Electronic Sound 85: blowing my alpine horn

In issue 85 of Electronic Sound magazine, I do a deep dive on the new Bonobo album. Meanwhile, in my column I take on cancel culture while my fictional self blows a horn. All pretty normal, nothing to worry about here.

The Bonobo review is the lead review in this latest edition, which is always a nice spot to be in as a writer. You'll have to read the magazine to find out what I think, but I can tell you it contains the phrase "frozen fish aisle". I also review the latest album by Pan Daijing ("a forest of startled birds") and Arca's new clutch of albums ("witches and queerness").

This month's column has me getting outraged about cancel culture. "Are you telling me I can’t prance around as glam-rock Brian Eno, complete with unbuttoned motorbike jacket and feather shoulder-pads, while hooting Van McCoy's ‘The Hustle’ on the alpine horn?" And yes, that ended up being my illustration for the column, with added conkers for eyes. It'll all make sense if you read the column. Probably. Ahem.

Elsewhere in the mag, in gubbins that wasn't written by me, there's a piece about the Hacienda's design, a chat with Suicide and their "battered old keyboards", Tim Hecker talking about writing soundtracks, and a piece about the ace new electro-pop project Telefis. And loads more.

85 issues, 85 columns. Good grief. Incidentally, Erasure's Oh L'amour only got to number 85 in the charts when it was released, only surpassed by Dollar's cover version in 1987 and Erasure's slightly weedier remix many years later. All the best things are number 85.

Further Fats: Fat Roland's out-of-context March 2018 supercut (2018)

Best electronic albums 2018: this lot can't have their ambient cake and eat it

Here, you word-munching fool, is a selection of ambient albums that didn't make my final list, but I still like-ish them all as if they were my step-children.

If you like dark and rich, check out the chocolate-flaked gateaux of ambience from Gas’s Rausch (Kompakt). Or try a birthday cake instead: ambient artist todos produced an engrossing 10th anniversary mix on Ten Years of A Strangely Isolated Place (A Strangely Isolated Place) that's well worth your attention. Meanwhile, Huerco S iced our ears with plenty of low-fuelled drones on Pendant’s Make Me Know You Sweet (West Mineral Ltd).

I really need to know when to stop with a metaphor. Anyhoo... Brian Eno wrote Music For Installations (UMC) for people ogling sunflowers and melty clocks in art galleries. Meanwhile, house music seemed a key influence on the worldly ambient rhythms of Vakula’s Metaphors (Leleka). Spot the Apocalypse Now moments on Nmesh / Telepath’s ロストエデンへのパス (Dream Catalogue)

Guitar was the driving force by Aussie ambientist Eleventeen Eston on At The Water (Growing Bin Records). I reckon Sarah Davachi’s achingly serene Let Night Come On Bells End The Day (Recital) could be a great going-to-sleep album, but in a good way. Although equally ambient, Grouper’s Grid Of Points (Kranky) was rather more rousing thanks to Liz Harris’s whispery vocals.

If you're following this blog live, we're about to get into the top ten best electronic albums of 2018. Oh come on, show more enthusiasm than that: yawning's just rude.





Scroll all of the best 2018 electronic albums by clicking here.

You are enough

Here's s sign that has popped up in several places around Manchester. This one was tweeted by @uomlib_nick. You are enough, it says.

It's an important sentiment, and maybe something we all need to hear. We have nothing more to give than ourselves, and there's nothing greater to give.

The design is the work of Micah Purnell. He's a lovely bloke who seems to have an 'adbusters' chip in his brain: he has a particular talent for subverting brand imagery. He once designed one of my stories, a frame I still have on display in my living room.

So why the serious post, Fats, and what's this got to do with anything?

You know when you see something differently? The vase instead of the faces? The blue dress instead of the gold dress? It's happened here. I cannot unsee this poster's unintended double-meaning of ambient musician disgust.

You see it too now, right? You are Eno, ugh! Poor Brian.

It's doesn't erase its original meaning though: actually, that quirk has now made this one of my favourite poster designs. If you want some Micah Purnell Design Studio merch in your life, including this poster, head to this website. You should - he deserves the coin.

Because, y'know, maybe you're NOT enough and you need merchandise to complete your life. Dammit. I've missed the point, haven't I.

Brian Eno: music for infuriated garden tool instruments

Brian Eno's early solo work has been reissued on fancy vinyl. That's new 45rpm remasters of Another Green World, Here Come The Warm Jets, Before And After Science and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). I call them Anothaftermountjets for short.

These albums came out shortly after I was born, and although I've heard dribbles of them over the years, it's been interesting to dive into them properly for the first time. Listening to the whole lot, in order. It's definitely the sound of Eno transitioning from Roxy Music into something much wibbly woo. That's a technical music term, by the way.

Also, Another Green World is an anagram of 'angered trowel horn'.

It's a strange feeling to step into Bowie-era Eno. When everyone had hair like the standup comedian Paul Foot.

You can read my review of the reissues in Electronic Sound magazine. If you end up subscribing to the magazine because of this, tweet them at @ElectronicMagUK with the hashtag #angeredtrowelhorn.

Step inside Brian Eno's Reflection

Come in. Pull up an invisible chair. Rest your feet on that anti-matter futon. You are now inside Brian Eno's newest album.

His latest ambient opus Reflection is in the vein of classic Discreet Music Eno. It is slow listening, where the notes stretch out for eternity. What a spacious album. And so many skylights. I like what he's done with the place.

It's well worth a listen - you can catch segments of the whole thing here. May it give you space to stop for a while.

Speaking of Eno, I've been rediscovering Passengers, his much neglected mid-1990s project with U2. An overlooked album for both artists. Which is a shame because Slug and Your Blue Room are great and the Japan edition of the album had a remix of Zoo Station called Bottoms. That's right. Bottoms.

Ambient also-rans: from Panthers to Planet Earth

Ambient music never went away. It just ended up in this also-rans section of my 2016 countdown.

Just because I preferred Pye Corner Audio to Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein’s Stranger Things (Lakeshore Records), it didn’t stop that programme and its soundtrack being a glorious highlight of 2016. Alas, not in my final list though.

There are plenty more ambient works that didn’t make the top 20. COW / Chill Out, World! (Kompakt) saw The Orb at their most floaty, while Sir Brian of Eno spiced up a Velvet Undeground cover with the voice of Peter Serafinowicz on The Ship (Warp Records). Yes, you read that right.

Clark’s The Last Panthers (Warp Records) seemed dark and interesting, but it was soundtracking a TV series I hadn’t seen. Brooklyn’s Julianna Barwick spooked us with Will (Dead Oceans), clearly taking some of her inspiration from Oneohtrix Point Never.

Digging down into the experimental bucket, I have three final ambient works to mention. Norway’s greatest export Biosphere used Ukrainian and Polish folk music on Departed Glories (Smalltown Supersound). Black Merlin trekked to some far off places for the field recordings on Hipnotik Tradisi (Island Of The Gods). And Crotaphytus’s Acanthosaura (Further Records) came across as some kind of ketamine Planet Earth.





Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.

Best electronica albums of 2012: numbers 4 to 2

We're into the top five of what I believe are the best electronic music albums of 2012. I've wet myself with excitement so many times, I'm having to sit on four layers of towels surrounded by a makeshift wall of mop-heads.

We're into to rock-solid (or should that be bleep-solid) classic territory here. If numbers four to two are this good, my chart-topper is liable to trigger a flood alert.

Inevitably, lots of artists didn't make the top ten. Here are some more also-rans for this year's chart.

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 10-8; numbers 7-5; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

Also-rans

Brian Eno's Lux (Warp) missed out on the top ten, as did another big-hitter, Clark. His Iradelphic (Warp) seemed to be Clark-by-numbers to me despite some spine-tingling moments and despite topping my chart three years ago. Shame.

The DJ in me enjoyed I:Cube's mixtape-tastic “M” Megamix (Versatile) and Stunt Rhythms (Big Dada) from my favourite Amon Tobin guise Two Fingers. Also missing out is the noisy improvisation of Carter Tutti Void's Transverse (Mute), an utterly replayable IDM album Steam Days (Border Community) from Nathan Fake and two records from Mouse On Mars: comeback LP Parastrophics (Monkeytown) and follow-up mini-album WOW (Monkeytown).

4 - Grimes - Visions (4AD)

Grimes. Of course, Grimes. I played with the idea of excluding her because she might be too ‘pop’ for the EDM/IDM subculture this blog appeals to. Then I decided only an flipping idiot would exclude her, and although I am an idiot, I’m not a flipping idiot. Because, if you didn’t already know, Visions (4AD) is one of the best albums of the year in any genre.

Among the hazy layered vocals, analogue synth hooks and the light touch that keeps everything in a perfect balance, you’ll find Grimes reclaiming the orchestral stab (Oblivion), bringing back 1980s Prince beats (Colour Of Moonlight) and making a good job of a Mariah wail (Be a Body).

Ah yes. The voice, the voice, the voice. This will make or break the album for you. She’s high, she’s low, she’s delicate and she’s bluesy – almost choral on tracks like Skin. The voice is everywhere, and at its most effective, it is versatile and moving. Tied with such solid instrumentation, if this doesn’t grab you on first play, try it a dozen more times. Deserves to be on as many coffee tables as Moby (ask your grandad).

3 - Actress - R.I.P (Honest Jon’s)

Two years after I excluded Actress’ Splazsh from my end-of-year top ten, here he is making waves in the 2012 list. And what an unexpected treat: Actress has shut his drum machine under the stairs with the hoover, instead producing a collection of loops that take their rhythm from the likes of tape hiss, broken orchestration and eerie rattles. And probably from the hoover too.

R.I.P (Honest Jon's) is a dirty affair, but he allows space for the crackles and nastiness by keeping it simple. Actress has dug down into the essence of each track, finding the trashy distortions and frequencies then ditching anything else that doesn’t fit the groove. It’s puffy, fuzzy but not fussy.

Tracks like Raven are so smothered in hiss, it takes a while to find the rhythm. Somewhere amid the hissing loops of Marble Plexus, I hear a bass drum: I almost write a letter of astonishment to the Telegraph. Serpent has a shaky Splazsh-style rhythm but it’s bedded beneath layers of strings – in the true orchestral sense – and is the best example of why there's no other album like this in 2012. R.I.P is deep, metallic and, erm, dead good.

2 - Orbital - Wonky (ACP)

You wait eight years for a new Orbital album and one comes along at once. It is an unwritten rule of music criticism that comebacks should not work. Chinese Democracy. Free As A Bird. Dark Light*. They often give you the feeling you've been cheated. And yet Wonky (ACP) was Orbital’s best album since the mid-90s, leaving sweating fans everywhere throwing deep shapes of relief.

The throw-back moments are here, for example the Satan remix or the Belfast-style old tape loop reused for Stringy Acid, or indeed in the cut-up vocals starting One Big Moment or the skipping Distractions snares. But Orbital don't rely on these production details: instead they choose to rack up their live punch front-and-centre. New France is stadium dance music at its most euphoric, while title track Wonky is all build-up and build-up designed to wear out the soles of your disco crocs.

The two 2012 gig tickets in my pocket prove I am an Orbital junkie, so maybe I shouldn’t be placing them so high up in this top ten. But comeback albums of this quality are rare, and to top that, this album has a live anthem with as much potency as Chime and as much catchiness as Impact: album closer Where Is It Going equals their absolute best. They couldn't have done this better - and if you need one more reason for the Satan-bringers appearance in this top ten, this just so happens to be my 666th blog post on Fat Roland on Electronica. Even a top blog gives the right number etc etc...

[Read other parts of the top ten here: numbers 10-8; numbers 7-5; number 1. Click here for the whole lot.]

* You remember Dark Light, right? No?
Further Fats: Best electronica albums of 2011

Best electronica albums of 2011: number 1

Brummie music thinkbod Andrew Dubber recently railed against the habit of hacks writing off 2011 as the ‘year of boring music’. He argued that it said more about the paucity of stimulation in the journalists’ lives rather than a lack of good quality music.

“I suspect that it is not our musicians that have let us down, but our champions of music.

"So if your job is to report upon popular music and you are unable to find ten incredible things in the past year to share with those of us who still read what you have to say, then that makes you a failure.”

“John Peel-ism should be the norm,” he added.

Let me extend that thought. If you’ve ever liked a YouTube music video then left a comment declaring old music to be way better than the mulch that is spooned down our gullets today, then you might as well piss all over John Peel’s grave, suck up the urine from the soil, wait for it to digest, then take a second slash whilst banging on about how the first piss was a nicer shade of yellow.

My difficulty was not finding ten incredible things, but narrowing it down to an arbitrary number that inevitably led me to exclude something quite important....

[This is part four. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three.]

Some also rans

...James Blake’s album James Blake (Atlas). The most important underground electronic music artist of the past year is not in my top ten, despite me doing everything I could into tricking you into thinking he was Album Of The Year at the end of my previous post. Sorry 'bout that.

Last December, I indicated the excitement that preceded his debut album. When it finally came it, I felt it was playing to a quite different audience. An intricate album full of beautiful bass that even caught the attention of Beyonce – but there were ten other incredible things I wanted to share more than Blake's LP.

Other also-rans include new kids on the block, Cant. I found their album Dreams Come True (Warp) too band-y. I believe the monumentally entertaining Ceephax Acid Crew had an Unstoppable Phax Machine (030303), but I didn't get the memo, whilst there was no space in the top ten for the industrial glory of Byetone’s Symeta (Raster Notion) nor for Brian Eno’s poet-poking Drums Between The Bells (Warp).

Which only leaves one thing: a young Glasgow musician who’s brandishing something long, transparent and deadly. It’s a glass sword. That was a reference to a glass sword. Not his penis.

1 - Rustie - Glass Swords

The arpeggiated mayhem of Zig-Zag was the first moment beat-nuts took notice of Rustie. With that track and the 2009 highlight Bad Science EP, he very much sounded like a kid earning his dues in the Lucky Me collective’s electronic workshop.

Meanwhile, his mentors Hudson Mohawke and Mike Slott lead the way for the Glaswegians with, respectively, the Butter and Lucky 9Teen albums. Rustie, perhaps, sounded like the talented apprentice playing with the Nintendo in the corner, biding his time until...

Glass Swords (Warp). It takes three minutes for the first insane slap bass to cut through the ambience to make way for an orgy of portamento mayhem and retro computer game wizardry.

It brings to mind the retro synth mischief of Lorn, whose 2010 debut sounded like a naughty Knight Rider breaking into the Blade Runner film set. Rustie’s debut takes that philosophy much further. If Lorn was Kansas in black and white, Glass Swords is so far over the rainbow, it has hypercoloured the sun itself.

This is the sound of a young pretender dicking about with his software, which would be really annoying at a party, but committed to record it is a joy. He pumps up the Hudson Mohawke beat aesthetic until it bursts.

All Night is a soul jam at the most disgusting sex party ever to be held in your bass bins. Hover Traps is simply the catchiest tune of 2011, Globes sounds like drums crashing against the dawn of time, while After Light throbs with so much minor chord desire between the cut-up voices and blistering bass, you’ll be writing love letters to Glass Swords well into your pensionable years.

Every synth crunch on Glass Swords is a Glasgow kiss that requires, if you so please, your full bleeping attention. And it is all underpinned with a crystal-clear balance of melody and emotion. It feels to good to have Rustie battering my ear drums. You know how you can get fish to nibble your corn-encrusted feet in pretentious shopping centres? In this case, your feet are your ears and instead of fish there are nice things like pies and ice pops and bacon Frazzles.

Which reminds me, I’m hungry. Rustie's Glass Swords is my Album Of The Year 2011 because it matters and I'll be humming it in a year's time. Do have a listen below. Thank you for reading my blog in 2011. It has been an extraordinary year in many ways, and none of it would be possible if lovely people like you didn’t dip your eyes in my word sludge every now and then. Let’s do the same in 2012, only more ridiculous, more unrestrained and with more bacon Frazzles. Did I tell you I was hungry?



[This is part four. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three.]

Teebs, Babe Rainbow and Ital Tek tattooed onto a pop star's innards

I barely wordpuke about electronic jams in this here netspace, even though the whole reason for this website is to delare the word of the beat, of the resonance filter, of the wob-wob-wob.

Instead, I'm either banging on about pop music (OMG JUSTIN BIEBPIPE GOT A TATTOO OF POL POT ON HIS LARGE INTESTINE OMG) or simply not posting at all. This, lovely reader, is not good enough.

So what has been performing syncopated rhythms on my ear drums?

Teebs (pictured) has joined Soundcloud, which is about bloody time because I'm fed up of searching for the deadlocked skate dude on there and not finding him. Seriously. Just last weekend, I couldn't find him so had to punch Soundcloud in the face yet again. His first track posted there is about a year old, but it's sunny and dancy and deserves an embed below.

Anchor Steam by teebsio

Speaking of ambient jams that wouldn't look out of place spread over Brian Eno's bald head, I do believe I haven't told you about Babe Rainbow's Set Loose from his Endless Path EP.  It's simple and sad and deserves repeat clicks.

Babe Rainbow - "Set Loose" taken from Endless Path EP - OUT NOW by Warp Records

Also, Brighton's Ital Tek (or iTAL tEK or iTaL tEk or whatever his shift key is doing on any one day) has teamed up with London's Om Unit. Mr Unit, as it's only polite to call him, has been known to make music in the back of an RV before now. His pairing with Ital Tek is a persistent little bugger: a remix of Mr Tek's War Of The Ants. I'm having those tiddlywink snare effects tattooed on a pop star's pancreas.

Ital tek - war of the ants (om unit remix) Coming Soon (Atom River) by omunit

Top ten best electronica albums of 2010: part one of four

This is part one. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part two, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

10 - Lorn – Nothing Else

Marcus 'Lorn' Ortega teased us with the track Until There Is No End on Fat City Records some time ago, a deeply moving slice of apocalypto-funk. Clark, the recipient of my Best Album Of 2010, then went on to master his debut album Nothing Else. You know it because every city in the UK has been plastered top to bottom with stickers promoting the record. In the process, the Brainfeeder sound (crunchy cut-paste J Dilla beats) was quickly knocked several days left of Tuesday with the label's first signing outside of Los Angeles.

It was also Brainfeeder's second album proper, and with Lorn quoting Milton all about the place, you knew it would be something special. Before now, I have praised his testosterone retro and made comparisons to Animal Farm and Bladerunner. The album sounds like Knight Rider having a breakdown: maybe it takes itself too seriously, but Nothing Else soaks you like tears and rain with a sound defined by no-one else but Lorn.

Embrace the synth melancholy. Buy Lorn's Nothing else from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

9 - Venetian Snares - My So-Called Life

Like a naughty boy, Aaron Funk ventured away from his natural home at Planet Mu and set up Timesig Records for the (arguably) 22nd studio album from his interior decor / percussion-inspired moniker. Because it was recorded quickly - Snares sees this more of a diary entry than a year's work - My So-Called Life shifted the game somewhat. Well. Slightly. Its still a (detri)mentalist cavalcade of dirty junglism.

The quick recording process lightened the music by precisely nought-point-seven degrees: for example, pastoral string-picking gives way to a beautifully melodic 8bit 'n' bass on title track My So Called Life. But it's the vocal samples that are leaned on more heavily than usual here - and what horrible vocals. Grossly non-PC Welfare Wednesday contains a hilarious jibe at Planet Mu label boss Mike Paradinas, while Who Wants Cake? and Posers And Camera Phones say things that would make Jerry Sadowitz blush.

The most accessible and disgusting Venetian Snares album for a while. Buy it from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

8 - Caribou – Swim

Caribou doesn't need any more praise heaped on his handsome locks. Resident Advisor has already pronounced Swim as the album of the year (please don't look at that list too much: mine is horribly and coincidentally similar). And Sun's dizzying refrain ("sun, sun, sun, sun...") loomed heavily over 2010.

I have an entirely personal reason for including Swim here. Opening track Odessa was playing in the bar in which I was getting drunk after my blog awards win, and it kind of became my soundtrack. That's not to downplay the rest of the LP though: crisp, driving house music, chiming hypnotica on Bowls and a nod towards indie pop on Kaili. But really, it's all about Odessa and it's all about the Sun. Sun. Sun. Sun. Dammit, there I go again.

Hunt yourself a Caribou: buy Swim from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

Not quite in the top ten (part one)

I will not pretend my list - or indeed any element of my blog - is comprehensive. I also don't think this has been a classic year for electronica, nor that all of these artists are electronica. Crikes. This is like a minefield. Anyhoo, here are some of the albums that didn't pass muster.

I'm astonished at how commercial some of my top ten is this year, although Magnetic Man's eponymous debut album pushed the pop too far to be included, despite MAD and despite it being one of the most important electronic music collaborations of recent times. The same goes for Plastic Beach by the Gorillaz, although that was still a glorious album.

Daft Punk's Tron Legacy soundtrack came very close; maybe it would have helped if I'd bothered seeing the film. I found Darkstar's slow mosh-hopping North difficult to love, while Salem's King Knight didn't tug the earstrings enough for a top placing. Meanwhile, UNKLE bored me to sleep with Where Did The Night Fall.

I was gutted not to include two albums at the opposite end of the electronic sonic spectrum: Ikonika's gamer-baiting Contact Want Love Hate and Brian Eno / Jon Hopkins' Small Craft On A Milk Sea (which is not a great ambient album: it is a great techno album). Any top ten without them would be a crime. It's a fair cop, guv.

This is part one. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part two, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

Painting 2010 beige: Eno, Orb, Hardfloor and Seefeel

It's not sepia: it's beige. When you look back on the past, you're looking through beige-tinted glasses. Don't go romanticising it.

A clutch of recent and upcoming releases offer several shades of light brown for those with nostalgia in mind. Let's start with The Orb, who have teamed up with 90s uber-producer Youth to put out a retrospective of the acid house label WAU! Mr Modo, called Impossible Oddities.

You may think you've never heard of WAU! Mr Modo, but you surely do remember their biggest hits Zoe's Sunshine On A Rainy Day and The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds. Both tracks are here, albeit re-jigged. I'm more excited by the Orb's remix of Sun Electric from back in the days when an Orb remix was always called an 'Orbital mix', thereby confusing them with the famous but unconnected head-lamped techno duo that brought us Satan.

Also, ambient sandal-gazers Seefeel are to release their first album in 14 years (artwork pictured). The band was relaunched by their original pair of guitarists a couple of years ago and, after releasing the summer-crackled Faults EP (the title track is lovely) in September, they have slated an eponymous long-player for a February 2011 release on Warp Records.

And there's more. Hardfloor are back, this time with their eighth studio LP. Two Guys Three Boxes (the boxes referring to their beloved acid-making machines and not record boxes) will be out on bonfire night. And finally, we are moments from the launch of the Small Craft On A Milk Sea, Brian Eno's album on Warp Records and, for many, the most anticipated release of the year. Eno's album will be out on November 15th and you can listen to bits of it here.

The old school is very much alive, well, and unashamedly beige.

Brian Eno will release his new album on Warp Records

So it's true. Brian Eno, king of the ambient and soundtrackist for many-an-airport, is to release a new album on Warp Records.

I reported this here on Friday, but I can't help feeling it seemed a little too good to be true. Warp's debt - particularly Aphex Twin's - to Eno seemed a little too obvious. It would be like The Wanted teaming up with the Backstreet Boys. Or Flo Rida doing a duet with the back end of a sheep.

If you want to be kept up-to-date with the new album's development, click here to go to Eno's website.

Meanwhile, my other bit of speculation came true - Magnetic Man did indeed score a top ten hit at the weekend. Maybe it's not such a compliment to be in this week's chart: as twitterer Tom Ewing pointed out, "the new UK number one is called All Time Low. Not even close lads, though for a first go it's a decent stab."

At least the Wanted have got to the top spot as a result of their singing talents and not in any way because of their... oh. I see.

(Picture: South Bank Centre)

The Gospel According To Aphex Twin

> See a video of this talk here

Bright Club Manchester invited me to give a talk at their debut event at Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester. So I decided to set up a new religion and present it to the unsuspecting masses.

My brief from Bright Club was to talk about something I'm passionate about and to make it entertaining. My brief to myself was to make it sound convincing whilst making absolutely no sense whatsoever. It also had to be utterly un-fanboy, so there are no details. Just silliness.

You can stream the full audio for the Gospel According To Aphex Twin here. Meanwhile, here is the full text.

Gospel According To Aphex Twin

I'm here to present to you tonight a new religion based on modern electronic music, and by the end of this you will be converted. It's based on the holy trinity of the analogue drum pad, squelchy bass line and bearded geeks in bedroom studios. This is the gospel according to Aphex Twin.

To understand this gospel, you need to go back to the prophets. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who were working with George Martin before he became that bloke to do with the Beatles. Who knows what the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is most well known for? (Audience response: "Dr Who!") Doctor Who theme tune, absolutely right. Ron Grainger's notes to them contained annotations like 'swoops' and 'wind bubbles', it really was a fantastic new sound.

In the beginning also, there were hippy-haired men in sandals. Some of Pink Floyd's more experimental was as close to techno as you're ever going to get. I've not got time to go into this now, but the Beatles really do provide the missing link between skiffle and the Chemical Brothers (come and ask me afterwards!).

In the beginning, also, you had the puritans. Kraftwerk, who were clean and clinical, who stood there on their podiums giving sermons about wild ideas like pocket calculators and autobahns.

But I'm talking about modern electronic music. In the 80s, a lot of electronic music was about going out, getting dressed up and going dancing, so you had new wave, hip hop, rave. But this is about what happened after that. When the musical missionaries brought Detroit house music over to Europe, it became something different. We know it as electronica, intelligent dance music, armchair techno or, my favourite, braindance.

You had people like LFO who did this really ordered warehouse techno, which made Kraftwerk look like a free jazz band: they were cold and ordered  - and looming (you know when you get that feeling when the One Show's about to come on?). It brought techno kicking and screaming from the dance floor into the pizza-box strewn living room of the ravers.

This whole group of bands gave us the new scriptures to follow. The Artificial Intelligence series of CDs was brilliant stuff. Their record label described it as: "You could sit down and listen to it like you would a Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd album.” This was radical for that time, it really hadn't been done before. Although that manifesto was later used to excuse trip hop, which is wrong.

You had Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85 – 92, our bedraggled poster boy tonight. On that album - it's a beautiful album - there was a sample from the Charlie And The Chocolate Factory film, the one with Gene Wilder, “we are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams” – for me that was inspiration, it was like the Martin Luther King of electronic music.

And Orbital's brown album, so-called because it didn't have a title. It was their second album and it was so unifying and so uplifting that if you go to an Orbital gig now, it's like they're the early hymn writers and people are raising their arms in unity and in worship. The NME called Orbital's second album “as warm as plasma and as eerie as ectoplasm”. And incidentally,I wasn't sure how to fit this in: Orbital are named after the M25, and I wanted to do a section based on bands named after roadways. I've only got The Streets, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes and Muse...

So what are the beliefs of the Gospel According To Aphex Twin? Salvation can be found experimentation. We will encourage you to question and to challenge. So we've got Flying Lotus paying tribute to Alice Coltrane on his new album and Bjork has been working with techno pioneers for most of her career.

Salvation can be found in repetition, that Hot Chip refrain of "the joy of repetition is within you". Repetition in this religion is not essential, but it helps you reach a new, higher state of consciousness (something falls down at the back) or make people collapse. Repetition is a political thing also: a previous government tried to make repetitive beats illegal. Some of you might remember the Criminal Justice Bill was a big thing. Repetitive beats technically became illegal, but it became law. Fighting it was a bit like like banging your head against a brick wall continuously and ironically.

Salvation can also be found in staying underground. It's easier for me to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for electronica to get into the singles chart; it just doesn't happen. Autechre, who are the Mancunian purists of techno music, are wilfully obscure. I run a website on electronic music and for a while I ran a thing called Chartwatch where I would track the progress week-by-week of electronic acts in the singles chart. It wasn't very successful, and I've got a few of the entries here:

- No new electronica in the singles chart.
- Still no new electronica in the singles chart.
- Simply Red are in the top 40, I'm off for a cry.

So it didn't really work. Speaking of Simply Red, it brings me to the one unforgiveable sin, which all religions must have. The unforgiveable sin in this new religion is mediocracy. If you are, for example, The Orb and you record a 40-minute single Blue Room and it accidentally rockets up the charts and so you go on Top Of The Pops on prime-time TV and you're not sure what to do so you play chess, that is brilliant. If however, your album ends up on coffee tables, you start hanging out with celebrities and you've got lyrics like "there was snow, white snow", then you're Coldplay.

Extremism is encouraged in the Gospel According To Aphex Twin. Like all good religions, extremism is encouraged. So Venetian Snares, one of my favourite bands, he sounds very much like a barrell of nails being rolled down a cobbled hill. I'd particularly recommend the albums Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms, Filth and Winnipeg Is a Frozen Shithole.

I'm here to increase my religion, I'm here to grow my religion because I had to fit it into the theme of tonight. So will the Gospel According To Aphex Twin work? We will get organised, we will make Brian Eno pope. Electronica is dominated by a lot of the hallmarks of religion. So you'vbe got worshippers in communal ecstacy, you've got white middle-class, socially-inadequate men all over the place and also electronica's very good at looking down its nose at other people not quite doing it right.

I'd like to end with a bit of involvement, if you'd like. This is where you become part of the new religion. I'd like to end with a call-and-response, a piece of liturgy. This comes from when Lady Gaga and La Roux and Ladyhawke were first getting successful and the Guardian ran a piece about "chicks with synths", that was the new thing. So I wrote a letter to James Blunt suggesting that perhaps he get on the bandwagon and... you'll see.

If you can say the bits in bold, but please can you say it loudly and clearly and with conviction:

We join together in the Gospel According To Aphex Twin.

Aphex Twin is the daddy.

This is the First Letter To James Blunt, chapter one.  

Thanks be to Aphex.

Dear James Blunt. You should become a chick with a synth.

Amen to that.

You need to buy a nice shiny silver synthesiser and get it into every publicity shot you can.

Praise be the synthesiser.

You will, of course, need to alter your gender. I once cut the leg off a teddy bear with my dad's nosehair clippers... I'm sure changing your sex wouldn't be much different.

Get to the point.

I pledge my all to the Gospel According To Aphex Twin and his holiness, Brian Eno.

I will experiment.

Yes I will.  

I will embrace repetition.  

Yes I will.

I will embrace repetition.  

That’s not funny.

I will follow the holy order of the analogue drum pad

Thum!

and the squelchy bassline.

Pyow!

Lead us not into Maroon 5 for ever and ever.

Amen.

This was the Gospel According To Aphex Twin. Thank you very much.

You can stream the full audio for the Gospel According To Aphex Twin here.

Good thing bad thing

Good thing: the Cabaret Formerly Known As Bucket at Chorlton Art's Festival the other night had puppet poetry, a zombie western band and the eye-catching Madame Laycock And Her Dabeno Pleasures. It was also at a great wee bar, Oddest, which ought to be prosecuted under trade description laws.

Bad thing: I spent all morning the other day annoyed at Coldplay. I listened to people arguing so I was annoyed at Coldplay. I was late for my bus so I was annoyed at Coldplay. I turned on Radio One and heard JLS so I was annoyed at Coldplay. Irrational, undirected hatred is not helpful.

Good thing: I spent Thursday on my Twitter feed posting links to tracks Brian Eno has written or produced. For your non-tweeting pleasure, here they are: Roxy Music's Ladytron, Byrne and Eno's America Is Waiting, Eno's Here Come The Warm Jets, Bowie's Warszawa (which apparently gave Joy Division their 'Warsaw' name, I discovered later) and Eno's Fractal Zoom.

Bad thing: I had an incredibly dirty exchange of innuendos with the poet laureate. We had both been drinking, I was talking about a delivery of her books, and "in the back" was all it took. I tried to spark off a similar exchange in a bar a few days later, talked about "crusts" and just ended up offending someone.

Good things: Name dropping on blogs. Hootsuite. Getting up an hour earlier every day to write and not feeling as dead as I thought I would. Borland's Universe Trilogy (google it). Reunion drinks with friends I'd known fifteen / twenty years ago and it being *great*.

Bad thing (which is a good thing really): I am leading a church. Run for the hills. Sanctus 1 were mad enough to vote me onto their leadership team. Thankfully, there are other leaders and so it's not going to go all Koresh. It will, however, go all Moonie and not in the way you're thinking.

Karen O versus Brian Eno: the alternative Oscar race

The grouchy Oscars have chucked sand in the face of Yeah Yeah Yeah's frontpiece Karen O and king of ambientronicableeps Brian Eno.

It seems that neither musical genius will be allowed to vye for the Best Original Score Oscar gong at the 2010 Academy Awards. Which is a shame for Karen O for her work on Wild Things, my favourite film of 2009.

The reasons are dull and not worth going into here - thank goodness Pitchfork have done that already - but this raises an important and probably era-defining question:

How else can we decide who's better? Karen O or Brian Eno?

Here's how. (Coughs.) Gentles and ladymen, I present the 2010 award for the Best-Original-Karen-O-Or-Brian-Eno. The nominees are: Karen O and Brian Eno. Let the judging commence.

Best real name

Karen O is obviously not her real name. Her proper name is Karen Lee Orzolek, which almost rhymes Roland Orzabel. But she is trumped by the ridiculous birth moniker of Brian Eno, which is Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. And that rhymes with nothing - like orange, modem or Christmas tree. Best real name: Brian Eno.

Stupidest album title

Brian Eno may have thrown us a couple of bones in the shape of January 7003: Bell Studies For The Clock Of The Long Now and Lady June's Linguistic Leprosy, but Karen O clearly wins because, with It's Blitz!, she clearly loves exclamation marks whereas the bald one thinks he's above such things. Stupidest album title: Karen O.

Best inventor

I don't think the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have ever invented anything, so Karen O tumbles at the first obstacle. Brian Eno, meanwhile, invented the Windows 95 start-up sound and is often incorrectly credited with the invention of ambient music. Best inventor: Brian Eno.

General coolness

This is a close one. Brian Eno helped out Belinda Carlisle on a French album. Karen O recorded a porn theme with Kool Keith. Brian Eno works for the Liberal Democrats. Karen O made music in a Manhatten loft apartment. Brian Eno produced Coldplay. Karen O wrote a song describing what happens when you stick your finger in a light socket. Like I said, it's a close one, but the O scrapes it. General coolness: Karen O.

Tie breaker: best anagram

'Brian Eno' is an anagram of 'One Brain', while 'Karen O Out Of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' is both an anagram of 'Yo-ho-ho! A heathy Yankee features' and 'A Nauseate Feathery Hey Hooky Ho'. Best anagram: clearly Brian Eno.

The award for the Best-Original-Karen-O-Or-Brian-Eno goes to Mr Brian Eno.

Now, Brian, can you please keep your speech to less than three minutes. ...Okay, Brian, you can stop now. Brian. Brian! Stop now, Brian. ...Brian, you're just repeating things seemingly senselessly. Stop, Brian. I think he's stuck in some kind of algorithm. Brian!

Vive la crackle: Kraftwerk drop a klanger with Der Katalog

So then, Kraftwerk's classic bleepiness has been digitally remastered in the form of The Catalogue, an eight-album box set.

Ralf Hütter has been digitally storing the Krafty ones' crumbling old master tapes for some time, so it was inevitable that some kind of redux release would end up on our shelves.

Now, don't get me wrong. Sometimes, remastered things make sense. The extra shiny bits in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind are quite nice. I much prefer the 1,400 page version of Stephen King's The Stand, if only for the trailblazing anti-hero Trashcan Man.

But what's wrong with analogue fuzziness? You wouldn't attempt an 8 bit version of Eno's Music For Airports and you wouldn't scrap your Minimoog because it oscillates too much.

I'm being too old fashioned and grumpy, and anyhoo a major music magazine has already beaten me to it with this withering review:

"Sadly, the remaster is a fiasco. The soft tones of Computer Love become sharp, the wide spaces of Home Computer contract into tunnels, and Pocket Calculator bears down on us like a spiked ceiling in a horror film.

"Equally poor is the remastered Radio-activity, where atmospheric crackles and hisses have been removed by noise reduction software. For pity’s sake, they’re part of the music!"

Out of Jan 'Mouse On Mars' St Werner, Brian Eno and Merzbow, who do you think would do the fandango?

Before I get my hands filthy with three recent albums, I ought to warn you that I've been obsessed with horses for the past few weeks.  Not Equus-obsessed, but just finding-them-amusing obsessed.  So at some point during this blog post, I will exclaim "Horse!" when you least expect it.  Be ready.

Jan St Werner, of Mouse On Mars and Von Sudenfed fame, has again branched out into his solo guise Lithops.  By all means, look up Lithops' new album Ye Viols, but please don't expect a Mouse-type jaunt.

When it's upbeat, it's like trampolining on barbed wire; when it's downbeat, it's like having your head rolled in setting fibre glass.  I can only assume that while making Mouse On Mars tracks, St Werner tidies out all the mistakes and broken ideas by turning his studio upside-down, shaking it, and letting all the snippets and imperfections pour into Lithops.

Ye Viols is a must only for die-hard Autechre fans and appreciators of sparkling, pristine production.  If you're not fussed about either of these, stick to Mouse On Mars.

Album number two.  Brian Eno collaborated with Moebius and Roedelius, who are jointly known as Cluster (photo: Mark Pilkington).  They brought us an album called After The Heat, an LP rich with rural etherealtronica, Vangelis-inspired soundtrackism and cute popsurreality.

After I've finished making up words, consider that this album is over 30 years old. Its re-release sits neatly in our Twitterfied world of dubstep and glitch, like a cool grandpops who knows how to get out of his threadbare chair and get down with the kids.

The best track on After The Heat is The Belldog.  It has a synthy bass which circles and circles, building a huge sense of foreboding, and also because of its 70s analogueness, makes the whole track sound like the Airwolf pilots getting stoned.

Which brings me, finally, to another old master.  Merzbow has released the first volume of his 13 Japanese Birds series, as written about so eloquently here on my site.

If you can stomach 20 minute tracks of frenetic precision drumming and bustling distortion, then you're a greater person than me. I'm just thrilled he called one track Fandangos In Space.  I want to have a fandango in space.  Can someone arrange that, please?

Did you see my horse-shout?  It's in the first paragraph of this post.  I told you it'd be when you least expect it.  I'm clever, me.

What I watched, what I heard and what I thought in 2008

The best scene in a film.

Call it. I'm tempted to plump for Javier Bardem's baiting of a gas station owner in No Country For Old Men, or the moment we realised Indy was on a nuclear test site in that vivid scene with the dining table dummies in Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull.

But it's neither of these, friendo. My favourite scene of the year taught me everything we need to know about the fragility of life. In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, our foul-mouthed protagonist fights an Elemental - kind of a vegetarian Godzilla - and the resulting death scene is astonishing, beautiful and the absolute opposite of the throwaway baddie deaths we often get with Hollywood.

Crappest purchase of 2008.

Gym membership. I should have seen the warning signs as soon as I walked in: "Gym? What's a gym? ... Oh! A gym!"

Back to films again - which was the best in 2008?

Strange beasties ruled 2008. Firstly, Wall-E was one of the best animations for years, and the most tender robot love affair since Bjork's All Is Full Of Love video. Cloverfield was a lost creature of a different kind, in a film which was simply a tour-de-force of suspense and large-scale horror.

Another pair of strange beasties brought us the best two films of the year. Heath Ledger gave us 2008's best performance in The Dark Knight, although he should have rescued his magic-trick pencil and crossed through a couple of over-long scenes. Instead, I raise a glass to the Oscar-winning monster Anton Chigurh and No Country For Old Men - the bestest film of 2008 following a couple of worrying Coen Brothers misfires.

Anti-Obama: the biggest political disappointment of 2008.

Brian Eno has completed his first year as Liberal Democrat youth advisor. I was a tad disheartened to see the modern-fangled youth of today haven't all shaved their head and dedicated their lives to Robert Fripp or Mixmaster Morris. It's still more thug life than My Squelchy Life. Come on, Brian, get it together.

My moment of puffed-chestness in 2008.

I was proud that I tried a stand-up comedy routine, which was scary but gosh I did it. There was some comedy in there, it was rather routine, but at least I was standing up. My challenge now is to do more in 2009.

My greatest personal achievement of the year was losing 50 lbs in a few short months. Yes, I know, I should mention these things on my blog so you can post messages of encouragement / bitter jealousy. The only thing I won't allow is "Thin Roland" jokes, because believe me it has been done to death by my wonderfully supportive if slightly unoriginal friends.

Top telly of 2008. Yes, this is getting a little sad now.

Watching The Wire on DVD doesn't count, because it came out in, like, 1526 or something. So then, two little words sum up my favouritest TV moment of this blessed 12 months.

Dead.

Set.

My worst moment of 2008.

There is only one. A couple of weeks ago, my cat Whiskey died after a brief illness. She had been my closest companion since I was 16, and I have felt aimless and listless since I lost her. I have 19 years of fond memories of a good-tempered, sleek, shy furball. She deserves a hundred blog posts, but what needs to be said can be said in just a few words: I'll miss her forever.

2008's best album. Probably.

A tough one this, as I don't think it has been a classic year for electronica. I think Metronomy and The Whip are a dish best served live. The Bug took one giant dubstep forward with London Zoo, while fellow dubstepper Burial wowed the Mercury Music Prize with his 2007 album Untrue. I seriously rated Bochum Welt's ROB (Robotic Operating Buddy) even though I didn't rave enough in this post from April .

Portishead's Third showed Tricky a thing or two about keeping fresh after years out of the fridge, and Leila's equally accomplished comeback was quiet but beautiful. Gang Gang Dance's primal Saint Dymphna was Warp Record's most tribal release, while Squarepusher held back on the drums for his jaaazz Just A Souvenier album. (Edit: I forgot to mention Autechre's Quaristice, which I attempted to play as background music in my bookshop but only succeeded in pissing people off. Consider it mentioned.)

And finally, top of the tree is a gathering of geeky keyboard wizardary called Hot Chip (pictured). Made In The Dark's mechano pop is a little to commercial for this snobbish blog, but oh what joy when it produces videos like this for One Pure Thought.

Skip to the end...

There. I called it. And it came up heads. I'm going to buy a bicycle before all the shops close down. Meanwhile, I'll cook up a little 2009 preview. While you're waiting for that, have a joyous new year.

A good week for old LPs - and if you say 'what's an LP', I'll set fire to your mp3 player

808 State (pictured), Manchester's third greatest band after Together and Swing Out Sister, have reissued a glut of old LPs.

Firstly, Quadrastate, the one with Pacific State on, is out on CD for the first time.

And secondly, a quartet of old 808 albums have put on a bit of slap and come out to play again: 90, ex:el, the astonishing Gorgeous and the cock-themed Don Solaris.

As if my joy wasn't unbridled enough, record label ZTT are also planning on rereleasing MC Tunes' The North At It's Heights.

MC Tunes, if you recall, was the lizard-tongued rapper that had an "only rhyme that bitessss" back in the dying months of Thatcher's Britain.

Speaking of Prime Ministerial gay icons... Back in Ted Heath's day, there was a collosal jam session to end all collosal jam sessions.

King Crimson lynchpin Robert Fripp was meant to be laying down some phat guitar licks for the god-voiced Robert Wyatt, when he bunked off to lark around with Brian Eno.

You remember Brian. I did a Bri Chart of him once.

Anyhoo, the resulting session between Fripp and Eno was the historic 21-minute opus Heavenly Music Corporation. This rich, mesmerising wash is a highlight of their No Pussyfooting album, which has also, like the 808 State albums, been released back into the wild.

Which means it's a good week for old LPs. Go find a record shop, virtual or otherwise, and reminisce your guts up.

It's not a pie chart but I called it a Bri Chart because that was the only pun I could think of

This chart shows why I'm worried about Brian Eno. (Click here for large.)

I should have posted this months ago, when Eno told Radio 4's Front Row that he would be producing the latest LP from tapioca-flavoured, whinging popmunters Coldplay.

He said their new material "will be very original and very different from what they've done before."

It wasn't.

Viva La Whatever was released by Coldplay this week and, like past albums from James and U2, you can see the Eno sheen dripping from every note.

But what was Eno thinking of? What was the former producer of U2's sunglasses era and Talking Heads doing anywhere near a band I consider so bad, I'd rather trim my toenails with a chainsaw than listen to Chris Martin's Bluntesque mediocrity.

That's why I created my Bri Chart, above, showing the collapsing milestone's of Brian Eno's production career.

On a more delightful note, listen to Islands covering Eno's The Big Ship (you'll need to scroll down a bit).

Of his Eno cover, Islands' Nicholas Thorburn said "It doesn't matter if it's sloppy. Things can be a little rough around the edges if they have heart."

Or they can be as neat and tidy as a Coldplay song and have absolutely no pulse whatsoever.

Just time for an mpSunday, the series where I use the internet to give away music. Clever, I know. It only seems relevant to bust you some Eno, so here goes:

mpSunday: Brian Eno's Big Ship (this mp3 has now gaaawn - click here for the latest mpSunday.)