30 tusks, 25 blogs, 5 votes

Because I won Miss World or something at last year's Manchester Blog Awards, I get to be a judge this year. Imagine American Idol's Randy Jackson melded with 15 dead walrii. Yes, walrii. That's me.

The shortlist, for which you should be voting in your droves even as you read this sentence, is intimidating because there is so much good stuff in there. I only found out recently I'd be judging, so I've had to swill my buckets of dripping bitterness down the drain of perfectly balanced pragmatism and instead adopt a clear decision-making head.

I am now practising a mature opinion about everything. Thus:

- A lot of Orbital's stuff is excellent, but some other bits don't half go on a bit;

- Production techniques in r'n'b often set the tone for all sorts of music in the future in the same way the Nazis were good at car building, but that doesn't stop me even now from envying the production in Cry Me A River;

- Hooded tops are a wonderful way to express the rave culture of my youth, although they make me look a bit like 15 dead walrii;

- Some songs with guitars in can be good, while others can be bad;

- Some other things are good while some other things are bad. You should be getting the point of this list by now.

Short of setting fire to the internet and deciding the winner from the last blog standing, I don't know how I can judge the shortlist. But I'll have a go and I'll enjoy it immensely.

Not that winning last year did anything to my stats other than make me so busy, I've let this blog go a bit. Just look at the stats:

I did some writing, and then I did some more writing. This was in the days when everything was rosy and puppies frolicked in metaphorical fields. Fat Roland On Electronica got as many as four readers, then look: I won the award and suddenly I'm at minus one and, as you can see from the extrapolation above, things are set to get totally walrus.

15 hoodied walrii feasting off the corpses of frolickless puppies. Do you want that, dear reader? Yes you do, so get voting in the Manchester Blog Awards. Your votes get combined with judges votes and then we all have a massive booze up later in October.

Quickies: Short Stories For Adults

Flashtag writers: fancy a quick 'un?

After I've trodded the boards with my #flashtag writing gang at Bad Shoes Festival this Sunday (there we are in the 2pm slot), I get to release a book.

We Flashtag writers, last seen running the Flash Mob Writing Competition, have produced an anthology of dirty stories.

Quickies has 30 authors, 72 pages and a gaudy lilac cover. Read more about its production over at my fiction blog, Italic Eyeball.

We'll host the launch of the book on Wednesday 28th September for Didsbury Arts Festival. Go to the Arts Festival website for more details... although do get there early as I suspect we'll fill the venue.

I'll be reading, probably, a strange situation piece called Slow Movement, Hard Plastic.

And then you get to buy the book. We'll even do a Kindle version. More details soon.

Which brings me to another point. FatRoland dot com is ten years old in a few months. I intend to do something special to mark the occasion. Curious? You should be. *walks off, whistling innocently*

Teebs, Babe Rainbow and Ital Tek tattooed onto a pop star's innards

I barely wordpuke about electronic jams in this here netspace, even though the whole reason for this website is to delare the word of the beat, of the resonance filter, of the wob-wob-wob.

Instead, I'm either banging on about pop music (OMG JUSTIN BIEBPIPE GOT A TATTOO OF POL POT ON HIS LARGE INTESTINE OMG) or simply not posting at all. This, lovely reader, is not good enough.

So what has been performing syncopated rhythms on my ear drums?

Teebs (pictured) has joined Soundcloud, which is about bloody time because I'm fed up of searching for the deadlocked skate dude on there and not finding him. Seriously. Just last weekend, I couldn't find him so had to punch Soundcloud in the face yet again. His first track posted there is about a year old, but it's sunny and dancy and deserves an embed below.

Anchor Steam by teebsio

Speaking of ambient jams that wouldn't look out of place spread over Brian Eno's bald head, I do believe I haven't told you about Babe Rainbow's Set Loose from his Endless Path EP.  It's simple and sad and deserves repeat clicks.

Babe Rainbow - "Set Loose" taken from Endless Path EP - OUT NOW by Warp Records

Also, Brighton's Ital Tek (or iTAL tEK or iTaL tEk or whatever his shift key is doing on any one day) has teamed up with London's Om Unit. Mr Unit, as it's only polite to call him, has been known to make music in the back of an RV before now. His pairing with Ital Tek is a persistent little bugger: a remix of Mr Tek's War Of The Ants. I'm having those tiddlywink snare effects tattooed on a pop star's pancreas.

Ital tek - war of the ants (om unit remix) Coming Soon (Atom River) by omunit

Five-point Manchester survival guide for freshers

Welcome to the straggly-haired slaughter, you fresh-faced lambs. Here is the official Fat Roland guide to being a fresher.

You arrived in Manchester today lugging your duvet under your spindly arms after doing that passive-aggressive eye thing as you left your parents behind for good. You have chosen the right city: Manchester invented computers, music, politics, card games and the Nintendo Wii.;

But how do you survive in the Northern capital that also brought the world Madchester drug casualties, murderous Hacienda bouncers and, shudder, more than a few members of the BeeGees?

One. You need to know where to hang out. One wrong move, and you'll be bundled into an alley and piddled on by a tramp. These are the only places you should hang out in your first year of university: your halls, the Student's Union, anything with a Wetherspoon's logo, Tib Street, Ancoats and, after two in the morning, Deansgate train station.

Two. You have to listen to the right music. Generally, if it's got a guitar and sounds needy, it's middle-class pseudo-angst and you might as well get minute Laura Marling faces tattooed on your nipples. If it's got keyboards and the players of the keyboard sport cool hair, it could be hipster, in which case you might as well hang out at Common Bar in a cloud of your own farts. Any other kind of music is acceptable.

Three. Don't get in my way. Don't use buses. Don't walk down streets. Don't sit in bars, although if you really have to, for goodness sake don't talk. Only go to the cinema on Orange Wednesdays because that's exactly the day I don't go to the cinema. Do come into my bookshop and buy some books, but only if you're fit / cute / might be fit when you're 25.

Four. Catch as many diseases as you can, and ensure you pass them on to as many Manchester residents as possible. Illness reduces crime (and let's be honest, you're going to get robbed blind in those shoddy student digs), boosts immune systems, and I really like laughing at people thinking their world's going to end because they've got a cold. Yes, women, you do it too. Incidentally, I don't intend to catch the cold virus ever again, so this doesn't affect me. You get extra points for sexual diseases, especially if picked up on the dance floor of 5th Avenue / Cruz 101 / the Christian Union Christmas party.

And finally, five. Don't use anything digital. Unplugged is cool and preserves the 1950s culture in which Manchester truly thrives. You don't think the Happy Mondays used electricity, did you? It was all done with tooth 'n' comb and a kazoo doused in liquid LSD. Ditch your modern appliances. Buy your singles on seven inch. Get proper books. Wash your clothes using poorly-dressed maidens in a scullery. If you need to learn something, go to a library or ask a busker. And stay off blogs, because the amount of effluence dripping from their so-called good advice guides would be enough to turn Doctor Crippin's stomach.

New students: welcome to Manchester. We gave you M People, Dolly Parton and Kraftwerk. (Probably, I dunno.) Now what are you going to give back?

See also: my top 20 Manchester albums of all time (2009)
See also: my students' guide to new music (2010)

They catch me in the beer tent, you sound the alarm

DJing in a beer tent at Greenbelt Arts Festival is probably the best fun you could have with your trousers on your head.

I've been going to Greenbelt almost every year for the past 20 years. It's my spiritual and artistic home and it's even Mark Thomas' second-favourite festival.

This year, I had two DJing slots in the Jesus Arms organic ale tent, which gave me the chance to do a dark set (techno and IDM on the Saturday night) and a light set (ambient and 4/4 beats on the Monday night). My co-DJ Dan flipped things in a different direction with the likes of Desmond Dekker and Prince.

Being in such close proximity to beer attracted the usual punter comments:

- Have you got any Beatles?

- Have you got any Abba?

- Have you got anything with a tune?

That last comment, dear readers, really means "have you got anything that I recognise" because most people want spoon-feeding with the same old mulch. It's a minority view, so I didn't compromise: back-to-back Autechre tracks were a personal highlight.

The picture shows the free software we used to DJ with. A massive thanks to Dan (who really needs a snazzy DJ name, like DJ Dan The Destroyobot or something) who not only brought proper good choons but also brought the kit to make it all work.

Purple tins and Co-op: where the hell is Fat Roland?

The time has finally come to nudge me off my bloggy throne back into the pits of well-deserved obscurity, for the Manchester Blog Awards are now open for nominations.

Last year's accolade, in which I shared a couple of gongs alongside some truly smashing blogs, astronauted me scream-first into the spaceosphere: people suddenly wanted me to *do* stuff. I'. sure, once I can no longer call myself "blogger of the year", it'll be back to the purple tins and sitting outside the Co-op.

But I have been busy. For example, I will perform my umpteenth fiction reading at Manchester's leading literary shindig Bad Language this Wednesday, August 31st. I'm hugely grateful for Bad Language's support: they have been the driving force behind my newly-discovered love of short story writing.

And don't forget the wonderfully-named Bad Shoes Festival on September 25th in Chorlton. Bad Shoes is a joint mission between Bad Language and that temple of gorgeousness, Shoestring Magazine. At the festival, I'll join the Flashtag Writers for a fiction reading of sorts. Ah, the Flashtag gang. It seems like an eternity since we congealed our efforts around this stupendously stupid blog post last November.

Oh, that reminds me. We're doing a book. We're doing a disgusting book of smutty stories for Didsbury Arts Festival. Quickes: Stories For Adults in in the editing / typesetting phase and features work by us, by specially commissioned writers and by general submissions. We're going to launch it on September 28th, and it would be great if you could come-- er-- be there.

What else? I'm bound to miss something. I've resurrected by photograph microfiction thingy blog Fatotograf. Me and a few Sanctus 1 chums will be giving out fish this weekend in a new short story experiment. I ran a fun blog workshop for Full Circle Arts and Blank Media. My coming out story is the subject of an Art With Heat project for Manchester Pride (yes, I'm in that video!). You can find me DJing on Saturday and Monday nights at the Greenbelt Arts Festival. There's stuff going on with Manchester Science Festival, but it's not quite announceable yet. And I am currently uploading a few 100-character stories over at Italic Eyeball.

Oh and to take my mind off all of the above, I just wrote this. Like I said. Astronaut. Screams. Spaceosphere.

All Warp Records stock destroyed in Sony / PIAS fire

I had been chiselling out a blog post about the Sony DADC warehouse fire that claimed the stock of scores of independent record labels in the UK, including Warp Records.

Today, Warp issued a statement on how the fire, caused by the London riots, had affected them. It was not good news.

"All of Warp's UK stock appears to have been lost in the fire," say Warp.

Read that again. Horrible.

"The Sony DADC warehouse also acted as our international distribution hub and so this has affected our ability to supply our overseas partners."

They go on to state that forthcoming released by Grizzly Bear offshoot CANT (as obtuse a name as !!!), uber knob-twonk Rustie and techno veterans Plaid will go ahead, but that funtime high-cymballed beat combo Battles may have to cope with a digital-only version of their next single My Machines.

Label Love is a campaign to raise cash for the many labels affected by the blaze. There is one event already scheduled, and I hope Manchester can organise something similar. PIAS, who sub-contract the warehouse, have also teamed up with the Association of Independent Music to support those affected.

But the worry is not just financial.

"The biggest challenge for us," continues the statement, "is replacing Warp's extensive back catalogue spanning the last 21 years. We will replace as much of this as we can by creating new stock and replenishing where possible with stock from outside the UK. Unfortunately some releases may never be available physically again."

"We will be closely supporting PIAS in their efforts to get the independent music community up and running as quickly as they can."

There's not much else to say. My planned blog post, full of theoretical blatherings about the wider affect of the fire and the riots, has been thrown into the bin. All that remains is a deep sadness for Warp Records and the effect of this incident on the legacy that has fed this blog for years.

Not just Warp, either, of course. A full list of labels follows in small print.

All that, before we even get to the human tragedy of the stupid, stupid riots. What a sad few days.

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[PIAS] Recordings, [PIAS] Recordings Belgium, 4AD, A Camp, Absynthe Minded, Accidental, AEI Music, Air Recordings, ALC Music, Alsation, Ambush Reality, Ancient & Modern, Angular Recording Corporation, Arcady Records, Ark Recordings, Asthmatic Kitty Records, Atlantic Jaxx Recordings, Bad Magic, Balling The Jack, Banquet Records, Battered Ornaments Records, Beggars Banquet, Best Before, Big Brother, Big Dada, Bird Records, Blackmaps, Bloody Chamber, Blowout Music, Blue Chopsticks, Border Community, Borstal Beats, Boysnoize Records, BPM, Brainfeeder, Brassland, Bright Star Recordings, Brille, Broken Sound Music, Bronzerat, Brothers and Sisters, Brownswood Recordings, Buzzin’ Fly, Cache Cache, Cadenza Records, Celluloid Records, Chalkmark / IE, Chemikal Underground Records, Cocoon, Control Tower, Counter Records, Dance To The Radio, Dead Oceans, Deceptive, Defenders, Ent UK, DESOLAT, Dessous, Different, Dirtee Stank, Divine Comedy Records, Domino Records, Double Six Records, Drag City, Dreambrother, Drive Thru Records, Drowned In Sound, Dummy Records, Duophonic, Eat Sleep Records, Fabric Worldwide, Fake Diamonds, FantasyTrashcan, Fatcat Records, Fence, Feraltone, Finders Keepers Records, Flock Music, Flying Circus, Freerange Records, Friends Vs Records, Full Pupp, Full Time Hobby, Gang Of Four Recordings, Geographic, Ghost Ship, Glaze Recordings, Groenland Records, G-Unit, Hardly Art, Hassle Records, Helpless, Hem Hem Records, HFN Music, Immune, Independiente, Infant, Infectious, Jagjaguwar, Kartel, Kitchenware, Kitsune, KMS Records / Fabric, Laughing Stock, Lex Records, Lipservice, Little Sister Recordings, LO-MAX Records, Loose Music, Lovepump United, Low Life Records, Lucky Number Music, Lucky Seven Records, Mantra, Matador, Memphis Industries, Merok, Metric Music International, Metroline Limited, Model Citizen, Moikai, Motion Audio, MyMajorLabel Ltd, Nation, Ninja Tune, No Quarter, NovaMute, Nusic Sounds, One Four Seven Records Ltd, One Little Indian, Organs, Outcaste, OVNI, P.I.L., Peartree, Records, PeMa, People In The Sky, People Tree, Pirates Blend Records Inc, Planet Function, Play It Again Sam, Playlouder, Poker Flat, Polyvinyl, Records, Poseidon Records, Post Present, Pschent, Raw Canvas, Red Cord Records, REK’D, Rekids, Rekords Rekords, Renaissance, Reveal Records, Riverman Records, Rock Action Records, Roots Records, Rough Trade Records, Rubyworks, Sea Note, Search and Destroy, Secretly Canadian, Setanta, Shape, SideOneDummy Records, Silva Screen, Slam Dunk Records, Smekkleysa, Soma, Sonic Cathedral, Soul Jazz Records, South Paw, Southern Fried Records, Stereo Bang Media, Stolen Recordings, Stranger Records, Streamline, Sub Pop, Suicide Squeeze, Sunday Best, Thrill Jockey, Tirk, Too Pure, Torque Records, Touch & Go Records, Transmission Recordings, Tri Tone, Trouble Records, True Panther, Try Harder, Turnstile, Twisted Nerve Recordings, Universal Sound, Victory Records, Wagram, Wall of Sound, Warp, Watergate, We Love You, Wiiija, Willkommen Records Ltd, Wonderfulsound, XL, Xtra Mile Recordings, Yaala Yaala, Young Turks

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