Monday, October 16, 2006

OCTOBER LISTENING POST



XYLITOL- "FUNCTIONARY" MINI-ALBUM

This 3" CD hails the beginning of a new era of hardcore cross-genre fertilisation. It's not so much the fact that tracks like "Ye Ye Electronique", the moving "Atomised" and "Marike" come across like a tighter, more disciplined DER PLAN, if they'd come from Sheffield and been asked to score the theme tunes to scientific programmes (that's a good thing, by the way). It's not even the sleazy "Ritual King Slaughter", which evokes images of terminator budgies swooping around a flat on search and destroy missions for cats, before dissolving into a breakdown that sounds like a dalek using its plunger to push a music box around in a tin can. It's in the cover version of the Oppressed's "Joe Hawkins" - Oi! crashes into Flexipop, with spectacular results. Perhaps if this track had been released in 1981, it would have saved many an electro fan a bashing. This CD is highly recommended, and you can get it from Jim Backhouse - contact him via his Bunnywelt site or google "myspace xylitol" - for it's him behind it all! Thanks are also due to Jim for introducing me to the Italo Disco classic that's "Checkout Five" by Naif Orchestra.

VERDICT - This is too good for the same world as those bedwetters The Feeling, that Co-Op advert with the irritating animated Northern Irish bastard with the leaf-blower and his fucking apple pie treat, and reality shows about ill-behaved dogs

V/A - "INTERNATIONAL DEEJAY GIGOLOS 9" 2XCD

IDGs hasn't released anything good for years now, in comparison to Viewlexx, whose Freak Electrique, Rude 66 and Nancy Fortune records piss all over DJ Hell's vacuous, coke-bloated roster. The Parallax Corporation summed it up on that Electro-Cash tune on their brilliant "Cocadisco" album, a slag-off of the fashion whores who'd probably pay 20 quid for a 12" of Grace Jones making cigarette-puffing noises over a Casio pre-set rhythm. By the Disco Pope- am I getting self-righteous or what? The only thing that stands out on "IDGs 9", to me anyway, is XLOVER's "Suckbox", which at least has some sense of urgency and intent. I just ended up flicking through the rest of the tracks, getting incredibly bored.

VERDICT - Download Rude 66's "Overkill" instead

PULP - "DIFFERENT CLASS" DELUXE EDITION 2XCD

You know you've become some pathetic middle-aged SELLOUT when you start re-buying things you had on cassette years ago. And so, here we have the ambiguous "Mis-Shapes", which always had me thinking: if a group of physically disabled people went to a Pulp gig, would they be welcomed or cold-shouldered by the hordes of art students who'd been dolling themselves up at the Retro Clothing Exchange?

There also used to be a great scam going if you were working class and male; most female students from privileged backgrounds used to experiment with 'a bit of rough' at least once during their educations. As long as you a) didn't fall in love with the rich bitch b) didn't expect this relationship to last beyond the end of her degree, at the very longest c) certainly didn't expect to get any real dosh or social status out of it - maybe a couple of T-shirts and some free drinks in a members' club full of arseholes, but little else d) never felt the need to actually let on that you found her fucking dumb and boring and played up your 'working classness' to full effect, you were sorted. Of course, though, Jarvis Cocker was driven by the same insistence on truth, honesty and justice that powers this blog, and so he gave away the secret with the chart smash hit "Common People". Well done, mate. No, you take a pat on the back, me old Cocker. Fucked that scam for good, you lousy little bleeder. Not that I'd know anyway, I never indulged in this trickery. I used to be open about wanting to spank the pert arses of the daughters of Lords and Ladies, while playing Whitehouse's ErectorLP at full blast.

And then there's "Disco 2000", and memories of **** come flooding back, even down to that line "Martin said that you were the best", which she used to go on about, as if the thing had some massive significance to....right, fuck this -

And "Sorted for Es and Whizz", a sonic buffer to Faithless' 'revolution through E' fantasies and all this Temporary Autonomous Zone shctick. I used to know this bloke who took loads of Es with his girlfriend, and they both ended up developing 'E jealousy' when either of them took it with someone else! Mad or what? He tried to write a book about E which was so unbearably bad I couldn't bring myself to beg him to stop sending me bits. Then things all went tits-up when his girlfriend discovered we'd been passing sheets around down the pub and laughing at the bit where he has an MDMA-induced religious experience on a train between Derby and Crewe. And she cried, and made me feel like a backstabbing cunt. Later, he dumped her for some girl he'd taken an E with for the first time.

"I Spy" - self-explanatory, "there's more than one way to fight a class war"

There's loads more stuff, but it's fucking brilliant, no matter what anyone says to the contrary.

VERDICT - Is it true the Pussycat Dolls are men, or is this just another urban myth? I heard about 3 separate people claiming this fact as gospel earlier in the year, but now nobody seems to mention it. Don't take speed, it gives you blackheads
Comments:
i spy! now there's a song 'smoking your cigarettes, drinking your brandy'...marvellous. i must say it didn't help me a jot when I was at goldsmiths, i'd never thought to blame jarvis though. hmmm
 
Jim - I think it's on 'The Oi! of Sex' compilation, though it wasn't nearly as good as it sounds - in fact the whole album was pretty dire, not even bad enough to be memorable

Owen - to be fair he did redeem himself by wrecking Jacko's nativity play...
 
Sorry, it was 'Son of Oi!', but honestly, you'll regret it if you go there...
 
Sorry, it was 'Son of Oi!', but honestly, you'll regret it if you go there...
 
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