July- September in 32 Tracks

Karen O- All Is Love
Editors- Papillon
Memory Tapes- Bicycle
Trailer Trash Tracey's- Candy Girl
The xx- Basic Space (Pariah remix)
Sky Larkin- Smarts
Male Bonding- Year's Not Long
HEALTH- Die Slow
Mariachi El Bronx- Cell Mates
Diamond Rings- All Yr Songs

Brand New- At The Bottom
Julian Casablancas- 11th Dimension
Friendly Fires- Kiss Of Life
The Drums- Let's Go Surfing
Joy Orbison- Hyph Mngo
Arctic Monkeys- Cornerstone
Wale Ft. Lady GaGa- Chillin'
The Very Best- Warm Heart Of Africa
The Cribs- We Were Aborted
Wild Beasts- All The Kings Men



Jamie T- Emily's Heart
Gossip- Heavy Cross
Girls- Lauren Marie
Grizzly Bear- Two Weeks
Lumina- I'l Be With You
Delorean- Big Dipper
Japandroids- Wet Hair
Los Campesinos- The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future
Vivian Girls- Walking Alone At Night
Washed Out- Get Up
Acres Acres- Diamonds From Coal
Florence and The Machine- You Got The Love (xx remix)

These tracks on Spotify

Jan- March playlist
April- June

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Simian Mobile Disco- 'Temporary Pleasure'

From Klaxons to Arctic Monkeys, Peaches to Florence James Ford is the man twiddling the knobs for some of the biggest acts in music right now but in between producer duties he is also one half of Simian Mobile Disco; one of the nations biggest dance acts. Returning for their second album Ford has used his impressive contacts list and recruited the likes of Beth Ditto, Hot Chip and Gruff Rhys to make guest appearances on the floor fillers more cohesive and euphoric second album.

At just ten tracks long ‘Temporary Pleasures’ isn’t around for a long time but it sure is around for a good one. A hedonistic atmosphere runs through the record at all times beginning with Super Furries’ Rhys on ‘Cream Dream’. Similar to last years Neon Neon album it’s a synth heavy retrospective with falsetto hooks and a nagging electronic pulse. From thereon in we get the amazing ‘Audacity of Huge’ featuring Brooklyn experimentalists Chris Keating of Yesayer, his charismatic appearance see him crooning lines about “a bag of Bill Murray, a Damien Hurst telephone’- it’s a surreal ode to pop culture and unrequited love and possibly one of the finest songs of the year to date. As an album that sees the act on the front cover often fading into the background (Purposefully you suspect) then the albums success relies solely on the guest stars. So acts like pointless hipsters Young Fathers and Jamie Liddell on ‘Turn Up The Dial’ and ‘Off The Map’ respectively do nothing for the album and rather take up space that more great instrumental tracks such as ‘1000 Horses Can’t Be Wrong’ could have used. However when the guest vocalists nail it they elevate the record to greatness. Beth Ditto in particular illuminates ‘Cruel Intentions’ releasing the disco diva that has lurked inside her for so long. Soulful yet eminently danceable it is better than anything on the most recent Gossip album. Similarly Alexis Taylor brings the playful rhythms of Hot Chip to the table on ‘Bad Blood’ adding afro-pop beats into the fray alongside his haunting and woozy voice.

If you’re looking for a sleek and compact party album for the Summer you could do a lot worse than ‘Temporary pleasures’ an album that should well see James Ford and Jas Shaw make a name for themselves in their own right.

7/10

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June: Blog Highlights

June will forever be remembered for one event, an occasion so monumental it will go down in the history books and be remembered for ever more. A once great and succesful figure but one that had fallen on tempestuous and difficult times in recent years tragically released this as their new away kit.

Michael Jackson, the King of Pop also passed away.

In blog-land these things all happened.

I had a few chats with Maximo Park, Dizzee Rascal, Beth Ditto, Marina and The Diamonds and Florence and The Machine.

Blur came back and tore Rough Trade East a new one. Watch it here.

Bloc Party and The XX debuted new singles. One is a lot better than the other but Bloc Party try hard bless them.

Crocodiles introduced themselves to the world.

Pains of Being Pure At Heart put in a set of two halves in London.

T-Pain jumped the bling shark with his new Big Ass Chain.

And I made my first effort in beoming the next Scott Mills by appearing on Radio 1's Steve Lamacq show talking about Lost Knives.

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Words with... Beth Ditto

“I wanted to make a really gay record and having Hannah (Blilie, drums) on the cover looking so butch and handsome made for the idea of gender fluidity approachable in a pretentious way. I think it sums up the record really well, it’s the perfect title for it.” Beth Ditto is talking about her band Gossip’s new album title ‘Music For Men. Emerging from the whirlwind of column inches and dance floors smashes that Gossip’s second album ‘Standing In The Way Of Control’ brought Ditto is back to doing what she does best, not designing clothes or hanging off Kate Moss’s arm but making soul-punk records and playing kick ass shows. How does it feel to be back in Britain and how does it feel to come over here to such a large audience when in America you’re still relatively unknown? “It feels great, I mean we didn’t meet in art school and we’ve been around for a while before everything blew up for us in Britain so we’re a really close band and we started because we wanted to make music together. Because we have that basis of friendship and music it keeps you together because you realise that it’s far more important than any attention you might be getting for whatever reason. So even though we come here and play to big crowds we never forget where we came from.”

‘Music For Men’ is an opportunity for Gossip to escape the ubiquitous and career defining single ‘Standing in the Way Of Control’, was there ever fear of being a one hit wonder? “Well in America Human League only ever had one hit single and how cool is that? All the really good bands that I listen to, any of them who had a mainstream crossover did it with a song that wasn’t even their best. If you listen to Devo that song (‘Whip It’) is one of the worst songs they ever wrote so it’s like a real fluke that it became so big. I’m more worried about people liking our albums, you can’t think about making hits or it’s not genuine any more.” The new album also gave Ditto and her band a chance to work with a musical icon, “Rick Rubin is the most musically amazing and interesting people I’ve ever met. It’s rare that you meet someone who is so versatile but if you think of his status in the music world and the way he holds it blows your mind. He’s super down to earth, all about spirituality and the earth and how you connect to each other and he really brings that to the music by knowing it’s all a process that applies to each band and I think that’s why he has worked with so many different bands.”

With tabloid notoriety and a bona-fide chart smash under her arm Beth Ditto became a larger than life figure in the public eye speaking from the eye of the storm did it ever feel like Gossip and music were being put behind labels like ‘lesbian’ and ‘overweight’? “I don’t think I’m a purist that way, we all have genuine interest in things away from the band and music. Some labels were a source of pride in the scene we came from, it was important to be known as a queer band or on a Riot Grrl label and I think the mainstream doesn’t understand that as much. So when people come up to us and are like “It should be the music first man we’re kind of like well OK because there’s so much other stuff to think about, we’re not serious in that sense.” As a band that live under the queer moniker how does something like Proposition 8 make you feel? “It’s obvious that we’re in the middle of a civil right battle for sure. The idea of this whole group of people being told they can’t do something, it’s like the 60’s- separate but equal. What it comes down to is it’s just not fucking fair. It’s a really intense time. If anything happened to me tomorrow my partner of eight years wouldn’t have any say in what happened to me even though they know me better than anyone else. My family are very understanding but if they weren’t, as is so often the case, if your family didn’t want you to be gay and anything happened to you they could just erase any history you had and the relationships you made just because they didn’t agree and there is no law to back up the gay person in that situation. Think about how deep that is. There needs to be a paper trail of who a person is and it’s something I think about a lot and it affects me a great deal. ” Does America under Obama feel like a more optimistic place? “I think Obama is really rad and he’s doing his best. Rome wasn’t built in a day so it can’t be taken down in one either. It’s great that he is working on healthcare, it’s so important and I know people are wanting him to move on economic reform but healthcare is one of the reasons he was elected in the first place, I just worry that foreign policy is going to get in the way. Domestically at least things feel very positive. The very fact that we have an African American President gives me hope for the society that we live in.”

Beth Ditto is intelligent, passionate and articulate. You can take the girl out of the underground but you can never take the underground out of the girl.

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Gossip- 'Heavy Cross'

Gossip are in a weird place right now. Not quite the one hit wonders the cynics want them to be but unlikely to regain the zeitgeist the way in which that song did two years ago. But what sort of scene is it where a disco-punk band with an out and proud front-woman are judged on their commercial appeal? Gossip return ahead of their new album 'Men In Love' with a typically savvy affair. 'Heavy Cross' sounds not unlike 'Yr Mangled Heart' or 'Coal To Diamonds' but with more ryhthm and sass. It's a return to form.

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