FINALLY, here's what the 'LCD' in LCD Soundsystem stands for

You know what the LCD in LCD Soundsystem stands for, right?

I was in Lidl shopping for lightbulbs and I bumped into James Murphy. Typically for him, he eschewed the customary trolley or basket, and he was clutching at least a dozen polar bear plush toys to his chest.

"What does LCD in LCD Soundsystem stand for?" I asked James.

James frowned. His reply was a bit muffled. He was struggling a bit with the polar bears and I think the fluff was tickling his nose. "Mffmmfff mfmfffff," said James Murphy.

"Pardon?" I said. "Loud Clashy Drums? Lairy Chorus Drawling? Lazer Computer Dance? Lawks, Calamitous Din? What did you say, James Murphy?"

He then said something else, but it could have been anything to be honest. I would have shifted one of the cuddly polar bears from his nostril, but I didn't want to drop my lightbulbs.

I punched past him to get to the front of the queue, and once I'd shouted at the cashier, unplugged the card machine for a laugh then scooped an out-of-date bus pass from the bin outside the front door, I'd almost forgotten about my chance encounter with James Murphy.

Almost.

"He probably said Lovely Compact Discs," I said to the bus driver as I tried to blur the expired bus ticket in front of his angry face.

Lovely Compact Discs. The LCD in LCD Soundsystem stands for 'Lovely Compact Discs'. You read it here first.

I've written a review of LCD Soundsystem's latest album 'American Dream', which may or may not be available on compact disc, for Electronic Sound. Here's the single 'tonite' you've probably already heard but probably should hear again.

Manchester International Festival: hot, sweaty, dramatic fun

I spent most of this year pretending Manchester International Festival didn't exist. Blah blah blah, leave it to all the Macbeth-quoting theatre luvvies.

And then I won tickets to The Machine (pictured) courtesy of the Postcode Lottery of all things. It was an edge-of-the-seat, imaginative and funny play that bent reality and built the stakes beautifully.

Massive Attack's behind-screen visual soundtracking I've seen done better (Murcof's eye-poppng collaboration with AntiVJ, for example), but it was a powerful narrative that renewed my love for Adam Curtis' visceral pessimism.

Then I thought that was it. Done the festival. Tick box. Outta here. Fat Roland has left the building.

However... you know when you lace the jelly with heroin and all the children get addicted and no-one suspects you because you're the clown and no-one's going to check your shoes for high-grade class As?

That. Except the clown is the festival and I am the children and the drugs are:

- Maxine Peake's passionate and haunting Masque of Anarchy, which reminded us that great theatre can send hearts reeling:

- Tino Sehgal's unsettling and mesmerising This Variation, which replaced one's sense of safety and security with a surreal horror;

- James Murphy's friendly and inclusive slow-disco club night Despacio, which used a custom-built sound system to dance away the mothballs;

- Festival Square and its fun transformation of Albert Square / the magical access to old buildings / the super-friendly volunteers / tremendous word-of-mouth buzz that deserves some kind of marketing award.

So yeah. All that. MIF transformed Manchester into a living hotbed of creative surprises: theatre for the people. It was hot, sweaty, dramatic fun and it made my city a community again.

With thanks to Cowboy Boots Dave, Ros + Lee + Sarah, Dancing Matthew, Hartley Hare + numerous people to whom he's either engaged or related or friends with (mostly the latter), various ticket sellers, um, the Postcode Lottery, and anyone else who mainlined me some festival.

Further Fats: Murcof's amorphous star clouds at Futuresonic 2009 (2009)

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

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

7 - Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma

There's something about the great nephew of John and Alice Coltrane that enables him to kidnap heavyweight vocalists with Guru-like ease (Erykah Badu, Thom Yorke, Outkast, Laura Darlington) and yet still beguile the casual listener with the strangest cacophony of polymathic twiddling whilst provoking bemused reviewers into penning juxtapositional metaphors of space travel and smokey 1970s jazz clubs. That and his beats are well phat.

So, among the laidback hip hop of Zodiac Shit, the shuffling funk of Dance Of The Pseudo and the swirling headnodding of MmmHmm, we have a multitude of influences: jazz, garage, hip hop, techno, classical, folktronica and Enrique Iglesias. Despite all of this, I can't help feeling Cosmogramma is an album none of us can quite understand yet and perhaps it should be enjoyed more some time in the distant future, maybe in a smokey jazz club in space.

FlyLo isn't just a comedy airline created by Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Buy Cosmogramma at Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

6 - Autechre – Oversteps

The Wills and Kate of Manchester electronic music produced three records in 2010. 3 Telepathics Meh In-Sect Connection was a banana-themed collaboration by Sean from Autechre, Move Of Ten was technically an EP (although it's longer than the Flying Lotus album, above), while the release featured in my top ten, Oversteps, gave notoriety to Altered:Carbon who dressed their own LP as Autechre.

Listening to Oversteps is a bit like cuddling up to your favourite hedgehog: it's sharp and awkward, yet you're allured by the familiar scent. I don't get the detractors who write this off as difficult. known(1) has harpsichord, qplay is as delicate as my tummy after a night on the rohypnol, whilst see on see and Treale (oh NOW they use capital letters) are bonafide Autechre hits. Kind of. Warmer than Quaristice, this is music that spikes the bloodstream.

Buy Autechre's Oversteps at Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

5 - Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise

Arriving on Rough Trade Records like a supercharged Sosumu Yokota, Pantha Du Prince produced eleven minimal techno masterpieces that were so fluid, so organic, they could only have been harvested as they were literally dripping from the trees. Minimal techno often bores me, so why on earth is this several leagues above places six to ten on my list?

Maybe it's the snarling acid on Behind The Stars, the heavenly rave chords of Satellite Snyper, or the clanks and bells and feedback and heavenly choirs of synthdom that eddy and whirl around crisp beats that couldn't beat more crisply even if accompanied by a Walkers advert starring Gary Lineker being thumped to a pulp by sixteen heavily-armed packets of Seabrook. I'm not sure if Black Noise can be topped, but there are four albums on my list that have done just that. Stay tuned.

Bring the Noise: buy Pantha Du Prince's album from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

Not quite in the top ten (part two)

I'm pleased with my top ten, although excluding any amazing album is a bit like shepherding your ten favourite sheep into the pen then shotgunning the rest into blasted pulps of smoking mutton. Here are more lambs that have been silenced.

Gold Panda's glitchy Lucky Shiner (pictured) probably got bumped because a couple of artists in my top ten are doing similar things. Massive Attack's Heligoland probably got bumped because, although the album was an improvement, it still sounded like veterans keeping the life support going. Also on a mainstream tip, I never quite connected with LCD Soundsystem's swansong This Is Happening.

A notable omission from my top ten is Squarepusher's Schobaleader One project, but I couldn't separate how he could make some tracks on d'Demonstrator sound like Royksopp and then not expect to be compared to Royksopp. He's excluded because he sounds like Royksopp. There, I said it. Squarepusher sounds like Royksopp. Royksopp's funnier the more you say it.

Actress' Splazsh is an essential album for 2010, and I feel pained to exclude it. Oneohtrix Point Never received major acclaim for Returnal and again was a close call. And Starkey's Ear Drums And Black Holes, bringing ballads and grime to Planet Mu Records, also just missed the cut.

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

Massive Attack got soul but Ceephax got swing(ing lampshades)

Hey, look, there is some albums what just come out!

Ceephax Acid Crew

I'm swinging from the bloody lightshade.

United Acid Emirates, the new album from Ceephax Acid Crew, has got me prancing around my mansion like a brain damaged pixie. It's so lurid and colourful, like being stuck in an 8 bit Meg And Mog cartoon.

The drooling, looping trippiness of the acid, splattered all over this album, is a constant, giddy joy. The opener Cedric's Sonnet is a sharp, spikey melodic number reminiscent of his brother Squarepusher in Welcome To Europe mode. Castilian is dragged kicking and screaming by a full-on, bullying bass drum, while the dated click rhythm of Life Funk reminds me of Felix-era house music.

This is, however, not a stupid album. It's a serious step forward for Ceephax, where he demonstrates his various skills at chugging 80s techno anthems (Topaz) or off-kilter chord arrangements (Commuter). And all this with plenty of squelching acid moistness. Highly recommended.

Massive Attack

Are you bothered about a new Massive Attack album?  Of course you are: I can't believe you asked me that, you idiot.

Heligoland has finally, um, landed. It's a full seven years after the band's previous studio album ("If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing slowly," says their MySpace page) and nearly 20 years after their highly influential debut Blue Lines. And actually, it's that memory of Blue Lines that I can hear on Heligoland.

Yes, there are guest vocalists (which The Guardian had down as almost unique in the dance world, despite the Gorillaz, Fatboy Slim and Unkle doing that kind of thing for years). Yes, there is gloominess a-plenty. But what this has, which I think 100th Window missed, is... capital letters... SOUL.

It's an album that is destined for coffee tables, new year's parties and easy headlines about the vocal collaborators (hello, Guy Garvey), and therefore many serious music fans will brush it off their shrugged shoulders. Which is a shame.

What will really get me all excited are those Burial remixes the internet's been promising.

Pantha Du Prince

Also out this month is Pantha Du Prince's Black Noise. Oh, and look, he has vocal collaborations from the likes of Animal Collective, !!! and LCD Soundsystem people. Read this and weep, The Guardian.

Black Noise is awash with clouds. You know how some albums sound urban-y and some sound outdoors-y? This is Heidi the goat-herder's friend flatlining on heroin on the highest mountain in the world while buzzards perform a jagged dance of death around her.

With sharp techno, dizzying loops, spiralling bells and smoky, smoky atmospherics, this will appeal to Susumu Yokota fans looking to grab something a bit more substantial by the goat horns.

Mark E gets it on with Mouse On Mars while Amon Tobin gets it on with a spoon and pans of varying sizes

If you slashed me in half, maybe with a machete or a surprisingly sharp no-entry sign, you would realise the word MANCHESTER is written through me like BLACKPOOL through rock.

So when guitar electronistas Mouse On Mars (pictured) teamed up with the legendary Manc combo The Fall to form a whole new group called Von Sudenfed, I was bound to froth at the mouth whether or not it was any good.

Thankfully, it is any good.

Their debut album Tromatic Reflexxions is a clattering, shattering mess of bleeps and beats and Mark E Smith yelps. The LCD Soundsystem-style bedding is not as experimental as other Mars material; it is immediate and urgent and fits so well with Smith's distorted ramblings.

All counted, The Fall have released over 90 albums. Von Sudenfed's album stands as a highlight in that swaggering legacy. If you like The Fall, buy it.

Less successful is Telefon Tel Aviv's Remixes Compiled.

This is a tottering pile of production work stretching back to the days when they were in short underpants. It includes a Nine Inch Nails remix, but only because Aviv were bumming studio space from Trent Reznor. It's an adequate compilation, but it won't last more than a handful of plays on your bright green Tomy CD player. (What do you mean you haven't got one?)

Thirdly, Foley Room is Amon Tobin experimenting with 'found sound'. In other words, he has been capturing noises with the magic of microphones rather than ripping from other records.

The result is a collection of sporadic sheep bleats and cutlery clinks that goes on for two hours.

I am, of course, lying. It's the usual blunted cinematic denseness from Tobin, keeping your head in the reefer clouds and your feet in rock and roll hell. Bar a few extra oddities (lions!), there's nothing new here, But that's the point; he's not allowed to change because he's good.

'Though it does include kitchen utensils, so I was almost right.