Acceptable in the '80's: M83 and Neon Neon

I was born in the early '80's, so I tend to have a vague sense of the decade, mainly via Saturday morning cartoons and toys (the fact Care Bears, My Little Ponies and Strawberry Shortcake have crept back into popular culture only confirms that I am now old enough to be considered retro). And perhaps via my older sister's penchant for heavy metal music like Motley Crue and Van Halen and the odd pop song by Cyndi Lauper or Billy Idol. Somehow I immersed myself in '80's culture through re-runs of Family Ties when I was thirteen, and via an admittedly strange obsession with Michael J. Fox (how many can boast and/or hang their heads in shame about the fact that they've seen the film High School USA?), and soon I was a rather avid listener of the '80's lunch hour on the radio. Granted, this was exposure to the Top 40 fare of the '80's, but it was a start. I was dazzled by shiny synths and the outrageous outfits sported by popstars at the time. I was fascinated with the garishness of it all. I wanted there still to be an MTV that played crazy videos no one would dare make anymore with exploding kitchens and lit-up sidewalks and public schoolboys with light shining out of their eyes.

I didn't see the ultimate John Hughes film The Breakfast Club until I was fourteen and in a ninth grade English class (I'm still not entirely certain what it was supposed to teach us about English literature). Somehow, even though it was set in the prior decade in an American high school, it resonated with me. Perhaps, it was because John Hughes managed to create a highly appealing myth about what it meant to be a teenager - where the losers always triumphed over the popular...or at the very least, joined forces for one Saturday. Eventually, I went on to see the rest of the John Hughes' Holy Trinity, Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles, and ended up desperately wanting a friend like Duckie. Instead, I was probably somebody's Duckie. Once I was already out of high school, I saw Cameron Crowe's Say Anything, which affected me in a similar way, making me feel nostalgic for something that never existed in the firstplace. I'll admit that if I manage to catch The Breakfast Club for the umpteenth time on TBS, I'll watch it (even if it's the badly dubbed, censored version - the bad dubbing itself is entertainment).

Tapping into the spirit of one of the most celebrated and maligned decades, are two fairly different bands with two fairly different takes on what the 80's sounded like and meant as a concept. M83, a French electronic act featuring Anthony Gonzalez, and Neon Neon, a collaborative effort between Boom Bip (real name: Bryon Hollon) and Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys, have both attempted to capture the spirit of the 80's in their albums Saturdays=Youth and Stainless Style, respectively. While Saturdays=Youth hearkens back to the John Hughes sentiments of being an adolescent in 1980's America, Stainless Style follows the rise and fall of John Delorean (yeah, the inventor of the Delorean, most famously used in its gullwinged glory in the Back to the Future trilogy).

I hadn't been aware of M83 until this album despite the fact they've been around since 2001. Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau created M83, named after the galaxy of the same name, in Antibes, France. Following Gonzalez's split from Fromageau, the former decided to carry on without the latter, creating both ambient music in Digital Shades Volume 1, and Saturdays=Youth, which was released on April 15 of this year. Gonzalez cites The Breakfast Club as one of the influences for this album (the Molly Ringwaldesque girl on the album cover is already a clue), but the overall effect of the album is a meeting of modern shoegaze and '80's synthpop. In addition to his own vocals, Gonzalez also enlisted vocal help from Morgan Kibby, a singer/actress, and the final product is mesmerizing.

Out of all the tracks on the album, Kim & Jessie and Up! are the most likely soundtrack to play behind Molly Ringwald at the prom, and are, thus, the most recognizably associated with the sound of the '80's. The former uses New Wave drum machines to back effete male vocals in a New Romantic vein while the latter begins with sparkling synths before tumbling into a wide-eyed, breathless Kate Bush-like tune (if you weren't already convinced by the sound of Kibby's vocals and the melody, the phrase "hounds of love" creeps into the lyrics). Lovely album opener, You, Appearing, is Cocteau Twinsesque with its gentle, plaintive piano and synth accents behind the overlapping chants of Kibby and Gonzalez. Both Skin of the Night and Graveyard Girl, though differing in mood (the former being moody and ethereal and the latter being bright and upbeat), each speaks to a melodramatic adolescent urge to live more and be more than you could ever possibly be. In Graveyard Girl, Kibby states "I'm fifteen years old and I feel like it's already too late to live," speaking to that naivete of youth, where emotions are intense and time progressively accelerates. At the beginning of Highway of Endless Dreams, Kibby speaks again, stating, "I'm going to drive until it burns my bones," before the song builds propulsively like a star burning up into supernova. In contrast, Too Late sounds like the stillness of a mossy pool where synth notes are dropped in like stones, sometimes skipping across the surface. Dark Moves of Love, which once again features an interchange of vocals between Kibby and Gonzalez begins with a Neil Tennant-like spoken line before launching into dramatic sweeps of sound, weaving an image of a dialogue taking place between two lovers in a maze of mirrors, chasing and losing each other again and again. The eleven-minute instrumental Midnight Souls Still Remain ends the album, creating a vast soundscape that conjures up images of outer space or underwater, both scenarios being connected to each other in more ways than one. Contrasting with M83's youthful, idealistic take on the 80's, Neon Neon's Stainless Style is a mosaic of a man who came to represent the excesses and eventual collapse of the '80's. In the Spring issue of Under the Radar, Gruff Rhys says Stainless Style is an "investigation of the American dream and the American nightmare. It's a celebration of all things plastic and synthetic." This oscillation between shiny light and seedy dark infiltrates the fabric of the album as it bounces between different styles, not all of them sounding quite like the '80's. Guest duties on the album include Spank Rock, Fab Moretti, Har Mar Superstar, Yo Majesty, and The Magic Numbers, varying the sound of the album even more. The age-old link between fast cars and fast girls holds true for this album as they come to be metaphors for each other.

The album opens with the instrumental Neon Theme, which uses a pumping bassline and laser-like sounds to create a glimpse of the future as imagined by the '80's. Like Saturdays=Youth, Stainless Style isn't always a mirror of the music created in the '80's, and the track Dream Cars is more akin to a '60's Motown melody than any yuppie's stereo. Conversely, I Told Her on Alderaan, which references Princess Leia's home planet, is a song that could have been performed by The Cars (no pun intended) with its synth flourishes on top of driving guitars. Trick for Treat, Sweat Shop and Luxury Pool are all hip-hop tracks, rapping narratives of Delorean's incredible ambition and talent and his equally as stupendous fall from grace. Trick For Treat deals specifically with Delorean's cocaine issues, namechecking Back to the Future, the Reagan-era mantra "feed the greed," and The Velvet Underground's I'm Waiting For the Man. I Lust U, featuring vocals from Cate LeBon, is a cool dialogue between Delorean and a prostitute as they tell each other "I love you if the price is right." Belfast, which references Delorean's failed sportscar venture in Northern Ireland, is a mournful synthpop song in which Rhys sings, "I built my empire and threw it all away," while Michael Douglas, a Bronski Beat-type song with a modern twist, relates to the time Delorean attended pool parties with Douglas in LA. The album ends with title track, Stainless Style, which sounds like a gospel chorus, trailing into an acappella "Oh, how many are my foes/how many rise against me," perhaps a nod to Delorean's conversion to Christianity later in life. All in all, the jetsetting highs and tragic lows of Delorean's life become glossier and hypereal under Boom Bip and Gruff Rhys's treatment.

And so two very different albums and concepts meet up with their common interest in the '80's. A time when you either wanted to be stuck in Saturday detention or flying through time in a Delorean. Both M83 and Neon Neon are brilliant in their reimagining of the decade of my early childhood, and both manage to do it without irony (after all, irony belongs to the '90's). Now if only somebody could bring back neon Oreos...


Kim & Jessie - M83

Up! - M83

I Told Her on Alderaan - Neon Neon

Trick For Treat - Neon Neon

Tangled in True Love's Defeat: Andrew Spice's Pretty Demons

This post is going to take us back a bit in time, considering Andrew Spice's debut album Pretty Demons released five years ago, but before I go there, I want to go back a bit further than that. To a high school gym in 1999...where I first witnessed Andrew Spice truly perform.

In the midst of a shoddy variety show put on by our Winnipeg high school, wedged between amateur skits and adequate saxophone solos, Andrew sat down at a piano and performed Tori Amos' version of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Though I had known Andrew for about five years by that point, I hadn't known him as a musician - I had known him as the quiet clarinet player beside me in the school band, but hardly as a musician in his own right. I was completely riveted by his haunting voice and passionate piano playing as he lost himself in the music and emotions, capturing the tender torture of the song. At that moment, I knew he didn't belong with the rest of us - his level of maturity, musical and otherwise, greatly exceeded anything the rest of us adolescents were thinking or doing at the time. While the parents and students assembled there in the audience may very well have preferred the friendlier, amateur fare of other performances, playing out the typical popularity contests of high school, they were hardly the correct, discerning audience to be hearing him.

Thankfully, Canadian singer-songwriter Emm Gryner ended up hearing him, and then producing his album, Pretty Demons, on her Dead Daisys Records label and subsequently playing on Pretty Demons. Manitoba Film and Sound also endorsed the record with a marketing grant to assist in its promotion and distribution. The same year, Pretty Demons was nominated for an OutMusic Award for Best Debut Album. And unfortunately, while all this was going on, I completely missed it. I was hardly as up on my music at that point as I am now, and I was very likely too absorbed in the British music scene (as usual). It took me up until 2006 to notice, but then I couldn't turn away.

Pretty Demons is indeed pretty in its fractured and bruised self-revelation, managing to avoid standard heartbreak cliches. I have difficulty comparing Andrew with other artists because I still think of his voice as completely his own and I can't quite objectively step back and hold it up to other artists. The best I can do to describe Andrew's style is: His voice hovers like mist over cascades of piano, creating rainbows in unexpected places of darkness. His influences listed on his MySpace profile include PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Nine Inch Nails and Imogen Heap, which I can definitely feel in the atmosphere of his music, but again, Andrew escapes a direct comparison to any of them. On tracks like Unafraid, Beautiful Creatures, and Nice to Know, Andrew peels back the bandages on a broken heart to expose a poignant self-doubt and vulnerability in lyrics like: "how easy this would be/if I wasn't me/how unafraid/how perfectly made/I wish I was" (Unafraid), "if I were easy and pretty pretty/I'd be remembered" (Beautiful Creatures), and "the poison that I am/must be hard to cure yourself/from everything that's never quite enough" (Nice to Know). Melodically, Beautiful Creatures is the closest to a radio-friendly hit with its pulsing beat that mimicks a tense heartbeat, and soaring chorus. It is followed by one of my favourite tracks on the album, Silent Rain, which features trembling, breathy vocals, fluid piano, strains of strings, and the incredible lyric of "I'm cold and grey inside this lie/tangled in true love's defeat."

Breaking away from the fluidity of Silent Rain, Perfect Day begins with a romping piano line that continues to roll beneath lines like "no it's not something you said/it's something that you are/all uncertainty and loveliness/paint me pictures with your eyes/take me in your arms tonight." The next song titled Christopher reveals the object of betrayal and hurt (and likely the object of the majority of the album's sentiments), and Christopher then turns up by name in the lyrics of the following track Nice to Know. Pride, like Silent Rain, is a more understated, hushed song, tremulous in its honesty and beauty where vocal and piano move as one. For the track Sometimes Lukewarm, Andrew's voice dances over the lilting, upbeat melody as the lyrics tell a story of relationship confusion, where feelings about a partner can shift between being suffused with love to overcome with the disappointing reality of his/her flaws. Congratulations takes envy of an ex to new heights as acoustic guitar takes over - "motherfucker" has never been sung so delicately. The album ends with Matthew, a song dedicated to Matthew Shepard, the American student who was fatally attacked in 1998 in a horrific episode of hate crime. It features some of the most heartbreaking lyrics about death I've ever heard, creating a personal conversation with Shepard's spirit and elevating him from beyond a hero to a canonization for those who can see themselves in him. Overall, Pretty Demons is a beautiful document of young heartbreak and loss, and a search for comprehension and healing.

Andrew hasn't officially released any music since Pretty Demons, but I continue to hope that he will - he's the classic case of an indie artist that will never get the respect and support he/she deserves from the current music industry. If I've convinced you by now (and I hope I have), you can easily purchase Pretty Demons at CD Baby. I'm thankful that I was there back in 1999 to witness the beginning of such musical talent. And here's to hoping that once again, the right people will be listening.

Andrew Spice's MySpace: www.myspace.com/andrewspice

Beautiful Creatures - Andrew Spice

Silent Rain - Andrew Spice

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #18

It's cover version time again. I've had several of these accumulating since the first weekly mix of covers, and I felt it's been long enough of a break. I still marvel at the way other artists can make me enjoy a song I would never have listened to by the original artist. Case in point: the video clip above featuring Kate Bush singing Elton John's Rocket Man. Also, in this week's mix, I ended up picking two Beatles tracks covered by Nina Simone and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and I'm not really a Beatles fan to begin with. Somehow Siouxsie and the Banshees managed to make me re-imagine Dear Prudence in a way I never would have with the original - now I see a mysterious, dark little girl who won't leave her room.

Looking at this particular mix, it seems I've subconsciously went a bit 80's with covers of Billy Idol, Madonna, Oliva Newton-John, New Order and The Smiths. I've also included the utterly Canadian cover version - Corey Hart's completely ridiculous Sunglasses at Night by fey Montreal DJ, Tiga, who actually manages to make the song cool...well, maybe just a bit less embarrassing. And to avoid confusion for some, It's Not Over Yet is not an original Klaxons tune, so Goldfrapp is actually covering a cover and/or covering the original by Grace - I like her fragile, stripped-down version nonetheless, far more haunting than the Klaxons. One of my favourites in this mix is the cover of I Wanna Be Your Dog by French artist Emilie Simon - it's startling and lovely at the same time as her child-like voice croons over bizarre feedback and dreamy melody. Another favourite is John Cale's version of LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends (arguably one of the best tracks off Sound of Silver). I'll call this mix It's Never Over Yet.

Dancing With Myself - Nouvelle Vague (Original: Billy Idol)

I Don't Wanna Grow Up - Cold War Kids (Original: Tom Waits)

Like a Virgin - Ryan Adams (Original: Madonna)

You Will - Snow Patrol (Original: Bright Eyes)

It's Not Over Yet - Goldfrapp (Original: Grace)

I Wanna Be Your Dog - Emilie Simon (Original: Iggy & The Stooges)

Gimme Shelter - Patti Smith (Original: The Rolling Stones)

Here Comes the Sun - Nina Simone (Original: The Beatles)

Dear Prudence - Siouxsie & the Banshees (Original: The Beatles)

Sunday Morning - James (Original: The Velvet Underground)

I Just Came to Tell You I'm Going - Jarvis Cocker and Kid Loco (Original: Serge Gainsbourg)

The Headmaster Ritual - Radiohead (Original: The Smiths)

Ceremony - Galaxie 500 (Original: New Order)

All My Friends - John Cale (Original: LCD Soundsystem)

Only Love Can Break Your Heart - Saint Etienne (Original: Neil Young)

Frontwards - Los Campesinos! (Original: Pavement)

Get It On (Bang a Gong) - Power Station (Original: T.Rex)

Let's Get Physical - The Black Ghosts (Original: Olivia Newton-John)

Always on My Mind - Pet Shop Boys (Original: Elvis Presley)

Sunglasses at Night - Tiga (Original: Corey Hart)

"This Isn't Shoegaze - This Is Suicide": Titus Andronicus' The Airing of Grievances

Though Titus Andronicus' The Airing of Grievances came out last month, I only just discovered it last week, and I felt it merited mentioning. With their combination of a raspy, Conor Oberst-like howl, unwieldy shoegaze distortion and jubilant guitars, this New Jersey band, who are named after one of Shakespeare's most ignored plays, embody existential angst in a way that is diffcult to ignore or dismiss. The Airing of Grievances is the sound of growing up and realizing that the world owes you no favours and that leaving the womb was probably one of life's biggest mistakes. Titus Andronicus hit all the reference points for hopeless youth, including Camus, A Clockwork Orange, and Bruegel's Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, which features the drowned Icarus's legs sticking poignantly out of the water.

While singer, Patrick Stickles' vocals are often so distorted with breathless anguish, it's worth looking up their songs' lyrics. They reveal an openly personal story, including references to Stickles himself and the band's hometown of Glen Rock. Opening track, Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ, includes the fabulous line "People will tell you that if you don't love your neighbor, then you don't love God, but no god of mine would put light in such unrighteous eyes" - vicious poetry - and the first minute of the song drags along like a dirge only to burst into a full heliotrope of rage, reaching for a sun that it can unwillingly follow but never touch. Songs like My Time Outside the Womb and Arms Against Atrophy explore variations on the theme of wishing you had never been born. The latter includes the line "Even though things lately may have been real horrorshow, I'm wishing I was back in utero," which, deliberately or not, namechecks both Burgess's phenomenal A Clockwork Orange and Nirvana's swansong album. Titus Andronicus, an eponymous song, includes a spirit and melodic sensibility that reminds me of British Sea Power's latest efforts but with a spitting and snarling Johnny Rotten over top, and its constant chant of "Your life is over" is like a re-working of the Pistols' "No future."

And of course the next two tracks on the album are entitled No Future and No Future Part Two: The Day After No Future. The former is one of those songs that perfectly describes the helplessness of depression. To slower, meandering guitars, Stickles rasps his way through words like "There's still one shoe that hasn't dropped yet. It's hanging on by an aglete. This world seems like a nice place to visit, but I don't want to live in it." This track, with its companion song, forms a fifteen-minute nihilist opus that stretches from a mournful ballad to banging bass drums and chiming guitars. Closing track, Albert Camus, sums up the alienation of the whole album with a reverby darkness that feels like being held under a rockpool while your brains starts exploding into stars from lack of oxygen. Too self-actualized to live in blissful ignorance, Titus Andronicus puts up a screaming front, exorcising bitter disappointment.

Titus Andronicus aren't gazing at their shoes behind bashful fringes. They're looking the world full in the face and going down fighting.

Titus Andronicus MySpace: http://myspace.com/titusandronicus

Titus Andronicus Blog: http://titusandronicustheband.blogspot.com/

Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ - Titus Andronicus

Albert Camus - Titus Andronicus

Fall For Them: Vanilla Swingers Album Out This Summer

I raved about Vanilla Swingers in an earlier post having heard five of the tracks off their eponymous debut album, and now that I've heard the full nine tracks, I'm going to have to say that this is a frontrunner for my favourite album of 2008. The official release date for the LP (both as downloads and a physical album) is now July 14, so mark your calendars. Since I already made rather detailed descriptions of the five tracks I was initially sent, I will focus on the remaining four tracks for this post.

For those who didn't read my earlier post (and for those who would rather not bother with clicking the above link to do so), I'm going to quickly explain the premise for this spectacular concept album. Influenced by the John Gray book Straw Dogs, a piece of philosophy which discredits the progress myth of humanity, Vanilla Swingers follows the story of "two people who meet, run away, go back in time, lose each other, and meet again in 2015." Featuring some of the best lyrics of the year and a tender interplay between male and female voices in a similar vein to Stars, this album deconstructs the myth of human superiority, but rebuilds by using what truly makes humans human: myth creation, especially that of romantic love. It's our capacity to invent and create who we are, flaws and all, that truly defines humanity, and Vanilla Swingers plays on all the bittersweet emotions that result from this capacity.

The Town, which I briefly commented on in my earlier post based strictly on lyrical content, is a lovely album opener, setting the scene and mood for the rest of the record. Miles opens the song, backed by lazy strums of the acoustic guitar and piano, and Anne comes in for the second verse as they describe the sterile boredom of living in a suburban wasteland, where people keep reassuring themselves that they are, in fact, "ok." The characters in this album do manage to find each other amongst the dreary "pre-postmodern" structures and vapid fun bars, and so a tenuous, but tender, romance ensues. Though the lovers attempt to run away from everything in the song I'll Stay Next to You, The Hive finds them in the realization that no matter where you flee in time and space, you cannot escape the same negative aspects of humanity. The Hive, within its eight minutes, shifts between styles and rhythms like the fluid time it represents, beginning with a more subdued hushed vocal accompanied by lightly pulsing guitars and hi-hat, but then ending with a bouncier, twee melody worthy of Belle and Sebastian or Camera Obscura. Accompanying the restless music is the incredible lyric of: "Screensave faces, Chinese walls divide/Monitors flicker but I only saw the light behind your eyes/We're part of a problem with no solution/Everywhere you go, everything so cheap/Someone's gonna pay/From the daily rail to the NME, sing the same old song/'They build you up they knock you down. Fifteen minutes counting down. Changes like the weather. You built me up you won't knock me down - I'm keeping both feet on the ground. And it's getting better!'" The wasteful commericalism combined with the climate of false progress (most famously and most recently endorsed by "New" Labour) ends up being ubiquitous and inescapable.

In Back to the Present, which logically follows Danger in the Past, the lovers flee the 1980's for the amorphous present. The dreamy melody is propelled by twinkling piano lines and punchy chords while Miles' mournful, but thoughtful, vocals muse over the loss of his lover, who didn't appear to accompany him back to his present. The narrator must comfort himself with the dreams of what if's and potential futures while never actually achieving them in his reality. Album closer, If You Fall, comes after the lovers reunite in the future and realize that they could still believe in the bond between them, and that even though they were lost, they were lost together. If You Fall's bittersweet, delicate melody suits the fragility of the lyrics. The last lines of the song and album are: "On your way to work remember/If you fall for this you'll fall for anything that passes by you/If you fall for this you'll fall for anything." These words leave you wondering if you shouldn't fall for the Humanistic myth or if you shouldn't fall for the myth of romantic love. Or that perhaps they're inextricably connected, and thus, inescapable anyway.

If you're in the London area, or are going to be on May 27, go to see Vanilla Swingers' first live gig at the 12 Bar. And as I mentioned earlier, their album, which is produced in a limited run of 1000, is out in a couple of months. Run away with Vanilla Swingers. You just might find yourself back where you started with the ground beneath your feet feeling strangely new.

The Hive - Vanilla Swingers

If You Fall - Vanilla Swingers

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #17

You guessed it. This week's mix is all about drugs. They are part of that legendary formula, along with sex and rock 'n roll - at least according to Ian Dury - and many musicians have used them for inspiration while many of them have also died from them. Most countercultures have used some form of them, thus the music tied to these countercultures have expressed the experiences induced by these drugs and/or personified them. Whether you're a hippie tripping on LSD or magic mushrooms, listening to psychedelic music; or an amphetamine-popping punk, pogoing; or a depressed singer-songwriter hooked on heroin, drugs and the altered state of consciousness that come with them have inextricable links to music. And you know all the cool kids were doing opium or absinthe back in the Romantic period.

I, myself, have never taken drugs (without a prescription, that is), and I don't think I ever will - I'm plenty crazy on my own without them. Losing control of my brain doesn't really appeal to me when I can very well lose it without the aid of substances. I have no doubt that the appeal of drugs is having that kind of out-of-body experience to escape your own mind and body, which becomes yet another reason why I should never try drugs - along with my generally addictive personality, I would end up having a lot of problems if I ever tried them. Music itself ends up being my drug of choice.

And of course, rock stars are known for their ridiculously extravagant lifestyles and drug experiences. I marvel that David Bowie is still alive after all the cocaine he went through - that strict diet of orange juice at the time must have helped. One of my favourite drug-musician stories is the one about Morrissey taking ecstasy. And then sitting there by himself in his room.

This mix ended up being pretty heroin-heavy (even without the inclusion of Nine Inch Nail's Hurt) - the heroine/heroin homonym is always fun to work with. Also, it becomes readily apparent that drugs are a fantastic metaphor for love and lust. I very well could have put a dozen Suede songs on this mix or half of The Velvet Underground's output, but I chose to go for variety and maybe a few more unexpected ones. And I know this mix is in no way a definitive one about all drug songs, so no complaints about not including The Beatles or Jefferson Airplane. I'm going to call this mix More Tracks Than a Heroin Addict. Please listen responsibly.

Vegas - Calvin Harris

Idiot Drugs - White Rose Movement

Special K - Placebo

Junkie Slip - The Clash

Drug Drug Druggy - Manic Street Preachers

I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones

Caught By The Fuzz - Supergrass

There She Goes - The La's

Heroin - The Indelicates

Golden Brown - The Stranglers

Mother's Little Helper - The Rolling Stones

I'm Waiting For the Man - The Velvet Underground

Ashes to Ashes - David Bowie

Sorted for E's and Wizz - Pulp

Horse Pills - The Dandy Warhols

Kisses Like Heroin - Cupcake

Days Without Paracetamol - Snow Patrol

Heroine - Suede

Never Let Me Down Again - Depeche Mode

Sugar Pill - Ambulance Ltd

I've Become a Budgie Believer: Duchess Says

I'll admit that I often get too wrapped up in keeping up with the UK and European music scenes to the neglect of my own country's music. This realization truly hit me last year when I was shopping in Spillers, the oldest record shop in the world, which is located in Cardiff. I started talking with the girl behind the counter, and like all passionate music fans, she wanted to recommend her favourites to me. When she discovered I was from Canada, she began gushing about a Canadian band called The Sadies, who she had seen several times in concert. I had never heard of The Sadies, let alone seen them even once. She looked a bit puzzled and disappointed, and I felt a bit sheepish. Ultimately, the style of music The Sadies played wasn't really my thing anyway, but it made me quite aware of how little attention I give to music made in my own backyard, and how I can very well miss bands and artists that I would love. And my recent discovery of Duchess Says, a band from Montreal, has proven this point to me all over again.

Self-described as "moog rock," the music Duchess Says creates falls somewhere between Sonic Youth, Robots in Disguise and Siouxsie and the Banshees, full of distortion, synths, and punky guitars. They've been releasing music since 2005, including the EP Noviciat Mere-Perruche, but I only just noticed them now via other music blogs where their debut album, Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs, is being lauded. Having listened to it (you can stream it and buy it at Alien8 Recordings), I'm going to join the chorus of praise. The album squawks and squeals with feedback while swaying to sleazy disco and new wave synths - at times, it reminds me of Descartes a Kant without the waltzy respites. One of the tracks making its rounds on the blogs is Cut Up, which is a blistering aural attack that leaves you torn between wanting to dance both the robot and the pogo. This duality of synthpop and punk continues through tracks like La Friche, which is awash with reverb as it alternates between something that could have been a Glass Candy track and unhinged banshee-like howls. The level of crazy hits new piercing levels on songs like CH.OB and Les Residents. A Century Old, is Duchess Says probably at their most calm, but then it picks up speed like a cyclone, grabbing more elements as it continues to build electronic layer upon electronic layer. Released single, Black Flag, which has also been remixed by Juan Maclean, is the most synthpop track on the album with a catchy chorus and a strong synth line. Like much of my favourite music, Duchess Says makes you feel like you're listening to someone completely losing their mind and not caring whether they find it again or not. In effect, you can dance your brains out to it.

To add to their quirky appeal, Duchess Says claim to belong to the Church of Budgerigars, which appears to be a budgie-worshipping sect. Perhaps the world would be a better place if we all believed budgies had the answers. Or at the very least, we could all just absorb ourselves with bopping our heads against mirrors. I would love to see our world leaders leaping into mirrors like a volleyball player heading a ball.

Duchess Says is one of those reminders that I should never give up on my own country's music. Looking no farther than the mirror can be wisdom.

Cut Up - Duchess Says

Black Flag - Duchess Says

Hooray for The Delays: Everything's The Rush

I've been a Delays fan since their debut album Faded Seaside Glamour. I still distinctly remember buying it from the fantastic A&B Sound when it was still in operation in downtown Winnipeg (it closed a couple of years back - it seems the closing of proper music stores is always inevitable), and listening to it before I went to my German language lab at university. Greg Gilbert's unique raspy falsetto caught my attention and their soaring, dreamy melodies transported me. I proceeded to listen to it over and over, loving tracks like Wanderlust, Long Time Coming, Stay Where You Are, You Wear the Sun, and Hey Girl (a song which bears a strong resemblance to The La's classic There She Goes). When I was in the UK in 2006, I made sure I bought their second album, You See Colours, which continued to impress me (Valentine is one of the most technicolour auditory experiences I've ever had, and You and Me is a beautiful pop symphony). I then eagerly waited as they released their Love Made Visible EP to hear what their next full album would be like, especially since they were dropped from Rough Trade and signed to Fiction Records. Officially released tomorrow in North America, Everything's the Rush is everything I would expect from the Southampton four-piece - ebullient, frothy loveliness. Some critics have called this album overstated, but I think the fact that The Delays reach for those extremes and blow them out only makes their work that much more euphoric. Romance - by which I mean the true sense of the word and not purely gooey expressions of love or a deplorable genre of novel - is always overstated, and The Delays definitely have a romantic sensibility.

While Everything's the Rush may not have that pumping electronic feel of songs off You See Colours, it does continue to prove their ability to craft incredible melodies with unabashed bombast. Lead-off single, Hooray, is joyful, jangly and jacked-up, and feels like an out-of-control kite whipping up into the stratosphere, but it only hints at the brilliance of the rest of the album. My favourite tracks on the album are Touch Down, which has interweaving lines of dancing melody, creating a vivid tapestry with syncopated drums; No Contest, which features a pulsing synth line that bubbles up like early Depeche Mode; and Friends Are False, which opens with harder guitars, leading into a darker song with a chorus that oscillates as Gilbert's voice clambers up and down scales - probably the most rock I've ever heard from The Delays. Love Made Visible opens to a rhythm that sounds like breathing, but then explodes into twee choruses celebrating an energetic love, and One More Lie In celebrates further romantic notions of youthful rebellion. To temper the energy of the rest of the album, songs like Pieces, Silence, and Jet Lag are slower with string sounds, dramatic sweeps of the orchestral, and melodic lines that skip along like children around a maypole. The bonus track The Earth Gave Me You is a pretty whirling dervish of a song with delicate keyboard lines paired with Gilbert's dreampop vocals, and it provides a perfect end for the album.

And so The Delays have delivered again. Leave your pretensions behind. Join the rush.

Hooray - The Delays

Touch Down - The Delays

Chest Out - The Delays (Hooray B-side)

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #16

As likely expected, I'm going to make this week's mix a Mother's Day mix - a mix that I had to think about for a bit. The reason I had to think harder about it was because I really didn't just want to find as many songs as I could that mention mothers (not to mention I only have a handful that actually do). Then I contemplated making a mix that would include music my mother liked, but posting several Boyzone tracks, some Neil Diamond, and Christian contemporary music seemed like a bit too far of a departure for this blog. Ultimately, I decided to go for a few songs that mentioned mothers and then a bunch of songs that were gentle and lullaby-like. A few of the tracks are purely instrumental. All in all, these songs are warm and comforting - just like my mother is.

My mother has countless idiosyncrasies, one of which is a bizarre mixing up of adages or metaphors, more often than not with humorous results (my mother is usually the one that finds it the most amusing and kills herself laughing). For example, she might say "I'll kill one bird with two stones" (that's one very dead bird) or call Toronto "just another pin in the pincushion" (I'm still a tad befuddled about that one). Pronounciation is another difficulty for her sometimes - so don't ever ask her to say "Boyzone" quickly because you'll end up with something closer to "Buzzoon." She likes to check to make sure the front door is locked about a dozen times before she goes to bed, and as a favourite snack, she dumps salted peanuts into a glass of Coke. And her snores could quickly erode the foundations of houses.

Regardless of the many arguments my mother and I have had, and despite the fact our personalities are pretty dissimilar, and even though I've had my childhood moments of fear of her wrath, I'm hugely thankful that I have her. I know she's sacrificed a lot for my sister and me, and I know that she worries far more than she should. She's always gone above and beyond the call of motherhood for us, comforting us, encouraging us, and defending us. While our interest in music diverges completely (my mother hates coming to record shops with me, but highly enjoys watching American Idol), she's the one who stood dutifully in line for Arcade Fire tickets when I had to be elsewhere. And she's probably the only mother in the city who made sure she knows who Freddie Mercury, Richey Edwards, and Morrissey are for her daughter's sake. She may sometimes think Morrissey is dead, that Freddie Mercury disappeared and that Richey Edwards sang in The Smiths, but I appreciate the effort, and I love her all the more for it. I'm going to call this mix For Audrey.

Daughter Like Mother - Nathan Larson

23 - Blonde Redhead

Song to the Siren - This Mortal Coil

Lush (What Becomes You) - Soundpool

Apres l'orage - Peppermoon

Skating - Melys

Mother Stands For Comfort - Kate Bush

Frou Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires - Cocteau Twins

Chinaberry Tree - Mew

Surfing on a Rocket - Air

Over Over - Dejesus

Are Mothers Saints - Manic Street Preachers

Sun Dew - Fern Knight

Heaven is Inside You - I Monster

Scattered Blacks and Whites - Elbow

Hoppipolla - Sigur Ros

Yoga Means Union - Ambulance Ltd

Mansfield and Cyclops - Espers

Tokyo Police Club: A Lesson in Gig Selection

Back when I first heard about Canadian band Tokyo Police Club (probably well over a year ago now), I downloaded a few of the tracks off their EPs from music blogs, listened to them, was mildly interested and then left it at that. They were typical indie-pop with that bouncy backbeat and a bit of new wave cheek. Having listened to most of the songs off their Smith EP, I recall thinking the songs were rather short and similar. Then after listening to several songs off their A Lesson in Crime EP, I started confusing those tracks with the ones I heard earlier from the Smith EP. Besides the slower title track, I couldn't distinguish between the two EPs. When I heard their debut album, Elephant Shell, I confused its tracks with the tunes from their EPs. Needless to say, I probably shouldn't have gone to see them live. I don't know what exactly I was thinking - as if seeing them live would help the fact their songs all sounded the same to me. Nonetheless, I decided I would give them a shot (and kill one more evening in my generally eventless life) and attend their gig at the Garrick Centre in Winnipeg last night. As part of the tour in honour of the sixteenth anniversary of Exclaim magazine, TPC are making their way across Canada with varying opening acts.

The second I got into the line for the show I found myself irritated and for completely unreasonable, curmudgeonly reasons. The massive amount of teenagers and people who were technically adults, but still much younger than me, were annoying me with their attempts at indie hipsterdom. These things shouldn't anger me (these indie kids are at nearly every show I ever attend, whether in Winnipeg, Toronto or even Cardiff...they're practically a global phenomenon - I bet there are penguins somewhere in the antarctic wearing Converse sneakers and footless tights, bobbing their heads to a bouncy backbeat). Perhaps what was really irking me the most about this crowd, aside from the t-shirts paired with dinner jackets and the bizarre return of plaid flannel shirts, was the fact that all these kids appeared to adore Tokyo Police Club. Again, this should have been expected, concerts tend to be attended by fans of the band playing them. But somehow the fact this many young people turned out to see this particular band, which in my eyes was completely average, vexed me. It started to make me wonder whether the kids were there because they truly loved the band and found their music to be life-changing and original, or whether they wanted to believe that this band was truly unique because all the other cool kids thought so, too. And if it really was the former reason, there was no way I could ever understand these people. At any rate, I started feeling rather surly and self-righteous and turned up songs by The Sound on my iPod to block out the rumbling of excited chatter around me. I became an ancient 25-year-old.

Frankly, it's already a bad sign if I'm not compelled to take up my usual spot against the stage. Despite the unseemliness of being pressed against the stage at my age (though this problem will probably only get much, much worse as the years pass), I almost always plant myself firmly against the centre stage, arms resting on a monitor. I should also add that the fact I'm very short also contributes to this behaviour. This time I stood back a fair bit further than usual, well away from the pointy elbows of malnourished indie boys, though still close enough to have my hair ruffled by the bass vibrations emanating from the speaker stacks. As Tokyo Police Club took the stage, I hoped against hope that they would end up impressing me with their live presence.

They blazed through their set in less than an hour mostly because all their songs are about two minutes long - a feature I came to appreciate as I felt myself longing to leave the venue early. With a set that included In a Cave, Tessellate, The Baskervilles, Your English is Good, Listen to the Math, Nursery, Academy, Nature of the Experiment, Box, Citizens of Tomorrow, and Be Good, TPC failed to engage me - to be honest, every time they played a new song, I could swear they had already played it earlier, and that I was in some horrendous indie groundhog day. In their live context, the sameyness of their songs only became more prominent to me (the only reason I can recount the songs I do is because I mentally took note of a few lyrics off each song to compare with the actual tracks later and work out like a puzzle - a fantastic mental exercise, but not a good sign for their music). Singer/bassist, David Monks, whose voice reminds me a bit of Peter Perrett of The Only Ones, was animated, but uninteresting as a similar drumbeat intro started each song off. Graham Wright, the keyboardist, who provided the odd unhinged shouting chant, bent so low over his keyboard that I feared he would trap his nose between the keys until he snapped his head as far back as humanly possible with Snoopy-like tosses. But even that action became cliched for me - it felt like I had seen that before from countless unmemorable opening acts. The show became reminiscent (right down to the seizure-inducing strobe lights) of when I went to see another indie Canadian band, Hot Hot Heat, play a gig about three years ago. That time, too, I shouldn't have expected much, considering I was really only there to see The Futureheads in the support slot, but the complete disengagement I felt at that gig also came as a sad surprise. Their fans also went beserk for songs that had no effect on me whatsoever.

I can't bring myself to hate TPC because they are so genuine and grateful, bless, thanking the crowd at every moment and making the effort to keep mentioning their earlier Winnipeg gig at The Pyramid. The set was also punctuated by a dedication to someone named Jill just before Your English is Good (am I so crotchety that I even find this ungrammatical phrase annoying?) and the encouraged participation in the form of handclapping for Citizens of Tomorrow. So, TPC do get an A for their attempt to interact with the crowd. Their encore was appropriate in that it was short just like their set was - it consisted merely of Cheer It On, which I only really remember because they keep shouting their band name in it (not something I'm particularly fond of, but which is extremely helpful when you're like me and apparently need to utilize mnemonic devices where this band's songs are concerned). For most of the show, I found my eyes straying to the audience, including a boy with the exact same haircut as Monks, flailing like he had a particularly bad case of head lice, and a couple of indie hipster girls dancing by themselves, one of whom looked like she had walked straight out of a 1980's high school yearbook photo, oversized glasses, unfortunate haircut and all. Kudos to them for being so confident with themselves and for actually having sense enough to attend a concert they would actually like.

I had also hoped that the opening acts might make my attendance worthwhile, but to no avail. The two opening acts were Smoosh, a teen-sister duo from Seattle, and Attack in Black, a plaid-shirt-wearing four-piece from Ontario - I've largely forgotten both of them. I will give kudos to Smoosh in that they're doing something fairly ambitious for their age (and heaven knows I can't play keyboard and sing at the same time, nor can I write my own music, and I really had nothing going for me as a teenager...so, I really don't have much of right to be harsh), and in time, they'll probably fit quite nicely into the indie scene. At the very least, they played a cover of Bloc Party's This Modern Love, which was admirable. Attack in Black sounded like a blend of country-rock and emo, a mixture I never really want to come across again.

All in all, the night was forgettable. Although, I'll probably remember just how forgettable it was if TPC tours this way again.

**NOTE** I'm not even joking when I say I initially forgot to include tracks to download for this post. Bloody hell.

Tessellate - Tokyo Police Club

Cheer It On - Tokyo Police Club

Waiting For Velocifero: The Latest From Ladytron

I can hardly wait for June 3, which happens to be the release date for the latest Ladytron album, Velocifero. To tide everyone over, Ladytron has put the entire album up streaming on their MySpace, which may make buying the album in June a bit anti-climactic for some people, but I'm nonetheless excited to get the physical album in my hands. Named after an Italian scooter, Velocifero definitely continues to propel the band further, perfectly fusing rock sensibilities with electronic fuzz and synths. The album ends up sounding like a Velocifero - cool, vintage, sleek, fast and undeniably European.

Black Cat, which is available for free download from the band's Web site , is an electric album opener with a tingling upper register contrasting with a rumbling lower one. Ghosts, the first single to be released off this album, swaggers along like a rock god for the verses and then kicks into a sing-song, see-saw chorus, ending with electronic bliss and what sounds like a gong. I'm Not Scared sounds like a reckless ride along a French motorway, both light and airy, but also frantic enough to turn your pulse to quicksilver. Speeding in I'm Not Scared's wake, Runaway, a track which features a fantastic beat, blends all that was good about '80's synth music as the vocals straddle icy and sweet like a sexed-up robot. Sounding like a proper Depeche Mode song should, Burning Up twinkles and blinks like a candy-coloured strobe light, and carries hints of Destroy Everything You Touch. Kletva, along with Black Cat, is one of the two songs of the album completely sung in Bulgarian by band member, Mira Aroyo, and it bounces around in several directions at once like a gypsy on amphetamines. Apparently, Kletva is a cover of a '70's Bulgarian folk-rock song by Shturcite. The track, Predict the Day, is reminiscent of Simian Mobile Disco with its fuzzy and twitchy rhythms, while Lovers, a briefer song, features chunkier rhythms under breezy vocals. Deep Blue moves back into lighter, splintery beats with splashes of sound effects and synths vibrating like speeding tires over pavement. The closing track of the album, Versus, features some male vocals in addition to the regular female ones, and it works blindingly well. It boggles my mind just how Ladytron continue to impress me, keeping their signature sound, but creating such brilliant melodies and beats that always sound fresh.

It's nice to have an incredible album from one of my favourite bands to look forward to this summer. After all, Destroy Everything You Touch is one of the most perfectly crafted songs of all time. Anyone who believes differently deserves to be run over by a Velocifero.

Black Cat - Ladytron

Ghosts - Ladytron

Runaway - Ladytron

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and...Well, Friday I'm in Love: Weekly Mix #15

To balance out last week's rather happy-go-lucky mix, I decided to swing down into the depths of despair this week. And honestly, the first thing that came to mind when I thought of self-indulgent gloom was...Beetlejuice's Prince Vince of the Neitherworld. For those of you that remember the old Beetlejuice animated television series, you'll probably recall the episode in which Beetlejuice and Lydia meet Prince Vince, a monarch so gloomy that a cloud of rain follows him everywhere he goes. He does a lot of moaning and sighing, hand drawn dramatically across his pointy brow. And I absolutely loved him as a child. There's a reason why I chose to include Black Box Recorder's Child Psychology for this mix.

This mix ranges through a few different genres and styles, including post-punk, goth, folk, and indie rock, but they all revel in misery, most often their own. I'll admit I'm probably a more negative person than most, and I'll also admit that I can very much relish being engulfed by wistful melancholy and solitude - like many, I often create my best art when I'm miserable. And as pathetic or crazy as it sounds, I take comfort in keeping my expectations of life really low to avoid disappointment and keep my life on a relatively even keel. If I'm honest, as a child, I already had signs of an inexplicable melancholia - as a small child, I described it as "homesickness" even when I was usually at home. I probably do have some sort of condition that takes me beyond a predilection for misery - the actor Hugh Laurie once said that he knew he had a depression problem when he waited for the inevitable return of sadness before a happy moment was even over yet, and I completely understand what he meant. I more than likely have a more persistent black dog on my shoulder than others, but music is the one thing that can often get me through it. Not exactly to banish the dog, but at least to soothe it to sleep. Music helps me feel less alone when all I want to be is alone.

No one seems to do self-obsessed melancholy more artfully than Morrissey and The Smiths, but the other artists in the mix are also highly proficient in the moping department. Of course, there are the doomed singer-songwriters of Nick Drake and Elliott Smith; the gothic tones of Depeche Mode and Siouxsie and the Banshees; the more melodramatic whines of Placebo, Muse, and Lorraine; and the drone of post-punk darkness in The Chameleons, The Cure, Joy Division, and The Sound (I particularly love The Sound's I Can't Escape Myself - anyone who's felt depression and a general malaise with being oneself on a regular basis will completely relate to this song from the tragic, but brilliant Adrian Borland - and it actually reminds me of a fantastic piece of dialogue from the film Before Sunrise where Ethan Hawke's character talks about being tired of being with himself all the time, hearing his own boring stories for the rest of his life). I may never get rid of that raincloud that follows me, but with mixes like these, I'll survive, reminding myself that I often actually love the rain. I'm going to call this mix I Naturally Fled. I'd like to think Prince Vince was a Smiths fan. Wallow and enjoy.

"I've been too honest with myself, I should have lied like everybody else." - Richey Edwards

One Hundred Years - The Cure

A Pain That I'm Used To - Depeche Mode

Isolation - Joy Division

NYC - Interpol

Well of Misery - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Soul in Isolation - The Chameleons

I Can't Escape Myself - The Sound

Premature Burial - Siouxsie and the Banshees

Child Psychology - Black Box Recorder

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now - The Smiths

A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to Be Free - Elliott Smith

Black Eyed Dog - Nick Drake

Planet Helpless - Puressence

From Despair to Where - Manic Street Preachers

Black-Eyed - Placebo

Twenty Years Under Water - Lorraine

Sing For Absolution - Muse

Sad Eyes - Bat For Lashes

Creep - Radiohead

Sibling Lovers: An Enigma Wrapped in a Misery

In one of those meandering trips you can take when on MySpace, I somehow ended up (via a friend of a friend of a friend...) on the profile for the band, Sibling Lovers. As many MySpace bands do, Sibling Lovers cultivate a mysterious identity with very few details about them. What I do know is that they consist of James Masson (vox, piano, organ, guitar, celeste, mandolin, bass, strings) and L'wren (vox, drums, percussion); that they locate themselves in Paris, London, Melbourne, Stockholm, and Berlin; that they don't have a record label; that their next and only gig is in Istanbul; and that they make beautiful, moody, melancholy music. They remind me of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds meets darkwave, and their aesthetic seems to be nineteenth-century-gothic-film-noir.

All the songs featured on their profile are like inventive dirges with dramatic orchestral arrangements. The song Kleine Nazi, is a jet black ode to a female Nazi in jackboots, and Ghost, apparently featuring the vocals of Zoe West, an experimental artist from Australia, is also known as Desert Tree on West's profile and sounds like a female Nick Cave rasping over a mesmerizing mix of gothic and Western high noon showdown. The Crying Spider, which seems to be based on the Odlion Redon painting of the same name, sounds like it's being plucked on a slightly dissonant mandolin and features no vocals at all. Backwards and Lost is also purely instrumental with a timpani drumline and dreamy strings - it could be the soundtrack to a Tim Burton film. Their MySpace also features a cover of Stand By Me that transforms the original into a mournful ballad.

I would definitely like to find out more about Sibling Lovers and hear more songs, especially with the deep, Cavesque vocals from James. Then again, maybe the less I know about them, the more I can wrap my mind in their music and manufacture my own dreamscapes.

Sibling Lovers' MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/siblinglovers

Kleine Nazi - Sibling Lovers

Ghost/Desert Tree - Sibling Lovers and Zoe West

Stand By Me - Sibling Lovers

Sleeveface: Celebrating The Flipside of Vinyl's Other Artform

I just found out about a rather fun and alternative use for vinyl records - Sleeveface. Apparently, it originated in Cardiff when some DJs started playing around with their records. They then developed a Web site, http://www.sleeveface.com/, and global interest ensued. Sleeveface is officially defined as: "one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion." Of course, this stipulation limits your sleeve choices to ones that incorporate body parts (human or not), but thanks to people's creativity, the choices seem limitless.

I took note of this particular contemporary artform because it celebrates and contemporizes an artform that seems to have been lost in many respects. I love vinyl records for several reasons, including the warmer sound of the music, but one of the big reasons for loving vinyl is the sleeve. Yes, CDs include album art along with the liner notes, but the sheer scale of vinyl album art makes it feel more like proper art - the size allowed for and encouraged more attention to detail. You could frame a vinyl sleeve, but not a CD liner. You also don't hear about publicity-stunt-turned-collectibles like the first pressing of Damned, Damned, Damned on Stiff Records with CDs.


I would argue that nowadays album art has become either pedestrian/commercial and/or non-existent, especially with the introduction of MP3s. I'm not Luddite enough to think vinyl is the be all and end all of music because I find MP3s hugely useful (I would never have access to a lot of the music I've discovered and/or obtained via MP3, and being able to carry around 1000 songs in my pocket has been terribly convenient). However, if I could afford it, I would try to double up all the CDs I own with their vinyl counterparts. When I can, I still buy vinyl singles. There are still bands and artists out there who put some thought into their album art, but generally, it seems record labels choose what they see fit.

If you live in or near London, or intend to be in the area in June, you can attend a Sleeveface party at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on June 5. The admission cost is only five pounds and it sounds like a lot of fun - I would go if I were there. Apparently the last party, which took place last month "saw mass-Sleevefacing, the likes of which have never been seen before, projections of impromptu sleevefaces, a whole heap of partying and dancing and even ended up with two sleeves, meeting for the first time and going home together." Who would want to miss out on that?

I'm Gonna DJ - R.E.M.

Good Old Vinyl - Jim Noir