Iambic 5 Poetry is the standout track from this 1999 mini masterpiece from Tom Jenkinson. This record is also from his jazzy, saccharine sweet phase, complete with soft pianos and tinkling ting-tings. The whacky and the weird rhythms and the pointless, insular ramblings are still there, they’re just eveloped by a nicer, newer combination of digital and organic music.

This is only the second Coldplay record I have in my possession. Someone gifted me the sappy, moody but not-really-that-bad Parachutes album many years ago, and I bought Viva La Vida, Or Death and All His Friends because the cover invoked a bizarre feeling of optimism in me. Even more bizarrely, I also bought it, despite not really liking Coldplay, because I wanted to see if there was any new musical reason to like Chris Martin and Co.

Sadly, I have to say that they still sound like they want to be U2. The guitars sound like a homage to The Edge, and the epic atmospherics of the album sound very Joshua Tree-like. They have Brian Eno as a producer which probably doesn’t help. I’m sure there are definitely U2 fans out there who dig Coldplay but I obviously am not one of them.

My theory is that Coldplay figured that since they were incapable of rivaling the cutting edge Radiohead stuff, they might as well try and fill be the biggest stadium rock band mould created by U2.

As a consolation, thanks to Coldplay’s massive fan base, at least I know I can get a good price at Cash Converters for this CD next week.

The weird, ridiculous lyrics and John McCrea’s lazy, deadpan delivery are why many people dislike Fashion Nugget, and CAKE’s music in general. The weird, ridiculous lyrics and John McCrea’s lazy, deadpan delivery are exactly why I absolutely love this album, on top of the excellent and wide ranging influences and ability this band has. This album spawned two radio hits (The Distance and the cover of Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive) for this alternative rock band from Sacramento and it’s very high on my list of albums I hope to somehow have in my possession if I find myself marooned on a deserted island. (It goes without saying that I must have a CD player on hand if I find myself marooned on the said deserted island, but I digress…)

Mashups don’t come better than Danger Mouse’s 2004 effort, The Grey Album, which combined an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z’s Black Album with instrument samples from The Beatles’ White Album. Completely unauthorised and deemed illegal, very few people have the promo vinyls that were initially pressed. You will not find it on CD or on iTunes (or maybe you can) but you know for sure that it can be found floating around in the deep bowels of the interwebs.

Find The Grey Album at your own discretion/risk, but almost as good as the audio mashup is a video mashup done for one of the tracks. Not the most polished video in the world, but I guess the idea was good.

Realising their miserable failure as indie rockers, the now defunct Simian branched out sideways into the dance side of the indie spectrum as Simian Mobile Disco. Their 2007 release Attack Decay Sustain Release is a collection of mostly punchy, light and hook-laden dance tracks. Given their rock roots, this is admittedly rather effete dance music fare but you won’t really care or notice once you get into it.

Simian Mobile Disco are actually in town and will be playing at Zouk tonight. It’s probably going to be an awesome set and, unless you are pregnant or otherwise limited in mobility, you really have no excuse not to be there tonight.

Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin (aka Lemon Jelly) released their full debut album, LemonJelly.ky in 2001. It was both a commercial and critical success, and if you listened to the album, you’d know why. With the warm, organic beats and weird, psychedelic synths, this album will just make you happy. Very happy and quite bouncy all day long; go give it a listen it if you haven’t yet!

When Let’s Get Killed came out in the late 90s, Irishman David Holmes never got the fanfare and radio play that his contemporaries, like Fatboy Slim, garnered. His quality and talent (especially evident in This Film’s Crap, Let’s Slash The Seats and his Essential Mix compilation) was/is far superior to some of the electronic music that was all the rage back in the day.

Every track on this album opens with sampled sounds and conversations from New York and segues into the music, much like a soundtrack for an imagined movie about the city. All in all, it is a very groovy, eclectic, if disjointed, mix of music. Radio 7 is a standout track and should have really been used in some way in some Bond movie (or parody).

A testament to Holmes’ enduring quality, my friends, must be the fact that he is still producing quality stuff while his contemporaries of the past decade have, to put it mildly, faded.

With all the money they made, I suppose the Arctic Monkeys‘ Alex Turner could do whatever the hell he felt like doing. And so maybe he decided to gang up with his friend Miles Kane, start a side project called The Last Shadow Puppets and release a ballsy and ambitious album titled Age of the Understatement that would pay homage and draw inspiration from retro ‘orchestral’ pop music.

Despite the arrangements sounding somewhat familiar (maybe nostalgic is the right word here), the sweeping strings, fulsome percussions and great energy make this a very, very good album. Already I am thinking this should be one of the best albums of the year.

Just to clear things up, there’s only one girl in the band Brazilian Girls and none of the band members are Brazilian. Their third album, New York City, is a continuation and refinement of their music style which can be described as an almost freestyle world music, down-tempo, electro-funk, techno-dub mishmash with jazz undertones. The schizophrenic nature of their music is definitely helped by the very delicious lead singer, Sabina Sciubba’s fluency in German, Spanish, French, Italian and English. It’s a good album with a high interestingness factor, although it sometimes feels like they are contriving to sound kooky in the name being experimental.

If you have never heard of Mother Love Bone before, here are three main things that summarise their short history.

Fact 1:
They were one of the pioneer bands of the Seattle grunge scene of the late 80s/early 90s.

Fact 2:
Their exuberant lead singer Andrew Wood died of a drug overdose at the age of 24 right before the band was due to release their debut album in 1990.

Fact 3:
The band’s bassist, Jeff Ament, and lead guitarist, Stone Gossard, went on to found Pearl Jam and went on to achieve critical and commercial success.

Most of what remains of Mother Love Bone is the 1992 compilation album, Stardog Champion. The world will never know what they might have achieved, but the sad story of Mister Faded Glory is all that we are left with.

You could describe Brian Eno’s 1978 ambient album Music For Airports a masterpiece or a classic. You could lavish it as being seminal or quintessential. You could also say it was groundbreaking and extremely accessible. It is a lot of things, but you just shouldn’t spend too much time trying to describe it. You just have to listen to it, hear it and feel it for yourself.

For a band that gave us seminal classics like 1991’s Screamadelica, 1997’s Vanishing Point and 2000’s epochal XTRMNTR, it was quite hard to believe Primal Scream could come up with total crap two years ago, which they titled Riot City Blues. I was really hoping they would have recovered that hard edge and done something new with their newest album, Beautiful Future.

But alas, it’s another derivative, boring and patchy effort from a bunch of guys who seem to have lost their edge. With the exception of one or two well-produced tracks (like the very groovy Uptown), most of the album is just despondently disappointing.

With almost all of Beck’s albums, I have always needed many listens before coming to a decision on whether I like it or not. His 2008 album, Modern Guilt, however took me just one listen to immediately like it. It sounds darkly catchy and much more consistent than the 2006 LP The Information. The Modern Guilt has a ‘vintage’ sound throughout the album and Gamma Ray is a standout track for me, despite lyrics informing us of the state of our ecosystem (”If I could hold hold out for now/ With these icecaps melting down”).

It’s a little introspective, even sad, at times but the album holds together pretty well even on a gloomy, rainy day because thankfully, you cannot always make out what Beck is rambling on about half the time.

A very smooth DJ mix by Adultnapper, Audiomatique 2.0 features music from the likes of Trentemøller, Gui Boratto, Martin Eyerer and many more. Starting off with stripped down downtempo fare, the mix progresses into slightly more aggressive, dancefloor stuff while maintaining a svelte, minimalist undertone all the way. It’s a nice collection of very urbane, minimal and modern electronica, but it’s not really going to set things on fire and become a classic of the future anytime soon.

Kowalski was the first single from Primal Scream’s very compelling 1997 release, Vanishing Point. Breaking away from whatever they had done before, this single was a disturbing blend of industrial dub, samples from the (pointless) 1971 movie Vanishing Point and Bobby Gillespie muttering weird nothings.

And it sounded great. The Automator mix was wicked and I was so very captivated by the cover art. In fact, the Primal Scream sleeve art from Vanishing Point, Echo Dek and XTRMNTR (and the singles they spawned) were a definite source of stimulus for me back then as an aspiring designer.