Best electronica: some quick YouTube links

If you feel a bit out of the loop with all this electronic blip-blop, and if Chris Evans is simply refusing to play the latest Mike Slott, then you might appreciate this list.

Here are ten tracks that have turned my head in the past year or so. You should definitely listen to them all, then get digging on the internet for more of the same. Each artist is tagged at the bottom of this post, so click through to see what else I've written about them.

It won't surprise you to know that there are more than ten acts out there: these were just the first ten I thought of. I would love it if you suggested more in the comments section.

If you're wondering where to start with modern IDM / electronica, Fat Roland's essential yet insubstantial YouTube link guide has got it covered:

Play the whole frickin' lot as a YouTube playlist or click on the links below:

Hudson Mohawke - Fuse

The Tuss - Rushup I Bank 12

Mount Kimbie - Maybes

Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo

Rustie - Bad Science

Joker - Digidesign

Mike Slott - Gardening

Flying Lotus - 1983

Max Tundra - Will Get Fooled Again

Wisp - The Fire Above

The best album of 2009 is Dan Deacon's Bromst. Here's why...

Edit, December 2009: The best album of 2009 is not Bromst. Yeah, I know, I'm contradicting myself, but hey, this here post was from April! Here is my full and final run-down of the best albums of 2009. And now back to the post you clicked on in the first place...

Welcome to the best album of 2009.

It's tempting to label Dan Deacon's Bromst as a coming-of-age masterpiece, using my best Wonder Years voice. But it's only his second UK album proper; he's barely in long trousers yet (see picture!).

I know it's only the beginning of April, but this is the best long player of the year. Here's why:

Bromst opens with Build Voice, which does what it says on the tin, and gives you the same swirling tingle you got in your loins at the start of Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion. I expected some toytown trickery and silliness, but this opener is reserved, considered, and, dare my pouting mouth whisper it, mature. Its melodic choir and hopscotch piano makes way for an extended fart: we're into the start of Red F and an energetic, almost frenetic speed pop track that loses none of the melody.

Are those chipmunks hidden in the chorus of Paddling Ghost? The playfulness is still here, raising a cub scout salute and making a goofy face, but like the wonderfully titled and beautifully epic Surprise Stefani, all the Timmy Mallett-ness is integrated into the songwriting.

So Deacon throws us wailing spirituals (Wet Wings), stuttering dog samples (Woof Woof), plus even more chipmunks only a lot, lot faster (Baltihorse), and we catch every single one of them because it all makes glorious sense.

If Flying Lotus hadn't already done it, Bromst has made me fall in love with electronica all over again. By the time we're at the xylophones and modem tones of closing Get Older, which in Max Tundra's hands would be endearingly comical, our heads are bursting with rhythm and colour and cacophonous bliss.

This is the sound of a musical genius having the absolute best time of his life. The streaming link I mentioned in this post a couple of weeks ago is no longer online, so try here instead.

I've discovered this new thing called CDs / Still time to spend time with Fat Roland

Fopp in Manchester is flogging some cheap Warp CDs

I got each of the following for £3 each (see pics below). Plus the glorious moviefilm Sunshine for a handful of groats too.

That and Max Tundra's Parallel Error Beheads You for £1.99 and a squids postage from Manchester Vinyl Exchange's ebay site.

The joy of it all sends a tingle through my happy hat. I can afford more expensive albums, but the cheapness makes it fun. I'm into CDs. Recorded music is alive: Bill Drummond is wrong.

Of course I haven't played any of these. I've been too busy with Spotify.

Are you still here?

Don't forget that you can still see me in an exhibition at Manchester's Green Room. We Were Spending Precious Time tracks a journey I made through the city on the theme of silence within live music events. I'm on a video which is streaming as part of the whole thing. I was forced to watch it, and my bits are a bit windy (ahem) so you have to listen up to hear me. Which fits my silence theme nicely.

The full text of my exhibition piece will go on this site when the run ends. We Were Spending Precious Time is on for another week and a bit, after which me and Lindow Man are going on a long post-exhibiting holiday together.

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.

13 bird related facts about Merzbow's Masami Akita

In honour of Merzbow's 13 Japanese Birds project, in which the seminal Japanese noise experimentalist will release 13 records in 13 months inspired by Olivier Messiaen's birdsong music, here is a list of 13 bird-related facts you should definitely know about Merzbow mainman Masami Akita.

Bird fact one.  Masami Akita shares his surname with a prefecture of Japan in which three swans died from bird flu.

Bird fact two.  Akita founded Merzbow in 1979, just three years after the Atlas Of Breeding Birds In Britain And Ireland was published.

Bird fact three.  Some birds, such as the whip-poor-will, are good at camouflage. 'Camouflage' is the name of yet another album by Merzbow, out this month.  A special edition of this album is in the shape of a seabed and is limited to just 149 copies.

Bird fact four.  Akita is from Tokyo, which is in a place called Japan.  The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was founded in Didsbury, which is very much not seen as the 'Tokyo of Manchester'.

Bird fact five.  You can listen to Merzbow's Woodpecker No 2 on Last FM.  It pretty much sounds like a lot of his other stuff.

Bird fact six. Akita attended Tamagawa University, which has a Honeybee Science Research Center.  Honey bees are not birds.

Bird fact seven.  While in Akita's home country of Japan, TV-presenter and planet-killer Jeremy Clarkson tricked the country's speed cameras by shielding his face with a mask of ornithologist Bill Oddie.

Bird fact eight.  Merzbow is named after the work of Kurt Schwitters, who once made adverts for pen makers Pelikan.  (I wanted so much to type 'penguin makers' just then.)

Bird fact nine.  The bird with the most feathers is the Tundra Swan.  Max Tundra is an electronic musician, as is Merzbow.

Bird fact ten.  Masami Akita switched to using laptops some time in the 'noughties'. Chris Killen's debut novel The Bird Room was probably written on a laptop. Probably.

Bird fact eleven.  Akita is into bondage.  There is a bird called the red knot.  There may be a connection there, I'm not sure.

Bird fact twelve.  A cassette compilation called Massaconfvsa, featuring Merzbow's track Everywhere It's Machine (Grid Module 3), was released in 1988 on O Crow Records.  It seems to be the only thing O Crow has ever released.

Bird fact thirteen.  If you're baffled by Japanese noise music, read Paul Hegarty's Noise Music: A History, which has a whole chapter on Merzbow.  Birds do not read books, as a general rule of thumb.

Just one creamy falsetto (warning: contains nauseating levels of false modesty)

Musical comparisons are a dish best served pithy, with a generous side-helping of originality.

That's why, sometimes, my blog makes as much sense as a Lego pipe-wrench. I'd rather describe something in a way you haven't heard before than rely on the usual journalistic cliches ('Tricky is like Morcheeba... on heroin.')

But I'm afraid, Piccadilly Records have whupped me at my own game.

Following my post about Max Tundra and the Sound Of Music, I spotted this description of Tundra's new album in Piccadilly's weekly email guide:

"It sounds like Yes playing glitch techno with Pharrell Williams, fighting Todd Rundgren at the controls while Green Gartside offers his creamiest falsetto."

I never pretend I am the best writer on the internet; I am barely in the top, ooh, four. But I wish I had written that, darn damn'd it.

Max Tundra does Prince while, by the look of the picture wot I edited in Microsoft Publisher, the Von Trapps do LSD

The bejewelled crowd bustles and hums in a room glistening with gold carvings and low-slung chandeliers.

A woman in white announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, the children of Captain Von Trapp wish to say goodnight to you." She raises her hands in awkward invitation and the hum foams up into chatter and gasps.

Down the stairs of the grand hallway descends a music sensation that will be remembered for generations.

It's a topless Max Tundra balancing a huge tooth hat on his head.

Yes, the master of bizarre pop and lord of the 8 / 16 / 4 / 0.5-bit opus is back with a busy electro-fuzz single (see the video featuring the tooth hat here) that boasts the Sound Of Music's So Long Farewell as a b-side.

He's done well: he's gone for the obligatory cowbell, but I'm not sure how that thumping 808 snare would sit with the delicate Von Trapp kids (pictured).

It bodes well for Tundra's third album next week, Parallax Error Beheads You. Expect the usual suspects saying it's messy and as busy as an OCD bee, and there should be the usual stampede of comparisons to Nintendo / Sega / insert generic bleepy video game console here.

Time for an mpSunday, where I give away my record collection (but only on a Sunday, mind). This track was the first glimpse we had of the potential brilliance of Max's new album. It's him doing an uncomfortably straight approximation of a geeky Prince.

mpSunday (right click and save as): CRAASH! This mpSunday has now expired.

Which reminds me. If anyone is hoarding an mp3 of Tundra's version of the KLF's What Time Is Love, cyber-slap me. And yes it is okay to use the 'cyber' prefix again.

Let's get quizzy - the answers

Well, chafe my trousers and call me Henry, it must be time for the answers to the pub quiz I posted last week.

Q1 The First Commoner of the Land is the Speaker of the House of Commons, a.k.a. Michael Martin

Q2 Tony Blair is the UK politician that has been played (or parodied) by Michael Sheen, Robert Lindsay and David Tennant.

Q3 Paddy Ashdown’s first name is Jeremy, Obviously.

Q4 The Sun prefered to call Paddy Ashdown Paddy Pantsdown in the early 1990s.

Q5 In his own words, Iain Duncan Smith was a quiet man.

Q6 In the 2006 local elections, (b) Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern ended up with the most councillors out of them, The Christian Peoples Alliance and SALT.

Q7 William Pitt The Younger’s father is called William Pitt The Elder. Minus a thousand brownie points if you got this wrong.

Q8 In no particular order, Simon Hughes, Chris Huhne and Sir Menzies Campbell came first, second and third in the 2006 Liberal Democrat leadership contest. No, not Lembit Biscuit or Mark Oatcake.

Q9 Dennis Skinner called the Minister of Agriculture a "slimy" and a "wart", said the only thing growing in the 1980s were “the lines of coke in front of Boy George and the rest of the Tories”, told the House of Lords to go to hell and called Dr. Owen “a pompous sod” – after which he offered to withdraw the word “pompous”. His infamous nickname is the Beast of Bolsover.

Q10 David Cameron has been an MP for six years.

Q11 David Cameron's constituency is Witney, in Oxfordshireland.

If you got 10, you are Mike Paradinas and you are the foremost genius of electronic music. If you got 9, you are Max Tundra, which makes you a genius, but just not as recognised. If you got 8 or less, you are Adamski, the keyboard wizard.