Cars and girls

It's strange growing up in some of the 70s and all of the 80s. Because it means, like everyone else who is exactly my age, I know every word to Prefab Sprout's 1988 UK#44 hit Cars And Girls.

When asked in a job interview once why I would be suitable for the position, I said I was 'in it for the cars and girls'. They didn't get the Prefab Sprout reference, but I did get the job.

Now I'm all about the cars and girls. It's my mantra. It's my life.

Cars. And girls. Everyone who knows me says that's all I talk about. I've even been tweeting about cars and girls. As Prefab Sprout said, "Look at us now, keep driving, something something something cars and girls."

Click here (or click the picture, I guess) to see a larger, readable version.

The ApartHotel (Techno Plug) Experience

Anyone who has been within 50 miles of me over the past week would have seen me frothing at the goolies at the thought of staying in an aparthotel.

An aparthotel is like a hotel but it has flats instead of rooms. Technically, it's a flotel.

I was staying in one of these portmanteau properties for a work thing. That is the dull bit. The interesting bit is it had a TECHNO PLUG. Imagine Autechre doing your plumbing.

Let this overly long video explain more...

Skrillex is fourth in the BBC Sound Of "Zane Lowe"

We've had a momentous start to 2012 and you don't even know it. Comical screamo dubstep kid Skrillex has come fourth in the BBC Sound Of 2012.

The Sound Of 2012 is an annual poll of pop pundits and producers. The voters include shadowy behind-the-scenes people from the BBC, the music editor of Skins and the head of music for, um, BT Vision.

Oh and "Zane Lowe". If that's his real name.

They tip their hat towards artists who are yet to enjoy major success, the Beeb stuffs the hat through a sorting hat and then the top five hats are put in order of hat.

The Sound Of [Enter Year] rarely gets it right. In 2005, they chose The Bravery over Tom Vek, while winners have included Mika and 50 Cent (really?!).

The rest of 2012's top five isn't relevant because I've just clicked away the tab in Firefox, but I'm pretty sure it comprises some soul singer, Niki & The Dove, a really sweary woman and a man named after the sea. The important thing is there is comedy dubstep at number four.

In a revealing interview for the BBC, Skrillex says he has been jamming with Nero and, if you listen carefully, admits he takes a nap between his gigs and his aftershow parties. He seems like a nice guy. A tired, nice guy.

If "Zane Lowe" likes him, then he's okay by me. Because we all love "Zane Lowe". As long as - and this is an appeal from my steaming bowels - Skrillex stops doing that thing with his hands. Seriously...

Hounds Of Hulme: Midnite EP (final promo video 3)

Edit: The Midnite EP can now be bought here: only a quid! Oh and this, incidentally, is the 600th post on Fat Roland On Electronica.

Street teams have been walking every avenue of the country promoting the inevitable number one single from Hounds Of Hulme, posting flyers through doors, shouting the track names through loudhailers and spray-painting the band logo on children's faces.

Of course, that's not true. There's no street team. When one of your band members is a horse (see the band line-up on the Bandcamp page), you spend most of your time clearing the poo-droppings from the mixing desk. At least, we would if we had a mixing desk. Or a shovel. We use our hands. In fact, we have fashioned all the horse manure into a big brown pretend mixing desk.

All I have is my final promotional video, which is pretty similar to the others. And this is how I'm describing the EP:

"3 tracks of glitchy techno packaged with artwork, a hilarious two-page PDF survival guide to one of the tracks and a bonus bad quality video... all for only a quid."

The video is really bad, although it's fun. At one point I was recording moving pictures of my own wallpaper. The promo videos here are only a screenshot from one frame. If you want to see the full three minutes, you'll have to buy the EP, obviously.

I've released a few Hounds Of Hulme tracks over the past few months. Yes, I kept it quiet. One of them was the backing track for this advert for Quickies: Short Stories For Adults, while another track was described as a "sparse and minimalist mechanoid meltdown glitch funk groove" and compared to EMF, Eskimos in Egypt, Jesus Jones and Wagon Christ. Which was perceptive because I own records by all four bands on vinyl or on tape or on wax cylinder.

Hardly anyone will take notice of the Hounds so if the Midnite EP sells more than a handful, I'll crack open the champagne / Toblerone. Roll on Monday... watch out for the pre-order appearing on Bandcamp later this week.

Edit: This was the 600th post on this blog, so I've plopped in a bit of artwork to celebrate the fact. If you like the artwork, it will be available as a permanent tattoo on Etsy in the next few minutes.

Hounds Of Hulme: Midnite EP (promo video 2)

Edit: The Midnite EP can now be bought here: only a quid! 


Following on from the promo video yesterday for my debut single as Hounds Of Hulme, here is an ever-so-slightly different promo video.

The great news is that the Midnite EP is now a "package". So it's not just three tracks of techno noodling, and it's not just that one of them has a bad quality video, and it's not just artwork bundled with the tracks, but you now get a two-page PDF survival guide designed to help you listen to the the longest track on the EP and not die before you get to the end.

Here's a glimpse of the survival guide (below), complete with track timings. If you want the whole thing, you'll have to buy the EP, which goes on pre-sale later this week in advance of its official release on January 9th.

In the words of forgotten mid-noughties r'n'b sensation Ciara, "Looking for the goodies? Keep on looking coz they stay in the jar... unless you give me a quid on Bandcamp, in which case you can download the advertised product."

Hounds Of Hulme: Midnite EP (promo video 1)

Edit: The Midnite EP can now be bought here: only a quid! 


Expect a few days of relentless self-promotion as I catapult into the world what appears to be my debut single.

I've avoided the restrictions of getting a record deal, having a producer, using a recording studio, getting any promotion or employing any form of quality control. Instead, it's just me and my bandmates in Hounds Of Hulme, one of which is a horse.

I'm quite glad to finally announce this as I've kept it under my hat for a few weeks: I kind of wanted it to be a New Year thing. This promotional video may explain more. Or not. The Midnite EP is released on Monday. It will be available for pre-ordering on Bandcamp later this week.

Hounds Of Hulme: 9th January 2012...

Best electronica albums of 2011: number 1

Brummie music thinkbod Andrew Dubber recently railed against the habit of hacks writing off 2011 as the ‘year of boring music’. He argued that it said more about the paucity of stimulation in the journalists’ lives rather than a lack of good quality music.

“I suspect that it is not our musicians that have let us down, but our champions of music.

"So if your job is to report upon popular music and you are unable to find ten incredible things in the past year to share with those of us who still read what you have to say, then that makes you a failure.”

“John Peel-ism should be the norm,” he added.

Let me extend that thought. If you’ve ever liked a YouTube music video then left a comment declaring old music to be way better than the mulch that is spooned down our gullets today, then you might as well piss all over John Peel’s grave, suck up the urine from the soil, wait for it to digest, then take a second slash whilst banging on about how the first piss was a nicer shade of yellow.

My difficulty was not finding ten incredible things, but narrowing it down to an arbitrary number that inevitably led me to exclude something quite important....

[This is part four. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three.]

Some also rans

...James Blake’s album James Blake (Atlas). The most important underground electronic music artist of the past year is not in my top ten, despite me doing everything I could into tricking you into thinking he was Album Of The Year at the end of my previous post. Sorry 'bout that.

Last December, I indicated the excitement that preceded his debut album. When it finally came it, I felt it was playing to a quite different audience. An intricate album full of beautiful bass that even caught the attention of Beyonce – but there were ten other incredible things I wanted to share more than Blake's LP.

Other also-rans include new kids on the block, Cant. I found their album Dreams Come True (Warp) too band-y. I believe the monumentally entertaining Ceephax Acid Crew had an Unstoppable Phax Machine (030303), but I didn't get the memo, whilst there was no space in the top ten for the industrial glory of Byetone’s Symeta (Raster Notion) nor for Brian Eno’s poet-poking Drums Between The Bells (Warp).

Which only leaves one thing: a young Glasgow musician who’s brandishing something long, transparent and deadly. It’s a glass sword. That was a reference to a glass sword. Not his penis.

1 - Rustie - Glass Swords

The arpeggiated mayhem of Zig-Zag was the first moment beat-nuts took notice of Rustie. With that track and the 2009 highlight Bad Science EP, he very much sounded like a kid earning his dues in the Lucky Me collective’s electronic workshop.

Meanwhile, his mentors Hudson Mohawke and Mike Slott lead the way for the Glaswegians with, respectively, the Butter and Lucky 9Teen albums. Rustie, perhaps, sounded like the talented apprentice playing with the Nintendo in the corner, biding his time until...

Glass Swords (Warp). It takes three minutes for the first insane slap bass to cut through the ambience to make way for an orgy of portamento mayhem and retro computer game wizardry.

It brings to mind the retro synth mischief of Lorn, whose 2010 debut sounded like a naughty Knight Rider breaking into the Blade Runner film set. Rustie’s debut takes that philosophy much further. If Lorn was Kansas in black and white, Glass Swords is so far over the rainbow, it has hypercoloured the sun itself.

This is the sound of a young pretender dicking about with his software, which would be really annoying at a party, but committed to record it is a joy. He pumps up the Hudson Mohawke beat aesthetic until it bursts.

All Night is a soul jam at the most disgusting sex party ever to be held in your bass bins. Hover Traps is simply the catchiest tune of 2011, Globes sounds like drums crashing against the dawn of time, while After Light throbs with so much minor chord desire between the cut-up voices and blistering bass, you’ll be writing love letters to Glass Swords well into your pensionable years.

Every synth crunch on Glass Swords is a Glasgow kiss that requires, if you so please, your full bleeping attention. And it is all underpinned with a crystal-clear balance of melody and emotion. It feels to good to have Rustie battering my ear drums. You know how you can get fish to nibble your corn-encrusted feet in pretentious shopping centres? In this case, your feet are your ears and instead of fish there are nice things like pies and ice pops and bacon Frazzles.

Which reminds me, I’m hungry. Rustie's Glass Swords is my Album Of The Year 2011 because it matters and I'll be humming it in a year's time. Do have a listen below. Thank you for reading my blog in 2011. It has been an extraordinary year in many ways, and none of it would be possible if lovely people like you didn’t dip your eyes in my word sludge every now and then. Let’s do the same in 2012, only more ridiculous, more unrestrained and with more bacon Frazzles. Did I tell you I was hungry?



[This is part four. Click here for part one. Click here for part two. Click here for part three.]