Farting, belching, bleeping buckets of steaming sub-bass

Murcof (pictured) just seems to get deeper and deeper, into some unknown depths that would even prompt Satan to exclaim: "Hey, what's going on down there?"

The Versailles Sessions, Murcof's new collection of experimental noodlings on the legendary Leaf label, are no less deep. Although the album was meant to work for an arty-farty event on the other side of the channel (in a land called France), the sprawling, spooky compositions work in their own right.

The only downside is the record's loaded with harpsichords and flutes, and is therefore giving me flashbacks to my third year music lessons at Parrs Wood High School.

My favourite album this week is the seething bucket of steaming sub-bass that is Lord for £39, the latest offering from Edinburgh's Neil Landstrumm.

The rolling tech-bass tickles the feet of ragga and plays footsie with bleepy console noises to produce what ought to be a sombre bad-boy wonky techno effort. Except, the album has titles like Ross Kemp As Pixel and Easter Krunk Power, so it's hard not to smile.

Finally, keep your eyes open for a 12" from Dorian Concept called The Fucking Formula. It snaffles Landstrumm's fuzzy bass and wonkiness, but it has a Prefuse 73 accessibility about it. If you like your belches and squelches as low end as possible, whilst keeping your top end nodding in a hip hop stylee, track down this single - and duck when album When Planets Explode hits next month.

Brass band players, coming over here, taking over our dancefloors

The Daily Mail is an august institution that, in 2008, has had an important and positive effect on modern culture.

I'm not talking about its constant chiding of anyone it considers as non-British, or indeed its fawning over old fashioned values where we could hang misfits and still leave the door open.

No, I'm talking about one of my favourite gigs of the year where the Matthew Herbert Big Band (Matthew pictured) sampled themselves tearing the Daily Mail into strips, before bursting the racist rags into the air in a delightful, synchronised confetti show.

Their album There's Me And There's You is a political mix of brassish oomp-ery and jittery sampling, although Eska's sassy jazz vocals are worth hearing live than through your headphones.

Also out recently was Last Step's 1961, the second album under this signature for Venetian Snares' Aaron Funk. It's a massive, brightly coloured bag of broken Roland 303s, 606s, 808s and any other shiny palindromic music box you care to mention.

If you rate Luke Vibert and Squarepusher (who dazzled at last week's Warehouse Project, but that's for another post), or if you pine for old Aphex Twin, you should have this album in your collection. Just be prepared for sporadic ruptions of cheesy pop and TV adverts.

More straight down the line is Harmonic 313's Dirtbox single, which is a darker bad-boy slice of his usual gasping slow-motion Detroit techno

When his album hits in a couple of months, it will sit proudly alongside his classic album of nearly 15 years ago, the ambient beast that is 76:14.

Ah, yes, 15 years ago. When you could leave your door open, shoot whomever walked onto your property, and Princess Diana wouldn't get suicide-bombed by social workers. Those were the days.

Fake plastic CDs and eating too much cheese before writing a blog post

I have just been in Subway, where the speakers above my head segued from Blue's Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word into, oh glory, Orbital's Chime. I was so excited, I ordered double cheese.

In other news, the CD is dead. No, really, this time it actually is.

This week saw the first music chart without the behemoth of Woolworths peddling the likes of Killers and Neyo next to their usual jumble of dolls, blank discs, board games and knickers. CD distributors feared a mountain of unsold discs and pulled back on supply. This week was always going to be, basically, a download chart not a real-plastic-CD chart.

So no surprise then that this week's number one, Leona Lewis' wrought version of Snow Patrol's Run, sold more downloads than any other song ever. That's 133,000 copies and a bullet at number one.

Which is really jammy for Leona, because it was just an album track pounced on by pop-thirsty fans after a performance on the Karaoke Factor in November.

I'm a little jealous. So this Saturday I'm going to stand outside the market stalls just off Tib Street in Manchester city centre and belt out my own unique version of Orbital's Chime*.

Millions will flock to the internet and download my song. They will learn my special dance. Woolworths will resurrect itself and sell tea towels with my face on.

I am the future of downloads.

People will eat double cheese in my name, for my name is The Electronica Leona Lewis.

(Blogger: some kind of facility to insert rousing music at the end of blog posts would come in useful here...)

*I will only do this if it's 28 degrees celsius and blazing sunshine

Rare as a green-- oh, look, there's one now

I have spent most of this week being slapped around by bacteria and being threatened by mutated microorganisms with phrases such as: "Nice bowels. Shame if somethin' were to... happen to 'em..."

Which means I'm catching up on all the wonderful blogness I would have bestowed upon you if I hadn't been as feverish as a the cast of Saturday Night Fever after they've caught scarlet fever from listening to Kylie Minogue's classic 2001 album Fever...

This is an ever-so-slightly Manchester-centric post. There was a great Rare As A Green Dog's night at the Royal Northern College Of Music last week.

The nutty but wonderful Barbara Morgenstern gaily set her grand piano on a Kaoss pad, while asbo-technoist Caro Snatch made some quite frightening noises at spoken word artist Lisa B and soprano Jenny Kosmowsky.  DJ Paizan teamed up with nimble-fingered VJ Digital Donut to provide a rhythmic contrast to the ethereal strains of Peterloo Massacre. A cracking night.

Lisa B's new collection Resonant Frequencies, set to the bold, dirty effects of Caro Snatch, will be released at Nexus Art Café in Manchester next Monday, December 8th, 8pm.  It's free to get in, but only a tad over 100 copies of the album will be available on the night.

And now for something totally un-Manchestery.  The hypnotic animation Waltz With Bashir (pictured, with my green-ness added) boasts one of those soundtracks that swoops up the film and flings it to new heights.  Let your earholes be as seduced as your eyeholes .Go see the film, before I set my infected microbes on you.

Orbital come back around. Well, it seems logical, doesn't it?

Well, slap me with a chocolate banana and call me Humphrey, I cannot believe my internet-reading eyes.

Orbital have reformed!

The brothers Hartnoll (pictured) are taking their bobbing headlights to the Big Chill, which happens at the beginning of August next year.

At their last recorded gig, I blubbered like a little girl who'd lost her chainsaw.  When the last notes of One Perfect Sunrise rang out in a live session on John Peel's show, it was the end of a band that was single-handedly responsible for my love of dance music.

My most vivid memory of the 90s (are we allowed to talk about the 90s like that yet?) was the swathe of blue light washing over gurning faces at one of their mid-90s festival gigs.

And now they're back, according to this piece in the NME.

Says Phil Orbital: "It's not an exercise in nostalgia, the time just seems right."

The timing is terrible.  It's eight and a half months away.  I'm going to have to nail my joy down and triple-wrap it in gaffer tape, lest I explode from months of delighted anticipation.

I'm still waiting for that chocolate banana slap, by the way.

Oramics is like television, only backwards

There's was something refreshing about Sunday night, like a slap in the face with a glove woven from miniature bunny rabbits.

I went to an electronic music night with seven, count 'em, seven female artists. It was a million miles from bearded nerds with bleepy toys.

But more about that later in the week.

Meanwhile, the picture above is the best picture in the world. It is Daphne Oram, electronic music pioneer and co-founder of Maida Vale's Radiophonic Workshop.

She created the Oramics machine, a piece of gear that would make the super-sleek geeks at Korg recoil:

It was about the size of a chest of drawers and was constructed from metal shelving materials. Electric motors pulled eight parallel tracks of clear 35mm film stock across scanners that operated like TV sets in reverse.

I love Daphne. Read about her in the Guardian here.

Six wheels on my digeridoo

I've been hiding from my keyboard for the last couple of weeks.

While I rediscover my blogging rhythm, here is some music to mash up your ears, um, big style.

First up, Manchester's grime collective Virus Syndicate bring on their mechanistic style on second album Sick Pay (pictured). Sub bass with intelligence.



This next band is more entertaining than a marching band of kazoo-playing sealions dressed as go-go dancers. Gang Gang Dance offer a sort of tribal prog-techno that probably needs to be seen live to be appreciated. Their new album is Saint Dymphna, and it makes me want to roller skate through Brooklyn on a six-wheeled digeridoo.

And lastly, go and listen to Mira Calix. The Elephant In The Room: 3 Commissions is lovely and orchestral and evocative, and is ideal listening when you've been so busy working, you ain't had no time to blog.

Swimming with the sharks in the (Basic) Channel

This week, I have been mostly listening to the relentless stabbing* of German techno.

Basic Channel's BCD-2 is well worth a listen if you like watery synths splashing on top of throbbing waves of shark-infested drum machines.

For the dedicated techno fan, this compilation of a decade or so of Basic Channel releases renders all those rare 12"s dead. But it's worth it for the inexorable attack of the bass drum. Go buy.

Off State-side now. Producer Mike Cadoo has reissued his 2005 internet album Shimmer And Fade in a real life album format.

Released under his Bitcrush moniker, the three ideas here are electronic noodling, pop sensibilities and live percussion. With guitars. Four ideas, then. Like an indie Lemon Jelly. Five.

It's a pleasant enough 70 minutes of listening, but I wish it didn't wear so many influences on its sleeve, whether it's Plaid, New Order, Boards Of Canada, early Verve, MBV, Lackluster or Proem. If he stuck to the drudging indie stuff, this could be magnificent.

Finally, holy child of Detroit Kenny Larkin (pictured) has made his Chronicles 12" series available on one double CD for the first time. Detroit's a little too smooth for me, but the packaging's pristine and you get a free mix too, so give the boy some love.

I'm not sure if Detroit has many sharks, so I can't end this post neatly by looping back to my original theme of infested waters. You'll have to write your own ending in the space below.
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*if you like relentless stabbing, there's a new documentary in which Justice slash up the face of a psycho fan. That's, like, soooo Dead Set.