The New Year singles chart is one hot Christmas tree fire

New Year is a time for new beginnings. New promises, new routines, new gym memberships. A lovely fresh start.

So why is the New Year UK pop chart so stuck in Christmas? Here are 19 of the 20 top ten singles in this week's chart, the week *after* Christmas. Listed in alphabetical order. Deep breath...

All I Want For Christmas Is You, Come On Home For Christmas, Do They Know It's Christmas, Driving Home For Christmas, Fairytale Of New York, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, Jingle Bell Rock, Last Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas Everyone, One More Sleep, Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree, Santa Tell Me, Step Into Christmas, The Christmas Song, Underneath The Tree, Wonderful Christmastime.

What the flaming workshop elf is going on? The answer is that while last week's Christmas chart picked up all the pre-Christmas buying and streaming, this chart is picking up all the Christmas Day streams. Which is depressing because it shows the entire of the UK has had the bad taste to soundtrack their turkey guzzling with Shakin' Stevens, Brenda Lee and Elton cacking John. Wot no techno?! It's enough to make me vomit my sprouts THROUGH MY EARS.

There should be a rule. Any Christmas song that is still in the charts after Christmas should (a) be deleted forever, (b) have its artist dropped from the label, and (c) have its lyrics tattooed onto a screaming reindeer that haunts our dreams forever. This is all totally reasonable, as I think you'll agree.

Props to young Nashville singer Gayle (pictured above)who was the only artist in the top 20 who didn't have a Christmas song. Here are some of the lyrics to her smash hit ABCDEFU. It's quite sweary, so to keep on the right side of internet filters, I have replaced all swear words with antique furniture.

Louis XIII walnut tabouret you and your mom and your sister and your job

And your broke-Point de Venise floral curtains car and that regency mahogany double wardrobe you call art

Jonathan Charles side table you and your friends that I'll never see again

Everybody but your dog, you can all Edwardian corner cabinet bookcase off

The worst thing is, we won't get a new singles chart until January 7th, which means these festive songs will be in the pop charts after twelfth night. That's unlucky, like keeping your Christmas tree up for too long, or riding Santa's sleigh after midnight, or informing the authorities of the workshop elves you've got chained in your basement.

Last Christmas was at number one on last year's New Year chart, then dropped out of the top 100 the following week. This will happen again, with nearly three dozen seasonal songs about to tumble down the listings. Next week's chart is effectively a big reset button, with Gayle inevitably becoming number one and all the Santa-suppressed non-seasonal Ed Sheeran songs rising again to the surface like a bad egg.

Ho, ho, and inevitably, ho.

Further Fats: Merry pissmas (2006)

Further Fats: Whatever happened to the cheeky New Year number one? (2013)

Apart from the music, there is one thing wrong with Ed Sheeran's Tiny Desk Concert

Here's a screenshot of the pop music artist Ed Sheeran performing one of those NPR Tiny Desk Concerts.

I can't remember what he performed. One of his pleasing ditties, I suppose. A warm guff of mainstream melodies. Maybe he performed a six hour homage to kittens being drowned in a vat of Monster energy drinks. I don't know. I could barely listen to more than a few seconds of his Tiny Desk Concert.

No, the music is not the point here. Take a look at that screenshot. Go on. Take a look. Take a close look. Can you see what's wrong? It's there, glaring you in the face.

Here is Ed.

Look at his cute hamster face. He's holding that guitar deftly. No doubt he's good at holding other things, like potted plants, soft cheese or ransom letters. Ed is standing in the middle of the room, light from the windows gushing through his legs. He is, right at this moment, probably singing the word "spatula".

Next. Here is the concert.

The musicians stand around Ed because standing around the singer is the minimum requirement to create a concert. I wonder what their names are. Malchom. Guffery. Kendoolix. Colin. Although we can't see a drummer, I reckon there are seven musicians. That's a lot of people to fit into a room, especially when it's a home library where half the books seem to be missing. Nevertheless, good concerting, musicians.

Finally. Here's the desk.

YOU'RE MEANT TO BE BEHIND THE DESK, ED. Not around the desk. Not near the desk. Not, as in this case, not only standing next to the desk, but facing the wrong way so you can't even shuffle sideways and open the drawers.

Look at Lizzo doing her Tiny Desk Concert. It appears to be a reception desk, slightly shallower than usual. Lizzo is behind the desk. Therefore Lizzo is doing a Tiny Desk Concert.

Look at Miley Cyrus doing her Tiny Desk Concert. She's clearly positioned in front of a child's make-up desk. Therefore Miley is doing a Tiny Desk Concert.

Even flipping Coldplay get the desk thing right. Look at how many people are behind that desk. There's even a poster on the left showing someone sat at a desk. 

Ed Sheeran is doing it wrong. The desk, which may or may not be tinier than usual, is not being interacted with. It is separate from the performance, as if a desk thief has dropped it by mistake while running from the dining room to the billiard room.

This isn't a Tiny Desk Concert. This is a Tiny Desk Next To A Concert.

The fact that it took me ten minutes of scrolling through Tiny Desk videos to find those desk-performance links because it turns out hardly anyone doing Tiny Desk concerts has a desk in their video therefore rendering the series a total con IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT. I just wanted to have a go at Ed Sheeran.

Stupid Ed and your stupid desk.

Further Fats: What was your first concert? (2019)

Further Fats: Story: A meeting regarding new material by the electronic music producer Aphex Twin (2020)

A pressing problem: trouble at t'mill for vinyl production

The vinyl production industry is in meltdown. Which could be a good thing if melted vinyl records made crude oil or liquorice. But it doesn't. This means trouble, with Mixmag saying the industry is in "a state of chaos".

I'm planning on buying my mates 37 copies of Ed Sheeran's new album for Christmas. That's 37 vinyl copies to each friend of Ed's =. That's his album name, by the way, not a typo. My pals are going to love me, especially as each one will be individually wrapped in three rolls of toilet paper.

However, there's trouble at t'mill. Are records made in mills? No idea. Anyway, due to extreme weather, staffing shortages, a lack of raw materials, and vinyl now outselling CDs for the first time in history, it's taking longer than ever to get a record pressed. Especially if you're a small label in a queue behind a mass-producing major label. Vinyl production seems to have more delays than a dub reggae remix of the band Delays. 

This means consumers may be waiting a long time for their vinyl. A bunch of mums aren't going to get their Abba or Adele for Christmas Day, leaving weird Uncle Derrick to recreate entire albums on the spoons.

It's really unfortunate for small independent labels, who pride themselves on high quality product that's now in an endless queue behind some dreary Pink Floyd special edition. And with Brexit making Bandcamp sales to EU customers uneconomical, they're having to work harder than ever to make any money. 

Sorry, that last paragraph was all serious. Erm. Sausages. Clowns. Cats falling off tables. Phew, saved it. 

The Mixmag article suggests solutions might be found in an increase in pressing plants, the revival of dubplates, and a more creative approach to physical releases. However, electronic music duo Posthuman seem to have a more pragmatic handle on things, saying the whole thing will burn out soon:

"As soon as it isn’t profitable, [the major labels] will jump ship just like they did before. There has to be a saturation of Led Zeppelin and Elton John B-sides where the public will just say ‘enough is enough, we’re not buying any more’. I don’t think this crisis will last for much longer.”

I'm off to record a cover version of Ed's album on my cassette player. Piano, Casio keyboard, trumpet, kazoo. No spoons. I'll copy it across on the tape-to-tape bit of my old hi-fi unit. If I set it to double-speed, I'll easily have a load of toilet-rollable copies done by Christmas. Sorted.

Further Fats: A creative meltdown means horrible bowls and don't you forget it (2012)

Further Fats: Do you remember the first time (with your own money)? (2019)

Best electronic albums of 2020: twenty-two

22 – K-LONE– Cape Cira (Wisdom Teeth)

Find a marimba. No, that's a xylophone. It's the one with the bars underneath. Yes, that's the one. Give it a clonk. Well clonked. The sound's a little insubstantial, isn't it. Welcome to the soft-touch world of K-Lone.

Cape Cira is as feather light as cirrus clouds tickling the skies above tropical lakes. Its bass drums are faltering footsteps on hot sand. The album is ambient, the album is world music, but the album is also Detroit-inspired techno transplanted from the motor city to a seaside hut in the Bahamas then left to bleach in the sun.

One online reviewer calls this 'Smooth FM in an African mood'. I'm not convinced by a comparison to a radio station that has voted Imagine, Careless Whisper and Ed Sheeran's snoozesome Perfect as its listeners' favourite songs. But there's definitely something soporific about Cape Cira.

Just embrace it. It's slow, it's relaxing, it's quite gorgeous. Oh and don't forget to put the marimba back. It belongs to Alan Titchmarsh and we still owe him for ruining his alpine horn.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

THIS is the day that music died (repeat to fade)

The day that music died is 3rd February 1959, when Buddy Holly's plane crashed in bad weather, the phrase later being immortalised in Don McLean's American Pie.

That is guff, of course. The day that music actually died was an entirely different day. If you don't believe, look at my totally true and reliable Twitter feed.

Here are some days that music died, as tweeted by me.

22nd September 2009

CHAS AND DAVE HAVE SPLIT. *This* is the day that music died. http://bit.ly/173hCs

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) September 22, 2009

The day that Chas and Dave split. Dave had found gigging too much, with Chas, who died in 2018, explaining that Dave "has horses and he loves driving them round his grounds and painting gypsy wagons, which he's very good at, so I don't think he'll miss the gigging."

29th October 2011

*This* is the day that music died. And cigars. And jewellery. And tracksuits. And tinted glasses. And armchairs with holes in the arms.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) October 29, 2011

The day that Jimmy Savile died. Oh dear. In my defence, the allegations against horrendous man didn't appear for a while after his death. Everyone knew he was dodgy, but none of us took him seriously because he seemed truly ridiculous. Crumbs.

31st October 2015

*This* is the day that music died. Not all the other ones. This one. https://t.co/Q7yhMWri11

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) November 2, 2015

On Halloween 2015, frizzy saxophonist Kenny G announced his intention to play the longest sax note ever while on a flight. He'd previously played an E-flat for 45 minutes and 47 seconds, which is a lot of E-flat. Although his record was since broken, there's no evidence of Mr G succeeding in his in-flight blow job, and apparently Guinness World Records aren't bothered about it anymore.

11th September 2018

Failed reality TV singer Steve Brookstein appears to have deleted his Twitter account. THIS is the day that music died.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) September 11, 2018

The day that the terrible Steve Brookstein deleted his terrible Twitter feed. I think his account was restored: I don't know and I can't be bothered to check. A jazz Twitter account took my tweet at face value and invited me to a Brookstein gig in Cobham. I didn't go.

28th September 2018

Ah hold on, THIS is the day that music died. pic.twitter.com/EYfD0tBVtg

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) September 28, 2018

The day that a Bargain Hunt auction was artificially inflated by Bez's girlfriend sneaking in bids as a ringer. "“My girlfriend thought she was helping out," said Bez, whose plan forced the programme to be reshot. As I've told many a fellow clubber at three in the morning, if you can't trust the Happy Mondays, who can you trust?

11th December 2019

No, wait, ignore the others, THIS is the day that music died. https://t.co/Jlygp7fVC1

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) December 11, 2019

The day Ed Sheeran was announced as artist of the decade by the Official Charts Company. This was based on record sales, which seems a narrow way of judging these things. How much banging techno did he make? How many Fat Roland dance moves did he adopt? How much effusive praise has he left in the comments section of this blog? I shall be writing to the Official Charts Company to complain.

25th June 2020

THIS is the day that music died. https://t.co/jwygpZMgOL

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) June 25, 2020

The 21st anniversary of Vengaboys' Boom Boom Boom Boom!! getting to UK number one. Not the event itself, but the 21st anniversary of the event. No, not even I have figured this one out.

2nd December 2020

3% for Nathan Fake?! THIS is the day that music died. https://t.co/CkefaK2hzD

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) December 2, 2020

My choice of Nathan Fake's Blizzards losing out in Picky B*stard's Albums Of The Year tournament. At the time of writing, its vote share has doubled, but it doesn't look hopeful. This is despite me praising its "rhythms rising from the foundations of the clubs we no longer go to" (read my article here). I think we can all agree that me not doing well in a competition is definitely the day that music died, making it comparable to the loss of legendary musicians in a devastating plane crash. Jeez. That's the worst thing I've written since Savile.

And finally... Never?

D'you know, I'm beginning to think that music's still alive. Check its pulse. If the blood's flowing at the same tempo as Chas and Dave's Rabbit, there's hope for us all.

Further Fats: The day Tyondai 'TyBo' Braxton retreated from Battles (2010)

Further Fats: The day Engeljames Blunterdinck representing us in the European debt crisis (2012)

Further Fats: The day Maroon 5 finally got a UK number one single after eight years of trying (2015)

Endless Ed Sheeran is the most played artist of 2019

It's official. Ed Sheeran is the most played music artist of 2019.

He beat Calvin Harris to top PPL's Most Played Artist Chart for the fourth time in five years. Coldplay broke that run as 2016's most-heard, although everyone now agrees we were all having a bad day and we listened to them by mistake.

Sheeran scored three UK number one singles last year, respectively with Justin Bieber, Khalid and Stormzy. The most-played tracks of the year are full of collaborations too: Calvin Harris with Rag ‘n’ Bone Man; Mark Ronson with Miley Cyrus; Sam Smith with Normani. It's like no-one can do anything on their own anymore. They're all trying to emulate successful double acts like Ant & Dec and those two girls out of The Shining.

It's interesting to see who Sheeran beat in the Most Played Artist Chart. In third place is Sam Smith playing the spoons while tightrope walking over a crocodile pit. In seventh palace is the sound of Rita Ora having a benny and throwing a television through a hotel window. And in tenth place is the whole of Maroon 5 screaming into a funnel.

I once claimed that Ed Sheeran was here to destroy us all, that every song had become Ed Sheeran. In my defence, it was the week he broke the charts by scoring 16 top 20 hits at once. But even a stopped idiot tells the right time twice a day. Maybe I was pointing towards a future so Sheeraned, we forget how to listen to anything else. We are living in that future.

Extensive surveys tell me that the average Fat Roland reader reads this blog by mumbling the words out loud. This blog is actually all cut-and-pasted from Ed Sheeran lyrics: has been since 2004, seven years before Sheeran had his first hit single. Sorry to break it to you, my muttering friend, but by reading this very page, you're already making the Suffolk superstar the most played artist of 2020.

In two of his singles, Shape Of You (not bad) and Galway Girl (terrible), he makes a reference to putting Van Morrison on a jukebox. People aren't paying attention. They're putting Ed on their jukeboxes, not Van. They're putting Ed on their record players. They're putting Ed on their Spotify. They're putting Ed in those annoying birthday cards that make a tinny noise when you open them. 

Ed everywhere. Ed will never end. He is Ed Sheer-on-and-on.

Further Fats: Rihanna has ruined everything (2012)

Further Fats: U Can't Touch The UK Charts: an MC Hammer infographic (2014)

#SevenInch: Buying some Ed Sheeran from a record shop

I want to keep a video diary. A totally accurate video diary.

So I did this.

It's a Seven Inch video diary in which I, Fat Roland (me), talk about something for a minute, In this first edition, I go to a record shop to buy a song by Ed Sheeran. All the cartoons are by me.

The audio's a bit loud, so watch those delicate ears of yours.

A party political post on behalf of the Fat Roland party

I'm writing this on the eve of a UK general election that will probably return an increased Tory majority.

That's despite Theresa May promising to pour spiders into the nostrils of orphans and feeding ground puppy dogs to millionaires. Or something. I haven't been paying attention.

Not a single party has promised to pipe continuous Boards of Canada into every NHS hospital, and none of the manifestos have declared Ed Sheeran illegal.

A while back, I decided not to be political on social media. Twitter is the sound of a billion loose bolts rattling around an ageing tractor engine: I don't need to add to the noise.

Although I did have two separate Tories have a go at me on Twitter, unprompted, because I said something positive about my neighbour's mosque. Make of that what you will.

My first decree if I was prime minister? Compulsory acid house parties for everyone. All day. Every day. It would be relentless and awful, but in a good way.

Anyhoo, it's election day coming up, and soon none of the echo chambers and poll bubbles will matter. It's going to be spiders and nostrils all the way, I think. I hope I'm wrong.

Just remember this as you place your X in the box: at that precise moment, you're not only deciding the fate of the country, you're writing the name of Ed Sheeran's second album (artwork pictured above).

You monster.

The definitive top ten Aphex Twin facts

To celebrate April 14th, named by many as Aphex Twin day because of his classic 2001 track Avril 14th, here is the definitive top ten facts about everyone's favourite windowlicker.

1. Aphex Twin's real name is Richard D James. The D stands for 'down south' which is where he lives.

2. The '26 Mixes For Cash' scandal nearly ruined his career. Since then, it has been illegal for members of the House of Lords to procure drill 'n' bass remixes without declaring them.

3. Aphex Twin once owned a tank. His favourite trick was to put a goldfish on the passenger seat and ask it "how do you drive this thing".

4. His comeback album Syro used, at some point in the recording process, every instrument ever created. Apart from the five-string banjo. And the tuba.

5. The old woman who gets screamed at in the Come To Daddy video was played by Aphex Twin after a particularly long day in the studio.

6. Aphex Twin made tracks while lucid dreaming. He installed a full studio inside his head, enabling him to work while asleep. This is why he has a USB port in the side of his head.

7. He once uploaded so many tracks to Soundcloud, Ed Sheeran has been number one ever since.

8. His first album was Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which incidentally are also the measurements of his bust and hips.

9. His pseudonyms have included: Nasty Window, Twinny McTwinface, Billy Skinhole, Polygon Idiot, Tssk Tssk, Hello Brian, Susan Boyle, Caustic Postman and AFC BOURNEMOUTH.

10. Aphex Twin has wonderfully soft hair. He puts this down to never playing the tuba. No-one likes tuba.



Futher Fats: 26 Mixes For Cats: gratuitous twits and puns (2011)

Further Fats: Top ten ways to write a top ten music list (2012)

Further Fats: All things Aphex Twin

Ed Sheeran is here to destroy us all

Every song is Ed Sheeran.

Or at least it feels that way. This week, Ed Sheeran shifted so many albums, he outsold the next 771 bestsellers combined. Not the next 71. The next 771.

He has so many songs in the top 20 singles chart right now, I had to produce this graphic (below). These are rough screenshots I took of this week's chart. You can tell which tracks are not Ed Sheeran: I have struck them out with a cross.

Click the graphic for a bigger view.

Everything is Ed Sheeran right now.

So much so, I have added a Sheeranizer to this website which will filter out any blog posts that don't mention Ed Sheeran. You can see the Sheeranizer in the top right corner of this website if you're viewing it on a desktop.

If you can't see the Sheeranizer, you're either reading this on a mobile phone, or it's several months later and everyone has forgotten who this guy is. Ted Shearings? Edge Earring? Bed Sharon? No sorry, can't quite remember the name.

This is like the real life version of that autumn leaves picture.

Which leads me to one question. What is Ed Sheeran up to? Why does Ed Sheeran need to be everywhere so much all of the time?

Because it's a grab for power. We were all fixated on Justin Biebpipe and yet here comes the Suffolk scamp taking over everything.

Ed Sheeran is in charge now. Ed Sheeran will not be held back. If you try and stop Ed Sheeran, he will tear you to pieces. Ed Sheeran will bite your face off.

ED SHEERAN WILL DESTROY US ALL.

Either that or people quite like listening to his music. One or the other.

Thousand

This is it. This must be the end.

Welcome to my 1,000th blog post. It has taken 12 years, two months and 22 days to get to this point. When I posted "watch this stain" in 2004, I was in black and white, and all I wore was a petticoat. These days it's all skateboards, telephones and haircuts.

There have been huge musical milestones while this blog has been online. Band Aid 20. Downloads. Ed Sheeran. YouTube. Band Aid 20. Smart phones. Biebermania. Band Aid 20.

But it's the world of electronic music that has been most turbulent. This website has survived Burial dubstep, Skrillex dubstep, witch house, chillcore, the 80s revival, the 90s revival, autotuning, sidechaining, two Orbital splits, the Harlem Shake, the Technics relaunch, and Mr Aphex Twin opening the nozzle and then some.

Because of the millennium bug, there is no way a blog can continue beyond a thousand posts. So this is the last ever-- wait, hold on, the phone's ringing.

Hello?
...Yes, this is he.
...It can? That's not what the blog authorities told me.
...What do you mean I have to continue? On whose authority?
...Oh I see. Yes, they ARE a very important person.
...I am a bit annoyed, yes. I'd planned a retirement.
...What? Yes of course bloggers retire. I'll have you know, I earned money.
...Huh? Well, about 75 quid, I think.
...No, not per year. Since 2004. Why are you laughing?
...Now you're just being rude. I'm putting the phone down. Twazmuppet.
...
...Yes, I'm still here-- Hey! You just hung up on me. Dammit.

So I suppose I'd better continue, typing into the void, my keyboard spinning through the deadness of space. Thank you for reading any one of the previous 999 posts. If you want a more serious take on blogging, firstly WHY, secondly have a look at my blogging tips from 2011. Or read my decade nonsense from 2014.

And thank you to Blogger for remaining pretty much consistent all this time, even though your spellcheck still doesn't recognise "bloggers".

Take it away, Moby. I've been waiting YEARS to post this.

Don't be rattled: it's just drum 'n' bass

In a Salford pub yesterday, as I leant against a snoozing cat (pictured), I was reminiscing about the moment I discovered the full beauty of drum 'n' bass.

It was at Tribal Gathering in a tent dense with dry ice. It was like walking into a shisha pipe, only with a sillhouette of an MC rising out of the cloud. I'd got a load of vinyl, but it was the first time I'd seen "liquid beats" (ugh) in a live setting.

Here's a remix of LTJ Bukem's classic track Music. It's just a clip (full version here), but this is the kind of loveliness I walked into.



For those not used to this kind of drum 'n' bass, you need to get over the busy-ness of the beat. It is, after all, running at 175BPM which is enough to leave your rattled bones scattered over the dancefloor. Let the loop become one. And then lose yourself in the chords swirling around the centre.

Despite the likes of Rudimental hooking up with Ed Sheeran to bring a clunkier - yet still entertaining - form of this music to the Hozier generation, the genre has stayed pleasantly underground. Yeah, there was that Olive track a generation ago, and that woman totally addicted to bass. But really...

But the smoky, airy Bukem stuff remains fairly pure. And, when done well, absolutely one of the most liberating styles of music alongside acid house.

A particular favourite of mine was Big Bud. a regular on Progression Sessions and someone whose sound seemed to cut a little deeper. Listen to High Times below.

I like cats. I like drum 'n' bass. Maybe there's a corrolation between the weed-hazed jungle ambience and a domesticated jungle cat that sleeps 22 hours a day.

Maybe this, and exactly this, is what cats hear in their head all the time.



Further Fats: Bleep Years day nineteen - LTJ Bukem's Horizons (2012) 

Further Fats: The precarious future of Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud (2016)

What's happening with the not-so-current current album chart?

It's 2016. We have flying cars and chutes that feed us breakfast. Money is made of gas. We are so in the future, it's ridiculous.

Why then, dear reader, does the current album chart look like this?

Robbie Williams. Elvis. Bon Jovi. Michael Ball. Michael Buble. Michael flipping Buble.

They aren't even the most successful Michaels. They're eclipsed by Jackson and George. But it's not that which riles me.

It's 2016, not 1927. These five folks date back to the time we used pagers for social reasons. Back to the time dial-up internet meant you had to write to Readers Digest to request your ration of bytes. Back when we brushed our teeth with chimney sweep brushes. If you could afford teeth.

Alright, old fogeys probably sell better in the lead-up to Christmas. No record company's going to risk losing the next new thing in the swamp of seasonal sales. I bet the best-selling things in pound shops right now are carriage clocks, denture glue and snuff.

But there's definitely a domination of physical product here. Boil the chart down to just streams, and instead the top five is Drake, James Arthur, Justin Biebpipe, Ed Sheeran and Kanye. Much fresher blood. So what we're seeing in the current album chart are strong old-school Adele-style sales of supermarket CDs.

In short, streaming is dead, old people are alive, and Michael Buble is definitely not the most successful Michael in town.

I wish the chutes thing was true.

Further Fats: Here is the latest pop chart, apparently (2014)

The precarious future of Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud

It looks like Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud is about to fall out of the top 100.

I don't even know how that Ed Sheeran song goes. I've probably heard it a million times, but it has just trickled out of my brain like very, very beige sand.

What I do know is that is has been in the UK top 100 singles chart continuously for 94 weeks. As you can see in this Official Charts tracker (below), it debuted at number 26, took over four months to get to number one, and then just would not go away.

But look at the current week, highlighted in pink (click pic for bigger). It's dropped to 100.

What happens when it drops out? Do the charts lose their strength, like Samson getting a buzz cut? Does someone somewhere stop playing bingo? What happens when we reach number 100 in our own lives; is Ed Sheeran a metaphor for human existence?

Ed (frightened eyes, pictured at the top of this devastating exposé) has one saving grace: a statistical anomaly. In this week's chart, Kanye West scored nine new entries. Nine. For now, the battle is between Sheeran fans constantly buying Thinking Out Loud on CD, and Kanye fans streaming his album tracks on the backs of buses.

Who will win? Leave a comment under this-- actually, don't bother.

(11th June 2016 update: The single hung on for one more week, then dropped out of the charts. It reappeared again this week at number 98, its 96th chart week, giving hope to millions.)

I love acid and the acid loves me

I'm pretty sure acid is the best kind of music.

I go through phases. Recently it's been ambient dub centred around the Beyond label of the mid-90s. I went through a big house phase a few weeks ago. And sometimes I just want noisy techno (Objekt's pretty good for this: I keep hearing sounds on the street that sound like this album).

Acid, though, is the music I'll always go back to whatever my mood. Because of its technological restraints (imagine having a genre of music that can only be made on the banjo), acid barely changes. One Josh Wink record aside, it has never commercialised, nor has it ever faded to nothing.

I Love Acid are parping out some great records at the moment. And imagine my delight when I discovered this Twitter account.

New favourite Twitter account: @303OClock. 1,505 acid tracks and counting. I'm going in. I may be some time.

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) October 1, 2015

And nothing will beat Hardfloor's sledgehammer acid build-ups.

Maybe the best thing about acid, whether it's acid techno, acid house, acid gabba or acid trousers, is it's never going to be a topic of conversation at a family dinner table. There may be spilled gravy over Ed Sheeran's performance on X Factor, but no-one's going to get into a humus fight over the best era of Lords Of Acid. Acid is somehow secret clubber's knowledge, forever shaded from the glare of the mainstream. Maybe it's the drug connotations, I dunno.

Not that I've ever done the drug. No seriously, I haven't. My mind's weird enough as it is.

Acid is totally the best kind of music. Delve into those links above. Because when it's good, it's proper good. Even acid trousers, which is definitely a thing, honest. Ahem.

> Further Fats: Painting 2010 beige: Eno, Orb, Hardfloor and Seefeel

Fnarp blang-grabble toop: what I learnt from drawing

Some time ago I went to a life drawing class. We sat in rows with our chosen tools, in my case an A3 sketchpad I had bought that day and the pencil I used to illustrate a 2012 short story collection. A succession of models in fancy dress glared at us: we drew Storm from X-Men, an evil-looking Darth Maul and someone from Blade Runner.

I didn't like it. It left me frustrated. I wanted to snap my pencil. I didn't snap my pencil. If you snap pencils, it releases lead into the atmosphere and a dolphin dies. I read that somewhere.

The models were great, the night was friendly and fun, the costumes and make-up were brilliant, and the company I kept was great. I drew lots and, for a while, I enjoyed the challenge of squinting at the shapes before me and trying to spew that onto paper.

Yet I learnt a few things:

I DON'T DO REAL THINGS.

I'd rather live inside my head. Things outside my eyes are boring. I need to mix things up into a beautiful field of horses or an elephant hick or a cheese goat Neil Buchanan mash-up or something so disgusting and weird it's probably NSFW.

I DON'T DO SCHOOL.

I won't sit still. I won't draw in a structured environment. I won't follow your recommendations to the letter. Don't give me an exam: I'd break it. I don't only think outside the box: I've opened a dictionary, crossed out "box" and written "fnarp" instead.

I DON'T DO CLOTHES.

Well. I wear clothes: I'm not a naturist. But I wanted actual life drawing not fancy dress. Models with skin and that. Nuddies. The sags and contours of skin are more interesting than leather jackets and capes. If you're not reading this naked right now, I'll be furious. Actually, I can see your reflection from my computer screen. My eyes. MY EYES.

I DON'T DO CONVENTIONS.

Despite this blog post using conventions of grammar on a template of a major blog publishing platform using equipment owned by multi-national corporations, I, like, totes don't do boundaries yeah?! Smash the system, yeah?! Fnarp blang-grabble toop p'dinb-dinb wam. That's not even a sentence. I'm out of control.

MAYBE THIS IS WHY I LIKE BASS MUSIC.

My dislike of following a crowd. My disrespect of popular conventions. My urge to always find the new. I feel restless.

Maybe this is why I got into electronic music. I'll spend the afternoon trawling Bleep, loafing around Resident Advisor or spinning through Soundcloud for something new: Objekt or The Bug or Butch.

Meanwhile everyone else is into fancy dress and normcore and real things and Ed Sheeran and Sunday lunch and saying how-do-you-do and wearing ties and television and breathing and jeezeverythingissoBORING.

Anyway. I kept my drawings. They were okay.

Because / a melon / only slightly: birthday thoughts

Another birthday is crushed underfoot by the hippo of time, so it seems appropriate to look back over the last 12 months and ask myself some important questions:

- Why?
- What with?
- Did it hurt?

Among the many highlights of the past year was the moment I was crowned Miss Manchester. It all seems a blur, but I do remember being hoisted through the city streets on palm leaves, feathers and heavy-duty scaffolding. The sash matched my varicose veins.

In December, I trapped all of Manchester's police in the sewers and injected explosives into all the concrete. I then imploded our American football stadium before making a man in a bat costume climb up a bit of a wall.

The other week, I gave up my Fat Roland moniker and became Thin Malcolm for a day. This time was largely spent flat on my face weeping furiously into the threadbare weave of my carpet. I then went on Jeremy Kyle and fought myself for custody of myself. Good times, good times.

Birthdays are about presents, so here are two things. Firstly, a Hounds Of Hulme track I recorded today (see below). It's a bit rough-and-ready, relying too much on preset instruments, but I like it. The energy from the track largely rose from watching the awful Olympic closing ceremony on iPlayer. In the words of Twitter's ever-reliable funny bloke Vivmondo, "I suppose we'll simply never know why David Bowie turned down the opportunity to appear alongside Ed Sheeran and a tape of Kate Bush."

Then after the music, why not click here for a series of inspiration quotes I bombarded by Facebook friends with over the weekend. I hope you too will find them inspiring enough to find your place on the carpet, that sweet spot in the dust and the fluff and the skin.

It's just a bit of a wall. I don't see what all the fuss was.



Further Fats: Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool (my birthday three years ago)