Dear James Blunt

To: Twenty-First Artists Ltd,

1 Blythe Road,

London

W14 OHG

Dear James Blunt,

I couldn't help noticing that you aren't quite the chart presence you once were. Your last three singles, which the BBC lovingly described as "catchy and uplifting, in a Chris-Martin-on-an-off-day kinda way", have reached numbers four, 57 and 20 respectively. I would have thought if these chart positions befell Girls Aloud, KitKat's sponsorship moguls would be spluttering into their sugary tea.

May I offer a suggestion that would help return you back up the greasy pole of fame?

These days, it's all about chicks with synths. Trust me on this: I have my finger on the pulse of modern whims. Lady Gaga is a chick with a synth. La Roux is a chick with a synth. Britney Spears is a chick with a synth (that is, assuming "synth" is rural states slang for a snaffled bag of Bic razors).

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

You don't have to play it yourself:. Maybe smuggle in a synth pop legend such as Gary Numan, Adamski or Richard Clayderman to tinkle the electronic ivories for you. Then mime playing, as though it's your big new thing. "Look, there's James Blunt, and he's a keyboard wizard," people would say, and they would point. People would point at you, although this time it would be in admiration.

You should do this. Become a chick with a synth. Every single would go to number one.

Which leads me to one last thing. You will, of course, need to alter your gender. I am quite happy to offer my services. I once cut the leg off a teddy bear with my dad's nosehair clippers, and I'm sure changing your sex wouldn't be much different.

I still have the nosehair clippers.

It wouldn't be pervy or anything. I have no desire to see you naked; I think we had quite enough of that in your 2005 smash hit video I'm Quite Beautiful. One quick snip, maybe a bit of a push-in with a sink plunger, and we can leave matron to mop up the blood.

Just let me know.

Yours sincerely,

Fat Roland

Berlin's Vector Lovers are marching like an army with pinheads for shoes

Vector Lovers' (pictured) spanking new album Afterglow is just a little too pristine, like Future Sound Of London's rambling era without the ever-present peril of descent into hell.

At first listen, it seems to live closer to the surface than the usual subterranean Soma techno, but the shallow end is deeper than you think.

Half-Life is all breathless synths and sinister crackles, while Last Day Of Winter is watery and hesitant.

A Field marches like an army with pinheads for shoes. The delicate Piano Dust is heart-breaking and intimate, and that's the key; the album is so well produced, every padding bassdrum and swooshing chord pours straight into your eardrums.

Afterglow will reward you with what it says on the tin. Go buy.

At the other end of the spectrum, maybe on a secondary spectrum complete with its own biohazard label, is the tumultuous mayhem of Shitmat's new offering Grooverider.

Don't be hoodwinked by the reference to the drum and bass legend; this is old skool Britney-sampling jungle cut and pasted into fresh genres that didn't even exist five minutes ago.

It's inevitably formulaic: cranked-up breaks stabbed with broken vocals and sporadically laid to waste by doom-mongering sirens or pant-wobbling sub-bass.

But it's fun tee-hee, just like his earlier track Agricultural Ardcore, which was the god-awful Archer's theme tune hacked to a stump.

If Shitmat is Red Bull laced with amphetamines, Bola's latest album Kroungrine is peppermint tea laced with nothing. Not so much a downer as, well, a bit boring.

It lies somewhere between DJ Shadow and lounge jazz, but it is certainly neither. They should nick a trick or two from the Vector Lovers.

Theatre Of Pictures: Volume Two

Ah, the smack of willow on fish, the whirr of blade against trunk fur. This is the season for the mammoth-mowing cricket olympics [1920s haddock version]; a true Englishman's sport.

No time for that, however. I have been pottering in the studio with the rest of a collective collectively known under the collective name of Theatre Of Noise. As you know, I promised to keep a picture diary of our podcast, so this second installment follows a first installment, which makes a good deal more sense than mammoth-mowing cricket olympics [1920s haddock version].

>Pointy shoes

So to the first picture we go, with gladdened hearts and pointy shoes. Behold a sixth member of our crew, George. He was our Gmmaz engineer for the day, and is well into his drum 'n' bass, although I've lost his Myspace URL so he doesn't get a nice orange link.



While we're talking technical, here's a photograph of eight subchannels with red faders. They are red because each one of them (a) increases sound levels and (b) launches a nuclear weapon six miles south of Oswestry, which is fine by me because Oswestry is a frozen shithole much in the style of Winnipeg.

>Making horseshoes



You have to know your Venetian Snares albums to get that last sentence. Anyhoo, we were given one big microphone and we had to make a horseshoe around it. After the metalwork had finished, we gathered ourselves into an extended semi-circle. (Keep up now...) It felt just like recording the Archers. I hate the Archers. If you listen to it, stop; it's rubbish.

Here's that microphone, set against a background of soundproof glass, our two-page running order, and an Important Red Marker Pen.

Look at the microphone. Isn't it a nice microphone? The round thing is a pop shield, which automatically converts any music into an insipid synthesis of a Britney hit.

With pop on our mind, it seemed only appropriate to interrupt our podcast - our "popcast", if you will - to indulge in a smidgeon of karaoke, as led by Fil.



>Three legs

Fil took the pictures on this picture diary, although obviously not that one, unless his left arm has a third elbow to enable him to hold a camera from that angle. That's my shoulder on the left. I have just landed upright from a Swedish three legged karaoke flip, which incidentally has only ever been performed successfully by me, the Chuckle Brothers and two former members of Primal Scream, although not at the same time.

I hoped this picture diary of our podcast would be informative and revealing. It's not working out well, is it? Part three, the startling denouement*, coming up soon.

*copyright Nikki French 2007