Night Grows Pale: Flying Lotus has a new killer Queen track

Take a sweeping musical score, drain it of all its blood, throw in some weedy guitars and what have you got?

Queen. That's what you've got.

I've never had much time for the prancing operatic rockers Queen. Yeah, I had moments of liking them when Wayne's World and Shaun Of The Dead came out. I'm also quite taken with the Freddie Mercury doll action shots by Toyko tweeter @suekichiii.

And okay, yes, the new Flying Lotus track Night Grows Pale features a killer Queen sample from the 1974 single White Queen (As It Began). Despite my protestations in my previous blog post about Burial rejigging an old dance track, this rework is great. Nicely done, FlyLo (pictured above).

But those are the only Queen things I like. The bit in Wayne's World where they rock out in the car, the snooker cue assault in Shaun Of The Dead, that Twitter account, and the new Flying Lotus release.

And the sample in Utah Saints' What Can You Do For Me.

And the Under Pressure riff.

But that's it. That's all the Queen I like. Honest. Have a listen to the new short but sweet FlyLo below, and beneath that get a load of his Twin Peaks theme.





Further Fats: Tim & Daisy make Jay & Bob look like ****ing Bert & Ernie (2008)

Further Fats: Chosen Words: Q is for Queen (2010)

Whatever happened to the cheeky New Year number one?

So Bowie didn't get to number one last week.

Great.

That's that, then. Let's Dance remains his most recent musical legacy of any widespread significance. Sigh.

The thin white berk had a great chance to revive an important musical tradition in the UK pop charts: that of the cheeky New Year number one. It should be easy. No-one buys anything apart from headache pills and diet books in the week after new year, so number one should be a walkover.

The new year charts seem dull these days. A guaranteed post-Xmas X Factor chart-topper, some r'n'b guff and that's about it. A drum 'n' bass track tiptoed in at number 100 and it seems Bon Jovi got back in the top 40, but neither are worth tweeting home about.

Iron Maiden famously topped the charts in 1991 with Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter, followed by the ridiculous sadistic monks Enigma. Made-up people often took the chance for a cheeky early-January number one, with Mr Blobby and Bob The Builder inexplicably retaining their top positions after Christmas because there was naff all else to buy.

Cotton Eye Joe. Chocolate Salty Balls. Even Daniel Bedingfield's squeaky anthem Gotta Get Thru This. You cannot tell me that those tracks would have had the same chart-dominating impact without lower sales across the rest of the January charts, as great (or otherwise) as they were.

This weekend may well see the return to the top of the charts by Eminem, 50 Cent and that kazoo-voiced triangle man from Maroon 5. If they were covering White Town's Your Woman, or Aphex Twin's We Are The Music Makers, I'd class it as a cheeky new year number one.

They're not. And so it goes.

Further Fats:  Fat Roland's number one album chart death rant (2010)

Chosen Words: Q is for Queen

Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

Yes, that Queen. The prancing dead bloke with the moustache and the chest. The asteroid-explosion-haired guitarist. Yeah, Queen.

Because Queen started something. Or rather, Vanilla Ice started it when he stole *that* bassline from Queen and Bowie's Under Pressure for his 1990 hit Ice Ice Baby.

The age of the sampler truly arrived with that record. It used to be the preserve of novelty acts or one-hit wonders (MARRS, Jive Bunny, Black Box). Subsequent massive hits by Enigma and the KLF dragged the technology kicking and st-st-stuttering into the trendy mainstream.

The subsequent controversy over Vanilla Ice blatantly stealing his sample was a spooky omen of many troubled arguments about what can be nicked and what counts as digital theft and "what, is that Loleatta Holloway, AGAIN?!"

When a doctor asks you for a urine sample, use the container provided: weeing into your Akai will not impress the NHS. Take heed 'cause I'm a lyrical poet.

Top five examples of sampling going too far:

- Jive Bunny
- funky drummer / amen break
- Scooter (pot) sampling the KLF (kettle)
- advertisers using cut-up techniques because it's "urban" or "street"
- every Puff Daddy and Kanye West chorus ever

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.

Why, H, why did it all have to end?

This week, I have been mostly feasting on Moderat.

Moderat is a portmanteau. A what? Exactly. It's a perfect marriage of two Berlin musicians: the cold, hypnotic Modeselektor (described by the duo as "Russian crunk") and techno entrepreneur Apparat.

They last hammered together an EP, Auf Kosten Der Gesundheit back in 2002, when the world was still newly mourning the demise of Steps. Oh H "Ian" Watkins, where are you now? Sob...

...where was I? Oh yes. Anyhoo, a month or two back, Modeselektor and Apparat picked up their rusty nails and hammered together something much more impressive. A whole Moderat album (pictured).

Moderat is all-analogue, recorded where Bowie put Heroes to tape, and it piddles pop sensibilities up against a drizzle of dubstep and a serious slab of sub-atomic bass woofery.

It is melodic and (yeeks) catchy, and brings to mind Apparat's work with Ellen Allien. The album's got a touch of icicle on its edges, though, and the German rapping may well turn you off when you ogle some of the tracks on their MySpace page.

Max Tundra brings his sesame streetfunk to Manchester

So then, me and my chum packed our party bags and jollied off to a Max Tundra concert.  It was one of those events we'd been talking about for ages.

The venue was the Deaf Institute, Manchester's gigging force majeure. We delayed setting off because there were some dodgy lads hanging outside my gaff, and I feared they might break in and steal all my chandeliers and brass candlesticks. We then spend fourteen years in the bustling queue while we spectacularly failed to get a refund on a pre-paid ticket. We then queued for non-alcoholic lager (him) and a diet coke (me) because we're on health kicks.

So we missed support band May68.  A BBC review said they "don't make music; they make addictive little bombs."  Bombs are frightening enough without them being addictive, sheesh.

May 68 are named after Charles De Gaulle's least favourite month (ask your French grandfather, if you have one). They're relatively new onto the Manchester scene, and they're a bright pop baguette with an extra helping of CSS sauce.

The be-masked Wave Machines also supported.  They're Hot Chip-inspired art-poppers from Merseyside who sling their funk way below the belt. Their set had one sparkling gem in the form of Keep The Lights On. It sounded like the Bee Gees and David Bowie getting dirty with Grace Jones.

Finally, to the Max (pictured).  I hinted at Max Tundra's trademark stage spasms in this piece back in October, but it struck me for the first time that he is a man who seems constantly surprised by his own music.

He will buy an instrument (a kalimba, a children's toy microphone, a glockenspiel) to use once in one bar of one song. The result is a man running around the stage trying to keep up with his own incredible music.

So we had the skippy frantics of Orphaned, the speed-freak r 'n' b of Lights, the sesame streetfunk of Which Song, and the bizarre other-worldiness of his "cover" of KLF's What Time Is Love.

The dodgy lads didn't steal my brass candlesticks. But me and my chum did make off with fuzzy warmth in our guts from Max's melody and deadpan pleasantries. "Anyone here from the Owen's Park campus?" says Max, no doubt recalling a quick read of Google maps on the way to the gig.

Max Tundra is a definite for your diary next time he's in town and, no, it won't matter if you miss the support band, or if you have to pay for a friend who didn't turn up, or if some robber nicks your widescreen cafetiere while you're out.

Because watching a constantly startled Max Tundra is worth every penny.

Ralf not Florian: Kraftwerk creator quits amid shameful blog wordplay

Before I shine the neon lights of my wisdom onto the whole Kraftwerk situation, let me first say thanks to all the new people that have shown a little computer love by reading my blog over the new year.

I enjoyed writing my 2009 preview posts, and it seems you enjoyed reading them. My blog is now read by more people than it ever has been, so you are part of an ever-pulsating crowd clammering for a bit of Fat Roland. Well, you can have me. Every last bit of me. (I am now sprawling on my chaise longue, swooning like a fop.)

Right then.  On to Kraftwerk.
 
Florian Schneider, the robotnik on the right in the piccie above, has exited the Kraftwerk autobahn by quitting the band.
 
According to my pocket calculator, he was in the band for 38 years.  To put that into perspective, teenager-snuggling metallics-botherer Bill Wyman was in the Rolling Stones for only 30 years.
 
Schneider co-founded the band that invented every other synth band ever.  He used to ram a flute through a ring modulator.  Sir David 'Christ The Saviour' Bowie named a song after him.  That was a metaphoric ram, by the way; Florian Schneider does not, and has never abused woodwind instruments.

But still, he has quit.  Sigh.  I hope his musique doesn't stop, and although he'll never be big on the radio, activity for this model music maker should hopefully continue.  I also expect his solo projects will be far less desperate than my attempts to shoe-horn in as many references to Kraftwerk track titles as I can into this post (eight altogether - um, can you spot them?!).
 
Florian is a delight to watch on this interview from a decade ago.  He starts off reticent and bemused, and it just gets worse...

Interviewer:  Are you preparing a new album?
Florian:  Yep.  [smiles]
Interviewer:  Do you like the new generation of techno music?
Florian:  Ya.  [doesn't smile]