Jesca Hoop - Born To

Alert. Alert. This new single is distinctly not Hoopy enough. It appears that Jesca Hoop has sold out. However: 1. When I saw her live last year, I made a few observations as follows -- (i) She appeared to be singing in the venue equivalent of a public toilet. (ii) There were not many bodies there at all, which, naturally didn't bother me being the fan of the more intimate performance, but being the calibre of songwriter that she is, she deserves and indeed ought to have an audience size to match the quality of performance, which, by my reckoning, should be a larger one than what she had. Conclusion Yes, it is sad when artists leave the beauty of their original rustic roots for the more smooth finish sheen of the fast track manufactured music mould, but we have to remember that in order to make wonderful noises, musicians have to eat. Boy do musicians get hungry. It is good to know that a few lucky artistic individuals will manage to achieve what Bjork mentions here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-dFRFsQKGQ namely, 'Full Artistic Control'. Thus they continue to make weirdly bizaare sounds within the fiercely constricted mainstream and thus the big money makers and the less savvy guitar hobos finally (albeit haphazardly) shake hands. Aaah, what a nice thought.

Martyn Bennet - Paisley Spin

Okay okay hands in air. It was me. I enabled multiple posts using Maconie's Freak Zone.

Billy Cobham

For the first time ever I am listing this artist in my Music Blog because I genuinely think it's alright. That's not what a music critic is meant to do mind. A music critic is meant to tear it limb from limb and then pat it on the back. I'm not one of those. I'm a musicosaurus.

X Ray Specs Bondage Up Yours

I'm young and I like punk. In about six years I estimate that I will have become more moderate and a fan of Daft Punk. When I'm sixty I will live in a castle and listen to Wagner.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Sickly Child

Hard House. Minimal Tech. Dance. I like to appreciate these music forms from afar like a maiden upon a hillock viewing a faraway battle. The maiden wishes she could take part in the event but knows when to admit defeat. You have to be realistic. Sometimes these cunning syncopated rhythms remind her of the darkest alleys and the slimy beings that slither about with their fingerless gloves waiting for the right moment to cut your throat and take your money and shake the answers out of you. Sometimes they make her think of golden dragons and shining knights and honour and kings. But we don't live in a world of honour. We live in a world where only those who shout the loudest win. The truth is shredded from newspaper cuttings and spun into a web of nylon frills. The ribbons tighten round your throat till skin matches the colour of the scarlet silk that you use to hold your apples. Inaccessible in appearance yet not invulnerable. The insects bite. The molluscs are ready to feast on purposefully selected nectar strains. Not for taste but for shape and their ability to swim against the currents shrivelling on the vine. No grapes without wrath. A feigned hatred bred from fear. Where love is out of reach only cynicism. Elle a perdu les sciseurs. Mais dès le début elle ne les avais pas. Ce n'était que de l'espoir. Malfondé.

Eddie Kendricks - Keep on Trucking

I place the helmet on my head and fasten it tight. I am aware that I should be feeling some sort of fear. Some sort of apprehension. I feel nothing save the faceless exhilaration of anonymity. If there is no one to blame then there's no place to direct the gaze of confusion. The growth no longer strangled by haze. The vine entwines itself. Born with a mighty lust for the outside rain, grey and warm with rage. It wants to make you believe that you shouldn't have come that you should turn back and go home. But the sky plays tricks sometimes. Yes. The weather does not share secrets easily. A new sign on the Shepherd's Wheel. It turns once again to face the grit. Merciless stone. Grind that bread. Produce a masterpiece to go into the mouth's of the replete. Spit out the crumbs and feed the crows and peck out the eyeballs of the weak. Transparent film shields the secrets from X-ray vision. Men no longer agog as their curiosity disolves. They feel nothing but a vague feeling of nostalgia at the family that faded, the child that divided. The seer now blind. The master now enslaved. And in that world I found one last priestess of the old world. She had walked a thousand miles from Nordic pales to land's end and she will keep on walking. Her hair not grey but silver her skin not wrinkled but impervious. Her voice not bitter but affirmative. I am proof I have seen, said she. My back wheel skids on the loose grains of truth they don't want me going up there to the shadows that move but why overthrow wisdom for ignorance and mediocrity for nothing for nothing? I push and hug the frame like it's my only friend and we make it to the top. And the rain comes down again; tentatively. No longer certain whose side it should be on. Who is the aggressor and who is the victim and who is the thief indeed? Who told the lie? Who was the spy? Who wrapped it up and placed it inside a cake inside string inside a room inside a machine? I shake off the feeling. It was only out to reveal. Not treasure. Something else. I will stop at that place again and this time I will understand what it meant. This time I won't throw it away. Fly through the valley and shamble home and breathe.

La Rennaissance Africaine

I should really do something. I should be doing something right now. Being the first one to recognise that there are other people in the world who are suffering more than me, I should quit making out that the world is crashing around me everyday. In a way it is, but I can't help the fact that I am jobless and in the middle of an impending house crisis. On the one hand it could be so easily fixed (there are people around this place who might want to move into a dilapidated old house and play scrabble) and on the other it seems like an impossible mountain of doom. Woe is me. There are a few things that I want to do. Of course I want to make my parents proud of course I want to do well. But I'm not a wonder woman, and much as I like the idea of jetting off into the third world to learn what it really means to suffer; to not know where your next meal is coming from; to plant seeds and not know if they will grow; to be thirsty; to be hungry; to never see your work come to fruition; I just don't think I'm built for it. Is there a chance that I will ever find something that I can do? I don't know. I'm good within certain frameworks. I could try teaching in Africa, but I'd have to raise the money myself, at my own pace. Should I work in a pub, or pick fruit? Maybe. Do I want to go there? Or more importantly: do I want to go there by myself? I like the idea of getting somewhere by my own means - on trains and boats, on foot and even bicycles. Is it possible to cycle anywhere? That's the question. Humanitarian Aid. That's what I should aim for. To peacefully resolve difficult situations. No hurt. Just enlightenment. And enough to eat.