Meemo & Mu have tunes for Christmas, Easter and Pancake Tuesday

Get your face around this Soundcloud shizzle.

This Meemo & Mu show is labelled as a Christmas broadcast but it's a straightforward avalanche of ice cold music brilliance. You can probably listen to it at any time of year. Even Whit Sunday.

It's co-hosted by Lara Rix-Martin from Objects Ltd and Mike Paradinas from the Planet Mu label. They also release tunes as Heterotic (pictured), but they've been good and not packed this with their own tunes.

Good job, really. I mean, who would use promotion of other people's work to plug their own stuff? That's selfish, right? Only narcissistic people do that. On a, er, totally unconnected note, I'd just like to report that the Hey Fat Roland podcast has been delayed by a new job and will return after the new year. Search 'hey fat roland' now on your podcast app and subscribe in time for the relaunch.

Ahem. Sorry.

Back to Meemo & Mu. There are some real talents in this mix: Fatima Al Qadiri, Antwood, Eva, Teengirl Fantasy, Hieroglyphic Being, Mr Mitch and Jlin. It's also a useful prompt for me to dig more into the relatively new Objects Ltd.




Further Fats: All bound for Mu Mu land (2006)

Further Fats: Hey Fat Roland podcast

Snurvive the snowpocalypse with snowtronica

Fat Roland would like to advise listeners of serious disruptions to music due to the severe weather conditions, which are likely to continue tomorrow. Electronica listeners are advised not to listen to or make tunes except for the most essential artists.

These are those essential artists:

- Anything by The Avalanches (via Stuart Durber)

- Anything by the Chemical Brrrs (geddit? via Isaac Ashe)

- Anything by Max Tundra (via Dirty Protest) 

- Biosphere: Polar Sequences (via Dial)

- Digitonal: Snowflake Vectors (via Dan Brearley)

- For delayed journeys, Faithless: Take The Long Way Home or Miss You Less See You More (via A Strangely Isolated Place)

- Herrmann and Kleine: Catch A Snowflake (via Dan Brearley)

- Joy Electric: Walking In A Winter Wonderland (via John Mark Cullen)

- Leftfield: Melt 

- Mike and Rich: Mr Frosty (via LUDD)

- Moby: Snowball (via Ben Edson) 

- Modeselektor: The White Flash (via Daniel Stirling)

- Monolake - Infinite Snow (see forthcoming album review, prob'lee on Saturday)

- The Orb: Little Fluffy Clouds (of snow. Via Stuart Durber)

- Trentemoller. (While The Cold Winter Waiting, I reckon. Via Isaac Ashe.)

- Various: Tribute To Antarctica (via Mrcopyandpaste)

- Wisp: Frozen Days (via Smucker)

Do add your own snow-themed electronica / IDM in the comments below. Or tweet it and tag it #snowtronica. Together, we can get through this if only we listen to the right music.

Monthly mop-up: top class joy, too many leggings and the theme tune to the Equalizer

Here are some scabby flakes of putrid bloggery that I didn't have time to squeeze into my blog in April.

As a proud Mancunian, I like the look of Top Class Manager. Lesley Gilbert, the widow of music manager Rob Gretton, created this book from notebooks, posters, letters, and studio notes, all chronicling the short history of Joy Division. I think it came out some time ago, but I've only just noticed it - here.

Speaking of the holy land, the Manchester International Festival is approaching fast. Uber-techno-mecha-gods Kraftwerk will appear with Steve Reich, while Elbow will strike up with the Hallé Orchestra. I once performed with the Hallé, but that's for another post. Oh and the Same Teens will be doing one of their gigs for, um, teens. I found myself at one of their events once, and everyone, absolutely everyone, was wearing leggings.

Time for a B12 update. (I feel like I am a TV presenter updating you on the longest marathon in the world.) The legendary techno label is issuing lots of lovely old goodness on a series of Archive albums. I last reported them when they released Volume 3. They're now up to Volume six of seven, which spans 1992 to 1994 - read more about the whole lot at Boomkat.

Finally, I've been working on a piece called Bands From The Last Few Years That Sound Like Orbital But Aren't Orbital. I'm struggling. I'm trying to avoid obvious bands from 'back in the day' like Leftfield that Last FM or iTunes would obviously point out. So I've got Mike Paradinas, Boards of Canada, Plaid, maybe Bola, the Crystal Castles track Untrust Us, and the theme tune to the Equalizer. Long Range doesn't count because it's an Orbital spin-off. It's not a good list, is it? I thought this piece would float, but it seems to be drowning. If you can help, throw me a lifeline in the comments.

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.

Things that make you go Yeeeeehhhaawww

I hadn't given Bogdan Raczynski much time of day - until last weekend, when I heard his new album would be called Yeeeeehhhaawww.

He promises that his new album will be "the music I would play if the universe only had 45 minutes left... Think 1992 megamixes, trance, math beats, my favorite basil-based kitchen recipes, four to the floor, giggles and an explosive happy energy."

Bogdan deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Squarepusher, Mike Paradinas, Jega and the holy Aphex Twin. There, I've just done it. Mentioned him in the same sentence, that is.

>Pink

The only record I have of Raczynski's is My Love I Love (pictured), constructed of gorgeous pink vinyl. It's brimming of detuned accordian folk songs sung in a whiny falsetto voice. It's not exactly restaurant-at-the-end-of-the-universe stuff, although it's deranged enough to be piped throughout a Vogon spaceship.

Raczynski is the only Polish IDM / braindance artist who used to play trumpet in Japanese jazz clubs. Some of his live shows have only been ten minutes long, and he has recipes on his website. These are facts.

>Beer

This is a fact: I know two Polish people called Stefan. One of them has another Polish friend, co-incidentally called Bogdan, who taught me how to pronounce the name of the Polish beer, Zwytec. It's a bit like saying "serviettes" but with a 'zsch' instead of an 's'.

This blog post has more non sequiturs than Family Guy. Damn you vile woman, you've impeded my work since the day I escaped your vile womb!

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Say yes to Yeeeeehhhaawww, due for release in May 2007.