throw in some confounding humour, mix in hurtling punkish riffs (yes, TUNES!) and play with dynamics is, to my mind, pretty unique. Wormrot do use tried and tested building blocks, but create an architecture all of their own: this is "roots" grindcore, and you can't help but marvel at the economy of expression it distils.

The second criticism is that they're not overtly "political". As you know, this is one we would normally regard with more seriousness than most, dogmatic and po-faced as we are about the madly fucked up nature of this greed-swollen, empathy bypass world. Well, there are vague socio-political themes in some of Wormrot's songs, but clearly being from Singapore they can hardly bang on about Thatcher / Reagan / Bush / Blair in quite the way that US/UK bands we love might have done. Worse, if they did tilt into the platitudinous, they might lose the mischievous streak that helps make their songwriting so immediate, their Singlish lyrics so (deliberately!) entertaining. And - of course - there's a generational thing in this post-internet age, that newer bands of every genre seem less concerned about directly addressing social issues through their songs: some just "care about the state of their hair" and deserve censure accordingly, but I have faith that many believe that there are other, more meaningful ways to be politically engaged, and I suspect they may even be right. Perhaps I just need to get that mote out of my eye.

Any road up, the gig tonight has been a revelation, and we think about our reaction to that brilliant Insect Warfare record, and how we'd concluded it was - in a positive and natural way! - the death of music. And of course it transpires, not for the first time, that we couldn't have been more wrong: perhaps it was actually the beginning, and "Dirge" was its natural heir, the first in the line of new potentates. It was interesting to read what Digby Pearson, perhaps the godfather of grindcore, said about Earache (an oft-extollable label) signing Wormrot: for like him, we thought there was something different, something *genuine* about Insect Warfare and Wormrot as distinct from much that went before, and like him it was (the still-shiveringly thrilling) "Born Stupid" that made us really sit up and take notice of the latter.

Now I am a very lucky man: I've been to hundreds and hundreds of great gigs over the last 25 years. I've been privileged enough to see Rakim, Cube, P.E., the Go-Betweens, Brighter, Hood, Motorhead, Napalm, ENT, Nasum, Slayer, the young Mary Chain, the 80s Fall, KRS-One, Blueboy, Tramway, Bolt-Thrower, TBS, Wu-Tang Clan, the Windmills, Would-be-goods, the Wedding Present, Heavenly, Lock Up, even Comet Gain on a good night. But I have got to level with you right now and say that tonight - a gig that was exciting, crucial and a somehow everything-affirming pick-me-up - ranked with the very best of those.

2011-06-05T14:40:00.007Z

It Glitters, It's Gold

A blue moon glimpses out over Camden's fading evening sky: for D'Alma and I are out in North London again. Old men that we now are, we edge towards a couch in a *buzzing* Jazz Cafe and slump gratefully onto it, drinking Red Stripe from plastic cups but fantasising that we're sipping 40s on the kerbside. We hear "Slam", "King Of Rock" and chunks of Gang Starr and Jeru blaring out: old style East Coast is the vibe tonight, and it fits our contented mood like a glove. Then, as we chat, the noise slowly ratchets up, a frisson of excitement begins to subsume the room, and we decide it's time to raise ourselves back to our weary feet and check out what's going down. An unassuming-looking guy in a baseball cap and a Carhartt hoodie strolls down the steps to the stage. No big thing, surely. *But we're all butterflies and goosebumps*. Why ?

Because he's the R, Rakim Allah, the God MC, the greatest rapper of all time. Until this spring, he hadn't played in London for twelve years. We bought tickets to see him in 2008, but then he cancelled and we wondered if we'd missed the chance for good. And now we're twenty feet away from him, in a venue that only holds a few hundred people. Remember, "Paid In Full" (this show is loosely billed as its 25-yr anniversary) sold over a million on its own. So forget the disappointment of the Olympics lottery: we've won just by getting in here tonight.

The stage is bare save for Rakim, his buddy DJ Technician and two turntables: but the R's presence fills the room. He unleashes "My Melody", and the punters go wild. He switches forward a whole quarter-century to the beautiful "Holy Are U", and the place crackles with electricity. Then, we jump back to the late 90s and "The 18th Letter", with stabs at its best tracks, "It's Been A Long Time" and "Guess Who's Back". Another rewind in time takes us to 1986 (of course): we're bathing, *luxuriating* in the warmth of this show.

More singles are deployed. "Move The Crowd" takes an elegant bow, but it's "I Ain't No Joke" which really hits the spot. Then there's an obligatory sequence "for the ladies", which is chivalrous of him. However, unfortunately it features the likes of "Mahogany" and "What's On Your Mind", by some distance Eric B and Rakim's worst ever singles, as well as his verse from Truth Hurts' "Addictive" single (mind you, please note that we love Truth Hurts, and despite occasional rumours to the contrary, we do not have any kind of downer on R&B - yr confusion may spring from our oft-stated view that the only thing worse than a hip-hop record ruined by a stilted R&B hook is an R&B record vandalised by a completely superfluous bolt-on verse from a jobbing rapper. That kind of crossover madness can still go hang, in our book). Anyway, we look on, dutifully, until it's over.

The otherwise-amazing set is punctuated liberally with newer cuts ("How To Emcee" stands up surprisingly well, given the general lack of love for "The Seventh Seal" LP) but it's not long before "The Punisher" delivers an appropriately bruising reminder of how Rakim truly used to *slay* the mic ("kill 'em again", he urges, and heads truly BOUNCE). Rakim and DJ Technician then divide the crowd for some call and response that quickly degenerates into general abuse: we're on Rakim's team, of course, so we easily defeat those "other side" suckers. In a novel variation of "frontman goes rogue" (you know, MES on the keyboards, or that thing Flavor Flav does on the drumkit) Rakim takes to the decks for a couple of minutes of serious scratching: beforehand he's a bit nervous ("if it don't work, don't dare YouTube me") but afterwards, facing renewed acclaim, he's more relaxed. "YouTube that shit".

A guy just up the bar comments that "this must be like going to see the old blues legends". We sort of see what he means, and it's true that most of us here have visibly grown up with Rakim. The bloke just next to us looks like a Chelsea headhunter, but is more than amiable: he tells us that he too was 13 when he first got hit by Rakim's flow. However, there is the obligatory idiot (for your future gig-going reference, this one looks a bit like Richard Jobson during his Armoury Show phase) who tries to start on us, because we're wearing suits. Jobson tries to engage our new friend from the Shed End, but headhunter's on our side: he knows, just like us, that what you're wearing doesn't matter, nor does what you do for a living: we've all got jobs to hold down and family to keep (and are grateful for both), and what matters is that we can still come together to pay tribute to the people who, through their music, have enriched our lives. Rakim is right up there, of course, amongst the other greats we've recently had the privilege of seeing (Cube, Chuck, KRS...)

A fact that the legend on stage proceeds to ram home in a coursing final spell. So as our last drink kicks in, we're pummelled by a sequence that starts with "Don't Sweat The Technique", flowers into old car-stereo staple "Know The Ledge", hits hard with "Paid In Full", replete with the Ofra Haza remix intro, and after increasingly imploring requests, finishes with a breathtaking "Follow The Leader", done a cappella. It can't get much better. We don't feel so weary now, or so old.

I think we've compared Eric B and Rakim to the Smiths before, the phenomenon of four landmark albums and countless classic singles in only a few short years, followed by nothing else: after they went their separate ways, they never reformed, could not tarnish or dilute their legacy. They started young (Rakim was 18 when EB&R broke big and only 24 when they broke up: the same age as Johnny Marr when the Smiths split). And if Chuck D was Strummer, strident, political and defiantly international in outlook; and Ice Cube was Johnny Rotten, the frontman of a punkish vanguard who then matured into a creative artist in his own right; then Rakim is the obvious man to play the Morrissey role, the man who introduced poetry and a whole new lyrical style into hip-hop, whose early peaks have never really been equalled, but whose voice is still as welcome and distinctive as it was when "Eric B For President" first appeared. I think we've also made the point, but shan't tire of it, that the great John Peel introduced us (and thousands of others) to both.

You should always move on, and always love new music, and as you know we do, but there's a reason why the golden era got its name, and flashbacks to it like this are a shot in the arm, a reminder that in a quarter-century from now we could be in another venue, seeing an artist that broke in 2011, perhaps someone we'll discover over the next few weeks or months. That holds out a gorgeous kind of promise, and we just can't wait.

2010-12-31T23:58:00.031Z

We're falling, we're falling, we're following our heart: singles of 2010

Dedicated to the memory of Anthony Price

Look at us, a nation within a nation. By day, as plodding grey skies encircle weeping grey buildings, we grimly sketch out a life as slaves to watercoolers and office gossip. But by night, in our own indie-pop republic, we still scurry excitedly in search of bloodied yet unbowed perfection, dancing to both right and utterly wrong notes with equal pride. This is *our secret*. And within this warming cocoon, we *live* music that's ever-effervescing, always wide-eyed with joy.

So each of the songs in this list (this list compiled *today*: forget those "best ofs" put together when the year's only eleven-twelfths through, for they're the POP-chart equivalent of leaving the match after - quick maths here, hang on - yup, 82 and half minutes, meaning you miss half the goals), yes each of these songs from the softest, plumped-up pillows of prettiness to the fastest, hardest blur of migraine-pricking amplifier abuse to the most urgent and fuzzingly sinewy buzzsaw serenades, is really an ANNOUNCEMENT, a loudhailer exhortation to put down your i-phone and your blackberry and your unhealthy introspection ***seriously, PUT THEM DOWN. now*** and indulge the you that wants to actually RELATE to people, to places, to pint-sized brews of merry melody that induce heady drunken rushes and honeyed hangovers, to travel to tiny rooms and feel them flood with pop noise and pop nous. Not as drearily academic token rebellion, some cub scout badge of "revolution", but for the kind of puckering serial frissons of resistance to the out-there EVERYDAY that indie-pop and all our other loves thrive on and ultimately devour. For when the ingredients fall into place and our heroes hit it *just right*, everyone knows that a blushing popsong can do anything. And so it is that when we hear any of these records, our hearts are replenished with a faith in the future, begin to *throb* with POSSIBILITY...

Oh, the best groups, producers, singers, MCs, labels... they aren't guzzling in the limelight, following well-worn "career paths", hanging in the "right" (i.e. wrongest) bars; they aren't self-congratulatory, self-defined "auteurs". They're sporadic, organic, never contrived, ever-angling to be someone's new favourite artist. Each record is a tiny grenade lobbed out from a new hiding place before they spring back to their lair and start brewing up the next gobbet of pop or techno or bassline loveliness. These grenades EXPLODE into our consciousness. They show music as it *should be*, fallible yet despite... no, BECAUSE of that, potent and ever-able to provoke squeals of surprise and delight, the irresistible nodding of head, an air-punching FIST, as if the quarters had bulged the net in full sight of the madding clubhouse terrace. We might burn down the disco, but we won't stop dancing.

So stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, muzzle the dog, slam down the piano lid and bring out the coffin, because *their* music is now OFFICIALly dead and ours is ALIVE. You'll know by know how we value POP and PUNK and SOUL and define them in ways that make complete sense to us, that MAKE IT REAL to us, but make no sense to those who see them with dry, dead-eyed prejudice as cramped compartments that must never overlap, but however you personally draw the lines we promise you there is no fat here, but there *are* one hundred little grenades, each a pouting postcard from the year that was 2010 (um, before we forget, our albums of 2010 are here, in unusually short form, and our last club playlist here, ooh and last year's singles here) and putting this little post together is when we pull the pin out, stand back, and urge you to join us in our escape from the vie quotidien. Let the panegyrics begin.

* * * * *

1. Phobia "Unrelenting EP" (Relapse, 12")

Although it was a superlative year for singles overall, there maybe wasn't any one song that was truly breathtaking in the way of "English Electric Lightning" or "Train Not Stopping" or "Dry Land", say, and we had found ourselves thinking that there wasn't really any record that genuinely stood out from the crowd, but then we realised that there was one EP, of chasteningly severe quality, that really did stand out, not least in that it that over its 14 minutes it gave us a hearty 17 tracks and all with that same pure *rush* of adrenalin that we got from the start-stop speeding of the Rosehips over twenty years ago. In short, it was PUNK.

Punk meaning much more than middle-aged Exploited aficionados on London Piccadilly postcards, or the waves of nostalgia-seekers who assemble at Blackpool every summer to watch their fave icons from '77 grow old with them. For Sarah Records (unlike some of their paler imitators) were punk. Napalm Death are punk. Scorn and Klute were born from punk. "Straight Outta Compton" and "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted" are punk. The legendary JP was punk even before punk happened. On its day, you know, this fanzine is punk. It's an ideal and an ethic and an attitude, essential for music to be of any consequence. Phobia know all this and more, which is why they write should-be karaoke standards like "If You Used To Be Punk, Then You Never Were" and accept that sentiment as TRUTH in this world of sellout *sellout* SELLOUT.

And Phobia know of what they speak: they've been around as long as Milky Wimpshake now, but while there were some doozies on last LP "22 Random Acts Of Violence" ("varying in places from HC-inspired tunes with choruses to straight blast-beat blood and thunder, but overall catching a single mood"), "Unrelenting"... Is. Just. That, the band decamped from SoCal to Insect Warfare's own Texas to record these songs, ending up with a fearsomely kinetic EP of glittering distinction that filters olde world grindcore and surging d-beat through modern eyes - it's Kill The Client (with whom they share a drummer) meets "Leaders Not Followers" - while lyrically distilling pretty much every injustice and pain the *sensitive* likes of you and I could ever feel. We bow down.

2. Jamie Ball as Action Bastard "Love Song" (Teleskopik Music, 12")

No, no, no, no, no. This is so wrong. And yet so right. If you're acquainted with the music of Jamie Ball, you'll be expecting an adrenalin-pumping, borderline insane, assault of bounce-techno. If you haven't come across Jamie Ball, you might be expecting that this "Action Bastard" persona is some kind of noise maverick: a purveyor of harsh frequencies, maybe of harsh guitars, certainly of enforced chaos. But "Love Song" drowns any preconceptions in still, lakeland beauty, in stately ascetism and *extremely* repetitious minimalism: it's a looped, stubbed, faststep pulse around which clipped synths oscillate like patterns on the mere, the kind of bountiful near-classical plaintiveness that we'd expect from the Remote Viewer were they gracing us with new records today. And then, a mere seven or so minutes in, that unchanging pulse is overtaken by distant, beautiful piano, like a cold mist hovering above Tarn Hows, a dreamy coda that brings us to the end of a rather blissful whole. "Love Song" is a rare groove, and to be honest is no more hard-techno than your favourite indiepop band. It is, however, confusingly good: despite breakneck pace, it's a brave, dignified and (whisper) even romantic single, the like of which you will not regularly trip across.

3. Ryuji Takeuchi "Vital EP" (Sven Wittekind Records, download)

Us having fleetingly compared his last 12" of 2009 with none other than Sven "I Stay Hard" Wittekind, it seems fitting that this February release from Osaka-born Takeuchi came out on Sven Wittekind Records (yes relation). "Vital" builds organically, rolling drums subsumed in turn by layered strands of percussive noise, but within minutes it has completed a grim mutation into a seamless warp and weft of futurist techno, rattling synths criss-crossing darkly industrial soundscapes to create a bleak yet brisk dystopian void echoing with what sounds like a CS canister being let off at regular intervals (a sound that was de rigeur in minimal techno this yr). "Critical" on the other side sneakily reassembles the lead tune from its component parts into something a scintilla more thoughtful, but it's the A-side which is the killer: "Vital" is austere, constructivist, monochromatic and brilliant, and you'll rarely find 7'43 whoosh by you so quickly.

4. Manatee "Indecision" (Slumberland Records, 7")

So some of the best "indie" music of the year has come via bands that no longer exist: there was the wonderful Black Tambourine gatefold LP (if "Lazy Heart" 2010 had been released as a 7" it might be up here too), there was Cloudberry Classics' CDr-EP release of seven snappily arranged, over-the-speed-limit yet melody-*crammed* recordings by the simply magnificent Sainsburys, and there was this out-of-time single - apparently recorded at the tail-end of '08 - from defunct Oakland / SF quartet Manatee (like the BT LP, it features label supremo and tastemaker extraordinaire, the one and only Mike Schulman, on axe duties).

By rights, a band monikered after the beautiful, elusive, lugubrious and sadly endangered manatee should probably sound really slow-paced, mysterious and kind of bulbously mournful, but no danger of that here: this Manatee are delightfully feral, rooted in what sounds to us a very UK-inspired indie sound, let's say the old-school tunefulness of the better C86 bands allied with the spikiness of the Weddoes' guitar stylings back then, all topped off by high in the mix wide-eyed vocals (with some rather splendid lyrics) that work *perfectly* as the song pounds away, refusing to flag, and we dance around the kitchen air-guitaring to it. Indeed, around 2'05 "Indecision" gets very Close Lobsters to these ears (also a Good Thing). So, a find, for sure. Oh, and happily, the single is on clear, aquatic blue vinyl, providing a link to the real manatee's own preferred environment.

5. Cappo "Loyalty" (Son Records, download)

Nottingham's Cappo carried on not so much rising above as simply floating above, hovering serenely in some mad kind of inspiration-fuelled hip-hop jetpack device or something. We've discussed "Loyalty" before in its broader context, but with that rolling piano, carefully selected sampling and righteous lyric, it worked so so well as a single too. "Loyalty" is positively clinquant, and as importantly, it is also *great British urban music* - yes, it does exist - which might be worth the Observer bearing in mind next time they waste time trying to show they're down with lazy eulogies of tame grime-pop pap, an obsequious interview with fucking N-Dubz, or getting a hopelessly out of depth Paul Morley (of whose writing and outlook on music we generally remain huge admirers) to attempt to sum up the UK grime scene...

6. Masta Killa "Things Just Ain't The Same" (Nature Sounds, 12")

Well, as a statement of the obvious, the title is up there with "Love Don't Pay The Rent", "Once A Prefect, Always A Prefect" or maybe even "I Don't Like You (Cos' You Don't Like The Pastels)", but this is a fabulous single from "Loyalty Is Royalty", as dosed up on the spirit of Wu as Raekwon's recent Only Built... II meisterwerk (i.e. to the fullest), with Killa's sprawling chat unfolding grittily as PF Cuttin superglues a clipped Grace Jones sample onto repeat.

And while we don't usually fall for lazy equations of rap with poetry, the lyrics and their delivery here are outstanding, painting street pictures with ease ("Late night summertime jam, we in the park / DJ cutting, MC spitting his dart / a Sergio Tacchini brown suede ballet"), the fluttering reminiscences the neatest fit with Killa's rise and fall cadences. Or drawing out an all-too palpable sense of menace, offset by the bravado of youth: "Gazelle frames matching with the Kangol hat / You couldn't have that, brothers might snatch that... Mama cried tears of fear when I was wildin' / sayin' 'please don't wear that, people getting killed for that'". Plus, a minute or so in, the *real* MK Don (hmm, can we copyright that ?) handily reels off a checklist ("Slick Rick, Run-DMC, Jam Master Jay / Wu-Tang Clan, Scott LaRock, KRS-One / damn, brothers like Pun... Cold Crush, M-O Dee, Treacherous Three, Spoonie G, Busy 'Killa' Bee") of rap artists of whose fullest repertoires YOU MUST LEARN.

7. Gold-Bears "Tally" (Magic Marker, 7")

This feels like falling in love. The beautiful, pinkish Sarah-style sleeve for this 3-track 7" on snow white vinyl - MMR 55 - instantly made us regret not having bought more of Magic Markers 1 to 54, and the compellingly thrillsome music contained within the grooves reinforced that thought: three tracks of wonderful, freewheeling, indiepop for fans of the Wedding Present, Boyracer and half the Sarah roster, and it's great at our advanced age still to have the joy of hearing a record like this, by a band who came at us from out of nowhere (although they were of course already on the radar of many of indiepop's more discerning scene-monitors): this is an EP that the phrase "crashing through" could have been invented for.

"Tally" springs into being with chiming pop melodies before noisily hurtling through its verses with unerring excitement: the stylus is being lifted from the record almost before it landed on it. On the other side, "Jezzer" is another hurricane of pop noise, featuring guru of the genre Stewart Anderson, which barges into "HK Song", suddenly sweet and slow, but still glinting with the pop nous which the earlier tunes tried to bury in distortion. You know how upset we were by the Faintest Ideas split last year, but the mere existence of Gold-Bears is proving significant consolation. Indeed, their version of "Skyway" on the Tullycraft tribute comp was nearly as ace as these three. Plus, they've a Cloudberry 7" out soon which from what we've heard is equally, um, seismic. Mind you, the point of offering a free download and then furnishing it in .rar still confounds us somewhat: for people as technologically unsavvy as us, you might as well say "free download, only you have to collect it from the Sea of Tranquillity".

8. The Declining Winter "Official World Cup Theme 2010" (Home Assembly Music, CD single)

Comfortably the best World Cup record since Jules Rimet's prize comp kicked off in Uruguay eighty years ago (incidentally, does anyone else agree that Uruguay's rather pretty national anthem knocked spots off the dirges of most other teams in the summer ?) Anyway, Richard Adams' plaintive half-whisper optimistically implores our overpaid timewasters to "bring back the old silverware" over a typical Declining backdrop, an exquisite rustic knit of gently tumbling guitars and aching violin, all broken twigs and twisted bracken underfoot, with production stalwart Choque Husein serene at the controls.

This, and last year's wonderful "Haunt The Upper Hallways", remind us a little of the former Creation Records band, the mysterious Pacific, who despite being rather maligned in their day managed to release two excellent, multi-instrumental singles that straddled traditional and modern rather acely. Indeed, "Official World Cup Theme 2010" is *such* a tizzingly beautiful record that the obligatory sampled commentary (in this case of John Barnes' mazy run in Rio), however tongue-in-cheek, rather takes the edge off the magic. Still, a further demonstration - along with the gorgeous second track, "Red Kite", as majestically rare as the endangered bird that's its subject - that the Declining Winter have flowered, with typical pastoral grace, into being one of England's very finest bands. In sharp contrast to the England team, they deserve our (and your) support.

9. Newham Generals "Bag Of Grease EP" (Dirtee Stank, download)
The streets of London in '010 are positively littered with the debris of lame crossover attempts by MCs who are capable of - or have, in the past, delivered - so much better: Devlin ("Runaway" is unspeakable, an affront to his talent), Chipmunk, Riko Dan, Kano, the once-mighty Skepta, Professor Green, the longtime ilwttisott-sanctioned Tinchy, the now integrity-free zone that is Dizzee Rascal, the disgraceful, shameful abominations that were Roll Deep's two summer singles). But we must once more grant an honourable exemption for Newham Generals from this hall of shame. As if "Hard", on Breakage's LP, wasn't a good enough example of how *real grime* should be, er, brung, then "Bag Of Grease" should convert any remaining doubters.

The lead track is "I'm A General" and - we never thought we'd get the chance to say these words again - *it's a proper grime tune*. Lesser fanzines have been drawn to mention it by only dint of the guest spot from the late Esco Bars (or, more to the point, by the fact that he was half-brother to a certain England centre-forward), but we'd like to right the balance by pointing out it is simply a cracking street rekkid, as such making it a phat two fingers to the cabal of musical sell-outs chronicled above. In fact, Footsie's remix of it, which rounds off the EP, is possibly even better. The title track keeps the levels high: Skepta turns up for a verse halfway through, and hopefully learns a little about how you don't have to water something down just because it's a single. The third and fourth tracks, also produced by Skitz Beats, are maybe marginally more accessible, with clubbably dubsteppy synth lines: our only gripe is that by the time we reach "Getting It In" the synth sounds just a little bit too obviously "eerie": it reminded us of the Midsomer Murders theme, which is not something a street grime record should really be doing.

10. The Lucksmiths "Get-to-bed Birds" (Matinée Recordings, 7")

A few idle reviewers of the Matinée Grand Prix comp, from where this improbably piquant little gem sprang (although in retrospect it might have been better had it been saved up just for this piece of plastic) somehow let the greatness of this track get away from them, as if understatedness wasn't actually always one of the Lucksmiths' many rare gifts (our take on it was: "subtle but superb - lyrically, a synthesis of so many past Lucksmiths themes, touching tenderly as it does on new year regrets and wanders past old haunts - and yet all this quiet, downbeat contemplation is set off by a heartliftingly trilling guitar line that refuses to be bowed... it fades out, all too quickly, but that's something you could say about the band's whole legacy"). How wrong any doubters were, though, as this dreamy goodbye settles so easily into the grooves of their last ever 7" (and the B side is an almost equal treat). Wipe a tear from your eye, mourn their beauty, *celebrate* that legacy.

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11. Tex-Rec "Kill The Dream EP" (Sven Wittekind Records, download)

For Tex-Rec's homeland of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the dream was killed in the World Cup play-offs, but defiantly he unleashed this smiling assassin of an EP which seduces you with rhythmic patterns as sleek and glinting as the bonnet of a newly polished Countach while at the same time moving in for the kill with dancefloor-massacring intensity. "Detonator" is an imperious opener, with each curving whoosh of sound unleashing a new layer of jinking, Stan Matthews-esque synth wizardry, before "X.O.P." eschews "layer and build" in favour of serving up a fat plateful of nervy, edgy yet bouncy hi-tec skitter. The title track proceeds to rather majestically patrol the boundary fence between moody and minimalist, sharing with "Detonator" a whizzing two-note motif and careful build, and finally "Polarized" goes for a buzzing, tinnitus vibe: initially it's not as endearing as the three predecessor tracks, but the last three or four minutes see it unfold into a shimmering, even pretty, comedown to ensure we end on a high. At a healthy 36 minutes all told, this may be the longest EP of this quality since Eric B & Rakim's Don't Sweat The Technique remixes, or maybe that Boyracer one which had half an hour of feedback on. Plus, there really seems to be something about SWR at the moment that makes its charges up their game: "Kill The Dream" is streets ahead of the frankly annoying "Black Capital", for example. Immense.

12. Math and Physics Club "Jimmy Had A Polaroid" (Matinée Recordings, 7")

From the really rather very good long player: it wasn't that long ago that we were lamenting the end of Matinée Recordings on vinyl, but Allah saw fit to put that right and the "absolutely bombing" "Jimmy Had A Polaroid" celebrates with "two and half minutes of indie-pop righteousness that was born - luckily enough - to be a 7" A-side, a pacy and catchy number in which delectably jangling guitar elides with skidding, bouncing rhythms which both then collide head-on with slipsliding, lump-in-throat lyrical nostalgia". On azure vinyl, with blue-printed sleeve pic that's just as cute and nostalgic as the song.

(NB: for all Matinée Recordings fans, i.e. anyone out there with functioning synapses, we've archived about 30 reviews of old-school Matinée classics here and the best part of another 20 here. Hope they bring back the same warm memories as they did for us!)

13. The Garlands / The Sugarplums split (Atomic Beat Records, 7")

As mentioned here this nicely rounded slab of pure vinyl goodness was a superfly extended play for real, but right about now it is worth emphasising that given the brilliance of "Open Arms", even if the EP was a one-tracker it would still bestride 2010 as a colossus. "Open Arms" is a testament to true indie-pop's stubborn refusal to subside, a soundtrack to a year's worth of ups, downs and sideways scuttles, a never-blinking celebration of clanging chords and soaring girl vocals which peaks with that death-defying leap from the verse into the chorus. Quite, quite brilliant.

14. Sven Wittekind and Andy White "Bass Junkies" (Sven Wittekind Records, download)

This is buried treasure, a 12" that takes us straight back to those days of staying up late on a schoolnight, listening to teasing techno tremors on John Peel to offset next-day lesson dread. Slowly bubbling bass from the German pair sets the scene for a couple of minutes before the tune starts to build, but it's only really around the six-minute mark that "Bass Junkies" properly springs into life, pivoting on a single, sampled operatic held note before the percussion busies itself in more traditional Wittekind style, but the track still keeps things close, more minimal than hard tech, just gently nibbling away at your ears, resolutely refusing to swing and instead keeping it metronomic, hypnotic, *close* for its blissful, subtly ever-undulating second section. It's not short - if, as Cloughie observed, it only takes a second to score a goal, then you could feasibly bag about 700 in the course of its near 12-minute duration - but it's the kind of song that begs you to make that time.

15. Zipper "Visions" (Cloudberry Records, 7")

What more can one say about Zipper, who daily realise their own Talulah / Buzzcock / Ramone visions of producing accessible but never chintzy high quality indiepop ? Well, what we're going to say - and this is in a year when we've been reminded of the glory of Looking For An Answer, *and* Nashgul have come up with their breakthrough record - is that they must be the best band in the whole of Spain right now. "Visions" was of course one of three unutterably skill Zipper singles in 2010, as nippy and intelligent as Xavi and Iniesta combined, but without their propensity to dive. As an aside, the EP title is a meld of the titles of the three component songs: a game you can play at home with all your favourites (you know, "Spirea Velocity Crystal", "Never Mother's Favourite Dress", "Pleasantly Whole Wide Everything", that kind of thing).

16. Zipper "Lunes Por La Mañana" (Elefant, 7" EP)

So yeah, forget grenades, for here are four more bouncing bombs of galloping pop goodness from a band whose joyousness brings us close to (happy, happy) tears on occasion. The title track may already be familiar to you, while "Hoy Estoy Muy Pop" reprises a right charmer from their album, but the two we'd *really* pick out, "Siempre Es Lo Mismo" and "Hoja De Reclamaciones" are - ach, words failing us so early in our review - utterly *electric*, shimmering along with a vigour and life-grabbing ZEAL that only Phobia, no less, have truly matched this year. Zipper, we are in awe of you.

17. Boyracer / The How split (Slumberland Records / 555 Recordings, 7")

Slumberland deliver, not for the first or last time in this post. For after penning what we thought was the last of our many tributes to Boyracer, we find that band hadn't quite breathed their last, with two tracks here, on the other side of The How's respectfully joyous hayride, "Polly", which show how the Racer *still* effortlessly pack churning, gnawing emotion into short, burning popsong form. "Vanity Is Sanity", a little like the Lucksmiths' swansong being so 'essence of Lucksmith', is in many ways a distillation of All Things Boyracer, both lyrically and musically: Stewart laments his lot ("my 25 fans will go sick for this / better get it on iTunes, quick") but deep down you know he's sufficiently proud of his songwriting + back catalogue that he doesn't really need to hurt so. "Use A Bank I'd Rather Die" is not a cover of McCarthy's typically sarcastic third-album response to their haters, but instead a post-"Nottingham Grindcore Scene" punch of indiepunk cynicism: and both songs, peppered with feedback, thumpingly fuzzy bass and dollops of lyrical disdain, neatly bridge 'old' Boyracer with the punka-ethic of more recent solo project Tricia Yates Fan Club, in doing so giving us yet another precious 'racer single to cherish (oh, it's nestled in our fave 7"s box at the moment, along with "Present Tense", "B Is For Boyracer", "Racer 100", the split with the Beatniks, the "Boyracer" flexi, a Rocket Racer radio session EP, "Go Flexi Crazy", the one with "Katherine" on it...). Damn, as Chuck would have it: we shall not see their like again.

18. AZ "Feel My Pain" (can't remember the label at this hour, download)

So Brooklyn *is* still teeming with great music, but which those celebrating the terrible local loft-apartment indie hipsters over a grim-faced veteran like AZ are tragically missing out on. "Feel My Pain", with Frank Dukes production and scratches by Statik Selektah, but riding a musical vibe not too far from DJ Honda's, shows that AZ is still not a man to rock a party (thank heaven) when he could be riding low on the streets, spitting on the corner and dropping multi-syllable verbal gems. He's clearly got eyes on Rakim's mantle as the lord of the internal rhyme: "Feel My Pain" is veritably littered with them. Also, you can tell *true* hip hop singles because they still have a load of proper shout-outs at the end - in this case making up a good solid quarter of the whole song - instead of a radio friendly-fade or an extra chorus. Finishing with a nice little dedication in memory of Guru. Busy B[ee] gets his second shout out from a song in this list, too.

19. Roc Marciano "Scarface Nigga" (Fat Beats, download)

Following his hands-across-the-ocean (East Coast to East Midlands) work with the great P Brothers on "The Gas", "Scarface Nigga" sees the Roc furnish further evidence that he is, as Johnson once allegedly described Garrick, "a gamester, a pimp and a player" (although it turns out that this, and the other stuff about Garrick being blackballed by SJ from the Literary Club was actually made up by Sir John Hawkins and Mrs Piozzi and that actually it was Sir John that was basically chucked out of the club and anyway to the extent Johnson had any major beefs they were really with the likes of Voltaire and Rousseau and as such were beefs that far outrank most of hip-hop's falling-outs over the years). Um, anyway, stripped-down and skeletally pure, lyrically murky and unforgiving, and eschewing any kind of hook, break, change of style or pace, this single positively reeks of the same street corner intimacy as Ed209 and Imam THUG's stunning "Karma 360".

20. Ryuji Takeuchi "Option EP" (Toyfriend, download)

"Option", on Ukraine's Toyfriend label, is another back-of-the-net piledriver from Mr Takeuchi. Patiently and painstakingly constructed, it builds in brittle fossil layers, occasionally building up to siroccos of sculptured sound that briefly engulf the listener before dying down as suddenly as they started). There's no mistaking the class on show here as Ryuji wanders imperiously around the park every inch the libero, like Beckenbauer in his prime (or John Terry in his dreams).

* * * * *

21. A.P. "Hydraulix 40" (Hydraulix, 12")

Like Atomic Beat et al, D.A.V.E. The Drummer's Hydraulix label may not exactly overcrowd the release schedule, but that might just be *why* it boasts a catalogue of such pure gold. Think of past in love with these times, in spite of these times year-end top twentiers like the gleaming Hydraulix 37 (the Drummer vs the Anxious, an 'A' which was "two sublime techno adagios linked by a gently simmering interlude, is quite enchanting, and should probably be bought by you", apparently), or the aceness of Hydraulix 35 (the Drummer plus DJ Geraldine, untitled, "minimalist and very modern, a great example of the alchemy of the techno underground"), or the propulsive charm of Hydraulix 29 ("D.A.V.E. the Drummer and S P Groove team up for two toe-tappers rooted in samples that could almost be throwbacks to the heady days of Donna Summer disco, propelling more mechanical sounds into a heady blissed-out oblivion"); think of D.A.V.E.'s top-drawer A-side Mark Ankh refit on the Hydraulix 13 spin-off remix imprint.

Well, fresh from that bracing tradition, this - somewhat appropriately "XL" - Hydraulix 40 is Welsh techno doyen Allan Palmer's best single yet, intricately deploying synths, fills and tricks with pinpoint accuracy but also retaining towering, thumping, headache-inducing power, making this single much *harder* than some of the SWR releases, for example, that we are majorly bigging up at the mo. "Get Down", in particular, unleashes gouging polyrhythms that pound furiously at your ear, a stormy maelstrom of cascading, roof-battering hard rain.

22. Terror Danjah "Acid" (Hyperdub, 12")

Sounding very different to the squintingly grimy "Hardrive" of only a few years back, "Acid" sees TD assemble a glutenous aggregation of swerving chocolatey riddims that you'll be lapping up like the caramels in a box of Quality Street, as he maxes out some squiggly loops to blissfully meld acid house and rave-singed dubstep for a mere three skidding minutes or so, including a brief lizard-lounge interlude in which he slips in twenty seconds of oldskool 4/4 and a couple of bars of dislocated home computer bleeps for no reason at all, which of course is the best reason (cf. the Japanese drinking song in "Beautiful Day"). Naturally, the Danjah-man also manages to *bring the grime* (and his trademark "gremlin" noises) throughout, although these are beats too precious to be disfigured by an MC. All in all, proof that erstwhile grimesters can crossover into Hyperdub's hipsterly chinstroking, yet often majestic world without missing a beat.

23. DJ Honda and M.O.P. "Gun Hold" (DJ Honda Recordings, 12")
Hip-hop seems to reach improbable new nadirs daily, so it's tremendously pleasing to report all these singles that buck the trend, even when they are still as far from "conscious" rap as the Earth is from the sun. Yes, this is the very same M.O.P. that had two UK top ten hits almost a decade back (although we treasure them most still for their contribution to Gang Starr's fairly supreme "B.I. Vs. Friendship" off "Moment Of Truth), and "Gun Hold" is a wonderful, real-school record, with M.O.P. cuss-spitting growlers from the days when you still got those kind of chewing-glass rap voices, and they *launch* themselves at Honda's no-prisoners 90s-throwback mix with all the vigour (lots) and finesse (little) of Paul Scholes attempting a tackle in the vicinity of the centre circle.

In fact, "Gun Hold" is so good (and vieux-ecole) that it could almost be an out-take from Onyx's "Bacdafucup": if like us, you reckon that hip-hop these days has too much singing, and not nearly enough SHOUTING, yet recognise that professional bawlers like DMX are nothing more than the poorest imitation of Sticky Fingaz, then M.O.P's incessant yelling should help to rebalance things somewhat. As for Honda, well he had a great World Cup, although we reckon his team-mates Endo and the battling Matsui were even better. (Remix fans may wish to note that a swell Ain't Gonna Change remix of this turned up on DJH Recordings later in the year).

24. Magrudergrind "Crusher" (Scion A/V, 10", CD and download)

New 6-tracker from the DC trio, following on from their lyrically thoughtful, musically *sledgehammer* eponymous full-length, although interestingly the anger at them having "sold out" by signing with Scion has yet to abate. Musically, thankfully, they are still in the right place: the first five songs all impress as they bludgeon away, mixing stop-start grind riffing with uncommonly furious blastbeasts, some hardcore vocals (on "Stagnation"), and even rapping (on the props-to-graf "Heaviest Bombing", the inevitable and - literally - superlative sequel to This Comp Kills Fascists' "Heavy Bombing" and the LP's "Heavier Bombing"). Sixth track "Cognition", nearly as long as the first five put together, sees them stepping away from what they do best (a little like "Burning Bridges" did on the LP), but helps lend the EP a little more balance and variety. We also love the sleeve, which pays unapologetic homage to the artwork for Earache's murderously seminal "Grind Crusher" compilation. All in all, Magrudergreat.

25. Luca and Rossi B "E10 Riddim" (Planet Mu, 12")

Despite the postcode (E10 is Leyton, really - hence the name of Orient's matchday programme - plus the further real-football heartlands of Hackney and Walthamstow marshes), Mr Ross is of South London stock, and this one sees him taking a JCB to the dancefloor yet again. While the vehicle here is prime leftfield-step imprint Planet Mu, the music is infused with clattering grime overtones, especially when Killa P rolls up for the vocal version on the B-side and turns it into the clanking, raggatastic "Police Ar Come Run" (not since Riko's dazzling double CD have we so fervently yearned for more headmashing ragga stuff of this ilk), instrumentally pretty much the same but they've added in some sirens for good measure. Your GP, if he's worth his salt (and extravagant trust-cushioned salary), will confirm that it is medically impossible to listen to this and *not* nod your head like a mad one.

26. Tender Trap "Do You Want A Boyfriend ?" (Slumberland Records / Fortuna Pop!, 7")

Earlier in the year we'd had the fabulous "Girls With Guns", as twangy as Heavenly, as sprintingly quick as Talulah Gosh at their furious steaming-train fastest, Amelia upping the ATTACK as fur flew to a rollicking, almost cartoony (check the vid) soundtrack: plus, there aren't enough indie-pop bands repping gun crime, so that was novel too (albeit that only an indie band would march with a mere pistol these days, instead of a semi-automatic). But "Boyfriend" is the great leap forward, probably their best ever single, clad in a great sleeve too and housed on fresh Dulux-white vinyl.

Even more than on last year's diamond-bright mmm-muscular pop gem "Fireworks", "Boyfriend" has the guitar sound *just right*: the harmonies *just so*. Indeed, when Amelia sings "heaven, perfect heaven" in the chorus, it's as if she's giving you a glimpse of that very place. The B-side, too, "The Sum And The Difference", is a spirited stab at properly exhuming Talulah G: enjoyably tumultuous, it rattles along like a shopping trolley on a badly paved street. All with a video that stars the Lexington, the Betsey Trotwood AND the rather marvellous Union Chapel, the heart of the old Compton estate, which they managed to get to before all the scaffolding went up. It would be good if we could get someone to put Tender Trap on there: maybe our good friend Jo Whiley, when she next commandeers it ? A band that deserves *so* much more than to keep getting confused with the Temper Trap.

27. Cortechs "Cologne" (Herzschlag Recordings, download)

As they actually do hail from Cologne, calling a single "Cologne" feels a bit odd, like a London band calling a single "Londres", unless they're referring to cologne as in the splash-on stuff, and that's still called "cologne" in Cologne and not "Koln" too. Or maybe they recognise that "Koln" doesn't mean much to those outside Germany, except those of us who remember that Pierre Littbarski played for them around the time of the '82 World Cup. Whatever, but we'll let it go, as the record is exceedingly fine, a pitter-patter of syncopated techno percussion underpinned by heart-monitor beep and cuddlesome synth dynamics. They also managed to crash onto the galactico SWR roster this year with "Slow Wave Sleep", a steady droning hum of Wittekindish drum and drum which showed another side to their game.

28. Cappo "Genghis (The E Side)" (Son Records, download)

In which Caps unveils three tracks that missed the cut for
the mighty A to D sides of "Genghis", and to these ears they are just as strong. Indeed, the production on "Million", "Honour" and erstwhile bandcamp freebie "Psychological Warfare" is more compact, more striking than some of the stretched-out sparseness of the original LP: the first two tracks, in particular, could credibly be single A sides at least as much as album E sides.

29. Zipper "Last Chance For Friday's Badge" (Bubblegum Records, CD EP)

Yes, again; plus they do that weird "combined title" thing on this one too. But really, this is the *essence* of pop: bottled, tumbling, smiling, simple, pricking recollections of that upstairs room in that unglorious pub where this very band buzzed, entreated, uplifted, lit the place up and lifted the roof. Two sparklingly furious straight-up speed pop songs with occasional and super-endearing rough edges, then one marginally slower, addressing the not entirely original topic of a Pastels badge, but with a chorus to end them all. Addictive, engaging, near perfect.

30. Bonne Idée "A Dream Of You" (Cloudberry Records, 7")

Five from Gothenburg and by God, this is good. Sounding unlike any other single in the rarified air of this top thirty, "A Dream Of You" is almost unbearably tender, a beating heart of fragile indiepop so flutteringly weightless it could hitch-hike on a butterfly's wings, but with the vocals hinting at a darker story. For some reason the bit around the start of the second verse, when our heroine sings "the room is shaking / 'cos someone is waking" and picked guitars sound pinpricks of dawn light, makes us shudder, but in a kind of inexplicably happy way. Weepingly, beautifully, lambent.

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31. Rotten Sound "Napalm" (Relapse, CD EP)

From Vaasa, Finland - original home of Cats on Fire, if we've read the "Dealing In Antiques" sleevenotes properly - yet well-drilled in a glorious tradition created in Birmingham, England, Rotten Sound render this one subtly different from most grindcore output by making it an on-the-record tribute to, rather than unspoken rip-off of, the granddaddies and masterly progenitors of the genre, i.e. their (anti-)royal highnesses Napalm Death. A trio of self-penned Rotten numbers in guttural ND-stylee - the peak of which is the longest, the trim and frankly *triff* "Dead Remains" - are followed by a hat-trick of actual Napalm covers: the choice of "The Kill", "Missing Link" and "Suffer The Children" shows taste, and the versions are pretty much as strong as one could expect, given the sacred cows that are being slaughtered here. Do you think there's any chance of a split release with their old Vaasa brethren ?

32. POTO "Rose Tinted" / "Do You Know" (Tremors Recordings, download)

"Rose Tinted" and "Do You Know" were the first fruit of a collaboration between Peel favourite Martyn Hare and electro arriviste Paul Wheatcroft, but the originals of these two tunes sadly live down to the press blurb comparisons with Pendulum and Daft Punk, being serviceable but blandissimo dance concoctions guaranteed to go straight over your head next time you're in some haunt on Clapham High Street, fighting off chinlesses in a doomed attempt to get served at the bar. The reason this single places is not because we're lowering our standards, but because somehow the *remixes* of the two tunes - one from Martyn Hare and one from Jamie Ball (Hare's erstwhile partner in crime in the unavoidably named Hareball) - are absolutely stunning: well, we say "remixes", but really these are obliterations of the originals. Hare's "Rose Tinted" rework bins all the tame electro bounce and mangles the song into five minutes of coursing, typically unforgiving techno: and Ball's piledriving "Do You Know ?" raises the level even more, a crashing wave of mechanised chaos which ignores the pedestrian subtext of the original by kidnapping it, surrounding it with cardiac-arresting percussion bedlam and then pulverising it to within centimetres of its very being. Mighty.

And here's something weird - later in the year POTO released another single, "To The Last", and the A-side was a bit... you know, Canonbury Lane wine bar. But, just like "Rose Tinted" and "Do You Know ?" all was SAVED by a great remix, in this case by Lukas, which also achieves with flair a wanton destruction of an inessential original.

33. Weekend Nachos "Bleed" (Relapse, 12")

Well, there were a couple of clues in the slower and more experimental passages on their exceptional (and thematically so-bleak) "Unforgivable" album (#11 here), but all in all we would never have guessed how Chicago's Weekend Nachos would follow up that short (12 songs in 24 minutes), blistering set. Certainly not with a two-track single running in at around a quarter of an hour, the pace of the LP decimated entirely into a compelling slowcore sludge: only the existential anger remains.

"Bleed", a scuttling drone of chugging guitar hewn from granite rock, has a little bit more variation, even briefly accelerating to a trot at one point, and towards the end, just when you think the battering has receded, huge thudding, true power-chords judder into view, a final attempt to beat down the listener into submission. "Observer" on the other side is a more relentless one-trick grinding chord shuffle, a grim-faced hybrid of "Budd" (the underrated 12" by Albini's crassly-named and uncoincidentally short-lived Rapeman) and ND's "Evolved As One" which even ends with the sound of laughter, something we never expected to hear on a Weekend Nachos record. We probably wouldn't want to listen to "Bleed" every day for the rest of our lives, but it's somehow very important that it's there, and the band deserve immense credit for confounding fans and foes alike with this one.

34. Phil Wilson "I Own It" (Slumberland Records, 7")

Phil Wilson has proved himself as consummate a songwriter as any others in this list - Henry, Collins, Hannon and Godard included - and he outdoes them all here with "I Own It", a very different proposition from the tentative, mysterious beauty of his previous Slumberland single outing, "Industrial Strength". Showcasing some wonderfully jinking guitar plucking, plus a chorus that makes no secret of going for the pop jugular, this could merrily be the Brilliant Corners or Phil's own mighty June Brides in their ineffable prime.

35. Odessa Soundfreaks "Goblin" (Toyfriend, download)

Mention of Odessa still makes us think of the Odessa Steps, which in turn brings to mind Potemkin, which then makes us think of Eisenstein, and before too long we're in reverie once more over Sergei's overlooked "October 1917" and wondering idly what the Bolshevik head honchos of the day would have made of rattling Ukrainian techno from the former Russian fiefdom close to a century later, alongside the impudence of both the Orange Revolution and Shakhtar Donetsk's infamous aviary (or, even more idly, what he'd have made of hosting the World Cup a century after the Revolution). But given Vladimir Ilyich's pronouncements on music as beauty inamidst "vile hell", we're hopeful that he would have enjoyed "Goblin" as much as us: it's excellent, as well structured in its way as any of Sergei's filmic narratives. Like us, though, we're sure that V.I. would have had gulag-sized reservations about the duo's somewhat terrible name.

36. The Fall "Bury" (Domino, download)

Not the most obvious Domino signing, one would have thought, but surely it's the secret dream of every label to release one Fall single + album before the inevitable parting of the waves. After the grave disappointment of Gorillaz' "Glitter Freeze", which "featured" M.E.S. for about a quarter of a nanosecond (if that), this is a full-band return to form(ula) i.e. wizened musical legend freestyles for three full minutes an unhinged but ultimately entertaining train of thought over unsubtly combative angular guitar lines played by freshfaced and soon-to-be-sacked young people.

Yes, "Bury" may be musically unimaginative and unvaried, but who cares ? It's still vibrant POP music in that its very existence, its strange conviction (the Fall's absurdity is never wilful) makes you feel that all is right with the world, gives you a smile, paints utter contrast with the sub-Britpop proto-rawk "indie" graveyard of 2010. Oh, our eyes veritably *mist* as we recollect Mark on TOTP, riding roughshod over the Inspirals' "I Want You": what a perfect three minutes that was. Well, "Bury" isn't far off that. There was a limited 7" of this, too, but sadly we're no longer as "in the loop" as we might once have been. As you've probably all spotted by now.

37. DJ Honda featuring Lord Tariq "30 Some Odd (Remix)" (DJ Honda Recordings, download)

Admittedly this is a reworking of a tune from "Honda IV", albeit happily twice as long as the sub-two minute original, but there really seems no end to the number of truly quality collaborations that centre around DJ Honda. In this guise particularly, blessed by Honda's horn-heavy, 70s funk tinged, indelibly New York style, "30 Some Odd" has the feel of E A Ski's "Blast If I Have To" - one of our eight things for Marianthi - in the way that the Bronx's Tariq really does sound, as one in a hundred MCs do, that he is genuinely a very dangerous and scary person (i.e. as the vernacular has it, he's true gangsta). All this makes the otherwise preposterous, super-sweary lyrics here sound compelling, whereas in lesser hands they would amount to meaningless self-bigging. Indeed, if you poured equal parts "Blast If I Have To" and Honda and Mos Def's "Magnetic Arts" into a test tube, this is what would be created: it's not quite as good as either, but then that's always the thing with hybrids.

You may also recall that Tariq's click is Boss Money, whose work with P Brothers not too long ago caused our gentle hearts to require some serious stilling. Thankfully, unlike Honda's other LP remix single this year, "KGR v Honda" (and yes KGR there does indeed stand for none other than Kool G Rap), this doesn't sound overloaded by distortion and compression: god, listening to that KGR remix is as painful as listening to the Go-Betweens ruinously-mastered "Oceans Apart"...

38. Kryptic Minds & Youngsta "Cold Blooded" (Osiris Music, 12")

Kryptic Minds were probably the discovery of 2009 for us, the way they had opted in to the dubstep world and instantly put themselves at the heart of it with matchless records like the "Life Continuum" and "768" 45s, and the album "One Of Us". Here, the boys team with Youngsta for a plate of darkside half-step on their own label. "Cold Blooded" is certainly full-blooded, with the legendary downwards lunge at 3'20 that feels like a falcon dive, but it's "Surge" on the other side that sweeps us off our size 9s, as verses built on sheer, unnerving bass chasms (hell, it has more drops than Lukas Fabianski) are separated by a refrain that pivots on a call-and-response of string and woodwind sounds, a little more like the uplifting eerieness of "768" or "Distant Dawn", and without a vocal sample to be seen. Both tunes help to cement their thoroughly enviable position as the Joy Division of dubstep.

39. Virgil Enzinger "Phlogiston EP" (Sven Wittekind Records, download)

It's so hard, through the imprecise medium of language, to properly capture the arcs, ebbs and contours of these songs we love: to sketch out how shades of melody and rhythm combine to form colours that are just as indescribable. Scientists had struggled similarly, in the 1600s, to tame and explain the properties of fire: it was also so vivid, so magical, that they ended up having to invent an explanation, the so-called element "phlogiston". And following earlier singles "Darkness" (ludicrously pretentious press intro, suite of high profile remixes) and "Psychonaut" (nicely echoey clattering drums, unafraid to have appropriately queasy ascending and descending scales at the same time), this EP from the Austrian superproducer spoils us by happily combining such taut, description-defying music with the truly excellent title track track title's nod to the travails of those scientists many centuries ago. No wonder that he was also recruited to contribute the remix of "Bass Junkies".

40. Adriano Giliberti "Riot" (Dirty Planet)

Italy exited the World Cup even before England, leaving only the excitement of the last quarter of the Slovakia game to remember them by, although their dismal displays overall made Donadoni's sacking after Euro 2008 seem all the more harsh, given that it turned largely on losing a penalty shoot-out. Anyway, our Adriano cares <1 jot, for "Riot" is the sound of your neighbours having a party next door - playing techno turned up loud so that you can hear constant, unyielding kick, snare and synth through the wall - at the same time as every single car and house alarm on yr street goes off. Yes, that good. The first two or so minutes are sadly a little bit timid, but after that this is ripplingly essential, thematically melding the energetic chaos of his native Naples with the capital city savvy of his adopted Rome, especially if you want to annoy your neighbours (or indeed your own family). There's something noble, almost heroic, about the tunnel vision repetition at play. Oh, and as if that didn't sufficiently sate, heavy US hitters Takeuchi and Zawodny (q.v.v) drop in to deliver mixes: the former's is amazing, a gritty and subterranean "morning after" re-work.

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41. Joell Ortiz featuring DJ Premier "Project Boy" (E-1, download)

This is more like it: Orteeez, like many, only shines in the right company, but his face certainly fits this malevolent beast of a record, anchored by some of Premier's better, and most menacing, backing for quite some while (indeed, since his heyday) while still finding time for unlikely simile ("my name got weight in the hood / like elephant's legs"). The kneejerkers who would have it that this is a "celebration" of all that is murkiest about projects life are missing one crucial point: that Joell's narrative over the four minutes here does far more to indict than glamourise. Saying that he wouldn't want to be anywhere else doesn't change that message: all of us feel kinship with where we, our friends and families are from. We've long set ourselves an annual quota on the number of US hip-hop tracts we're prepared to give house room to that bang on largely about how tough the rapper is / how hard his district is, but without fail there are always a clutch of tunes which are just so tight and compelling that we're happy to let them in to our twisted hearts. This is one. As another illuminating couplet has it: "it's like I went celibate / cos' no-one's fucking with Ortiz this year."

42. Pariah "Detroit Falls" (R&S, 10")

From (a Scotsman in) London via a Belgian label, this was a marvellous Starkey-esque deconstruction and reconstruction of a single soul sample - a sample which opens proceedings, just to give you a blinkingly quick unedited glimpse of the raw material - to produce three and a half minutes (part of a welcome current trend: less noble artistes would have tried to stretch this to twice that) of searching, evolving, *involving* dubstep soundscape. Think maybe Dilla, think of a squinting Detroit sunset, think of night falling on that distinctive city skyline.

43. Kryptic Minds "Badman" (Swamp 81, 12")

If "One Of Us" and its surrounding singles for the most part saw Kryptic Minds execute their soundscapes with the pinpoint precision of Bobby Moore dispossessing Pele in Mexico '70, then this follow-up single on Loefah's Swamp 81, clad somewhat oddly in a black-on-deep red print sleeve of a beaming PC and WPC, has the duo laying down a much more straightforward construct of battering-ram sub-bass, eschewing subtlety almost entirely more in the manner of Ben Massing "dispossessing" Claudio Caniggia in Italia 90. But just as Massing's attack was in its own way just as satisfying as Moore's phlegmatic control, "Badman"'s pulverising judder (the locked repetition of a four-note bass drop) is no less enthralling than the Minds' more cerebral work (mind = cerebral, see ? It might be late, but we're cooking with gas here). Indeed, bits of "Badman" could be mistaken for a tube train rumbling directly below your floorboards. There's a bit of a pointless speech sample, though (still, what other kind is there ?) for which we've marked them down appropriately. Also, not quite as essential as the Cockney Rejects single of the same name, although to be fair that's a high hurdle.

44. The Hobbes Fanclub / Young Michelin split (Cloudberry Records, 3" CDR)

Despite our renowned sunny disposition, cheerful demeanour and beaming countenances, there are times when we *will* every new band we hear to be terrible. It makes life so much easier if we can just dismiss them out of hand, save the effort of tracking them, stalking them, saving pennies up for them, eventually being disappointed by them when they *fall off*. Yet many bands still have the impudence to be actually rather good. Young Michelin, as we'll mention again anon, have become one of our favourite French pop bands already, and "Obscene" shows them enjoying themselves greatly, with gtr FUZZ and shoutiness giving it an extra edge: but the Hobbes Fanclub were *completely* new to us.

They are, however, ace. Original no, somewhat derivative yes, but sparkling all the same, "Outside Myself" being a rush of fuzzy-enough guitars, little-boy-lost vocals, just grooving along hoovering up any hooks and rushes in the general vicinity. The only thing we weren't initially too keen on was the minute-long guitar "break" in the middle, but then we realised it increasingly reminded us of the rather yummy "You Should All Be Murdered", and that we were extremely comfortable with it after all. "And Just Like That" provides a different twist, slowing things a little for some moody but ultimately romantic girl/boy vocal interplay, but both tracks show the band drawing from the same workbook as the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, say.

45. Andre Walter "Infrasound" (Sven Wittekind Records, download)

Apparently, "infrasound" is sound below 20 Hz, the normal range of human hearing. As we're human, and yet can still hear this EP, we can relate that "Infrasound" is not *actually* infrasound but a rather intricate exercise in techno pointillism that oscillates rolling, ricocheting rhythms with jacking spring-heeled hydraulics, all sprinkled liberally with pitch modulation. On the lead track (er, "Infrasound Part I": there are three in all, running time 25 mins) Walter basically establishes a taut eight-minute framework of busy, gnawing percussion and steadily populates it with unerringly, *defiantly* bouncy slivers of superminimal techno until you start to forget quite where you came in or, indeed, when you might get out. A more-than-pleasantly diverting mindmeld of contemporary beat manufacture.

46. Frenkie V. "Exclude" (Sven Wittekind Records, download)

Francesco Varchetta is still only 20, but already making a pretty serious mark, and "Exclude" is a hugely enjoyable instrumental frolic through the (far) left-field which after a *completely* insane beginning (more unhinged than "Riot" and "Bury" put together!) gradually recasts itself into an equally captivating hunk of somewhat gleefully obscurist techno, defying the genre's usual "layer, build and dismantle" tradition with a frankly liberating "er, what's he going to next ?" approach to song structure. The prospect of more like this from him in future is not unwelcome.

47. Northern Portrait "Life Returns To Normal" (Matinée Recordings, 7")

Something of a SWR / Slumberland / Cloudberry and of course Matinée-fest, this list, a state of affairs for which we proffer zero apology. While this sits easily amongst the singles of the year, it was probably only about sixth or seventh best track on the long-player, which shows what a tremendous EVENT that album was. As you'll all be aware already, "Life..." is another clever, slick, melodic, smart piece of poppermost post-J. Marr jangle from this terrific discovery of a band. A shame in a way though that they chose their most Smiths-like track as a single: like Stefan's admittedly surreal dalliance with the tentacles of Murdoch, it just gives any haters (who are, of course, idiots) more ammunition.

48. Uzul "Ruffneg" (Dub Technic, 12")

Starts a little apologetically, bashful dubstep stylings that are as pleasant as an autumnal afternoon on the heath but that don't stand out from the madding crowd: yet soon enough Uzul decides to go a-genre mashing and this excellent record starts a bouncing techno pound while drawing in elements of glitch, warp, electronica, wobble, rave and even trance around it. A bold attempt to mix the 140bpm intricacies of hipster DS with both unhinged mechanical burbles and unharnessed dancefloor shenanigans, which frankly we'd have admired even if it hadn't come off.

49. I, Ludicrous "Clerking Till I Die" (Old King Lud presumably, download)

Much as we expose ourselves as unreconstructed Peelites each time we rep for yes-they-are-still-going southwest London modern music-hallers I, Ludicrous, there is method to our continued torch carrying. Like so many bands oft renowned for something they did twenty years ago, the Ludicrouses have in fact settled into a more consistently impressive career autumn, delivering downbeat drones on the human condition (miserable) that are avenues away from the tumbling, banter-fuelled shoutalongs of nerd history. "Clerking" is another of their surefooted, but assurably bleak, takes on working life: heavy bass and iron-bar guitars pull it along, while an unremitting pallor clings to Will Hung's increasingly funereal narration. There is pathos dripping from every pore here, and much as you might want to call them a joke band - and much as there are as ever lines in here that invite wry, if thin and nervy smiles - the joke has always been, as I, Ludicrous once themselves sang, "that we were serious". In a world of fluffy novelty and short attention spans, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more serious, depressing, *necessary* record than "Clerking Till I Die".

50. The Hillfields "Come Outside EP" (Underused, download)

We've huge admiration for the Hillfields (just as we have for I Ludicrous, come to think of it) for unashamedly foisting moody, downbeat indie wares on an audience attuned to more mindless, darewesay on occasion aimless, saccharin indie pop fare. The downside on a six-tracker like the (offering-you-out ?) "Come Outside", especially as it comes on the heels of the equally morose but totally A1 "Afterburn", is that by the end of it you're half-wanting to hug them and say "come on, buck up now" before they're asking you for directions to the nearest suspension bridge. All the tracks benefit from repeated plays, especially at the moment the winsomely dolorous "Mix Tape", but "Colour It In", the first track here, is still the most imposing and successful: it shakes with imperious Joy Div-isms and carved descending basslines, while Rob Hillfield summons up ghosts of childhood past. Really very good indeed. Again.

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51. Comet Gain "I Never Happened" (What's Your Rupture?, 7" EP)

A return to form: despite its clean and simple lines, it doesn't take long to realise that "I Never Happened" the song really is prime Comet Gain (think "City Fallen Leaves"), all tingling and heady, a warm vial of pent-up love, a tribute to giddy teenage sensation and the fact that you don't have to *be* teenage to fall under its spell. Best of all, it means we can now treat "Herbert Huncke" as the temporary aberration it no doubt was. A clue as to where they're coming from on the lead track is provided by a charm-drizzled turn on New Order's ever-startlingly adorable "Love Vigilantes": in between though, there are halfcut collaborations with the Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts which are just as good as you would expect (i.e. not really very good).

52. For Ex-Lovers Only "Coffin" (Magic Marker, 7")

Sounding exactly as you might hope a band named after Black Tambourine's third or fourth best song to sound, FELO finally explode onto wax with this scratchy, brilliant, distracted sub-two minute pop noise scree of indeterminate vintage. Along with Gold-Bears' single, this also finally cements Magic Marker's place in our hearts (and charts) and yes, this is overdue: the fault all on our side.

53. Kulvinder Johal featuring Raman Aujla "Johal Boliyan" (VIP Records, download)

Now we pretend that we know about some genres, but when it comes to bhangra - um, if this is bhangra and not some subtle microgenre akin to the indie pop vs indiepop vs indie-pop debates (to be continued in the White Swan sometime) - even attempting to bluff is a non-starter. All we know is that we wish that all the weddings we'd ever been to had bounced to this kind of thing rather than the usual dry paint dross, but then we've never been to a Panjabi wedding, which is probably where we're going wrong. There were a couple of weeks where we listened to nothing other than the likes of Kulvinder and PBN, at which point it seemed likely that this top 100 singles list would suffer a serious bhangra invasion, but in the end we tacitly decided to shove all the votes in the direction of a couple of our justified favourites, starting with this one in which Derby-based veteran Johal trades vocals with teenage law student Aujla (the *actual* sound of Leamington Spa). There's quite a squelchy bassline hidden underneath, while the instrumental hook is a killer, as jangly as Close Lobsters, as feral as P.E. We are given to understand that all this is down to Tru-Skool's production skills.

54. Potential Badboy "Fast Cars" / "My Sound" (Ganja Recordings, 12")

We can take or leave "Fast Cars" - it's not in the same league as the song of the same name by the Buzzcocks - but "My Sound" is one of our favourite D&B assemblages of the year, a meld of "champion sound" sampling and ribbiting jump-up hooks, a song that leans much more towards the junglist end of jump-up (see also Jaydan's puffingly fine "Original Rudeboy" on Smokin' Riddims). And that then got us into...

55.Direct Feed & SiXfOoTuNdA "Johnny Flys West Side Grade" (Warlord Dubplate, download single)

56. Krumble "Ultrash Talker" (Jungle Therapy, download)

"JFWSG" is one "side" of Warlord Dubplate eight, a share with Ragga Scum. It's unafraid to be engagingly chaotic, an amalgam of leisurely skank with wild, unrestrained junglist drum passages, although we still maintain there's an apostrophe missing in the title. While "Ultrash Talker" is Jungle Therapy five, and does just as nicely: the Frenchman makes like Teenagers In Trouble and early Squarepusher before mixing in straight-up mad skank, scrambled ragga vox, sleek samples and industrial-strength laser sounds, and just when you think he can't top that, in come some sirens, a Flavor Flav sample (infinitely more uplifting than Flav's contemporaneous non-sampled "Can't Do Nuttin' For You" reprise on Noreaga's dismally misogynist "Nutcracker" single) and rumbling Northern Line-deep Shane Embury-esque bassology. A pleasure to listen to. (A later Jungle Therapy from Krumble, "Ticket To Grind" also merits uncovering, if only to enjoy its pelting, happy-go-lucky B-side, "Rave Destruktor").

57. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart "Say No To Love" (Slumberland Records / Fortuna Pop! 7")

"Higher Than The Stars" was a difficult proposition: it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination *bad*, but the emasculated sound, the multi-format horror and a dated St.Etienne remix combined to make it something we couldn't bring ourselves to linger on, discretion being the better part of valour and all that. "Say No To Love", however, is identifiably a searing, gutbusting and terrific song, thrillingly arranged, longingly sung, pacily strummed, and issued on gooey green vinyl. It also sounds not unlike early Ash in places (don't worry, this is good: that band's later misdemeanours against music should not deflect from the teenage kicks of "Jack Names The Planets", "Petrol" etc). It's true that the thoroughly, er, modern production sheen still strikes us as less than ideal for this achingly feral band - at least when Archie Moore was harnessing things for the LP the rhythm section was upfront and pounding, the whole shebang somehow a little more *urgent* - but maybe, if this is what it takes to get this excellent band pumping out of a few more radios, then it's still all worthwhile. Later in the year came "Heart In Your Heartbreak", and that was good too: not great, but good enough that we're still caught by a certain jealous sadness, that bittersweet feeling as they slip (up, up and) away from us.

58. Mark Zaraboy "Growl" / "Disease" (Toyfriend, download)

Aka "The Growl" / "The Disease", which prompted some discussion as to the merits and demerits of the definite article in songtitles and a slight altercation when someone suggested that Echo and the Bunnymen's best single would have profited from being called "Cutter" (and their second best "The Silver"). Zaraboy's record, whatever yr linguistic preferences, is a terrific single from the can-be great, can-be-dodgy Toyfrienders, both sides of which tease with skybound pararhythms and fluffily attractive beats, which "Growl" supplements with occasional clacking drum machine fills. Still, ultimately "Disease" is the one which we can't shake.

59. Falling and Laughing "Bunnyhood" (OddBox, CD-EP)

In the neatest of printed cardboard sleeves, this comes with its own fanzine making some very salient points on Kitty Empire's view of the indie wars (although that's the least of our own ongoing and increasingly personal beef with the Observer's music pages). But "Bunnyhood" is worth getting ultimately for the tunes, recorded and mixed with some care by the legend that is Pete Off Of Horowitz. The slower passages, all smoothed guitars that occasionally unravel, as if the Sugargliders had formed at art school, easily recall a more modish Tompot Blenny, but there is much more to F&L: the sudden, frazzled Field Mice-ish flurry of noise at the end of "Roly Poly", the poppier, more shambling "Stockholm Archipelago", the more wilfully feral "Kim's Song".

Few bands have sounded so comfortable switching between fast and slow, quiet and noisy, light and dark textures since the urgently perfect Hood. Crucially, each track also benefits from a rare innovation in indie-pop (or, indeed, music): interesting and original lyrics, epitomised by fine lead track "Feral Fanzine Frenzy" and its take on the many failures of modern music journalism, before it evolves into a paean of love for the naked honesty of the fanzine.

60. Steppa & Kitcha "Belly" / "Jaws" (Calypso Muzak, 12")

We sourced an unmarked Nu Urban promo copy, but worked out which track from the northern more fire mavens of jump-up was which quickly enough, given that one of them contains fairly obv references to a certain killer shark movie's theme tune, as well as a sample of some bloke going on about the general scariness of said beasts. But despite the majorly insane riff that defines "Jaws", it's "Belly" that's the kicker, a downward-spiralling hook that sounds not unlike the "point deducted" buzzer on Fighting Talk, interspersed with surprisingly beatless interludes that will no doubt be MASSIVELY confusing a jump-up dancefloor near you approx. now.

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61. Chris Liberator and Sterling Moss "United Colours Of Rave" / "True Colours Of Techno" (Maximum Minimum, 12")

If their acid-flecked "We're On The Outside" collaboration on Stay Up Forever perhaps tended to cater a little too completely for the "largin' it" constituency, then - just like last year's "The Cult" - this single from the ex-WAGTEY man and his sadly-not-named-after-Worrell compadre spreads the net, boasting plenty of nuclear hi-jinks for the old-man ravers but also enough drilled beat-discipline for us more puritanical, "in it for the music" got-into-techno-through-Peel consumers of London techno. In the early 2000s, Maximum Minimum were responsible for some of the best singles around, and this is therefore a welcome return for a label that at one point was matching Matinee and co stride for stride in this fanzine's year-ends. "UCOR" ultimately pivots around a timeless, not-many note rave motif, but the groove is as compellingly clean and high-bpm as the best of Chris L's past fare. "TCOT" flows naturally, dispensing with any hands-in-the-air credentials by locking in to a modern, thoroughly crafted and reasonable-octane tech groove, enlivened by the occasional intrusion of those gradually elevating "whooshing klaxon" noises we all love so.

62. Cooly G "Up In My Head" (Hyperdub, 12")

The opinion has been ventured within the catholic and usually of-one-mind in love with these times, in spite of these times organisation that "Up In My Head" is a bit... coffee table, an accusation based in part on the evidence that it received a positive write-up in the Guardian Guide, the bastion of all that is good-but-not-threateningly good in music. It's certainly true that unlike last year's seedily dark "Narst", a soundscape which brought to mind the kind of dystopic vision that Ice-T christened "a hellish habitat of shanks and steel", "Up In My Head", with its swooning vocals, feels somewhat more *commercial* (or, as the young Razorcuts had it, "COMMERCIAL!"). However, the majority view here remains that so long as you listen to it through a system with sufficient BASS, "Up In My Head" not only falls the right side of the coffee table, but proves rather stylish to boot, a more stripped-down approximation of the joys of "Reminissin'", the epitome of how a modern soulful dancefloor concoction should BE. And if the upshot of it having a club-friendly lyrical hook is that ppl who would normally only listen to stuff from the *wrong* side of the coffee table also cock an ear to this (and thus potentially to the whole Hyperdub roster), then we would venture that the more, the merrier.

63. Pale Sunday "Shooting Star" (Matin?e Recordings, CD-EP)

Deconstructed in more detail here, it became increasingly clear to us over the year that the stand out track was "Are You Scared To Get Happy ?", now a formal member of the same pantheon of greatness as older Pale Sunday hall-of-famers "The White Tambourine" and "The Girl With Sunny Smile".

64. Public Enemy "Say It Like It Really Is" (Slam Jamz)

They remain better than you think, and taking into account that this single celebrates Chuck's 50th (gulp!) birthday, they deserve at least a little ongoing kudos for retaining the kind of fire which is simply unknown to most musicians of that age. It's true that "Say It" doesn't truly set the place on fire, pull up trees or any other euphemism involving actual criminal damage, but it fully merits its place in this list not least because the fact remains that when Chuck opens his mouth, you *listen*. Flav has clearly been persuaded into the studio too, and from time to time Chuck lets him grab the mic just to let you know WHAT TIME IT IS BOYYYYYYYYYY, but thankfully the bulk of the song is devoted purely to furious scratching, a tankingly great repeated "trunk of funk" of a hook (as if the Shocklees, as a birthday present, had returned to cut and shunt Chuck's solo single "No" with PE's "Revolverlution"), and Chuck's confirmation that he's still more interested in bringing hip-hop to the world ("I just got back from SO-WE-TO") than "popping champagne", or having singing on his records. So long as Chuck D is in such imperious form, the idiots have no chance of winning.

65. The Hit Parade "I Like Bubblegum" (JSH Records, 7")

It's a measure of the greatness of the Hit Parade in more recent years that JSH Records is one of the best British record labels over that period, given that to our knowledge it has released works only by the one and only Julian Henry (of "See You In Havana", "In Gunnersbury Park" or "My Stupid Band" fame, depending on your age), and ipso facto one of the most reliable songwriters in Christendom. You may remember one JSH release from a past trawl of these very pages: the Parade's last LP, "The Return Of", which was top ten in our 2006. But now, in a neat Corbusier-showcasing sleeve, and with all profits going to the renovation of Porthmeor Studios in St. Ives, "I Like Bubblegum" sees JSH reunite with none other than Cath Carroll to give us a delectable slab of electro-tinged white funk indie-pop which frankly only they could pull off. If this had sold as many records as it ought to have, those studios would now spread over about a thousand hectares AND be awash with snooker rooms, swimming pools, an indiepop rehab centre and a garageful of Bentleys.

66. Kashmere "I Am Galaktus" (Boot, download)

A top record. Not *just* Kashmere's record - from the opening bars you will be in little doubt that the decks are being marshalled by the beatbuilding genius of Diversion Tactics' Jazz-T and Zygote - but there's no doubt that the Iguana Man's flow continues to suit these momentous, bassy, blue note productions, and "Galaktus" is prime brag, three minutes of pure stepping on the sickest of beats. The Galaktus alterego becomes a cyber companion to Chubby Alcoholic's Robot Boy (on whose self-titled single Kashmere guested), and either of them remain more than welcome to grab the mic from us anytime they roll by N1. If you check the LP, by the way, you get "Supreme Being", a not-to-be-missed Kashmere / Chubby collabo (actually, it's mostly Chubby).

67. Hell Razah "Kids In The Street" (Nature Sounds, download)

Another sterling slice of East Coast hip-hop. Brooklyn boy (another one) and former Killah Priest collaborator HR is mourning the death of innocence as well as the deaths of kid after kid on the corner, and he's entitled as anyone to ruminate on mortality having thankfully emerged from the coma suffered following a brain aneurysm. Razah recounts his own broken childhood without rancour, along with knowledge-of-self lyrics: "Shorty, you feel alone like Macaulay Culkin / that you won't make it to see 40 before you see a coffin / but don't rush to sell your soul for that fame and fortune / If it ain't a bigger portrait then it ain't important", cracking piano and chipmunk sampling production from Ayatollah and plenty of dramatic reconstructions with appropriate sound effects. Plus, like the AZ tune, some authentic shout-outs at the end.

68. Jesu "Christmas" (Avalanche, download)

Shoegaze's centre of gravity has moved not just geographically - i.e. from Morse's own Thames Valley, basically, to the rest of the world - but also by genre, the best shoegaze now coming from the "metal" side (check French band Alcest) rather than the "indie" side (notwithstanding the likes of A Sad Day For Puppets' recent Cloudberry single). Back in the early 1990s, when shoegaze was *RIFE*, we used to actively malign it, partly because our modus operandi was - and possibly still is - v. much "rebel against yr peers, not yr parents", but on reflection the bandwagons that shoegaze replaced (baggy) and was superseded by (britpop) were *much, much* more rickety.

Our main reservation now is only that so many claim to like "shoegaze" or "dreampop" without recognising that the likes of Justin Broadrick are now the colossi of the genre, a truth o'erlooked in part because of the way he mangles fuzzy sonorous dreamscapes with industrial / metal influence (so "Christmas", after a tender-ish first four minutes, detours into a more ponderous next five of jarring and juddering guitar noise - just the thing to scare away the doubters). But that shouldn't detract from the myriad attractions of this single, most of which come from the way that the appropriately pained-sounding vocal is surrounded by a sweep of part-ethereal, densely-layered, um, itself-celebrating guitar distortion. Nothing stops this "Christmas" being one of the better festive-flavoured singles we've encountered, and just hearing the main man from Godflesh crooning sweetly about sleigh bells and Christmas trees - much as the lyrics are tempered with real sadness - is a treat indeed.

69. Saqi Roadshow featuring Miss Pooja and Meet Malkit "Pariyan" (VIP Records, download)

Another danceable, boy / girl vocal gem to emerge from our autumn immersion in a very British branch of "world music". And so the musical renaissance in the West Midlands, a place which ought to be known for more than *just* inventing metal (apart from black metal of course, which we all know is a Geordie invention), continues apace.

70. Roman Zawodny "Seres EP" (Sonic Mind, download)

If his "So You Said" single (NOT a Brighter cover version) was maybe a little... *plain*, the EP title track restores order and justice with zeal and aplomb, a cracking and appositely silky funky/tech homage to the Chicago sound from this stalwart of the NorthWest (er, that's the US NorthWest, rather than Carlisle, or for the really parochial of you, Maida Vale) warehouse scene that bubbles, effervesces, oozes honey into the grooves. Smashing handclaps, too: a minor marvel of sleek, modern techno.

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71. Raffertie "7th Dimension" (Planet Mu, 12")

Raising Mark Ankh three, "7th Dimension" silkily updates last year's soothing, prog-step "Antisocial" single into a radiant meld of Jamie Vex'd's "Miracles" remix and the strange screeching noises that helped make Ant's "Homemade Discord" one of this century's better singles so far. Perky vocal samples give this Dimension a warm, housey feel, like a nervous kid brother to Skream's "Burning Up", but there's definitely a rave / trance influence in there too, with super-skittery beats combining to *maxed* effect all the while before a comedown last quarter in which a whispered calm o'ertakes as the alien chatter quietly subsides.

72. Nicol & Majistrate / Harvest "Age Of Aquarius" / "Wild Bunch" (NAM Musik, 12")

The AA-side is our pick, a breath of new life as (Birmingham's) Harvest ministers a festival of suitably agricultural wheat-from-chaff jump-up that does our world the world of good, in part through a thankfully restrained use of *exactly* the Wild Bunch sample that you'd be expecting. Murderous. Back on the A-side the label proprietors, the Forster & McLennan of the genre, intersperse their tale of Apollo 13 with groovesome enough sound effects, but over 5 minutes 30 it drags a little compared to the simple joys of "Pussy Killa", or their half of "Mission Statement Pt 6", last year.

73. Serum "Souped Up" (Co-Lab, 12")

Serum's first for Co-Lab, apparently. We've nothing specific to say about it, other than that it's very good.

So, the World Cup Final. Comfortably the best one since 1986, and anyone telling you otherwise (we appreciate this includes basically all media outlets and JCL footy fans) didn't watch any of the finals inbetween. Tense, a bit aggro (at times like the breathless & insane Holland v Portugal game in '06, or Uruguay in every game in '86), outcome in doubt 'til late, a few golden opportunities to seal it not taken, a totally action-packed half hour of extra time, the inevitable red card that was impending all game, a late goal saving us from the ignominy of penalties. The referee, incidentally, got far more right than wrong, and produced a performance far better than any of England's despisable players managed.

We really enjoyed the tournament as a whole, too, probably more than at any time since the halcyon days of the early 1990s when Romania, Yugoslavia, even Bulgaria were making the later stages. Germany, Ghana (Gyan's miss as dramatic as anything from previous tournaments) and, a tad surprisingly, Chile were terrific value. With the first division and the Champions League having become as boring as it gets, the World Cup, a bit like the coming 3rd division season, served as welcome respite. And while we're selfishly upset we won't get a World Cup on our doorstep in 2018, FIFA made the right decision (for the wrong rea$on$, obviously): England's top tier continues to ruthlessly export its brand, strangling other countries' domestic leagues whilst plundering their better players. Along with other such countries in western Europe, we're the last people you should give the tournament to.

Plus, Russia will make fascinating hosts. Their win was worth raising a glass of Stolichnaya to, and so we did (hint we learned in Russia: ice cold, it's a top-one chaser for a jar of Baltika).

74. Spiros Kaloumenos "Stay Focus EP" (Focus Records, 12")

And Otto Rehhagel got all sorts of grief for his stewardship of Greece in said World Cup, but against Argentina they were pretty professional and well organised: as usual, idiot commentators would much prefer that they'd tried to play like Brazil '70 and got mullahed than play the percentages and hope results elsewhere went for them. Sad to see King Otto go, then, but his leading Greece to Euro glory is unlikely ever to be forgotten.

As for the tune, well Piraeus-born Kaloumenos introduced himself to us with the sprawling bundle of pacy techno that was "Status Quo" (Greek with a little Latin, ha): like the Garlands' 7", it got a little overexcitable with the drum machine fills, but it would not be the last single of his we eagerly devoured. Then there was "Shortcut", even better, a 12" on TechHead Recordings, marginally more bite-sized, a single, propulsive groove that gets into its stride, gets its head down and then just carries on in a straight line, like Franz Carr. Or Adie Mings. And then there was this EP: lead tune "Keygen" is the one, adorned as it is with a shimmering, futurist glaze: while there's an Axel Karakasis remix on the other side, the original does the real business, a veritable ciabatta of wholemeal techno goodness toasted lightly with glittering synth.

75. Oh! Custer "Forget It" (Cloudberry Records, 7")

Cuter than a nest of baby robins, gnawing away at us each time we re-listen and inexorably winding and wending its way deeper under our skin, "Forget It" is an unassuming, only sort-of produced, lo-fi CORKER of le pop indie from the Swedish duo that despite its many rough edges and unspeakably tinny drum machine has more than enough, just in the way that the guitars insistently chime and clang around hug-invitingly hesitant vocals, to help it sneak in under the wire and coax us to well-up completely. Right now, as we write, those giddy, swirling, nervous opening instrumental bars TOTALLY hold us to ransom.

76. Brilliant Colors "Never Mine" (Slumberland Records, 7")

It took a second dip of our toes in the water before we gave Brilliant Colors their due, but the trio here deliver a dizzying sub-two minutes of straight-from '78 Girls At Our Best-ish shedazzle, a worthy sister to Summer Cats' similarly no-nonsense fuzzpop from earlier in the year on the same label. As with many ace bands of the recent moment (Cause Co-Motion, Sugarplums) we're convinced there's some early-14IBs in there too, at least in those sections where the guitars briefly attempt to collapse in on themselves. And the groovy bass run that intrudes towards the end makes you feel like grabbing the nearest trampolene and just *bouncing*.

77. Lifeless "Wytches Hammer" (Pay For The Piano, download EP)
Because the post we wrote on Darkthrone's "Circle The Wagons" LP - a post which we for some reason entitled "Circle The Wagons, Raise Your Flagons, Make Like Foggon And Spraggon" - still rests lonelily in the "drafts" pile, Lifeless provide the only obvious link to Middlesbrough in the blog this year. "Wytches Hammer" is a 3-track EP that follows up on their "Full Chill" set and continues the band's attempts to rehabilitate thrash, or at least stop us Brits looking across the Atlantic for it all the bloody time (we're as guilty of this as anyone, given our occasional slaveless devotion to Municipal Waste). "Wytches Tyt" rocks into view first, before "Nss" burns things up (even including a vampin' solo) and "Nuclear Bore" finishes off: it's only a demo (which is why the drums don't seem to have been properly miked up, making it sound a bit like the midnight shift at Rich Bitch circa 1986) but it shows there's nothing wrong with their ongoing songwriting skills.

78. Sven Wittekind "Dangerzone" (Sven Wittekind Records, download)

Eleven ambitious minutes of neoclassical post-techno from the oft-unassailable Sven, on his own label. The prelude is a clattering, trebly rattle which eventually moves over to allow a clean percussive pulse, after which the song traces a line somewhere between Takeuchi's "Option"'s ear-bending siroccos and the more rooted techno sound of "Bass Junkies", but never quite matching the heights of either (possibly because it could have benefited from being two or three minutes shorter). Still, however, never less than pretty great.

79. Murder Construct "Murder Construct" (Relapse, 12")

So long as "noise" bands are making records this seductive then I suspect we're going to keep voting them in to these lists whether you scroll straight through them or not, and from brute opening salvo "I Am That" it's clear that newly created supergroup Murder Construct are going to have their cake *and* eat it as they segue whipcrack grind passages with sludgier breakdowns, the odd solo, and even something (loosely) approaching a chorus to create a three-minute minor metal masterpiece. Not all seven tracks can muster quite the same quality, but there's no doubt that Murder Construct have installed themselves failry forcibly on that "ones to watch" list.

80. Summer Cats "Your Timetable" (Slumberland Records, 7")

And here is that Summer Cats 45. Never thought we'd necessarily find ourselves liking a record by this lot *quite* so much, although as our past year-end singles rundowns appear to include everyone from Saxon to Rachel Stevens, perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised by anything. Anyway, "Your Timetable" does everything right - celerity, being *doused* in fresh and welcoming feedback (cf. the way that the Legends album showed how Club 8 + feedback = better than Club 8) and sub-two minute duration - and shows not for the first time how Slumberland can really pick an 'A' side. A neat package, too, with a geometric, gently neoplasticist sleeve as minimalist as the song, bearing only the name of the band and the name of the tunes. Bravo for that, too. Plus, the sleeve (not the song) reminds us a bit of Airport Girl's "Salinger Wrote".

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81. Majistrate "Plank Bass" / "Spiral" (Lowdowndeep, 12")

Bass bin-baiting, uptown top planking Jaydanesque jump-up jujitsu from Nicol's mate his Maj, on Logan D's lowriding Lowdowndeep label.

82. Dub Pistols featuring Rodney P "Ganja" (Sunday Best, download)

83. Skitz featuring Rodney P, Kardinal Offishall and Skibbadee "Struggla" (Dragon Drop, download)

Over the years, music introduces you to many distinctive voices, drawls, barks and croons, from Hackett's tearstained longing to Gedge's guttural moan to Smith's demented yelp. Yet occasionally the tones you hear over many years have such a comforting, reassuring, welcoming burr that you really feel like it's a reunion with an old mate every time you cue the vinyl. High on this list of "music blokes that we'd love just to go down the pub with", along with legends like Gregory Webster, Chuck D and Blak Twang, is the completely undisguisably unique Rodney P, the original riddim killa formerly of the incontestably splendid London Posse. Without him, "Ganja" would be the usual mindless student tribute to da herb (the Dub Pistols, bless their hearts, genuinely seem to be labouring under the apprehension that calling the record "Ganja" makes them edgy, dangerous, and subversive) but with him it is entertaining and enjoyable (if still mindless): Rodney's chatty rhyme skillz going up and down the register. "Struggla" is musically a little tighter, courtesy of Skitz's ever-so wide skills at the controls: here, Rodney shares vocal duties with the Kardinal and Skibbadee while police sirens occasionally intervene. Although very 21st century, what both records have in common is a certain spirit, a true-to-reggae feel, that puts us in mind of one of the great south London labels, Lavender Hill's too short-lived Fashion (once home to Smiley Culture, Tippa Irie and the like).

84. Aswad featuring Sweetie Irie "City Lock" (Rhythm Riders, 12")
At their peak, Aswad were simply one of the greatest British bands ever. That peak may have been thirty years ago, but history won't erase (and yes check out the collected Peel Sessions). This 3-tracker consists of three remixes of the title track from their LP last year - from Breakage (a fairly mentalist jungle rework), Roska and the band - although the download release added the original too. Without Brinsley Forde, "City Lock" is not, and could never be, a glorious throwback to Aswad's first "new chapter", but it has just enough - namely in the vocal harmonies and the most gorgeous brass motifs - to remind you of the band's mighty skills. As Aswad traditionalists, we'd obviously have preferred more singing on this rather than rely on Sweetie Irie's dancehall-flavoured vocal, but the band's own (Ladbroke) Grove remix, in particular (yet more sirens ahoy!) still has just enough hints of the band they once were.

85. Young Michelin "Elle M'Oubliera" (Holiday Records, download)

Now that Domenech is gone at last, our usual Francophilia can properly resume, after his disgraceful treatment of Giuly and Trezeguet and that was even before leaving out Ben Arfa, Benzema and Nasri yet still picking the likes of Gouvou, one of the worst international players we have ever seen (he's had about as many good games for France as Gerrard or Lampard Jr Jr have for England). At least when Jacquet displayed similarly eccentric wiles, playing Guivarc'h as lone striker in a World Cup final, he had Zizou in midfield to win the game single-handed.

Er, no excuse for not copping this single, given that it's free: this scamp of a chiming popsong sees Aline's YM marry merry pace with sweetly dovetailing jangly guitars and there's even a slightly unexpected but still welcome intrusion of some rather random fuzzy noise before the tune fades away. Indie in an old-fashioned, but sincerely a very good, way.

86. Peverelist "Better Ways Of Living" / "Fighting Without Fighting" (Punch Drunk, 12")

Reviewing Bristolian artistes always throws up a moral conundrum for us: the sure knowledge that they are either (1) Rovers, (2) City or (3) neither, and that two of those outcomes are unacceptable. We know that most of the Beatnik Filmstars are Rovers, that Tramway were, that the Hi-Life Companion have put their money where their mouth is by sponsoring Jo Kuffour. Cary Grant was from Horfield, so he's definitely Rovers too (by contrast, the Norman Mailer rumour was sadly a Wikipedia hoax). Massive Attack and Banksy are City, and we're given to believe that Secret Shine are, too (if that's wrong, it's probably actionable). We have no idea about Pinch, Brilliant Corners or indeed Peverelist, and reserve the right to adjust this placing as necessary should we find out. But, until we do, our line is that Peverelist has produced this brilliant if subtle single, both sides of which do him all-round credit, justice and honour, the latter featuring a bit more clattering echo, which is how we like it right about now. Records like this are almost a bridge between the most forward-thinking dubstep right about now and the equally minimalist techno emerging from stables like Sven Wittekind's (a stable which we may just have mentioned a few times).

87. Pinch "The Boxer" (Tectonic, 12")

Excellent single from fellow BS-postcode resident Pinch, who can be relied on for at least one such annually. Despite the pugilistic theme, the song is sensuous and contoured, immersed in bongo-heavy but progressive percussion and translucent, lilting wraps of sound. The boxer in question sounds punchdrunk, bursts of wobbly synth swaying around and crashing onto the ropes, with the choral sample then suggesting a ghostly choir of angels urging him back into the ring. There's a Darqwan remix on the other side, for all you Darqwan remix fans out there.

88. Dub Zero "Ragga Hammer" (Lava Recordings, 12")

At our school, there was this band called Sub Zero, chancers whose daddies had all bought them quite expensive "rock" instruments. Middle school assembly was once ruined by the "treat" of us all having to listen to the band, fronted by a midget with a mullet, perform a cover of Metallica's "In My Darkest Hour": frankly, given the choice, most of us would have willingly goldfished the usual church hymns instead. Also, when our band later "supported" them, they refused to let us use their amps, which counts as diva behaviour round our way. (Although, interestingly, the bass player later ditched the plodding metal and went on to become a certain hugely successful electronica bloke and Warp Records mainstay). However, as we all know, the joys of language mean that a single letter can make a big difference, so Dub Zero is as far removed from Sub Zero as the Fall from the Call, Cex from the Ex, Garth Crooks from Garth Brooks or Kevin Campbell from Tevin Campbell. (Mind, should it transpire that Dub Zero is the same person / people as Double Zero, who we've slagged off in the past, then we're going to look mighty silly). Anyway, "Ragga Hammer" is really all about the verse - an excitable and frankly fearsome gloop of chattering synth-drops - but the bass and FX are sprinkled into the loop just at the right times, meaning that you can withstand the repetition. Just cushty.

89. Andy White "Stereophony" (Sven Wittekind Records, download)

It always seemed the ultimate irony that stereophony, a technique for achieving the ultimate three-dimensional sound, is a word forever tainted by association with one of the most one-dimensional bands ever to have existed. As such, it may be too late to reclaim it, but Andy White does what he can with this typically ambitious, meticulously constructed single, on the only label right now that can house such ambition. Over ten minutes, the A-side epitomises the progressive, organic new wave of instrumental music as it builds gradually, eschewing traditional structures, unfolding its textures like patterns on a kaleidoscope as they turn from image to image, and each melds into the next. Yet, like his collaboration with the label owner, "Bass Junkies" (q.v.), there is still a pulse at the centre of it all, a heartbeat underlying every single nuance, every slight change of direction. In fairness, it's not a tune you could hum, but you can have fun trying...

90. Ian Void "Distraction" (Tremors Recordings, download)

Bet his nickname's "Dystop". A tide of curving, sinewy, syncopated syne waves that lap against acidtech beaches before coming ashore and being garlanded by grateful natives. Best of the four remixes is probably label overlord Martyn Hare's: otherwise, we'd suggest you plump for the original.

* * * * *

91. The Blanche Hudson Weekend "Hate Is A Loaded Gun" (Squirrel Records, 7" EP)

92. The Blanche Hudson Weekend "Rats In The Cellar" (OddBox Records, 7" EP)

Very loosely speaking, if the Manhattan Love Suicides were Psychocandy then the Blanche Hudson Weekend are Darklands, and the best tracks on each of these EPs (respectively "Song For Kristen" from the former and the horribly dark, subject-wise, "Grip Of Fear" from the latter) play to their strengths by being girl-sung hymns of Mary Chain adoration: as such it's virtually impossible to separate the two singles, but the "Hate" EP gets the nod simply because of the way that "Kristen" draws to a glorious close with not one but three variants on the "Darklands" guitar melody criss-crossing each other.

93. This Many Boyfriends "Getting A Life With" (Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation, CD-EP)

Lead tune "I Don't Like You (Cos You Don't Like The Pastels)" is on the side of the angels: it's a beautifully shambling piece, a parcelled-up celebration of grinding guitar fuzz and ramshackle Subway Recs flair from the Leeds combo. A little like Murder Constuct, the Boyfs get a little stretched at times over seven tracks, but finish with the other standout tune, "It's Lethal", a canny and dinking piece of thoughtful indie troubadouring with a quite *severely* hummable hook. Comes in a paper bag package with all sorts of goodies: badges, stickers, and a fanzine with a fun page (we particularly liked the maze: shades of seventies hardback pop annuals).

94. Edwyn Collins "Losing Sleep" (Heavenly, download)

We were a bit worried we might have to *pretend* this was great, but actually it *is*, instantly and obviously, very great. At least as charming as "Gorgeous George" and nearly as sweet as "Rip It Up", but with a deliciously introspective and inevitably moving lyric given his recent travails, "Losing Sleep" sees Edwyn straight back to what he invented and does best: a kind of yearning, nostalgic indie-pop soul.

95. Liechtenstein "Passion For Water" (Fraction Discs, 7")

Latest single from pop's favourite principality, last seen entering into some new tax treaties with our very own HMRC, sees them crank up a somewhat trebly (but nonetheless very welcome) Siddeleys revival tip, mixing swooping harmonies that recall the feyer flair of their own "Survival Strategies In A Modern World" with bold, (literally) brassy dollops of Johnny Johnson's sassy band.

96. High Roller "Prior Engagements" (Digital Terror, download)

When we hear the phrase "High Roller", of course we think of only one man - Ice MF T ("schoolboys admire / young girls desire / very few live to retire" and all that). This High Roller is no west coast old schooler, more a throwaway jump-up merchant, but remember that throwaway is just how jump-up should be, ya get me. (Glances at wall clock: only four more to go).

97. DMC "I Got More Songs Than You Do" (label doesn't spring to mind, download)

This fanzine stays true to the memory of Run DMC. They changed the game forever and they did it with purpose, humour and style. Hey, they're the main reason why we still rock Adidas today (well, that and our admiration for der Kaiser who, incidentally, was right about the England team. Again). If you check out Run DMC videos from day, they'll make you grin as well as make your feet move: plus, without them, you'd never have had that hugely enjoyable set-piece in CB4 where Chris Rock and co mime to them in their ride. As for the senseless death of JMJ, that was a huge loss not just to the hip-hop game, but to music full stop.

Yes, it's a shame that Run DMC's two worst ever releases are probably their two best-known: "Walk This Way", the song that (wrongly) relaunched Aerosmith as a going concern, and the fenland-flat "It's Like That" remix (frankly, they'd have done better getting in Pat Nevin than Jason Nevins). And it's a shame that their classic logo is currently nearly as ubiquitous in high street fashion as Franklin & Marshall. But these things should NEVER be held against them.

Anyway, DMC lets us know that he is still around with this single, a quaint enough ode to the i-pod - over a snarling, dirty New York rock riff allegedly produced by Freddie Foxx - that will hopefully top up his pension fund a little. Like KRS, like Rakim, like Gregory, Amelia or the Gedge, he is forever ORIGINATOR and *legend* to us.

98. DJ Honda featuring Group Home "Group Home Gangsta" (DJ Honda Recordings, download)

Brooklyn's Group Home pair up with Honda for this experi-gangsta single that sees the latter veer off on a tangent production-wise, letting Big Dap and er, the other one rhyme portentously over a spectral series of drum rolls, which together with the chipmunked vocal samples give this almost the feel of a stripped-down Starkey tune. The more we think about Honda's last album ("IV") the more we realise how great it was - "Magnetic Arts", "Never Defeat 'Em", "30 Some Odd", "KGR & Honda" *and* this - if only there hadn't been that Fred Durst collabo.

99. The Divine Comedy "At The Indie Disco" (Divine Comedy Records, download)

We are opening ourselves up to yet more ridicule from the cool here, in the unlikely event they frequent this URL, but there is still a place for well-carved three-minute melodic vignettes in our musical imaginings, and this worked just fine. We're old enough to remember when the Divine Comedy were a scrawny up-and-coming teenage Norn-Irish indie trio in tracksuits, light years from being the modern day vehicle for rich man's Morrissey Neil Hannon's overarching er, archness, so we're quite happy to give praise when the man comes correct, and this song, capturing as it does rather smartly the quintessential pathos of the indie disco, ticks all necessary boxes.

100. Shuttleworth featuring Mark E. Smith "England's Heartbeat" (Yip Yop / Minder, CD single)

The idea that every record has to "feature" someone, probably the guy or gal on vocals, is one that we trace back to the 80s, starting with Paul Hardcastle and other instrumental types who felt that "with" didn't do their singer enough justice, and then Soul II Soul came along and suddenly every record needed to "feature" someone. Nobody, however, in the history of featuring, has been a better, er, featurer than Mark E Smith: we refer you to DOSE featuring Mark E Smith, Mild Man Jan featuring Mark E Smith, Inch featuring Mark E Smith, even - somewhat memorably, as we mentioned earlier - Inspiral Carpets featuring Mark E Smith. So it was a deep sadness when Gorillaz' "Glitter Freeze", in early '010, managed to "feature" Mark E Smith only by letting him bark about five words down a fuzzy telephone line, leaving the rest of their instrumental wibblings untouched by his erudite whimsy and maniacal musings (and yes we know that's the second time we've complained about "Glitter Freeze" tonight, but then it *was* a grave disappointment, a bit like the "river of fire", which we're also not going to stop complaining about any time soon either).

Luckily "England's Heartbeat" redresses the balance, some almost-indiepop guitars with mournful chorus chords over which Smith sounds surprisingly tender, setting out fairly non-specific thoughts on the World Cup odyssey, although the song is also pockmarked with distorted loudhailer edits of his more familiar stentorian bark. All this makes it, while no "Kicker Conspiracy", the best footy song since I Ludicrous' "We Stand Around" (er, and that isn't by the Declining Winter).

* * * * *

Bubbling under (hang on... rustles various bits of paper):

Pale Sketcher, Jaydan, Insect Guide, more from Virgil Enzinger, the Noisear / Arson Project split (second best split 7" of the year, with Noisear = the Garlands), Outdoor Miners (at least as much Midway Still as J. Mascis, but still pretty *grate*), more Krumble, the Sunbathers / Los Lagos de Hinault split, more Pains of Being Pure at Heart, the Foreign Beggars remixes, A Sad Day For Puppets ("Again": not "Touch", that was terrible), Tony Montana, Meow Meow (sweet, really well put-together Cub / Gaze-echoing number with duck & dive boy / girl vocals, but still ne'er a patch on S.S.S.), POTO (that Lukas mix), the other ones we mentioned from Spiros Kaloumenos, Cortechs' "Slow Wave Sleep", Aias, DVA (the sort of looping, discombobulated, glimmering Eastern-tinged flow that Trim might well covet for any "Monkey Features Vol 2"), Abraxas, Bubblegum Lemonade, the Orchids, the Notes, Killing Joke, Vic Godard, Cooly G vs. Scratcha DVA, Sadat X, D Double E, Purified In Blood (you can't beat a bit of battling Scandinavian folk song-morphing into metallic / hardcore crossover in the morning)...

... one of Jammer's ("Back To The 90s"), Ikonika, more Terror Danjah, more Steppa & Kitcha, Talib Kweli, the Rotted, A Smile And A Ribbon, Pleasure vs. Heist (nothing annoys fellow commuters quite like drum and bass at this pace), Wiley, more Kryptic Minds, Houdini (they're no Whodini, though), Motorhead, Majistrate again, Folk & Stress featuring GZA (even if the first 2'45" is spent drumming fingers on the table, gently browsing copies of Country Life while waiting for the GZA to actually turn up to the studio and deliver his verse!), Sometimes Always, White Town, Memphis Bleek, Allo Darlin', more Adriano G., D.A.V.E. the Drummer and Sterling Moss, Birds Of California, DJ Pleasure again, DJ Hazard, Just Ice and KRS-One, Singing Bridges, KRS-One on his own, Honda featuring Kool G Rap, Tantrum Desire & Cabbie, Standard Fare, Martyn Hare, Stig of the Dump, JME, Canibus, King Midas Sound...

... two from Ice Cube ("I ain't Sinatra, I ain't tha Carter" indeed), one from Snoop (mind, it was a Cube cover), Hexicon, World Atlas, Distance and Benga, Sterling Moss v A.P., the Whatevers, Beanie Sigel, Sambassadeur, Raffertie again, more than one from Starkey, Redmist Destruction (but why oh why is nothing on their EP in the same league as their Terrorizer Grindhouse cut, "Fucking Destruction" ?), James Blake, Tinie Tempah's "Pass Out" (seriously - it's pop not grime, obv, but for a UK no.1 record to have a sense of humour, not too much auto-tuning, hardly any background wailing, and musically some vaguely interesting things going on, including switches of mood to both reggae-skank and dimly furious d&b...), DJ Itchy and Guy McAffer, Television Personalities, Big Troubles (a kind of "Swan Finer" to Outdoor Miners' "70s Manual Worker"), S.Kalibre (but really, nothing on a par with this), the Vaselines, Big Twins, Dum Dum Girls, Greg(o)rian, DJ Honda featuring Ras Kass...

... though we didn't include the otherwise excellent A-Bomb and Klute "singles", as in the end we reluctantly accepted they were really tasters for their (rather good) albums...

Right. Now, that, surely, really is it. Our "swinging" cover star today, by the way, was Francombe House, Redcliffe, Bristol, shot in balmy April 2010.

Lockdown.

2010-08-31T18:49:00.004Z

The Warmest Sound

For more than thirty years, my Grandad was in a band. They regularly toured the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the States, playing everywhere from the Hollywood Bowl to the Royal Albert Hall, and released so many studio and live LPs that they made Billy Childish look like the Blue Nile, indeed so many that nobody, including my Grandad, could keep track of every record. We've endeavoured to build up as much of the extant vinyl as we can grab, but we're resigned to the fact that theirs is one discography we'll never complete. Dozens of the albums were on EMI, via the wonderfully named Regal Zonophone (later reactivated as a boutique imprint for St.Etienne), which at the time made my Grandad labelmates with Joe Cocker, Procol Harum and the Move: you may also recognise that label name from Mark E. Smith barking a treasured catchphrase of ours, "Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, Regal Zonophone". He (my Grandad, not MES) spent fair chunks of time in the 1960s and 70s in EMI Studios - as they then were - in Abbey Road: on more than one occasion a vastly inferior band, called the Beatles, were in the studio next door.

No, my Grandad wasn't in a rock band or a folk band or a pop band - probably just as well, given our pronounced reservations about such music before 1976. He was in a *brass* band (playing the baritone, since you ask: along with its sister the euphonium, a wonderfully evocative instrument). Indeed, he played with that band from the 1940s right through to the 1980s: all the way from Attlee's premiership to Thatcher's, unconsciously charting a poignant political decline. But he was also, in that time, a prodigious moonlighter in an array of other musical projects: a conductor, a band leader, a choirmaster, a published songwriter and no mean concertina player. And he could never resist a nearby piano, the instrument that gave him associateship at the London College of Music when he was only 15 years old.

Still, it was that warmest sound, the calming, beauteous caress of brass instruments, which is the most powerful, inerasible memory from days going round to his snug terraced house as a kid. It was always there, a soundtrack to our equally indelible recollections of the lavender-scented front room, of the sweeties from Grandma, of the net curtains, of the musty carpet we played on, of the pet cockatiel whose MES-like interjections would occasionally "accompany" the dancing trumpets and trombones.

In that house, where the turntable never stopped spinning, we learned to share Grandad's love of music. It wasn't just the soothing tones of a full brass orchestra, much as those can still take us to a cherished place. It was also of pieces he'd himself grown up with - the Trout Quintet, the Serenade for Strings, both sheer elegance at 33 rpm - which would be handed further down the generations. Or he'd play us "The Entertainer", or he'd play Bucks Fizz on the record player (the seven year-old me kind of liked them). He bought us cassettes for Christmas and birthdays, from gospel and classical recordings to the Japan and New Order tapes I asked for when those bands superseded even the Fizz in the battle for my inconstant musical affections.

For him, for decades, it had been tour, tour, tour; too much time on the road and away from family: the pull of music can sometimes stretch too far. But once he left the band, it was precisely the same songs that had taken him away that helped rebuild the home again. And that was the house I knew. A brass band can conjure surprisingly powerful feelings: it's music often earmarked to symbolise comfort and homeliness, whether to sell freshbaked Hovis or play cosy winter carols to snowbound commuters, but the more spirited passages have an entirely different feel, painting radiant colours with uptempo, resilient and above all *celebratory* brush strokes. The appeal of brass band music across deep-rooted family traditions, military traditions, working traditions and religious traditions is another reason why, for its devotees, it is so much more than just something to listen to: just ask the bandsmen who stood tall before the mines were decimated, along with the colliery bands of which they were so fiercely proud. Hear mournful cornets and French horns lamenting a world forever left behind.

* * * * *

My Grandad died the other day, just shy of his 95th birthday. We'd had our final conversation in the stroke ward. He asked, rather from left-field, whether we preferred Parsifal, of all things, to Die Zauberflote. We had to back Mozart on that one, which I'm confident was the answer that Grandad wanted. And then he found out that the Black Dyke band had just covered (a vigorous, blazing, full-on march called) "The Liberator", and his enthusiasm for that particular tune fair flooded out, a music fan still every bit as excitable about his pet favourites as we are about Horowitz, about Cappo, about Insect Warfare, about whoever. Serene and happy, he hummed the melody, for those precious instants oblivious to the ever-present distraction of fellow patients' chatter and the orderlies buzzing around him on their rounds.

It's fair to say we never inherited his musical ability. That would have been evident each time in our teens that we scratched together distorted sub-Weddoes chord screes and listless can't-get-a-girlfriend indiepop laments from a Korean guitar and a 10-watt amp, politely as he tolerated such cacophony. But we did inherit his passion for music, which is why these fumbled, hasty words are here. His life saw musical trends ebb and flow: jazz and the charleston in the twenties; the reinvention of British music by the likes of Britten and Vaughan Williams (the latter of whom once conducted him); the rock n' roll invasion; the high water mark of classical minimalism; the subsequent birth of subcultures from punk and metal to goth. But right through into the 21st century, his passion remained. Only in the last couple of years did ill-health finally stop this particular nonagenarian stripling journeying up to town for concerts: a round-trip of some 260 miles. Don't know about you, but we sincerely hope we're still so committed to gig-going when we hit our our tenth decade.

For the funeral, we plumped for two old faithfuls. As Grandad was the first to acknowledge - and as he was angling for in that Magic Flute conversation - sometimes you just can't shake a good hook, whether written at the tail-end of the seventeenth century (that was Pachelbel's Canon) or on the cusp of the twentieth (we went for the New World, inadvertently maxing the Hovis angle). On the day, and just at that moment - with the newfound luxury of distance, and sudden tears in eyes - each seemed supremely fitting.

And we're glad, at least, that Grandad got to meet his great grand-daughter before he died. When she's older, we might show her fragments from distant, pre-mp3 times: some of the 78s he played on in the early days, some of the sheet music he wrote. For she's going to get an immersion in music, in all its forms and formats, of which Grandad would heartily have approved.

2010-08-21T18:40:00.000Z

Words On Power

In the lift at the office the other day, inamidst all the usual work hard / play hard bluster, some bloke from the corporate department was banging on with no little alacrity - and a certain, surely misplaced, sense of pride - about how 'twas all "unrelenting grind" up there. No, my friend, faffing around with shareholder resolutions and verification notes is *not* unrelenting grind: but let us show you what *is*. For the Power It Up label, pride of Lower Saxony, have recently been responsible for no fewer than three records that fully warrant the oxygen of publicity. Unfortunately, we don't have it in our power to grant them that, so we're going to resort to just scribbling about them here instead.

* * * * *

Kicking off with "A Tribute to Nasum". Prosaically enough, "A Tribute to Nasum" is indeed a v/a tribute to the legendary Nasum, indeed probably the ultimate tribute to Nasum in that over its course, some 53 mostly first or second division bands from across the grindcore spectrum try but in the end fail to produce a cover that quite lives up to the untrammelled quality of the Swedish band's originals. However, before you cross the compilation off grandma's Christmas list, that stat doesn't stop it being worth investigating further. After all, you could have said the same about the "Fortune Cookie Prize", "Snowstorm" or "Romantic And Square..." tributes, but it didn't stop them being eminently kissable in their own right.

Firstly, this tribute features a number of bands with a pretty solid rep in our eyes, combos that have either graced this blog, or would have done had we got round to posting up a greater proportion of we've written: Coldworker (of course featuring ex-Nasumite Anders Jakobson), Keitzer (authors of the mighty "No Justice No Peace"), Rotten Sound, Nashgul (q.v.), Total Fucking Destruction, Afgrund, Japanische Kampfhorspiele, Leng T'che, Mumakil, Misery Index, Kill The Client... The compilers have obviously decreed that for the benefit of punters short of staying power, most of these better-known names should be thrown in right at the start of the disc, largely leaving the last 40 or so tracks to comparative unknowns. Of the above-named, Rotten Sound do their best to make the chosen track ("Resistance") recognisably their own, and it's probably the most accomplished number here; TFD cheerfully give "Blinded" the slightly leftfield shakedown you'd expect; Leng T'che play things safer by choosing to cover the tip-top "No Sign Of Improvement" and net the ensuing open goal, although it's nowhere near their 2010 highpoint, "Totalitarian" (featuring guest vocals from Barney Napalm Death). And speaking of the sadly absent Napalm Death - perhaps Nasum's most celebrated fans - probably the closest we get to them here is Mumakil's excellent, bracing version of "Gargoyles & Grotesques".

Secondly, even aside from the "A-listers", there are plenty of individual tunes that contain sparks of interest, and it's not so hard to wade through them all, given that the average track length here can't be too much more than a minute. Rompeprop and Methadone Abortion Clinic stand out for the way that their pitchshifted Mortician-like vocals drag "Disappointed" and "Sixteen" away from the originals: you could be forgiven for thinking that neither band were fronted by humans at all. Indeed, the goregrind bands here - bands who are, by definition, usually pretty terrible - profit from at last having some decent ingredients to work with, instead of coasting on blood and guts or puerile in-jokes. There are also a few death metal outfits on board, who by and large moonlight effectively as born-again grind combos.

Thirdly, of course, is the indisputable T.R.U.T.H. that, Nasum having been a rather splendid musical ensemble, a large percentage of the original melodies were simply rather ace: this assists a number of the participants in producing something approvably listenable, such as Mastic Scum, Goregast, My Cold Embrace and Expose Your Hate who, respectively, cover the groovesome quartet of "The Masked Face", "Stealth Politics", ""Silent Sanguinary Soil" and "Shapeshifter". You can't go too far wrong with that kind of material, and they don't.

Fourthly, it's rather sweet to see how far around this globe the tentacles of Nasum's influence had spread before their premature demise: there are bands here from the States, Canada, Brazil, Singapore, Japan, Sweden, Finland, Norway, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Poland and, rather surprisingly, Saudi Arabia (Creative Waste, if you were wondering). It's a trifle disappointing, though, that to the best of our knowledge the only band on here hailing from our own sceptr'd isle are Aberdeen's granite grinders, Ablach ("Too Naked To Distort").

Fifthly, there's just our wonderment at the clutch of groups on display who bothered making it all the way to the studio in order to record a song lasting 20 seconds or shorter: given how half of the bands here seem to hail from Alpine regions, this conjures vivid images of them spending hours trekking through snowdrifts in order to make it to the recording session, before starting the arduous journey back only minutes later. Particular admiration is therefore due to each such hardy adventurer, but the real prize here goes to the indefatigible Bathtub Shitter, whose cover of "Rens" (duration: 3 seconds, at the outside) finishes the whole exercise off with a shouted flourish.

* * * * *

Next is Nashgul's newest, "El Dia Despues Al Fin De La Humanidad", the best work to date from the La Coruna four-piece. Now the fact that Nashgul had tracks on both the Repulsion and Nasum tribute albums tells you a little about where they're coming from, but closer parallels are probably their Spanish compatriots Looking For An Answer (more on that story later) and, somewhat inevitably, the increasingly legendary Insect Warfare.

There are some excellent songs on display: first track proper (after the obligatory doomsday intro) "Hidrofobia" absolutely explodes into life, unsurprisingly carrying no doubt conscious thematic echoes of Insect Warfare's "Hydrophobia" but also setting a benchmark for the record as a whole in terms of its abrupt early-Napalmisms and rolling riffs. "Predicores De La Muerte", the obligatory broadside against organised religion's double standards, springs into life with a great little instrumental groove, and "La Plaga" for us is the best track of all, Nashgul singing about hiding from said plague "entre las ruinas del capitalismo" while interchanging riff-flecked passages with all-out grind attacks. There's "Olor A Napalm", with the whiff of Napalm (Death) you'd expect, "Crematorio", which pulls all Nashgul's tricks into a showboating single minute or so, and the pivot of the album, "El Dia De Los Muertos", about consumption, indolence, routine jobs and mediocrity, which slows down into a long, booming intro (think General Surgery's patented Carcass / Unrest blend) before the blastbeats kick back in. Hot on its heels is one of the faster ditties, the sung-in-English "Terrorist Warhead", which might do for some of you missing Insect Warfare as much as we obviously are.

The final flurry of tunes, for us, don't quite hit the same heights (even though "Street Trash" has some heroic punk riffing, "Planet Cancer" contains more welcome hints of I.W., and "El Vengeador Toxico" just has a brilliant title) but still show Nashgul settling in comfortably to their newfound role as premium quality grinders, a welcome move away from past dalliances with zombie horror shtick (Machetazo, take note). "El Dia Despues Al Fin De La Humanidad" is highly recommended.

* * * * *

And finally, there's an album that's already made our year-end top tens (in 2007), but which we've been listening to near-continually since and which now gets a more widely distributed re-release, in the manner of those Insect Warfare and Wormrot long-players. "Extincion", by five-piece Madrid powerhouse Looking For An Answer (motto: "grindcore is raw, veganism is law"), was originally released on the band's own Living Dead Society label: by any yardstick, it's a cracking release, one which from the opening slaughterhouse sample radiates the band's sheer energy and anger. Musically, the LP is a precursor to those later-recorded IW and Wormrot collections, being a pummelling aggregation of blastbeats, furious breakdowns and low-end growl (as distinct from Nasum's love of screaming high-register vocal): as we've ventured before, the band ape the best tradition of "Mentally Murdered"-era Napalm, somewhere between the tinny conviction of "From Enslavement..." and the Scott Burns-produced death metal of "Harmony Corruption", most tracks between two and three minutes long to allow them to mix things up a little. It's also no great surprise that Looking For An Answer, like their compatriots Nashgul, turned up on the Repulsion tribute record (with "Driven To Insanity", which also appeared on their excellent 7" EP for Relapse last year).

The opening salvo proper of the appropriately savage, stop-start staccato "La Matanza" ("Slaughter") is perhaps the best "meat is murder" song since THAT one, which soon crashes into "Vuestro Respeto Es Nuestro Desprecio", as LFAA line themselves up against "la justificacion del dolor inocente", itself a theme later picked up in "Repugnancia, Aversion y Odio" (animals as innocent victims of cruelty) and "Conciencia Genocida" (which mourns our "criminal indifference" to that). LFAA have no truck with the old canard that our capacity to reason justifies our maltreatment of animals ("Los Humanos Tambien Son Carne"), so it's unsurprising that "Demilicion A Sus Valores" debates violent action to protect animals, or that "Replica" ("Retort") contemplates revenge without compassion on those inflicting that pain. For animals, the call is for "la liberacion absoluta": on "Ruptura", one of the longer tracks, which contains some passages with a deathier feel, the band not-so-gently chide even the "protectionists" who regulate, and thereby legitimise, animal suffering.

As for what us human beings are doing to ourselves and to each other, the message is that we're all implicated: "integrados en un sistema de produccion global que camufla vuestra mediocre y vacia existencia" ("Fosa Comun"). "Sistema Social", musically the tightest of the three 30-second tunes on the album, resumes this school of thought, addressing the slightly wider target of "una tirania profesional" under which we cyclically labour and consume. The riff-heavy "Utopia Muerta", which unfolds a little like the instrumental sections of Napalm's "Scum", excoriates those recreational "revolutionaries" ("cuando mies de bastardos" - ouch!) who won't brook change to their comfortable lifestyles. Such decadence is our ultimate oppressor: that's the premise of "El Yugo De La Opresion", which boasts dollops of crustpunk and a killer Doom-like riff. Oh, of course there's nothing original about any of this: but that's a criticism that can levelled at most of the rest of our favourite music too. What is incontestable is that on this record, the music and the lyrics dovetail perfectly, all-too exquisitely, and the passion and the soul of the band shine bright.

In a sense, every message on the album is compressed into the obligatory one-chord (one word, one second long) number, "Escoria" (scum), but the real apotheosis of all these lyrical threads comes nearly halfway through, as the ambulating bars of "Marcha Hacia La Extincion" roll unsurprisingly into the title track and LFAA rail bitterly at how humanity's self-absorption is leading us to total wipeout, aided considerably by a blinding breakdown in the middle. The musically sublime "Cada Naciamento Es Una Tragedia" (also replete with a searing breakdown) then translates this idea, somewhat bluntly, from the general to the particular. So by the time you get to track 18, "Revulsivo", you may be feeling a little suffocated. The band has this one final chance to finish on a positive note; but despite their name, they can't bring themselves to do it. The song's message is frank; that hope is deception. It fades out, fades back into the sound of the abbatoir.

Which all makes "Extincion" as bleak as it is brilliant: as bleak as listening to the Field Mice's "Bleak" on the bleakest of bleak midwinter days, as bleak as you'd expect from an album whose sole theme is, well, extinction. But perhaps the very bleakest thought of all is this: there is very little of what LFAA say that isn't - if we're honest - completely spot on.

2010-08-14T09:41:00.000Z

The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

Let us take you for a walk. We'll start at Queen Vic's clock on the edge of Highbury Barn, and as you sashay down Highbury Hill you'll briefly espy the horizon-clogging deathstar of "the Emirates" (the stadium name that mainstream commentators and journos are contractually obliged to use, but it's only really known to locals and Gooners as the Grove), before it sinks once more beneath the Victorian villas on either side of the road. Eventually, on the right just by the old art-deco West Stand entrance, as the street flattens out towards Arsenal tube station, there's a gateway where the old Highbury matchday turnstile used to be.

Now, of course, it's the entrance to a gated parallel universe of glass-flecked, clean-lined flats (sorry, we mean "an exclusive and truly unique development of high specification apartments") but - unlike the old Highbury - there's a public right of way enabling even us unwashed to venture unescorted through the grounds of said flats, meaning that you or I can freely wander across what used to be the turf in front of the South Stand, see how all of the old stand facades remain, albeit now housing urban luxury ("Highbury Square") for an unbeguiling combo of Arsenal obsessives, second-home seeking City workers, buy-to-let parasites and minted locals.

It's fair to say that the residents and developers do their best to stop you noticing there's a public path: indeed, it took a local newspaper campaign to shame them into actually unlocking the gates, even though the requirement to provide public access was one of the few concessions the council made when rubberstamping Arsenal's plans to bury N5 in endless vistas of premium high-rises and premium low-rises. So don't worry if it all looks a bit "private": it isn't. (Similarly, a little further south there's daytime public access from Gaskin Street to Islington Green through the private square built there, behind the old Collins Music Hall: again, the residents would seem to prefer we didn't know, so use it or lose it).

Stroll through the gate and in a few steps you are there, where the pitch used to be: treat yourself to a touchline meander. An acre or two of manicured plants to the landscaped left. Shrubbage where Adams caught opponents offside, where Keown wrestled them down, where Meade and Caesar laboured, where Henry's shots rippled the net. For an older generation, memories will be of Joe Mercer, Wally Barnes or Reg Lewis gracing this arena at the outset of the 1950s, when much of the area was still bombed out, when memories of Cliff Bastin were fresh, when local kids used to alternate their Saturday 3 p.ms between Highbury and White Hart Lane (even celebrated THFC fan Chas Hodges freely admits in his autobiography to being one of them). Incidentally, the Nicholls toy shop on Holloway Road those same kids used to frequent is still there: not everything has been overhauled this past half-century or so.

When you reach the east side of Highbury Square and exit, take the sharp left into Avenell Road where the 'thirties frontage of the stadium is most neatly preserved: the concierge desk snug where marble halls and Chapman busts abounded. Then, ambulate down towards the huge grey new Arsenal spaceship, fortnightly sucking in 60,000 come-lately out-of-towners until they all leave 80 minutes in (not merely for easy access to the Waitrose, the waiting limos and the chauffeured 4x4s that leave their engines running throughout the game: a lot of them are more into rugby really, and just get confused easily). Many fans still commute, though: since the ground move, the greenspace of Highbury Fields has been disfigured permanently by a diagonal track directly through its heart, the grass worn down to dust and mud solely by the weight of Arsenal fans trampling across it every fortnight.

The ten-foot high letters that spell out "ARSENAL" in imposing grey stone - sadly, you can't move them about to make choice anagrams - are the entrance to the ground from Drayton Park (the road), in front of the recently-christened Clock End Bridge over the railway line to Drayton Park (the station). Across the way, Drayton Park (the pub), normally quiet and hyper-local, enjoys bonanza paydays when the away supporters' coaches come down and it can barely contain the demand. A few doors down, Veli's caff: a great place for double egg and chips that no doubt now has to face up to unparalleled competition for its handful of tables. Veli once told us that he only ever really wanted to concentrate on serving locals, but now there's a stadium right across the way, that's a bit of a pipedream on matchdays. One suspects the takings compensate.

Should you slope around the Emirates' environs before a game you will spot all the tickbox new-breed Arsenal fan matchday staples: huge queues in Starbucks (fan in front of me plumped for a wet skinny caramel macchiato, paid for on a card), fans indulging in champagne breakfasts in more than one Upper Street eaterie, a small army of Range Rovers (usually with disabled badges) crawling around the streets, Zilouf's doing its £16 per head gourmet "matchday special". Post-game, fans in Holloway Tesco's stocking up on fine red wine, French cheese and more champagne. Now it is quite possible that the same scenes are repeated nationwide, and that fans in Bristol, Bournemouth, Bury, Burnley and Barnsley also max on macchiato, champers and Bordeaux in the same numbers. But somehow we feel entitled to doubt it.

To be fair to the club, the main entrances to the new ground (sorry, "stadium") acknowledge the club's peripatetic history via Dial Square, Woolwich and Highbury; we haven't yet dared to enter the Arsenal Museum, but the mural wrapped like a cake decoration around the circumference of the place has a reasonable spread of Arsenal greats past and present, although the true greats, those who've earned their place in history rather than those still hanging on the coat-tails of the present, are defiled by having their names on the back of their shirts, as if all that we've ever had is the febrile acceleration of the commoditisation, the monetisation of the sport post-1990, a financial imperative now reflected in the unresolved antagonisms between local people and the Arsenal empire in their midst about planning, about parking, about policing. It's hard for cash-strapped councils to negotiate against multi-million pound corporations, whether Tesco or Arsenal, and it's harder still for the immediate community to have their voice heard by an entity that is increasingly looking to markets thousands of miles away, that is on-the-record as claiming 30 million overseas fans (and a frankly unlikely 2 million in the UK) whose goodwill needs to be mined. Arsenal FC *does* still do very good work in the community, does continue to foster some of its local links: we wouldn't want to suggest otherwise. But in general, a bit like the game itself, it's never felt further away.

And - the story is old, but it goes on - we think of our love of football (and we do still love it, despite its lazily packaged ubiquity spreading it thinner and thinner, which we will refuse to let crush us) and all the truisms that underpin it: loving not just football today, but the rich cultural history of the sport; loving not just the highest tiers of football, but valuing and enjoying it at every level; loving not just your club team or your country, but the wonderful, wide world of international football; loving not just "champagne" football, but admiring defensive, resilient, yes even bus-parking football too; appreciating that football is a game - a game - played (and refereed) by human beings in real time, and that the TV-led obsession with "video evidence" is just as inimical to appreciating it as overdosing on Carling OPTA stats, or those over the age of about 12 wheeling out the good old "deservometer" (the ever-selective "we should have won because we had more possession / we hit the woodwork / their goal was offside / the ref was a homer / because of Blatter and Platini", etc etc); recognising that MK Dons are not a football club; recognising that at the end of the day, real life is still more important (this is quite comforting to dwell on if, to pluck a random example out of the air, your team of choice has just lost 6-1 to Oxford Utd), and that just shouting a lot, being able to dish it out but not take it, and using football as a vehicle for general abuse of the other team / their fans / your own fellow fans / officials is not "passion", or at any rate, not the kind of passion that's worth cultivating. And we realise that actually, only a few of us seem to regard these things as truisms any more, which is probably why we feel so isolated in thinking that football is disappearing swiftly into a swishing cesspit of its own making, soundtracked only by cash tills and verbal abuse (and given that the average afternoon at a game at any level consists of little other than folk hurling the C-word about with abandon, the irony in the fear that vuvuzelas might destroy such a valuable atmosphere is PALPABLE...)

So we sigh, and retrace our steps to the old ground, and we step inside again, just to try once more to summon up the ghosts of matches past and imagine the roar of the North Bank in the days of Joe and Wally and Reg, and we wonder what they might have made of the inescapable, in-yer-face modern game, of Super Sundays and baby Bentleys and Football Punk and "the race for fourth" and taking out a second mortgage to buy a season ticket. Then, feeling a slight chill, we turn around, ascend the steep incline back up Highbury Hill, and contemplate all that the new season might bring.

2010-07-23T22:00:00.000Z

Provide And Conquer

Consider some of the finest, freshest British hip-hop records of the last decade. The Zebra Traffic singles "Grand Final" and "Learn To Be Strong", and P Brothers-powered album "Spaz The World". "I.D.S.T." and "I Know" on twelve. The Main Rock "Resilience" EP. The Capkon Entertainment split with Konny Kon. "The Get Out", with Zero Theory. The mighty Ed 209's classic ecstatic, "Stay Ex Static" (4th division ESCAPE mixtape track nine). Styly Cee's unleashing of the H-Bomb and last year's Needle Drop, courtesy of Endemic. Even this January's winter warmer, the probably not Bolt Thrower-inspired, almost tauntingly effortless flow of "Psychological Warfare".

What do all these records have in common, besides their inescapable aceness setting them apart from the common sludge of the genre ? Why, Cappo, of course. We got very excited about the man not too long ago ("Not unlike a certain Rakim, Cappo's style now is very much *rise above*, and without ever losing his trademark hunger and aggression he shows off once more the expanded vocabulary, mystical leanings and scientific metaphors that keep him heads, shoulders, knees and toes above pretty much anyone left repping the UK right now") but believe us that was ZIP to the excitement of suddenly discovering that there was a whole second album ready to go, some seven years in the making: the return of the Akai Warrior. We're certainly not alone in rating Cappo as now the UK's finest, most consistent MC, although it's still a mystery to us that more don't.

The release of this new long-player, "Genghis", was a welcome departure from the usual pre-release drip, promotion, leak and hype: Son Records and Cappo orchestrated a total lockdown on its contents, even rewarding those of us who bought the record on what Caps calls "Complete Faith" or "Loyalty" with a free extra ten tracks of older-school Cappo, "The Ruddington Heights Tapes", ten cuts which we can confidently say would make a fine elpee in their own right. But they are not the main event. "Genghis" is. And, as "Spaz The World" proved in spades, the two-disc vinyl format is still where it's at for any self-respecting hip-hop album. Each side has its own intro track, central hub song (or two) and outro, giving every number a clearly defined space, just as you'd find on a 7" single or EP. It means the label hasn't just chucked a dozen songs at the wall and strung them in one linear mush on a CD. The songs have context. For an artist with substance, that's a necessity.

Side one, disc one starts with a two minute freestyle, "Live Intro", scratches handled by longtime collaborator Styly Cee, in which Cappo extols his "century breaks" and signs off with the siren call "Spirit of Victory", before flipping into that first track proper, "Complete Faith". Propelled by what could possibly be the percussive undercurrent to Bolero (but thankfully sans Ravel's garish melodic accompaniment), it's a thoughtful opener, musically dry, tinged with the God complex that runs throughout the album (and, let's face it, all great hip-hop albums), a complex abetted by the somewhat hyperbolic sleevenotes. However, it's the title track, which follows, that is probably the LP's first banger, a depiction of Caps as a warrior on horseback jet-propelled by an unrelenting, allegro vivace, horn-aplenty sample. The side ends with "Provider", which returns to "Complete Faith"'s theme of looking out for friends and fam, and the album's theme of strength and confidence as the way out of the gutter. The beats coalesce beautifully, joined for the choruses by a shimmering, radiant hook. "Pressure is a privilege in my book", observes Cappo, Grand Imperial.

Turn the record over and glassy instrumental fragment "Street Walker" leads into "Loyalty", which was the taster (download) single. A standard pub conversation of ours is how nobody has released a truly classic (we're talking all time top 10 or 20 here) hip-hop single since maybe '97- that the last was probably either the Wu's "Triumph" or Gang Starr's "You Know My Steez". But "Loyalty" is in that zone - indeed, it has a real GS feel, with gritty Premo-style 90s crunched beats encasing bass clef piano, and Cappo unfolding a lyrical stream of consciousness. It set up a weight of expectation for the main event, that's for sure. There's a deft, brief Ra sample in there, as well as a tiny musical extract from Caps' "Resilience" EP, perhaps the moment when he first came of age as producer as well as MC. On the album version, instead of the single's end fade, a jarring drum lock intervenes, setting up the lower-key, dusky "Magna Carta" which is simply so deft, so accomplished. The last cut, "Fire With Fire", then ups the power once more: one of a handful of *major* tunes which more closely recall hold-no-hostage spec of the brothers P. The hornflecked production is boss. At its close, the needle skips across to a brief comedown, some shout-outs to the massive.

The second disc resumes with "Turns And Twists", co-produced with Styly Cee. Nothing to do with Slaughter and the Dogs, these are the Condor's musings on the vicissitudes of life (or, as HMHB would have had it, "them's the vagaries"): Cappo's anchored, tru-thought mindset is thankfully as far removed from "Beamer, Benz or Bentley" as you can get. It's the longest track on the album, mind, and perhaps it feels that way towards the end. Never mind: "Barcode" then delivers tighter stylings - the cooing vocal verse sample making it his "New Wu", Cappo being as much an admirer of Raekwon as the rest of us - before the shortest of interludes, "Green", and then the mighty, eastern-kiltered "Gilgamesh II", both the (virtual) flip to the "Loyalty" single and a sequel to the equally mystic "Gilgamesh" - semi-mortal, demi-god - that sat so comfortably on "The Director's Mixtape".

The final side (run-off groove etched with that "Spirit of Victory" maxim) is a mixed bag soundwise, with a brace of more commercially-minded, David Haye-tough tunes sitting alongside two quieter grooves. "Most Wanted" is, appropriately enough, a hay(e)maker: it bursts from the record with a drilled, repeated sample before Cappo leaps in, as forceful as he's been all album, to set a few people to rights from the off. Respite comes but fleetingly with the skit of "Dukes" before "Re-Cap" marks the end of the full tunes, its soulful, string-swept backing making a cracking alliance with Caps' ever-gruff solemnising. It's one of his "last-minute match winners", perhaps the closest "Genghis" comes to the naturally accessible highs of "Spaz The World". And once it's gone, there is only "Build And Destroy" to give Cappo his voice, an outro in which he outlines his work method and his work ethic. That's all, folks.

So what can we say to sum "Genghis" up ? Well, it's a more *mature* album than "Spaz The World", more ambitious ("I spaz the universe this time", natch). With Cappo self-producing, we've no need for the massive P Bros. beats, the Quantic Soul samples that anchored three or four of those still-wondrous Spaz tracks and the likes of the Zebra Traffic singles we mentioned. Lyrically, there are plenty of references to his home town ("the legendary city") and to *rising above*; the usual glittering sea of similes. As you'd expect, there are no celebrations of crime, no pointless spars or spats, no sex rhymes or party tunes: there's no dumbed-down LCD stuff, no misogyny or thinly-veiled homophobia. In short, there's nothing tying Cappo in with the Thatcherite / Reaganite rap currently exerting a dispiriting hold on the UK and US mainstream. Apart from a brief appearance from Styly Cee, there are also none of the guests that made Spaz perhaps easier to initially digest: "Genghis" requires a little more concentration, more contemplation. But the rewards aren't too far away.

And don't just say "I don't like rap music", because Cappo's as far from 50 Cent as Cage is from Corelli. True hip-hop is about self-improvement, not self-destruction, and Caps has practised everything that he's preached - he's self-taught "Resilience", he *has* learned to be strong. This is the record he wanted to make, one suspects he's yearned to deliver for some time. Some will find moments of it too reflective, a little too intricate, occasionally even too philosophical. But that's the nature of the journey. As for us, we've stepped back, taken a month or three to digest "Genghis", made sure we didn't rush headlong into any eulogies we might later regret while the blackbirds were still singing. Yet it's still our turn to go all hyperbolic on you now: this, our long-suffering compadres in sound, is the real deal.

2010-06-09T18:40:00.010Z

Old Traditions. New Standards.

If we had a pound for every time we'd been tipped the wink that some coming-up-from-the-street alleged new grind messiahs were "the new Nasum", or "for fans of early Napalm", or "in the classic Peel session vein", then we'd have raised enough cash to buy Rickie Lambert back from Southampton, and maybe even to match his wages. (As an aside, if we had a quid for every time a vaguely jangly but bordering on dead-end indie pop outfit were described as "for fans of Sarah Records" - as if true fans of Sarah Records were ever shrinking violets when it came to expressing their views on the general rubbishness of non-Sarah Sarah-"type" bands: indeed, a reactionary strain of Sarah Records diehards went further and used to freely castigate Clare & Matt even for yer actual Sarah bands, chastising the Garden Flat for daring to be piled up with new Blueboy and Sugargliders stuff rather than, as the rhetorical flourish had it, "a seventeenth bloody Field Mice LP" - then we could probably clothe Fernando Torres in the blue and white quarters).

Imagine our surprise, then, to find out - by dint of listening to their compelling "Abuse" album - just how *divine* Singapore's Wormrot are. It's scarcely believable, what with Insect Warfare having harrowingly imploded, to find out that Earache have already stepped in seamlessly with a new catch to try and fill the aching gap, but they have, and just as they brought Insect Warfare's epoch-transforming "World Extermination" to a wider audience with last year's re-release, they've now done the same for Wormrot's 23-track indie debut on Scrotum Jus, together with an extra disc containing 34 bonus cuts (a back catalogue in reverse chronological order through to their earliest demos, with perhaps the diminishing returns you might expect, although fittingly the last ditty is an Insect Warfare cover). All 57 pieces would comfortably have fitted on a single CD, mind: so much for Earache's eco-credentials.

Despite their shared inspiration, sound and raw drum / guitar / yell attack (not wishing to break with contemporary grind mores, Wormrot operate without a bassist, which as lovers of Embury-esque "earthquake" bass we confess to find saddening, but it seems to be what the kids are down with nowadays) Wormrot are not *quite* the new Insect Warfare: too often the lyrics don't follow those of cornerstone influences Napalm or ENT but are somewhat less cerebral (track 14: "Fuck! I'm Drunk"), whereas IW's impressive range of grievances was more securely in their musical forefathers' tradition; and there are a few songs which aren't quite fit for purpose, particularly when singer Arif goes for a snarled-up punk parody vocal instead of either blitzkrieg high-end shriek or reassuring low-end growl. Nevertheless, on standouts like "Extermination", "Operation Grindcore", "Murder", "Sledgehammer", "So Fierce For Fuck" and the dizzyingly dansette-destroying high of "Born Stupid" the combination of high-speed mosh and ultra high-speed grindpunk blastbeats combine to simply dazzling effect.

Being of a vintage that allows us to reminisce about the days when grindcore basslines shook the foundations of buildings, we also remember when every other new indie band were hurriedly christened "the new Smiths": Bradford, Easterhouse, the Cradle, Gene, Suede... We've also mentioned who we think, eventually, got the closest in a way that mattered. In 2010, however, us indie-children have ambled into a new debate: who are the new Lucksmiths ? For whoever they are, they're going to have to be pretty blindingly amazing.

Well, the second LP by Seattle minstrels Math and Physics Club, "I Shouldn't Look As Good As I Do", is as strollingly charming and well-constructed as either its s/t predecessor or any of their fine EP releases, and has them refining even further their modestly understated masterclass in the genteel art of compact songwriting. It opens with the absolutely bombing 7" single "Jimmy Had A Polaroid" (YES! Vinyl is back on Matinee; God is in his heaven): two and half minutes of indie-pop righteousness that was born - luckily enough - to be a 7" A-side, a pacy and catchy number in which delectably jangling guitar elides with skidding, bouncing rhythms which both then collide head-on with slipsliding, lump-in-throat lyrical nostalgia. There's also rather more driving bass than usual, which helps tremendously.

The real achievement of ISLAGAID, however, is that this lead-off single is followed by nine other songs which are pretty much just as well-honed and ripplingly toned: the record a sea of smart, shortish, melody-led numbers that show that you don't always need to slow proceedings down, or to drag them out, to extract occasionally gut-gnawing emotion (although even in this environment, the closing chords of "I've Been That Boy" are unexpectedly moving). There are no true *experiments* here, unless you count perhaps the slightly incongruous if lyrically deft banjo-led narrative of "Everybody Loves A Showtune": there are, however, a number of fitting *embellishments* across the album, in the shape of slightly more ambitious arrangements, a sweeping mellotron, female backing vocals, a newfound studio confidence. At its heart, though, the record remains testament to a fair-timeless songcraft: the light-as-featherdown sweetness of "We Make A Pair", the bristling, bustling jangle of "Love Or Loneliness", the debonair, boy-laid-bare "I'll Tell You Anything", the heavenly sturm-und-twang of the marvellous "Trying To Say I Love You".

Math & Physics have already carved out a niche for themselves, a trademark sunshine sound softly belied by self-aware, often delicate lyricism, but on the strength of this - as you've probably guessed - we would now also nominate them as "most likely" to inherit the mantle of the new (luck)'smiths (a few had them down as the, erm, new old Smiths, after the Morrissey-esque vocal tics on their earlier releases, but the no-doubt rickety suspension of their cover star VW Beetle now seems to have forcibly shaken those from singer Charles' system). More than that, though, the inspired and rousing closing track, "We're So DIY!" even manages to out-Tullycraft Tullycraft. And let's face it, if it were possible for any mortal band to be both the new Lucksmiths AND the new Tullycraft, we would *definitely* want to be part of that, to be their new best friends for ever and ever. Wouldn't you ?

Sticking with the sophomores, there's this second Diversion Tactics LP, "Careful On The Way Up" on Boot, a good seven years in gestation, and it's positively showered us with real hip-hop joy for a good few months now. Despite their undoubted talents, DT were always beyond the posing or industry game-playing, so talisman lead MC Chubby Alcoholic sets out his stall early on, in the huggable and scene-swiping album opener "No Collaborations": "I ain't dreaming of cocktail bars / I'm dreaming of record sales on Mars / and double-parking rocket cars", and the record is full to the brim with his self-deprecating dexterity: there's the self-mocking "Ladies Man" remix ("another day, another Dear John / another mobile phone not switched on"), accompanied by a great Tommy Koi production, the pathos and vivid picture-painting on "NY to the UK" ("the only white boy at the screening of Juice", he reminisces) or a gift for the adept scene-setting metaphor ("I keep it darker than the ragga night at Kentish Town Forum", he boasts on "Twelve Steps").

"Careful On The Way Up" is another attempt by DT to bring the genre into focus, to remind us listeners that hip-hop IS NOT ABOUT bling or guns, never has been. It's about loving a lifestyle and subsuming yourself in it. Cuts like the startlingly strong "Where I'm From" (accompanied by wowsing string-backed beats from the Last Skeptik) and "For The Deejays", as well as tipping earned props to the likes of Jazz-T ("superstar DJs who carry their own bags"), let Chubby lay his heart on his sleeve in setting out his love for hip-hop and how he grew up with it: this is *emotional*. Oh, and they throw in both sides of ace last single "Can't Swim" too.

Although Chubby welcomely dominates the verbals, there are a few guests: the UK collabo track is "Three Card Brag" on which B.Gritty and none other than Blade (taking a rare break from retirement) turn up to accompany him, and "NY to the UK" is even grander as New Yorkers Percee P and Tim Dog, no less, interchange verses with underemployed DT hard-rhymer Squeaky da Rixter and of course the ubiquitous Chubby (the handover from the latter to Tim Dog makes us grin from left ear to right, for reasons we can't quite NAIL, before the Dog delivers a nakedly hardass verse that with its sudden end marks the denouement of not only the song, but the whole CD). But hey, our favourite track right now on "Careful" isn't even one of the lyric cuts: it's "The Turntablists", which does as it says and spins turntablist gold over two and half minutes, showcasing Miracle, Deejay Random, Biznizz, Pogo and the sonic architects of the whole album, Zygote and a Gang Starr-sampling Jazz T. All without an MC in sight. It's adroit and truly great.

Naysayers might say (or naysay) that after such a gap since the first LP, "Pubs, Drunks & Hip Hop", Diversion Tactics owe their eager public more than a 35-minute album: but we've never ever had a good word to say about over-long long players, nor about naysayers, and aren't going to change now (especially as Wormrot, Math & Physics and at least a couple of the albums below back up our case 1000%). For if Diversion Tactics aren't an act who are all about quality, not quantity, then no-one is. DT occupy the same place in our hearts as other fine fellow-Brit crews of yore, whether London Posse or Three Wize Men or Hijack or OutDaVille, but they are not "the new" anyone: the love they show for their art makes them definitely one of a kind.

What about Dutch duo Jesus Crost ? Well, if their newie "010" is anything to go by, they're sort of "the new" Sayyadina / Sore Throat / Agathocles: for on this hard and-fast 23 track, sub-quarter hour blastbeat frenzy on Broken Bones they take equal chunks of fired-up inspiration from the polar grinders' stop-start mastery, the Brummie legends' brevosity (I know, a word we've just invented, but it fits) and the lower-fi Belgian combo's shambling g-core playfulness. We reckon that "010" is possibly an even more consistent album than "Abuse": the Crost certainly don't stand on ceremony, and it's not always easy to divine where each track here begins and ends, but what is for certain is that they have a rare ability to cram half-a-dozen hooks and changes of pace into a single 30-second song; and if you string together "Rapsol", "Ungeheuer", "Cocoloco", "Wurfloch", "Tsarbomba" and "Solve The Conflict" (the only English-language number, all of nine seconds long), you can create a frankly blistering replica of a truly *classic* Peel Session medley from day. Rotterdammerung, if you like. On this form, even Japanische Kamphorfspiele would struggle to match them.

Speaking of Peelie, the Fall are, without any doubt, the new Fall ( ...the true Fall, the only Fall). There are poor men's Falls and there are Fall tribute bands, but more than any other musical phenomenon in the whole of human history, there is no other Fall. Many of the reviews of the ever-mighty combo's 28th long-playing take on barked stream-of-consciousness krautrock n'roll, "Your Future, Our Clutter", have given props to new label home Domino, for allegedly having (somewhat bravely) rejected the first iteration of this album and told M.E.S. to go and do it again. Perhaps they remember how the delayed release date of "Country On The Click" seemed to work wonders for what then became, after a respectable pause, "The Real New Fall LP", but in truth we have no way of knowing whether the original, raw "Click" might have been even finer than this finished product most indubitably is. Certainly, since "Are You Are Missing Winner", the Fall have enjoyed a decade of uncommonly rude health: so why can't we assume that what Domino were originally presented with was just as strong as the final cut ?

Speculative anti-Domino harping aside, make no mistake: there's nothing wrong with "Your Future", and we should thank them for the public service of releasing it. It starts off with two uniformly *superb* songs: "OFYC Showcase" crunches along, drum battery and looped not-many-note bass riff eventually swirling, heaving into a grand Fall chorus shout, with the endlessly repeating keyboards recalling some of "Kamerads" or "Hex"'s feistier, hyper-repetitive passages. After that, "Bury (Parts 1+3)" looms into view: two minutes of chugging dictaphone through-a-wall chordage seguing into a minute of grainy but less aggressively lo-fi riffola before the full production of the single version crashes in, every Smith line brought suddenly and piercingly into focus: "a new way of recording / a chain around the neck", all part of an intriguing narrative about Spanish kings, squirrels and murals interspersed with attempts at a catchphrase chorus ("I'm from Bury", mutters Mark, as his wife shouts "I'm not from Bury", with equal conviction).

The album rolls on: "Mexico Wax Solvent" is slower, stylish, a sort of Latin update of "Dr Buck's Letter" as it pursues an album-pervading lyrical theme of not trusting doctors; "Hot Cake" is faster, a rollicking rockabilly ride; "YFOC / Slippy Floor" is an Appalachian peak, a several-minute slab of manic, unreconstructed, grin-inducing old-school Fall; "Funnel Of Love" the obligatory northern soul cover, oozing the punked-up young Fall of "Rolling Dany"; the closing "Weather Report 2" is ethereal, funereal and naked, recalling the heartrending softness of "Bill Is Dead" as Mark sings about being passed over, but also about having being in love: "You gave me the best years of my life" he coos, before the plangent guitars are overtaken and outweirded by increasingly icy, off the wall synth burble. Oh, over the course of an album, no-one but the Fall could get away with this kind of stuff: even the Fall often don't. But they do here.

Violent Arrest's "Minute Manifestos" is a thrill-ridingly visceral set, a 12" courtesy of Tadpole Records and Boss Tuneage with the latest salvo from this band comprised of 75% of southwestern England's great Ripcord, in their attempt to be the new - sorry, we mean to reinvigorate the incorrigible spirit of - Discharge, Black Flag and all their progressively-less celebrated adherents since, on both banks of the Atlantic.

Side one: the blunt workaday punk of "Kill Me First": the fear of dying alone, not at home. The combative "Oppenheimer", indulging a genre obsession with nuclear obliteration. "State's Evidence", musically feistier, the first *great* song, a crunching disparage of the turncoat witness. "Fools", the most succinct and sweary musical riposte to the expenses scandal. "Killing For A Living", longer, more anthemic, shot through with just the same rage and venom ("no human victory, just capitalist fucking LIES") and even boasting a 'propah' guitar break that sprouts up like an angry thistle after the first chorus.

Side two: "Playing With Matches", flickeringly taut and bleak. The savagely short, quite excellent "Invisible War". The nicely aggressive riot-themed riff-grinding of "Burning Britain". A blazing cover of Dumbstruck's "Victim's Pit". And a second mini-anthem to finish, the singalong but ineffably bleak "Desensitised", a hymn to the emptiness of our staring blankly at TV screens as tragedies unfold abroad. A short summary ? Maybe. But for 10 tracks clocking in at a dozen-odd minutes, why not ? You need to listen to this for real, and feel the burn. Oh, and as no small bonus, there's a CD version on which you also get all twelve tracks from the second best single of 2008, "Criminal Record", plus two other brief outings one of which is an unsettlingly sublime 23-second Ripcord cover.

Finally, to one of the most impressive, most interesting sets of the year so far, and that's Vex'd's "Cloud Seed", on Planet Mu: all the more so because it's really an *accidental* album. With the duo having sprung their separate ways (and us having raved about Jamie's subsequent "Miracles" re-jig, in particular) this is a collection of their unfinished second LP and other late-period projects and remixes, meaning that collaborations with a downbeat Jest (not Jehst) and Warrior Queen at her lewdest best sit alongside remixes of the Elysian Quartet and a Richardson Suite for Piano and Electronics, which in turn mingle happily with darker and harder-edged pieces ("Killing Floor" or "Nails"), which for their part co-exist with beautiful song fragments (the shot-through "Remains Of The Day") and mood pieces (the exquisite two-minute clinches of "Shinju Bridge" or "Slug Trawl Depths").

Part dubstep, part soothing classical minimalism, "Cloud Seed" is pregnant with atmosphere, and only drags in a couple of places (afraid we must 'out' these as the overlong refix of Distance's "Fallen", and the undeniably talented Anneka's usual Beth Gibbons / Bjork thing - see also Starkey's "Stars" - unfortunately dragging "Heart Space" towards the level of Hampstead coffee table muzak). At times, your overriding reaction to this album is admiration, as much as anything else: the way that "Out Of The Hills" transcribes a reggae backing and draws it into Vex'd's industrial-influenced dubstep web without missing a pulse is truly skilful, like setting a slow-motion Cruyff turn to music, or watching Zidane as framed by Douglas Gordon and Mogwai.

"Cloud Seed" makes an interesting counter to last year's standout instrumental album, Kryptic Minds' "One Of Us", in that it jumps from mood to mood rather than setting one, but in its very different way it's just as vital. Vex'd may no longer be "the new" anyone, but any of the myriad paths that "Cloud Seed" prompts its intrigued listeners to explore could just be *our* key to discovering the new Vex'd. And that has got to be worth pursuing.

2010-02-17T23:17:00.002Z

A Smile, In These Ungrateful Times

"It took ten years / To get from there to here..." - Tracy Lauren Marrow

Words which wisp impishly to mind because it's pretty much exactly a decade since we first encountered a Matinée Recording in the flesh, picking up matinée 005, the double-7" "A Smile Took Over", in Rhythm Records in Camden. It tickles us now that Matinée had started releasing great records a couple of years earlier, around about the same time we decided that we were justified in firing up a website to proselytise inanely about great records, but it seemed an even nicer symmetry that there we were buying this Sarah Records tribute in the very same room, and with the same tremblingly healthy trepidation, that we first picked up "Emma's House", "Sensitive" etc towards the tail-end of the 1980s. And in just the same way, things kinda burgeoned from there.

Slowly but surely getting wise to the label's small but perfectly formed roster of indie-pop bands, many of whom were UK-based, we were able in those distant, blissful early-00s days to purloin further Matinée releases without too much tribulation from central London shops, usually HMV or Selectadisc: the honeyed majesty of the Would-be-Goods, the wowsome low tones of the swirling Windmills, Pipas and their softly-sung bijou pop traces, Melodie Group's twinning of sarcastic entreaties and delicate intricacy, the measured south coast elegance of Lovejoy, the increasingly buoyant post-everything pot-pourri of stop-start art-pop that Sportique became, the scything yet jawdroppingly pretty post-Brighter barbs of Harper Lee, the marginally eccentric but underrated Ego from Montpellier, Simpático's brilliant evocations of yearning, the Lucksmiths' way with tender words and glistening guitar chimes. (It wasn't long, as Jimmy Tassos as always told us we would, before we'd hunted out pretty much the entire Lucksmiths back catalogue: clinching the deal, sweetly enough, in Au-go-go in Melbourne). We were fortunate, too, to be indulged e-mail exchanges with Harper Lee as well as Matinée's ex-Bulldozer Crash outfits, Kosmonaut and the Liberty Ship. And eventually, there would even be a terrific American band on Matinée, the dapper and swishingly melodic Math and Physics Club.

Along the journey, vinyl sadly fell by the wayside - these things happen - but there was never any doubt that new Matinée releases would continue to demand loving scrutiny. We've "archived" a ton of our stuff here. We even got to do an interview with Jimmy, just as the Recordings empire moved from DC to Santa Barbara. And on top of all the new bands, there was a steady trickle of reissues of neglected, even lost, past material: everything from the ultra-obscure Visitors set to a Remember Fun! EP, from the wonderful, rumbustious Siddeleys collection through to the later Brighter reissues (one of which we were privileged enough to have had some modest involvement in) and of course (*genuflects*) "R Is For Razorcuts".

As time passed there were ebbs and flows in the catalogue, and then years where there were hardly any releases at all, but there was always that feeling of quality control, and as with any label we really love it emanated not just from the music itself but from the photography, the art direction, the sense that records were being *curated*, not just released (Jimmy - we assume - having been no less ruthless than Clare & Matt once were in terms of rejecting or refusing material that didn't fit with the label ethos, the label feel). And this fanzine's continued to try to pronounce on Matinée releases for the whole of the last decade: Sportique's "Communique No.9", the Windmills' "Now Is Then", Harper Lee's "All Things Can Be Mended" and "He Holds A Flame", Lovejoy's "Sid Vicious" and "England Made Me", the Lucksmiths' "Warmer Corners" ... not a single one that doesn't still gleam in the cold light of '010.

While continuing to see Matinée bands live (so many warmgrilled memories: the Windmills at the Hope & Anchor, Sportique at the Betsey Trotwood, the Visitors at the Blue Posts, Pipas all over, Tender Trap and the Pines at Toynbee Hall, the Would-be-Goods at the Buffalo Bars, Lovejoy and Airport Girl at Notting Hill Arts Club, Slipslide at the Water Rats) in more recent years we became inclined to leave closer analysis of Matinée releases to others, for a host of reasons (one of which was that there were at last no shortage of punters writing about them). Even then we were forced to make an exception for the two Northern Portrait singles, which pretty much pulled our giddy legs from under us; and we should really have made a more obvious exception for the WBGs' "Eventyr", which didn't find too much trouble squeezing into our top ten albums of 2008. Yet with the likes of the Windmills, Harper Lee and Sportique no longer around (if you can find three better songs from the '00s than "Walking Around The World", "Train Not Stopping" and "Modern Museums", do tell us: we'll be camped out on yr doorstep with a blank tape by dawn) we couldn't help worrying that a golden era might have passed.

2010, however, sees a slew of new CDs: a single, two albums and the label's latest various artists assemblage. And it appears from these that, as the great D-Mob once had it, they're back with a vengeance.

* * * * *

Us being us we gravitate towards the SINGLE first, and it's the new Pale Sunday outing. From Brincando de Deus' "An Evening Out" through to Postal Blue's recent re-entry into the pop stratosphere there's always been something *about* Brazilian guitar-pop for us, and the Sunday have demonstrated in the past their flair for uncloying but faithfully jangle-repping compositions. We rather adored their previous single, "A Weekend With Jane", including "The Girl With Sunny Smile" that turned this reviewer into Boy With Sunny Smile, and later tracks like the fizzed-up "White Tambourine" (on their "Summertime" LP) showed that early promise was no fluke. Now, an overlong silence is punctured by this "Shooting Star" EP, a four-tracker in "360 stereo sound".

The title number is newly confident, a strident, riproaring popsong which combines the necessary "we're back!" feel with a whiff of mid-period BMX Bandits and a pleadingly naive protagonist ("I can prove to you I'm different / if you'll just give me a chance": she'll have heard that before, matey). It's fizzy, instant and satisfying. As good, though, is "Are You Scared To Get Happy ?" which is just as well given that it shares the name of the best fanzine of all time, in the world, ever, BAR NONE. This particular AYSTGH? seamlessly interweaves the coursing indiepop melodies of halcyon days past with a little more good ol' fash fuzzy six-string strum, and the "downhill" section to the end, which repeats the title whilst accumulating some lovely string-like harmonies along the way, is pure gold. Yeah, you can try and get big and clever and say how in 2010 people of our advanced age should have outgrown plain old indie-pop groovery, but in all honesty, if the right ingredients are there, resistance is useless. All in all then, yay. Cubed.

* * * * *

Every great book deserves a great cover, and Matinée marquee signing Northern Portrait's new long-playing record (OK then, CD) is clad in a lush three-panel digipak sleeve clothed in shots of Le Corbusier's sleek white Villa Savoye. The architectural avant-garde doesn't immediately leap to mind when considering parallels to Northern Portrait's rather more raffishly classical indiepop art, but we guess that Le C. and the Portrait share a certain unshakeable *resolve*, and an unblinking dynamism that's expressed by the former in the Savoye's ramps and slopes, by the latter in the ever-effervescing froth of guitars that by this third release is approaching tidal wave momentum.

Yes, I know: as you can tell, "Criminal Art Lovers" (for that is it's name) is a messy blighter to review, not because it isn't brilliant (occasionally it's spellbindingly so), but more that once you've lazily thrown the regulation - but entirely apposite - One Thousand Violins and Smiths comparisons at them (as we felt compelled to when considering their almost-fearsomely promising "The Fallen Aristocracy" and "Napoleon Sweetheart" EPs), there's a limit to how much more you can enlighteningly add, especially when one part of the band's "resolve" is clearly not to be deflected from their chosen path by the criticism that they wear one or two of their 1980s influences a little *too* starkly.

So perhaps the tack to take with this their debut album is to note that it sounds much as you thought and probably hoped it would, a patchwork quilt of mesmeric jangle, of lyrical ache and longing, of masterly song arrangement sugared with generous dabs of knowingly Mozza-esque vox. Happily, nine of the ten tracks are entirely new, with only a reprised "Crazy", from the first EP, looking back to the rather special singles that got the ball rolling. And it says much for the other tracks that "New Favourite Moment", which actually takes the role of album closer, could just as easily be a bolting opener - or indeed a single itself - what with its iridescent powerpop glow and sparkling Rickenbacker hook, a hook that jangles with the brilliance of the Four Brothers (notwithstanding the disconcerting undertow of the drums approximating an early 90s' shuffle-beat). But yer actual first track, "The Munchausen In Me", is of course *fighting fit* for purpose: spry, self-mocking ("fainting... / may be my only chance") and with a keenly-observed storyline, it cuts at the POP! jugular before culminating with a falsetto flourish. Hot on its heels, "When Goodness Falls" is alive with sprightly joy, sharing its veritable rushes with later tune "What Happens Next ?" and in doing so uniting the band's newer repertoire with one of their earliest tunes.

For many, the peak will be "The Operation Worked But The Patient Died": we alone seem to hear some Harper Lee in the crystalline, layered intro and opening verse before the song unfurls like a butterfly about two minutes in and tears the place to oblivion, but there's no doubt that "Operation"'s majesty and ambition provides the perfect set up for the more laconical title track, which vanquishes dreams of a "comfy life" before ending with a valiant coda: "as you walk on by / please keep walking", guitar trills raining down munificently. And if you really want to go a bundle on the Smiths connect, then "Life Returns To Normal" is your cue: the guitars unapologetically canter around shapes worthy of the young Marr while Stefan Larsen twinkingly drawls "I wanna help you" in the manner of "Disappointed"'s "young boy, I wanna help you..."

To be sure, Northern Portrait's sound is a grown-up sound, and that won't be to everybody's taste. After all, debate about the Orchids' rightful place in the Sarah pecking order rages on even now. While to others - those not inclined to listen properly - this will be dismissed as the label's second Smiths tribute LP, following the treasurable, if slightly in-awe of its subject "Romantic And Square Is Hip And Aware". But *our* fears - our only fears - for this album, which were that the first two EPs saw them maturing so fast that a full ten-tracker risked veering into M.O.R., were *completely* unfounded: when the Portrait are in full, crooning flow, there's more than enough excitement to go around. (We tumbled out of the White Swan the other night just in time to catch Northern Portrait playing live at Baby Honey, and it was the best indiepop set we have seen for *years*: and yes, his voice is that expressive in real life).

Maybe there's nothing here that quite set our senses as instantly aflame as much as our favourite NP songs to date, "The Fallen Aristocracy" and "I Give You Two Seconds To Entertain Me". But then those were the kind of punches that floored you partly because they came from an unexpected quarter, from a band who'd appeared from nowhere yet already seemed in some kind of easy prime, some kind of higher orbit. "Criminal Art Lovers", on the other hand, was an album that we waited for and wanted and had high expectations of from the very off. One listen was enough to show us it was blatantly up to meeting them. And by the fourth or fifth spin, it had revealed itself as a true achievement. There's lots of talk as we swan into this second decade of the millennium about how the once-trusty album format is dead as an art form, but if "Criminal Art Lovers" is anything to go by, it's a format you're gonna have to forcibly wrest from our cold, dead hands.

* * * * *

Staying on the albums trail, we're currently becoming mildly infatuated with Copenhagen, it being the home not only of Northern Portrait and Mikkel Andersen (NB relatively blameless in this disaster), but also the mighty Aamot brothers, aka Electric Pop Group. Their second album, um, "Seconds", plays in contrast with NP's lavish, widescreen elegance: it echoes Brighter rather than the Smiths, internalising emotion rather than archly deconstructing it.

The Group, of course, are on-the-record in acknowledging Brighter as an influence (which is just as well, because if they weren't you could simply strap them to a lie detector, play them "Summer's Day" from 2008's "Sunrise" EP, and turn the resulting cacophony of endless beeps into an underground techno 12"). However, while that song harked back to the non-percussive whisper of Brighter's glacial "Laurel", most of "Seconds" is driven more by the Brighter of "I Don't Think It Matters" vintage or perhaps even the Brighter of our imagined great lost "Wallflower" / "If I Could See" single: a drum machine at pretty pace anchoring delicately trebly guitar-picking and delicately trembly vocals (see also the Fantasy Lights), while short simple hooks cascade all around.

Which all means that there is no shortage of marvellously toetapping indiepop on "Seconds": the opening "Not For Another", which teems with wistful regret and introspection ("we never turned out to be / the things we set out to be / when we were younger / the dreams of yesterday are no option any longer" genius CHURN awwwww), "The Way You Used To Do", which buttresses its shapely verses with a "Darklands"-style guitar line, and the sculpted, heavenly brittlecore that is "Drawing Lines": an affecting collage of chiming, upbeat hooks (think sunlight reflecting back from the ripples of a lake) but with more positively tearful lyrics. We get former Matinée label comp tune "My Only Inspiration" ("sounding a bit like a more mannered sea urchins or the clouds, with even a touch of the "velocity girl"'s at the end") anew too, and it remains *stellar*: along with their EP lead track "I Could See The Lights", perhaps the band's most enduring song. So the next question for Electric Pop Group will be this. Having given us mini-classics like "Inspiration", "Lights" and er, "Lines", can they follow up what Brighter did and step up their game even further, follow this up with a "So You Said" or even a "Killjoy" ? If so, we've got their back for all time.

* * * * *

And mention of Matinée comps seems as good a time as any to big up their latest label compilation (and 50th album release), "The Matinée Grand Prix". Matinée's v/a selections are always a handy snapshot of the roster at any one time, and have the added attraction that they don't dredge the back catalogue but tend to focus on new & exclusives from said roster. Unfortunately it's just not physically possible for "Grand Prix" to be as invigorating as last time around's "Hit Parade", but they give it a good go, and if you'll just permit us to focus on a clutch of ilwttisott highlights, you'll understand that you might just need to grab it anyway.

The Lucksmiths' swansong, "Get-to-bed Birds", is subtle but superb - lyrically, a synthesis of so many past Lucksmiths themes, touching tenderly as it does on new year regrets and wanders past old haunts - and yet a little like "Drawing Lines", all this quiet, downbeat contemplation is set off by a heartliftingly trilling guitar line that refuses to be bowed. There's almost a feel of something unfinished about "Birds" as it fades out, all too quickly, but that's something you could say about the band's whole legacy. We will forever regret - and bitterly - that the closest we ever came to seeing them live was an abortive trip to their gig at the Metro Club, a trip finished abruptly by a bouncer who didn't want to play ball.

Fellow Melburnian Jason Sweeney also knows longtime how to rock an indiepopkid's world - it was Sweet William's cover of the Sweetest Ache's "Briaris" that kicked off "A Smile Took Over" - but we'd been denied the company of his artistry since The School Of Two's "Party Line" on 555's "Your Cassette Pet": and so the welcome return of his erstwhile Matinée persona, Simpático, comes with "Australian Idle": an icy, existentialist take on pop culture powered by a laidback, softly hypnotic groove that brings distant flickers of another Sweeney project, Other People's Children, to mind. Being lowkey doesn't prevent it being perhaps the true standout, and it would be gorgeous providence if its inclusion here signalled some imminent new record from project Simpático.

Tender Trap, meanwhile, shake the rafters with "Danger Overboard": the verse continues the tilting, reverb-happy crunching 60s guitar sound that lit up recent Fortuna Pop! single "Fireworks", but then there's something almost Marine Research-ish in the way that a crater-sized chorus then emerges. We're pretty sure we recollect the song from their recent Buffalo Bars outing, in which case we can report it's even better when they are literally, rather than metaphorically, rafter-shaking.

There's plenty else here too, don't get us wrong: Strawberry Whiplash's jolly "Boy In The Bubble Car" finally emerges, albeit rather longer than the first, tentative myspace version; there's more from both Electric Pop Group and Northern Portrait (the latter in slowed-down, proto-"Back To The Old House" mode); Clay Hips' "Disappointed", which draws out the slightly queasy early-90s revival to which "Higher Than The Stars" gave a re-up; plus titbits from the Guild League, Bubblegum Lemonade, Math & Physics no less and Cats On Fire. But, as ever, it's late, and we've only a sentence or three left in us.

* * * * *

When we picked up "A Smile Took Over" in north London that winter day, we had no conception that this upstart young label would still be firing releases as good as these out a decade later, or that they'd have amassed a back catalogue that would hold serious comparison to the label the EP paid tribute to. But it is, they have, and, as one of Matinée's current flagship acts put it, we feel ten years younger for it.

2010-02-14T10:05:00.000Z

Night Of The Livid Gasheads

Picture the scene. It's the close of the evening, and the tube station escalator has just spat you back up into the outside, some spots of inky rain providing respite from the sheer, unadulterated chilliness of the previous two or three hours. These have been spent sitting wriggling on a cold wooden seat at Brisbane Road, watching your football team of choice implode their play-off dream by getting choicely and justly walloped 5-0 by a vaguely resurgent Leyton Orient. It's the worst performance you've seen from the Gas in nigh on 20 years.

Your tongue is scalded from the evening match-prescription hot chocolate, your fingers freezing even through your gloves, your face near-numb with cold, a hundred "for fff...."s having trailed off yr lips into the floodlit-hazy sky every time a shot went begging, a pass was skewed to an opponent, a run into space was almost *wilfully* left unmade. When you're virtually hoarse from ironic cheering, it's a sign that all has not progressed ultra-smoothly out on the pitch: the pending opportunity to deploy an obliquely inelegant Public Enemy-referencing pun in a blogpost title is but small consolation.

Now, you're nearly back at the ranch, almost home to the safety of your luxury penthouse pad (ha!), longing for an instant pick-me-up: something that can at least temporarily take your mind from the decadent fantasies of all the other, *cosier* ways you could have spent the evening, or spent the twenty-pound note you passed across at the turnstile when your heart was still full with hope. Key in the door, a sigh, and still shellshocked, you put the kettle on and reach (but of course) for the turntable...

The Garlands / The Sugarplums, then. 7" vinyl, in modestly stylish black / yellow sleeve. The latest 45 from the somewhat gently yielding Atomic Beat Records "production line", joining a leisurely but shockingly fine back catalogue that already boasts the Pains of Being Pure At Heart, the Parallelograms, Pete Green and Pocketbooks. So this is ABR 004, and it is truly bountiful.

The first side sees the Garlands - Christin Wolderth and Roger Gunnarson Esq, no less - build on their self-titled Cloudberry CD-r single with two absolute zingers, songs so storming that they could fell trees and boundary fences for miles around. "Open Arms" is candy-coloured, jangle-flavoured, classically-honed power pop at its absolute zenith, an action-packed 2 1/2 minutes (making it the longest track on the EP) that immediately stands with anything our heroes of yore managed to produce in the days when we were young and gambolled like newborn lambs in the occasionally-salubrious environs of the Jericho Tavern or the Fleece & Firkin or the Camden Falcon or wherever, the sort of supertune that rules in 2010 just as much as it would have done in 1987 or 1997, or any other election year you could care to name. The verse is so to-die-for that you're almost scrabbling around for your flick-knife, but when the chorus comes in it's a new adrenalin rush altogether, so to-live-for - Christin's voice sailing up somewhere towards the clouds - that you resume just dizzily nodding along.

"Tell Me" starts with chords distantly reminiscent of "London Calling" (so distantly that we wouldn't normally deign to mention it, save for the fact that "London Calling" had been played over the tannoy at Orient about every ten minutes, so it was still ringing in our heads rather). Anyway, even that foggy resemblance expires about ten seconds in, after which "Tell Me" reveals itself to be a slinkily groovy 111-second purepop belter, combining the lightness of touch of the Would-be-Goods with the incessant smile-inducing fast-burn of Roger's former dream team, Free Loan Investments (reckon we were entitled to expect this release to be as ace as is, given the things that the Free Loans' "The Last Dance" did to us last year), plus someone's clearly having a whale of a time with the drum machine. And best of all, this time there are no inadvised stabs at cover versions.

Half-time. We turn the record over. It occurs to us: would this record be such a "pick me up" if you couldn't actually pick it up ? The answer, of course, is no. Long live REAL records; viva vinyl.

For some reason we were expecting the Sugarplums, on the other side, to make the generic but soulless kind of indie-pop noise that's so prevalent at the moment (preconceptions of bands that involve scene playas, alas), but luckily we were wrong and their songs are triff too, albeit in a dimly Cause Co-Motion! / Beat Happening! kind of way rather than the Garlands' foxglove-fresh all out POP! assault. "April Again" has the Baltimore combo unravelling gruff (the vocals sound almost Huon-ish at outset), knowing whimsy alongside gloriously naked flickers of melody. There's some Pants Yell! in there, maybe, and an absolute truckload of beguiling charm. "Joyce's Bicycle Gang" ("kids on bikes! kids on bikes!") is in essence another song cut from the classic indie-pop template, however much the Sugarplums imbue it with an ounce or two of slacker chaos: this time we reckon we can detect a frisson of ye olde Iced Bears (when they were still 14 rather than Fourteen). Around twenty seconds from the end, a new guitar fuzzes just perfectly out of the left-hand speaker, gently guiding the bicycles to a gliding halt.

And that's it. Job done. When two 7"s as exciting as this and "La Caceria" come out within a matter of months of each other, all must be well even with this crazy world. Plus, these are two bands who actually like each other, we understand: just as well, if like us these affairs still make you think a little of A.C.'s somewhat seminal "No, We Don't Want To Do A Split 7 Inch With Your Fucking Band".

And as you savour your cup of tea you reflect. Maybe you were one of a mere 300 restless souls in the away end who had the dubious privilege of sharing Rovers' worst defeat in aeons, dooming you to eternal torment in the twelfth layer of hell, or something. But then you're also one of only 300 lucky bleeders in the world who gets to own this engagingly gutwarming little single. There's a Venn diagram in there somewhere, and tonight you're right in the middle of it, smiling through the pain. Result.

2010-01-31T10:55:00.005Z

The best singles of 2009

As you know, we were hoping that 2009 was going to prove a terrible year for music and making it less demanding on our time and purse, but unfortunately it was once again a *brilliant* year. Especially for singles, as the forest of verbiage below might just testify. (You can compare with our top hundreds from '08 and '07, if bloodyminded enough: and our albums of 2009 are still skulking around here.)

In his earnest, histroy-suffused, occasionally maddeningly technical but fabulous book "The Rest Is Noise", Alex Ross quotes Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, no less, as saying: "I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things, and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell."

We can't help feeling there's a truth in there, reflected in part by the name of our fanzine and the thrall to music, new and old, we just can't shake. It's why, whether we're writing about it or not, whether consuming it or not, we'll always be listening to it.

* * * * *

1. The Wild Swans "English Electric Lightning" (Occultation, 10")

Swans' triumphant return shows quality of Mersey

"After a 20 year exodus these Swans have returned and with this wonderful, wonderful single, lovingly packaged on deluxe 10" ... Swan-in-chief Paul Simpson is hardly the first singer from the last couple of generations to put together a song about England at once wistful and defiant, nostalgic and modern, plaintive and sad, but this one ticks all the boxes, helped immensely by the way it builds, the deft piano and touches like the unexpected backing vocals, all topped off by Simpson's elegant yet distinctly vulnerable voice. Flip it over and you get the remarkable poem "The Coldest Winter In A Hundred Years", where Simpson, backed by swells and trills of guitar, piano and brush, fills in the uninitiated (us) on some of the prehistory to the Wild Swans' beginnings. An unexpected, but complete, treat."

And, y'know, I don't want to drag the Swans into our personal politicking, but another reason this song is king of our year is the way that it captures the same essential feeling of Englishness that many of us have: not proud, not ashamed, just *aware* of the good, the bad, the new, the old, the changing. "English Electric Lightning"'s beauty, evenhandedness and intelligence is - to us - a riposte to those clowns who insist on defining Englishness (or indeed Britishness) only as a sense of unruly entitlement, as something in yer face, aggressive, superior, backwards-looking, a one-way street leading inexorably into the gutter. We all know who they are.

PS: Like our buses, it seems that two quintessential and brutally honest observations of this "Englishness" thing have come at once: please do take time to get hold of Hulaboy's "The English Mindset" (from their "Scottish Gentlemen of Speed" EP, on split 12" vinyl with Tunabunny on 555) which comes at the subject from a different angle and on a lower budget, but with nearly as much veritas and grace.

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2. Rakim "Holy Are You" (SMC Recordings, download)

He came back to bless the mic

In common with "English Electric Lightning", a near-perfect comeback single.

"*gorgeous*, honestly. We wait a full 45 seconds of looped sample scene-setting before Rakim starts to flow, but when we do it's as mellifluous, as *captivating* as ever. And although the beats nod slightly, unavoidably, towards hip-hop's 21st century, there's no Autotune, no Akon chipmunking, no godforsaken backing wail, no bolt-on chorus to screw up the serenity of his thoughts: only brief, crackling sampled piano and the sung words (yep, sampled from the Electric Prunes) of the record's title. Indeed, the track is sufficiently, satisfyingly old-school that even Mr Farrakhan gets a mention. But the key, as ever, is the flow, some of which made us double-take: "Walk on water ? / No, neither did Jesus / It's a parable to make followers and readers believers". Or this: "we were children of the most high, so we fell / from paradise to holy hell / probably descendants of the Holy Grail / another part of history they won't reveal..." before it ends, with the inevitable sign-off: "Rakim Allah. Peace". And it's hard not to feel, every time you listen to the R, that you haven't, in some small way, been blessed."

And if only Eric B had been, um, "on the cut", this would have probably sneaked up that one place further. "The Seventh Seal", while delayed nearly as long as "How To Look Imploring", is not nearly as bad an album as many would have you believe - any LP that gets slated by Pitchfork and Popmatters must have something to commend it, and Rakim's cuss-free flow (isn't it refreshing to buy a hip-hop CD without a parental advisory sticker ?) still shines way above the rather less inspired backing - but it's fair to day that "Holy" proved to be its peak. *Do not* let the lukewarm reception to "The Seventh Seal" stop you copping this single.

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3. The Declining Winter "Haunt The Upper Hallways" (Home Assembly Music, 7")

Pastoral symphony oozes Adams family values

"This is indeed haunting, luxurious, kind of softly spellbinding, its opening flickers of feedback building into a sweep of fluttering drums, polite guitar and languid violins suggesting falling leaves and early dusks, eventually joined by vocals from richard adams... that suck the moisture from the air one syllable at a time ("the / rain / came / down") and send the most exquisite shivers down your spine... the latest chapter in the history of hood and post-hood classic singles... this record is wonderfully *easy* to fall for: yes it soothes, it intrigues, yet it's far from an ambient haze, propelled along as it is by the kind of footsteps-on-forest-floor rhythms that have decorated hood tunes for the best part of one score years."

Cleverly came as a 7" packaged with a ten-track CD, allowing this stunning song to make its mark as a single in the Hood tradition, but also allowing you the luxury of delving into the CD's many instrumental fragments for a more measured taste of the Winter's honeyed healing powers.

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4. Looking For An Answer "La Caceria" (Relapse, 7")

Thrill of "The Chase"

Yes, yes, YES, as Peelie used to say while a closing chord faded into flitting, fleeting feedback. We've had the back of Madrid veg-core fiends LFAA for a while now, so couldn't be happier that Relapse have now put their hands across the Atlantic to ensnare them for a 7" and album deal. This 4-track EP @ 45 rpm shows they've lost none of the 89/90-Napalm vigour of past outings (two of which, incidentally, the brilliant "Rupture" and "Humans Are Also Meat", recently resurfaced on a Spain Kills comp) with four tracks of burningly danceable, almost Terrorizer-like, grind. "Estandarte De Huesos" and "Supremacia Etica" on the A side and "La Peste Roja" on the B mix up blastbeats, breakdowns and moshery with uncommon vigour: the final song is a cover, no less, of Repulsion's "Driven To Insanity", presumably to give LFAA an 'in' to their new potential non-European fanbase, but it's the three originals which stoke our fire, float our boat, run the ensign up our flagpole etc etc. You can tell it's a good year for singles when this is only #4, and it's about time animal liberation got a soundtrack this vital: tbh, "La Caceria" may be the best grindcore 7" since "Mentally Murdered" / "Cause And Effect" all those moons ago.

PS it's limited to about 600, which is insane.

5. Endemic and Cappo "The Needle Drop EP" (No Cure Records, 12")

Notts so manic now

Just as in 2008, Cappo turns up on a 12" banger towards the year-end and raps his way straight into contention: this time, it's another Nottingham producer - Endemic, rather than Styly Cee - who's made it all happen. This record came out on 15th December, escaping every year-end list that wasn't made by dilettantes like us, and unaccountably being squeezed out of the race to the UK number one spot for Christmas. As Xmas pressies go, though, it rules.

Ultimately "Needle Drop" is Endemic's record, and he delivers swooning, heavily string-laden beats in the style of an English RZA that ebb and flow to match the virtuosity of Caps and his guests. As Endemic's partner in crime on this occasion, Cappo provides all the vocals for the intro, the jump-off title track and side B cut "Crumbs", but is also joined by Londoners Cyrus Malachi and Iron Braydz (on "Hacksaw") and Cyrus & Iron plus his fellow Notts rhymers Lee Ramsay and Scorzayzee*, no less, on "Eagles", where Endemic switches mood dramatically to provide some piano-backed, more furiously discombob beats, daring each MC to raise his game to compete. (The seven-tracker is rounded off by the contrasting instrumentals of "Eagles" and "Needle Drop"). Not unlike a certain Rakim, Cappo's style now is very much *rise above*, and without ever losing his trademark hunger and aggression he shows off once more the expanded vocabulary, mystical leanings and scientific metaphors that keep him heads, shoulders, knees and toes above pretty much anyone left repping the UK right now. Fantastic stuff.

*You may have come across Scorz more recently via his featuring in Shane Meadows' latest movie, but don't be fooled: the man is no joke (and the Arctic Monkeys should be supporting him). Listen to hall of fame cuts like "Voyage", "Want What's Yours" or "Why I'm Here" before you even dare tell us the man can't flow.

6. Starkey "Miracles (Jamie Vex'd Remix)" (Planet Mu, 12")

American dubstep steps out from the shadows

"Jamie out of Vex'd takes on "Miracles", from Philly resident Starkey's "Ephemeral Exhibits" LP last year, and with a remix burning with the same cinematic vigour that informed his own "In System Transit" 12", he helps bring the original out into the open, all spooked-out edits curling up to cuddle fabulously warm, disembodied vocals."

Since "Untrue", an increasing number of people have been picking up on how the best instrumental tunes really can conjure up depth and emotion, far less cynically and cheaply than many a sung "I love you". (The worst can drain your pocket and your patience, but that's another story). "Miracles" is unpretentious, but a real pepper-upper: a sleek, modern soundtrack for the journey home from the office that can make you breathe contented smiles just as readily and surely as it makes your head nod.

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7. DJ Honda featuring Mos Def "Magnetic Arts" (DJ Honda Recordings, download)

Exquisitely cut diamond that might remind you why you loved hip-hop in the first place

"This is peaches and cream... DJH, following his long-player with fellow local Problemz, is here limbering up for his next showcase album ("IV"), and the multifaceted, too-often inconsistent yet still underrated Mos Def deigns to join him for some horn-happy, full-on, no flagging old-of-skool dextro-freestyling that is over waaay too quickly (not even three minutes on the clock)."

Mos watchers will point out that half the lyrics are nicked from "Casa Bey", as if that's a bad thing. Here's a worrying precedent, though - a few months after issuing the single as reviewed, Honda issues an "extended" (four minutes not three) versh as another single, meaning that if like us you're a sucker, you have to buy it again (because the four minute version is indeed one-third more ace).

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8. Raffertie "Antisocial" (Seclusiasis, 12")

In which Caspa and Rusko frankly get OWNED

""Wobble Horror!" gained a few broadsheet plaudits, but "Antisocial" is much more interesting: two enormous bouts of big-city wobble from Birmingham's up-and-coming earl of crunk-step which surround a subdued, ambient halfstep middle while themselves being bookended by busy, vocal sample cuts that sound not unlike that "Miracles" remix again."

Yes, interesting. It is possible, and sometimes even scene darlings are scene darlings for a reason. "Antisocial", like "Miracles", speaks a different vocabulary than the Wild Swans or Rakim, but still one that delivers a cosy glow, albeit through the medium of a wobblefest in several distinct parts that's in patches urgent, in others chilled to oblivion. As such, it reminds us a little of the Fall's marvellous, and so overlooked, wonky epic "Chiselers".

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9. Kryptic Minds "Life Continuum" (Osiris Music, 12")

DS arrivistes effortlessly secure their place in its first XI

They may have emigrated from the very different world of drum and bass, but Kryptic Minds seem to have effortlessly adapted to dubstep's more gently yielding textures. The Minds' Simon Shreeve is a true music man: someone in it for the right reasons, whose work is always thoughtful, even if this means having to give it the very un-2009 luxury of several spins before the true rewards are revealed. "Life Continuum" is a gently pulsing, bass-led groove, the needle tracing the subtlest dark-of-step signatures while revealing hidden depths and subtexts one listen at at time. And like their Tectonic single "768", this is not on their ripplingly gorge "One Of Us" album, which means that's now three Kryptic Minds releases we urge you to investigate.

10. Socialist Leisure Party "Turktown Saints" (Cloudberry Records, 7")

Return of a couple of Action Painting! peeps with irresistible POP! single

"The swashbuckling debut(ish) of Socialist Leisure Party... a song that just floats along, giddily semi-drunk on a layered combo of fluttering rhythms and breezy flute motifs, but never lacking energy or pace."

This was the point for us at which the Cloudberry project eventually gathered (we hope) unstoppable momentum... our joy at this record confined only by later going on holiday at the precise moment SLP were playing in London (them and Insect Warfare, in the same week GRRRR). The way that "Turktown Saints" cheekily rushes by gives the same inward glow we had when we first got "These Things Happen" home from the record store, a feeling that - like our first taste of tens of Sarah singles - hasn't evaporated to this day.

Can't recall if we mentioned this before, but "Vulnerable Adults" on the other side was very nearly as good, you know: rare to see a song so catchy squirreled away on a B-side, but it's a further treat that does rather make this single a *must-buy*.

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OK. We outta here.

2010-01-26T10:28:00.004Z

The best singles of 2009: 11-20

11. The Faintest Ideas "Procrastination of Every Day Tasks" (Slumberland, 7")

As you will appreciate, "Procrastination..." is actually a mere one-third of this excellent 7"-diameter disc (Slumberland's "Searching For The Now volume 5"), teamed with two other landmark songs in Liechtenstein's dreamy "This Must Be Heaven" and the Faintests' own, more plangent "You're Gonna Wake Up One Morning and Know What Side of The Bed You've Been Lying On".

("Perhaps [Liechtenstein's] poppiest track of the year is could-have-been-a-53rd&3rd single-in-day "This Must Be Heaven"... but it's actually the Ideas who come out on top on that platter, with two corking songs, of a quality that only the Bright Lights and Boyracer have really managed at the same velocity, and that remind you that there is no level on which the Faintest Ideas did not make brilliant *POP* music. The consensus seems to be that they are now no more, in which case we can only say that they will be very sorely missed.")

But for us, it's this last song on the platter that deserves elevation, perfectly summing up the trajectory of this sadly-gone band with two minutes of noisy, gnawing pop that seems to cram in every emotion we've ever felt and leave us feeling somehow both churned-up and ecstatic. It's enough for us that Gothenburg gave us its symphony orchestra (ooh, and Liechtenstein), but chucking in the Faintest Ideas as well makes the place even more magical to us. Listening to this final postcard from the kingdom of Denmark, and relating to it so much in this London drizzle, is a sheer privilege.

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12. Skream "Burning Up" (Digital Soundboy, 12")

It's fair to say that sometimes we think maybe dubstep darling Skream is a tad overhyped. But then he comes up with singles like this, dabbling delightfully in delectably old-skool jungle, and we throw up our hands and happily acknowledge that he can deserve all the love he gets. Loosely doing the same for us in '09 as Jaydan's "What U Want" did in '08, "Burning Up" artfully takes dubstep, drum n'bass and house influences and sampled vocals but never sounds like a mere reassemblage, a chin-stroking construct. Instead, the turbo-bass and Amen breaks emphasise its simplicity and danceability. The sleeve is not of his native Croydon but instead a shot of the river, split by the Millennium Bridge, facing the gamut of ugly buildings running along Upper Thames Street: you may remember the millennium's "river of fire" not so much dancing across the water as petering out pathetically above it. With "Burning Up", happily, the flames are for real.

13. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart "Come Saturday" (Fortuna Pop! / Slumberland, 7")

Look. We grew up on Factory and Sarah, so the idea of taking singles off albums, especially afterwards, still gives us a little chill. But the Pains can be forgiven because "Come Saturday", one of the more muscular tracks on their debut LP, is such a bouncing, flawless, hook-drenched don't-want-it-to-end song; and partly because previously unreleased "Side Ponytail" on the other side of the Saturday afternoon-green vinyl - a shortform, buzzpop variation on "Come" - still outdoes many an A-side released this year.

There's a school of thought that says this re-recorded version is inferior to the "Searching Of The Now" version, but then there's a school of thought that says the Earth is flat. We reckon this "Saturday" is effortlessly superior to the original recording, as #13 (set against the heights of #58 last year...) might just show...

14. Lomax "Faith Massive" (RAM Records, 2x12")

"Breakthrough single ahoy: Lomax decides to throw us a *mighteous* 'plate with "Faith Massive"... combining dubsteppy wiles with fractured jump-up, a nervous and skittering dish rendered slightly surreal by the occasional crashes of what appears to be Gary Numan's doorbell. It's a double-12", but you only really need the title tune."

In other words: fractured, wintry dubstep shot through with icy blasts of d&b.

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15. The Postcards / Yellow Melodies split (Cloudberry Records, 3" CD-R)

Firstly, apologies to the Yellow Melodies: nowt wrong with them, but they are here in what's become known by this fanzine as the "Driller Killer role".

As for the Postcards: well. We've banged on a fair bit about undersung bands from the last decade who've effortlessly turned out nr-stupendous stuff that many an 80s label would have clamoured to release: the Hillfields,Northern Portrait (we've now heard "My New Favourite Moment", too: oh my GOSH yes), Forest Giants, the mighty Windmills. And the Postcards (it appears they take their name from the label, but funnily enough if they were named after the simply smashing Forest Giants tune of the same name that would fit just as well) are another such, a group whose songs surely cry out to be released ON VINYL, as "Postcards" was but sadly the Hillfields and NP have not yet been. "Watch The Skies!" is just *a brilliant song*, a shyer take on the deft epic guitar-pop of the W's "Walking Around The World". It's understated, brisk, melodic, sad, crying out to have been released as an own-right 7". The companion piece, "Nothing Excites Me Like You" is not quite as chic, but it's still a warm, scrambling soup of jangle, one that pricks the same hallowed reference points in us.

What's more, turns out the Postcards are from our very own beloved London - out in SE23 -and we never knew. Sorry not to have picked up on them before they received Roque's seal of approval: like Violent Arrest last year, they're a group we should never have slept on, but who we'll definitely be keeping tabs on now.

16. Cooly G "Narst" (Hyperdub, 12")

"Cooly G drops pure PHYSIC on this monster instrumental... the kind of beat that a wasted talent like Skepta could really do with at the mo... plays out as the soundtrack to a scrolling urban underworld of shanks and steel, a tune that's sinister yet still pregnant with suggestion. "Narst" doesn't actually go anywhere in the end, mind - its clipped, grime-like pulses sound like a crescendo that never comes to fruition - but as they say, sometimes it's better to travel hopefully than to arrive."

Pulsing urban noir from deep house's only Tooting & Mitcham player. "Loved Up" on the flip, featuring G's own vocals, got more love(d up), but for us it was "Narst" that was the deal real. There are so many reasons we prefer autumn / winter evenings to summer days - and so many aborted blogposts on the subject that will no doubt eventually transmogrify into a finished one - but the way that grime and dubstep come into their own when you're wandering the London streets of a crisp, clear night is one. "Narst" is such a song, one that makes you feel king (or queen) of the pavement.

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17. Horowitz "How To Look Imploring" (Cloudberry Records, 7")

"What a single their forthcoming 45 on Cloudberry is, two songs that could fight all day for A-side status and you'd never be able to sensibly resolve it without UN intervention. "How To Look Imploring" is even more ridiculously tuneful than [Very Truly Yours'] "Popsong '91", all carefree careering down a luge of snowflake-covered melody, while "The Drunks Are Writing Punk Songs" admits little changes of pace while still anchoring them brutally to Tullycraft-esque hooks the size of the Appalachian mountains... there's no getting away from the fact that when both sides rule as much as this, the humble 7" continues to be one of our greatest sources of joy in this sometimes dark, decaying world."

True that. As brighter blogs than this one have observed, no single record - not even Rakim's "Seventh Seal" - has had a longer gestation period than this 7", first announced in the Cloudberry Bugle as a wax cylinder. Was it worth the wait though ? Oh yes, especially with the original art (front and back) from Andy Hart. And we still can't tell you which track we prefer.

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18. Recordkingz featuring Mobb Deep "Heat" (Recordkingz / Creative Entertainment, download)

"Imperious... a sweet summation of the artistry of Queensbridge's most revered veterans... not least as it's so long since the Mobb gave us a single this good on their own... this is a sticky, sultry, scratch-filled banger that manages to sound modern (there are some in-vogue Eastern stylings) but yet not as *plastic* as the new school so often does. Juliano has taken the time to sculpt something that suits Prodigy and Havoc, and they oblige by rocking up some simple QB phrases and spitting them across the piece."

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19. Pocketbooks "Footsteps" (How Does It Feel?, download)

Blue riband chocolate box POP! from north London's finest purveyors of well, blue riband chocolate box POP! Like their previous single classic, "Cross The Line", it's not just the coursing melodies or the keenly observed, effortlessly romantic lyrics but simply the way the song is put together, the art of song arrangement having elsewhere rather tumbled down the pecking order in indie-pop's evolution. There have been some interesting conversations about how the London that Pocketbooks evoke is a world away from the spectral, ambient London of King Midas Sound or the cut-throat London of most new urban music as if that was a bad thing, but it hardly makes them any less authentic. If Pocketbooks started to tell tales instead of nights out robbing in Somers Town, that might just be a sign they were slipping. But as it is, they've still got it LOCKED.

20. Horowitz "Super Snuggles" (This Almighty Pop!, CD-R)

"Title ripe for emblazoning on a range of baby-gros ? Check. Supercatchy fuzz-distort pop melodies from the off ? Check. Vocals sung from the bottom of a vertiginously deep lift shaft ? Check. Chorus the size of a colliding galaxy pile-up ? Check. Another great single from Horowitz ? Checkmate."

We understand that those exposed to the greatness of Horowitz in the past twelve months include a privileged handful of the good burghers of Malmo, Jonkopping, Stockholm and Linkoping. And if the restarted Hadron collider proves to have half as much furniture-wrecking power as a Horowitz chorus, then we're all in trouble. For other bands, Horowitz make lesson one quite simple: have tunes. Loads of them.

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2010-01-21T10:00:00.008Z

The best singles of 2009: 21-30

21. Diversion Tactics "Can't Swim" (Boot, 12")

Interesting, really, that surely the UK's most winningly consistent hip-hop crew blaze not from Notts or inner London, but outta relentlessly suburban Guildford: kinda proof of the adage that it's never about where you're from, always where you're at. Anyway, after our appetite for their upcoming LP, "Careful On The Way Up", was whetted by last year's preview of the fearsomely good "No Collaborations", it was about time the mighty DT gave us a single, and this platter handily twins the uberdextrous lager-fuelled lyrical stomp of "Can't Swim" with an overdue return to MC Chubby Alcoholic's schooldaze, "Back To School".

"Swim" sees Jazz-T, whose "All City Kings" was one of the best LPs of '08, and Zygote, whose "Beats To Make You Frown" was one of the best of '06, produce as the inestimable Chubby fronts another fairly complete examination of alcohol addiction which knowingly plays off the confident - "the pub raconteur with the wit to embarrass you" - against the self-examining - "the functioning addict / guilt trip and bouts of panic". "School", meanwhile, will ring familiar enough to any of us revisiting their (strictly non-academic) secondary school curriculum (sample line: "if you can't stand the heat / then you faint in assembly"). Chubby's personality, as ever, fair bubbles into the grooves, but the key to Diversion Tactics remains the construction of the beats. This time it's none other than J-Zone who guests to provide the kinda pounding, funky beat you got on Cube's early "storytelling" cuts.

Looks like the LP should now be out early this '010, meaning it will join a long list of this fanzine's most anticipated (which also currently include Tender Trap, Standard Fare, Richgirl and Looking For An Answer...)

22. Kryptic Minds "768" (Tectonic, 12")

Clever, spinning dubstep from KM, especially when the nervy stringed synth chords propulse around its clicking, hypnotic groove and reverb-happy mid-bass. The flip is worth investigating for its typically considered take on Pinch and Moving Ninja's Tectonic Plates wonder, "False Flag".

23. Beatnik Filmstars "Slow Decay" (The Satisfaction Recording Company, 7")

"The BFs have been knocking out largely left-of-centre pop hits from their Bristol centre of gravity for decades now, but continue to mature like the finest of wines, and their latest slinky 7" ranks - but of course - with most of what they've done since "Maharishi" first crossed our path around the time of the Great Reform Act... a fantastically depressing lyric about the inevitability of disappointment sweetened - no, leavened - by the kind of vintage indie-folk that grows and grows on you until your record player is buried under creeping pop ivy. Or something... The natural follow-on from the mellow harmonics of their brilliant "Fez 72" album last year, this is another very special single."

Yes, Bristol no longer rocks, so much as shimmies by in a slo-fi haze. We mentioned the Inane's vulnerably tuneful "Touched By Time" the other day - a lost gem from 26 years ago - well, "Slow Decay" is also the sort of song we may yet bewail as a lost gem in 2035. So don't sleep on it until then.

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24. The Hillfields "Afterburn" (Underused, download)

As is this.

"warm, brooding, with prowling bass and only faintly jingle-jangling guitar before post-thirlwall vocals swoop to decorate the cake with enigmatic slivers of verse, just as on their "a visit" cdr single on cloudberry, it reminds us a little of that first beloved album, indeed so many overlooked late 80s masterpieces..."

Can someone now please release a Hillfields single on vinyl ?

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25. DJ Honda featuring EPMD "Never Defeat 'Em" (DJ Honda Recordings, download)

Here's something. Apparently none other than Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith (i.e. the legends that constitute two-man East Coast rhyme machine EPMD) played... wait for it... All Tomorrow's Parties this year, thanks to My Bloody Valentine's reliably eclectic tastes rather than those of ATP's normal catchment. We don't think it would be going out on a limb to install EPMD as the best band *ever* to play that august event, even in the company of the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and MBV. Hell, if only we'd known, we'd probably have gone, given that EPMD seem generally to give these shores a wide berth: tragically, the warm-up gig they were going to do in London fell through (as all decent-looking hip-hop shows, it seems, do).

Anyway, in '08 we mentioned - somewhere in here - their "Blow" single and how excited we were about their forthcoming album. That record, in the end, flattered to deceive, but it did contain the Honda-produced (and Method Man-featuring) "Never Defeat 'Em" and there's no doubting that when let loose on the mic over something nicely old skool, Erick and Parrish have still got it. DJ Honda is the man for that, and so this "Never Defeat" gives them an extended verse each, winding up in less than two-and-a-half mins with a curt "it's all over: see ya!".

Contrary to what you might think, we don't salivate at the thought of tearing apart today's more saleable hip-hop artists: if Jay-Z or Eminem were releasing exciting albums we'd be more than happy to shout their names from these pages. But until that happens, we have no qualms about pointing you to songs like this, which *won't* change your world, but *will* make you greet E&P again and make you glad they're still IN BUSINESS.

26. Free Loan Investments "The Last Dance" (Fraction Discs, 7")

Gosh. Is it really seven years since "Ever Been To Mexico ?"

Anyway, the best indie-pop is always worth waiting for. The sort of music that gives you summershine rushes, goosebumps and an inner grin, that makes you feel like you're sprinting through a cornfield shouting "Death To Corporate Rock!" while gaily flicking fingers at The Man. The sort of music that makes you feel *special* that you're in the indie-pop camp, even though none of your friends understand.

"The Last Dance" is a five-tracker which shows, unsurprisingly, that FLI's sound has "matured" over the last few years, but not in a "slowed-down balladry" or "we've incorporated elements of folktronica" sense, oh no. Instead, they are still injecting immeasurable *excitement* into two minute POP songs, but without feeling so constrained to stick to the template Talulah / Tulips trajectory that held "Mexico" together. "BBC", for example, rings with the trebly dynamism of those early Heavenly singles, right down to some gorgeous Amelia-isms, while "Emanuel" positively bounds along, the guitars a little more feral, more *fractious* than before. And the closing sorta-title tune "Anyone Can Dance", despite an offputtingly jitterbugging verse, then assails you with a splendiferous chorus designed to echo between your ears long after you've taken the record off.

27. Pinch "Attack Of The Giant Robot Spiders!" (Planet Mu, 12")

"a biiig plate from Rob Ellis... still lowkey rather than in-yer-face 'step in which the march of the oversized arachnids (a kind of lurching metallic clanking, bringing to mind robot spiders with a collective limp), is broken up by a battalion of bass that rolls in around 2 mins 45."

Later in the year the wheels came off fairly horribly with "Get Up", Pinch and Yolanda's apparent attempt to rival Geiom's um, unrivallable "Reminissin'", but "Attack!" is the perfect showcase of Pinch's signature sound, a song built with constantly developing motifs (the undercurrent of bass, then the plinking eastern synth) but retains the same rich, percussive structure. So there's no doubt that Pinch is a player for real. The real question for us now is whether he's a Gashead, or an '82er.

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28. Newham Generals "Head Get Mangled" (Dirtee Stank, download)

It didn't exactly occur to us, when talking with genuine positivity about Dizzee Rascal in '05, or Tinchy Stryder in '06, or Chipmunk in '07, that there would soon come a time when they notched up six genuine UK number one hit singles between them in a matter of months. The tragedy, alas, is that - despite the fact TS produced his ace "Cloud 9" EP as recently as last year - all three have switched between the only two genres of music that count, by moving from the type we commonly know as "good" to that we usually label as "rubbish". In which context it seems no surprise that Newham Generals' surprisingly excellent "Head Get Mangled" (despite being on the good ship Dirtee Stank and under the tutelage of Dizzee Rascal) failed to trouble the scorers.

""Head Get Mangled", especially when coupled with the hundredweight of pure old-style "Run The Road"-esque grime that is "Merked Again", could easily be the single of 2009 so far: interpolating sidewinder rhymes with washes of d&b and experimental instrumental, like a grime "Levitate", it makes having your head mangled a true pleasure. They're probably best known for being proteges of Dizzee Rascal, but DR hasn't made a record this exciting since "I Luv U"."

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29. Chris Liberator and Sterling Moss "The Cult" (Neuroshocked, 12")

"The good ship (Chris) Liberator hoists Mr (Sterling) Moss on board for a single on Polish label Neuroshocked, "The Cult", that cuts a fine swathe through the tremulous waters of hard LDN techno, more subtle than melodious, and nowhere near as down-yr-throat as the offerings from A.P. & Mr Farley... a strangely soothing bombardment."

"The Cult" is clean, disciplined, determined, a nice companion piece in feel and tempo to maybe our favourite techno tune this year, Jamie Taylor's brilliant "Loophole" (second best song ever of that title, on the Toyfriend "01" compilation), with the former's energetic to-ing and fro-ing and Victoria Falls drop substituted with a swishing drilling sound which emerges a few minutes in to haunt your inner ear.

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30. King Midas Sound "Dub Heavy - Hearts and Ghosts EP" (Hyperdub, 12")

"Unfurls as if labelmate Burial had decided to meld his modern 'urbantech' sonics with the in-day sensibilities of old masters like King T. On palpably heavy-gauge 12" vinyl and oozing with predatory sub-bass, the soooooothing lead track "I Dub" is maybe the most magical, even if the cut-up vocals and distant klaxons that intrude more obviously on "Ting Dub" on the other side provide a little more light and shade, echoing the progression that Burial himself made between "Burial" and "Untrue". "Long Dub" completes the EP, a shimmering haze of elfin, late-evening vibes, this time hung around a deconstruction of a fuller Roger Robinson vocal... Word."

Don't really understand what any of that means, and anyway over the course of the year "Ting Dub" has evolved into our favourite song on this excellent single, a bold, brave new world record that in our view could only have come from this our capital city.

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2010-01-16T11:57:00.009Z

The best singles of 2009: 31-40

31. Davinche "Rider" (Davinche, CD EP)

Eleven versions of the main man's worringly addictive "Rider" for all our delight, including Little Dee's that we mentioned in passing earlier in the year. The lead version, angling for radio, boasts Keedo, Ghetts - with the best bars on the whole CD - and a "Punch In The Face"-reprising JME, but is handicapped by a sung chorus bit (boo). On the other hand, we swear that Ghetts gets a mention of Alexandr Pushkin in, which surely makes it grime's first.

The other ten tracks are a mixed bag of straight freestyles and R&B sung delights. The freestyles are as ever where our true interest lies: there's a full 'style from Keedo but sadly not from Ghetto, and even Wiley's take (much as it's nice to hear from him again: like bumping into an old friend in your local) is overshadowed by fast, flowing cuts from Skepta (a bit Ed Hardy-obsessed, but otherwise better than nearly all of his LP), Tinchy Stryder (best thing he's released in 2009, despite vaguely dispiriting if honest "I'd rather spend my time at the jewellers" line) and a very buoyant-sounding Tinie Tempah. The real credit, however, must of course go to Davinche for making it all happen, and reminding us *again* that when grime's finest are let loose over 64, 96 or more, the end result is better than any crossover dance single they'll ever make.

32. Chris Da Break & Black Art "Bring The Force Back" (Neuroshocked, 12")

After turning up on the earlier Chris Lib / Sterling Moss-led "The Cult" 12" on his own Neuroshocked label, Chris da Break returned - with fellow Polish producer Black Art - to front this one, a premier league slab of '09 techno and a halfway house of sorts between the urgent, hook-led bassery of Mark Ankh's mighty "L and M" and the subtler, if equally insistent, high-bpm intrigues of "The Cult".

As a considerable bonus, the EP also features not one but two new DDR tracks: "Rock Da House" and "Deejay" (we know, you could hardly come up with more unpromising titles, but the songs bely them, being two of his better tunes in recent memory...)

33. The Wild Swans "Liquid Mercury" (Occultation, 7")

In which the Wild Swans decide, perhaps in a bored moment, that since they've reformed and all they might as well chuck in a near-perfect pop song while they're here. Jangling guitars cascade in and out during a number that might as well just be a chorus all the way through, with ne'er a single wasted note or chord... in many ways this two and a half minute compression of elegant pop is the opposite of "English Electric Lightning"'s ambitious wordiness, but in many ways it's very nearly as satisfying. (Indeed, if it wasn't for the fact we hated "There She Goes", we'd say that this was their "There She Goes". We think you'd know what we mean).

34. Tender Trap "Fireworks" (Fortuna Pop!, download)

"A tale of burnt fingers unlucky in love [that] fair stokes our still-simmering hearts: perhaps gutsier and more rooted than previous outings, it still comes over as pure indie pop, but 60s-tinged (not fatally so) and played with a harmonic, almost garage-punk edge half a world away from the drum machine electro-pop of their first, equally (ahem) pop canon-mastering forays. indeed, you could even say it takes tentative steps into "comet gain territory". dame amelia may have once sung that "hopefulness to hopelessness is not very far", but tender trap make the distance seem miles and miles."

Plus, of course, they *killed it* at Baby Honey the other week.

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35. Gregory Webster "Promised Land" (Slumberland / Where It's At Is Where You Are, 7")

Our longtime love for Gregory is well-documented, and our anguish at that alleged final Sportique LP never having snuck out has bored many a punter down the Florence and Jorene over the years. So it's *simply thrilling* to have him back on the (ever-more creaking) ilwtt, isott turntable.

"Promised Land", clad in the sweetest sleeve courtesy of Daniel Novakovic's artwork, doesn't so much roll back the years as unfurl a jewel-encrusted magic carpet to transport you back to the happy memories of his "My Wicked Wicked Ways" album: it's a gentle, folksome ballad, an escapist fantasy leagues away from the artful post-modern dischord that Sportique perfected. Instead, it sits comfily alongside Greg's beauteous reinterpretation of "Something's Missing" on WIAWYA's "Play Some Pool, Skip Some School, Act Real Cool" Springsteen tribute. We're not quite sure where in Gregory's travels around the southern shires that he located the log-cabin which forms the centrepiece of "Promised Land"'s story, but as we would pay good money just to hear him singing the telephone directory, we could not care one jot.

36. Slayer "Hate Worldwide" (Columbia, CD single)

As venerable and respected an institution round these parts as both Gregory and Amelia, with whom they've been sharing our affections since 1986, Slayer too can still be relied on to set the pulse racing. This an absurdly limited one-track CD-only single (1,000 copies in the UK) that pre-empted their "World Painted Blood" album this autumn. Now as that album makes all too clear, Slayer are capable of some pretty dreadful stuff these days, but "Hate" is a jolly little anthem for sure, the cockles of your heart positively warming as Araya spits "I'm a God-hating heretic, not a God-fearing lunatic" (can't just be us who immediately thinks of Sarah Palin at this point) while that twin-guitar thing drills away enterprisingly in the background. You could argue for hours about Slayer's relevance, but live they are always worth a shot. And so long as they're coming up with shoutalongs like this, their records will also merit the obsessive attention they still receive.

37. Pleasure / Majistrate & Nicol "Mission Statement Part 6" (Nam Musik, 12")

Seriously neat double-header on twelve courtesy of Majistrate and Nicol's own Nam imprint. Pleasure's "Asylum" on the one side is anchored around a wonderfully deep, squashed sound, a little like the sound of people in the flat above moving furniture around, but there's not enough else to it and after a while the repetition does indeed make you feel that the asylum may beckon. "Untouchables" on the other side is as good as we currently expect from Maj n' Nic, building on the easy highs of "Pussy Killa". One of the top tunes of this cloth in 2009.

38. Shrag "Rabbit Kids" (Where It's At Is Where You Are, 7")

Shrag don't always head our list of popstar crushes, but they do come up with some killer individual songs from time to time, which is one of the reasons their long run of singles has been a format that suits them so well. "Rabbit Kids" is neither the echoey retrospection of "Forty-five 45s" or "Hopelessly Wasted" nor the Fallesque barrage of much of their other singles but instead sees the Sussex Heights brigade in a more indiepop mode, belting out catchy, foot-tapping melodies but thankfully without going anywhere near cute or winsome. In our Britpop days in Nottingham at the Cookie Club or the Irish, "Rabbit Kids" would have been a surefire hit, teamed with "What Do I Do Now ?" or that Echobelly one. In 2010, those heady days behind us, it's one to cherish more personally.

39. Mutated Forms "Storm In A Teacup" (Allsorts, 12")

Estonians MF can sometimes either over-wine bar it with their icky mutant D&B-loungecore creations, or over-egg things slightly with mega-jump up ruckus like the earlier "Coppers" (q.v), but when they are *on* form they produce true thoroughbreds, such as this slab of aptly-titled half-mellow, half hi-tensile lizardness, a groover which reminds us of our late-90s days when summer listening consisted of little but Gopher and de Crecy. If, of course, Gopher and de Crecy had found themselves coupled with a smacking post-junglist beat.

40. Kromestar "Bassbin" (Southside, 12")

Kromestar, Bono, Darren MLS* - a growing club of men in music who seem to wear shades all the time. "Bassbin" is south of the river DS churning on Kromestar's own label, with more speaker-bothering bass-end doused liberally in jittering electronics. What's cunning is that all the while there are Star Wars effects flying around the mix, the percussion is quietly doing all sorts of jazzy, syncopated tricks, somewhat defying impressions on first hearing that this is merely a conventional floorfiller.

* Now, of course, Darren Blanche Hudson Weekend - check this.

2010-01-11T11:46:00.003Z

The best singles of 2009: 41-50

41. Jesus Of Spazzareth / Hammers split (no label as far as we can tell, 7")

The JoS side of this split six-tracker, adorned with a snap of none other than Chas and Dave, just shades it: the fiery, fearless, indubitably sense-filled "This Is Existence Not Living" should be made part of the National Curriculum. Indeed, if it wasn't for the way our copy seems to have warped in transit, it would not only have been further up the list, but we'd probably have been putting it forward as the national anthem. Hammers' contributions peak with the bristling, equally antagonistic "You'll Be Clocking Off In Your Coffin", which thematically comes from very much the same angle.

42. Socialist Leisure Party "Tactical POP! for Coffee Cadets" (Shelflife, 7" and CD)

"Immaculately-clad in artwork by Andrew Holder, the 7" barks into life with the admirably original uptown 'A', "Head In The Hay", which ramraids straight melodic indie pop with nicely skewed post-AP! exclamation. The accompanying CD rates too, the combination of uplifting pop (sorry, POP!) and more cynical / throwaway lyrics, a cut above yer boy-meets-girl shtick, making for something rather refreshing all told: "Scented Crowbar" nicks in first, a cheeky quick kiss before things take off with the excellent "No Tattoos", a collage of spinning strumathons, of spiralling indie-licks. And after the studied shambling of "Mondayland", an inst. of which appears on the single 'B' for any Cloudberry-karaoke heads out there, the spirited "Down With The Kids" nods, at least, to AP!'s rockier past."

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43. Hermit Crabs "Correspondence Course" EP (Matinee Recordings, CD single)

"We were probably a little unnecessarily ill-disposed to them for having had the temerity to enter, just as much win, a songwriting competition (with "Feel Good Factor"), because in our minds that brought up images of Rockschool or Orange Unsigned or every battle of the bands we'd ever suffered, and in any case we actually vastly preferred the album debut that followed, "Saw You Dancing", a frothy and clever brew of delicate folk-tinged indie pop, but now with the "Correspondence Course" EP... we have what we think is easily their breakthrough moment. "About You Before" is as warm, as cosy, as cuddly and catchy as "Eighties Fan", while the title track, which we found ourselves revisiting in earnest thanks to Sam's little review, repaid his (and our) faith, especially with the extra washes of guitar that intrude towards the end."

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44. The Atrocity Exhibit / Magpyes / Jesus of Spazzareth split (self-released, CD-EP)

Three-way 14-tracker with rather fetching design from up-and-coming titans of UK "deathgrindoom" tAE, short-burst grind merchants Magpyes and riff-crunching speed crusters JoS. tAE launch a quartet of exocets into the murky ether, peaking during the sweaty breakdown of "Corpsehanger" and in the whole of the explosive "Assassination Template". Next, Magpyes spin half a dozen frantic, frayed webs of shoutcore, peaking title-wise with the minute of "Darling, You're A Fucking Sinking Ship" but in intensity with the briefer encounters of "Crashing And Burning" and "Lovers". It's then time for the Mansfield Town-repping JoS to round proceedings off with their longer and marginally less febrile, shambling grind tunes of which "Council Of War" would be our pick, although none of them quite make us pile around as much as "This Is Existence Not Living".

It's usually while reviewing records like this that we mention how they remind us of the venal, visceral high-speed punk white noise of Flyblown and Scalplock, and how brilliant those bands were, so for the sake of good order we'll do that again here too.

At £3 inc p&p, btw, this is a steal: go here.

45. Ital Tek "Massive Error EP" (Planet Mu, 12")

"More justified Mu... an elegant, warped 5-track 'step EP from Brighton's Ital Tek, of which it's the title track's slender burbles, draped in bite-size wraps of laser synth, which slay us most completely."

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46. Sarandon vs. the Membranes "Spike Milligan's Tape Recorder" (Slumberland, 7")

There was a time (it was 1984) when every other indie single sounded as crashingly inventive, chaotic and irresistible as the Membranes' "Spike Milligan's Tape Recorder". Hard to imagine now, but everywhere you looked there was a future Ron Johnson band striking up gangly chords and frenetically annoying the neighbours - as Rhodri Marsden once said (to us!), "you should be able to bottle that feeling that you got, the excitement of a new Big Flame record when you were about 16...".

A quarter of a century on, bite-sized anti-twee angular post-post-punkers Sarandon pay tribute to every such single, as well as to the Membranes, by coupling their 2009 versh of "SMTR" with the original on a Slumberland 7" replete with Vinyl Drip (erstwhile Membranes/Bogshed label)-referencing sleeve. They do this despite the certain knowledge that it is not possible to improve on the Membranes' shrieking, Fall-happy, still mastered-from-vinyl original: a truly magnanimous act of evangelism. Sarandon's take is still (as you can see) in the top fifty singles released this year: from the opening Gedge / Salowka-speed strums, it refashions the original as a shorter, blunter, neater, ride, clanging with a need for speed.

47. Cappo "Unwritten Rule (Styly Cee Remix)" (Son Records, download)

On which Styly Cee reverses last year's splendiferous Caps EP out of the garage and does a cut-and-shunt on its final track, adding his own down-to-earth patter to the Condor's imperious flow and tacking on some sunny funk samples. You could say it comes to something when an inferior remix of a 2008 B-side still ranks in a list of 2009's best. But really, all it demonstrates is how superb "The H-Bomb" was the first time around.

48. Taggarna Ut / Madamm split (Cloudberry Records, 3" CD-R)

Taggarna Ut's scratchy, excitable, impulsive and joyous jangle (no plodding or going-through-the-motions a la a few indie-pop types these days) is *just the ticket*, and it was no real surprise to discover later that they include some ex-Faintest Ideas influence, as the Faintest Ideas, God rest their soul, were probably the best thing out of Scandinavia since Bathory. Their mates Madamm, also from Gothenburg, sparkle a little less brightly in this particular winter night sky, but their songs still pay faithful tribute to the purepop side of indie.

49. Rusko "Babylon Vol 2" (SubSoldiers, 2x12")

"Not only are lead tracks "Mr. Muscle" and "Go Go Gadget" especially the bouncing epitome of all that is good about wobble, but track three on the EP, "Soundguy Is My Target" is on another level altogether, being a mighty righteous to-date skeng reggae number (Jah wobble, anyone ?) on which Lutan Fyah lays down imperious vibes. More fire."

Speaking at the end of this long year, the wobblier tunes on Vol 2 have not perhaps aged too well. But "Soundguy Is My Target" continues to bristle with skanking menace and class. Lutan Fyah also managed an album of his own in 2009, which we ought probably to hunt down.

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50. Skream / Benga "Trapped In A Dark Bubble" / "Technocal" (Tectonic, 12")

"An all-star double header... On "his" side, S manufactures a very deliberate, layered halfstep number, "Trapped In A Dark Bubble", all twinkle save for the slapped beats, with a melody of parcelled-up synth chimes emerging minutes in. Benga's "Technocal" on the other side of the 12" is a little feistier, a rash of swung dubtech and eerie syncopation that effervesces with a sweet kind of menace, like a bottle of home-made ginger pop that's about to explode."

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2010-01-04T10:41:00.012Z

Slight The Power: singles of 2009

John Peel oft-threatened that one year he would broadcast a festive 51-100 rather than the top fifty, dispirited as he was with all the "young men strumming guitars" that displaced the Bhundus and PE tracks to that 51-100 backwater. And as you know, we're slavish devotees of the man's wisdom, so here are ours. For the avoidance of doubt, we're adoring of, and grateful for, them all.

51. Birds Of California / Kristin Mess split (555 Recordings, 7")

"You can't but be reminded a little of the much-missed Lunchbox by the Birds of California side of the latest split seven-inch treat from 555. The three songs (this is a 33 rpm record) on the Birds' side from ex-Lunchbox personnel engagingly intertwine reverb, indie jangle and spirited brass in a way that takes its cue from Lunchbox's "Summer's Over" mini-album but which takes it a little further, giving it a spacey, even dubby vibe. Over on the other side, BC's Kristin Mess provides contrast to BoC's little soundscapey experiments with four acousticky tunes, so fragile you feel they are liable simply to break at any time."

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52. Starkey featuring Durrty Goodz "Gutter Music" (Keysound, 12")

"A twelve on Keysound - trailed heavily by Jamie Vex'd amongst others - which sees more doubletime showboating from the unstoppable Durrty Goodz over some unhealthily frantic riddims, even if DG's quickfire riffing on how all great music comes from the gutter doesn't touch the storytelling highs of Goodz's solo "Ultrasound" set."

There were numerous Starkey collaborations this year but of course -"OK Luv" with Badness was the other one that merited more than a cursory - but this one keeps it *busy*, in doing so giving Durrty's flow the chaotically frenetic backing on which it thrives.

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53. MC Ren "Reincarnated" (Villain Entertainment, download)

"while there's little (ok, nothing) about it that's new or original, we're rather fond of it... we're left in no doubt by the end of the song that Ren is indeed still around, still gangsta, still the same guy who dropped all those memorable second verses, and that as he "started this gangsta shit", he's gonna finish it too."

You'll have spotted our deliberate mistake, because inevitably - given hip-hop's unyielding pun love - it transpires that this tune (and the album from which it comes) are actually called "Renincarnated". Do you see what he's done there ?

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54. Dubblestandart & Lee "Scratch" Perry meet Subatomic Sound System & Jahdan Blakkamoore "Blackboard Jungle" (Subatomic Sound, 12")

That cast list brings back fond memories of overlong artist collaboration names, our favourite from childhood always being Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam with Full Force. We like the "meet", too: so much more convivial than "with", "featuring" or the overused "vs"...

The tune here, "Respect The Foundation", is a rehash of Perry & King Tubby's "Blackboard Jungle" meisterwerk, but an immaculate rehash curated exquisitely by Austrians Dubblestandart, the guardians of modern dub who wowed our little minds with their single with Ari Up not too far back, and New York co-conspirators Subatomic Sound System, with Scratch - due back at Camden's Jazz Cafe soon - returning to join the newly-surnamed Blakkamoore (only THE Jahdan, who wrought such damage with Team Shadetek on "Brooklyn Anthem", remember ?) on the mic. Very very fine.

55. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart "Young Adult Friction" (Fortuna Pop! / Slumberland, 7")

Few bands have added so much wordage to the indiepop blogosphere of late, but regardless of the debates last autumn as to whether "Higher Than The Stars" saw them upping their game or starting to fall off, we'll always be in their debt for the two London shows they gave us in their first ever week in the United Kingdom. And, of course, for a slew of fabulous singles like this one, the green vinyl number from their primary colours collection that tackles library-related "romance" with the charming vim we've come to expect from the Pains. And as we may make plainer anon, we thought Archie Moore and the band did a sterling job with the production on the sessions that yielded "YAF", even if it's been decried in some quarters of said blogosphere...

56. Salvo "The Info" (King Kong Holding Company, 7")

"Sal is joined by the instantly-recognisable voices of relative heavyweights Kashmere and our local heroes Taskforce's own Chester P. Jehst has a hand in the production, which is still likeably rough, this really being a record about showing off the respective verses of the rappers on board. Nice."

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57. Ital Tek "Mako" (Atom River, 12")

Seductive, futurist sounds that we tracked down in Phonica from South Coast one-man mood merchant Ital Tek (seemingly aka iTAL tEK, which is very bIG*fLAME), this time on his own label, seeing him gently introduce Joker-type influences to the ghostly clicks of prev single "Massive Error" to create an intensely urban dreamscape of gnarly nr-funk synth, and chord changes so sweet you could kiss them.

58. Dap-C featuring L'il Wayne "Ma Money" (NGU Records / Hip Hop Village, download)

"We'd been at least 3/4-expecting the much-trailed Dap-C / L'il Wayne collaboration to be a trainwreck, but it's really very far from that: whatever Wayne got paid was worth it... the man from New Orleans properly turns up, with both Talib Kweli (another neat guest spot, following on from "We Gets It In" on Craig and Marl's "Operation Take Back") and old-stager and metric martyr Royce Da 5' 9" in tow... the beauty of (homestyler) Quincey Tones' vaguely serene, unflashy string-laden backing is that it just lets each MC concentrate on limbering up their larynxes: there are no attempts to interact, and the five minutes, entirely free of wack chorus lines or wholesale Kanye-style song steals, goes by shockingly fast. It shouldn't work, of course it shouldn't, but it really does."

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59. Standard Fare / Slow Down Tallahassee split (Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation, 7")

It's been some year for Standard Fare, but their song here, "Dancing" helps demonstrate why: 'tis clever, cute and catchy yet also angular, interesting and thoughtful. Something about its stripped-down, faintly minimalist dynamic and the group's dew-dripping promise and makes us think of Young Marble Giants, a thought which not too many bands are capable of eliciting. But there's ever a downside for whatever poor sods end up on a split single with a band as aflame as Standard Fare, because they're on a hiding to nothing, even when they get two tracks ("Angel Of Death", which could never deliver on the promise that famous title conjures up, and "Tricks"). Taxi for Slow Down Tallahassee, then.

60. Giant "Drumstick" (Hench, 12")

Demonstrating that there's even more to St. Petersburg's popular culture than the considerable joys of Pitergrind (or that brilliant veggie cafe named after Dostoevsky's The Idiot where they serve their Baltika with ice cold Standard vodka), Russian collective Giant launched this salvo via Jakes' label, Hench. "Drumstick" might be dismissed as merely yr standard wobblestep lurcher, were it not for the fact that it's painted in parts with shades of skank and others with wailing Sino-synth, giving you a little more for your £5.99 or so.

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61. Seven "Drop" (Aquatic Lab, 12")

A darkside 12" from early in the year on Australia's Aquatic Lab, though it's Englishman (we think) Seven spinning stolen D&B tumble amongst the battalions of indelicately fluttering deep-end bass that threaten to unseat your speakers as it rotates. Would have been even better at a minute or two shorter, mind.

62. Glenn Wilson "Another Corner" EP (Equator, download)

Every year needs a signature house-influenced funky techno track *that isn't rubbish*, and for 2009 Glenn's "Coursing Hares" is it. It's part of a tryptych of varied instrumentals: lead track "Mechanics", despite bristling with trademark Wilson elasticity, electricity and elegance, is probably the weakest, whereas "Outdoors" goes back to basics for the kind of intricate yet uncompromising many-BPM pounding that we so routinely fall for. A further reminder that Sweden is more than pulling its weight at the moment, in so many different musical genres.

63. Obituary "Blood To Give" (Tanglade, download)

A slithering beauty ("the quirky single "Blood To Give", a semi-experimental nu-grunge drone with at least three drum-only sections, which we like to imagine as a riff on the Field Mice's "Alone Forever"") from their snarlingly consistent metal-grunge "Darkest Day" album, of which more in here.

64. The Parallelograms "Dream On Daisy" (Cloudberry Records, 7")

First time we heard this, there was a sense of underwhelment in the room, but luckily that was easily cured by spinning it again, and again and again. The final flourish from those excellent Parallelograms (past moonlighters as Fucking Rosehips) is actually a winning 3-track EP in winning Scott C. sleeve, topped by this title track that melds the anorak armoury of thudding bass, jangly guitars and minimalist skin-bashing and threads them into a bathetic little story. Parental advisory: contains TWEE HANDCLAPS. And a GLOCKENSPIEL SOLO.

65. Joker / Pinch & Moving Ninja / Peverelist "Tectonic Plates 2.4" (Tectonic, 12")

"a three-tracker twelve in the series from Pinch's own label Tectonic which starts with Joker's intriguingly-titled (or should that be untitled) "Untitled-rsn". A little less disposable than the Sino stylings of his "Digidesign" 12", it buzzes neatly with pitch-bend and rattling glitch (ooh, new genre alert: viva "glitch-bend"). Moving Ninja and the label honch's joint venture "False Flag" is a different kettle altogether: its charms are virtually imperceptible until about three minutes in, but then a switch is THROWN: Mr Ellis seems to have some left-over robot spiders clinking around in the mix, and there's also space for a nice woodpecker-like rat-a-tat-tat sound as it grinds to conclusion. Finally, as we always said, Peverelist's "Junktion" was the true star of his "Infinity Is Now" 12", and here it gets a pretty comprehensive "Shed" refix, evolving into a chiming, neoclassical workout (whatever speed you play it at)."

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66. Camera Obscura "French Navy" (4AD, 7")

People seem to have this idea that we're not into Camera Obscura, but that's nonsense. Yes, if we're trapped in a room full of frothing-at-the-mouth Camera Obscura disciples then we'll slag them off, but that's just because we're contrary bastards, suspicious of consensus: in reality, they make some great songs and for sweet, melodic, retro charm you never need look too much further. And to think people said they were only a Belle & Sebastian rip-off (they did originally, honestly).

True, it seems that we don't like "French Navy" as much as we liked numbers 1 to 65, but in a world of 6 billion people and nearly as many single releases, that's a pretty minor thing. Of their 2009 singles "French Navy", for our money, just outpaces "The Sweetest Thing" for all-round loveliness: the verses are a touch rope, but the string and brass arrangements, employed just lightly enough, are the best since Chas Hodges'.

67. Hellbastard "Eco-War" (Selfmadegod, CD-EP)

If you'd told us at the start of 2009 that Hellbastard would be releasing a new EP (and album) then while you were still rubbing our lipstick from your bemused smacker we'd have been no doubt forcefully expressing the view that said records would end up right at the top of these our interminable annual "best ofs" a year later. In truth, neither "Eco-War" nor catchily-named longplayer "The Need To Kill... Rage, Murder, Revenge & Retaliations: The Rise Of The Working Classes" quite met our heady expectations, but they were still confident, capable, technical, clinical, angry, dense, oozingly ambitious and occasionally intriguing.

"Eco-War", a five tracker, springs to life properly with the anti-whaling "Sea Shepherd" but peaks, probably not intentionally, with "Massacre", a re-recording of a tune initially demoed by the band back in 1986. There is time before closing for a cover of Slayer's "Die By The Sword", and then a pointless skit, but it's the chunky proto-crust of "Massacre" that best displays Hellbastard's original charm.

68. Raekwon "The New Wu" (Ice H2O, download)

We very nearly OFFICIALLY gave up on Wu-Tang after the aberration that was "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". But actually, we need them more than ever in the continuing war on mainstream rap wackness, and Raekwon's "Yes Sir", "Real Shit" and "The New Wu" all contributed to the war effort. "The New Wu", in comparison to a few of the big hitters on "Only Built For Cuban Linx" revisited, has a slovenly chorus and over-samples a slightly gooey harmony motif, but with R, Method Man and Ghostface on the mic it's still enough to make you go back to your Wu collection. Which can only be a positive outcome.

69. MRK-1 "Magnetic Device" (Earwax, 12")

Hide away your iron filings. Second best single of the year with the word "magnetic" in its title, this is a chunky-as-Yorkie slab of snare, kick and lurching synth that couches the beats in a distinctly radioactive ReadyBrek glow, even as they pound away at you uncompromisingly in the vein of Distance's "Victim Support". (Maths fact: the B-side of this bears the desperately unoriginal title "Revolution 909", making it by our estimation precisely the 909th song to do so. He probably gets a prize).

70. Cause Co-Motion! "Because Because Because" (Slumberland, 12")

"[This] 12" on Slumberland from the increasingly splendid Cause Co-Motion! is a carefully-ordained shambles, more of that Messthetics vs early-14IB thang, the six tracks peaking with side two's frantically-drummed but *um.... special* "Leave It All" and somehow rather heartbreaking closer "You Lose" ("You never win / oh no / And get jealous / Oh yeah / And then you lose..."). No tune longer than two minutes odd, either, which is absolutely as it should be."

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71. Boa Constrictor / The Cavalcade split EP (Cloudberry Records, 3" CD-R)

"It is forever the destiny of Swedish bands, whatever the genre, to be somewhat taken for granted: had Comet Gain released BC's "Out Of Nothing" on the back of "Casino Classics" it would have been hailed as garret-room genius, but Boa Constrictor will remain relatively uncelebrated because they're not British, and are possibly sober. Brits the Cavalcade, on the other hand (who ironically sound a little like they might be from Sweden, but actually hail from Preston) take us back to the days of sweet jangling, days we occasionally hanker for... "Meet You In The Rain" has the kind of twinkly late-80s charm that makes you wish it had been issued on cassette."

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72. Jaydan "Suicide" (Propaganda Recordings, 12")

"While this is barely the sublime stuff of '08's sugary house reinvention "What U Want", Jamie Cope is making a compelling case for joining Speech Ferapy and MJ Hibbett on the podium as Officially Leicester's Finest, and while on first listen quite sober and contained for something of its ilk, "Suicide" is actually deceptively frenetic. And intensely rewarding."

Can't imagine what we were thinking of when we described this as "sober and contained" on any level - must have been the drugs talking. S'pose "Suicide" is more restrained than its predecessor single "King Of Miami" to the extent it doesn't have sirens on it, but then you can recreate the sirens simply enough by listening to this while walking down the Holloway Road. Even on the rare days when Pete Doherty isn't up before Highbury Corner magistrates.

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73. Nicol & Majistrate "Pussy" Killa" (Chronic, 12")

Uncompromisingly agricultural - imagine Devon White and Peter Swan scrapping for a high ball at Twerton (a sight we've witnessed) - "Killa" is another pick from '09's drum n'bass crop, happily and indulgently repetitive as only true floorfillers can be. If only these two were as ubiquitous as David Guetta et al, properly visceral dance music might have a future.

74. I, Ludicrous "We're The Support Band" (Old King Lud, download)

Only seven years since first appearing (on the Bull & Gate comp "The Mercy Killing Of Tarantula Pie") hardy perennial "We're The Support Band" becomes I, L's first digital single, and in a year without an official Fall release it is especially welcome. Listening to "Support Band" is like revisiting an old pub haunt (or, indeed, the B&G, Ludicrous' spiritual home) to find the same drunks still reliably rolling around the bar: it's still scratchy, rough and dronily out-of-tune, a conscious echo of the draining support bands it parodies, but saved by Will Hung's defiant tones ("we go on and on and on and on and on") that perfectly match the Fallish repetition of its lone chords ("the riff's second-hand, we go from the Damned"). Silk purses from sow's ears, and all that.

75. Concrete DJz "Generator EP" (Mastertraxx, 12")

First white-labelled in late '08, this four tracker saw official release this time last year via Mastertraxx. We'd still pick out "Solid State Refills" - "a kind of driving "Limehouse Green"-style cut with female vocal yelp and back-of-the-mix feedback - that we keep coming back to".

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76. Paul Langley and Jamie Bissmire "Clash Of The Titans" (50 Hz, download)

More feverish than "Generator", this vehicle for former hip hop head Langley and ex-Bandulu geezer Bissmire was apparently a "fuzzy-minimalist jack-techery fest", whatever the hell that is. More spookily, this is the only tune that we've ever paid to download only for it to spontaneously self-combust a few weeks later: if the major labels ever get hold of that kind of technology, you can be sure they'll be using it to screw us. A passing wizard reckons that the original song actually came out about a decade ago, but as we've done all the voting now it's probably too late to sort that.

77. Morrissey "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" (Polydor)

I know, Morrissey. How out of touch we are, eh, when everyone else is down with Taio Cruz or Ironik or the various bands with Cats in their name who we just don't get, and we're still finding slivers of joy in the ongoing noodling of a star whose best work was behind him by the time he was 25...

Mozza has now had 37 solo singles chart in the UK. And the vast majority of them, on release, struck us only as ripples from a pond: we think, "oh, that's ok, a bit Morrissey-by-numbers though, lacks a hook, could do with less lead and more froth". But then, five or ten years later we re-listen to a batch of said singles and think, "you know, that wasn't so bad: a bit understated, but listen to that *voice*, and compare that single with the clunking rubbishness of the other big "indie" players of the time..." and even now there are probably only five or ten of the 37 that we wouldn't happily return to.

So yes, this single is ok, a bit Morrissey-by-numbers, lacks a hook, could do with less lead and more froth, doesn't even have the muscle and defiant charm that initially attracted us to his previous 45, fellow "Years Of Refusal" cut "All You Need Is Me". But that doesn't stop it also being a rather cute, whimsical, winsome distraction, welcomely understated musically (almost jangle-pop in construction). And we're likely to enjoy it anew in a few years time, when another volume of the man's greatest hits is spat off the production line by one of the million record labels he's now loved and lost.

78. Mutated Forms "Coppers" (Zombie, 12")

"Mutated Forms are never going to be winning artistic plaudits for their rustically straightforward drum and bass outings, and "Coppers", a single on Zombie, will not be catapulting them any closer to an Ivor Novello award. However, after the obligatory student-friendly speech sample, they sensibly get on with raising the roof with some no-nonsense jump-up which is about as subtle as a night out with England's under-21s."

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79. Signed Papercuts "Of My Heart" (Cloudberry Records, 7")

"Took a while, but its pained-boy and plaintive-girl voices help unfold a shimmering kind of very trebly half-Sarah, half-shoegaze brittle beauty, especially in its last, more fevered, minute where the extra rush sounds like the noisier bits from Aberdeen's "Byron" EP (or that bit off Je Suis Animal's "Secret Place"). Still torn as to whether or not this would have benefited or lost out from better production, but we're definitely in favour of the way both singers stretch so hard to reach the high notes. They damn nearly pull it off, too."

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80. Butcher Boy "A Better Ghost" (How Does It Feel ?, download)

"A smoochable track with that... cultured, melodic, sauntering, breezy Hermit Crabs / Math & Physics feel..." Have a dim feeling we were meant to have seen this lot at the Luminaire, but it's been a kind of hectic year. "A Better Ghost", of course, was one of the jinking standouts on their "React Or Die" album: few records went better with the twelve days of Christmas and a roaring fire.

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81. DJ Honda featuring Problemz "The Big Payback" (DJ Honda Recordings, download)

"Excellent... [Problemz] slaps rhymes against a nicely loose backing track without ever sounding that he's having to try too hard. It's confident, poetic and knowing."

Best of a few decent singles lifted from the pair's "All Killa No Filla" album collabo, which also included "Give It Up" and "NY/NY", Problemz having finally reached the front of the queue to spearhead the legend Honda's funk-flecked downtown grooves. The two would pair up later in the year for "That Knock", a cut from "Honda IV" that also became DJH's 93rd single (approx.) of the year.

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82. Living With Disfigurement "Thrill To The Terror Of Death!" (self-released CD EP)

London trio LWD delivering a four track EP of high and low end vocal (the low works best) over grudgingly Carcass-like guitar buzz, perhaps peaking with final track "Preserving The Guinea Worm" and its positively thunderous looped riff, although you may also have heard the snappily-named "Better Living Through Surgery" on a Fear Candy earlier in the year.

83. 'Allo Darlin' "Henry Rollins Don't Dance" (Wee Pop!, 7")

"intelligent, sassy, witty, tuneful - so what's not to like ? ... AD do this kind of faintly whimsical but many-carat indie-pop thing so much better than most, plus they're the only band with an apostrophe at both the start and the end, which must count for something."

84. KRS-1 with Buckshot "Robot" (Duck Down Records, download)

KRS always tells the truth, so the issue is usually how well he spits and where on the spectrum the beats are at: the answers, as is usual with Kris these days, are (a) quite well; and (b) OK, but nothing to write home over. Lyrically things are fine of course, "Robot" being a KRS-subtle (i.e. not subtle) dis of auto-tune hip-hop that benefits from his evident disbelief at how far the game has shifted and the lack of respect for its past: "Go online, look up Kraftwerk / everything we doing is past work" and a plaintive "we started breaking / so we could stop fighting". Since capitalism tamed hip-hop, nobody will pay him a blind bit of attention, mind.

"Robot" is actually produced by none other than Mobb Deep's Havoc, and it's fair to say you should take it over H's own "H Is Back" single, later in the year.

85. Shirley Lee "The Smack Of The Pavement In Your Face" (hitBACK, download)

A typically complete effort from one of pop's most unjustly unlauded songwriters: "dead romantic... slowly entwines its path into your affections".

86. Wake The President / Je Suis Animal split (Electric Honey / Lucky Number Nine, 7")

"The sprightly and in places frankly irresistible "Miss Tierney"... mingles the brash beauteousness of Felt with some Sarah-ish jangle and only intermittently annoying vocals."

The Je Suis track is the discomfitingly Stereolab-ish "Fortune Map", but "Miss Tierney", saucy and ebullient, is still the belle of the ball.

87. Richgirl "He Ain't With Me Now (Tho)" (RCA / Jive, download)

Does the world really need another Destiny's Child ? Our inclination would be that yes, it probably does, and "He Ain't With Me" brought Richgirl a step forward from their earlier "24s" single, without Bun B to mess it up. The last time we derived such innocent happiness from such a mainstream R&B sheen was when bigging up Mis-Teeq a few years back: but, you know, it's kinda nice to be in that place again.

This was the first time we gave money to the Sony group this year.

88. Anjay "Stimulation EP" (Circulate Recordings, download)

Anjay's style can sometimes veer into somewhat vanilla techno and in large doses wash over you somewhat, but we'd rather that than the dated rave lookbacks that still seem to infect every other Stay Up Forever release, say. On this neat little EP, the rhythm-centric "Earth Mover" picks up where "Old Thought" from "Mechanical" left off, but it's the title-ish track "Maximum Stimulation" that humours us the most: rippling metallic synths patterned around the usual floor-humping percussion.

89. S.Kalibre "Spitrapture" (self-released, download EP)

A couple of usual suspects aside, it has not been the rosiest of years for UKHH, but as we've said before true-to-the-game g-rhymer S.Kalibre is one man who can always be relied upon to *bring it*, and "Spitrapture" is a useful six-track reminder of the Medway man's gruff but effortless mastery of Estuary flow, even if he is unencumbered here by too many beats of truly high quality. You can buy it here, along with the later, down-to-earth, and surprisingly touching "Oh Girl" single...

90. Strawberry Whiplash "Picture Perfect" (Matinee Recordings, CD single)

Styled and arranged quite beautifully, still this latest single from Strawberry Whiplash didn't quite charm us as it should - as we wanted it to - despite ringing catchiness aplenty and oodles of loving layered 12-string. Like Bubblegum Lemonade's "Doubleplusgood" album, there's almost something a little too um, picture perfect about a song which might profit from a little more scruffy charm. Perhaps this is the indiepop equivalent of watching the Islington Arsenal: you find yourself admiring the silkiness of the build-up play but end up wondering guiltily whether the Professor might profit from getting someone just to hoof the pig's bladder into the six-yard box once in a while.

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91. Korpiklaani "Vodka" (Nuclear Blast, 7")

"not entirely sure whether this is so-bad-it's-good, actually bad, or actually good, but the fact it puts a smile on our face every time probably justifies you making that call for yourself. ... for three minutes "Vodka" is nearly as wonderful as weird, the latest inheritor of the mantle of "All The Young Children On Crack" or maybe "The Message Is Love"."

Yep, a truly bizarre piece of beerhall whimsy: even Milking The Goatmachine, on Nuclear Blast's somewhat wilfully "irreverent" Anstalt sublabel, have nothing on this. A gift for late-night drinking games, too.

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92. Very Truly Yours / The Understudies split EP (Cloudberry Records, 3" CD-R)

"A brace on a Cloudberry's new line, the fluffed-up pillows of pop loveliness that are their "800" series), with "Popsong '91" shining the brightest, as it veritably Melbergs-up some 'UK 80s-90s' Brit(indie)pop stylings."

And the unashamed "Popsong '91" is for us still the pick of the pops on this the first of Cloudberry's 4-track CDR splits, all of which yielded at least one fantabulous discovery, and a couple of which outdid even their cousins on proper Cloudberry sevens.

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93. JME "Over Me" (Boy Better Know, download)

The first three or four seconds of this prompt a deep intake of breath - a concern that despite the thoughtfulness of last year's "Famous ?" set, JME is about to join ex-grime compadres Dizzee, Tinchy and Chip Diddy in their tame acquiescence to THE MAN and launch into some trancey crossover nonsense with LibDem pseudo-grime verses aimed at alcopop-swigging thirteen year olds. But as soon as the fractured, gloopy, oh-so-grime click beat comes in, together with Jamie's reassuring London conversational, yr fears are assuaged. What follows is two minutes of sharp rhymes, each ending in the same two syllables, followed by a short instrumental section that at one point goes all "Everything's Gone Green" on us. Nice to have you back, J.

94. Anjay "Mechanical" (Dark Crank, download)

"It's rare for a techno EP to exactly overflow with strong tracks, but three or four of the numbers here from the Polish stalwart would qualify as own-right singles... "Old Thought" rides a rolling drum intro before animating a Shredder-like groove, focussing heavily on rhythm rather than the sonics, and "Steel Emotions" by contrast is built around hovering, minimal blippery (the K-Tech remix of it is a little slower and less austere, stripping the joy from it rather), "Mechanical Brain", the title track of sorts, may be the best of all worlds as it starts off being all about the beats, but some neat blippery then ensues."

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95. Ryuji Takeuchi "The Fixer" (Hardsignal, download)

Slightly surprised that this one sneaked in, but not unhappy: the techno veteran continues to churn out less-than-forgiving poundings like this that remind us of the better hidings administered to our ears by Mr Wittekind & co in recent years. It would be lovely to think that one day someone would dare drop this at Feeling Gloomy or Club de Fromage, emptying out the N1 Centre in the process. We like to watch those students run.

96. Ikonika "Smuck" (Planet Mu, 12")

Original if kooky vinyl outing from the ever-exploring creator of '08's "Millie" and "Please", looped around playful, erratic jumpstarted synth tones, that starts to seriously warp into pleasingly atonal grooves a half-minute or so in. (We really longed to get into its much-touted follow-up on Hyperdub, "Sahara Michael" - not least because it has such a pretty sleeve AND the title sounds a bit like Shalawambe's "Samora Machel" - but in the end it was more a record to admire than reload).

97. 2562 "Embrace" (3024, 12")

I was once forced to endure Embrace's grisly stadium ballad "Gravity" whilst being driven around the Clarkson-friendly twisting roads of the Italian mountainside (unsurprisingly the same landscape from where Mr. Disposable Razors had his watch hewn). The choice between bearing "Gravity"'s hollow platitudes for a few more minutes and jumping out of the passenger door to certain death was one of the hardest I've ever had, and I'm still not sure I got it right given the mental scars driven foursquare into my cerebellum by their plodding, "epic" landfill indie. Apart from the choice of title, however, everything about this single is as pristine as that mountain scenery, as past Tectonic heavy-hitter 2562 scatters warming sprinkles of rushing synth and welcoming pastoral dubstep over carefully layered percussion.

98. Tippa Irie "Bad Boy" (African Beat, download)

"Riding a surprisingly old-fashioned roots rhythm, TI obviously hasn't forgotten how powerful reggae can be as a means of channelling a powerful political message (after all, the roots of "Bad Boy"'s sentiment can be heard more than thirty years ago in "Stop The Fussing And Fighting"). He also manages to mention de Niro and Pacino in the chorus without going the whole hog and rhyming them, for which we're grateful."

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99. Oxmo Puccino "365 Jours" (Cinq 7, download)

"almost-impossibly laid back... casually but brilliantly unfurls over lizard lounge backing until the man is close to comatose, merely whispering sweet nothings into the mix while Hood-like violins collide with jazz vibes to fade."

Actually, just noticed that in this 51 to 99 we've visited England, Scotland, the US, Sweden, Austria, Russia, Poland, Serbia, Holland, Estonia, Finland, Japan (via a couple of exiles, admittedly): now we're in France, we'd like to take this opportunity to dedicate "365 Jours" to Thierry Henry.

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100. Pale Man Made / Leaving Mornington Crescent split (Cloudberry Records, 3" CD-R)

"In 2009, pleasingly, there are no longer severe strictures against sounding honourably indie, and so PMM's Weddoes-Pavement churn makes them one of the best of the new Cloudberry crop for us, especially the way that "In Your Bed" sounds like a meld of a young Andrew Jarrett and the first Candy Darlings single..."

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2010-01-02T09:58:00.005Z

Tonight, We Get Even

Hello. Here are our favourite albums of 2009.

1. Insect Warfare "World Extermination" (Earache)

The end of music, which can't be a bad thing. But an excellent, thoroughly powerful, suite of songs to boot.

Would have made an amazing EP: The whole album. (The "review" mentions our most favouritests).

What were they thinking of ?: Their only mis-step was splitting up.

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2. Kryptic Minds "One Of Us" (Swamp 81)

Freezing December evenings, cold to the touch, hugging pavements and kerbs, walking uphill past kids circling on their bikes, the low-rise estates lit by the frizzy whites of passing headlights and the jaded neon of the newsagents and kebab shops. Glancing up from the shadows to see the lampposts framed against coke-black sky. Passing underneath Turnpike House, pockmarked with bright rectangles of light. Watching the heave of punters spilling out of the tube station. Opening out on to the main drag, sapphire blue Christmas lights slicing the dual carriageway, four or five storeys as far as the eye can see, up to a central horizon where the city lights fade into the darkness. The buses lurching to a halt as they exchange early leavers for late shoppers. All of this is when we love this city most, a scene captured perfectly by records like this.

They say that dubstep doesn't make for good albums, but the exceptions proving the rule can glitter like gold. For the real problem with the kind of music that D&B exiles Kryptic Minds make (apart from our complete inability to describe it: records like this also remind us why writing about music is probably redundant) is that it is the easiest style of music in the world to make badly, to make boring, to provide an open goal for yer hordes of would-be detractors with their "real music" bleats. So it's not often that we will recommend an instrumental LP to you all - the last one to fit the bill would inevitably have been the ubiquitous Burial's - but this bassy, bubbly darkstep is music made with love, and it shows (and in the closing coda "Distant Dawn" it boasts possibly the most beautiful - we overuse that adjective, but here it is the only one that will do! - song of 2009). "One Of Us" is on Loefah's new label, and you can just imagine how blown away he must have felt when he first heard the masters.

Would have made an amazing EP: "Secure Lost", "Six Degrees", "Three Views Of A Secret", "Dissolved", but pretty much anything.

What were they thinking of ?: We could have done without the brief intro and, at a push, maybe the samples on the otherwise sterling title track. And "Something To Nothing" is tantalisingly too short.

3. Obituary "Darkest Day" (Candlelight)

"the second album since their comeback and possibly their mightiest yet... It leads with the spirited, unusually fast "List Of Dead" and the quirky single "Blood To Give", a semi-experimental nu-grunge drone with at least three drum-only sections... "Darkest Day" takes the ingredients that have made Obituary the least trebly band in the history of the solar system - the flayed-throat Tardy growl, the lumbering, low-end bass, the thudding drums and the fuzzing, detuned guitars - and melds them into what is probably & accidentally the best *grunge* album ever made, as well as being a highpoint in recent death / thrash workouts. Even the fact that their employment of Ralph Santolla (a free transfer from Deicide) now obliges them to throw in guitar solos every so often doesn't detract: most are short, sweet and blisteringly, um, "tight", with thankfully none of the extended epic diversions that slightly derailed their last live turn... Ralph shreds, everyone else keeps things muddy, and all us punters can go home very happy."

An album with real focus, a creeper that grew on us month by month. Muddy, grungey, sludgey (irresistibly so) but never sloppy. Tightly played and lovingly marshalled, "Darkest Day" may have been horribly overlooked by the world in general, but it never veers from its noble course. They're coming to Islington in a month or three: see you there.

Would have made an amazing EP: "List Of Dead", "Lost", "Blood To Give", "Outside My Head", "Payback", "See Me Know", anything really.

What were they thinking of ?: "Darkest Day", just possibly, and even that is our Simon's favourite track.

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4. Raekwon "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Part II" (Ice H20)

Even the more interesting and thoughtful reviews of OB4CL2 (that would be a great numberplate to have, eh ?) managed to tie themselves up in knots rather, essentially saying, "although I personally think this album is out of this world, I'm worried it sounds a bit dated, therefore I'm going to rein in my praise". Get a grip, people! Have the courage of your convictions and to hell with trends. Is this album good, or not ? If it is, praise it. Would you really rather that Raekwon had released an album that sounds like "The Blueprint III" ? The Chef has provided a fairly major clue as to his artistic intentions by calling this album "OB4CL2". A sequel. Not an attempt to veer off in some new ultra-credible direction, to co-opt whatever flavour-of-the-week trend is being hawked for biggest bucks at the moment. Instead, an attempt to go all out for quality - a rare quest in this world of Flo Rida et al - while still producing something doggedly, designedly, determinedly in the vein of the original Cuban Linx.

The real story of this album is perhaps how it manages to live up to the impossibly high expectation. To recap, this is the new Raekwon. A fifteen year in the making sequel to one of the 90s' seminal sets. Vocal duties from main guest Ghostface Killah and Clan alumni Inspectah Deck, Method Man, Masta Killa, GZA and Cappadonna, as well as heavyweights like Busta Rhymes, Beanie Siegel, Slick Rick and Jadakiss. Beats from an incredible sweep of producers: to name just a few of them, the Wu's own RZA and Allah Mathematics plus Dre, J Dilla, Erick Sermon, Pete Rock, Marley Marl and Necro (although some of the peachiest are from Icewater Productions).

Given the stellar cast, it's a *marvel* that this album avoids disappointing. Even more amazing, given our general hatred of overlong records, it's a 75-minute, 25-track epic (in the old days, it would have been regarded as at least a double album) and yet for the most part it holds up all the way through. We would hardly have believed that was possible any more from a hip-hop album. So do we care if some call it "dated" ? Do we bobbins.

Would have made an amazing EP: "House Of The Flying Daggers", "Cold Outside", "Have Mercy", "Walk Wit Me", "10 Bricks". Us lucky Europeans get an ace bonus track too (in the shape of "Badlands"), which should hopefully cost UKIP a few votes next time round.

What was he thinking of ?: The two Dre productions are not essential. And using "We Will Rock You", however fleetingly, as a hook on the otherwise surprisingly sound "We Will Rob You" is [really] not clever (especially as the same conceit turned up on "Cold Case Files" last year).

5. General Surgery "Corpus In Extremis - Analysing Necrocriticism" (Listenable Records)

"You won't need a feverishly over-exercised imagination to know what it sounds like: the title track, a "Symphonies" throwback, is a peach")... 15 tracks arrayed from the short-burst grindmath of "Necronomics" and "Adnexal Mass" through to the joyous five-min sludge of album pivot "Virulent Corpus Dispersement" yet perhaps peaking in sheer excitement with the fierce higher-tempo riffing of "Exotoxic Septicity" and "Restrained Remains". Stepping out of the shadow of Carcass, GS have proved that they are major music-makers in their own right, the dead wood now at a minimum."

Would have made an amazing EP: "Virulent Corpus Dispersement", "Restrained Remains", "Exotoxic Septicity", "Necrocriticism".

What were they thinking of ?: A toughie. Perhaps the closing "Mortsafe Rupture" and "Deadhouse" could do with a smidgeon more *oomph*.

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6. Magrudergrind "Magrudergrind" (Willowtip / Candlelight)

"a thing of some wonderment. The Washington, DC trio deliver 16 shortish nuggets that comprise not only gleefully mayhemic old-skool grind of the highest order ("Fools Of Contradiction", "Heretics") but also chugging, Obituary-style thrash ("Burning Bridges"), lo-fi pseudo hip-hop ("Heavier Bombing", featuring the sort-of-legendary Napalm Def), thoughtful if not positively moving post-hardcore moshery (the closing "Martyrs Of The Shoah", a treatise about the horrors of the Holocaust) and any number of quickfire interludes and samples. Better still, the lyrics are keen-eyed, sharp as any syringe you'll find in your local park, taking down everything from the 'gentrification' of DC ("the decline of estate comes with racial ties / liquor stores, corrupt police and mothers' cries") to the fuckwittery of the far right ("constantly speaking words / based on your own insecurities... you hate because you can't conceive intellect"). Building on their fine contributions to "This Comp Kills Fascists" (which had included the original ode to graf, "Heavy Bombing") and their earlier split with the excellent Shitstorm, "Magrudergrind" is a sterling achievement."

Would have made an amazing EP: "Martyrs Of The Shoah", "Fools Of Contradiction", "Heretics", "Built To Blast", "Lyrical Ammunition For Scene Warfare".

What were they thinking of ?: Some might say "Heavier Bombing", but not us. At a push, "Burning Bridges": just a l'il slow.

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7. Durrty Goodz "Ultrasound" (Awkward)

"This mixtape (soz, "pre-album") is a blinder, as damn talented, confident and danceable as "Axiom", so much so that we're reluctantly convinced already that his upcoming "Born Blessed" set isn't going to be able to match it. DG obviously has the same beefs with most grime mixtapes that we do - they're too long, they're full of filler, etc - so as well as reeling off one massive tune after another, he has time and temerity to drop in superb parodies of other MC's "sweetboy" songs *AND* the recent spate of feeble electro-crossover singles by grimesters (welcomely declaring the latter bandwagon OVER), to throw in a whole number about fast forwarding through rivals' mixtapes, to team up with Maniac for "Grime Killers", which skilfully works in samples from a Dotun Adebayo phone-in addressing the lack of role models and educational achievement in the black community. Best of all, this is actually a "grime" album that sounds like grime, rather than sludgy hip-hop apologia: sugar rushes like "Destruction" or "Superhero" make you wanna make like Lionel and dance the ceiling to bits. As you know, we're at best sceptical as to musical talent, because it so often fails to translate to exciting music. But what's special about Goodz is that he's palpably, prodigiously talented and *doesn't* let it hinder him. On this evidence, the guy remains simply head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries."

And where's "Born Blessed" then ? Gone the way of most grime albums, we fear. But no, it wouldn't have been this good: grime albums never are.

Would have made an amazing EP: "Upset Me", "Destruction", "Superhero", "Grime Killers".

What was he thinking of ?: "House Wife" is the lamest tune here. And, good as the parodies are, any parody of something that was originally rubbish is never going to be essential.

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8. The Short Stories "The Night Is On Fire" (The International Lo-Fi Underground)

"Bristol's latest slept-on sensation have taken only months from album no.1 to complete their second long-player... Two things jumped out at us initially. One is that it's difficult to recall any album made since, ooh, approx. the dawn of time that starts with such relentless miserableness as the lyrics to (and delivery of) opener "It Only Hurts When I Move": but you need to bear with it, because the song butterflies into a plush, pastoral instrumental with a gorgeous coda the keyboard swells of which deftly and deliberately recall a morose classic of times past (listen, and you'll divine what we mean). Two, for "See My Skin", the Short Stories have achieved what Dave Simpson signally failed to for his otherwise so-comprehensive survey "The Fallen", and managed to coax ex-Blue Orchids and Fall ledge Martin Bramah out briefly from hiding, to deliver a short spoken word overlay to the track's clanging, *cough" Fall-esque guitar serrations.

There is, of course, more to the record than that: similar sentiments to "It Only Hurts" drive "Sink Or Swim", but this time the music is a little breezier, a piece that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Forest Giants' elegant swansong "Things We Do When We're Bored". "Closing Time" is more straightforward still, a slightly whimsical new wavey number that would have sat equally well on their debut, and that would probably be the obvious single choice, were small labels to be afforded the luxury of being able to release those anymore. There's the album finisher, "Adoration", a thoughtful dissection of the differences between us that we usually gloss over: its gently repetitious cadences give it the feel almost of a lullaby. But the whole LP is anchored by the rather tender narrative of "The Loser's Club", a most delectable slow burn of dramatic Velvetsy guitar-shuffling combined with that rambling feel of the young Fall's most cogent storytelling moments. It goes on for around 12 minutes, but - and here's the crucial part - a little like the later Fall's "50 Year Old Man", you get sucked into the narrative sufficiently that you could swear those twelve minutes pass in a mere instant or two."

And here's a bonus for Short Stories / Forest Giants / Rob Pursey fans: it turns out that Mister Rippington and Mister Pursey, before the Five Year Plan, were in a combo called The Inane. Their unreleased 7" (a bit of habit with Mr R, given both Forest Giants and Short Stories' subsequent experiences) "Touched By Time" - from 1983 - can now be downloaded as part of the "The Only Fun In Frampton Cotterell" album on Bristol Archive Recordings. And believe us, it's a gorgeous song, a genuine "find" seemingly inspired by the nervy beginnings of New Order and the skyreaching of Orange Juice but which also manages to remind us of early TVPs, early Razorcuts, early Cure, early anyone good. Very much of its time, but you can tell it's Tim.

Would have made an amazing EP: "It Only Hurts When I Move", "The Loser's Club", "Adoration". (Quite a long EP, admittedly).

What were they thinking of ?: If pushed, "See My Skin" has the lowest play count...

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9. Pocketbooks "Flight Paths" (How Does It Feel?)

"Pocketbooks' new record... follows the plumes of harmony that verily *rain* down over the perfect first three tracks - "Footsteps", "Fleeting Moments" and "Camera Angles" - with a proper LP-ful of vitamin goodness... a stream of hummable, always likeable stories, bubbling with lyrical imagination, rippling with a determination to encompass all of London life into a series of vignettes, to treat us to a series of top-deck pop journeys around the city. They've also largely left that slight church hall-feel long behind, with the songs boasting production that more snugly mimics the art of their arrangements, and we even get re-recordings of the two songs from that superb Atomic Beat 7" that manage not to emasculate the joie de vivre of the originals... this record is about the subtle tangle of connection between us all, our "flight paths to each other", presumably a Pastels nod. There's even a bit near the end of the final track, "All We Do Is Rush Around", where Andy SHOUTS and then they *ROCK OUT* for 20 seconds and the excitement of that is a breathless tribute to all that's gone before, a fall of ticker tape to top off the parade. So. Hold my hands, and tell me that Pocketbooks will never leave me."

Would have made an amazing EP: "Cross The Line", "Footsteps", "Fleeting Moments", "Camera Angles".

What were they thinking of ?: "Every Good Time We Ever Had". Why would anyone queue to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ? (Unless, perhaps, Pocketbooks were supporting). And the slow ones aren't as good as the faster ones, but then that's the case with all bands ever.

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10. Newham Generals' "Generally Speaking" (Dirtee Stank)

"rough, edgy & brilliant, despite being from Dizzee's proteges and on Dizzee's label. "Violence" and "Pepper" hit hard like grime should and the spacier, bizarre single "Head Get Mangled" similarly takes no prisoners. "Mind Is A Gun" is another corker, distilling trilling experimental dub n' d&b noises alongside more crackled, lo-fi MCing. Line these unforgiving, non-conforming songs up against the dreck coming from Tinchy, Chip and a few others at the moment and there is no competition."

Would have made an amazing EP: "Violence", "Head Get Mangled", "Pepper", "Mind Is A Gun", "Movin'".

What were they thinking of ?: "Bell Dem Slags".

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11. Weekend Nachos "Unforgivable" (Relapse)

Now the first thing to be said about Weekend Nachos is they don't sound like they'd be much fun to be around. The disc itself is emblazoned tartly with the legend "SACRIFICE MYSELF TO DESTROY THE WORLD / I DON'T WANT HUMANS TO EXIST ANY MORE" opposite a cheery sleevenote dedication urging "Fuck you to everyone else in the entire world". Lyrically, it's the sort of thing the emo kids who camp out at the Garage these days would love - the words burn with anger, hostility and mighty disaffection, with the Nachos not so much "glass half-empty" as "glass very much empty, and about to be shoved into your face". Yet it's hard to deny that just as pessimism informs the Short Stories record, it also helps drive Weekend Nachos' growling, breakdown-cluttered, injected-with-90s hardcore songs, songs that chug on a short fuse, ever-threatening to explode. Even more downbeat than their clutch of tracks on "This Comp Kills Fascists", the dozen here sometimes overdo the slow breaks, but create a coherent whole in which they've taken the king's shilling of half-decent production values without going overboard and over-experimenting. In a year of solid, consistent full-lengths (and as you know, we're happy that 24 minutes counts for these purposes), "Unforgivable" is another that refuses to be split easily into killer and filler.

Would have made an amazing EP: We'll go for "2009", "Nights", "Unholy Victory", "Pain Over Acceptance".

What were they thinking of ?: Hmmm, tricky - there's no real dead wood. Can we nominate the way the (samey) songs elide into each other ?

12. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart "The Pains of Being Pure At Heart" (Fortuna Pop!)

"We've read a lot, mostly on the money, on this, so don't propose to say much, only this. One of the sad things about some of the wonderful bands who sprouted up around '86 was that while they produced blissful singles for the next couple of years, relatively few ended up making equally life-affirming first albums: some never progressed to LPs at all, others only when they had grown up a little, or sold out a lot. So whatever the passage of time does to the Pains of Being Pure At Heart, we can at least all be happy that they have produced a(n eponymous) full-length, on Fortuna Pop! here in the UK, that lays out perfectly, just as it should, all the confidence and poise they have now, and that we'll never have to hold that same regret in respect of them."

Would have made an amazing EP: "Come Saturday", "Everything About You", "This Love is Fucking Right", "Stay Alive".

What were they thinking of ?: "Teenager In Love". Obviously.

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13. Beatnik Filmstars "Broken Bones" (The Satisfaction Recording Company, download only)

"A shame that this is download only, because like "Fez 72", it's a record shaped in the classic tradition, starting with the glorious six minutes of "Back Up Plan" on which, after pre-empting the lazy reviewer - is there any other kind ? - by describing himself as "singer in a smalltown lo-fi country rock band"), Jarrett lays into an almost gleeful expose of how your heroes will always let you down ("they were in it for the money"). The downbeat tone now seems to be where the BFs are at their best, with second tune "Let The Good Times Roll" also profiting massively from their newfound acceptance that a modern West Country take on country & western can pay handsome dividends. "The Old Fool" is an almost spectral lament, once more invoking the ghost of past side-project Kyoko with its measured, weary beauty. And in the middle is another outstanding song, "Throwing Punches", that hinges on a switch of pace but reversing all the old tricks to good effect by the switch being a slowing down, rather than a speeding up, coming out of the verse. The clincher is the way that "Lucky Sevens" reprises the sarky "good times" theme but with a knowingly weighted playground chorus that would let the thing cross-over largestyle if only radio play ever ensued."

Would have made an amazing EP: "Back Up Plan", "Throwing Punches", "The Old Fool", "Let The Good Times Roll".

What were they thinking of ?: "You Only Get This Track When You Download The Whole Album".

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14. The Hillfields "It'll Never Be The Same Again" (Underused)

"an andrex (soft, strong but marginally too long) of an album which might with its studied indie wherewithal and high altar jangle just be their own "where it is"."

Would have made an amazing EP: "Afterburn", "Medicated", "Down On You", "Postcard From Home".

What were they thinking of ?: "No More No More"

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15. Liechtenstein "Survival Strategies In A Modern World" (Slumberland, 10")

"a candy-yellow 10" whose grooves trace the sound of the Dixie Cups channelled through the Dolly Mixtures, Talulah Gosh and Free Loan Investments (while still managing to bring to mind other treats from the Shop Assistants through to the Slits), shortish songs with twinkling, trebly guitars and impeccable harmonies that, without ever sounding forced, fit like a glove."

Would have made an amazing EP: "Postcard", "By Staying Here (We Will Slowly Disappear", "Roses In The Park", "Sophistication".

What were they thinking of ?: Well, good as this is, there's nothing here that *quite* tickles us like "Apathy" (lyrically) or "Stalking Skills" (musically)...

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16. Flow Dan "Original Dan" (self-released)

Disclaimer: there seem to be different versions of this floating about, with diff tracklistings, and the official release is meant to be on Eskibeat, though our copy isn't. So this is about the mixtape we have!

Until now, he's been king of the guest appearance, show-stealer extraordinaire: witness his turns with the Bug, par exemple. But following last year's teasing by Trim, with whom he'd fallen out in a bad way, Flow Dan now does have a proper CD out, in HMV and everything, and it works well as a pristine example of dark, unreconstructed street grime in a world where his former brothers in grime have increasingly transmogrified into unrelentingly surburbanised teen entertainers. "Original Dan" is very different from Trim's thoughtful, reflective "Soul Food" volumes, but that's fine, because this is FD playing to his strengths, the kind of album that makes us start flicking through AutoTrader searching for secondhand Capris, XR3s, Imprezas and 635 CSis to play it in.

With spots from Wiley, Frisco, Killa P, Badness and best of all the legend that is Riko (along with the Dan probably the realest left right now, unless you count God's Gift as being a music man, rather than a road man) there's plenty to enjoy, but best of all are probably the tracks where FD goes it alone vocally: any other MC's tones inevitably sound suddenly trebly and vulnerable when set against Flow Dan's irrepressibly gruff verbalising "fuckery", whereas he gives the impression his deadpan focus *never* flickers (by way of example check one of the bonus tracks, the "News At 10" freestyle, where he makes sparks fly over the Big Ben chimes). It's easy to spot the guest productions, too: the Maniac*-produced "Still Deya" lives up to the sleeve notes' immodest description ("a no mercy instrumental complimented by a militant vocal delivery... not forgetting melody's [sic] and punchlines to kill"), the Bug himself assists by providing the backing on the spectral "Run" and Wiley does his swirly-violin backbeat thing on the remix of "Bad Man Talking". Other production treats are furnished by "Test This Corner" (just as enjoyable as Riko's "No Boad Test This Corner"), "This Side Bwoy" (this side being the darkside, as Big Fris would have it) and "Dumpers" (where Bless Beats' riddims would work ably enough as an instrumental).

Would have made an amazing EP: "Still Deya", "Run", "Dis Side Bwoy", "Just Me". We'll throw in "Don't Rate 'Em" and "News At 10" if we're allowed the bonus tracks.

What was he thinking of ?: "Stage Show": we've probably heard more versions of this than Mick Quinn has had hot dinners, but everyone knows it's Jammer's version that kills it. "Show Them": autotune sucks. And "Moving To Me": it would work OK as a parody, but can we please stop with the rubbishy electro crossover stuff now ? That died when Goodz (q.v.) rightly declared it OVER.

* Better get this thing over with now, given the amount of times we've given him props in the past: Maniac has gone down, and quite rightly. It doesn't mean that we haven't loved so many of his signature beats for Flow Dan, Riko, Wiley, Little Dee, all his stuff with Tinchy Stryder: it does mean that he won't be making any more, but then he has only himself to blame for that.

17. Trim presents "Monkey Features, Volume 1 (The New Series)" (Cre8ive)

And look who it is. Obviously one of the reasons these pages still limp on is that there are so many artists who just don't get the love we think they deserve. Often the most under-rated are in indiepop, although the nature of that beast at the moment means that even the most obscure band can normally count on a cabal of hardcore fans. But of perhaps everyone in this list, it's probably Trim who is the most unaccountably slept-on: a tough yet funny, engaging, conversational and often even charming MC whose "talking stylee" over interesting, crunchy, percussion-heavy and original beats has now yielded a good five mixtapes.

There are plenty of Pitchfork types who would never even contemplate investigating most grime, but who wouldn't find Trim's cerebral, easy-E14 style too wearing. True there aren't many choruses, or too many guest MCs, but then those are things that explain the lack of more mainstream appeal: we're honestly unsure as to why so many people outside of the grime fraternity (especially all us "grime-curious" indiekids) are still blind to Trim's existence. For now though, we're just grateful he hasn't given up, and is still stepping up when so many of his brethren have made ungainly, unseemly attempts to gatecrash into semi-public view. It's not too hard to find this mixtape for a fiver, and we would recommend the effort: you might even find you want to pick up some of the older ones too.

Would have made an amazing EP: "Monkey Features", "Battlefield", "Trousers (remix)", "Greeze Part 2"

What was he thinking of ?: Hmmm. "Chinese Whispers" is a touch rope.

18. Japanische Kampfhorspiele "Luxusvernichtung (Vierundfunfzig vertonte Kurzgedichte)" (Unundeux, 10")

Though described as an EP, we eventually decided to file this in the "albums" list because it's played at 33...

"If you still hanker after a healthy continental supper of what we're tempted to christen Borstal-grind (y'know, "short sharp shock" and all that), you need look no further than "Luxusvernichtung", a smartly-packaged 10" artefact by hyper-prolific German sextet Japanische Kampfhorspiele, and the debut release on their own Unundeux label... Twenty or so minutes long, this EP yields some 54 tracks which gravitate from virtual one-liners through to more substantial offerings ("Vernetzte Welt Geht Unter" even allowing itself the admirably pointless luxury of both a fade-in and a fade-out) though it's songs like "Vorort" or "Konfekt" which get the balance between the music and the desire to lyric-cram just right: think Napalm's "The Kill"... the other thing that really struck us about this record is how, we are 100% sure, it would have been receiving daily play were the great JP still around."

Would have made an amazing EP: The whole thing is one really, though our favourites are probably "Krise", "Austausch", "Talk", "Konfekt", "Liebe Islamisten" and "Sklaven der Uhr", plus "Managerseminar" and "Momo" of the (many) sub-10 second tunes.

What were they thinking of ?: Not sure. But why stop at 54 ?

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19. Mobb Deep "The Safe Is Cracked" (Siccness)

We're not often wrong*, but when "The Safe Is Cracked" fell into our laps we dismissed it rather too quickly ("typically patchy", apparently), possibly influenced by the fact that their Recordkingz collabo "Heat" outshone anything on it, possibly also by the fact that we still hold everything MD give us up against "Hell On Earth", which is a bit like holding every new Morrissey single up against "This Charming Man" or "Hand In Glove".

Nevertheless, repeated listening as ever reaped rewards, and we now feel able to pronounce the patient fighting fit: while the quality, especially in the beats, maybe isn't as high as past albums, the essentials of the true Mobb sound remain: the earthy rhymes, the beats that bring Queensbridge sidewalks to life. The upshot is that "Infamous" and "Get Out Of Our Way" ring out as totems of their late-00's sound, while "Can't Win 4 Losin'" also crackles with the nervous energy of yore, even if lyrically Havoc and P are celebrating a success that's financial every bit as much as it's artistic. The word is that this album is unofficial, unauthorised, and that fits to the extent it has the same haphazard, unthemed feel of Onyx's "Cold Case Files" set, but that's all to the good because it means there are no expensive productions or mega-lame crossover tunes, only hard, cold songs with an underground feel. As such we can only disagree with what seems to be the general view that "The Safe Is Cracked" is wackness. A fairer criticism might be that it's "for fans only": but then we're fans. As we know - secretly - are a couple of you.

Would have made an amazing EP: The ones we said.

What were they thinking of ?: "Mobb Deep", (this version of) "Heat": the CD makes a slow start.

*Correction: we're usually wrong.

20. Joe Pesci "At Our Expense" (Bones Brigade)

Their name, one hopes, a tribute to said actor's performance in Home Alone rather than for his role in that ancient mobster film that middle-aged men never cease banging on about. Or perhaps even a tribute to the ancien Diversion Tactics track "Joe Pesci", although there may be room to doubt that.

This JP are a north-east three-piece and their genre can probably be discerned from the usual maths: 17 tracks, album length a shade under 15 minutes. What is particularly enterprising about "At Our Expense" - and we suspect the reason it has crept into this top 20 above albums we have frankly listened to more! - is the way that they have declared all-out war on production values, basically recording live one-take and in doing so making even the last Agathocles or Spoonful of Vicodin records seem like lush canopies of lounge muzak. But as the drums blast and the guitars hammer out noise and occasional riffs, and as singer Stuart hollers as if their collective lives depended on it - remember, these days there is no bass to ground things - it's hard not to warm to these clanging powergrind projectiles that sound like they're being heard through next door's wall, even if the spoken-word samples as ever detract rather than improve. (The proof that the less such samples, the better comes with the number of them on "World Extermination", or any of its fabulous precursors, i.e. none).

Would have made an amazing (and short) EP: "Cure Vs Profit", "I'm Not A Pessimist (It's Just That We're All Fucked)", "Brain Dead Beer Bong is Stinos' Epitaph", "Smelly John Pierre".

What were they thinking of ?: The samples, always the samples.

* * *

Quite a few other albums meriting special shouts, chiefly Frisco, MJ Hibbett and the Validators, Butcher Boy, DJ Honda, Pants Yell!, Cheap Red, King Midas Sound, Spoonful Of Vicodin, Hellbastard, Goatwhore, Municipal Waste, Napalm Death, Recordkingz and Brutal Truth, but we really are too shattered to attempt to capsule them further. And it arrived too late for the poll, but Mytty Archer's "If I Had A Shovel" set (a CD out on 555 and 75 Or Less) is absolutely charming us this new year: please do seek out a listen.

We also had, against all our better judgment, a soft spot for Discharge's "Disensitise": it may be a pale imitation of a wan shadow of a poor copy of their original mastery, but hey, they're Discharge after all.

Oh, and our gig of the year was a turn-up: Duane Lamonte. (Private party, you know how we do). Plus maybe the first half at Brentford. Anyway, until the next time...

2009-12-23T19:16:00.004Z

My blast beats, faster than techno

Word up.

After the implosion of the greatest record label ever*, we shunned the rainspattered pavements of Bristol and ended up in Hyson Green, Nottingham for a year. There were some lows, to be sure - we came to be pretty familiar with the premises and workings of Notts CID - but the time was punctured by unarguable highs such as Heavenly live at the Narrowboat, the fact that Selectadisc was situated perfectly on the way to our bus stop home, and visits to watch Radford FC in the East Midlands Counties League, who at the time "boasted" none other than Devon White's brother Oliver at full back (come on, you didn't think we were going to sell out on you and adopt Forest or County, did you ?) The Narrowboat and Selectadisc are, inevitably, sadly no more (the latter presumably victim to the kind of "progress" that saw our last local record emporium replaced by yet another effing designer bakery) but we are pleased to report that Radford FC, at least, soldier on.

In 2009 that oh-so reliable barometer of public opinion, the trusty office straw poll, associates Nottingham only with Robin Hood, gun crime, Brian Clough and the ever-unfolding debacle at Meadow Lane, but that we suspect says more about white-collar London than it does about Nottingham. We associate Notts with many things, all good really: Heresy, OutdaVille, P Brothers, Cappo, Scor-zay-zee, Tempa, Mr 45, Lee Ramsay, C-Mone, the 1993 Heaven Records Christmas Party, Carl Froch, Sam alayerofchips... and one particular heavyweight record label. For whereas Nottingham's finest industry was once, of course, lace, that is no longer the case. It is now Earache Records.

Earache, like Sarah, began in 1987 amongst the optimism of the second half of that decade, when new music was finally rising - driven by desperation - to stem the tide of mainstream pop's bland capitalist excesses. We've often wondered what would have happened if Earache had "done a Sarah" and stopped at MOSH 100, because since that landmark was reached the quality control has had a few issues, inevitable once the label became a huge multinational concern (as Sarah no doubt would have). But even with so much now run out of its New York office, Earache is still in the heart of Nottingham, in Theatre Square, and is still dear to ours.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that our compilation of the year (*dan-dan-daah*) is "Grind Madness: Earache Records At the BBC", a 118-track, eight-band, three compact disc comp of original John Peel wireless sessions of 1988-1990 vintage. In case you were wondering, to achieve that accolade it headed off the Close Lobsters' singles comp**, Aswad's "BBC Sessions", The Claim's "Black Path" and 555's marvellous "The Wetherbeat Scene" book n' CD.

* There's a certain trend at the moment for renouncing the works of Sarah Records which needs to be roundly dealt with, ideally with scenes of distressing violence. This sentence is part of our ongoing campaign to strike down this wilful revisionism: you may hear more.

** The original sleevenote for track four (the Lobsters' "Let's Make Some Plans") on the inelegantly-christened Fire Records label comp "I Wouldn't Piss On It If It Was On Fire" said: "From the singles compilation "Livin' Lovin' Lobsters"". For a full decade or so after that, we laboured not unreasonably under the illusion that there was a Close Lobsters singles comp at large, and berated ourselves daily for our failure to source it. This was a mystery which put Edwin Drood or Marie Roget's to shame, although the upside is that, having failed comprehensively in our quest to locate "LLL" (a quest which can be replicated even now by Google search), we largely managed to fill the gaps in the singles collection ourselves through judicious secondhand purchasing at the Record & Tape Exchange. Anyway, in 2009 our dreamed-of Close Lobsters singles compilation was definitely, definitely, definitely released, under the infinitely more pleasing name of "Forever, Until Victory!"

* * *

CD One

Napalm Death # 1 (22.9.87)

At the time, Napalm Death's first session found its way round our classroom pretty quickly. The shortest Peel Session ever recorded, despite the largesse of 12 tunes, it fitted on one side of a C12 (these were very popular around then, being the tool of choice for pirating computer games). It is largely sheer brute force, but whatever your age when it came out, you will never forget first trying to get your head around three sub-5 second songs (including the barely two secs of "You Suffer"), marvelling at the fact that twenty-second songs like "Retreat To Nowhere", "The Kill" or the Repulsion-intro versh of "Deceiver" still actually had some kind of structure, or being so disoriented by the barrage of noise that the minute or so of "Lucid Fairytale" suddenly seemed as epic as the English Patient. There was a great interview with Iron Maiden's Steve Harris around this time where he clearly couldn't get his head around the idea of songs thirty seconds long (average track length on this session: 28s). But the fact that "The Kill" and "You Suffer" still decorate every Napalm Death live set show that they weren't as ephemeral as some then claimed. And "Life" remains the most succinct and, oddly, accurate song ever about er, life.

The other session that night was a repeat of Laugh's, which would have found itself blown out of the water somewhat.

Rating: 9 1/2 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track to crave your listening indulgence: "Life".

Napalm Death #2 (20.4.88)

Napalm Death's second Peel Session is probably the apotheosis of this scene: the music, the production, the noise, THE PACE, the merry melodies hidden within. It is an astonishing rapidfire burst of punk played as metal. Some say you could never top the first session, never quite recapture the shock and awe of it all, but for us #2 takes the cake, takes the whole (non-designer) bakery.

"Multi-National Corporations" begins it, slow crunching chords, the vocals a hollered growling mantra. Compared to the tinny version on "Scum", you can already hear the benefit of the BBC engineers' sterling production. By the time you get to "Instinct Of Survival" and "Parasites" not only are you starting to enjoy being pinned to the wall, but also noticing that toe-tapping riffs, largely absent from session one, are joining the onslaught (and later on, "Raging In Hell" gives you so much danceability that you might just go through the floor). "Moral Crusade" stands out with its memorably chaotic opening, a kind of grind take on "Testcard Girl"'s close; there's the definitive version of "M.A.D." with its chugging, stop-start groove; you get the original "CS" (aka "Conservative Shithead", Part 2 of which didn't emerge until "Enemy Of The Music Business") and there's the incredible cover of Siege's "Walls" on which Dorrian's vocals, switching from guttural growl to chorus scream of "tearing down the WALL-S!", do the demolition job pretty much singlehandedly. The only thing which could improve things is finishing with a four-second cover of S.O.B.'s abrupt theme and of course that's exactly what they do (basically, it's the most imposing two-second chord you've ever heard, reprising the one they've just finished "Conform Or Die" with, followed by a "Dead"-style yell).

Rating: 10 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: we couldn't.

Napalm Death #3 (10.9.90)

With Bill Steer and Lee Dorrian having left by now, we'd moved away from "classic line-up" territory for this rather fun-packed greatest hits session, where the boys - now including PETA fave Barney Greenway - seem to enjoy reprising a few favourites from the first couple of albums. In a sense, this session was a mini-celebration, the new line-up's last opportunity to play with the Steer / Dorrian-era material before Napalm moved to a slower, much more death metal-influenced style for a while. While you can't knock the songs (which include five bona fide Napalm classics in "Unchallenged Hate", "Suffer The Children", "Mentally Murdered", "FETO" and "Scum", alongside the gruff brevity of further versions of "Deceiver" and "Retreat To Nowhere"), there is nothing here that can't be gleaned with more satisfaction from the original releases.

Rating: 7 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Unchallenged Hate (the only Napalm Death song ever quoted extensively in a Martin Samuel newspaper column).

Extreme Noise Terror #1 (17.11.87)

Another classic session, no doubt. OK, every song sounded pretty similar: a bit of feedback, a drumstick count, then a minute or so of multi-layered "AAAARRRGGGHHHHs" raining down over largely interchangeable chord sequences, but what a session all the same, including our introduction to the nr-legendary "Carry On Screaming" and the anti-bandwagoneer "Another Nail". Rarely have the studio engineers captured the essence of a band so simply, meaning that once again the production here towers over the first official ENT full-length.

Rating: 9 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Another Nail In The Coffin.

Extreme Noise Terror #2 (11.5.88)

Paired with a repeat of the recent Viv Stanshall session, '88's ENT set was mildly less insular, the riffs on "Show Us You Care" and the coruscating anti-meat diatribe "Murder" showing a little songwriting development even as the old ENT resurfaced amidst the barely-honed chaos of "Only In It For The Music (Part 3)". The session also saw the debut of the excellent "Bullshit Propaganda". Although ENT weren't signed to Earache at the time, "Murder" and "Propaganda" would later find probably their most digestible form on that label, with the band's mid-90s "Retro-bution" set of re-records.

Rating: 8 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Bullshit Propaganda

Extreme Noise Terror #3 (8.3.90)

Another heads-down nose-to-grind summation of the punkgrind work ethic, session three premiered the sloganeering highs of "People Not Profit" and "Punk - Fact Or Faction", demonstrated a tiny bit more musical maturity with the build up and fade of "Subliminal", and played to an irksome kind of nostalgia with an odd, surprisingly straight cover of the Rejects' "I'm Not A Fool". Unlike their or Napalm's first session, you don't really feel the hand of history on yr shoulder listening to this one, but you still couldn't deny the quality of the music: and the message.

Rating: 8 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Subliminal

ENT recorded a fourth session in 2001, but by then that original sound (and, to be fair, the Earache link) was gone! Nevertheless, be reminded that they've more recently regained some of their initial splendour, even if it's a little disappointing, given that they wrote some of the best anti-meat industry songs ever, that they're apparently back on the carnivorous tip.

* * *

CD Two

Carcass #1 (2.1.89)

Is it possible to get a better start to a New Year's John Peel show than new sessions on the same night from Culture (including "Two Sevens" and "Fussin' and Fighting" redux) AND Carcass ?

Carcass's first Peel Session withstood the company. 'Twas a mammoth beast, musically one of those great leaps forward you get every few years: it's fair to say there were no hints of their impending greatness on their debut album "Reek Of Putrefaction", but on this night somehow they blossomed with this crunchingly riff-splattered quartet of songs, a heavy and grungey precursor to the bands Peel would later pick up and help launch in the UK, from Mudhoney to Nirvana. Indeed, Carcass got the Hollywood treatment eventually to the extent that - like many of those Peel favourites - they were swept up by a mega-label (Columbia), although that ended badly and, indeed, had a hand in ending Carcass. "Cadaveric Incubator Of Endo Parasites" later received the acclaim of being handpicked as one of four tracks to represent the whole of 1988 in Radio One's Peelenium.

Rating: 9 3/4 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Crepitating Bowel Erosion. Obviously.

Carcass #2 (16.12.90)

Sadly by now Carcass were using their real names, so that the dream "Offalmangler / Grumegargler / Embalmer" songwriting credit was effectively now the more prosaic "Owen / Walker / Steer", the latter now having left Napalm Death. With three tracks taken from their first LP it was perhaps not a surprise that the best song this time round was "Exhume To Consume", one which would appear on their second, chrysalis album.

Rating: 9 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Exhume To Consume

Bolt-Thrower #1 (13.1.88)

At the time, Bolt Thrower's three minute-plus songs seemed positively antediluvian, but again have withstood the test of time somewhat effortlessly (as have the band). And this first sesh is, for us, the best of all. We swear we hadn't heard it in its entirety since it was transmitted, but from the band's striking up of "Forgotten Existence", the riffs simply came flooding back. Al West's vocals are perhaps a little nervous, but help give the set a more punky feel than the stolid metallic grinding would otherwise yield, and now that we're older we're more relaxed over modest guitar solos (back then, we had the same zero tolerance to them that we now have for spoken word samples on dubstep and techno tunes). The other session that evening was a repeat of McCarthy's second, which would have made the 13th January a fine old night.

Rating: 8 1/2 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Attack In The Aftermath, for its hooks and those weird whispered "Right"s in the intro.

Bolt-Thrower #2 (16.11.88)

By now with Karl Willetts on board for vocals, BT#2 is strong, but the band's music was continuing to grow up and the songs seemed not quite to have the same hunger. Even so, with tunes like classic LP title track "Realm Of Chaos" on display, there was nothing in here that was really hard to love.

Rating: 8 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Realm Of Chaos

Bolt-Thrower #3 (4.9.90)

Peel Sessions chart musical evolution even better than singles and albums, and this third from BT saw them recognisably the tougher, more resilient beasts who would become colossi of rock, even if the more shambling joy of "In Battle There Is No Law" was by now disappearing behind them.

Rating: 7 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Destructive Infinity

* * *

CD Three

Godflesh (27.9.89)

One of the things that strikes you about listening to this compilation, and that naysayers will (to coin a phrase) *never understand* (sigh, grrrr) is that all eight bands on it are very, palpably, different: between them, they take and reshape punk, crust, metal, skatecore, thrash, industrial, hardcore... But Godflesh's session is probably the most "different" of all, making us think of Slab! or Loop rather than Justin Broadrick's past work with early Napalm incarnations. After "Tiny Tears" and fan favourite "Wound (Not Wound)", "Pulp" is at the heart of it, with its ever-recognisable drum barrage, although "Like Rats" remains perhaps the most intriguing track, with what sounds like an industrial foghorn joining Broadrick's vocal: you could almost be listening to Mark Stewart and the Maffia.

Rating: 8 1/2 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Wound (Not Wound)

Unseen Terror (11.4.88)

Oh yes. This only had a previous digital release on a Dutch East India Peel sesh import, but now it's available to us all. From the rugged agricultural blur / burr of "Incompatible"'s cheeky post-second wave riff, Unseen Terror's sole session is another all-time favourite: not quite as detuned / deathy as the same tracks where they appeared on their one and only album ("Human Error", also on Earache) but still essential. After the lynchpin of the session, the incredibly reasonable, sensible "Voice Your Opinion" ("Strategy, intelligence / These will help you to have your say... I disagree with many things / But I don't try / To upset others"), which also memorably appeared on the BBC's compilation "21 Years Of Wonderful Radio One" or somesuch alongside Jimi Hendrix and others, the session finished with the medley flourish of "Strong Enough To Change" (Shane Embury drum solo, sort of!), "Odie's Revenge" (a fourteen sec-burst, by no means their only Garfield-flavoured tune) and "It's My Life" (suitably oikish cover of Sick Of It All's obby original).

Rating: 9 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Strong Enough To Change

Heresy #1 (3.8.87)

Mmmm. Much as we love Heresy, this first session doesn't catch them at their finest, and it doesn't help that they start with "Flowers In Concrete", the only Heresy song that we can't quite love (now, its drum / bass breakdown sounds dated, even "baggy", which is a bit harsh given that the baggy obsession actually came later, meaning they were probably ahead of their time...) It probably also didn't help that Peel repeated the Fall session the same evening.

This is actually the oldest session on the 3 CDs: Peel had warmed us up earlier in '87 with sessions from the Stupids and then Electro Hippies, but it was Heresy who first started to inject some real pace. Nevertheless, they did so from song structures that still represented chugging second-wave punk: to these ears they remain more punk than metal. Apparently, Mitch Dickinson (Warhammer, Unseen Terror et al) played the guitar on this session: yet another example of the band-swapping that dominated the time.

Rating: 6 1/2 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Belief

Heresy #2 (9.3.88)

This session, by contrast, is blinding. Just great. May or may not be a coincidence that Baz Ballam was now in the holding role on guitar, but the likelihood is that Heresy knew their way around the studio by now. Starts with "Consume" and a fine version of "Face Up To It" but on all six tracks the boys are in their element, including an excellent "Cornered Rat" (riff later nicked by Unseen Terror in the middle of "Strong Enough To Change", q.v.)

Rating: 9 and a bit out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Cornered Rat

Heresy #3 (18.1.89)

Picking up where #2 left off, this has muscular, driving versions of classics like "Everyday Madness Everyday" and "Break The Connection". The shout outs to Brian Clough and Franz Carr would no doubt have tickled JP, too. It finishes with a hectic take on "Genocide" which, propelled by breakneck drumming, is possibly the closest Heresy would get in the studio to a pure grind tune.

Rating: 8 1/2 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Everyday Madness Everyday

Intense Degree (15.3.88)

East Anglian skaters Intense Degree are much overlooked, and criminally under-represented in terms of reissues or digital releases. Their thudding sound, starting here with a brooding, unrepresentatively mainstream slowish-guitar intro to "Hangin' On", was slower and more functional in places, more ragged in others, but the songs (a mere eleven here!) were always enjoyable enough, with the "Straitjacket / I've Got A Cure" medley that appeared on the seminal "Grindcrusher" compilation probably thereby becoming their most syndicated track (although "Skate Bored", "Bursting" and "Daydreams" made it on to the 12" vinyl of Strange Fruit's "Hardcore Holocaust" comp, too). A word for "Intense Degree" (the song!) as well: thirteen seconds long, a bubbling ID theme, made by a brilliant "wo-oah" near the end.

Rating: Very nearly 8 out of 10. If we had to choose just one track: Probably "Hangin' On", although we'll always be fond of "Skate Bored" too.

* * *

Despite the title, only one of the bands on this set is truly "grindcore", and that's Napalm Death, who did after all invent the genre. But that doesn't stop this being an unassailably good value comp, a faithful companion for Earache's the "Metal" boxsets of yore, accompanied by sleeve notes from Mick Harris, the whirlwind drummer at the eye of the storm who seemingly played on half the sessions. May Santa deliver "Grind Madness At The BBC" to each and every one of your bedside stockings, and if he unaccountably fails to do so then at less than 8p per track, you could always venture into the snow-flecked streets and buy it.

Anyway. Happy Christmas, and whatever you're doing on the 31st - whether you're going to bed early, going out robbing, venturing to a party with people you don't really like or being fleeced into paying £25 to spend midnight in a crowded pub you normally wouldn't dream of going into even for free - have a truly *righteous* New Year and thank you, as ever, for (skim) reading. It appears from the pile of scrawled post-its, CDs and bottles of Quilmes in front of us that we're about to add up the votes for our end-of-year polls, so there's real and present danger of some more distressingly long "lists" posts soon too. Sorry in advance.

2009-09-30T23:58:00.003Z

End Of The Affair

This is it, isn't it ?

As none of you were in the pub last night, a recap. We're prepared to acknowledge that maybe music didn't begin in 1976: it all started when a few troglodytes started to bash rocks together while waiting for the sabre-toothed tiger to marinade, giving themselves an edgy rhythmic soundtrack for their cave paintings (or modern art, as it was known at the time). It's just that between 200,000 years B.C. and that pre-ERII Silver Jubilee year, nobody really did anything much with this "music" invention.

Then came (punk) and all that went with it, swiftly branching out in a million directions to give us a panoply of delight so wide it draped from Magazine to Discharge, a period captured with such flair and erudition in "Rip It Up And Start Again" (or, for those less patient, later distilled into the two minutes of Sportique's mighty "Modern Museums"). But that was only the start. In England, roots reggae, briefly allied with the punk culture, came into its own to soundtrack and outflank a society that ever tried to pigeonhole it. While over the water, the hip-hop culture sprung into being, sowing the seeds of the art form that would probably give us both the very best and worst music over the thirty years since. As the decade turned, there was a spate of "waves": new wave, NWOBHM and (gulp) that infamous second wave of punk (altogether now: "DEAD CITIEEEEEES!!!")

From a brace of those myriad post-punk strands (the DIY self-consciousness of the TVPs, the starry-eyed would-be soul of Orange Juice), the C86 movement would emerge. Today it's both brutally over- and under-rated, modern hacks sporting either rose-tinted or shit-stained specs, but for us the likes of the Shop Assistants and the Wedding Present sublimely mingled a spirit of punk with girl and boy-next door narratives; the "other" bands made wonderful, angular, artful noise; and all of them created music that eschewed pretention at a time which otherwise reeked of it. (And if you wanted the *fastest*, most intricate jangle you looked to Zambia and Zimbabwe rather than Leamington Spa). The punk / metal tape-traders had also been busy, constructing an international underground which gave life and breath to Repulsion and then to the grindcore dynasty, and continued to gain succour from the works of breakthrough artists like Slayer (who, by now, were part of the melding of genres that saw Rick Rubin harnessing - no, unleashing - Run DMC's true and frightening potential at the same time as producing thrash's sit-up-and-mosh moment, "Reign In Blood").

So it was all mixed up, but all good. The Smiths were at the peak of their powers, before their split in '87 marked the first throes of the long, drawn-out death of "indie", but those in what would later be known as the indie-pop camp had Sarah fighting our corner for a few years yet, and if some of the alleged new Smiths would be, to put it politely, disappointing (Paul Calf certainly had it right on Suede), for some of us Public Enemy were emerging as the real new Smiths in terms of reach, ambition and sheer life-changing vigour. In the UK, PE's Brixton Academy takeover was that decade's "100 Club" moment, and the evolution of hip-hop over here was swift, even startling: from Three Wize Men's rough charm to the gift of Hijack's full-on (swoon...) inspiration in what felt a short burst of months. Across the pond, the golden era of rap came - and admittedly went - but not without changing musical lives forever with its education, poetry and power. Those four Eric & Ra albums still stand so strong.

Things got a bit rocky in the 1990s with the bad joke that was Britpop, and it's probably kinder not to mention "C96" (save for having captured Lauren Laverne's career high): only HMHB's tongue-in-cheek invention of "godcore" truly sought to stop the indie rot, but luckily the house, techno and acid revolution that had begun at the tail-end of the Thatcher junta was starting to develop into more interesting, sometimes less hedonistic splinters, and by the end of the decade the Britpop bandwagon lay justly in a ditch with the best electronic and experimental music showing there was still material out there that could challenge and excite. And soon, there would be those who had the guile to draw together many of the disparate threads. Jangle was no longer "massive" (boo), but jungle was (yaay). The early-90s gangsta rap albums and artists had true potency and range, but before too long that scene bred only rappers whose interest was in milking cliche rather than communicating truth. Still, at the same time that hip-hop in the States was disappearing up P. Diddy's nu-capitalist fundament, there was still UK talent starting to kick hard against the pricks, while garage music transmuted into grime, originally a soundtrack for the musically-savvy dispossessed that - at its finest - delivered a *compelling* listening experience.

It was now metal's turn to struggle a little, the sports- and nu- varieties ineffably lame, and even the real but cheap-feeling thrills of the black- or death- bands no substitute for the politics & righteous anger that expired once hardcore crossed over (and the world and his wife hijacked the grindcore parade). Even the quintessential metal roster, Earache, was finding that its blue riband releases were more likely to be uncompromising, post-gabber hammer techno straight from mainland Europe than next-gen Floridian thrashcore. But across the board, there were always jewels worth scrabbling for: here in London, acid techno was on a delicious rise (it was surely no coincidence that many of its leading lights had been schooled in punk and indie bands themselves in day). And, until the sad news came, Peel was playing pretty much "all of the above".

And the internet came, a Pandora's box that made crucial fashions easier to pursue, and for us to discover our own new pet bands and labels and scenes, who we could instantly enthuse about with our new-fangled paperless fanzines. Admittedly, the web being worldwide rather than worldy-wise, a few wood vs. trees issues were starting to appear, but quality and quantity were still - just about - different things. And grind begat goregrind, and dubstep begat wobble, and drum n' bass begat jump-up, and indie-pop... well, begat nothing, just kind of serenly drifted on, although on every corner there was some clown trying to subvert it, to invoke the dead hand of TWEE.

So in this exhausting time since '76, there have seemingly been no constants (apart from the Fall, of course). We've had everything from 2-tone to 2-step, from romo to emo, from white metal to "life" metal to pirate-metal to "nu-grave" ffs: there are surely no musical genres left to be invented (but if we're wrong, we'd nominate "riot boy" and "lo-NRG" to try). And the last five years have been especially breakneck: micro-scenes replaced by nano-scenes as the human attention span plummets all the time towards that of the poor unburdened goldfish. The average pressing no longer 10,000 shellac slabs but a dozen homecooked CD-Rs, even for those who haven't abandoned pressings altogether in favour of brittle seas of 1s and 0s.

And to top it all, we were all growing up, and life was getting complicated enough in itself. There was work and there was romance and there was family and there was work again. And for every great record there were exponentially more terrible ones, and sometimes we seemed only to be being sent the terrible ones for review. And reviews were pretty redundant anyway because anyone could just click a mouse and listen to the tracks for free, and in the rapidfire, impatient '00s reviewers only gave each song the most cursory listen before cutting and pasting the press release anyway. We thought that sucked, and wanted to *say* something more, but both flesh and spirit were weak. And every year brought wave after wave of newness, inducing a spiral of grey-green migraine visions as we struggled in vain to catch up not only with the new school, but with all the wonders we'd missed since the Pistols launched their raid on the national consciousness in days so distant that Jim Callaghan, Lord rest his soul, was but a new broom. And much as we still loved digging for gold, we found ourselves, increasingly, heretically, thinking that perhaps what music really needed was a full stop.

* * * * *

AT ABOUT THE SAME time as most right-thinking world citizens realised that Houston's Insect Warfare, bassless grindcore fiends par excellence, were one of the globe's better musical combos ("Disassembler" was the single best song of 2008, with Boss Money's "Cold World" and Keitzer's "No Justice No Peace" second and third, in case you were wondering), they've only gorn and split up. What they have left us with, however, is a full release - via a resurgent, post-gabber Earache - of their album masterpiece, "World Extermination". The front cover, a monochrome montage of a seemingly unsaddled horseman of the apocalypse towering over a disintegrating skyscraper city swarming with giant insects, forewarns us of what is to come. Less fittingly, the cooling towers on the back sleeve remind us of the cover of Monograph's "Paper Museum". A bit.

The record, on the other hand, most sincerely doesn't. There's a curt, ramrod sheen of intense, fidgety white noise before we bundle excitedly into the opening "Oxygen Corrosion" and the tone is set for the splendid next 22 minutes 24 seconds of your life. They've been called thrashcore, noisecore, power-violence, all sorts, but *this is grindcore*, as Jarvis didn't say. A message in a (broken) bottle from a time before "grind" became a lazy catch-all for anything that crossed a fairly rudimentary noise vs. speed threshold. That wonderful sound you can hear is a barrage of Dobber's blastbeats and hi-tensile yet superclean drumming, Beau's furious locked-groove riffage, and "singer" Rahi's barked and yelped quickfire staccato vocals, from which the words cannot sensibly be divined.

(Luckily, the lyric sheet does allow the words to be deciphered, and while it's clear - for example, from Terrorizer's excellent double feature on grindcore past and present - that main music man and spokesperson Beau doesn't regard IW as an overtly political band, there's no doubting Rahi's splenetic ire and lyrical energy, often directed at political targets. Ditties like "Paranoia" and "Enslaved By Machinery" decry where the human race has got to: a title like "Internet Era Alienation" describes just what we were lamenting only a few paras ago. Over the score of songs here, Rahi tells stories of stalking, confusion, message board idiots, targeted Luddism, the mind of a suicide bomber and, of course, nuclear extinction. The whole of life's rich tapestry, then).

And if that "wonderful sound" is the template, then the experience of this record is a series of variations on the formula, each song emphasising some of the common elements, whether the blastbeat, the breakdown or the coursing riff, a little more than others. (None of this, of course, means you can't dance to "World Extermination": our favourite tracks for jiving to are album highlight "Manipulator", "Self-Termination" and the frenzied finale of "Necessary Death", since you ask). The track lengths are pretty consistent, with most tunes crashlanding after a minute or so, only a couple at 20 seconds or less, and only a couple above 90. Occasionally the hurtling metallic onslaught seems to lose focus - when a track parks the noise for a scintilla of time before the next resumes and just BRINGS the chaos once more - so a few listens help to get used to the disquieting, pummelling music. Many albums have light and shade: Insect Warfare just play dark, making those briefest pauses of breath between songs shine like Blackpool illuminations.

Over this bleak palette of deep urban greys, occasionally other reference points or textures come into play: the disarming brevity of the unforgiving "Street Sweeper" and "Zone Killer", a spreading of wings on "Hydraphobia", a more reflective slow grunge tint to "Decontamination". "Mass Communication Mind Fuck" has a certain (hyperfast) grindcrust quality to it: tinges of ye olde Extreme Noise Terror, dare we say. Other nods are textual: the closer, "Evolved Into Obliteration", melds the title of Napalm Death's genre-defining second album with that of its legendary opening track. Unlike "Evolved As One", however, there is no brake pedal to fan the record's searing pace: instead, the song simply becomes one final attack in the aftermath, as concentrated and visceral as the previous nineteen. As Confucius once observed, if you don't deviate from a template this good, there can be no bad songs.

And the album was recorded in a single day: quite an achievement, given the skill and sheer physical endeavour needed to fashion something so technically tight, but perhaps also a part-explanation of its unrelenting focus. It's this purity - unity - of vision which is the reason this has to be album of the year, even if a few lucky souls got hold of it in its original incarnation in '07. If you trace a line through every grind landmark - "Horrified", "From Enslavement To Obliteration", "World Downfall" and then "Inhale / Exhale" - it's quite probable that it would finally lead you to this record. And now IW have gone the way of all the greats, leaving this (oh, along with a 51-track one-sided LP and a few unbelievably obscure split 7"s and an even more limited demo bootleg LP which we've a moggy-in-hell's of ever getting hold of) as their parting gift to an ungrateful Earth.

Maybe music has, indeed, come full circle (evolved into obliteration, natch), in which case "World Extermination", full of grindiloquent splendour yet as rugged and primitive as the rocks those cavemen once banged together, is the ultimate soundtrack. And if we're right in these our gloomier moments, and music does deserve a perfect full stop, this record might just be it.

2009-09-27T09:17:00.000Z

Cold days spent indoors, we didn't talk for hours

2009-09-25T17:13:00.000Z

The Beatles Ruined Music

2009-09-23T09:16:00.000Z

Yes, She Is My Skinhead Girl

2009-09-21T09:17:00.000Z

Standing on the platform, with another year in my life gone