Best electronic music albums of 1995: Semi Final 1 – Goldie versus Tricky

In a thousand years from now, when the apocalyptic nuclear dust settles, the few remaining mutated humans will whisper in hushed tones: "do you remember when Fat Roland did his Best Albums of 1995 thing?" And then some more of the remaining mutated humans will reply with their elbows, "Who?"

It's time for the semi-final of my competition to crown the best electronic music album of 1995. If you're not up to date with this, see the series so far here, and see the 16 albums I started off with here. The winner of today's face-off wins a place in the grand final. 

I've refreshed the judging criteria and, as ever, there is only one person on the judging panel: me. Facing my wrath for this semi-final is:

Timeless by Goldie

Maxinquaye by Tricky

The Walsall metalhead meets the Bristolian wild buncher. Let's fire up this sausage and see if it bursts.

Criteria one: which album is best stored in a fridge?

I feel that if I left Maxinquaye within a mile of my fridge, my butter would be mouldy within minutes. Tricky's got a serious case of cross-contamination in those filthy beats. In contrast, I'd happily nestle Timeless against my yoghurts and tripe. It's a clean album and works best at cool temperatures. I'm not having Goldie in my freezer, though: he'd swipe my Ben & Jerry's. Ice cream's the only thing he can eat, what with those gold teeth.

Winner: Timeless

Criteria two: which album is the best soundtrack for the lockdown?

Both albums trade on a certain level of paranoia, with Goldie's inner city pressure and Tricky's cack load of drugs. Neither can relieve the lockdown but they certainly could reflect it. It's the Tricky album that best sums up the cataclysm that is the Covid crisis in lyrics like "hell is round the corner where I shelter" and "how can I be sure in a world that's constantly changing?" and "how do I hide my own view in Zoom?"

Winner: Maxinquaye 

Tricky · Hell Is Round the Corner

Criteria three: which album would make the best birthday present for an elephant?

This one is easy. Maxinquaye is custom-made for wrinkly elephants as they trample across muddy plains. Their flat feet drum in trip hop patterns. Listen to them trumpet, the pure fat sound of a– oh hold on, someone's at the door. Back in a mo. ... Ah, sorry, that was Elmer the Elephant and he says Timeless is, and I quote, "da bomb when I'm toking on a patchwork blunt." This one has to go to Goldie. Don't blame me; blame the fictional elephant who coincidentally turned up at my door just now.
Winner: Timeless

Criteria four: which album's track titles are a secret code to unlock the secrets of the Illuminati?

Glad you asked. To detect illuminati coding, we're looking for three things in the titles: lizards, triangles and anything that rhymes with 'David Icke'. Tricky's Abbaon Fat Tracks has four letter As: are these triangles? Would lizards live in Goldie's Sea of Tears, or am I thinking of turtles? I had another listen to Tricky's disturbed whispering throughout his album, and he's definitely unlocking some Dan Brown kinda shizzle right there. He's like a whispering Icke.

Winner: Maxinquaye 

Goldie (Official) · Sea of Tears

Criteria five: which album can you dance the Macarena to?

For those living in the future, I'm writing this in times of social distancing, so I'm unable to carry out a controlled Macarena experiment on the 143 bus through Withington. However, Goldie's tricksy tripping rhythms are ideal for Los del Río's popular Spanish dance. I can picture it now: ardent arm thrusts, bombastic belly wiggles, underpants flying everywhere, the harrangued bus driver trying to catch me with an oversize fishing net. A mí me gusta!

Winner: Timeless

Criteria six: Which album cover would make the best face tattoo for Fat Roland?

Not having had a tattoo, I'm never quite sure: do you have to draw in the white bits? Thing is, the Goldie album already has a face on, so it should be ideal, but it would end up as a tiny face on the end of my nose and everyone would get confused. I'm often huffed and puffed and red in the cheeks, so if you tatted Maxinquaye across my fizzog, hardly anybody would notice – I'm going for that one.

Winner: Maxinquaye 

Criteria seven: miscellaneous and worryingly random

For no reason other than I hate you, this final section will be decided using Wikipedia's random page function. Which album would make the best portable flamethrower? Maxinquaye because, as we've established, Timeless is too chilled.  Which album would make a great hockey puck? Maxinquaye because it would be made of Black Steel. Which album has the best nom de plume? Easy: the 'Maxin' bit of Maxinquaye is named after Tricky's mother Maxine. Which album makes the best sewage pump? Timeless because of the (inner city) pressure. Which album would be enjoyed by a southern carpenter bee? Their faces look exactly like the Metalheadz logo, so Timeless. Which album would win the 1999 Qatar Open singles competition? Maxinquaye because he'd be on the (massive) attack.

Winner: Maxinquaye 

Overall winner and going through to the grand final: After a nail-clenching buttock-biting semi-final, Tricky storms it at the end to win a place in the grand final. The album stormed end-of-year polls after its release, so it's very worthy. Alas, for Goldie, the time ran out. Time. Timeless. Time ran out. Geddit?! No. Dammit.

The second semi-final will hit the internet faster than a speeding patchwork elephant. Watch this space. In the meantime, see all the original riders and runners here.

Further Fats: See the whole Best Albums Of 1995 series here.

Best electronic albums of 1995: the semi-final showdown

The battle to find the best electronic music album of 1995 is about to reach a spluttering climax. It's time for the semi-finals.

Sixteen albums went into this competition, facing up against each other in a series of tense one-on-one knock-outs. They faced hash judgement from a panel of judges that consisted of, er, just me. Only four albums remain. They are:

Timeless by Goldie

Maxinquaye by Tricky

Post by Bjork

Leftism by Leftfield

That's right. There are only four of them. The same number as the Beatles or Abba or The Proclaimers looking into a mirror.

The following artists didn't make it to this semi-final: Aphex Twin, Moby, the Chemical Brothers, Higher Intelligence Agency, BT, Carl Craig, Global Communication, Sabres of Paradise, Nightmares on Wax, the Black Dog, David Holmes, Autechre and your gran playing the spoons (disqualified before the competition began).

Moby got knocked out of the competition because of confusing signals from Eamonn Holmes. The Black Dog fell by the wayside because I compared them to a Viennese Whirl. And most controversially, the Chemical Brothers lost out in the first round because I disliked their attitude towards eggs.

This has not been a normal competition.

In the forthcoming semi-final showdown, Goldie's drum & bass classic will grind up against Tricky's towering trip hop debut, while Bjork's oh-so-massive masterpiece will grapple with Leftfield's legendary LP. Only two albums will make it through to the grand final to decide the best electronic album of 1995.

And yes, my judging criteria will no doubt get crazier. Why make things simple, huh.

The very next blog post will be the first semi-final between Golden Balls and the Trickster, er, I mean, Goldie and Tricky. Watch this site for a battle so epic, Lorraine Kelly will do an especially vigorous "och, noooo". In the meantime, catch up on the competition so far to find the best electronic music album of 1995.

Further Fats: the 1995 competition so far

Best electronic music albums of 1995: Quarter Final 1 – Higher Intelligence Agency versus Goldie

A horse and a nun walk into a bar. The horse says, "Have you seen Fat Roland's competition for the best electronic music album of 1995?" The nun says, "Why the long face?" The horse says, "You do this every time, Alison, why do you never listen to me?" Ignore those two idiots: they're hogging the queue to the bar. My best-of-1995 battle is back on track. Strap in, music fans.

We started with 16 albums and now it's time for the first quarter final. See the series so far here, and see the introduction to the quarter finals here. The choice is between:

Freefloater by Higher Intelligence Agency
Timeless by Goldie

The Higher Intelligence Agency (HIA) beat the legendary Sabres Of Paradise to get this far, while Goldie knocked out The Chemical Brothers. Two giant-killers, and only one will survive through to the semi finals. We have brand new judging criteria, and special thanks must go to @benjaminjudge, @JacksonWylde and @viaduct_theatre for suggesting criteria two, four and six respectively. Slap on that vaseline, it's time to fight.

Criteria one: which album feels too big to fit into a caravan?

The squiggly IDM of Higher Intelligence Agency, with its filters squeezed into ever-narrowing frequency bands, would be small enough to fit into a matchbox, never mind a caravan. Stick it under the Calor Gas, sorted. On the other hand, Goldie's Timeless is all about bombast, dynamism and volume. The opening track is 21-minutes wide: you'd not even get that into the entrance of the campsite. There's no travelling light with the monster that is Timeless.

Winner: Timeless

Criteria two: which album has the best individual noise?

Goldie's sound defined an era of drum 'n' bass, and so his album has some ear-bending moments. At one end are the heavenly suspended strings pulling everything taut, while at the other end there's some really ugly crying on Tears. The best single sound are the vocals crescendoing in at the start of State Of Mind as if catapulted from a distant satellite. Higher Intelligence Agency's work is full of great noises, with their squawks and boings and tickly acid (just listen to Elapse), but nothing beats Goldie.
Winner: Timeless

Criteria three: which album makes your record collection look coolest?

I have a real issue with how Timeless looks. I know embedding a Metalheadz logo in a perspex vagina was the coolest thing ever in 1995, but it hasn't aged well. Whereas, if I was flicking through your records and happened across Freefloater, I'd be intrigued. The cover looks like an impressionist Blue Peter ship, and the speech marks around the track title give it an added irony. Yeah. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Winner: Freefloater

Criteria four: which album would you play to ward off a tiger?

Let me think this one through. I turn down the side of Lidl and there's a striped, snarling beastie blocking my cut-through to the chiropodist. How do I fight the tiger? I could batter its face with HIA's bloopy beats, but that would only annoy it, and I don't want to run because I haven't got to the chiropodist yet. Goldie's beats might skip along more breezily, but they're much heavier. A fat snare drum right in its snout should do it. Take THAT, tiger.

Winner: Timeless

Criteria five: which album has the sexiest track titles?

With titles like State Of Mind and Jah the Seventh Seal, Goldie's track listing brings to mind the tantric liaisons of sexy Sting. Then again, he might start singing, so let's see how sexy the HIA track titles are. Fleagle. Hubble. Ting. Skank. Hmmmm. Less high class escort agency, more a fleshy fumble in a fag-stained Travelodge. Tough decision. The HIA album has "floater" in its title, which is the unsexiest thing ever. Sting, you've pulled.

Winner: Timeless

Criteria six: Which album would sound best played on the panpipes?

Complete disaster. I was halfway through the squealing sirens of Goldie's nasty Saint Angel and I dropped my panpipes down the toilet. The bleepy melodies of HIA, especially on Ting, were much easier to handle, despite my pipe-holes being a little damp. I'd wipe them down with bog roll, but, y'know, rationing and all that. I really must find a room in my gaff with better acoustics.

Winner: Freefloater

Criteria seven: miscellaneous and worryingly random

As with the first round, this final judging criteria is guided by Wikipedia's random page function. Which album flies highest? HIA is literally "Higher": it's in the title, duh. Which album makes the best Christmas music? Easy: there's a jolly festivity to HIA while Goldie's more Good Friday, alas. Which album could be prime minister of India? Goldie's led an orchestra, so surely he could do that as well. Which album helps with the scientific study of insects? HIA is the only one I can imagine beetles dancing to. Which album is secretly a Norwegian footballer? I guess This Is A Bad describes Norway's FIFA World Cup results, so Goldie it is. 

Winner: Freefloater

Overall winner and going through to the quarter-finals: No penalty shoot-out here: Goldie goes through to the semi-finals, winning four of the seven criteria. He will face whoever wins the second quarter final. Sad to see you go, Higher Intelligence Agency. The Metalheadz master proved too steely in the end.

Stay tuned for another quarter final as we get ever closer to discovering [cue dramatic look to camera] the best electronic music album of 1995. See the introduction to the quarter finals here. See all the original riders and runners here.

Further Fats: See the whole Best Albums Of 1995 series here.

Best electronic music albums of 1995: the Quarter Finals

Back in the onions of history, I started a contest to decide the best electronic music album of 1995. 

16 albums butted against each other in the most brutal battle since Genghis Khan laid siege to Milton Keynes. The Chemical Brothers and Autechre were some of those who fell by the wayside in the first round: it was not pretty. Since I finished that first round, the entire of civilisation seems to have collapsed, and we are left with just eight albums gingerly staggering towards the quarter finals. 

It is now time for those quarter finals. 

The following albums will face each other daily in a battle so apocalyptic, a butterfly will faint on the other side of the universe. The remaining contestants are:

Quarter final 1:

Freefloater by Higher Intelligence Agency

Timeless by Goldie

Quarter final 2:

Maxinquaye by Tricky

Everything Is Wrong by Moby

Quarter final 3:

Post by Bjork

...I Care Because You Do by Aphex Twin

Quarter final 4:

Landcruising by Carl Craig

Leftism by Leftfield

Some heavyweight candidates there. Which would you choose as the best electronic music album of 1995? Who do you think is going to struggle? 

I don't care how you answered those questions. This is because there's a twist in this contest: it isn't open to a public vote. The winners of each bout are decided by a panel of very experienced experts. The panel consists of, in no particular order:

1. Me.

2. Er...

3. That's it. 

That's right. It's a dictatorship. It's a despotic autocracy. It's a flipping con. The first round saw me eliminating albums on the basis of which would make the best biscuit, or which was best suited to egg-themed karaoke.

In the upcoming quarter-finals, there will be some different yet equally unhelpful criteria on which the judging panel (me) will make their (my) decisions.

Expect a quarter final daily over the next four days. Don your marigolds and stuck a broom up your bum: this is going to get messy. In the meantime, see the series so far here, and see the 16 albums I started off with here.

Further Fats: The Best Albums of 1995 series

Best electronic music albums of 1995: Goldie versus the Chemical Brothers

Here is the second round of my all-singing all-dancing contest to find the best electronic music album of 1995. See the series so far here, and see all 16 featured albums here.

A random number generator tells me the next two contestants are:

Timeless by Goldie
Exit Planet Dust by The Chemical Brothers

Lawks. Only one can get through to the quarter-finals. Fire up the chainsaws!

Criteria one: which album would make a better biscuit?

Here we have two critically acclaimed debut albums released within a month of each other in 1995, each one a shining example in its field. But which one goes better with a cup of Tetley's? The tone of these albums is wildly different: the Chemicals with their floor-stomping rafter-shaking beats, and Goldie with his complex rhythms and symphonic satellite sounds. Biscuits are basic: it has to be the block-rocking Brothers.
Winner: Exit Planet Dust

Criteria two: which album has more bangin' choons?

On one hand we have the "brothers gonna work it out" refrain alongside contributions from Beth Orton and the fringe guy from the Charlatans. On the other hand, we have the epic Inner City Life: feel your spine shiver with that opening "tiiimeleeeeess" from Urban Cookie Collective's Diane Charlemagne. Since these albums came out, we have endured terrorism, recessions, riots and fascism. Which tune echoes through the ages? Tiiimeleeeeess...
Winner: Timeless

Criteria three: which album's track titles better remind me of cute animals?

I'm going to ignore the fact that Goldie was obviously named after a famous Blue Peter dog. Timeless's first disc ends with the track Jah The Seventh Seal, which means this album must contain six other seals. The Chemicals have the track Three Little Birdies Down Beats. So what's better: three little birdies or seven blubbery seals? The birdies have it.
Winner: Exit Planet Dust

Criteria four: which of the two would Jesus listen to?

Goldie's album starts with Saint Angel and ends with Jah, while his track This Is A Bad sounds like a precis of Jesus banging on about good trees bearing bad fruit. It certainly sounds heavenly with all its extended chords, while Exit Planet Dust has chemicals and swearing and a song to evil singing birdwomen the Sirens. No offence, Chemical Brothers, but you are definitely going to hell.
Winner: Timeless

Criteria five: which is the better album to sing songs about eggs to?

A couple of moments on the Chemicals album proved successful. On Life Is Sweet, I managed to sing "I'm boiling my eggs soft, but I forgot to set the timer" and on Alive Alone I could fit the lyrics "I'm an egg, aren't I, I'm an egg, oh no". It's all pretty negative about eggs though. On the Goldie album, I not only could warble a chandelier-smashing "tiiimeeeer", I could also sing "Om-el-ette, oh those yolken eggs is what I wanna eat, sprinkle cheeeese, I need to be, I need to be your oooeuuuuuf". Speggtacular.
Winner: Timeless

Criteria six: which album has the better cover design?

The Brothers chose a photograph of a 1970s hippy couple possibly walking home from a music festival. The soft-hued picture has been flipped, so a clearly American car is driving on the wrong side of the road. It's an Instagram photo 15 years before Instagram. The Goldie design is impressive, with the Metalheadz logo embedded into some kind of robotic cloaca, but it lacks the resonance of its rival.
Winner: Exit Planet Dust

Criteria seven: miscellaneous and worryingly random

This final section contains criteria guided by Wikipedia's random article button. The album most likely to defeat the eye of Sauron? The aggressive rolling beats of Goldie. The album best made into a cheesy motivational kitchen sign? The Chemicals and the text would be In Dust We Trust. The album best used as a life raft? The Chemicals because it would placate the Sirens. The album filled with the most gas? Obviously Goldie: the album is mostly air. Album most likely to be found in the National Helicopter Museum? With his graffiti lifestyle and gold teeth, Goldie would definitely own at least six of their helicopters.
Winner: Timeless

Overall winner and going through to the quarter-finals: I did not like two big hitters appearing so early on in this competition. By a whisker, Goldie's Timeless wins this leg of the contest. Congratulations, big dog. Massive apologies to the Chemical Brothers. I'm sure you're gonna work it out. I'm sure you're gonna work it out. I'm sure you're gonna work it out. I'm sure you're gonna work it out...

Two more 1995 albums will go head-to-head in the next couple of days or so. Stay tuned to this blog. See all the riders and runners here.

Further Fats: See the whole Best Albums Of 1995 series here.

Ten slices of shallow-fried Twitter whimsy

Twitter is a platform in which everyone can communicate with everyone else all of the time without any downsides whatsoever.

What follows are ten slices of shallow-fried whimsy lovingly copied-and-pasted from my Twitter account. Some if it reads as a useful self-help guide along the lines of The Power Of Now, How To Win Friends And Influence People or the Roland SH-101 Owner's Manual. Some of it reads like poetry along the lines of, er, poems and stuff.

I have given each tweet a header so you can perhaps make an index from it, like they do with proper books.

1. The food puns
Butter Living Through Chemistry. Meusli Has The Right To Children. Thymeless. Dubnobasswithmyheadman (where bass is a fish). Adventures Beyond The Ultrawurst. Endtrojuicing. Not sure where I'm going with this.

2. A question about 1996
Did the boy ever see his mom that weekend to tell her Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan Satan?

3. Thoughts post-Brexit
Don't worry, everyone, we don't need Europe. Just stay in your towns, don't go anywhere, don't meet new people and don't buy anything. We didn't have the EU around the time of the Great Plague and everything was just fine.

4. Morning reflection 1
A grey morning in Manchester. Cold raindrops fall on puddled streets like polar bears in spandex, if polar bears were tiny and made of water, also forget the spandex, that's just a distraction tbh

5. A motivation
How to have a positive day:
- smile more
- do one kind thing
- pay a compliment
- open up the portal of d'ath krondor
- eat healthy
- live in the moment
- the tentacles, the tentacles, they burn
- be a good listener
- the void shall become all, ye wastrels of earth

6. A concern
I'm slightly worried that Antifa is short for Anti Fat Roland.

7. A dream for the future
It's splitting hairs, but I'd like to hear New Order's Mr Disco covered by Electronic.

8. Morning reflection 2
It is morning. The sun comes alive in the eastern sky and says its happy greetings. Hello trees. Hello fields. Hello squirrels. Hello sun! they call and wave. In the western sky, the moon dies a horrible death. Everyone laughs.

9. A simple wish
I wish Squarepusher was called Squidpusher and all of his promo shots were of him in back alleys selling squid.

10. The bird incident
Twitter, I forgot to tell you. A low-flying goose honked at me pretty aggressively the other day, so that's pretty much 2020 written off. How's YOUR week been?

Further Fats: Squarepusher's psychedelic number - could it send him (robert) miles off course? (2009)

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

Best electronic albums of 2019: eighteen

18 – J Majik – Full Circle (Infrared)

J Majik made his name with Metalheadz, which contrary to popular belief is not a Cyberman sex club but is instead one of the leading jungle music labels co-founded by everyone's favourite classical music conductor Goldie.

And that pretty much sums up what's on offer. Full Circle offers superbly retro drum ‘n’ bass noises: there are tingly bits which sound like heaven and busy drums that sound like hell and sassy vocals that sound like somewhere inbetween.

As with LTJ Bukem back in ye olden days, this has all the energy of those smoke-filled d'n'b clubs. The chords swell, the amen breaks spiral, the bass shudders, and the result is gorgeous. The beautiful break-down and beat drop in Red Circle is worth the price of the stream alone.

You might not be into drum 'n' bass. This is an excellent starting point because, to slightly misquote Tricky, it's brand new, it's retro. And yes, I am also wondering how Cybermen have sex. Must be something to do with pipes.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

Hey, Bleep dot com, whatcha been up to?

"Well, Dave, you can hear an Autechre remix of a track by scarecrow-baiting technistos The Black Dog on our site here.

Thanks, Bleep dot com. My name's not Dave, by the way. What else have you got?

"You might want to check out Antoni Maiovvi's Shadow Of The Blood Stained Kiss. It sounds like a slasher movie and it's got titles like Witchcraft and the onimously monikered They Return. You'll like that, Dave."

That sounds interesting. I'm not Dave. What's Kent electronic mentalist label Planet Mu up to?

"I'm glad you asked, Dave. We asked Planet Mu to come up with a six quid collection of some of their best stuff. It's called The Mu School."

Stop calling me Dave. Seriously. It was funny on League Of Gentlemen, but it's not funny here.

"How about an afro electro collection called Horse Meat Disco, Dave? It's like robots oiling up for an old fashioned disco."

Stop the Dave thing. I know it's a comedy construct to disguise the fact all I'm doing is just re-typing up a blanket email from Bleep, but it really is chafing my watermelon, man.

"Hey, Dave, check out this uber-swish white label remix of Goldie's Timeless--"

Right, that's it, I'm leaving the blog. *slam*

Live blog: Elbow nudge ahead for Mercury Music Prize win - my cat is disappointed

I'm blogging "as live" while I sit with my poorly cat to watch the 2008 Mercury Music Prize on the tellybox. The following text was written as it happened and has not been edited.

9.55pm: I make a glass of orange juice and stare at the TV screen. If Burial (pictured) doesn't win, I'm going to smash in my telly. I scan the room for a suitable heavy object. I look at my sleeping cat. She's quite big. Not fat, but tall. I consider what it would be like smashing in a TV screen with a cat. I drink my juice.

9.58pm: The programme starts shortly. Massive junglist Goldie has just lost some orchestra conducting contest to either Mel or Sue out of Mel And Sue. Clive Anderson is presenting this programme. I wonder if he will stay on my telly and present the Mercury Music Prize.

10.01pm: Ooh, it's starting. The titles are all blue and neon like it's Casualty or something. Lauren Laverne, ex-90s indie star, is presenting. She interviewed Squarepusher once and she looked like she didn't know who he is. I hope she rates Burial. She's just called the nominees a "mish mash".

10.04pm: The Last Shadow Puppets are performing; they're how I would like the Coral to sound. Some indie band has just played, and now there's a woman hammering her fist on a piano. Oh look, now it's British Sea Power, who are glorious.

10.08pm: During a bit of punditry which makes it sound like a football programme ("Simon Armitage: "He can do no wrong for me."), I wonder what 'mish-mash' music would sound like and how I would dance to it.

10.10pm: After some r'n'b nonsense, Burial's Ghost Hardware lights up my TV like a solar flare, but a really dark solar flare. Oh please God let him win. Gosh, is that Robert Plant? Hasn't he got wavy hair?

10.12pm: Lauren Laverne: "It's not just a young man's game any more, is it?" It's not flapping FOOTBALL, for gizmo's sake. Props to Armitage who desperately wants the mysterious Burial to turn out to be a "retired military historian from Kent."

10.14pm. This is moving on apace. Oh tindersticks, it's Adele. GETHEROFFTHESCREEN! Aaaargh, my ears hurt, Make her stop! Oh, she has. And now it's Radiohead, who are God and I will punch anyone who critizised them. With my cat.

10.18pm: Armitage has just called Radiohead "our generation's Pink Floyd". Come on, Imran Ahmed, say something interesting. Yes, he's just tipped Burial for the win. He's a wise man.

10.20pm: That jazzy guy with a lady's name with slicked hair (Jules something) is bigging up the audience with a bit of sub-Stephen Fry wordsmithery. I suddenly want Elbow to win. Or Portico Quartet, just to wobble the applecart. Maybe I'm just mentioning these bands so I don't look so foolish when Burial doesn't win.

10.22pm: And the £20,000 goes to... come on, get on with it Jules... I'm sticking with Burial for the win. It's... Bury's own Elbow. Brilliant. I always knew they'd do it. Didn't I tip them? Didn't I? No?

10.28pm: My poorly cat sleeps on, her paw snuggled over her eyes, while Elbow do a refreshingly good-natured interview with Laverne. She's got some kind of virus that keeps attacking her every few months, poor thing. My cat, I mean, not Lauren Laverne. I decide not to use her to smash in my tellybox. I switch the TV off instead and and let my cat console me for tipping the wrong winner.