On the Fat Roland radar: a sunset, a head-spin and a marshmallowy James K

October is often busier than a wild ferret building its igloo for the autumn. Does that metaphor work? Pretty sure I saw that on a David Attenborough documentary once.

I haven't had much blogging time, so before the month is out, before we discard October onto the laundry heap of forgotten month-pants (really need to work on those metaphors), let's listen to some music.

Here are some tunes I have recently enjoyed. Five tracks that are worth a pause in your day, when you stop to listen and decide that these tracks are "yeah, okay I suppose". That's enough for me.

Let's go.

Alexander Kulikov – Sunset

A foggy offering from this LA producer signed to Scotland's Soma Records. This is murky stuff, and although the bass drum is a real pile-driver, it's so incredibly distant - maybe even absent without headphones. Minimal, ambient and a perfect autumnal meditation.

This is from a recent EP. I don't think it includes this track, but look out for the new album Radio Edit out later this month on Greyscale.

Blawan – NOS

Yorkshire producer Blawan is turning heads at the moment. Then making those heads spin and go all vomitty. One review called his new headphone-exploding album SickElixir "a victory lap against his demons". 

See what you think. Razor-bladed ASMR electro. 

Djrum –  Three Foxes Chasing Each Other

Let's get pastoral. This tropical groove starts light, with a playful picturesque patter emphasising the "OK" in "evoke". And then comes the staccato charge of the machine-gun bass. A really interesting piece of work: tropical, tribal and ever-so teasing.

This is taken from the Oxford experimentalist's upcoming new album Under Tangled Silence. 

James K (pictured) – Hypersoft Lovejinx Junkdream

A breathy swoosh-gaze meditation from this New York producer's third album Friend. It's a song about disappointment, I guess, but it's disappointment cushioned by marshmallows, clouds and teddy bears made of marshmallows and clouds.

This pairs quite well with the Djrum piece, although it's a lot more silky.

Kneecap + Paul Hartnoll – Sayōnara

Well this was fun, wasn't it. Let's do it again sometime. We finish with subversive euphoria from Kemi Badenoch's least favourite rabble rousers Kneecap, with a little help from one half of Orbital. The video is worth a look-in: they're having a ball(gag).

Further Fats: Student's guide to new music (2010)

Further Fats: New musical excess (2015)

Raves against the machine: Mr C (and Octo Octa) lead the way

"Get up," said Bob Marley. "Stand up," added Bob Marley. "Stand up for your rights," Bob continued, really hammering his point home. The Bobster was onto something. Sometimes, we really do have to stand up and be counted.

You may have noticed that the political atmosphere has become increasingly febrile, a word that is only ever used for political atmospheres. The far right is on the rise, geopolitical tensions are at breaking point, and idiots have got their y-fronts in a twist about trans people and roundabouts.

Electronic music is political. There are a tonne of reasons for this, and there's a whole Substack long-read to be written about techno music, tribes and politics. However, this is not Substack. It is Blogger. So let's approach the subject in an utterly trite way.

Let's start an occasional blog series featuring political electronic music. Yay! Woo! Bleepy tracks that will have you dancing on your soapbox.

Each time I'll feature one particular political tune, with a couple of extras. Some tracks signal their politics with bright glow-sticks, while others will be more opaque. Either way, hopefully this will awaken the campaigner in us.

The Shamen: Fatman (1992)

The Shamen were a band in constant flux, moving from '80s electro pop to acid house freneticism to chippy chart pop to trippy introspection. I always felt that 1992's platinum Boss Drum album was an uneasy mix of a lot of these things.

Ebeneezer Goode was clearly making a point, vibing about the charts like no other track could. But it's album track Fatman that I want to focus on. It's a miserable tune, all minor chord and morose. The lyrics depict corporate fat cats as predators to be avoided – indeed, to be run away from. "Keep running," the song insists over a pensive Balaeric beat. 

"...The rich are getting richer / The poor destitute / Whilst the Fat Man, / He's got your loot."

The band's early work was political, taking on religious indoctrination in Jesus Loves America or a politician getting mashed on mescaline in Christopher Mayhew Says. Later on in their career, they seemed more concerned about the wonders of cannabis - tracks such as Sativa and the trippy Cannabeo being a case in point.

Fatman was proper politics. Like going to a rave and being battered around the head with a copy of Socialist Worker. It feels like the band was capturing a perfect balance between meaningful soapboxing and "coming on like a seventh sense" drug talk.

Last year, rapper rapscallion Mr C reposted Fatman to his socials, commenting "We needed change over three decades ago - we're desperate now." He's not wrong.

Octo Octa: Power To The People (2019)

The breezy breakbeat, the hyped-up crowd noises, the sheer joy of it all. This 2019 tune from US DJ Octo Octa (pictured above) is a cheery number, and a highlight from her Resonant Body album.

The crowd noise in this track is specifically political. The sample is taken from an ACT-UP meeting that was held in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS pandemic; ACT-UP stands for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. The sound was captured in David France's 2012 documentary How To Survive A Plague.

The group was preparing for a face-to-face with New York mayor Ed Koch: the words you can hear in the Octo Octa track are "Act up, stand tall, tomorrow morning at City Hall". When Koch met the campaigners, he defended his description of ACT-UP campaigners as fascists. Considering he was a New York Democrat, Koch would have fitted in petty well with the modern Republican party.

The rest of Octo Octa's discography is worth a rummage. 2017 album Where Are We Going? is a deep house joy, and has a real sense of celebration, it being her first album release since fully coming out as trans.

Orbital: Are We Here? (Criminal Justice Bill mix) (1994)

This Cage-esque silent track was Orbital's response to 1994's Criminal Justice Act that sought to ban repetitive beats and to shut down the UK's illegal rave scene. If you don't have a copy of this Criminal Justice Bill mix, you can recreate your own version by not playing it. Orbital are still protesting. Paul out of Orbital recently collaborated with Kneecap, and Orbital have recently been opening their own sets with the "peace or annihilation" challenge of Choice. I think the correct answer is peace: the other one sounds bad.

Further Fats: I have just burned down my local NHS hospital while listening to Phil Collins on my walkman (2010)

Further Fats: On my mind – the Guardian's 100 greatest UK No 1s (2020)

Full-mast hysteria: waving the flag for electronic music

 

Everyone's getting their cummerbunds in a twist over flags. Racists brandish St George crosses, idiots vandalise mini-roundabouts, and union jack underpant sales have gone through the roof. Probably.

In an effort to reclaim the national debate, I have designed six flags dedicated to electronic music. Shall we plaster pubs in these emblems instead? Replace the UK national anthem with Ageispolis by Aphex Twin? Yes. Let's do that. If you're reading this, please make that happen, the King. 

The first flag I designed is a red-white-blue rendering of the Aphex Twin logo (see above). This feels very flaggy indeed, and could be a distant cousin of the flag of Laos or maybe North Korea.

However, there's a problem or two. There's too much flag about this flag. Electronic music should be more creative than this. And the existing Aphex logo is black and white, which are the flag colours of his native Cornwall. No, we can do better.

This is my flag design based on Leftfield's Leftism. The shark jaw is pretty intact, and the embedded camera is represented by a series of circles. You do get animals on real-world flags – Wales has a dragon and Bhutan has a, er, dragon – but bits of bones are less common. Should flags have teeth? Vexillum dentata?

A simple T. Or is it? This one breaks a cardinal rule of flags: no fades. However, the speaker design feels geometrically pleasing. The KLF were notorious for their flag-flying, banner-raising live performances, so this redesign of their 1991 album The White Room seems apropos. The flag of Mu Mu Land.

Here is a flag version of Autechre's Oversteps album.  I did consider the designs for their numerous NTS releases, which were plastered with brilliantly blocky Designers Republic fonts. But I couldn't resist this more basic artwork, which is, essentially, the Japan flag with all of its colour and joy removed. Very much like an Autechre live performance, in a good way.

It was either this or the brown album. One thing I've noticed about actual national flags is that the colours are often bold. Look at Bangladesh's contrasting eye-popper or Seychelles' vivid fan of fun. Eyes will certainly be popped with this flag, based on Orbital's green album (Orbital 1). This flag feels lickable, which is something I always look for when hoisting a banner. 

I was drawn to Man-Machine by Kraftwerk because of its colours, and the geometry of the album text in its upper corner. But how to represent the band itself? Four simple polygons. And what are flags other than an arrangement of polygons. The main down side of this one is that once you think it looks like Hitler, that's something you can't get out of your head. Dammit, that's ruined it. Shouldn't have said anything. Sorry.

Flags are not bad things. They're fun, and we all want to cling on to identity and community. But let's keep them fun: everyone loves a bit of bunting. However – and this is just a suggestion – maybe let's not use flags to cause division and intimidate the vulnerable. If you're using a flag as a weapon, you are the weapon.

Further Fats: Blowin' in the wings – why protest songs should return to centre stage (2009)

Further Fats: I'm too techno to be Brexit (2017)

Orbital's A Beginner's Guide: when compilations become a loop

The popular beat combo Orbital have released a new greatest hits album. It's called A Beginner's Guide and it's to help people begin their loopy journey with Orbital.

Let's be honest. I can be honest with you, right? We don't necessarily need another Orbital greatest hits. 2002's Work covered their classic era, from Chime to Funny Break. Warner Music put out the Halcyon collection for the US market in 2005. Orbital20 marked the duo's 2009 reformation, while a delayed thirtieth anniversary collection 30 Something dropped in 2022.

There's a lot of greatest hitting. That's two-and-a-half compilations for every member of Orbital. Or five compilations for every Phil Hartnoll out of Orbital.

But then, heck, why *not* bring out a new compilation? There are 140 million people born every year, and not a single one of them is an Orbital fan, what with them being newly born babies. The world is constantly being updated with potential new ravers.

The design of the album is gorgeous. A retro government information vibe, with musty overtones of library music. The artwork makes me feel like I'm living in the 1970s, but without the racism and the lead petrol. A doff of the hat must be given to Julian House at Intro, a design and film agency that has done work with The Prodigy, David Holmes and Marc Almond.

The sleeve notes for this album have been written by Professor John O’Reilly. It's not the first time Orbital have dabbled with an academic. Professor Brian Cox yabbered over 2018's There Will Come A Time. Professor Stephen Hawking partied with them at the Paralympics on Where Is It Going. There's even a track called Professor Clark Arrives on their underrated soundtrack to The Pentaverate. Orbital are like the pied piper, but for profs instead of rats.

So if you like the idea of buying a record that contains Belfast, Beached and Dirty Rat – plus Illuminate if you get the CD edition – purchase your copy from your favourite music emporium. 

Further Fats: Bleep Years day fourteen – Orbital's Planet Of The Shapes (2012)

Further Fats: What is the best track on Orbital's green album? (2022)

Raving about Orbital and being Picky about Post Malone

The current episode of the Picky B*stards podcast features me raving about Orbital and losing my mind over Post Malone.

Before we continue, I realise that starring out the podcast name is extremely snowflakey of me. However, Blogger has a limited enough reach these days without profanity filters further restricting its readability. They're still a thing, right? Internet filters? Fudge knows. 

Guests on the P*cky Bs podcast nominate:

a new album for review, 

a classic album that none of us have heard, 

and a personal favourite artist. 

It's a bit like Desert Island Discs without the benefit of a free holiday and the chance to boast that you've been on Radio 4 at parties.

Let's go through those choices.

For the new release, I plumped for Moderat's unexpected fourth album More D4ta. I'd not had a chance to listen to it, so what better to introduce myself to the album while surrounded by three grumpy podcasters primed to tear my music taste apart.

For the classic, I chose Depeche Mode's debut Speak & Spell, an album which contrasts with their later work for reasons I explain in the episode. This choice was a risk, because the Pick* Bs are young and cool while I am old and decrepit. I feared I would present myself as a crusty old pensioner brandishing a dusty gramophone and wax-bunged ear trumpet. As it happens, (a) Speak & Spell is way before my time so shut up, and (b) my fellow podcasters' response was surprisingly positive.

My favourite band p*ck was Orbital. I don't need to explain this. If you're reading my blog and haven't picked up on the fact I'm obsessed with Orbital, you are as dense as a black hole or an actual hole.

We also reviewed Ethel Cain, who I was a bit harsh about but find more of a connection with later in the episode, Poliça, who I quite liked despite my pronunciation of their name, and Post Malone, who... you'll just have to listen to the episode.

This was immense fun, and it's always a treat to hang out with fellow music nuts. I won't spoil things by writing much more. Dive straight into episode 55 of **ck* ***t**ds: here are all the listening links. Alternatively, launch your podcast app and shout my name until your phone melts.

Further Fats: The Hey Fat Roland Podcast

What is the best track on Orbital's green album?

Orbital's first album Orbital was called the Green Album because the cover was green. Actually, it was quite a yellow hue of green, but Quite A Yellow Hue Of Green was never going to catch on as a nickname.

The album was released in 1991 and still holds up today. That said, this diamond is a little rough. Primitive production, percussion with all the grace of a sledgehammer, loops where you can easily see the join. I caught onto the Green Album a couple of years after its release, and even then I remember it sounding dated. In a charming way.

Like a lime-liveried "go" light, the Green Album started something special. And not just because it had the stone-cold classics Chime and Belfast. Music production was about to advance at light speed. Along with their NME-recommended Brown Album two years later, the Green Album launched Orbital's transformation into stadium-filling techno gods, changing the face of techno album production.

Okay. Serious talk over. Because I have to reduce things to lists or binary choices, it leads me to the question. Just what IS the best track on Orbital's Green Album? Let's have a bit of fun and rate each track according to how close it is on the colour wheel to its own cover colour, Quite A Yellow Hue Of Green. We'll be using the UK track listing.

1. The Moebius

We start off pretty strongly. This is a solid blue. Not bland Tory blue: it's Star Trek science officer blue thanks to its sample of a Next Generation episode. It's a metallic delight, all clanks and whirring machinery, part of that taken from the opening percussion in Mad World by Tears For Fears. Extra kudos for the mobius introducing a circular theme that would repeat during the band's career.

2. Speed Freak

Speed Freak feels pretty far from yellowy green. I love the bassy bouncy orchestral stabs, and the splashy snares would return on The Brown Album. But the yelps and exclamatory interventions sound a little try-hard. The parpy theme that drops midway through is... okay. Speed Freak is a throbbing purple. No. Wait. There's the whole acid bit later on. It's a tastefully muted purple, almost fruity.

3. Oolaa

Oh crumbs. The great thing about Oola, apart from its intensity, is the rising acidic line that feels like a precursor to the ecstatic brass on Impact (The Earth Is Burning). Amid the enthusiastic synth washes in the tracks closing cacophony is a discordance that has always slightly bothered me. Therefore, this is not yellowy green. It is orange. A pleasing orange that would look good on a racing car or a cat. 

4. Desert Storm

Desert Storm is the slow one. It writhes, it snakes, it plods along in a dubby way that isn't entirely unlike (a) the loping gait of the titular beasts in the 1970 film it samples, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and (b) an Andrew Weatherall production. It feels less like an Orbital track than the rest of the album. The fact this was track-listed instead of Satan or Choice means this is pink. Not just pink. A blushing pink.

5. Fahrenheit 303

This track is somewhere between a burnt orange and a deep brown. Crumbs. There's not a lot of yellowy-green in this part of the album, is there. The jazzy keyboard riffs and knowing guiro scrapes are pure Jools Holland. Or Adamski on a bad day. Somewhere inbetween. The squiggly acid completely saves the day, as does the moody bass that closes out the track.

6. Steel Cube Idolatry

Dave Angel did a cracking Mutations mix of this track. But we're not talking about that. Cube is clanky and clumsy in a really good way. The unsettling vowel utterations sound like a diva trying to escape from a drain. Ace. It all feels adjacent to found sound, which makes me fond of the whole thing. This is not far from green. A blue. A dark block blue, so not something you'd decorate your bathroom with.

7. High Rise

Now we're talking. This is another blue, but it's more than that. It's bluey-green. High Rise is often overlooked, but it's one of the few tracks on the Green Album that stops me in my tracks. It's Belfast-soft yet Steel Cube-hard. Nicely underplayed acid blurps, tickly synth scales, loops ratcheted into hypnotic repetition, and those rolling snares. PLUS a random key change. This is all the Orbital I need.

8. Chime (Live)

Although not the single version, this is their crossover hit. It got them onto Top of the Pops in 1990 and it's still in their live set today. Does it hold up? Of course it does. The electronic take on church bells. The suspended chord line. The flanging. The stuttering percussion. The cool-ass acid. Even the hand claps. Almost the yellowy-green of the album cover. Banana yellow. Lemon yellow. Very yellow.

9. Midnight (Live)

Yellowy-green! We're at yellowy-green! Even though Belfast is still to come, Midnight is the staggering highlight of Orbital's first album. Such omen. So potent. The minor chords and staccato hi-hats set a moody scene before we're plunged into a swirling, exotic world of deep, deep techno, all beautifully structured. Even the playful low-pass knob twiddling is great. A song I can play again and again.

10. Belfast

There's not a lot to say about Belfast that hasn't already been said. It's beautiful and balaeric and most definitely a light shade of green. If Midnight is yellow-tinted, this is perhaps lime. Pretty dang close. Its clubby beach vibes and choral sampling are hugely hooked into the zeitgeist of the time: think Future Sound of London, Energy 52, The Beloved, Rhythim Is Rhythim, even Enigma.

11. "I Think It's Disgusting" (Outro)

This is just a run-off track, so not worth rating despite this loopy coda idea being emulated in many smokers' beats albums later in the decade. Okay. It's red. This is a red track. And a lovely red it is too.

So there you have it. Orbital's first album rendered into colours with the quality of content rendered as proximity to the album's cover art. Bet you never expected to be reading something like that today, did you.

In summary:

Further Fats: Some lists containing rhyming Autechre, Orbital in colour, and the entire history of dance music (2009)

Further Fats: A rainbow of Aphex Twins (2021)

You wait for one Better Days and two arrive at once

I was tottering along the street a while ago when a black cat appeared from under a hedge to say hello. I always stop to fuss cats. They're cute and fun, and you never know if one will suddenly start talking French or lead you to an abandoned whelk mine.

The moment I stroked this friendly black cat, another black cat appeared. Same hedge, same appearance. I suddenly had two black cats greeting me. It was like being in The Matrix except without the pill popping and questionable spoons. 

Apart from the brief concern that I had developed a special power that duplicates whatever I stroke, a talent that could get very problematic very quickly, I handled the situation fine. Two very similar cats. Two very similar hands. The maths worked out: double petting commenced. 

Why am I telling you this? Because at the moment there are two songs in the UK singles chart called Better Days. This concerns me, because singles are less cute than cats and I don't like having two of them. 

One of the Better Days is by Neiked, Mae Muller and Polo G. It's a sunny slice of Tik Tok-famous retro pop in which US rapper Polo G asks "can I get an amen" so politely, it sounds like he's ordering afternoon tea. 

The other Better Days is a yearning torch song by Irish singer Dermot Kennedy. In the video, he falls into a puddle and stays there for a bit. It's pretty wet physically and musically, but Snow Patrol fans will like it. 

Two Better Days in one chart? I thought this wasn't allowed. I thought you had to give songs different nicknames so you could tell them apart, in the same way we all have friends called Big Tony, French Tony, Naked Tony and Seven Years In Strangeways Tony. I thought songwriters had these things allocated to them, making them queue with a numbered ticket as if they were waiting for fancy cheese.

In the past, duplicated track titles were easily navigated. Adele and Lionel Richie both had a Hello, but the songs were decades apart and Adele didn't have a bonce made out of clay. Orbital and Boney M both had tracks called Belfast. Neither are likely to get confused, unless the Orbital brothers suddenly start coming up with disco dance moves. Mariah Carey and Big Bird both had different songs called All I Want for Christmas Is You, but only one of them was about a snuffleupagus. 

It gets more difficult the closer the songs get. In the mid-1980s, there were two number one ballads called The Power of Love courtesy of Jennifer Rush and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Close in time, close in style. Meanwhile, Robert Plant, World Party and Erasure all had different hits called Ship Of Fools within 20 months of each other. It's such a colourful metaphor that, in my mind, all three songs have muddled into one vague image of a bunch of clowns on a pirate ship doing karaoke.

Whitesnake and Alison Moyet both had mid-1980s songs titled Is This Love. Go and look at the videos for the songs. Moyet and David Coverdale sport the exact same shaggy dog hairstyle. It's ridiculous. There have been 20 hit singles called Stay. It's such a bland track name, I could sing you the Shakespears Sister one but absolutely none of the others, despite the rest of the list featuring big hitters like Rihanna, Mica Paris and Simply flipping Red. Not helpful.

I demand that each Better Days song changes its name. The first one, the Tik Tok one, should be called Afternoon Tea. And the other one, the wet one, should be called Oh Look I'm In A Puddle, While I Think About It Whatever Happened To Snow Patrol. That should sort it. Who do I contact about this? Is it the Queen? Paul Gambaccini? Greg James?!

The other solution is to enact a new law in which every song is called Song. Every song ever written. All of them called Song. 

Hey, I've written a new track.

Brilliant, what's it called?

Song. 

That's great, what's it about?

Stuff.

Sounds wonderful, here's a Grammy.

I wonder if the existence of two Better Days is a Matrix glitch caused by the appearance of two similar cats. I'd ask Keanu Reeves if this is possible, but he's done four films with the word 'Matrix' in, so I'm not going to take his advice on anything. There is no spoon? I've got loads of spoons, mate, all of them identical.

Further Fats: No-one wants songs about the moon these days (2017)

Further Fats: A little cat story (it's the story that's little, not the cat) (2018)

Selected tweeted works: pigs, peanuts, Paul, pricks and polywonk

Sometimes I go onto Twitter then I give my opinions on Twitter and then I expect the whole of Twitter reads it and think "thank goodness that guy put something on Twitter".

If you are not on Twitter, you're in luck, because I'm about to spew some tweets all over this blog. Here are some highlights from my recent Twitter feed. And by "high", I mean "pretty low" and by "lights" I mean the encroaching darkness that will one day swallow us whole. 

Enjoy my stupid thoughts.

1. Genres
A guide to the different types of ambient music. 1. Ambient = chill-out music. 2. Hambient = pig-out music. 3. Diagrambient = lay-out music. 4. Wigwambient = camp-out music. 5. Victoria Beckhambient = out of your mind featuring dane bowers music.

2. Clock part one
Even a stopped cook gives the right thyme twice a plate.

3. Rockers
Have you noticed how heavy metal fans can't wink? Every single one of them. Now I've pointed it out, you'll spot it all the time. Heavy metal fans. Can't wink. Or crochet.

4. Snack part one
I ate some peanuts. Licked each one clean good and proper. Sang them one-hit wonders.

5. New year
I can't reveal my sources, but I've heard the only music we'll be allowed to listen to in 2022 is Roxette.

6. Pricked
I had my booster jab today. On leaving the pharmacy, a phalanx of seahorses escorted me on a hammock of golden plumes into the street then dumped me in a puddle. Please advise.

7. Snack part two
I'm eating Mentos and drinking Diet Coke. Pray for me.

8. Shopping
I once spotted Paul McCartney in a Currys. He was shoplifting three hoovers, trying to hide them in his enormous side flaps. He evaded security using his invisibility conch, while playing Eleanor Rigby through his gills. Three hoovers. What a guy.

9. Clock part two
I love that Orbital sample 'even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day unless it's a 24 hour clock in which case you probably paid a little more for it so why's it stopped ffs".

10. Indifference
No-one cares: a tweet reply hammered into the keyboard, shift key pressed with stressed-white fingers. No-one cares: a caption on a gif hurled at the internet, shattering on impact. No-one cares: the strained yelp of a purple veined man, scrunching his no-one cares face tattoo.

11. Reaction
"No PCR" is trending in the UK. Quite right. Can't stand Phil Collins Records.

12. Festive food
Remember, folks, you have until January 6th to eat your Christmas tree. Make sure you start at the thin end. Good luck!

13. Movies
Se7en should have been called 5even. The Fifth Element should have been called Th3 Fifth 3l3m3nt. The 4th Matrix film should have been called MatrIX. No reason. I just like things to be wrong and annoying.

14. List
There are some things I will just never understand no matter how hard I try, namely duck hands, the concept of jeleb, the word 'xthw))rd', cloud anvils and late-career polywonk.

15. Girl power
The Spice Girls would have been more successful if they'd been called the Spine Girls i.e. they were just a bunch of dancing spines. We're all thinking it.

16. Token
This tweet is an NFT. If you read it, you owe me 92 bits of ethereal coins or something.

17. Optimism
You know it's going to be a good day when you've laid a load of blue eggs and they start whistling Van McCoy's The Hustle. No? Just me? Suit yourself.

Further Fats: Tiny promises that get me through (2016)

Further Fats: Selected tweeted works: bagel, beards, bungs and beaches (2021)

Selected tweeted works: synthesiser worms, big shops

Is it against the law to copy and paste a bunch of tweets into a blog post? Making the micro-blog a macro-blog? It does seem wrong somehow.

Here are some recent tweets from @FatRoland, which is me. Like all social media, reading this is mostly a waste of your time. Imagine every word covered in paint, then watching that sweet, sweet paint dry.

For the sake of completion, I have included location tags on each tweet. 

1. Ear worm
Had a banging electronic music anthem stuck in my head today. And then I realised it was the Channel 4 News theme tune.
Location: basement

2. Synth worm
What if every time someone pressed a key on a synthesiser, a worm came out? You hadn't thought of that, had you? You need to be aware of all possible worms.
Location: a different basement

3. Guest appearance
Yes, that *is* me doing guest kazoo on Kanye's new album, good spot.
Location: end of garden

4. Down time
It's a low fuse kind of day. Housework. Chilling. Writing. YouTube. Snorkling. Mind control. Turning my knees into UFOs. Just boring stuff, really.
Location: top of telegraph pole

5. Animal
WAKE UP, SHEEPLE. (This tweet should only be read by people who are a grotesque hybrid of a human and an actual sheep, and who are also having a nap.)
Location: inside tube

6. Maths
Big Nas XL > Lil Nas X
Location: left of dog park

7. Zither
I'm sorry to announce that I've quit the extreme speed zither scene and will no longer be performing my sixty second soundtrack of The Third Man.
Location: three feet high and rising

8. Big shop
Went to do my big shop but it's bank holiday closed. Am now big shopping in the park (twigs = pasta, autumn leaves = cornflakes, sparrow = toilet roll).
Location: a collection of numbers and an arrow

9. Cover version
Kinetic by Golden Girls but performed by clockwork cymbal monkeys and Rowlf from the muppets.
Location: 1970s Granada TV

10. Key strokes
I have used computers since the 1980s. If I average 20,000 keystrokes a day, that's probably about 255,500,000 times my fingers have have touched a computer keyboard. And not once in those 255,500,000 times have I wanted Number Lock off.
Location: metaphysical

11. Watching
I see your tweets. I see your tweets and I like them. I want to become them. I want to be the negative space in your weird new font.
Location: location, location

Further Fats: Selected tweeted works – young lovers and yawning (2020)

Further Fats: Selected tweeted works – 17 Fat Roland tweets as recommended by Fat Roland

Cover me bad: Chime by Orbital

I have to make a huge apology. For the last couple of days on this blog, I have pretended to launch a covers band. I then spooled off a load of nonsense about whisks, washing machines and constipated cows. I am sorry to everyone I disappointed.

Please do not read the last two blog posts. They were a waste of valuable internet resources.

Let's take this seriously. I'm going to write a proper cover version, with proper instruments, and people are going to respect me as a musician. Let's choose a random song from my record collection.

Artist: Orbital
Track: Chime
Year: 1989
Reviews: "What a tune!" 5-star Amazon review (I genuinely couldn't find a comedically bad Amazon review)

Bells. We're going to need lots of bells.

Tubular Bells. Cowbells. Church bells. Anything that goes clang.

Kettle bells, which I don't think are real bells, but are the kind of things weightlifters lift up to show people they can lift things off the ground. I want those kind of bells.

Bell's whisky. I need to drink as much Bell's whisky as possible even though I read a booklet once that said blends aren't as good as single malts and I never learnt why but I remembered it so I could sound intelligent when I talked about whisky.

The TV programme Saved By The Bell. Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone even though it was probably one of those urban myths where he got the credit but the telephone was actually invented by Ainsley Harriott or something. 

Ali Campbell from UB40! He's a bell. A camp bell. I'll have him as well. While I'm at it, I'll have David Bellamy, the Scottish band The Bluebells. And Belle and Sebastian. Actually, I'm not that bothered about Belle and Sebastian.

I think that's going to sound lovely. Friedrich Nietzsche once said that “without music, life would be a mistake.” My beautiful cover version of Chime by Orbital, with its infinite cacophony of bells, finally gives Nietzsche's statement true meaning.

Chime has got bells in, right? I can't remember.

Told you I was going to take this seriously.

Cover me bad: Are We Here? by Orbital

I've decided to form a cover band.

Ages ago, I found a bunch of tribute band flyers in a pub. Among them were Korn Again. Guns Or Roses. U2-2. Bon Giovi and Slipnowt. The latter being from Yorkshire, I presume.

Tribute bands are the extremists of the cover band world. Committed to one particular act, one particular musical backlist. You can't stray if you're a tribute band. Perhaps a Busted tribute band called Busted Flush could get away with a McFly track or two, but you have to stay within your own chosen discography.

Not so for other cover bands. You know the kind. They play every Tuesday night in the back room of the Duck & Testicles, with the same old playlist. Achy Breaky Heart, Simply The Best, Knocking On Heaven's Door. They'll play anything that gets someone's foot tapping over a warm pint of John Smith's. Instead of going balls deep into a single act's oeuvre, their repertoire is wide and shallow, like a puddle or similar spillage.

You know what? I can do this. Let's dive into my pile of gramophone records and choose a song at random. I bet you ten billion pounds I could do an ace cover version of any song. Okay. I'm flipping through now. Eyes closed. Here we go!

Artist: Orbital
Track: Are We Here?
Year: 1994
Reviews: "Hasn't grabbed me yet." 1-star Amazon review

Oh. Right. I was hoping for My Way or something. We can work with this, don't worry.

The first main element are the questioning vocals. Some bloke waffles on asking questions, as if they're bugging a woman on Twitter. Are we here? Are we unique? What does God say? I'd recreate this by kidnapping a vicar and make them read a sermon under duress.

Then there's the drum and bass-y stuff. Easy. Set up an obstacle course of kitchen implements on the hill near my house. Whisks, toasters, knives, that kind of thing. Anything metallic that will make a clattery noise when hit. Put the vicar on roller skates, and as soon as they starts their sermon, give 'em a good push down the hill.

And finally, the other thing about Are We Here? is that it's long. So once the vicar has rolled to a stop, their battered body embedded with various kitchen gadgets, yank them back uphill with a rope and start all over again. It'll be like Sisyphus with his boulder but, y'know, not that at all.

Like I said, I can do an ace cover version of any song, and I've just totally proved it. You now owe me ten billion pounds.

Who said blogging doesn't pay?

A Full On Guide to Full On: introduction

When Kylie Minogue moved to Deconstruction Records to release Confide In Me, she gained an indie credibility entirely absent from her Stock Aitken and Waterman past.

And yet, Deconstruction was no less pop. Co-founded by Mike Pickering of M People, they had the big piano anthems of Black Box, K-Klass and Bassheads and M People. Taking on Kylie seemed an entirely sensible choice.

There was one compilation, however, which cemented Deconstruction's underground credentials. It was Full On: Edition One, subtitled "a year in the life of house music". This was Decon sticking a massive flag on the moon, and that moon was underground dance music. Not that moons can be made from abstract nouns, but you get the idea.

The cover design wasn't great. Here is its Discogs image in all its low-resolution glory. It looks like the front page of a financial company's glossy annual report. "Yah, Damien says the VAT changes have had a peripheral effect on out-sourcing but the bottom line remains pretty solid."

I shouldn't knock the designers, Farrow Design. They have pretty solid credentials, helping define the look of post-Richie Manics, Orbital's 20th anniversary, and recent Pet Shop Boys.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about whether navy goes with burnt orange. I'm here to talk about the music.

Full On came out in 1992, which made it pre-cool-Kylie but post-Italo-house. 2 Unlimited had taken the charts by storm with their lowest common denominator "techno" sound. Full On had a foot in similar bouncy Euro-house, but there was something so much more listenable about it.

It had Felix and Usura banging out thumping anthems for blocky pre-Windows-95 visuals. It had an early appearance from Justin 'Lionrock' Robertson', laying an early warning shot for the rise of big beat. And it had a nascent appearance from someone who, five years later, would score one of the most memorable top ten singles of all time.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to analyse one track a day and I'm going to call it a Full On Guide to Full On. I'll do two tracks a day if I don't have much to write about. Three if I'm really struggling. You can see the complete track listing on Discogs.

Don't worry: if you never listened to this album, you should still enjoy this. I'm going to shine a light on 1990s dance music by, er, deconstructing this Deconstruction album. At least, I hope so: I haven't written any of it yet.

Stay tuned for the Full On Guide to Full On.

Read the Full On series in, er full.

Read the Full On introduction explaining what the heck this is all about.

Spotify's mystical rivers of bad recommendations

If you ordered a handbag full of wasps from my Wasp Handbag shop, and instead I sent you a bucket of hamsters, you'd rightly be annoyed.

"I demand a refund," you would shout through my shop's letterbox. "I'm not in," I would convincingly shout back while hiding in the stock cupboard. "Ouch, ow, stop stinging me," I would add because of what was in the stock cupboard.

The streaming service Spotify is fairly good at giving me what I want. Its curated playlists seem to recognise my musical moodswings from gloomy techno to big gay pop anthems. It's easy enough to avoid its more ridiculous categories such as "At Home", which is as nonsensical as defining your listening experience as "Standing On The Floor" and "Leaning On A Hedge".

However, it has recently been trying to flog me hamster buckets instead of my favourite wasp-based clothing accessories. Not literally: it's a metaphor. Keep up.

Here's an example. The Grid is a brilliant dance project by Richard Norris and Soft Cell's Dave Ball, but instead of popping classics such as Floatation and Crystal Clear into my recommendations, it's been trying to push some unrelated rock band of the same name.

I get all excited when I see a Grid track I don't recognise, and when I click on it, all I get is some unrelated guitar dirge that makes me want to drag my ears through broken glass. And because I've played it, Spotify recommends them some more, locking me into an impostor loop that can only end if I throw my computer into a fire.

This happened again the other day, this time with Orbital. According to Spotify, the latest release from Orbital is a track called Mystical River. This is not an Orbital track: it is a fake; it is Trojan horse; it is a cuckoo's egg in the nest of my musical egginess. It's Spotify getting it wrong again.

As you can see from the picture at the top of this blog post, Richard Hughes the alien is furious about the incorrect listing. Who is Richard Hughes the alien? I drew him because just posting a Spotify screenshot would have been as dull as heck. He now exists. Everyone say hello to Richard Hughes the alien.

This isn't Spotify's only failing, of course. There are other user annoyances, such as the lack of ability to browse by label, even though a browse of, say, DFA or Warp would be really useful. And Spotify earn musicians so little money, they appear to want every musician to wear rags, work up chimneys and snort gruel.

Computers are very clever, but they are also eye-wateringly dumb. I recently subscribed to Now TV, and now my internet is packed with adverts telling me to subscribe to Now TV. That's like going into a newsagent, popping a Twix on the payment counter, and the newsagent screaming at you "buy a Twix, buy a Twix". I'm buying one, for crap's sake, lay off me. Also could I get a packet of Rizla? Thanks.

This is a reminder that algorithms can only ever be algorithms. We need to rediscover personal recommendations: proper ones from humans. As shops reopen across the UK, there are insanely experienced booksellers and record shop assistants and handbag wasp experts just waiting to give you the benefit of their years of experience. Use them. Spotify has its plus sides, but it can't tell great music from a bucket of fluff.

Further Fats: Mr and Mrs Spotify plug my oozing holes (2011)

Further Fats: How does Spotify work? I'm glad you asked (2017)

Ten amazing albums that influenced my taste in music

My blogging schedule's gone a bit sideways because the Covid-19 lockdown has, like many other people, left me quite out of sorts. My capacity for creativity is pretty limited.

So I'm going to steal something I did on Facebook. And then we'll get back to the best-of-1995 thing.

My brother Grum tagged me in a Facebook challenge to name ten albums that influenced by taste in music. Here's what I posted, edited to make it more interesting than wot I said on Facebook. 

1 – The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld

I remember playing this on my cassette walkmen in my tent on family holidays. So surreal to be in some random Welsh field and to get this amazing, otherworldly collages playing in my young ears.

2 – Transglobal Underground's Dream Of 100 Nations

This strange mix of UK techno and African tribalism and things from other planets. "Watch the skies! Keep looking!" I went to see TGU a couple of years ago and they were phenomenal.

3 – Drum Club's Everything Is Now

The album that truly made me fall in love with the bass drum for bass drum's sake, an appreciation that served me well in many a club. Thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump....

4 – Orbital's brown album. 

Here's the one that changed everything for me. My Damascene moment. The album that hardwired techno and all its variants into my brain for life. And look at me now. I'm **twitch** FINE.

5 – The Irresistible Force's Flying High

Mixmaster Morris's hypnotic ambience lifted me into heady clouds of dubby ambience: I haven't quite come down since. The kind of album that lives in my veins. I also liked things with circles on. See also Banco de Gaia.

6 – The Goons' Ying Tong Song

No, really. This is cheating because it's an EP not an album, and it was a family hand-me-down rather than something I bought myself, but it's worth it because THIS IS WHAT MY BRAIN IS LIKE ALL OF THE TIME.

7 – Adamski's Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy

I have to say, this is NOT a good album, despite the presence of Killer and NRG. But Adamski's DIY 'keyboard wizard' approach introduced my little Smash Hits brain to the concept of the bedroom studio a long time before doing that was a viable option.

8 – Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman

An obvious one for other fans of 90s techno, but what a strange animal at the time. I was already a fan of their 12-inches and I keenly devoured Junior Boy's Own's early output. All that gorgeous Tomato design work too. Cor.

9 – LTJ Bukem's Logical Progressions series

Drum 'n' bass was always a trip, and even now the thought of this series gives me tingles. My few short years as a drum 'n' bass DJ were some of my happiest creative times. The best sound, the best live experience, and the best to mix. 

10 – Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92

Pretty obvious, this one. That bass in Ageispolis. Oooooo.

And so many more, of course. Ten will do for now. 

That's it. I'm creatively spent. I've run out of words. Flong. Pathoot. Clibbibuuuu. See? It's just noise.

I'm off for yet another night of stupidly vivid lockdown dreams.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: B is for Boss Drum (2010)

Further Fats: Don't be rattled: it's just drum 'n' bass (2016)

Orbital tweeting Dick and Dom is all the goodness we need right now

We're all agreed that Twitter is an open sewer. A torrent of streaming mouth bums. The equivalent of a cavalcade of Celine Dion albums smashing into your face until the end of time. 

But every now and then, there is a moment of hope. A silver lining around the cloud of guff. That glimmer of goodness came in this tweet: 

Orbital are chatting to Dick and Dom. Everything's going to be okay. pic.twitter.com/Z6ksQLllyC

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) April 2, 2020

 

And here it is again with, for reason whatsoever, kittens: 

That's right. Techno behemoths Orbital had a nice how-do-you-do exchange with children's telly legends Dick and Dom. 

I suspect a collaboration is afoot. Acid Pants In Da Bungalow. Satan In Da Bungalow. Da Box In Da Bungalow. You get the idea. 

Orbital once made a video with Play School presenter Brian Cant. Play School had different shaped windows for children to look through, no doubt reflecting the big-fish small-fish cardboard-box shapes made by ravers. Also, they had a giant egg person called Humpty, which sounds like a standard hallucination at Shroom if you ask me. 

Shroom was a nightclub, by the way. It was important in the development of acid house and that happy smiley face symbol you see everywhere. Shroom rhymes with Button Moon, which was a children's programme about a pot-headed man who had astral visions and spent most of his time using kitchen utensils to get high.

As I said in that Brian Cant blog post, kid's characters have played a part in club culture. The Prodigy sampled Charly the cat for their debut hit in 1991, and Global Communication's Mark Pritchard scored an early top ten as Shaft with a raved-up Roobarb And Custard theme tune. My most scratched seven-inch, destroyed from overuse, is probably Smart E's druggie kids anthem Sesame's Treet. You can guess what that samples.

I'll get back to my 1995 albums contest soon. I just thought I'd share this moment of levity amid the chaos. A happy face amid the scowls. A thumbs-up amid the angry fists. A sunbeam amid the drizzle. A parking space amid the lack of parking spaces. A nice pair of trousers amid the dirty undies. Ew. I'll stop now.

Further Fats: It's a magic carpet ride, every door will open wide to happy people like you (2007)

Further Fats: Live tweeting at the Brits - the full text (2009)

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: seven

7 – Octo Octa – Resonant Body (T4t Luv Nrg)

Resonant Body takes us on a trans journey, which is a bit like a bus journey only there are loads of Twitter warriors running alongside trying to cancel out your existence. It's tough enough coming out as trans, even tougher to produce an album this good.

Here we have a party album bursting with breakbeats, acidic lines, sloshy snares, buoyant bass and choppy synths. It has depth too, such as in the plunging junglism of Ecstatic Beat and the misty ambient ripples of My Body Is Powerful.

There's even a bit that reminded me of Orbital. I can't remember which bit. That's good, isn't it. Quality music journalism. I've basically just told you there's a bit that sounds like something somewhere on the album. Nice and specific.

The climax of 'Body (as it's known to its friends) is almost bizarre as the final track is overtaken by an awkward crowd chant, but it feels deserved: Octo Octa's brilliant album isn't just a celebration of the body, but of a community. An unqualified joy: probably the most celebratory thing in this top 20.



Scroll the full best-of-2019 list here.

You'll enjoy these endearing FruityLoops versions of banging electronic music tunes

There's a knob-twiddler on YouTube who's been posting FruityLoops version of New Order songs.

"Knob-twiddler" is not a technical term, but instead is a nickname for people who like to experiment making electronic music. "FruityLoops" is indeed a proper term, in fact it's music-making software that's enjoyed something of a renaissance thanks to its users including Avicii, Basshunter and Timmy Mallett.

I lied about Timmy Mallett.

The YouTube user is called Mkaymufc and they are a New Order nut. Because they are using presets and some pretty basic plug-ins, their instrumental YouTube covers of Bernard & chums are not as well produced as the originals. That's like comparing a crayon drawing of a warthog stuck to your bathroom cabinet to a real warthog furiously trying to mate with your bathroom sink's overflow pipehole. You'll never get it in, Porkles. YOU'LL NEVER GET IT IN.

However, what is delightful is what Mkaymufc does with their limitations: there are some pretty detailed covers here, full of heart. There's something so comforting about a Midi-quality bass drum in a era of over-production. And like a cat following a laser along a carpet, you can watch it play along from start to finish in FruityLoops (now called FL Studio).

Sometimes it doesn't work: Electronic's Soviet doesn't come across well. But I loved Some Distant Memory (that Oboe's so cute!). New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle is brilliant, as is their take on Orbital's Kein Trink Wasser. It was an Orbital tweet that brought these videos to my attention. Sometimes the drawing is as enchanting as the real thing.

Here's Bizarre Love Triangle. Enjoy.

🔘 A PRODUCTION COVER OF OUR SONG KEIN TRINK WASSER BY MKAYMUFC 🔘 pic.twitter.com/fy9b1CDYXU

— Orbital (@orbitalband) December 27, 2019

Best electronic albums of 2018: sixteen

16 – Orbital – Monsters Exist (ACP)

Fat Roland, why have you buried your favourite band in the mid-teens when surely Orbital’s new album should be number one?

Good question, imaginary interrogator. Nice hat, by the way. On the first few plays, I had Monsters Exist pegged as one of Orbital’s okay-albums, more Blue album than Brown album. Golden Wonder crisps, not Seabrook.

But then saw them play much of this album live and had the skins of my ear-drums flailed by a glorious sonic symphony. Suddenly it all made sense. Hoo Hoo Ha Ha is a bit annoying on record, but in the context of a live set, it’s a killer.

As evidenced by their lively performances of PHUK on YouTube, perhaps this would have been better as a live set. This is a live album at heart, packaged awkwardly as a studio album. A studio album that hoo-haed its way into my ears much better once I’d been on that front rail at the O2 Apollo.



Scroll all of the best 2018 electronic albums by clicking here.

Red for Satan: Orbital wobbling my follicles

Orbital had my follicles shaking last night. All of them. It's the loudest Orbital gig I've experienced for some time - then again, I was right on the front rail in the sonic firing line, so no wonder my hair was buzzing.

It was a particular treat to see Plaid support them, one of the few bands I would rate as highly as the Orbital brothers. Do Matter sounded particularly celebratory. There were a couple of guys near me that were new to Plaid, and I reckon they gained some converts, especially after me banging on about how much I rated them.

Here's a piccie I took of Orbital (above). I can't remember which track it was, but it was probably Satan / Beelzedub. The colour is the clue: red for Satan, orange for Belfast, blue for Halcyon. In fact, here is my earliest memory of Orbital using blue colour washes for Halcyon: I'm in this crowd somewhere.



Further Fats: Why use a long word when a diminutive one will do? (2006)

Further Fats: Some lists containing rhyming Autechre, Orbital in colour, and the entire history of dance music (2009)