My Warp top ten: it's not all Warp and there aren't ten of them

As most electronica-headz know by now, Warp Records (famous website navigation pictured above) are asking for your favourite top ten tracks to go towards a bespoke album release later this year.

You can keep abreast of the voting further down this page on the right. No, a bit further down. No, the other right, yes, you got it.

Here is a list of my personal choices, which tragically exclude the likes of Leila Arab, Req and Richard H Kirk, whose albums I rate but I couldn't pinpoint individual "choons".

There is a slight failing in my top ten Warp list. There aren't ten, and not all of it was released on Warp. So it's as useful as fibreglass facewash.

What tracks would you choose? Why not leave a comment below? Comments cost £1.50 a minute, mobiles may vary, and not all comments will be read but you may still be charged.

- Aphex Twin - Ageispolis (I think I actually made love to my speakers the first time I heard the supersonic bass)

- Autechre - Arch Carrier (it's criminal to boil Ae down to single tracks, but this one has the nod)

- Battles - Ddiamondd (just sums up Battles' intensity and obstinate refusal to make any sense whatsoever)

- Boards Of Canada - In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country (just plain spooky)

- Clark - Ted (one of several Clark tracks I could pick, but I chose this for the sheer head-noddingness)

- Higher Intelligence Agency - Ketamine Entity (one of the first electronica tracks I was obsessed with)

- Hudson Mohawke - ZooO00oO0m (I still get excited about all those little Os)

- Jamie Lidell - A Little Bit More (Luke Vibert remix) (give a soul singer a laptop and you get this)

- LFO - LFO (at last, a techno track with easy-to-remember lyrics!)

- Link - Arcadian (an absolute all-time stonking ambient dub classic of the highest order)

- Luke Vibert - I Love Acid (yes, it's a crowd pleaser, but it's Vibert at his most Viberty)

- Nightmares On Wax - Les Nuits (commercial trip hop that I'm inexplicably fond of)

- Plaid - Get What You Gave (steel band electronica - nuff said)

- Polygon Window - If It Really Is Me (released in 1826 or something, this is epic Aphex Twin)

- Rustie - ZigZag (I could have chosen a few Rustie tracks, but this one hit me between the eyeballs)

- Sabres Of Paradise - Theme (I bought this purely because of the graffiti-style cover artwork)

- Squarepusher - Red Hot Car (the only singalonga-Squarepusher track until 2008's A Real Woman)

Monthly mop-up: simmering Super Furries, dribbling confusion and net-loafing twazmuppets

Play with this cute flash synthesiser. Go on, have a play. Finished? Right then, stop faffing about and read my monthly mop-up for March.

What did I miss in March?

Probably quite a lot.  I should have mentioned Seeland, who are the blessed offspring of Broadcast (website graphic pictured) and Plone, and were tipped for great things in the second part of my 2009 preview back in January. Their music is bright, simple and gently experimental, like a simmering Super Furry Animals. Their debut album Tomorrow Today sounds like the 60s, the 70s and the 80s all at once.

I also ignored the Mark Pritchard single ? / The Hologram. It's his first release on brand spanking fresh Ho Hum label, and it's had some backing from Mary Ann Hobbs. ? is a dark drone that seems to momentarily peer at you from around the corner. The Hologram is a stolid slice of trip-hop that doesn't quite catch the spirituality of ?.

I also need to give you the latest goss on Luke Vibert.  The playground rave mentalist has stopped bathing in acid, and instead has lit up a massive doobie with some hip-hop inspired tracks - but that's for another post.

Can you recommend me some video action?

Yes. The massive, garguantuan, behemoth video superstar of March 2009 lived up to the hype. We've had mash-up vids before, but none has been as nose-breakingly effective as a collection of songs called Thru-You

Jerusalem-born Kutiman grabbed entirely unrelated snatches of other people's YouTube videos, cut them up, stretched them, sliced them, diced them and made love to them. The result is a collection of brilliant tracks that are so unlike their original source material, it renders all copyright arguments into a dribbling confusion. Watch the videos here.

And there was me thinking Radiohead on Mario Paint Composer would be the bestest video I saw this month.

Can I have an animal-themed link, please Mr Roland?

Grizzly Bear's impassioned plea, mentioned in my blog piece from a couple of weeks ago, reminded me of an interview the band did with Pitchfork last month in which Ed explained a shock Animal Collective leak and offered his thoughts on the death of the record buyer.  Read the short interview here. Album Veckatimest is out in two months.

What is a twazmuppet?

Tim Footman is a twazmuppet. Comment Is Free writer and Radiohead biographer Mr Footman had asked his Twitter friends to remind him to get on with some work and stop dabbling with social networking. It seemed like a sensible thing to do. So a few hours later, I messaged him:

"Get some shitting work done, you net-loafing twazmuppet."

'Twazmuppet' was a word I invented in my head months ago, but never had chance to use. So I yelled it at a poor defenceless author. Read Tim's reaction on his excellent blog here.

Tim Footman is anything but a twazmuppet. At least, I think he isn't. Can someone ring the OED to see if they've decided on a definition yet?

What's your favourite Warp track?

This is a question Warp Records are asking you, the general public. Go to their Warp 20 voting site and help celebrate the 20th birthday of the best record label of all time.

Oh Venetian Snares, hold me in a tender embrace, and whisper to me these magic words: "Splooj Guzzlers"

I'm knackered and broken like an old shoe without laces nor soles nor... well, basically I'm like two strips of leather that just drop off your foot because there's nothing to hold them together.

So anyways, that's my excuse for not writing anything this morning*, and instead I'm posting a couple of videos courtesy of a damn fine YouTube channel called Expert Knob Twiddler.

It's a paradox that the exciting new kid on the scene, Spotify, has bugger all decent electronica, whereas Old Man YouTube, which was full of Rihanna and Janet Jackson and Leona Lewis crap until they killed a lot of it off, is bursting with futuristic bleepy beat combos.

Here are the videos.  The first has audio snippets from Venetian Snares' new album Filth (my favourite track name: Splooj Guzzlers), due out in a couple of weeks on Planet Mu.  One of the cuts is about Mr Snares' cat.  And below that are excerpts from a Venetian Snares 12" called Horsey Noises, a quite different animal from the album, and due to hit the streets in June. (Adapted cover of a 2007 single pictured above.)

If you followed me on Twitter, you'd already know about these videos, of course. Oh and while I'm plugging, my little exhibition thing at the Green Room is only on until this Saturday, after which I start a month-long radio project. Meanwhile my other little exhibition thing that I helped curate at Nexus continues for a couple of weeks.





*Oops. I seem to have written a full post after all.

Shut up, just shut up, shut up, shut up, just shup up, shut up

Will you please, please just shut up?

Some people need to learn less is more. One of those people is Tim Exile (photo: Stephen Pariah), whose new album Listening Tree is out in a week or two.

Exile, when he was just known as Exile, had a fearful reputation as a god of techno. Debut album Pro Agonist raged with killer snares and beat-pummelling Squarepusher-ness.

Fast forward to 2009, and Tim Exile's Listening Tree is crammed with bizarre rants about spiders webs (When Every Day's A Number) and one-way streets (Bad Dust). The "dreams of a lifetime wrapped in plastic" line on Carouselle is pure Mighty Boosh.

Squish the fussy vocals underfoot, and Listening Tree is beautiful, intricate, thrilling and theatrical. I just wish he would tone it down. The analogue ferocity is here, but it's on a leash and it's wearing those annoying white glasses worn by people like Sam Sparro.

Another album now. And just to show I'm over my grouchiness I displayed on Sunday, let me be sparkly and fairy-like for a moment.

Röyksopp's Junior is a magical world of glittering synthesisers and heavenly vocals. It chuckles where other albums growl, and soars o'er melody and harmony where other albums grate and scrape.

The album is as middle-of-the-road as you'd expect from the Bergen boys, and it is all yay-and-light where Exile is boo-and-dark. But the production is as pristine as Exile's in its own way: it sweeps you up on a giddy, unscary rollercoaster especially designed for princesses.

For example, the sawing synth line on third track Vision One is the most delightful thing I've heard for ages. I could just do without the Air-style cutesy vocals.  Which, of course, brings me back to the theme of this post...

BPA's album is a trouser-fiddling mess of buffalo proportions

Bless my Aunt Fanny's hairy knees: what has Fatboy Slim done?

I Think We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat is the first album by BPA, otherwise known as Brighton Port Authority, otherwise known as Norman 'Pizzaman' Cook (pictured) and his trusty engineer Simon. And it is a total disaster of buffalo-sized proportions.

The album is a vom bucket of ska-dance-funk trouser-fiddling dressed up in a tweedy construct about a rediscovered 1970s rock band. Which is funny, because I wish I'd never discovered this godforsaken record at all.

David Byrne seems out on a (be-suited) limb set against the chirpy horns and childhood rapping of Dizzee Rascal on Toe Jam. Think of Musical Youth copyists back in the 80s. Think of the Mavericks meet Boney M. Think of Dizzee's disastrous turn on that Band Aid single.

Seattle is a track that wouldn't be out of place on Woodstock's smoke-hazed fields. But this isn't Woodstock. Nor is it Seattle. It's meant to be bloody Brighton.

He's Frank (Slight Return) is more than a slight return. It is a wholesale Tardis ride to 90s Fatboy, although tragically more Brimful Of Asha B-side than Rockafeller Skank A-list. Island with Justin Robertson offers some cozy Vienna-style spaciousness, and it's a blessed relief to my punished ears - except Norm and Si insist on hammering on a clumsy chorus. With bent nails.

Cook can't remember recording all of the tracks according to this Rolling Stone interview [link broken]. Sounds like denial to me. Like a werewolf who tears and gouges his way through a village, then pretends not to remember it over melba toast the following brunch.

BPA give a bad name to DJs beginning with 'Fat'. Oh dear me. I'm off to douse my ears in battery acid.

Definitely 12-inch new almost Dan music!

What is the Fat Roland blog all about? I have the answer. I used Wordle to cook up this image of the most used words on the front page of this site.

'New', 'music' and 'album' seemed obvious, but do I really talk about shoes that much? And I'm delighted with some convenient neighbours: 'adventure collection', 'mismatched Roland' and 'orange grouse'.
I'm so cutting edge, I could slice pizzas.

Have a go with your site and summarise your results below. I love shoes, me!

Aphex Twin's new album does exist, my lying mouth be damned

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

Lies plume from my rotting mouth like farts from a knackered horse.

I thrilled at the sound of my own knowledge when I claimed Aphex Twin's new album didn't exist in this piece last month.

The rumours of an album called Konklaver were "absolute guffballs," I said. "There is no Konklaver," I said.

"Wild speculation," I said.

If I was on fire, I wouldn't piss myself out. How wrong could I be? Aphex Twin is in the process of writing a new album, and it could hit the shelves this year.

Steve Beckett, founder of electronic label Warp Records, said this week there will "definitely" be new material. He told BBC 6music:

"We’re definitely going to be putting out a new album by him. Hopefully it will be this year, if I can prise it out of his hands. It’s definitely on its way.”

Don't expect any leaks, though. Beckett has no idea what the Twin has up his techno sleeve, so us mortals in the blogocube won't be getting any sneaky advances.

“I don’t know a single note or anything about it. It will be as much of a surprise to me as anyone else. Basically, I find out what it sounds like when we go into the mastering room and he puts it - well how it used to be, he'll put the DAT player in and there it’ll be - so that’s the first time I’ll hear it.

“Then I’ll go onto my knees and thank him and then we’ll put it out.”

It may not be Konklaver, which was mooted for a March release in various fake forum postings around the interwebble. So I was right about that. But it is a new album.

Aphex's first album proper since 2001's Drukqs. Hush my yellowed, bile-billowing mouth.

Ever-so-slightly related blog post: Aphex Twin's new album does not exist. Now can we just stop worrying and enjoy our knaves-- er, I mean-- lives?

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. 

I've discovered this new thing called CDs / Still time to spend time with Fat Roland

Fopp in Manchester is flogging some cheap Warp CDs

I got each of the following for £3 each (see pics below). Plus the glorious moviefilm Sunshine for a handful of groats too.

That and Max Tundra's Parallel Error Beheads You for £1.99 and a squids postage from Manchester Vinyl Exchange's ebay site.

The joy of it all sends a tingle through my happy hat. I can afford more expensive albums, but the cheapness makes it fun. I'm into CDs. Recorded music is alive: Bill Drummond is wrong.

Of course I haven't played any of these. I've been too busy with Spotify.

Are you still here?

Don't forget that you can still see me in an exhibition at Manchester's Green Room. We Were Spending Precious Time tracks a journey I made through the city on the theme of silence within live music events. I'm on a video which is streaming as part of the whole thing. I was forced to watch it, and my bits are a bit windy (ahem) so you have to listen up to hear me. Which fits my silence theme nicely.

The full text of my exhibition piece will go on this site when the run ends. We Were Spending Precious Time is on for another week and a bit, after which me and Lindow Man are going on a long post-exhibiting holiday together.