Spring cleaning in November... it's crazy, I know

Pass me that feather duster. Thanks.

In a week's time, I'll be spring cleaning a few corners of my blog hovel. FatRoland.com will become something quite different, and will cover all of my internet sites rather than just this here blog.

It means that Fat Roland on Electronica will return to a mere blogspot address, as it was when it started. You won't notice a difference other than some of you will see a different URL.

Wait. Don't fall asleep.

Also, I will be retiring one Twitter feed and one blog, neither of which you probably know about - and if you did know about them, you won't have twigged it was me all along.

All will be revealed next Tuesday (which happens also to be the 8th anniversary of this blog).

The FatRoland.com web address is over ten years old. It's time to investigate the wrinkles...

Further Fats: Blog 1 website 0 (late result) (2007)

Some dogs are better than others

I hate dogs.

Many breeds of dog are vile and potentially dangerous. I do not understand a world in which it is normal to domesticate creatures that are capable of savaging and killing.

I don't think it's cute when friends post pictures of their dogs on Facebook. Oh look, here's Buster dragging his bum across the baby's face, how cute. Eeeugh. And no, I don't want to say hello to your dog when I meet you neck-deep in the brown stuff on a poo-strewn pavement.

There should be a dog licence which includes training for owners in pack mentalities and dog behaviour. Most of my dog bites - and I've had a few, believe me - have been from mutts that "wouldn't bite". Of course they bite, you silly owner, it's what they do.

You're waiting for the punchline, aren't you? You're waiting for the moment I spin this around and say I meant clogs and sorry for the typo.

There's no punchline. There are two exceptions, though.

Firstly, The Black Dog (pictured) are quite unvile and lovely. Their influential early albums showed me that dance music could be emotive and intelligent: Temple of Transparent Balls and Bytes were a deep and involving antidote to the two-dimension dance smash of the same year, No Limit by 2 Unlimited.

What's great is they're still making amazing music. The Black Dog are a good dog. Here, have a bone.

Secondly, my next-door neighbour's dog Wilf loves me. Even if I am miles off, he goes insane at the sight of me. His tail tells me in impatient semaphore that I am the best thing that has happened to his day. He only does this with me and one other neighbour. He doesn't even show the same level of shuddering, dribbling uber-joy for his actual owners, the duplicitous wee beastie. Wilf is great.

Wilf and The Black Dog are exempt. All other dogs can go to their basket and think about what they have done.

Further Fats: Temple Of Transparent Balls and the black, brooding Book Of Dogma

I am having a constructive conversation on Youtube about the KLF

Click here (or the picture) to make this bigger so you can read it with your eyeholes. And naturally, I'll keep you updated on the discussion in the comments below this here post.

Further Fats: This is not a brave new world: it's just another house group

Rihanna has ruined everything

Rihanna's latest single is the death of creativity.

That's it. It's over. Unplug your guitar. Put down your paintbrush. Leave that ice sculpture for the sun. Rihanna has ruined everything.

It's bad enough that the X Factor bursts with so many brands (the contestants' phones, Syco, the hotel they stay in, more Syco, even the cups on the desk in the US version) that there's barely space for the soundwaves what with all that money flying about.

But now Rihanna has released an advert and it's got to number one. An advert.

I'm not naive. I'm used to Levi jeans once belting up the the charts and Mr Latest Bling Bling Hippety-hop getting jiggy with cars and expensive fizz, but the Rihanna thing is quite unbelievable. Let me explain.

A few years ago, Emporio Armani launched a fragrance called Diamonds. Cue a launch party with Beyonce, Josh Hartnett getting his nips out in black and white commercials. and a forthcoming tie-in with MTV.

Diamonds is, according to its maker's website, "inspired by both the past and the present, the traditional and the modern". Such unique selling points are "particularly reflected by the ingredients". Better the actual 'ingredients' than, say, the bottle coming with a buffalo that constantly points at a watch as it screams "don't think about the future, NEVER THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE" in Buffalese.

Meanwhile, in another corner of the empire, Rihanna designs things for Armani: bags, pants, jeans, that kind of thing. It's an odd profession for someone who wears so little of anything, but she will earn a universeful of cash as did her preceding shill Posh Spice.

Nothing new, just people doing stuff.

So I can only imagine the writing process with Rihanna's latest single (no, I'm not calling her RiRi: she's not a panda), because she really has jumped the shark, punched the buffalo and bashed the bishop on this one.

RIHANNA: Shine bright like a... Shine bright like a... like a... I'm really struggling with a simile to finish this chorus.

PRODUCER: Star? Sun? Giorgio Armani's tanned face?

THE LIGHTS FLICKER. THE ROOM GETS COLD. ARMANI FLOATS INTO THE ROOM.

ARMANI: Someone mention my name?

RIHANNA: Georgie boy, we're struggling to finish--

ARMANI: Get a load of this.

ARMANI SPRAYS THE DIAMONDS FRAGRANCE INTO RIHANNA'S FACE. HER EYES GLAZE OVER. MEANWHILE, THE PRODUCER RUNS SCREAMING FROM THE BUILDING. HE RETIRES FROM WORKING IN STUDIOS, ALTHOUGH IN 2019 IS SPOTTED IN AN EARLY X FACTOR AUDITION DRESSED AS A BAD LEO SAYER.

"Shine bright like a diamond" it is. And that, dear reader, is how Rihanna's new single Diamonds came to be named after her employer's fragrance Diamonds, with both snuggled so close on this screenshot on the Official Charts Page (below), they could mate and give birth to, um, a parallelogram.

Well done, Rihanna. More than anyone in the history of the charts, you've reduced the number one spot to a commercial. Let's hope you do the same when you're saggy and old and advertising Farmfoods.

(Click for bigger.)

Further Fats: Rihanna will knock out a cover version of Hangable Auto Bulb as soon as she claps her eyes on this pile of blog waffle (2007)

Labour 2012: massive eyeball ballpit horror

I worry that I don't blog about music enough, so I scribble resolutions to myself to try harder. And then I get distracted by the Labour party conference and the resolutions flutter into my recycling bin.

I like to think of Labour as my natural party of choice. I was born in the great industrial city of Manchester, and my childhood memories include the smell of bike oil and dad coming back from t'pit at t'weekends. Okay, I liked about t'pit and t'weekends. But I was into T'Pau for a bit.

Actually, I haven't voted for Labour in a general election for 20 years. Tony Blair put me off: too blue. I felt he sent old Labour drifting down the river like Phil Silvers in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World with Tony Benn as the solitary floating hat reminding us of a once great party.

Still, that didn't stop me spending half of this week at their conference venue setting up a bookshop. And because it can be hard work and because a lot of people I meet might be quite bonkers, and because the set-up has done my back in a bit and I'm in a bad mood, you're going to get the brunt of my Labour conference experience in the shape of a few roughly-honed blog posts.

Let's start gently because it's early days. Here are some photos from set-up, Watch this blog for more updates in the coming days when things, y'know, actually get interesting.

1. We all get little stands like this. Our bookshop, which you'll see in later blog posts, takes up several of these little stands.

2. There is a stand called Everything Everywhere. There was nothing in it when I took this photo. Perhaps it's irony. Do politicians do irony?

3. Some nice person had left a bit of paper on their stall. It says SMILE. I wonder if it's the bank. Or maybe it's a dentist thing and they're going to fashion their stand into a gaping, toothless mouth for children to play in, complete with real saliva.

4. The RNIB wheeled in their Eye Pod on Wednesday. There are two eyes, not quite aligned. I think the inside will be full of massive eyeballs - like a ballpit, only horrible.

5. This is a camera. On the other side of this wall is the room in which all the speeches are made. There tend to be camera people lurking, hoping for that crucial shot of Ed Balls belly dancing or of John Prescott mainlining pork pie jelly.

6. Sky News are here. Last time I saw their conference stand, it had Boris Johnson in it. Not at the Labour conference, I hasten to add.

7. I think these are hats.

8. This is the main speeches room under construction. The big, dark rectangle is a video screen on which they will display a permanently rotating head of Neil Kinnock as he rabbits on about the soil in his garden and how his Ocado delivery was late this week.

9. A messy set-up for the union chaps. They do have more red paint than any other colour.

10. "Perspex Labour Party G-Mex." This was a piece of wood raised to head height with no perspex in sight. I think it's a puzzle to be solved, like the Da Vinci Code.

11. Marks and Spencer have built an entire shop in the middle of the venue. This is a man pointing at a light and saying it's a light and his friends are saying yes it's a light, we can all agree on that.

Further Fats: In the belly of the beast - a week in Tory politics

A complete guide to the 2012 Mercury music prize nominations

The Mercury Prize nominations filled me with so much excitement, I literally vomited myself inside-out.

But as I lay there in a bloody mess of colons and juices like an M&S advert from hell, I began to reflect on the list. Did I care? Had I heard of any of them? Shall I have sausages for tea?

The 2012 Mercury has pulled off the amazing feat of leaving me almost universally apathetic. Last year was great, with Metronomy, Everything Everything and Lady Peej of Harvey. I liked The xx in 2010, while recent years have given us Burial, the Klaxons and Hot Chip.

But where's Rustie? Where's Kuedo?

Maybe the Mayans are partly right, and in our brown depressive post-Olympic world, every one of us is three months from dying of boredom.

Still. I am a music blogger and I have to do my duty. Here, my sweet reader, is my complete guide to the 2012 Mercury Music Prize nominations. There is one slight problem: the list bores me so much, I've just guessed at what they're like instead of listening to them.

But, y'know, I'm a pretty good guesser.

Jessie Ware

Jessie was famous in the late 1980s as the Voice Of Gurning Rave, and with her album Devotion, she covers many club classics such as Nomad, Rozalla, the KLF and Don Pablo's Animals. Because of a bourbon biscuit addiction during a cold turkey phase in the 90s, she let herself go a bit. A lot. But sometimes, the gasping and the wheezing sounds a bit like DJ scratching, so it's okay.

Django Django

Following the critical acclaim of several shows in the West End written by monkeys with typewriters, hopes were high for the debut album by Django Django (pictured). Despite being a panda in Edinburgh Zoo, Django Django produced a truly human album, full of emotion and hope. Could have done without the twenty-minute bamboo drum solo, though.

The Maccabees

Forced circumcisions! The destruction of pagan altars! The murder of powerful Seleucid figures! These musical founders of the Judean Hasmonean dynasty may not be a cheerful bunch, but their barbershop quartet packs a punch. A guest rap from Ptolemy VI of Egypt on the benefits of the iPhone 5 is possibly just product placement, but hey, it's got a good beat.

Roller Trio

Disco. On Skates. Obviously.

Richard Hawley

My name is Richard Hawley. You remember me.
I was in Pulp for a bit, but after they were sorted for E
s and Wizz. Yes? No? Well stuff it, those times are long gone.
I was in the Longpigs too: we went on and on and on.

My name is Richard Hawley. You remember me.
I was beaten by the Artics in the 06 Mercury.
I haven't got time. Must rush, must dash. I really really oughta
Wax my hair and do 50s things with Elvis Presley's daughter.

Field Music

Ah, the sound of the field. Crickets chirping. Birds singing. Worms, erm, crawling. But don't be fooled by the pastoral name, because Field Music sound like the darker underbelly of the countryside. Cows being slaughtered. Crop dusters mowing down film actors. Farmer Giles falling into the blades of his combine harvester. Wildfires. Lynchings. Snakes. Basically, they're John Craven with a crossbow.

Michael Kiwanuka

Michael Kiwanuka made his name as the lead singer of Aphex Twin. The band's acrimonious split happened when Michael was possessed by demons accidentally released on the set of the video for the chart-topping pop hit Come To Daddy. His subsequent breakdown saw him recuperating with dozens of John Legend and Otis Reading records. He describes his solo album as extreme chillcore.

Ben Howard

It was never going to go well for Michael Howard's son-- sniiip. Ed.

Plan B

Plan B, or Nathan Plainsocks as he's still known in da hood, loads a wheelbarrow with bricks and smashes a bunch of windows on a Brixton estate. The residents come for him armed with baseball bats, machetes and unusually sharp sticks of carrot. Plan B is prepared. He launches into his album Ill Manors, a collection of smooth soul songs in a Timberlake stylee. They don't listen. He is destroyed to death.

Alt-J

Triangles within triangles inside a massive triangle balanced on the uppermost tip of a snooker triangle made from triangular bandages trying to play the triangle whilst shouting in a triangular voice "try angles" at the angles of a triangle whilst watching on a triangle television screen the 2009 Bermuda Triangle-themed horror film Triangle. Now imagine Mumford and Sons singing about that. There, you've got Alt-J.

Lianne La Havas

Don't bother: she's an anagram of 'Aha! Anal Snivel'.

Sam Lee

Sam and Lee, you'll remember, were the wacky pair that fronted SM:TV Live, hence the programme's name. They performed quirky skits such as Here's Me Singing Off Rhythm, Larks Mother That Sounds Funny and What's That You've Put In My Trousers. Their best known folk song is George Colin, named after the two presenters Sam and Lee had killed to get the spot on SM:TV. Sample lyric: "Oh ye olde lover of mine, stick that arsenic down yer bloomers, best kill all the viewers too, for thems be startin' rumours."

Further Fats: They say you can't keep a good tune down (the 2006 Mercury Prize)

Chris Martin and his band The Coldplops are what the Paralympics need

My favourite bit of the Paralympics closing ceremony was when Chris Martin walked into the stadium with his band The Coldplops, set up a wobbly trestle table and spent four hours applying paste to several miles of wallpaper.

I don't know if this actually happened. I don't even know if it's been on telly yet. I live inside the shell of a walnut where no telly gets in and no odour gets out.

But I can definitely say my favourite bit of the Paralympics closing ceremony was when Chris Martin walked into the stadium with his band The Coldplops and began cutting several fields of grass with a blunt Swiss army knife with most of its bits missing.

I'm assuming the Paralympics closes tonight. I've not had a telly for ages. You're watching it and I'm not. I've no idea. Clueless.

However, my favourite bit of the Paralympics closing ceremony was when Chris Martin walked into the stadium with his band The Coldplops and sorted his cutlery drawer into order, messed it up, arranged it neatly again and continued in this vein until the black hole at the centre of our galaxy formed into a giant replica face of 1988 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Steve Davis who then turned to Chris Martin and said precisely nothing because he couldn't think of anything to say.

If you were "boredmatised" (bored and traumatised) by The Coldplops in the closing ceremony, console yourself with the satisfying breaks on this great little release from Ninja Tune: Shuttle's Halo. It's a bloke who's played with Passion Pit or something and it's guaranteed to be a million times better than Martin.

Further Fats: Mmm, Underworld, the world loves you (Olympics opening ceremony)

Video: "Orbital sample Stephen Hawking"

I don't know where to begin. Underworld's music for the Olympic opening ceremony had me teary-eyed and gobsmacked. It led to a gushy post a month ago in which all I could write about was toast.

And now Orbital at the Paralympic opening ceremony. With Stephen Hawking. Wearing Orbital glasses.

Truly speechless. Between the two ceremonies, 38 million viewers got to see my favourite bands. And that's not counting the many millions more beyond our borders.

Apparently some sport is happening too.

My gob is thoroughly smacked..

Further Fats: My review of Wonky, which includes Where Is It Going, used in the above clip.