Pathetic, turgid and very unKylie - number two of a descending series of five

Hop across to Ebay and look up item number 120274828675. I've never sold on Ebay before, but there are my Kylie tickets right there.

Right then. Back to my enthralling series-- wait-- that doesn't quite sound right.

Back to my interesting series on customer reviews-- hold on a sec-- I'm not sure if that really sums things up too well.

One final try.

Back to my turgid attempt at a "series of posts" about customer reviews on i-tunes, as if anyone really gives a hamster's crotch.

Towards the beginning of the month, I decided to put up five reviews on i-tunes in a descending order of positivity. The first review got five stars, the second would get four stars, and so on until my fifth review which would be a scathing one-star rant.

And so to my four star review, referred to on this blog as "that album that had the red cover and it sounded a bit like a movie soundtrack," and otherwise known as Deadly Avenger's Deep Red.

This series will get interesting when we get into the lower stars. Honest.

Go, Kylie! You got it, guuurlfriend!

A warm, filmic engrossing album for fans of DJ Shadow and David
Holmes.

It ranges from gorgeously dark, low-down depths (Black Sun, Lopez), to
weaker easy listening down-tempo (Blade, Love Sounds), to Avenger's particular
area of strength - grand, spacious, friendly, meaty, beaty pieces of enjoyable
soundtrack pomp (We Took Pelham, Punisher).

Electronica that positively breathes down your neck. Four stars.

It's not a pie chart but I called it a Bri Chart because that was the only pun I could think of

This chart shows why I'm worried about Brian Eno. (Click here for large.)

I should have posted this months ago, when Eno told Radio 4's Front Row that he would be producing the latest LP from tapioca-flavoured, whinging popmunters Coldplay.

He said their new material "will be very original and very different from what they've done before."

It wasn't.

Viva La Whatever was released by Coldplay this week and, like past albums from James and U2, you can see the Eno sheen dripping from every note.

But what was Eno thinking of? What was the former producer of U2's sunglasses era and Talking Heads doing anywhere near a band I consider so bad, I'd rather trim my toenails with a chainsaw than listen to Chris Martin's Bluntesque mediocrity.

That's why I created my Bri Chart, above, showing the collapsing milestone's of Brian Eno's production career.

On a more delightful note, listen to Islands covering Eno's The Big Ship (you'll need to scroll down a bit).

Of his Eno cover, Islands' Nicholas Thorburn said "It doesn't matter if it's sloppy. Things can be a little rough around the edges if they have heart."

Or they can be as neat and tidy as a Coldplay song and have absolutely no pulse whatsoever.

Just time for an mpSunday, the series where I use the internet to give away music. Clever, I know. It only seems relevant to bust you some Eno, so here goes:

mpSunday: Brian Eno's Big Ship (this mp3 has now gaaawn - click here for the latest mpSunday.)

The gimp's guide to mind music

Who'd have guessed gimp masks were the key to unleashing the most phantasmagoric music humankind has ever set ears on?

No, I'm not talking about a startling new direction for Sigur Ros.

A lunatic called Mick in a place called London has attached electrodes to his bonce to create his own symphonies using simply the power of his deranged mind.

The device doesn't work a third of the time. This is possibly more to do with his skewed brain than the equipment he is using.

Nevertheless, here he is in a BBC video thinking up a sequence of notes whilst staring at the most distracting screensaver known to humanity.

There is a plus side. People who are less abled can make music, and this could open great new avenues for music therapy.

But for every plus, there has to be a minus. That can be found in the last line of the BBC news article, about a new video game using the gimp headset:

"It enables players to vanquish villains through thoughts and emotions."

If I had that ability, there'd be carnage. More carnage, even, than Mr Tran's trip to a toy store.

Mick from London, you are my new hero.

Thrusting little pointy blighters - number one of a descending series of five

I'm not sure if I agree with five-star rating systems after Empire magazine thrust four of the little pointy blighters on the travesty that is the new Indiana Jones film.

Unpeturbed, I was trawling i-Tunes to find "that album that had the red cover and it sounded a bit like a movie soundtrack" when I discovered some of my favourite albums had no customer reviews.

Why should I be fussed what the general public thinks when those with the loudest voice seem to be YouTube commenters, Have Your Say armchair pundits and Britain's Got Talent voters? (George was actually quite good, despite Day Of Moustaches' entertaining threat.)

Still, I decided to right the wrong. I am going to pen a handful of customer reviews for electronica albums on i-Tunes... with the following rules:

- It has to be an album I own that has been out for a while but no-one has written any reviews yet (as shown in the blue screen above).

- My first review will be a five-star rating. I will then find an album and give it a four-star rating. And so on, ending on a one-star review for an album I own but hate.

The idea is my reviews should get more vitriolic as I go on. First, to the five-star review. I have submitted the following review of Squarepusher's 1997 album Burningn'n Tree:

What happens when you let an electronic artist loose on his first love - the bass guitar? You probably get Jah Wobble.

What happens when you let an electronic artist loose on his first love - the bass guitar - and then lock him inside a spaceship airlock with a toolbox full of spanners, a detuned television and a light stick? Have a listen to Burningn'n Tree to find out.

It may not be his most consistent, and I'm not sure where speed bass sits in the ouvre of dance music, but it's a thoroughly enjoyable album and should be considered a classic of its kind. Five stars.

I-Tunes vet reviews before they're posted, so I'll let you know when this one appears. So far so dull. I'm off to find an album deserving of four stars...

DEEPER FRIED FAT: DO YOU, THE FLASHBULB

Seams burns tunes and Blood Looms and Blooms looms in June

Leila is working on her third studio album, Blood, Looms and Blooms, and like Portishead her last album was released before Rice Krispies were invented* (last album cover is pictured, with the words edited out in a pathetic nod to minimalism).

Taster single Mettle is a dense, trippy paean to the likes of My Bloody Valentine, so I'm expecting a full-lipped snog of post-trip hop, post-post-rock, and post-post-post-everything from her new long player. Expect it in June.

Incidentally, I only stumbled across Leila by accident.

In these new-fangled days of "burning" and "ripping" and other overly dramatic words for data transfer, it's easy to top and tail a copied album with some of your old faves. When my chum Seams gave me some of her tunes on a compact diskette, she sneaked in some late-90s Leila goodness and I was a convert.

While we're talking about sticking tracks onto the end of albums, you'll discover a treat if you rifle through my CD collection. On the end of my copy of Radiohead's In Rainbows (paid £0.00 and now I feel guilty) , you will find the Rainbow theme tune, Rainbow's classic 70s hit Since You've Been Gone, and two tracks from Mariah Carey's platinum-selling LP Rainbow.**

Back to the recommendations. Also look out for Boredom's Super Roots 9 on Thrill Jockey Records. The disc consists of one track, LIVWE, which is a grand symphony of rolling drums, stormy harmonies and wailing choirs. It doesn't change much over its 40 minute duration, but it's worth it for the opening jingle bells. I think it's Japanese but I may be wrong.***

And finally, a gripe. There is no excuse for Jamiroquai: he makes me want to smash in my eyeballs with guns. So there is definitely no excuse for Jamie Lidell's new offering Jim. Luke Vibert's remix of A Little Bit More rocked my world, but this Michael Buble toss rocks me to sleep.

*not true, but it's been a while.

**quite obviously a lie

***not a lie. I'm quite right. *puffs chest*

DEEPER FRIED FAT: TORN UP, JAMIE LIDELL

Ever decreasing memories of lifted bosoms and a DJ Shadow dump

Edit: no wonder this post was so nostalgic. I've just realised (a month later) this was my 200th blog post. Hurrah! Light a candle or summink!

Ten years ago I flipped my first disc onto a spindle in public. I was rocking big beat in a rough bar. I broke the decks. I bombed.

But Fat Roland (yes, that's me pictured) was born unto the world, and the rest - as they allegedly say - is hysterical.

My head is seeping with memories as I think back through my decade of DJing. Little snapshots.

Electrical tape, perfectly parallel, pretending to be Tron lines on a floor. Long, smooth, edgy drum 'n' bass mixes and my DJ mates nodding in appreciation. Deciding to dump the beatmixing for John Peel-style weird track choices. My mate Fil signing the letter T when I play something he liked.

Sweating in a hooded top as I played the 'cool DJ' role with a bunch of energetic South Africans at Manchester Apollo. My wedding DJing phase, oh my wedding DJing phase. Lifting someone's ample bosom, two handed, from the needle-knocking danger zone. Lending my decks to LTJ Bukem's former musical partner and learning to mix jungle just by watching.

Some record label guys thrusting a pure white, unlabelled 12" at me - and my joy when I realised it wasn't crap. The sunshine last August and the couple dancing near the front. Beat-mixing at a skate park five gruelling hours a day over ten days, which included putting on a long DJ Shadow track while I had a poo. Being chased from Rusholme with said chum Fil, covered in wallpaper paste and flyposters.

I have slowed down, like an 80-year-old driver. Work is my steering wheel, and I just can't get enough cushions of spare time to rise me high enough to drive (by drive I mean DJ) safely (by safely I mean often). I'm tempted to delete that last sentence, but no, I'll just keep typing. Be damned.

I now find myself working three doors away from my first ever gig, and Facebook has put me back in touch with some of my pals from that time.

It all comes full circle. Like a record. Although not in ever decreasing circles, like what a record actually does. That would be depressing.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: MAGIC CARPET, BIG DOG

A hundred blinking goths, Jabba goes J-Ho, and sodden notes drying on radiators

There are many things I should have resisted.

An invitation to Ara, Manchester's leading goth night. I arrive dressed in white. A hundred six-foot black and purple people, some of them dressed as crows, don sunglasses.

A record company showcase featuring a nascent All Saints. The room is full of Manchester celebrities. I spill MC Tunes' pint. His response didn't rhyme, but it certainly had bite.

Buying the Kooks' album. What was I thinking? It makes me sick to even think of it. I gave the CD away in a tombola at my 33-and-a-third birthday bash.

Getting my ears pierced in a strange attempt to cure a throbbing hangover. I looked like Jabba The Hut trying to be Lindsay Lohan. I decided that getting things pierced somehow doesn't cure hangovers.

Sledging with £1,300 in my back pockets.

There are many things I should have resisted. However, there is one thing I have resisted, but should have given in to quite some time ago.

Yes. I am finally on Last FM. Be the first to find me here.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: µ FACES

Confusion in our eyes that says it all - we've lost Control (well, almost)

Oh plop tarts. I was busy enjoying a bit of summery pop courtesy of King Of All The Animals, and I surf onto a site that tells me Sound Control have been silenced.

The most joyous moment of my life was discovering the blue, mottled knob-laiden monster that is the Roland JP-8000 in Sound Control's Salford store.

I spent half an hour in acid nirvana as I took that synthesiser to buttock-wobbling depths and combover-raising zeniths. As I slapped the cash on the counter, I made my best purchase ever and the "Roland" part of my DJ name was born.

Yes, I named myself after a bloody keyboard.

The staff at the Salford branch would always take time out to teach dimwits like me the finer points of sound modules and weird samplers, even if was a Saturday afternoon and the shop was full of greasy teenagers in pseudo-army shirts playing Wish You Were Here.

I was even allowed into their store room to peruse their nuts.

A great aspect of Sound Control is they give a damn about maintaining your gear. Now everyone who owns anything musical will see their beloved Stratocaster / digital drum kit / electronic zither (delete as appropriate) crumble before their weeping eyes.

The Salford branch remains open while administrators tout the business for all the rupees they can get. But the Manchester branch closed a few days ago, along with nine other Sound Control and Turnkey stores from Southampton to Glasgow.

I don't want to listen to King Of All The Animals now. I'm need comfort music so I can retreat to my happy place.

Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy it is, then.

Edit: Music Thing wants your help in tracking down all the music equipment shops in the world ever. Go to it!

DEEPER FRIED FAT: NEVER MIND, QUIETLY ROOTING