Aphex Twin's new album does not exist. Now can we just stop worrying and enjoy our knaves-- er, I mean-- lives?

"New album title begins with the letter V. Close enough to Y for Yellow House. Only W and X getting in the way, and keeping Y and V apart."

What?

Warp Records guitar-weilders Grizzly Bear exclusively revealed their new album begins with the letter V, according to this mysterious Twitter 'tweet' (link now broken) from a band member. They later exclusively revealed the LP will be called Veckatimest, and mixing finished this week.

Yes, wow. This website is just like Heat magazine so I can use phrases like 'exclusively revealed' and get away with it.

I can exclusively reveal that "Grizzly Bear's album begins with V" is an anagram of "Warm vegetably sizzling? Rubbish!"

In other Russell Grant-style wild speculation, I can exclusively reveal that the internet is squirming with the rumours of Aphex Twin (logo pictured) releasing an album called Konklaver.

Despite the rumours being absolute guffballs (there is no 'Konklaver'), Aphex fans are dribbling over forums everywhere with their unified cry "KONKLAVER!!!!!!!!!!", wearing down their exclamation mark to a mere smudge of its former self.

Aphex Twin has long been the subject of conjecture, as fans of his pseudonym The Tuss will testify.

With titles no better than 'Fashionable Headpiece', the dull track listing of 'Konklaver' is a far cry from Aphex's rich, early names like Schottkey 7th Path, Acrid Avid Jam Shred and i.*

As speculation goes, it's pretty unconvincing. But speculation's rife, as speculation so often - I can exclusively reveal - is.

I can exclusively reveal that 'Aphex Twin's Konklaver' is an anagram of 'Howl, extra-pink knaves.'

Aphex Twin's new album does not exist. Grizzly Bear's, however, does.

I can exclusively reveal I have been using an anagram generator instead of watching the Grammys. Please stop reading this drivel, and pop over to YouTube where you can see a delightful video of Grizzly Bear playing in a French bathroom in 2006.

Ever-so-slightly related blog post: Aphex Twin's new album does exist, my lying mouth be damned

Update: read my December 2009 update on Aphex Twin's new album here.

Update: read my March 2012 update on Aphex Twin's new album here, including an exclusive comment from Grant-out-of-Rephlex.

*not a typo, honest.

Chop off your hands and replace them with lazers for Detroit: 313 words about Harmonic 313

Edit: This album is mentioned in my top ten electronica albums of 2009.  (And no, this paragraph *doesn't* count.)

Here are 313 words about Harmonic 313 on the occasion of the release of his first album When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence. And yes, this paragraph goes toward the word count.

When Warp Records are spreading their tentacles into strange and wonderful genres, Harmonic 313 is the root of the tree trunk keeping the label rooted to its past. I could replace 'tentacles' for 'branches', but I like mixed metaphors.

313 is the dialling code of Detroit, a clear reference of intent when you consider this sounds like the daughter of motor city band Drexciya.  But this is not Put Your Hands Up For Detroit. This is Chop Off Your Hands And Replace Them With Lazers For Detroit.

This is the siren song of a cyborg calling from the distant shores of the future. It's the disturbance you get on the edges of hip hop; the fuzzy lines at the side of your vision.

A Speak and Spell machine is the gimmick, but in the android hands of Harmonic 313, it becomes something more sinister.  The desolation rips through me, like someone has whipped the bottom end of my spine and sent a shockwave up into my cold, cold brain.

When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence works better when things are kept simple. Like mashed potato. So we don't need the rapping that appears in small doses. Like mashed potato. I hate mashed potato with raps. Hey, Vanilla Ice, get out of my mash. That's what I'd say.

This absurdly cadillac-themed Harmonic 313 tribute on Hipsterwave amused me no end. It seemed non-sequitur. I have been getting friends to post non-sequitur comments on this Aphex video (edit: some bugger deleted them) - please join in.

Where was I?  Oh yes, 313 words.  Just enough remaining to say Harmonic 313's When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence can be bought from Piccadilly, Boomkat or Bleep.

Telefon Tel Aviv's big hair sound is shrouded in darkness

Edit: This album is mentioned in my top ten electronica albums of 2009. 

I want to describe Telefon Tel Aviv's new album, heralded as something to watch in my 2009 preview, as a collection of "driving pop anthems."

Don't get me wrong: they're not the Pet Shop Boys. They're not singing glorious ditties about naughty sex for a start. But there's something super-electro-pop about Telefon's third album, titled Immolate Yourself.

Spiralling opener The Birds' punches the air with eighties snares, an energetic stadium keyboard line and breathy vocals. Helen Of Troy should have its own big hair video and rolled up jacket sleeves..  Stay Away From Being Maybe steals the bassline from Bill Withers' Lovely Day and fires it into space.  Yet, it's all muzzled and shrouded in dark contemplation.

The deeper you push into the album, the more their sound hits a more familiar skewy electronica beat, with layer upon layer of melodies that ultimately lead nowhere. And that's the flaw with Telefon Tel Aviv. The production sparkles, the new nods to bands like Kraftwerk are a massive improvement, but they're never going to hit you in the face like, for example, Apparat or Wisp.

It's insubstantial... but it's a really pleasing, cotton wool, uplifting, dark and wet insubstantial.

And so to the electronic elephant in the room: the death of one half of Telefon Tel Aviv.  Charlie Cooper (in yellow, above) went missing after an argument with his girlfriend, but beyond that, the details are sketchy. They should stay sketchy in respect to his family and friends.

If this is the end of Telefon Tel Aviv, then Immolate Yourself is the sound of a band reaching their suitably melancholic climax. In the words of one commenter on Telefon's Myspace page, the "group put New Orleans (and the US in general) on the IDM map. Heck of an accomplishment."

IDM, for the uninitiated, is the name for most of the music you read about on this blog. And its historic connection with New Orleans is, well, zilch. It has been a British-led genre, so you could say America doesn't "do" IDM.

Except, it did. And for a while at least, its name was Telefon Tel Aviv.

Dear James Blunt: a reply

I wrote a letter to James Blunt proffering my expert advice on how he could improve his career prospects.

I got a reply.  And honestly, I feel like I've waited for my hero, autograph pad in hand, through rain and cold, and upon arrival he's just swished past into the stage entrance without a by or leave.

Dear Fat Roland,

Unfortunately due to James busy touring schedule he is unable to reply personally, however all messages will be passed on to his house for him to read on his return.

Kind regards,

Twenty-First Artists.

So he has my advice. His cleaner is probably reading it. Apparently he's travelling across Mexico on a horse at the moment, but I see he's due to play Moscow, so I hope he'll stop by his Ibizan pad to pick up his messages some time next week.

Read my Dear James Blunt letter.  Any ideas on what he'll say?  Personally, I think he'll be delighted.  Post your thoughts in the comments.

Dear James Blunt

To: Twenty-First Artists Ltd,

1 Blythe Road,

London

W14 OHG

Dear James Blunt,

I couldn't help noticing that you aren't quite the chart presence you once were. Your last three singles, which the BBC lovingly described as "catchy and uplifting, in a Chris-Martin-on-an-off-day kinda way", have reached numbers four, 57 and 20 respectively. I would have thought if these chart positions befell Girls Aloud, KitKat's sponsorship moguls would be spluttering into their sugary tea.

May I offer a suggestion that would help return you back up the greasy pole of fame?

These days, it's all about chicks with synths. Trust me on this: I have my finger on the pulse of modern whims. Lady Gaga is a chick with a synth. La Roux is a chick with a synth. Britney Spears is a chick with a synth (that is, assuming "synth" is rural states slang for a snaffled bag of Bic razors).

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

You don't have to play it yourself:. Maybe smuggle in a synth pop legend such as Gary Numan, Adamski or Richard Clayderman to tinkle the electronic ivories for you. Then mime playing, as though it's your big new thing. "Look, there's James Blunt, and he's a keyboard wizard," people would say, and they would point. People would point at you, although this time it would be in admiration.

You should do this. Become a chick with a synth. Every single would go to number one.

Which leads me to one last thing. You will, of course, need to alter your gender. I am quite happy to offer my services. I once cut the leg off a teddy bear with my dad's nosehair clippers, and I'm sure changing your sex wouldn't be much different.

I still have the nosehair clippers.

It wouldn't be pervy or anything. I have no desire to see you naked; I think we had quite enough of that in your 2005 smash hit video I'm Quite Beautiful. One quick snip, maybe a bit of a push-in with a sink plunger, and we can leave matron to mop up the blood.

Just let me know.

Yours sincerely,

Fat Roland

Massive Attack sampled a sewer designer? This must be Massive Samples then

The advent of the sampler in electronic music gave us geeky music enthusiasts our own special game: see if you can find the original bits of audio used in sample-heavy records.

Some samples are well documented, such as the Utah Saints' ripping of Kate Bush's Cloudbusting. And the shuffling Soul II Soul drum beat was copied by every dance band from here to eternity.

But every now and then random bits of sampleness jump out and mug your brains out.  Orbital's seminal record The Brown Album, which is topped and tailed by sampled voices, is a case in point.

I nearly spat out my cleaning fluid while watching Withnail And I, when the-one-who-isn't-Richard-E-Grant posited that "even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day". That phrase, sampled menacingly near the start of the Brown Album, had been on repeat on my CD player for years. Following the sample on the Orbital record, a lazer then jumps out from the speakers.  No zapping befell McGann in the film; just abject hopelessness.

And once, I was watching a late night Open University progamme (brown jumpers, big collars, scribbly hair) about how squeegee mops work. The droll presenter explained it was "input translation, output rotation".  Again, that was used on the same Orbital album, and I couldn't believe my ears.  It was definitely the same voice, and I was spooked for weeks.

This is a long way of going about introducing Massive Attack's new album (band logo pictured).  Protected - Massive Samples spoils the game a bit because it's a compilation of the songs the band has sampled and covered.

And so we have, in order: Level 42's mate Wally Badarou; soul singer Lowrell; sewer designer (and musician) William De Vaughn; the very reverend Al Green; every lawyer's friend James Brown; ex-Chef Isaac Hayes; jazz fusion drummer Billy Cobham; Lewin Bones Lock (never heard of 'im); slushy reggae legend John Holt; Blue Note-spawned 70s soulsters The Blackbyrds; jazz fusion group Pieces Of A Dream (who appeared on an astonishingly-titled album The Weather Channel Presents The Best of Smooth Jazz); and kings and queens of funk Rufus And chaka-chaka-Chaka Khan.

If you paid attention to that last paragraph, yes Massive Attack sampled a chap who, apparently, used to be a sewer designer. Or rather, they covered one, in the form of William De Vaughan's brilliantly written Be Thankful For What You Got.

As a closing thought, my sources remind me that Massive Attack were sued for sampling Manfred Mann's Tribute, forcing the Bristol dark-hoppers to change the name of the song on future pressings. Considering the amount of sampling they got away with, the Massive boys* should count themselves lucky.

I recommend Protected - Massive Samples, if only for the reason that it's a collection of tracks that was good enough to be pillaged by one of the greatest bands of all time.

* If I get any dodgy google traffic now for 'massive boys', I'll be livid.

Monthly mop-up: cross-shaped houses, cross ambientalists, and not getting your wires crossed in the studio

I have scooped up this month's unused snippets of bloggery-pokery and baked them into one tasty pie of goodness, especially for you, my dear reader.  Think of this as my 'deleted scenes' extra for fatroland.com.

Before I get stuck in, absolutely my favouritest release this month was Lukid's Foma - more so than Squarepusher's Numbers Lucent.  A music producing chum described Numbers Lucent as "the sound of the inside of someones ass" if it had a bad Casio stuck inside it.  I think that was a compliment, but most of it sounded like the weaker noodly stuff that didn't qualify for his Just A Souvenir LP.

On to business...

Will HMV survive 2009?

Consider this quote from retail trend analyser Greg Hodge when he spoke to the BBC a few weeks ago:

"Is there room for a music store on the high street? The answer is probably no."

Things look grim, with the CD album under threat from the unbundling of albums on services like i-Tunes, the collapse of Zavvi because of a Woolworths-related supply disaster, and HMV-owning Waterstone's cutting jobs in their goods-in departments.  Will HMV survive 2009?  Yes.  They have reduced their losses and sales are actually up.  Is there room for a music store on the high street?  Yes, it's just that there will be less actual music in them, and lots more Wii.

Have you advice for recording in studios?

No, but Alan Parsons has.  My favourite bit is "don't suck the life out of a recording by overuse of limiting and compression."  You don't know how many times over-production annoys me, especially, oddly, in the Christian music industry.

Please make the fighting stop.

It did stop, but the headlines made for uncomfortable reading.  The prince of all that is ambient Brian Eno spent January being quite vocal about Gaza.  Go and read his Stealing Gaza piece at the angry Counter Punch site.  He has expressed his support for Palestine in various newspapers, including the NME.  Between him and Vince Cable, the Lib Dems seem to be kicking ass right now.

Where do Justice live?

In a big cross-shaped house, of course.  Well, not exactly, but some crazy French architects have built a house (abstract pictured above) in tribute to the duo. There's a wonderful quote from Kanye West:

"I want to live there so badly, but people would have to know that the house is a cross shape because of Justice, not because I was some sort of religious fanatic".

This from the guy who brought us Jesus Walks.

Recommend a band that's not strictly electronica.

I recommended the heavenly Here We Go Magic to the A New Band A Day website.  They liked what they heard and prompty posted it on their blog.  You should spend some time on A New Band A Day: there are many gems to be found.

In other internet news, you can get more random links and musical thoughts by following me on Twitter (see link in the sidebar of this site).  As I said to myself when choosing my sexuality, if it's good enough for Stephen Fry, it's good enough for me.

Scary girls frighten me more than blood-filled elevators

I can't stand adverts that splice together video bits to create a "cut 'n' paste" music track.  I can't stand the way I just typed "cut 'n' paste".  They should wire up keyboards so that depressing those letters in that order delivers a debilitating electric shock to the fingers.

I also can't stand little girls who are possessed by something dark and dangerous, especially the ones near the lifts in the Overlook Hotel.  However, I'm willing to make an exception for this cute-as-buttons Aphex Twin protégé because:

(a) They've bothered to write an actual track. Or at least half an actual track.

(b) It builds nicely into a tune I would probably buy if it was made from real synthesisers and that.

(c) Don't tell anyone, but I think evil girls are sweetly endearing in a Roald Dahl worm-eating kind of way.

On the subject of childish things, my friend wrote a book about finding your place in primary school.  You should probably buy it.