Top 5 albums of the year.

Yup, I'm gonna be yet another one of them wankers who writes a list on a blog of the most obscure albums they can find just to try to look all 'down with the kids' and 'Hoxton' (because anyone who knows anything about being a hipster knows that you can't type the word 'Hoxton' without scare quotes or non italicized, its just one of them rules that the hipsters made up, which I am blindly following.)

The problem with that last bracketed ramble about hipsterism, is that I am not a hipster, and as such I am going to try not to just give you the XX, yes I liked it, but you are already going to know it. I am going to try to give you 5 classy albums that you might have missed that I most certainly didn't.



First up. Com Truise, one of those bands or artists where they swap the first letter from the first and last word, like Cunning Stunts or Meetwood Flac. Com Truise- or Seth Harley as he is known to his mother and father- spent the year riding high on a wave of praise from the hipster bloggers, music journo's and people like me, who think that everything should sound like the Tron soundtrack. And it does sound like Tron, or something from the Drive soundtrack but less Schmalzy. Put out on Matthew Dear's Ghostly International(more from him later) the album along with a lot of the labels other output this year has been the first time the label looks like it is going in a solid direction instead of just putting out anything that is a) Electronic and b) from Canada. In Decay is a shonky weirded out ket addled set of Don Henley instrumentals with Vangelis adding more than his fair share of synth lines. of course it isn't really, that's just me trying to be clever and do analogies, something I learned at school recently. Anyways. Com Truise, silly name for an artist. Great sound from a great label. Next up is 'World, you need a change' by The Kindness. You would expect 'The Kindness' to be a band that wears tight jeans, doing television style ditties about things that happened yesterday evening. Adam Bainbridge is in fact a UK born lover of New Wave, Post Punk, Talking Heads, Talk Talk and the longrunning BBC soap Eastenders.



That's right, he has done a cover of the Eastenders theme and plonked it right in the middle of his debut album, there is a part of me that thinks that this is brilliant, and totally iconoclastic, on the other hand, if I were in a nightclub or at a party and someone played the theme from Eastenders even as a joke, I would leave immediately, and never speak to anyone in the room again... unless they apologised by playing 'Swinging Party' by the Replacements, or even covering it. Good job that this is exactly what Adam Bainbridge did. It's as if he knows EXACTLY what to do to fix a very specific mistake. Anyways, it's the lads debut album so we can't be too hard on him.



The further I get into writing this top 5 the more I realize that all the musicians are white post 30 men with odd sudanims, and why should the next one be any different.

Daphni- JIAOLONG. (His capitalisation, not mine.)

Dan Snaith spent most of the noughties arguing with a band who had also claimed his original AKA 'Manitoba' before renaming himself Caribou, after the Pixies song. He wasn't only arguing with people and changing his name of course, he also prolifically smashed the underground with Psychadelic masterpieces which sounded as if they were taken from Laurel Canyon, sprayed with fairy dust, LSD mysticism and flutes before being played backwards and looped through some early 70s tape machine. Snaith is incredibly leftfield, and I would say that Milk of Human Kindness was one of the albums released in the between 2000 and 2009 that defines my taste in music. I can't really think of a better album released in that decade, at the moment. In recent years Snaith has had one eye on the dancefloor as 'Swim' took a much more house and techno orientation. his mix with Jamie XX in the BoilerRoom in August was an absolute carcrash, but I have been told his mixing skills have improved since then.



If Swim Saw one eye on the dancefloor, then his new sideproject Daphni, turns faces and shits on everything else keeping the dancefloor moving. It doesn't follow the rules, it isn't mastered properly, all the levels are wrong. These are complaints from DJ's who are at odds with the Sound of Daphni, to them, I say fuck off, this is what the kids should be listening to. I have been lucky enough to year 'Yeye' at a warehouse party this year, where I am sure I was the oldest person. it was good to be in a room with 3000 pogoing spastics all dressed up as zombies and not giving a shit about whether the Mastering is right. While I look forward to the next Caribou album, this is more than enough to keep me happy.

Matthew Dear- Beams.



What to say? I said Ghostly International were having a good year, and with releases from Com Truise, Tycho (who narrowly miss out on this completely subjective list) and This from label boss and legend Matthew Dear sums it up really. I know that 'This' from the last sentence has unnecassary capitalisation but when you listen to 'This' album then you will know why I am getting remarkably overexcited with the shift button. Dear, began his career on Plus 8, the nosebleed techno sister label to minus, which is the weirdy techno label run by Richie Hawtin. Both have a penchant for minimal techno, as you would know if you had ever listened to Dear's Alter Ego 'Audion.

He spent the majority of the noughties being on of the most in demand remixers/DJ's on the techno scene, slotting himself among the legends of the scene like Carl Craig and Laurent Garnier, but when he released his first album under his actual name, it had all songwriting and stuff in it. It turns out, Dear wasn't just someone who made weird squelchy noises, but he like melody and nice warm fuzzy sounds as well, and he even wrote lyrics. Asa Breed was a minor success with moments of bliss and a new Eno'esque direction, Whereas Dan Snaith's sound edges towards the dancefloor, Dear seems to be turning away from it.



Well, that might be a bit of a reach, you can still pretty much dance to anything on this album, but instead of simply bleeps and squeeks, Dear sings, and his lyrics are about feelings and emotions and things like that, and although its the bopps and beeps that keep me listening to the album, I appreciate Dear as a songwriter.

Had I had written this tomorrow or yesterday, this may well have been the number one album of the year, but...

BEAK  >> (my capitalisation.)

People have been refering to >> as two, or the second album. There is something so totally irresistable about this monster of an album, produced and performed by a band put together by Portishead's Geoff Barrow, it harks back to Neu! or Harmonium or Cluster or La Dusseldorf or any of those other bands that helped to completely rip up the rulebooks and start again in 70s Germany. Proggy? a little. Anonymous? yes, but would we have it any other way? With every note played you can hear the band losing their ego, surrounding themselves with the fuzz of the notes that they are making, or some other pretentious bullshit analogy. Truth is, its balls out, uncompromising, it can leave you feeling a little uneasy, like when you tune into those shortwave numbers stations, which might be spys broadcasting coded plans of a nuclear attack on your home. Yes your home!



The production is deliberately shoddy, the keyboards are all packing up, the bass guitar might be slightly out of tune, but I love this shit, I love this shit about 100 times more than I love the XX album. The BBC had this to say about beak: "Barrow, who founded Portishead over two decades ago, certainly has the widest recognition of BEAK>’s line-up, but previous projects by Billy Fuller (also of Fuzz Against Junk and a session bassist for Massive Attack among others) and Matt Williams (who’s released short-run experimental music under several names, Team Brick probably the best known) suggest they’re invaluable to the results."



Having never quite gotten over Krautrock, anything I hear with the slightest nod to them has me singing its praises. Trans Am's 2008 album Sex Change topped my list of that year, simply because it sounded like NEU! and perhaps that is why I love this album so much, because it is so far removed from James Arthur to make people who listen to it feel evolved and from the future, a future where the bass guitar tuners have been made obsolete and keyboards dont work properly, granted, but a future, nevertheless.

Unsung Heroes: Geoff Barrow

Geoff Barrow isn't instantly recognisable, but that is because he doesn't want to be. in the 90s he was the multi instrumentalist and creative force that drove 'Trip-Hop' icons Portishead (I put 'Trip-hop' in those little sarcastic scarequotes because 'Trip-Hop' is a terrible and lazy music journalist's attempt to pigeonhole a decent but unclassifiable band, and as such doesn't deserve to be mentioned without highlighting that it is some other twat's invention.)

Portishead, should be, by rights, superstars. Their first album went multi platinum, turns up in the 'best albums of all time' lists, 'Glory Box' and 'Sour Times' were both used in film soundtracks, the title tracks for TV series and Adverts. Between Barrow's Production and Beth Gibbons' unmistakable tones Portishead provided a unique, dark and haunting sound which spread out over three quality albums spanning 2 decades.





Picking a favourite from Portishead is not easy but I'll go with the rip because it merges analogue with electronic, emotion with the cold and man (and woman) with machine. This song is from the album 3, which was their third album, and although the album title could be a little more imaginative, the album itself is amazing.

When not with Portishead, Barrow is the producer and multi instrumentalist behind experimental band Beak>. Beak> are not a band that will ever win a brit award for best band, they would probably never be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. They take their influence from 70s Krautrock bands like Neu! and Can. Their are rarely lyrics and when their are, they are faint and distant. The second Beak> album '>>' (see what they did there?) is pretty much in my top 5 albums this year after a mere week or so being out. It could be from Cologne or Berlin, and could equally sit side by side with any track on 'Unknown Pleasures' by Joy Division.



Have a listen for yourself.

As a producer he has recieved much praise people like Thom Yorke from Radiohead, who cite Portishead's third album as giving them the confidence to go through with the 'In Rainbows' release. Barrow repaid the compliment with this monster of a track released with yet another side project of his, the Quakers who are in essence about 28 rappers and three producers. This track is lifted from Kid A's 'National Anthem'.




As if juggling three bands isnt enough, Barrow has spent the last decade DJing at Fabric and creating the soundtrack to an imaginary Judge Dredd film 'Mega City One'.
He was also at the helm on Anika's haunting 2010 self titled album. You can listen to that here, a grimey collection of covers ranging from 50's pop to the Pretenders, it sounds a lot like Nico (of Velvet Underground and Nico fame) The spotify link for both albums are below



The thing that really makes me think of Geoff as an unsung hero, is his reinvention of one of my favourite bands of the past few years. Behind any good band is a great producer. Whether George Martin for the Beatles, Eno, for Talking Heads, Bowie or U2, Weatherall for Primal Scream, Godrich for Radiohead etc. Barrow oversaw the transformation of the Horror's from a Schlocky and tone deaf Cramps covers band, to probably the most exciting in the UK at the moment. As well as that, he inspired Tom Furse, from the Horrors to start producing, remixing and re-editing.  Anyone who wants to hear what difference Geoff Burrows made to the Horrors, listen to their first album and then have a listen to Primary Colours. Although Barrow didn't produce the third Horrors album (They opted to produce it themselves) His influence is heavily imprinted on their sound...



Sea Within a Sea: the final track from the classic 'Primary Colours'

Barrow is a legend but for all his skills as a producer and creative flair as a songwriter, he is pretty much unknown, if you want to know what he's listening to or you fancy telling him that he is a genius. Then it might be worth following him on Twitter @jetfury.



Barrow, attempting to hide his face. If you ever see it in a pub, buy the man a drink. He deserves one.

Touched by the hand of Todd

Todd Terje is an oddity, he has been around for what seems like ages and has carved out a niche for himself as the king of midtempo dance music. His productions are few and far between, there was the massive 'Snooze for Love', 'Ragysh' and 'Eurodans' which was so good it caught the attention of Take That's Robbie Williams, who borrowed it and changed it just enough not to get sued on his single 'Candy'






Terje benefitted from being friends with the Norwegian producer Erot, who produced Annies first album before tragically passing away. Norway became a bit vogue in the early Noughties thanks to acts like Royksopp and Annie, and Terje has always quietly been in the background, growing more and more obsessed with disco but not releasing many of his own tunes...

To have roughly 33% of your productions plagerised by Robbie Williams is a bit of a bizarre achievement for anyone to write gushy blogs about... so what is it about Todd Terje that makes him such hot property at the moment? It's his remixes and re-edits of course. while his own material is thin on the ground, he is one of the most proliffic re-editors in the game, most DJ's will re-edit tracks to make them more dance floor friendly, it is a trend that has declined among DJ's in the past few years mainly because if there is a track that needs a re-edit, the chances are it has already been done by Todd Terje.


Paul Simon has been done...


Stevie Wonders Superstition...



The Bangles, Walk like an Egyptian... is there no place he wont go?



...I think that by the time you've remixed Demis Roussos, its safe to say that is the case. The track that led me to write this was a track I'd heard on Ivan Smagghe's Walk in the Woods, for Tsugi, I rarely check tracklistings unless I have to and with this one song nesting towards the end of the mix, I simply had to. It was driving, synthy, freah and timeless. It turned out it was a Terje remix of the late 70s New Wave band The Units. Apparently 'High Pressure Days' was a reasonably big track in its time getting lost of airplay on the radio both in Britain and in the States upon its release in 1979, but I was but a twinkle in my papas nutsack at that point so I have had to backtrack to hear it... I'm so glad I did



Thankyou Todd.

"I think I played that at the wrong speed"

One of the things that has died out with the end of vinyl as the main form of listening to music is playing records at 33rpm instead of 45 or vice versa. We all cackled as we turned our parents copies of Past Masters by the Beatles into Alvin and the chipmunks before deciding we wanted to have a crack at scratching for the first time like the rap DJ's do. Also, late at night when the radio got to play the weirder stuff and before the homeogenistion of radio, there were times when the DJ's had no idea what speed the faceless 7 inches theyd been sent in were supposed to be played at.

At its inception, vinyl was at odds with the machinery it was played on, this resulted in a record being played at a speed at odds with the one that it was recorded at. Certain recordings of Beethoven are known to us as being much faster than they were actually concieved by the German composer. People like Leadbelly and Robert Johnson tend to be pitched up 25% making the vocals seem nasally and whiney. This accidentally changed the sound of the early blues musicians that country singers like Hank Williams would go on to immitate later on. This mistake in the process of converting the sounds that came from an artist into a noise that would come out of a speaker had a profound effect on music which is still heard today when whiney Nashville men sing about their wives running off and taking their dogs.



Williams was influenced by the blues musicians that hounded the airwaves in his day. and it was always played about a quarter speed too fast.



And played at the correct speed...







...And this is Dolly Parton's Jolene slowed down, it works both ways.

Playing records at the wrong speed was not just something that would happen by accident; DJ's in nightclubs, before the advent of the CDJ could, completely change the energy of a dancefloor just by ramping up or slowing down a well known track.  They could use more nondescript 'DJ tools' to veer from house to drum and bass and back. A recent DFA mix CD opened with a slowed down version of Robert Hood's techno chinstroker classic, 'Minus'






And the second is the track played at original 45rpm.

Now either way, it isn't all that clear what the correct tempo should be and if you were to ask Robert Hood, he'd probably shrug his shoulders and tell you to play it however you feel you enjoy playing it most. it adds a level of freedom that gives you a say in the  production of the track, in a way.

I have mentioned before Marc Groul's ignorance of playing a record at the correct speed, leading to the entire creation of Belgian New Beat, a dark offshoot of Acid House and Industrial.






The difference is staggering, both are very playable both belong to two very different scenes or at the very least, rooms in a club. New Beat ended up being slower and more sinister, the offshoot of Disco from the early 80s Hi-Energy was also created by cranking up the speed instead of down,

 It would be wrong of me to talk about the perks of playing records at incorrect pitches without mentioning John Peel, who's lackluster approach to music broadcasting led us to hear happy hardcore played at house speed, wonky african music pacing along at snails pace and chipmunk vocals regularly on the most popular music station in the UK at the time. Peel was the champion not only of weird and wacky music but also playing records at the wrong speed.



"I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that sounded better when I played it the other night, at the wrong speed." John Peel, after playing Josh Wink's 'Higher State of Consciousness' for the second time.


The entire rave scene from 1989 onwards mainly involved a sample of a sped up soul record, with an 808 to beef up the drum part, part of a break and a cut of a vocal. An entire scene which men in their 40s reminisce over, for the most part not realizing that they were more often than not just dancing to a sped up version of the casualty theme tune. The early Prodigy singles are littered with pitched up vocals and tinny breakbeats, partly because that was the only technology available to them at the time, but that is what makes it so good, it is evidence of thrift, of making the best of what you have. It was grass roots and it was revolutionary and it was so, so simple.





The key part of this was the option to play the our music at various speeds, something so common through the age of vinyl, that it was completely taken for granted and it was something that was destroyed without a second thought when CD's came to prominance. The consumer need for conveniance took away some of the listeners ability to be creative with the track. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a luddite. As much as I loved vinyl, I was in awe of the superior quality of CD's, I marvelled at the invention of the I-pod and I love these computer programmes like Ableton and Traktor, which have revolutionised DJing in recent years. I never mourned the loss of the Betamax or the Minidisc. But not everyone is a DJ, we don't all have the means or ability to manipulate a track, whether for comedy value, like turning Kylie Minogue into Rick Astley with a flip from 45 to 33rpm, or turning a Hip-Hop break like Prodigy's 'Poison' into a weird psychedelic breakbeat garage track. Which is a massive shame. It is one instance where we've really lost something.

I did you's a mixtape.

1. Black Angel Death Song- Velvet Underground

 "...from an early performance at Café Bizarre in NYC’s Greenwich Village. Told they would be fired if they played the room-clearing “The Black Angel’s Death Song” again, the decided to open their next set with it. They were fired immediately, but not before making an impression on artist provocateur Andy Warhol, who was in the audience."



With their first album, the Velvet Underground ease you into what will eventually become one of the most challenging albums ever. The first songs are gentle, poppy and could just as easily be on a Carpenters album. The last songs, however are gritty, violent, trippy and bloody. For this reason, most of the people who listen to 'The Velvet Underground and Nico', for the most part don't get past Heroin. It is for this reason that I'm opening the proceding with this one; I'm letting you know that I am not going to underestimate you as a listener. Lou Reed, John Cale, Mo Tucker and Sterling Morrison had little choice but to accept that you have to ease the listener in to keep their attention, but I don't really need to sell this playlist so I'm going to open with this one.

2. Transmission- Joy Division



It's more listenable than the last one, but its still not very nice, all urgent and shouty. Songs with the lyrics 'Dance to the radio' should really sound like nice pop songs but this is not a nice pop song, the Bass sounds slightly out of tune and the epileptic growl of Ian Curtis make this sound more like the orders of a Nazi prison guard than an 80's Madonna record, which is where I would expect to see a lyric like that. There is something incredibly 'cold war' about this song, there is a paranoia to it.  It's up a notch in energy but it's still not very nice at all.

3. I'm On Fire- Bruce Springsteen



I was tempted to replace this one with the Electrelaine Peel session cover of the same song but the vocals don't quite match up, and if you've got through the first two tracks then you deserve a bit of sweetness, and there is nothing sweeter than the boss sneaking through an underage girls window with nothing but jeans, a T shirt and his penis. (if you are that way inclined.) If statutory rape offends you then just ignore the lyrics and admire those lovely late 80s production values that made Steve Winwood and Don Henley records so fuckin' lush.

4. Sprawl 2 (mountains beyond mountains) - Arcade Fire

The Arcade Fire have become a bit of a point of ridicule, they are humourless, there seem to be thousands of them, they never smile and it isn't clear whther they are brothers and sisters or they all just have sex with each other. This is a lovely track though and goes to show that you shouldn't get too wrapped up in non musical reasons for not liking a band. It sounds like they have swallowed a copy of parallel

5. All The Critics Love U in New York- Prince

A juicy piece of 80's Punk Funk from a multi-instrumentalist superstar injects a bit of fun into the proceedings. It is bonkers, it talks about masturbating and is probably an inspiration to all the DFA and Gomma records of the naughties. Shit Robot, the Glimmer Twins, LCD Soundsystem and the Rapture all owe a debt to prince, whether they feel like acknowledging it or not.

6. Curiosity Kills- Janes Addiction



A younger Janes Addiction with Multiple Tennis Grandslam Winner Novak Djokovic in drag (top right)

Janes addiction are one of those bands that release one album every 5 years, then dispand to deal with their side projects or to melt off into a heroin addiction and subsequent stints in rehab or joining and leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers, then eventually, back they come with an album even more cracking than the last. I've never been able to place Janes Addiction as to where they fit in, they were around about the time of Pearl Jam and Nirvana but they don't really fit in with the grunge thing, similarly they don't fit in with bands like Guns & Roses either, which is probably what makes them so appealing to me.

7. Fuk- Plastikman

Monster. Plastikman is the moniker of Richie Hawtin, for those that don't know, he is to techno what Hendrix is to the guitar, as his musical style has changed over the years others have tended to change to keep up with him. Fuk is just another of those tracks with a title with a misspelt K, 122 bpm, growling and thumping. It could have just as easily been spastik or helikopter, but I thought it would be nicer to pop a track under seven minutes long to keep it interesting.

8. French Disko- Stereolab

The reason I am doing this mixtape and harping on about it is that I watched 'High Fidelity' recently, and while I find John Cussack a horrible self obsessed wanker in this film, I quite like his taste in music, Lab are one of those bands that record shop people jerk off to incessantly, and this track is the reason why.

9. Lucky Number 9- Moldy Peaches



The back of the Moldy Peaches album with a DIY album critique.

It was a total accident that this was the ninth track, maybe I did it subliminally but either way it's spooky. Whenever I did a mix tape for potential girlfriends as a young whippersnapper, I would always pop the moldy peaches on, it would usually be 'Anyone Else But You' 'Nothing came Out' or 'Jorge Regula'. Since those days I have grown up and no longer send mixtapes to girls in hope of getting in their pants, because I made a mixtape so awesome that I ended up getting married. Also since then, the Moldy Peaches had a bit of a renaiscance thanks to the Juno soundtrack, which is brilliant, because all the way back eleven years ago, I decided it was the best album of 2000, even though everyone else was either listening to speed garage or 'is this it' by the Strokes so the Juno soundtrack vindicates me. it proves I was right, all that time ago.

10. Losing My Edge- LCD Soundsystem

This song is the hipster bible in MP3 format, although it's probably available on cassette and vinyl for the sake of irony. It's hard to gage whether James Murphy is taking the piss with this one, but namechecking Suicide, Captain Beefheart, Can, the Electric Prunes, Soulsonic Force and Gil Scott Heron to the backing of a heavily distorted bass a cowbell an 808 and a live drumkit proved to be something of a revelation to me. I look at James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy in the same way some might look at Bob Dylan, or John Lennon. fucking genius.

11. Silver Trembling Hands- Flaming Lips



They are as mad as they look.

The Flaming Lips are mental, their albums 'The Soft Bullitin' and 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' took them to the brink of world superstardom, some critics accused them of self sabbotaging by following up with the bizarre 'Embryonic'. It wasn't as fluffy, it was weird and all the levels were turned up too loud in the production and full of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs making animal noises. It was Brilliant and exactly the sort of thing we should have expected from a band that once recorded an album on 4 seperate CD's which were supposed to be played simultaneously on 4 seperate CD players. Silver Trembling Hands was a highlight from Embryonic and is probably a highlight of these tracks as well.

12. Naiive Song- Mirwais

Round about the time of the emergence of France as a Musical superpower (Think Daft Punk, Air, Cassius and Phoenix as well as producers like Ettiene DeCrecy, DJ Falcon and Laurent Garnier in 1998, the year France won the World Cup.) Madonna desperately worked her way around the hippest acts trying to get one of them to produce her album 'Music' (the scare quotes aren't ironic, but the script inside the brackets indicate that they paradoxically are.) Eventually she got round to Mirwais after everyone else told her to fuck off because they were busy. Mirwais also found fame with his track 'Disco Science', the opening track from 'Production', it is followed by Naiive song as track two on the same album. Some years earlier, he had been in a new wave French 80s band called Taxi Girl, who La Roux lifted their sound from, hoping that nobody would notice.

13. Hollywood- Cluster

I've mostly steered clear from the Italo Disco, Belgian New Beat, Jap Psyche or Drone, so I don't feel guilty about popping this on, it is not the most innaccesable Krautrock, but it is never clear where the track is going in terms of its melody, there are no real set motifs, it seems to rely on a brush for percussion which stays nicely out of synch with the synth, the bass guitar, the flute and the strings. in fact all the instruments seem to be two bars out from each other. Cluster were cited by Brian Eno as the future of music and listening to artists like Four Tet, Caribou, Nathan Fake or the Fuck Buttons, it is clear that making a track like this in 1973 put Cluster far ahead of their time.

14. Codex- Radiohead



Sample Radiohead Artwork.

Since leaving Parlaphone, it seems that Radiohead lost their appeal, in a similar vein to the Flaming Lips but probably more so, Radiohead turned their back on superstardom after OK computer, opting to make an experimental electronica album. Another example of not towing the line, Codex is a track from the bizarre King of Limbs, released last year to little fanfare, Codex easily stands alongside tracks like 'No Suprises' or 'Fake Plastic Trees' it's lush warm piano is a lovely place to end it. the mixtape that is, not your life, so don't go jumping off any bridges, it's not that good.

Nile Rodgers vs Giorgio Moroder

You may or may not know who either of these two are, they are not people instantly recognisable in the way, Che Guevara or Jesus Christ might be. Reading Pushing ahead of the dame - a meticulously researched and poetically written blog methodically charting every David Bowie song - it pitts two of the greats of modern dance music against each other. Bowie's song 'Cat People' was produced by both. Moroder wrote the music to the original version and Bowie the lyrics and vocal melody, a song which was later used in Tarrantino's 'Inglorious Basterds' to great effect. It was originally from the soundtrack to what was ultimately a lightweight flop of a film by the same name. For contractual reasons, the version of Cat People from the soundtrack wasn't allowed to be put on Bowie's 'Let's Dance' album, which is a shame because the original version featured on the soundtrack was a solid spacey synthy track which well deserves its recent reassesment as a bowie classic... The Nile Rodgers remake, paled in comparison; the suspense building intro replaced by a jagged spikey guitar riff which deleted most of the essence of the track.

                                                                     

Nile Rodgers was the producer of the version of Cat People which ended up on Let's Dance, and it was nowhere near as good as the soundtrack version. This is where I put Giorgio Moroder, superproducer with a thousand hits to his name, in the ring with Nile Rodgers, guitarist, producer and the king of disco. He was the brains (and songwriter) behind Chic, Sister Sledge as well as being a producer for Diana Ross, Bowie, Mick Jagger, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry and the B52's amongst others. Judging by that CV you would think its a TKO for Rodgers against Georgio, But Moroder's CV packs its own punch: Bowie, Blondie, Freddie Mercury, B52's among them But most famously probably was his work with Donna Summer. Moroder (along with Vangelis and forgetting Ennio Morricone) was also among the first artists to really get a stranglehold on the film soundtrack. At a point where the cinema's were packed and VHS was bringing cinema to the homes of millions of people worldwide; Moroder found another method of getting his music to the masses. Top Gun, Scarface, American Gigolo, Neverending Story and Superman III were all scored by or had major contributions from Giorgio. It becomes clear when you see the tracks that these two were involved with, that they were the two biggest musical superpowers of the late 70s and early 80s, Europe versus America. Their phones didn't stop ringing they chose who to work with, they were both, the man. Rodgers was the king of disco and Moroder was the mastermind of synthpop (and also, sad to say, the powerballad.)

If we're going to watch Moroder and Rodgers fight to the death then we might as well start it at the point where this hypothetical fight was concieved; between two different versions of a Bowie song.

Nile Rodgers version- With Stevie Ray Vaughan spikey guitar part introduction.

And the Moroder version, with the moody introduction, that was used in Inglorious Basterds.

It's a definate 1-0 Moroder for me, although it is all subjective, so you are allowed to like the album version if you like, but if you do you are a massive twat and you will probably have leave my house, if that is you hiding under my bed.

This is probably the best known of the Moroder tracks, it pops up in adverts, it was to of the charts in the UK and America when it came out and it is constantly used in adverts. It is not a personal favourite of mine if I am being honest but the ones with the biggest populist appeal never seem to be anymore. As I am saying something negative about the way one of his songs sound then I can probably take this opportunity to say his image was also a problem.

A problem that Moroder faces in general is that he has both a look and a sound that is 'of its time' whereas it still remains difficult to hear the next track and not forget you are listening to a product of the 70s.

Rodgers looks cooler, more timeless than Moroder too, it has to be said, I think that Le Freak and the image gives Rodgers a 3-1 lead.

Both of these artists were broadly working at the same tame, creating similar kinds of music, but there is a monumental difference in the way the music was produced: Moroder's focus was definately on production techniques, synth sounds and embracing the latest technology of the time and Rodgers, on groove. The mixing desk was still important but the sounds were more analogue, the guitar, the bass, the drum and the piano were the bread and butter of the Nile Rodgers sound. His sound was the noise of the nightclub:

"I've had insomnia since I was five years old. I just don't require much sleep. I'm never tired. I can pay attention and I have great memory. Every now and then I'll sleep for five hours, but I'm reasonably healthy. At least for an ex-hippie-drug addict-party guy. I'm no saint now and probably wouldn't be happy living like one, but I try and look for balance."- Nile Rodgers.

Ignoring the influence of drugs on the music of these Rodgers or Moroder, would be naaive at best, Studio 54 and Paradise Garage were the first places in New York where MDMA began being taken, starting out as a prescribed drug used by couples councilors to help induce empathy, it left the councilors couch and found its way onto the dancefloor. Equally notable was Moroder's music and its association with cocaine. Moroder's work on the Scarface soundtrack make it virtually impossible not to hear 'Push it to the Limit' and not to be listening out for the sound of white powder falling through the gaps between the beat.

But that was just an excuse for me to write a paragraph about drugs. 3-3.

The more I write, the more I realize that I am not the person to objectively look at Moroder and Rodgers, I have so much admiration for both of them. Neither were 100% prolific, but that just makes them human. At the moments where inspiration took hold of them they were unbeatable... take, for instance, Bowie's Let's Dance. It would be difficult to pick a bad track off it, but who better to produce a track called Let's Dance, than Rodgers himself.

Moroder's tracks are probably more well known worldwide simply because he positioned himself in the homes of millions of people worldwide, he had a captive audience and an audience that would associate his music, firstly with films that children would watch over and over again, and secondly with the experience of being in a place and time, that this repetition would leave in the memory banks of people... does that make sense? If not then just put on the flashdance soundtrack in a room full of ladies, they all revert to being 8 years old.






Perhaps the reason I see the two artists in the same sphere is because of the impact their songs had on me growing up. There are literally hundreds of songs I could choose from their catalogue that I would enjoy, but I am going to choose 5 of each, as per, and in no particular order. Nile's

And 5 from Moroder...








(simply for the synth solo!)

An uneasy guide to Underground Resistance

When you think of Detroit, you might think of Motown, you may think of the White Stripes or Eminem. You may not think of music at all, you might think of its decimated motor industry, its reputation for a having a huge murder rate, or even the film Robocop which was set there in the not too distant future. At the end of the 80s a series of factory closures all but destroyed Detroit, most of the skilled workers moved to Chicago and wherever the work was, leaving ghettos, closed down shopping centres, rows and rows of derelict houses and the heartbeat of what was once a major city, ripped out.

Detroit's Underground Resistance, represents one of the most interesting responses to Reagan era politics. Jeff Mills and 'Mad' Mike Banks banded together to form a group that would grow in members and stature. Unlike Derreck May and Kevin Saunderson, UR shunned the limelight, opting to wear masks at the warehouse parties they played at.




The group have toyed with several different genres of music, from hip hop to drum & bass but the staple of the Underground Resistance sound was and remains Techno, to this day.

Although they opted to place the music ahead of the cult of personality, they created (whether or not by accident) a distinct image of what UR represented, a brand, if you like. According to Banks they were as inspired by the album covers and music of Bands like Rush, as they were of the comicbooks of Marvel. The militant standoff-ish look attracted and repelled in equal measure, with accusations of black supremacist views because they would often dress up like the Black Panthers at gigs; this accusation is refuted by Banks and Mills who claim that the whole point was to make sure the music came first. Equally influential to the UR sound was Kraftwerk, who Banks often refers to as a defining influence on the scene, in terms of sound and in terms of image. Members of UR would collaborate with Kraftwerk on Expo 2000.


 As new members joined the music took different directions. Out of all the Underground Resistance family Jeff Mills has probably been the most successful but the biggest track to come out on the label is UR049, better known as 'Knights of the Jaguar' by DJ Rolando. A track that still gets played all over the world when the lights go up from Berlin to Tokyo.

The track is consistantly in artists top 5's, consistantly played by the likes of Pete Tong, Laurent Garnier, Francois K, Jeff Mills, Richie Hawtin, Josh Wink and anyone else who is worth their salt in the dance music community.

Asking a DJ to name their favourite Underground Resistance track is like asking your parents what their favourite Beatles album is. DJ, Producer and remixer Ewan Pearson opts for 'the whole of the Galaxy to galaxy ep' as his favourite release... and it is easy to see why, there is a track on there for every mood. My favourite of the bunch is Astral Apache, with its tribal sounding vocals, snares, bubbly appregios and the constant sense that it is building into the monster it becomes in the second half of the track. It would fit in easily on Surrender by the Chemical brothers, or Second Toughest in the Infants by Underworld.



Ewans favourite: anything off the Galaxy 2 Galaxy EP




Tom Middleton, Jedi Master, DJ, Producer and all round good egg, also struggles to choose when asked about his favourite UR record, but also opts for a track from the Galaxy to Galaxy EP: "so many! High-TechJazz.Timeless spine-tingling Sax-Techno masterpiece in my box/top 10 for ever."











Tom's favourite: Hi Tech Jazz.




The Beauty of UR is that although they stay within the realms of electronic music, they can be as soft and soulful as they can be hard, with decks, 303's, 909's, and even the saxophone. But they are often brutal, as Tronic boss and legendary techno DJ, Christian Smith's choice attests to...



Christian Smith's favourite: Seawolf.



Liberation Radio (from the Gyroscopic EP) is one of the tracks worked on by Banks, Jeff Mills and Robert Hood, it highlights the harder edge that Robert Hood brought to the tracks that he worked on with UR. The fact that all the producers worked under the umberella of 'Vision' shows a socialist approach to how Underground Resistance put out tracks. No arguments about royalties, no messing, no ego, just uncompromising futurist techno music.

Sometimes the artists on UR tracks would be so secretive they would just go under an alias and no one outside the studio would really know who actually produced it, "I don't go in front of the music. I believe that if you put your ego in front of the music, and place it in front of the speaker, then the people trying to listen to the music can't hear your music, they just listen to your ego."

And that is the best way to sum up UR, the ego was left at the door, whilst europe began to embrace the cult of the superstar DJ none of the Underground Resistance ever did take up that summer residency in Ibiza, DJ at the opening of the Olympics, or have a track appear on the Matrix soundtrack. It's not the sort of thing they would directly badmouth about, they're not the kind of people to do so, but they are proof that UR are in it for the right reasons, and that is the very reason why more people need to explore their catalogue, because there is a lot of quality in there,

Here are my top 5 in no particular order.












For my part, the attraction to UR is the fact that they are doing it for love; as hard as the music can get Banks is obviously a caring guy, who is really involved in the local community through youth projects as well as with the Resistance. I discovered them through Jeff Mills who has always been the celebrity face of UR, It was before the internet made it this easy to share music so I had to get the tracks the hard way, resulting in a few hundred spent and a few boxes of records that I don't really have the space for, would I change a thing? Nope, my life is enriched knowing these tracks.

Complete interview with Mike Banks from Wired Magazine here

Underground Resistance complete discography here

Thanks to Ewan Pearson, Tom Middleton and Christian Smith.

Belgian New Beat.

Belgian New Beat is not the sort of thing I would spend hundreds of pound on, however, it fascinates me, it was a fledgling moment between 1988 and 89 where kids were looking to Chicago, Detroit and the UK and seeing Techno and House explode on popular culture, a decade later the UK charts were absolutely choc full of Belgian artists releasing europap like Whigfield's 'saturday night' and Snap's '(I got tha) Power', but at its inception New Beat was something new and something that belonged to the kids of Belgium... and lets face it, what is Belgium known for apart from being next to Holland, and being invaded by the Germans, and Beer, and chocolate, and child sex rings? They deserved to have their own thing to be dancing to at the weekends... the Dutch were dancing to Acid Techno and the UK were blissing out to Acid House. "Legend has it that the Belgian New Beat genre was invented in the nightclub Boccaccio in Destelbergen near Ghent when DJ Marc Grouls played a 45rpm EBM record at 33rpm, with the pitch control set to +8. The track in question was Flesh by A Split-Second." (wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Beat )



Original.




The same track at 33rpm

There is a history of DJ's playing music at wrong speeds to create new genres, Jungle was apparently the result of DJ's speeding up breakbeat records and Happy Hardcore *shudder* was similarly created as a result of pitching up acid techno records, but it is always good to know that the RPM switch on a vinyl deck can create a scene and give young groups of bored people something they feel they can belong to. And that track probably does sound a little better at the slower pace.




Groul's (right) inadequecy with the equipment he used led to Belgian domination of Europe for over a decade.
There is an argument that the amount of music on the internet has cheapened the listening experience, that people don't appreciate it anymore because they dont have to pay for it. I don't really subscribe to that view. I used to spend an awful lot of time listening to music on the pods in record shops, and I was always subject to the taste of the buyers in that record shop... now I have total freedom to explore, getting inside tracks and following trails to find out where they came from, the quality is not really as good but then again, you can buy a 5th generation pressing of a track on ZYX records on vinyl and the net result is the same, unwanted popping and hissing. Another advantaged is that you get to see the odd video, which is very much the thing that gives Belgian New Beat its charm. We will examine the New Beat video phenomenon later, but first we will have a look at some of the more famous tracks of the sub genre.



Don't know too much about this group but the track was released in 1989 and has been subject to a single repress in 1992, which means it will probably be difficult to get on vinyl seeing as it never had distribution outside Belgium. Its producer Patrick De Meyer, would go on to take New Beat to the masses as producer of Technotronic and 2Unlimited, acts that it might be argued, killed the genre entirely. This, track veers just about on the right side of what might get played in a club today, with a bit of editing. This is a good track to gage a new beat record, spoken vocals in German or French, roughly 110bpm and much moodier sounding than the luv'd up sound of Italo-Disco, the noise coming from closer to the mediteranian roughly at the same time. The Belgians didn't get as much sunshine as Italy, which is probably a good gage of wht the Flemmish are into moodier sinister sounding tracks.




The video to this one is simply hideous, it reinforces every stereotype that prejudiced people have about European dance music... mullets, leather jackets, headbands, shitty dance routines...just click on it fully if you want to see it. What is really noticable about this track is the similarity the main synthline shares with 'what Time is Love?' by KLF. Who stole from who?  Everyone was stealing from each other, S-express and M*A*R*S* famously scored number one hits with 'the theme from S'Express' and 'Pump Up the Volume' respectively, selling millions, but having to give all their royalties to the people they sampled without permission, something that the likes of Grand Master Flash and Afrika Bambaataa had to deal with some 5 years earlier, when they sampled the krautrock folk. But sample stealing is another subject for another time. Onto the next track.





This is exactly the kind of track that was being pitched up to plus 8 in holland, with the roland 909 synth stabs, the deliberately pitched down vocals would sound normal at 45rpm, there was a kind of symbiosis between the dutch techno movement and the belgian new Beat shizzle, and they were driving distance from each other so there was no reason why the club kids of Holland and Belgium in the late 80s couldn't enjoy both.





This one has a bit more of a breaky feel whilst still keeping to the same speed, it retains the moody feel, and after 4 tracks you are probably starting to get a feel of what New Beat actually is...



This one is the track probably best known from the new beat spectrum, one that tends to pop up on the ministry of sound type 'old skool' albums, it is much faster than the 110bpm tracks, It is heavy as fuck and probably the one that I like least out of all of the examples I've given, however, there is a DJ Hell remix that has blown up several of my speakers.






A band that certainly took New Beat as an inspiration are Belgiums own Soulwax, although it is difficult to tell whether they are being ironic or not. This one appeared on their Radio Soulwax part 2 album, remixed and cut to shreds, but it shows that there is life beyond Anita and Ray, for New Beat, it was the European equivalent of the British Acid House explosion of 88 and 89, but unlike Acid House, which eventually moved on to the rave scene, jungle scene, happy hardcore scene, trip hop, etc et al which all sprouted from Acid culture, it appears that new Beat producers would eventually end up pumping our charts full of fodder.



This is sadly the legacy of New Beat, the stuff that the producers will be most remembered for.

For a pretty convincing top 50 of New Beat tracks click here

If you fancy getting a few online mixes down your ears, have a click on this with a much less detached and more fond take on the sub genre.

Grauzone.

I've been out of action on the music blog for such a long time because I simply didn't know where to go with it, but now I know... I will take the obscurest bands I can find from Belgium, Italy or in this case, Switzerland and paste the wiki entry for these bands...


At the end of 1979 Marco Repetto (drums) and GT (bass) left the punk band Glueams, to form together with Martin Eicher (guitar, vocals, synthesizer) a new band called Grauzone. Martin had already supported Glueams on their single mental.





They gave their first concert in March 1980 at the club Spex in Berne. Martin's brother Stephan Eicher (guitar, synthesizer) and Claudine Chirac (saxophone) supplemented the group temporarily in live appearances and recordings. After ten concerts, four singles and an album the group split up at the end of 1982.

GT and Marco Repetto formed together with the former Glueams guitarist Martin Pavlinec and the drummer Dominique Uldry, the band "Missing Link", later "Eigernordwand". GT supplemented the futurism oriented performance group "Red Catholic Orthodox Jewish Chorus" around performance artist Edy Marconi, in which occasionally Marco Repetto also played. Later the group changed their name to "I Suonatori". Stephan Eicher started a successful solo career. 1988 published Martin Eicher his solo-EP "Spellbound Lovers". Marco Repetto started in 1989 a new career as Techno and Ambient DJ, musician and producer (a.o. mittageisen v2).



The band is most famous for their 1981 hit "Eisbär" ("Polar Bear"), which was later covered by the French band Nouvelle Vague. The single went to #12 in Germany and #6 in Austria. Another track that was played a lot in dance clubs in the eighties was the instrumental Film 2.



That is the extent of my knowledge about this band... I first heard them when they popped up on Hot Chip's DJ kicks compilation a few years ago, since then I have heard Ivan Smagghe airing them and  Andrew Weatherall played them at a night I went to far too long ago, I have since discovered that they are a pretty awesome post punk 80s band but because they never really got out of Switzerland I never got to listen to them until the internet had well and truly happened. but it kicks shit out of Kajagoogoo or Flock of Seagulls. In certain places they sound lots like Public Image ltd, Gang of Four, and you might even expect that Kele from Bloc Party may have a record or two by them. In other places they sound like the goth techno you would expect to hear at the Panoramabar in Berlin or London's Fabric. It is also uncanny how much they sound like Joy Division.














Part of the magic of exploring a band like this is that they were people who lived directly in the embers of the second world war. These were guys born into the threat of nuclear war, they didn't have the same experiences of the 80s that Britain did and as a result the music sounds different not only in terms of the language barrier, but the production values, emphasis on rhythmn and song structure is vastly different to Duran Duran and Bananarama. Soft Cell and the early Human League material is the only tangible connection to the British music that was happening at the time, but more at the forefront were Wham and Culture Club, the latters wading in on politics was 'War is stupid, People are stupid'... Thanks for that Mr George, now I think you'd better be off because there's a rentboy chained to your radiator.

Happy Birthday David Bowie!

"Underwealing"

David Bowie lived off a raw egg a day for 8 months. David Bowies duet with Mick Jagger was more underweaming than it should have been. David Bowie was accused of being a fascist. David Bowie has been particularly unlucky with his eyes, getting one of them damaged in a fight at school and a lollypop stuck in the other.



Thats a massive thing about David Bowie, for every time you mention his name there is an interesting story. Most of the people who read stuff like this will know all the stories and more and even if you don't there is a blog a mere googlesearch away.

David Jones has a song for every story, every bit as important, iconic and consistant as the Beatles, his more recent albums were nowhere near as legendary as his run of albums from 69-88 but 20 years releasing quality album after quality album places him among Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi and Hitler combined in terms of legendary status.

Today is his 65th birthday, retirement age, so this is a little look back at his career with a butchers at some of his best work in no particular order.



Speed of life, instrumental first track on 1977's Low. It was a particularaly intense period in bowies life, having moved to Berlin to escape a particularly drugfueled existence in New York and knocking out 3 albums in the space of two years. The album this was the first of a set that would become known as the Berlin Trilogy, although only one of these 3 albums were actually fully recorded there.



Here's another one, possibly the most epic piece of schizophrenic space funk ever, an ode to isolation, endless travel and more than possibly a passing reference to Barbarossa, the king who Hitler idolised to the point that he named his bloodiest and ultimately most disasterous campaign after.



apparently this is Bowies infamous nazi salute... could be mistaken for a wave...



...unlike Holly Willoughby's attempt at a superman, which is almost certainly a nazi salute.

The other cheeky reference in this one is to cocaine, Bowies drug of choice during this point in his life. You can almost hear it being snorted from the snare drums and rubbed into the gums between every guitar lick you get a tertiary high just from the opening kick drum possibly because the coke dust on the drum kit found its way into the soundwaves which are emited every time you put this track on. People like to paint this era as Bowie's drug hell, but I bet he had the most awesome time making Station to Station. It ranks the longest bowie song on a studio album and possibly only one of 5 that gives me an erection every time I hear it, sorry to be crude but it is musical viagra. Bowie claims that telling Earl Slick to play a Chuck Berry style riff towards the the end of the track, is the only thing he remembers about the making of this album. But for some reason he has a story about having a dream about Iggy Pop getting trapped in a TV... the name dropping bastard.



This song is about that. I have no idea why I didn't add this one to the original draft of this blog, because I had an idea that I should have 10 songs because 10 is one of those numbers that everyone gets overexcited about, because of top 10s, this isn't a top 10, its a top eleven for the day that I chose it... I do however have a top 3 of his albums, they are as follows.


1.

2.

3.
In that order.

All the rest of them are pretty good with the exception of 'black tie white noise' 'earthling' and the tin machine albums, which just didn't work.



The most singalong-able track not to appear on a greatest hits album, never released as a single, possibly because it is so littered with sex references and innuendo. There is a part of me which is dissapointed that Bowie even recorded this instead of simply saying 'bend over, you're about to get the best fucking of your life.' To be fair I would enjoy this song more than getting shagged by Bowie but it would be something to tell the grandkids. A quintessentially Ziggy track, Ziggy being just one of the many persona's which Jones hid behind, and one which fascinated journalists and fans alike. This song fuses sci-fi, sex, androdgony and special effects, probably the standout track on Ziggy, and one which influenced every band in NME from then until now and probably until the end of time itself.



We always knew David was special, but this proves it, Bowie can do something that most university students, people with DIY jobs left unfinished and the architect Gaudi know too well.

"I know when to go out, I know when to stay in, get things done."

One of my friends used this song as a yardstick to time himself getting from the train station to his place of work, and it is a pretty cracking way to start the day. Produced by Nile Rodgers, one of those living legends and a choice that reflected Bowies need to stay on the cutting edge. Rodgers cut his teeth both performing in and producing for bands like Chic, Sister Sledge and Earth Wind and Fire. Now mentioning these bands is like reeling off a tracklisting from one of those Saturday night shit TV karaoke shows, but I'm just going to reclaim disco as one of the most innovative and important forces of nature, so much so that shit bands like ABBA and the Bee Gees hijacked it to make millions, See? Disco is a powerful thing.
Lets Dance is Bowies disco album, and it represents his last truly great album.



She shook me cold, Zeppelin-esque, its not one of those tracks that gets accompanied by a story really but for some reason its one of my favourites.



Another one that is considered part of the Berlin Trilogy, an apparently dark point in his life... does this look dark to you? Here is a man, not a myth, performing on the Kenny Everett show, no Nazi memorabilia, no drugs just a man on stage with some neon lighting behind him, trademark fag in hand some moves and a microphone stand. Singing about boys. This is an enduring image of Bowie and one that comes into my head whenever people mention his name. The man has swagger, and Everett can't resist a little flirt, even though Bowie was no longer gay at this point.



Yeah, Krautrock. Yeah, Eno. Yeah, instrumental. I like that about Bowie, sometimes he let the music do the talking, didn't need to fill up songs with unnecassary words, unlike what I am doing here. Named after Florian Schneider, Kraftwerk member and genius, and the nazi terror weapon, the V2. on a seperate note, my grandmother believed that the Nazi's had supernatural powers after seeing a V2 land in a field in Berkshire, until she saw a documentary about Nazi terror weapons which changed her mind. Bowie loved Germany, nazi or otherwise.



Maybe I am showing my age but I think the Bowie tracks from the film Labyrinth are among the most vital of his career. I remember being 9 and watching the ziggy concert with my dad on some BBC2 tribute or other hoping that the band would play 'as the world falls down'. I also (barely) remember coming home from a nightclub and collapsing on the sofa of a friends house, where said friend proceded to turn on the decks and do an impromptu post club DJ set, this was the second song he played and I had one of those weird druggy moments of realization that this might be one of the best songs ever, and its clear that Bowie wasn't even trying.



It took 22 years from its inception for me to hear this. I was 14 my CD collection consisted of fear of the dark by Iron Maiden and Bitty McClean by Bitty McClean. The imagary conjured up by this song set me on a path of musical self education. The Cop, the Queer and the Priest were very vivid in my head, and there was somthing about the 'smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think you knew you were in the song' line that grabbed me immediately, don't get me wrong, I knew of bowie before, but I hadn't accepted him into my heart as the true saviour before june 2004.



There is something so completely romantic, empowerring and all encompassing about this one, inspired by a newspaper article about a couple jumping the Berlin wall to be together, or maybe about the Producer Tony Visconti's affair with Antonia MaaB (pronounced marss) its been covered by Oasis, Rammstein (in german, of course)and Peter fucking Gabriel, this is a staple of modern music and would be a good example to beam into space as what the human race should be. The title is apparently a reference to the German band Neu! apparently (their exclamation mark, not mine.) It would be wrong to not have this in a top ten and probably best saved until last...


So there you go, for the most part I've attempted to stay away from the Ziggy Stardust's and Space Oddity's but from time to time I have needed to veer towards the Heroes and I have failed in my bid to talk about the music and not the legend but we all have our flaws, and if my gushy idolisation of an icon is a sin, then I'm going to hell, because I'll never repent for it.



Ziggy played guitar.