Awful Pauls

I have discovered an important theme in modern music. If I should die, please pass this on. People need to know. (See Boring Pauls here and Gorgeous Pauls here.)

Paul Rodgers

Rodgers qualifies for this list because he was a member of one of the worst rock bands in the history of all planetary axe-weilding. He co-wrote All Right Now which got the spirit of raaawk into a headlock and squeezed all the breath out of it. The single ummed up the sanitised, by-numbers music that later led to similar fayre in the form of Lenny Kravitz and posthumous Bob Marley singles.

Sean Paul

The ever-blazin' dancehall megastar imprinted himself onto the public consciousness like he was branding cattle. It doesn't change the fact that his hits such as We Be Burnin' and Baby Boy were the audio equivalent of listening to Stephen Hawking plugged directly into a malfunctioning karaoke machine. He had such a messiah complex, he called his third album The Trinity and gibes biblical-level wisdom to his Twitter followers: "If it glitters it dosnt have 2 B gold!!! It can B a fish scale! Carefullllll of dem fish!!!"

Paul Young

I don't need to tell you that this silk suited soulboy achieved an amazing feat of perfoming self-strangulation to get that distinctive vocal inflection. To say his saccharine pop slop has made the world a better place is akin to suggesting UB40 have made it immensely easy for ginger white musicians to be taken seriously for their reggae songs. He is now a member of some Mexican-themed 80s revival band (pictured) who recorded the song Do We Really Want The Same Things? Yes, Paul, you do: you'll never change.

Paul Gadd

I am a massive believer in astrology. So for example, I am a very typical... er... um... no, I have no idea about astrology, although I do have all the signs and dates memorised for pub quiz purposes. I do believe that the number one single at the time of your birth has an important bearing on your life and its various successes. So I will never forgive Paul 'Gary Glitter' Gadd for declaring "I'm the leader" at the moment my placental juices flopped onto the hospital table of life.

Paul McCartney

This pouting thumbs-alofting wannabe frog chorister destroyed all known music in the 1960s when he played a key part in a band that had a nice line in production techniques, boasted an uber-talented bespectacled songwriter, gave the world a Thomas The Tank Engine narrator, and yet was continuously thwarted by McCartney's attempts to turn every single track of the greatest group of its time into a simplistic, bedtime song predecessor to his pièce de ridiculance Mull Of Bloody Kintyre.

Paul Simon

If only The Sounds Of Silence had been taken literally. I'm crying as I write this. He wasn't only satisfied with playing carbunkle to the Garfunkle with the drippiest pairing in the history of drips, he then released the audio equivalent of the Guardian newspaper in the smug cloud formation of Graceland, an album so plainly awful and worthy, Coca Cola's pillaging of the developing world can only be seen as some kind of misplaced revenge attack.

More Pauls

This is not over, Pauls. I have a massive list of Pauls. There are more Pauls, although be assured the Pauls will get better from this moment on. What about the Pauls that are neither here nor there? The Boring Pauls? And then, there's the Gorgeous Pauls...

A mallet-pawing, arm-throating, wrestle-bashing preview of 2009 (part two)

I'd better get my 2009 preview finished before this whole New Year lark becomes unfashionable.

March.

Berlin adrenalin-techno kid (and former classical violinist, 'pparently) Tim Exile will plant his Listening Tree album.

The Future Sound Of London, whose artwork make gatefold vinyl a pleasure to ogle at, will play their first live date for over a decade at the Bloc weekender. It is unlikely to be as frenetic as Dan Deacon's live performanced.  Deacon counts a mallet among his percussion instruments, and has been taking to the stage with a synth-heavy 14-piece ensemble at recent gigs.  For that reason alone, seek out his new long-player Bromst.

Oh and former members of Plone and Broadcast have formed Seeland, who I reckon are a hot tip for 2009. When you clap ears on their debut album, you'll spot whispers of Stereolab and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The rest of 2009.

One of Paul Simon's favourite bands, Grizzly Bear should give Warp Records a new album in May, or thereabouts.  Speaking of Mr Simon, I still haven't forgiven the garfunkled-one for Graceland.  And while we're at it, I'm still boycotting Sly Stallone films for the travesty that is his 1996 movie Daylight.

If I kept my CDs on shelves, with my favourite artists on the higher shelves, and my least favourite artists on the lower shelves, Plaid would have their very own shelf about fourteen miles above my house. They are putting the finishing touches to their album Scintilli, and it will be released on Warp some time in the middle of the year.

In August, Orbital will morph together for their first live performance since John Peel's Maida Vale sessions, this time at the Big Chill. As I said in this post back in November, they have promised it won't be "an exercise in nostalgia". Of course, we all know it will.

Portishead ended 2009 without a record contract, so expect some In Rainbows-style tomfoolery with their fourth album. It should be out around September.

On a more commercial tip, ex-Pop Idol contestant (spit!) and new darling of the press Little Boots will claim 2009 as her own. She's worth watching because she uses a Tenori-on, which is a pretty Japanese music making box that lights up. The same people who rave about 'Boots enthuse about La Roux.

Finally, you may need to strap me down because I am insanely excited about one particular artist.  The Glaswegian Hudson Mohawke refers to everything as "shite" on his Myspace page.  He's not being negative: he's just being, well, Scottish.

Mohawke is a new signing to Warp Records, and he flips between electronica, hip hop, electro and soul in ways that really shouldn't be possible.

Someone somewhere labelled his music as "emotronic" (probably H-Mo himself).  He's working on an album which should sound a little like this: