Alice

Seen this video a while back and totally forgot it existed until today, so I thought I'd share it.



Made up almost entirely of sounds from Alice in Wonderland by a guy called Pogo.

If that hasn't spooked you, then this will.

Briliant stuff.

Seedy Amor

French crooner and ultimate seed-athon Serge Gainsbourg has always been a man associated with poppy French love songs with a hint of sleaze sprinkled in there for good measure.

And in 1986 he showcased his true abilities to swoon the ladies with a drunken approach to the then superstar Whitney Houston on national television in France. Clearly pumped full of Bordeaux's finest, the lothario professed his intentions from the off in this delightful little video you can see HERE.

But this brazen sexual claim was clearly not a one off for Msr. Gainsbourg. A quick look at some of his album concepts are undoublty some of the seediest but hilarious ideas ever.

The album Histoire de Melody Nelson released in 1971 had this concept:

"The Lolita-esque pseudo-autobiographical plot involves the middle-aged Gainsbourg unintentionally colliding his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost into teenage nymphet Melody Nelson's bicycle, and the subsequent seduction and romance that ensues."

The popular French song "Les sucettes" was written by Serge for France Gall in 1966 and the song went on to become a national success, but what France Gall did not know was that the song was interwoven with innuendos and sexual motifs, and this might not sound too bad, so far it sounds like a normal chart song, but this was in fact a childrens song. Had Serge crossed the line? Maybe. But his ability to craft sleaze-drenched love songs was a talent.

A quick scan of his (C:) Drive would have been in order had he been alive today but we can't knock this French Adonis as he is far too much of a hero to many men and he made some excellent music.

Serge Gainsbourg-Cargo Culte

Français what you see

Living in Madrid, I have noticed that English is seen to be the ‘cool’ language. If you want have your finger on the pulse of the plaza, then you need to have the admirable ability to sporadically thrust English terms into your day-to-day chit chat. It goes without saying that technology has a huge influence on this linguistic invasion (email, internet, fax, etc. are all acceptable terms in Spanish), but you do find that many other terms are used incorrectly – someone is called a ‘freaky’ rather than a ‘freak’ and a service is known as ‘alto standing’ which means ‘high level’ – no surprise then that Spanish came bottom of the league in an EU survey in 2006 with a mere 22% classing themselves as able to speak English fluently.

Are the Brits any better? Don’t be daft. The Anglophonic inability to speak a foreign language is matched only by the colossal arrogance of many Brits abroad who expect to be spoken to in English wherever they go. Yet paradoxically foreign languages have penetrated the upper echelons of the English language. Open any high-brow newspaper and they will talk condescendingly of Schadenfreude, cause célèbres, and aficionados. Indeed, don’t even bother reading anything by those patronising pricks at The Economist unless you have four foreign-language dictionaries at hand.

Anyway, the point is that musicians have adopted this trend too, believing that dropping some foreign lingo in their tunes will give them that extra kick in the cool category. Madonna famously apologized in 5 languages for kidnapping African children at the beginning of Sorry, Kylie famously told the French nation in this song that she wasn’t aware of the reasons for which at the age of 68 she still looks like Dick van Dyke’s daughter from 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', and Dublin’s finest diva and philanthropic cockbag Bono showed the Hispanic world what a penis-face he was (as if anyone else was in doubt) by failing to count beyond three in Spanish at the start of this dreadful track.

Fortunately some bands have taken the foreign influence in the correct manner. Step forward the eloquently named Au Revoir Simone whose brilliant new album Still Night, Still Light is so warm-hearted and affectionate, you will feel like your head is being gently stroked by a group of Egyptian slave-ladies at a pyramid-period party.

This is the opening track:

Au Revoir Simone – Another Likely Story

Altair Nouveau

In City of Glass, the first part of Paul Auster's mind-bending New York Trilogy there is a storyline about a man who longs for a language that is not already loaded with meaning. It is a reasonable desire (if a tad futile). But, instead of writing a scholarly essay on the subject, he has a kid (not on his own), who he locks in a basement room, only ever feeding, though never communicating with. Unsurprisingly, this did not result in said child achieving lexical putiry, but created a very pasty, oddball who had the father locked up at the first opportunity.

Nevertheless, there is the seed of a very good idea in this. Not the language part, which is an awful idea unless you are an overly zealous disciple of Jacques Derrida. Even if the kid stumbles upon a lyrical clarity, they will merely be using a bunch of sounds, all but meaningless in the outside world. At best this will result in severe bullying at school, at worst it is a one way ticket to Hermitsville.

For the record, the good idea is not the locking up of the kid part either, let's ditch the child bit and the locking-up side of things too. Although we are being strictly hypothetical, there is no need to do so in a way that may mistakenly alert the authorities. What it got me thinking about was, what it would be like if you could completely control the musical influences of a musician, so that the only ingredients that went into their music were of your choosing.

This makes for a very enjoyable game that you can play with friends on those drunken evenings when everyone keeps stopping each other's tunes halfway through, going "no, honestly, this is amazing..." The way it works is that you get a pen and a bit of paper and before putting on a track you write down a maximum of three influences that you, as hypothetical musical overlord of the act you are about to play, allowed them to listen to when growing up. You play the track and your listeners have to guess at least two of the three influences (they can be acts, genres, single tracks, whole albums etc.) you have written on the paper. If they do not guess right, you get to play a track by each of the two or three influences they did not manage to guess. If your compadres feel strongly that you are wrong, or that they too, see threads of influence in the music then they can also play tracks.

The following is an example:

Say the tune i am playing is Cosmos by Altair Nouveau. Before having done so, I would have written on a piece of paper the following three things:

Logic System- Unit

A Guy Called Gerald- Voodoo Ray

Omar S- Psychotic Photosynthesis

Download, listen and once you have the jist of it, then play with friends. The overall objective of this wonderful game, is to allow you and your crew to get knee deep in each other's musical worlds.

*Please note that the people you play this with must be relatively close friends who you know are into music. It will be a disaster otherwise. Also, do not play this at parties, as you and your friends will seem like muso wankers and everyone will hate you.

Tinklin' the Ivories

They say everything is cyclic, and that often tends to be true. But periodic function has a lot to answer for, who could have foreseen the re- emergence of flourescent gym socks or Peter Andre?

What with the inevitable fall-out of the economic climate only now starting to come to into focus, what can history teach us? A recent expose of Thatcher's legacy in The Guardian offered a broad landscape of opinion that her anti- culture stance actually acted to create a fertile environment for some fine British independent films and music.

But come 2009, with a sleaze- ridden cabinet, inevitable vultures circling round No. 10 and rise of the BNP what can Gordy do?

Get some musical accompaniment and maybe take a leaf out of the PNP in Jamaica.
They were boosted by the vocal encouragement of one Cutty Ranks, seen here in raucous form at a PNP Rally in 1986...



So with Gordon on the rocks and his concern for recent #BGT finalist Susan Boyle, surely a sly ploy to boost his ratings and provide his D- REAM moment, may I suggest he takes a look in the history books and see a return to piano- driven house is surely on the cards...

Two recent efforts from Aeroplane and Joakim, heavy on the ol' joanna.

Baby I Can't Stop (Aeroplane Remix) - Lindstrøm & Solale

Joakim - Watermelon Bubblicious

Bin Laden and his Bush

In pre-9/11 days, when the world was free of terrorism and evil-doers, Peaches had the filthiest mouth in the global playground. She could deflower a ninety-year-old nun with one flick of her acid tongue and stoked controversy by rapping about Fatherfuckers in support of mistreated paedophile priests. Yet after the September 11 attacks, Peaches suddenly found that she was moved down the pecking order as Osama bin Laden took the title of jihad jobby-mouth, splurging out expletives against infidels and beardless barbarians in videos shot in glamorous mountain locations. Peaches embarked on a halal-style beef with bin Laden to regain her cred, which culminated in a ‘rap battle’ between the two in a Dubai nightclub. Bin Laden, under his hip-hop pseudonym ‘The Desert Diss-troyer’, prevailed after a series of memorable lines which left Peaches in tatters:

“I’ll pull down your pants the way I pulled down those towers,
Make your career disappear like a female Dane Bowers.
You live in a mansion, but I hide out in my cave,
Smoking opium all day; more drugged-up than an early-90s rave.”

But there was someone in the crowd that night with a weapon of mass destruction. It was Cupid and he fired his arrow straight through Peaches’ heart. From that day forward, she was infatuated with bin Laden and the gray-haired guerrilla instantly appeared at the top of her ‘most wanted’ list. But it was not to be. Bin laden fled into the mountains of Tora Bora that same night, leaving Peaches with only a note that contained his address and msn nickname. It is said that Peaches, a sufferer of an acute form of dyslexia, was last spotted in Ibiza, weeping outside the famous seaside nightspot Bora Bora. She wrote this song as a tribute to her Saudi soul-mate, in the hope that their paths may cross again one day:

Peaches - lose you

Big Apple Reppin' (via Brooklyn, Stockholm + Goteborg)

Many apologies for my tardy return to the heady climes of this blog, times are a tuff out there, got to make an honest crust. Enough of my grim up north chat though! - here are some top drawer NYC inspired tunes I've been digging recently.

The Phenomenal Handclap Band have been quite highly regarded for some time now - and rightly so - just the right amount of Old Skool/ Art School NYC aesthetic pioneered by Tom Tom Club with just a whiff of New Yooik attitude.

Anne Margret has been a Hollywood staple since the 1960s when the Stockholmer got noticed on the arm of Elvis after Viva Las Vegas (1964) and subsequent appearences on the Flintstones and the Cincinnatti Kid. She pursued a recording career blighted by record company comparisons as the female Elvis; luckily she was still recording by the time the 1980s swung around - with this belter being a result. There are actually two versions of this tune, this one with the disco drums, the other (Part 1), a more soulful subdued affair, email if you want a listen.

Finally, a remix from Anton Qlint one half of Tiedye and one third of the excellent Västkustska Ryggdunkarsällskapet. I've been a big fan of both these Swedes and even more so DJ Kaos following his 2005 opus Hello Stranger. Think this may be a grower.

The Phenomenal Handclap Band - 15 to 20

Anne Margret - Everybody Needs Somebody Sometime (Part 2)

Love The Night Away (Tiedye Remix) - DJ Kaos

Stockholm Syndrome

Back in 1973, some Swedish desperados robbed a Stockholm bank at machine gun point, holding four people hostage for nearly five days. When the whole thing was over police and Swedish society were shocked to find the captives defending the captors. The bond that had been struck during the siege was so strong that one of the women held later became engaged to and paid for the defence of one of her captors. Psychologists, as is their wont, noticed this to be a pattern and decided to give it a name. Thus, was born Stockholm Syndrome, which was given its most famous moment by American millionairess Patty Hearst who, after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army actually ended up joining forces and robbed a bank with them.

Fast forward to the Eighties, and a guy called Buffalo Bill was knocking people off in and around Baltimore, after having first held them captive for a while and before eating them. These were truly horrific crimes. One of his victims Catherine Martin was captured leaving a nightclub and then bundled into a van, before spending several weeks at the bottom of a well under Buffalo Bills house. Luckily for Catherine she was saved by pasty, tomboyish FBI Agent Clarice Starling, who with help from popular cannibal Hannibal Lector managed to track down the killer. Catherine was free.

You may be familiar with the tale, as it was made into 1991 horror film Silence of the Lambs. Though, due to society’s tendency to focus on the most morbid, lurid angle of any given story Catherine’s tale has been largely relegated to a bit part in the story of Hannibal Lector, about whom there have been a string of movies. Catharine’s tale is one worth telling though. Whilst Agent Starling managed to rescue Catherine from Buffalo Bill’s cold basement, she could not stop her from falling in love with him. Catharine’s tale is textbook Stockholm Syndrome.

Having been trapped in Buffalo Bill’s cellar for a long and no doubt terrifying period, Catherine began to foster an attraction for Buffulo Bill. His behaviour went beyond that of the usual captor, as night after night he tucked his Johnson between his legs and minced around in front of her and the mirror to the sound of Q Lazarus’ Goodbye Horses, pretending to be a lady of sorts. It is debatable whether it was Buffalo Bill’s curious mix of Michael Bolton meets Otto the bus driver good looks or simply the enigmatic, ethereal beauty that is Goodbye Horses, but love captured the captive’s heart. Did Bill feel the same? We will never know.

It seems hardly to matter, as the type of love experienced by those suffering Stockholm Syndrome tends not to need reciprocation. Indeed, given that the Swedes earlier mentioned spilt-up after a short while, it is arguable that the love is stronger if it goes unrequited. What we do know is that Catharine Martin’s love is as strong as ever.

In the wake of Silence of the Lambs’ success she changed her name to Walter Jones and moved to New York to avoid any potential publicity. Having taken up music on the advice of her therapist, she has been producing electronic music as a way of channelling the effects of her captivity. Last year a couple of her tracks graced the nifty Nobody Knows Anything on Xaver Naudascher’s Supersoul imprint. Her links with the electronic music scene mean that she has record promos given to her all the time. In 2008, she found a disc of vinyl with a white label, on her doormat. When the needle hit the groove, her heart almost melted. It was the Krikor edit of Goodbye Horses. Since then she has been locked in the studio with memories of Buffalo Bill.

That is, until now. DFA have just released I Will Always Love You, which sees her address those dark days and the eternal love she feels for Buffalo Bill. Available, for the moment, on vinyl only, it is a swooning, hypnotic, heartbreaking slice of new wave house, that is not only the best thing to have come out of a hostage situation, but one of the best tracks released by anyone, anywhere this year.

Listen here.

Goodbye Horse- Q Lazarus.