Best electronic albums of 2020: twenty-four

24 – John Frusciante – Maya (Timesig)

On the Picky B*stards website, I called John Frusciante's album a "tasty surprise" while making some forced allusion to teapots and plop. No, seriously, give it a read. I also said it was "Aphex Twin smushed with Squarepusher with all the energy of early Prodigy or Moby."

That said, I was wrong in one particular aspect. Maya wasn't a surprise. JF had been twiddling knobs as Trickfinger for years, playing with drill 'n' bass and acid house. What was different here was the personal nature of the album prompted by the death of his cat Maya. Yep. It's a cat tribute album.

This was Frusciante mastering the machines in a sound that was a million miles away from his Chili Peppers work or slapping a bunch of guitars over Mars Volta albums. He released it on Venetian Snares' Timesig label, which is as unCalifornicated as you could get.

Best of all, this album gave us Brand E, a melacholic yet bouncy IDM anthem that was, hands down, one of the most replayable tracks of 2020.

 

Browse the rest of the Best Electronic Albums of 2020

It is my duty to inform you of this Selected Ambient Works anagram

It is my duty to inform you that Selected Ambient Works is an anagram of "Welcome Break dentists".

Less impressively, Squarepusher's 1998 album Music Is Rotted One Note is an anagram of "emits erotic note sound" while his debut from a couple of years earlier Feed Me Weird Things can be rearranged to say "eight friends mewed".

Boards Of Canada's seminal album Music Has The Right To Children is an anagram of "hi, third nuclear ghost chemist", while their later work The Campfire Headphase works out with an Iranian twist: "imperfect shah had a pee".

Venetian Snares is more of a challenge. The best I could get out of Rossz Csillag Alatt Született was "let tzars lust at laziest clogs", which they should be allowed to do. Winnipeg Is a Frozen Shithole becomes the horsey scandal "fool whinnies at neigh prizes". I'm not even going to attempt Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms.

μ-Ziq's archive release Challenge Me Foolish can be rearranged to make "nice flesh homage, lol" which is all very creepy but none of this as good as the Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works anagram. Welcome Break dentists. Yeesh. Service stations are usually quite uncomfortable experiences, and this just opens up a whole new world of roadside pain.

Further Fats: Ardently foul, wet flies: do my angry anagrams, you fart-hole (2010)

Further Fats: Fat Roland's February pop anagrams - number 4 is a doozy (2019)

And on that bombshell, Venetian Snares is back

Venetian Snares. Remember him? He is responsible for drill 'n' bass, otherwise known as music for people who enjoy shoving woodpeckers in their ears. But in a good way.

December sees the release of Greg Hates Car Culture, which was his first release on vinyl back in 1999, a year in which no-one listened to any music because they were too busy running through the streets to escape the Millennium Bug.

Who is Greg? What's he got against cars? He sounds like the kind of guy who likes Top Gear, or Clarkson's Petrol-Drenched Circle Jerk or whatever it's called now.

I've listened to the album with both of my ears, and you'll have to subscribe to Electronic Sound to know my full thoughts. But I can tell you it has a superb John Goodman sample from The Big Lebowski. If you look at the track listing, it's pretty clear which track it is. Dude.

Back in my clubbing days, the way to suss out the coolness of someone else's music taste was to lean in and say "do you like Venetian Snares?" Comedy fans do a similar thing using Stewart Lee or Daniel Kitson.

If someone said yes, you could totes be BFFs (assuming BFF meant "Breakcore Fans Forever"). But if you just got a shrug in response, it was acceptable to excommunicate them from your life or throw them out of a window, whichever was easier.

And on that bombshell, here's a squirrel racing a jet-ski in a wheelbarrow. That's the kind of thing they do, right?

Further Fats: Logical regression (2006)

Further Fats: Cars and girls (2012)

Joanne Pollock's breaking down pop music, Snares-style

Pop music in seven different time signatures. This seems to be the manifesto of Canadian singer Joanne Pollock. Also, she tweeted it.

pop music in 7 different time signatures

— Joanne (@joannepollock_) May 7, 2017

Pollock first collaborated with twisted king of broken beats Venetian Snares back in 2013 under the name of Poemss. She has now released her debut solo album Stranger on Snares' label Timesig.

Have a listen to Carnival below. In this song, I can hear the experimentalism of Lamb, the sublimity of Grimes and the clanking awkwardness of found-sound Fluke. But mostly, I can hear Pollock setting out a pretty fascinating vision for electronic pop music.

Looking forward to this. Below Carnival, listen to the nicely simplistic Love Song from a few years ago.





Further Fats: They say you can't keep a good tune down. This is a lie. Tip a lorry-load of bricks onto it, that should do it (2006)

Further Fats: 5 pop music predictions for 2014 (2014)

Best electronic albums of 2016: seventeen

17 – Venetian Snares – Traditional Synthesizer Music (Timesig)

She married a chess computer in the end. No, you haven’t walked into the middle of a conversation: that’s my favourite track title from the latest album from the chaotic king of drill ‘n’ bass. Cue joke about “check mating” for life. Getting caught on pawn sites. Bashing bishops?

Snares used modular synthesis to record Traditional Synthesizer Music. That’s where you patch together a bunch of units, wires draped everywhere like spaghetti Mechano. The track below will give you an idea of what that looks like. There he is, smoking away. Bless.

Snares McSnareface has let it all hang out, mostly. The album may meander a little, but it’s surprisingly listenable and is perhaps closer to his Last Step alias. The beats are as clattery as ever. And, of course, you can’t vote for yourself. Yep. You guessed it. Another track title.



Scroll all of the best 2016 electronic albums by clicking here.

Bleep Years day three: Venetian Snares' Szamár Madár (2005)

Is this Bleep Years crap over yet? No, dear reader. It has barely just begun. Here's another year in my two-decade trawl of musical memories.

2005: Venetian Snares' Szamár Madár

Somewhere between his Planet Mu albums Winnipeg Is a Frozen Shithole and Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms, the prolific junglist Venetian Snares came up with an album of Hungarian breakcore called Rossz Csillag Alatt Született. No. Stay with me.

Breakcore artists (think drum 'n' bass mainlining a liquidised Duracell bunny) were often accused of anger and noise over emotion and delicacy. This one track from Rossz Csillag, called Szamár Madár, put that preconception into a cocked hat, sold the cocked hat to Roy Chubby Brown and had Roy Chubby Brown thrown into a meat grinder. Szamár Madár has emotion exploding from every bass note.

Half of the track is a nagging orchestral line and half of it is mentalist snare rhythmics, making this both listenable and hardcore. By 2005, I was co-running regular nights in the Northern Quarter and I knew it was a good crowd if I could play this track without people complaining.

More importantly, this track taught me the true beauty of difficult electronic music. For me, this became as listenable as Colplay would be for other, more cloth-eared pathetic people. In 2005, a year in which I was unhappy in my job and wondering where my DJing was going, these Hungarian chords sáved my sánity.

Is Fat Roland my real father? Norwegian woof. *click*

I thought I would like February more than I liked January. However, if January was a rat-infested tin house in a forest full of dead baboons, then February is the lice-ridden mulch underneath the festering welcome mat of the rat-infested tin house in the forest full of dead baboons.

And so, to lift me a few measly iota above this interminable funk I seem to be in (I can't even get excited about Cool Runnings being on iPlayer), I thought I'd do a quick update on my whereabouts.

Firstly, you can hear me read one of my short stories if you're in Manchester tomorrow night. If you heard me read at Waterstone's rather eccentric open mic night at the end of last year, you'd have heard tomorrow's story before. Otherwise, come listen to my fairy story at the Bad Language open mic night, at the Castle Hotel on Oldham Street. There will be many other writers, so I only have four minutes in which to impress you.

Secondly, my presenting partner Lee and I will reunite in a public performance for the first time since the well-documented Refresh FM debacle. We'll be running the next Special Guessed pub quiz at the somewhat super King's Arms pub in Salford on March 1st (8.30pm). I'd love it if we got a decent crowd to this: it would certainly mean a lot to me. We'll fill your pants with so much trivia, you'll be shaking it out of your trouser ends like the UNCLE guy in the Great Escape.

And finally, there's always my F1 Losers League, which I have banged on about before, but which now has an extended entry deadline of March 26th. Visit the website for more.

Yes, this blog is meant to be about electronic music. Pfffrt. If you want consistency of content, go and read The Pigeon Post.  I have been a bit shoddy recently, but there'll be more music witterings soon, honest. Meanwhile, here is a list of search terms that haven't resulted in recent hits on my blog:

- junglist Richard Madeley
- Norwegian wool
- a cacophony of roses
- the holy trinity of Rudy's Rare Records, Cool Runnings and Rastamouse
- Justin Biepbipe
- is Fat Roland my real father
- turnpike Birmingham rocking chair crew
- Norwegian woof
- cheap supermarket toothpaste
- Venetian Snarls

Blood sugar synths felines: some almost-recent tracks worth your attention

The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Didn't expect that, did you? Red Hot Chili Peppers. There, I said it again.

No, I'm not talking about the tongue-busting offspring of plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanasomething-or-other. I'm talking about the wiley shirtless guitar plodders who appear to have gone afro pop.

Actually, I'm taking about John Frusciante, who dumped the Chilis in 2007 but has now turned up as one part of Speed Dealer Moms with legendary bass-driller Venetian Snares. This is a live experimental project consisting of those boys, Chris McDonald, a bunch of drum machines (gear, pictured) and, in the band's words, "many cats".

Their first release is the Speed Dealer Moms EP, a short and bitter chunk of tapping distracto-grooves recorded as-live in 2010 that will frighten Chili poppers but may sound somewhat familiar to Snares followers.

While I'm perusing recent tracks (mainly from the end of last year), I've been addicted to Rafferties's Rank Functions EP. The title track is a 2step tech stormer on his own Super label that turned my pants brown, but check those warm chords in His Counting House or the out-and-out house snap of Horse Flesh. Suddenly, I feel Raffertie has "arrived" in that really pretentious way some people say "arrived".

Meanwhile, The Black Dog's latest offering is Subject To Delays. That's not an announcement for tardiness, but rather the name of their latest EP in their Music For Real Airports project which features rolling house and drifting ambience in equal measure.

Picture: modified from a Universo Frusciante snap.

Top ten best electronica albums of 2010: part three of four

This is part three. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part two and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

4 - Four Tet – There Is Love In You

Kieren Hebdon's strongest album had 2010 skipping to the dancefloor while it was still in short trousers. It is probably the only album in my list that has nudged the top 40, a deserved success after he lit the Burial touchpaper with the Moth / Wolf Cub 12-inch last year. In the modern parlance of today's youth, this album is definitely double-rainbow.

I had been lazy writing off Four Tet as coffee table electronica for people too afraid of Venetian Snares. There Is Love In You is sardine-full of outstanding tracks (the fractured vocals of Angel Echoes, the soaring simplicity of Circling, the thundering energy of Plastic People), but it works best an emotional journey start to finish, especially when topped with heartbreaking Bibio-like finisher She Just Likes To Fight.

A ten-out-of-ten for Four Tet. Buy There Is Love In You from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

3 - Luke Abbott – Holkham Drones

Is it really four years since Luke's stupendous 8-bit single b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b,b? Holkham Drones is Abbott's first album and appears to be named after a posh place in Norfolk. Even though it appears to be the Border Community label's only album release of 2010, it arrived on the electronica scene with less of a fanfare, more of an enthusiastic trumpet fart (check my own fartings here).

Holkham Drones needs to be rediscovered immediately. Taking its cue from basic frequency modulation, the cymbals hiss and the bass rings hollow and the whole thing appears as if it may fall over any second. But as the beat grabs you by the badgers, your mind is transported into a grey fluffy analogue world belonging to Boards Of Canada and Cluster (the band not the cereal). This meditation on ambience through repetitive beats is the greatest noise since early days of techno, or since I knocked on Timmy Mallett's door for a solid week because he owed me a fiver.

The best Abbott since, um, Diane Abbott. Buy Holkham Drones from Bleep or Boomkat.

2 - Gonjasufi – A Sufi And A Killer

A Sufi And A Killer sounds like Mark E Smith, Timothy Leary, Seasick Steve, George Clinton, Marc Bolan and Flying Lotus using their teeth, yellowed from chewing tobacco, to rip open time itself, then having a jolly good toke on apple tobacco in a shisha cafe. This is a debut album, don't forget. Despite its dizzying array of influences, this is as complete a sound as you're ever going to get.

"You came with weapons: I came with God," says Sumach, and you don't doubt him. The billion or so tracks on the album buzz with a shamanic intensity: the eastern impact of Kowboyz And Indians, the vintage jam of She Gone or the imposing beats underpinning his fragile vocals (an ancient Method Man?) on Ancestors. I don't know where he's coming from or where he's going to, but Sufi, so good. Sorry.

An incredible achievement for Warp and Gaslamp Killer and the rest. Buy Gonjasufi's Sufi And A Killer from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

Not quite in the top ten (part three)

My top ten is chock full of artists who have embraced the 4/4 rhythm, something which I wouldn't have done a year ago. And so it's a shame to lose Lone, whose Emerald fantasy Tracks evoked the spirit of classic Detroit. Shame to lose Underworld's Barking too. Matthew Dear's Black City didn't dance its way into the top ten either.

The Chemical Brothers got back to techno basics on Further, but it wasn't enough, while One Life Stand from Hot Chip was quite good but, frankly, a bit annoying. iTAL tEK's detailed Midnight Colour was definitely in my top half of the long list, while Susumu Yokota's Kaleidoscope didn't see its way into the final reckoning.

Dan Le Sac, Teebs, The Orb and Kode 9 (he did a DJ Kicks) also didn't make the cut. I was disappointed with Skream's chart-baiting Outside The Box. He needs to start thinking outside the, um, yeah, anyway. Royksopp's Senior had early retirement in the reckoning for this list.

And finally, some artists were excluded because they were probably too guitar-y and not electronica enough,. They include Denis Jones' Red + Yellow = (you must see him live), the Klaxons' Surfing The Void (and yes it was a good album cover) and the electrifying Nerve Up from Lonelady.

This is part three. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part one, part two and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

Top ten best electronica albums of 2010: part one of four

This is part one. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part two, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

10 - Lorn – Nothing Else

Marcus 'Lorn' Ortega teased us with the track Until There Is No End on Fat City Records some time ago, a deeply moving slice of apocalypto-funk. Clark, the recipient of my Best Album Of 2010, then went on to master his debut album Nothing Else. You know it because every city in the UK has been plastered top to bottom with stickers promoting the record. In the process, the Brainfeeder sound (crunchy cut-paste J Dilla beats) was quickly knocked several days left of Tuesday with the label's first signing outside of Los Angeles.

It was also Brainfeeder's second album proper, and with Lorn quoting Milton all about the place, you knew it would be something special. Before now, I have praised his testosterone retro and made comparisons to Animal Farm and Bladerunner. The album sounds like Knight Rider having a breakdown: maybe it takes itself too seriously, but Nothing Else soaks you like tears and rain with a sound defined by no-one else but Lorn.

Embrace the synth melancholy. Buy Lorn's Nothing else from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

9 - Venetian Snares - My So-Called Life

Like a naughty boy, Aaron Funk ventured away from his natural home at Planet Mu and set up Timesig Records for the (arguably) 22nd studio album from his interior decor / percussion-inspired moniker. Because it was recorded quickly - Snares sees this more of a diary entry than a year's work - My So-Called Life shifted the game somewhat. Well. Slightly. Its still a (detri)mentalist cavalcade of dirty junglism.

The quick recording process lightened the music by precisely nought-point-seven degrees: for example, pastoral string-picking gives way to a beautifully melodic 8bit 'n' bass on title track My So Called Life. But it's the vocal samples that are leaned on more heavily than usual here - and what horrible vocals. Grossly non-PC Welfare Wednesday contains a hilarious jibe at Planet Mu label boss Mike Paradinas, while Who Wants Cake? and Posers And Camera Phones say things that would make Jerry Sadowitz blush.

The most accessible and disgusting Venetian Snares album for a while. Buy it from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

8 - Caribou – Swim

Caribou doesn't need any more praise heaped on his handsome locks. Resident Advisor has already pronounced Swim as the album of the year (please don't look at that list too much: mine is horribly and coincidentally similar). And Sun's dizzying refrain ("sun, sun, sun, sun...") loomed heavily over 2010.

I have an entirely personal reason for including Swim here. Opening track Odessa was playing in the bar in which I was getting drunk after my blog awards win, and it kind of became my soundtrack. That's not to downplay the rest of the LP though: crisp, driving house music, chiming hypnotica on Bowls and a nod towards indie pop on Kaili. But really, it's all about Odessa and it's all about the Sun. Sun. Sun. Sun. Dammit, there I go again.

Hunt yourself a Caribou: buy Swim from Bleep or Boomkat or Piccadilly.

Not quite in the top ten (part one)

I will not pretend my list - or indeed any element of my blog - is comprehensive. I also don't think this has been a classic year for electronica, nor that all of these artists are electronica. Crikes. This is like a minefield. Anyhoo, here are some of the albums that didn't pass muster.

I'm astonished at how commercial some of my top ten is this year, although Magnetic Man's eponymous debut album pushed the pop too far to be included, despite MAD and despite it being one of the most important electronic music collaborations of recent times. The same goes for Plastic Beach by the Gorillaz, although that was still a glorious album.

Daft Punk's Tron Legacy soundtrack came very close; maybe it would have helped if I'd bothered seeing the film. I found Darkstar's slow mosh-hopping North difficult to love, while Salem's King Knight didn't tug the earstrings enough for a top placing. Meanwhile, UNKLE bored me to sleep with Where Did The Night Fall.

I was gutted not to include two albums at the opposite end of the electronic sonic spectrum: Ikonika's gamer-baiting Contact Want Love Hate and Brian Eno / Jon Hopkins' Small Craft On A Milk Sea (which is not a great ambient album: it is a great techno album). Any top ten without them would be a crime. It's a fair cop, guv.

This is part one. Please do read the other parts of this blog post: part two, part three and part four
To read last year's top ten best electronica albums, click here.

Aphex Twin's six new albums: "Maybe I can get Basshunter to remix Selected Ambient Works..."

Edit: Since this post, there has been further speculation about AFX's new album due to an enigmatic Aphex video that turned out to be an advert for Aphex Twin live.

Aphex Twin, who says he has completed six unreleased albums, is like Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys. His desk drawers are crammed with material and it's only a matter of time before it all blows away uselessly into the ocean, lost to the fishes for all eternity.

Maybe he can't stop writing tracks, or more importantly, he can't finish the one's he's started. Maybe the curse of the Aphex Twin Comeback is too much to bear and when he finally releases an album, it will just be the sound of him crying into a supersize tub of Ben And Jerry's.

Since Aphex Twin's last long player proper, Drukqs, Venetian Snares has churned out fourteen albums. We've waited such a long time for this new 'phex LP, it led me to speculate that yes, Aphex Twin's album doesn't exist in February 2009, that no, in fact Aphex Twin's album absolutely does exist in March 2009, or hold on, Aphex Twin's new album may or may not exist in December 2009, or sack it, I'll make some money from his reputation anyway throughout 2010.

Here is the quote he gave fashion magazine Another Man. You'll have seen it in WH SMith: it's the edition with the grizzly looking Keith Richards on the front. To help you with the quote, I've added my own subtext in italics:

“I’ve got six completed (at least I think they're completed, I'm not sure where music begins and ends any more). Two are very non-commercial, abstract, modular-synthesis, field recordings – those I finished four years ago (next to Analord, they sounded crap so I binned them).

"Another one is Melodies From Mars, which I redid about three years ago (my Bowie tribute album could be my big comeback after all). There’s one of stuff I won’t go into (it was my linedancing phase: I'd better not mention that); a comp of old tracks which is never really finished and always changing (maybe I can get Basshunter to remix Selected Ambient Works); and then one I’m working on now (as soon as I can learn a fifth chord on this guitar)."

He added: "There are also loads of tracks which don’t belong anywhere.” Really? If I don't get anything less than a massive fourteen hour concept album with artwork showing Richard 'Twin' James riding naked on a horse with naked Aphexes sprouting from each finger as music tumbles from his many crotches like sticky fairy dust onto a million dogs in Windowlicker outfits, I will be severely disappointed.

Anyhoo, you can read his fashion mag interview in lovely jpeg format here and here.If you can't be bothered to read it, the interview can be summed up as follows:

Are you superstitious? No. I'm bored of this now.
What do you do before gigs? Have a beer. I'm bored of this now.
Favourite noise? Wind. I'm bored of this now.
Describe your music. dflaghaozoushiduqwd. I'm bored of this now.
What scares you? My imagination. I'm bored of this now.
What can we expect from your next album? Which one? I've got six, beeyatch. Did I tell you I'm bored with this interview?

Or words to that effect.

The devil has all the best IDM: Venetian Snares

Here I am, on Hallowe'en night, choosing my favourite IDM / electronica to accompany your fright-filled evening of pumpkin soup, bad clothes and legal doorstep extortion. See the other posts in this series here. See the introduction to the whole thing here.

Artist: Venetian Snares
Track: Szerencsétlen
Album: Rossz Csillag Alatt Született
Year: 2005

The pizzicato strings at the start of the track are deliberately mimicking a horror soundtrack, so I nearly didn't include this for being too overt. But Venetian Snares' Szerencsétlen gives me the cold willies every time I listen to it.

The repetitive orchestral refrain, terrified by all the biting beats, reaches a frenzy of violence.

Whoever matched all of this up with a Tom and Jerry cartoon for this video deserves a knighthood (wherupon the Queen lets the sword drop a little too heavily... cue evil laugh).

Blog Of The Year

Fat Roland On Electronica was the big winner, alongside Love Levenshulme, in last night's Manchester Blog Awards.

I have been peppering the web with snotty flakes of false modesty in preparation for my campaign for blogputsch ending in failure. But believe me when I said I didn't expect to win anything; I meant it.

Banana skins

The awards event was held in the Deaf Institute and was graciously compered by Manchester Literature Festival's Jon Atkin. He introduced several short story readings by 330 Words contributors, all of which were brilliant and some of which included the phrase 'banana skins' in their text (by coincidence, but it proves I was right about 330 Words in my recent blog post).

My Shitty Twenties, the reigning Best Writing On A Blog winner, raised warm smiles with her blog post about gerbils and About A Boy and the spelling of Gandhi, while previous winner Chris Killen peformed a remarkable Choose Your Own Adventure story in which I volunteered to be the protagonist.

You can see us in Tom Mason's picture above, Chris reading the story and me making the crucial decisions. Except I've added a few speech balloons. That's me on the right, there. Chris Killen had me going on a date with crap hair then trying to escape through a toilet window. Or was it me that chose that? It was very chortlesome because he's a great writer.

And then came the awards. Best City And Neighbourhood Blog went to Love Levenshulme, more of which later. Best Arts and Culture Blog went to Ribbons and Leaves, which combines old and new by scanning typewritten blog posts (I must dig out my old typewriter some time).

The Best New Blog winner was the collaborative story-writing project 330 Words, while Best Personal Blog was awarded Might As Well, otherwise known as one of the brains behind Beards Of Manchester.

Each and every one of these blogs bagged a well-deserved win, and I urge you to frequent them constantly.

Slow motion

As for my wins, it played out in slow motion. As a couple of my competitors in the Best Writing On A Blog category won in other categories first, my chance of winning presumably increased. The preamble to my category mentioned the winner having a "slightly obscure subject matter", and that, along with a knowing tap from Do A Barrel Roll's foot, had me furiously trying to write an acceptance speech inside my head in the five seconds remaining before my name was read out.

On the stage, I took a slow sip of beer (got that tip off an actor a while ago!), hesitated because I nearly fainted from shock, and then apologised for everything I've said about James Blunt over the years.

To go on to win a second award, and this time the biggie (Blog of the Year) was surprising and humbling and delightful and scary and all the other things that bubble up from your stomach when everything happens at once. It gave me an excuse to be the first person ever to namecheck Venetian Snares at an awards ceremony.

Fat Roland the website has been chugging away for eight years, eight months and eighteen days, and as it became more bloggy (proper URL, some semblance of design) and more 'writerly' (six a.m. writing sessions, lots of editing), it still squatted in some obscure corner of the internet pooing out its electronic effluent on a modest gaggle of off-beat but lovely fans.

Something small

The extra sweetness from the yummy winnery was the fact I won Blog of the Year jointly with Love Levenshulme, another blog that is focussed on something small. but that something small is treated with passion and commitment and, it has to be said, sacrifice (turns out, one of them gave up their TV to concentrate more on writing, as did I earlier this year).

The judges split the prize because they couldn't work out which blog was the bestest, a conversation I would have given my right arm to eavesdrop on. "Aphex Twin or Levenshulme... Aphex Twin or Levenshulme... hmmmm... let me pipe Windowlicker in through Levenshulme library's windows, see what happens..."

I'm pretty sure ninety-twelvety per cent of Best Writing winners have gone on to be multi-millionaire novelists, so I'd better start writing my tome on Murcof b-sides straight away. I'll just copy out Dan Brown's books, twaddle a few words around and colour the edges of the book pages red because publishers think it's trendy.

Meanwhile, will this blog change? Will it fudge. There are bleeps to be fondled, squelchy basslines to be goosed, and I'll be flappered sideways if I'm going to give up this corner of the internet in my battle against r 'n' b clones, despotic pop loons and Michael chuffing Bublé.

Thank you for reading. NOT YOU, BUBLÉ.

My Manchester Blog Award rivals dissected

Edit: To see how well I did since writing this post, see the results here.

With the Manchester Blog Awards nearly upon us (you can still vote for me here until the end of Tuesday), it's time to look at my opposition in more detail.

The following blogs have been shortlisted, along with me, in the Best Writing On A Blog category. Let's see if they have what it takes to win the prestigious prize (to be awarded on Wednesday night).

Specimen one: 330 Words

On the positive side, this is a collaborative blog where people submit very short stories inspired by a picture. This ensures they have a wide reach and probably carry a lot of respect because of that. I must write something for them, if only to get reflected glory.

330 Words have a search function on their site. So I thought I would test their mettle by firing in some fairly obvious phrases. 'Aphex Twin' revealed no results, as did 'Venetian Snares'. However, a simpler search for the word 'banana' (pictured) returned two hits. Nothing for 'sausage', though. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Specimen two: The Pigeon Post

This is a music blog. You know what one of those is because you're reading one right now, although Mr Pigeon does a better job of it by posting audio and writing about music. It is, in other words, a proper music blog and it's made right here in Manchester.

The writing on 'Post covers nagging doubts at gigs, fruitless searches for new music, and railing against clichés in music blogs. On the negative side, he too has a search box and a scan for 'James Blunt hanging limply from the remains of his own broken career' returned precisely zero results.

Specimen three: Ribbons And Leaves

This blog is a-- oh wait, he's got a Manchester Blog Awards logo at the top of his blog and a link-through to the voting page. Why haven't I done that? Back in a moment...

...

Right then, I've done the same on my blog. Anyway, Mr Leaves types his blog posts on a 1960s German typewriter then scans them onto the page. It sounds exhausting, but the results are stunning. When I'm on his blog and I smash the side of my computer screen with the flat of my right hand, it doesn't go ding. This needs to be rectified. Ding.

Specimen four: Who The Fudge Is Benjamin Judge? 

I nominated this blog in two categories and it ended up getting shortlisted in both of them. Here we have a personal blog that has an imaginative edge, such as a list of things to do this decade that includes "live like a Moomin for a while".

He spends his time calling me a North Korea sympathiser stroke planet killer, which only leads me to scream out very much in the style of Matthew Bionic's query on Judge's sister blog Ask Ben And Clare. When I change my name to Kim Jong Roland, I'm going to nuke his blog.

So there are the fellow shortlistees. It's amazing to be in the same category as the blogs above. There are other categories in the Blog Awards too, but I don't want this post to go on forever so I must leave it there.

If you're going on Wednesday (anyone is welcome), you'll spot me being confused and drunk in the corner. I have no idea what happens at these things, whether I get to read anything at the front, or how many fist fights there will be.

See you after the Awards, dearest reader.

Greenbelt 2010: thronging bowels and fibs from the elderly

My annual pilgrimage to Greenbelt Arts Festival was plagued by being ill from head to heel, but I still managed to fit in a few hours of DJing.

I promoted the second set, on Sunday, with these posters around site (pictured). Most of them were quickly whipped down by anxious cleaning staff, but this one (pictured) survived next to the mens' loos for at least 24 hours.

You'll notice the stickers in the bottom left corner. They appeared thirty seconds after I put the flipping thing up. Without me noticing. As I was standing there. Very odd.

Other posters were the same bar the name at the bottom, which varied between different levels of stupidity (Susan Papp, Timothy Fishwhip). This poster is the only one that used someone's real name (Aaron Funk is Mr Venetian Snares).

This particular set went brilliantly, and thank you if you are one of the people that made it down. I didn't actually play any Venetian Snares, but only because the venue manager specifically told me "no Venetian Snares!". Which I don't expect happens much at Gatecrasher or Ministry Of Sound, and so is testament to the wonderfulness of the venue.

Anyhoo, back to the poster next to the loos. While I was stalking the men's toilets, which was constantly thronged by people of all ages and bowel states, I heard this very cute conversation between a seven year old boy and his grumpy younger sister:

BOY (reading): Ha! It says 77 and a half.

GIRL: That's stupid.

BOY: 77 and a half!

GIRL: They're probably 76.

BOY: It says 77 and a half. It's funny.

GIRL: It just someone having a laugh. There's no way they're 77.

BOY: Well, I think it's funny.

BOY skips off. GIRL takes one more look at the poster, then shouts after him:

GIRL: Anyway, everyone knows you never put your real age at the bottom of a letter.

I don't think they came to the gig.

Chosen Words: I is for Intelligent

a.k.a. World Cup Distraction Exercise: Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

IDM stands for 'Intelligent Dance Music', a phrase adopted to describe music produced by Aphex Twin and his contemporaries.

The 'intelligent' reference meant this was dance music that didn't just appeal to the feet: it affected the brain, the heart and lesser organs such as the spleen.

Some tracks released under the wide umbrella of Intelligent Dance Music include Venetian Snares' Winnipeg Is A Frozen Shithole, Chris Clark's Nostalgic Oblong and Kid606's thirty-second composition Dramatic Pause Of Silence To Signify The End Of The Album And Beginning Of Additional Songs Included On The CD To Make People Feel Better About Buying The CD Instead Of The Vinyl Version.

It could be said that not all IDM is intelligent.

IDM is not the only description for this particular form of electronic music. It is also known as the anatomically-startling 'braindance' and as 'techno' and as 'that bloody noise again, will someone shoot the drummer for crap's sake'.

Top five IDM pioneers:

- Richard D James
- Kirk Degiorgio
- The Black Dog
- Richard H Kirk
- Bay City Rollers (their blue period)

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.

Chosen Words: D is for Design

a.k.a. World Cup Distraction Exercise: Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and associated "facts"

Good design on album artwork goes hand in hand with IDM / electronica.

To have a good cover design, you either went minimalist like Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92 or complex like Venetian Snares' Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms.

The Designers Republic design a lot of electronica bands' covers, while Underworld had their own Tomato imprint. Neither of these companies produced anything as brilliant as porn screen-shots with superimposed kitten heads.

The mp3 is killing off the LP, and these days, album illustrators can be seen begging for pennies on street corners. Their cardboard signs say things like SPARE SUM PENNIES in Comic Sans, bringing shame on their once great profession.

No-one knows it yet, but the future of cover design is EtchaSketch.

Top five album covers:

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.

The Gospel According To Aphex Twin

> See a video of this talk here

Bright Club Manchester invited me to give a talk at their debut event at Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester. So I decided to set up a new religion and present it to the unsuspecting masses.

My brief from Bright Club was to talk about something I'm passionate about and to make it entertaining. My brief to myself was to make it sound convincing whilst making absolutely no sense whatsoever. It also had to be utterly un-fanboy, so there are no details. Just silliness.

You can stream the full audio for the Gospel According To Aphex Twin here. Meanwhile, here is the full text.

Gospel According To Aphex Twin

I'm here to present to you tonight a new religion based on modern electronic music, and by the end of this you will be converted. It's based on the holy trinity of the analogue drum pad, squelchy bass line and bearded geeks in bedroom studios. This is the gospel according to Aphex Twin.

To understand this gospel, you need to go back to the prophets. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who were working with George Martin before he became that bloke to do with the Beatles. Who knows what the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is most well known for? (Audience response: "Dr Who!") Doctor Who theme tune, absolutely right. Ron Grainger's notes to them contained annotations like 'swoops' and 'wind bubbles', it really was a fantastic new sound.

In the beginning also, there were hippy-haired men in sandals. Some of Pink Floyd's more experimental was as close to techno as you're ever going to get. I've not got time to go into this now, but the Beatles really do provide the missing link between skiffle and the Chemical Brothers (come and ask me afterwards!).

In the beginning, also, you had the puritans. Kraftwerk, who were clean and clinical, who stood there on their podiums giving sermons about wild ideas like pocket calculators and autobahns.

But I'm talking about modern electronic music. In the 80s, a lot of electronic music was about going out, getting dressed up and going dancing, so you had new wave, hip hop, rave. But this is about what happened after that. When the musical missionaries brought Detroit house music over to Europe, it became something different. We know it as electronica, intelligent dance music, armchair techno or, my favourite, braindance.

You had people like LFO who did this really ordered warehouse techno, which made Kraftwerk look like a free jazz band: they were cold and ordered  - and looming (you know when you get that feeling when the One Show's about to come on?). It brought techno kicking and screaming from the dance floor into the pizza-box strewn living room of the ravers.

This whole group of bands gave us the new scriptures to follow. The Artificial Intelligence series of CDs was brilliant stuff. Their record label described it as: "You could sit down and listen to it like you would a Kraftwerk or Pink Floyd album.” This was radical for that time, it really hadn't been done before. Although that manifesto was later used to excuse trip hop, which is wrong.

You had Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85 – 92, our bedraggled poster boy tonight. On that album - it's a beautiful album - there was a sample from the Charlie And The Chocolate Factory film, the one with Gene Wilder, “we are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams” – for me that was inspiration, it was like the Martin Luther King of electronic music.

And Orbital's brown album, so-called because it didn't have a title. It was their second album and it was so unifying and so uplifting that if you go to an Orbital gig now, it's like they're the early hymn writers and people are raising their arms in unity and in worship. The NME called Orbital's second album “as warm as plasma and as eerie as ectoplasm”. And incidentally,I wasn't sure how to fit this in: Orbital are named after the M25, and I wanted to do a section based on bands named after roadways. I've only got The Streets, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes and Muse...

So what are the beliefs of the Gospel According To Aphex Twin? Salvation can be found experimentation. We will encourage you to question and to challenge. So we've got Flying Lotus paying tribute to Alice Coltrane on his new album and Bjork has been working with techno pioneers for most of her career.

Salvation can be found in repetition, that Hot Chip refrain of "the joy of repetition is within you". Repetition in this religion is not essential, but it helps you reach a new, higher state of consciousness (something falls down at the back) or make people collapse. Repetition is a political thing also: a previous government tried to make repetitive beats illegal. Some of you might remember the Criminal Justice Bill was a big thing. Repetitive beats technically became illegal, but it became law. Fighting it was a bit like like banging your head against a brick wall continuously and ironically.

Salvation can also be found in staying underground. It's easier for me to fit through the eye of a needle than it is for electronica to get into the singles chart; it just doesn't happen. Autechre, who are the Mancunian purists of techno music, are wilfully obscure. I run a website on electronic music and for a while I ran a thing called Chartwatch where I would track the progress week-by-week of electronic acts in the singles chart. It wasn't very successful, and I've got a few of the entries here:

- No new electronica in the singles chart.
- Still no new electronica in the singles chart.
- Simply Red are in the top 40, I'm off for a cry.

So it didn't really work. Speaking of Simply Red, it brings me to the one unforgiveable sin, which all religions must have. The unforgiveable sin in this new religion is mediocracy. If you are, for example, The Orb and you record a 40-minute single Blue Room and it accidentally rockets up the charts and so you go on Top Of The Pops on prime-time TV and you're not sure what to do so you play chess, that is brilliant. If however, your album ends up on coffee tables, you start hanging out with celebrities and you've got lyrics like "there was snow, white snow", then you're Coldplay.

Extremism is encouraged in the Gospel According To Aphex Twin. Like all good religions, extremism is encouraged. So Venetian Snares, one of my favourite bands, he sounds very much like a barrell of nails being rolled down a cobbled hill. I'd particularly recommend the albums Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms, Filth and Winnipeg Is a Frozen Shithole.

I'm here to increase my religion, I'm here to grow my religion because I had to fit it into the theme of tonight. So will the Gospel According To Aphex Twin work? We will get organised, we will make Brian Eno pope. Electronica is dominated by a lot of the hallmarks of religion. So you'vbe got worshippers in communal ecstacy, you've got white middle-class, socially-inadequate men all over the place and also electronica's very good at looking down its nose at other people not quite doing it right.

I'd like to end with a bit of involvement, if you'd like. This is where you become part of the new religion. I'd like to end with a call-and-response, a piece of liturgy. This comes from when Lady Gaga and La Roux and Ladyhawke were first getting successful and the Guardian ran a piece about "chicks with synths", that was the new thing. So I wrote a letter to James Blunt suggesting that perhaps he get on the bandwagon and... you'll see.

If you can say the bits in bold, but please can you say it loudly and clearly and with conviction:

We join together in the Gospel According To Aphex Twin.

Aphex Twin is the daddy.

This is the First Letter To James Blunt, chapter one.  

Thanks be to Aphex.

Dear James Blunt. You should become a chick with a synth.

Amen to that.

You need to buy a nice shiny silver synthesiser and get it into every publicity shot you can.

Praise be the synthesiser.

You will, of course, need to alter your gender. I once cut the leg off a teddy bear with my dad's nosehair clippers... I'm sure changing your sex wouldn't be much different.

Get to the point.

I pledge my all to the Gospel According To Aphex Twin and his holiness, Brian Eno.

I will experiment.

Yes I will.  

I will embrace repetition.  

Yes I will.

I will embrace repetition.  

That’s not funny.

I will follow the holy order of the analogue drum pad

Thum!

and the squelchy bassline.

Pyow!

Lead us not into Maroon 5 for ever and ever.

Amen.

This was the Gospel According To Aphex Twin. Thank you very much.

You can stream the full audio for the Gospel According To Aphex Twin here.

A Team Doyobi bundle: £12.99 ... carrying a puppy under your ludicrously tanned arm: priceless

If fatroland.com has become known for anything for the past eight years, it's shopping.

There's nothing I like better than mincing down King Street, my beemer parked in a disabled space, to look disdainfully into shop windows full of clothes for retarded stick insects. Daddy's credit card, expensive shades, puppy under arm. That's how I shop.

Good job, then, the real world has Bleep, the online electronic music shop. Recently, they launched a 'bundles' sale, which is a brilliant way of getting rid of all the dross you can't shift otherwise.

I suspect all the fried gold has sold, but there's a decent set of silverware left. There's 808 State's Quadrastate, which had that saxophone tune, bundled with their Planet Mu Rephlex rarities album Prebuild.

There is a vinyl album bundle from the godfathers of chiptune Team Doyobi. I think their music is deeper than the lazy chiptune tag, but anyhoo it's worth a punt because they're key players on Manchester's Skam Records.

And if you prefer plastic, there's a CD pack featuring a brace of albums from London producer Kevin Martin: one under his King Midas Sound collaborative moniker, and one as the quite-frankly-brilliant The Bug. I still think The Bug's London Zoo is one of 2008's essential releases.

Along with a couple of slices of brutalism from Venetian Snares and a wee bit of vinyl from the Ant and Dec of techno Carl Craig and Kirk Degiorgio (note to editor - please delete the Ant and Dec bit: it makes no sense), the bundle sale is still worth a poke with your music-buying stick.

Visit the sale here or click on the links in this piece. And no, I'm not paid by Bleep: I just like 'em. Oh crap, they're towing my BMW - looks like this shopping trip is over. Later, dahlinks.

It's like... um... like... er... um... like Flying Lotus covering Lil Wayne

What's Flying Lotus doing covering Lil Wayne?

Lil Wayne (pictured), for those who don't know, is a gun-toting cough syrup-slurping MTV Man Of The Year rap artist who, in his own words, is "lick, like a lollipop".

Bizarre similes aside, Lil Wayne once recorded I Feel Like Dying. This is a Mary Jane toking piece of rap whimsy where Lil (can I call you Lilly?) muses on playing basketball with the moon, and when it's played backwards it seems to throw up the line "without the trousers, we are nude".

Flying Lotus has done his own version of I Feel Like Dying, which is even more blunted than the original. You can hear it on his MySpace page. It's not the first time he's covered Lil Wayne, and I'm all in favour of electronica artists doing other people's tracks.

I'd especially like Venetian Snares to cover the Benny Hill theme tune. Are you reading, Mr Snares? Will you do it? Just for me?

Back to the MySpace tracks. There's another good Flying Lotus track on there too: Prince is a very short tune that sounds like Mr Ozio dropping like it's hot on a Nintendo. Like a sexy Pacman popping blue pills instead of yellow ones.

Put that in your simile pipe and toke it, Lil Wayne.