Six wheels on my digeridoo

I've been hiding from my keyboard for the last couple of weeks.

While I rediscover my blogging rhythm, here is some music to mash up your ears, um, big style.

First up, Manchester's grime collective Virus Syndicate bring on their mechanistic style on second album Sick Pay (pictured). Sub bass with intelligence.



This next band is more entertaining than a marching band of kazoo-playing sealions dressed as go-go dancers. Gang Gang Dance offer a sort of tribal prog-techno that probably needs to be seen live to be appreciated. Their new album is Saint Dymphna, and it makes me want to roller skate through Brooklyn on a six-wheeled digeridoo.

And lastly, go and listen to Mira Calix. The Elephant In The Room: 3 Commissions is lovely and orchestral and evocative, and is ideal listening when you've been so busy working, you ain't had no time to blog.

Reviews: Gruff Rhys, TTC & Mira Calix

Artist: Gruff Rhys
Title: Candylion (album)
Label: Rough Trade
[site] [listen]
Despite them losing their rocky edge as they aged, I always thought Super Furry Animals were the dragon's balls. Here's yon lead singer waxing lyrical about, well, anything that spools from his astonishing imagination - everything from Smokey Robinson to celtic laments. I'll buy this, but I'll pine for them old Fuzzy Logic days.


Artist: TTC
Title: 3615 (album)
Label: Big Dada
[site][listen]
Disco and euro pop aren't the first words in the dictionary of French hip hop, but maybe TTC are out to re-write the rule book with this crazy, strange, deeply interesting album. MC Solaar it is not. More probably, they have taken a page from the bible of Warp acts like Beans and Antipop Consortium, with some nostalgic electro pop woven down the spine. (Yes, Fat Roland's been reading books and that.)


Artist: Mira Calix
Title: Eyes Set Against The Sun (album)
Label: Warp
[site][listen]
If you touch a butterfly, it turns to stone. Mira Calix's third long player flutters with your feelings; it tiptoes a meandering path leaving its listeners mesmerised and giddy with its beauty. It's also damn strange, but field recordings and fuzzy beats only add to the charm. This is too delicate for some: handle with care. I lied about the butterfly, by the way.

Will the David Attenborough of electronic music please step forward?

I'm not exactly what you call a man's man, although I fall effortlessly into realms of life traditionally spurned by most no-tails, such as Formula One, modern computer video games and long conversations about early Warp catalogue numbers.

I get as annoyed at male chauvanist pigs as I do at wimmin's libbers who spout things like "typical man!" and "You think that hurts? You should try childbirth." Sexism is from the same root as racism, so if you want to be my friend, keep your petty prejudice to yourself, lest I sulk quietly for three days before developing man 'flu*.

>Women in the field

This blog is meant to be about electronica / IDM music, which is male dominated like most areas of popular music. There are women in the field, such as Goldfrapp, Bjork, a bit of Mum and a smidgeon of Telefon Tel Aviv, but they are mostly standing on the touchlines watching the main action. See? That was a sporting analogy, which is so manly*.

In the spirit of political correctness gone mad, I would like to declare January 2007 as the month that Mira Calix will make it big. She is a glitch artist who dillies with found sound, and dallies with orchestral experimentation.

>Flowers

Her new album will be called Eyes Set Against The Sun, and it features samples taken from her garden. Audio samples, that is; she isn't flower pressing, even though that is very womanly*.

Australia's In The Mix magazine describes her as the David Attenborough of electronic music, and a particular quote from their interview with her (read it here) gives me hope that electronica artists' obsession with audio trivialities is not just a male fascination.

>Amazing creak

Here's what she says: “There’s a tree near where I live that has this amazing creak all of its own, and every little twig you hear sounds different if you bash it or step on it or rub against it, and because they are different types of wood they all make different types of sounds...

"I made a [musical] piece out of snow melting but it ends up sounding like water running because it obviously turns into water when it melts. Because it was all melting at different speeds and times, though, it sounds bizarre – maybe, to people, it could sound like I just turned the shower on! I enjoyed it, but in the end I got too cold and had to leave my recorder outside and keep popping back. I have no idea why I find it fun, but I do.”

>Fixations

Her childlike fixations sum up my thought processes about most things most of the time, although I'm not sure if that makes me a man's man, a woman's woman or just a Roland's Roland.

*irony in action