New : Mohn - s/t

Hi folks, back again after a week or two away from the action but I have plenty of new shit to rave about after some time well spent rummaging in the music shelves of cyberspace. First up is Mohn's selt-titled record which I think is their debut - I know nothing about these dudes, they might not even be dudes and there might only be one of them for that matter, I don't know how many people need to be involved to make intense electronica like this. Judging by the fact that all the song titles are in German I'm going to imagine that Mohn are two brooding pale-faced types from Berlin with zero social skills and poor diet. Kinda like Steve Albini circa 'Atomizer'. Their record isn't any more light-hearted than 80s Big Black either, it's a stark exhibition piece of slow-build electronica, slightly intimidating but highly accessible all the same. I was surfing between new releases the other day and the excepts I played off this one literally stopped me in my tracks - this shit is SUPERINTENSE. Most tracks clock in around the six minute mark and use the time wisely, employing slow-release pulses and sparse effects to envelop the listener - imagine a thin sliver of dark grey smoke exiting the speakers gradually until you look around and realise the room's full of lurching electronic fog. 'Mohn' reminds me walking round the sub-corridors of Templehof airport looking for my mate's rehearsal room a few years back, although if it had been playing at the time I think I might have shit myself and run away. Last year's überbitchin' 'Looping State of Mind' LP by Sweden's The Field was constructed with a similar blueprint to this but where he was aiming at subtle paths to euphoria, Mohn want to slow-cook you over over cold electronic light and leave you numbed and amazed. I'm loving this, especially the transcendant 'Ebertplatz 2020' which is the closest they get to a floorfiller, although the spooky vocal samples on 'Schwarzer Schwan' remind me of that Salem record from a year or two ago. If you like the more devious end of Aphex Twin (à la 'Come to Daddy', the sort of stuff he seems to use to deliberately alienate crowds) then you'll probably love this. I'm still wondering why they chose that name - it's probably a reference to some dead philospher dude but it just makes me think of Scottish football fans egging on their chosen team in the vein of 'MOHN RAITH ROVERS! GIES A FUCKIN GOAL YA WEE BEAUTY!'. On balance I think I'm happier in my continued ignorance of the world of Mohn, but in any case this LP is a stellar introdution to their universe.

Check out : the aforementioned 'Schwarzer Schwan' for hypnotic witch thrills and 'Ebertplatz 2020' for a devastating infiltration of the synapse.

New : Javelin - 'No Màs' / 'Canyon Candy EP'

More happy music for you happy people out there. Javelin have been going for a couple of years already but I only just got into their stuff - they base their material around samples from music shop bargain bins and the results remind me of the Avalanches, Kid Koala and Freddy Fresh from back in the late 90s. Not that either of these sound dated mind you, 'No Màs' was their debut that landed in 2010 and the 'Canyon Candy' EP followed a year later. 'No Màs' is the stronger of the two, 15 tracks of bright and bubbly electro sunshine with plenty of variety in the mix. They wisely let the samples do the talking for the most part, although vocal interludes like the Chipmunks rap on 'Oh Centra' and the indie crossover gem 'Moscow 1980' show that they aren't just two blokes hiding behind the mixing console. The results are more than just a sum of their parts too - like fellow second hand enthusiasts Holy Fuck, Javelin combine their nerdy love for spare parts with a genuine talent for crafting catchy pop gems and not laying in on too thick - this is lightweight in the good sense, one to put on as you get ready to go out in the Sunday sunshine, totally fresh and full of life. The Wild West themed EP 'Canyon Candy' focuses more directly on samples from Western flicks and old Country & Western vinyl, producing similar results but with less of the range. It's cool to hear them warp the guitar sounds on those old records (again, this kinda reminds me of Kid Koala) but back to back with their debut this EP sounds like more of an experiment than a fully-evolved release. They chop some of the tracks a bit too short, sometimes cutting things off mid-flow which, whilst it might be a way of keeping pointless noodling at bay, stops the record from picking up any kind of a rhythm. It's good, but their debut is better. Thrift store cast-offs moulded into something dazzling, these are both good examples of why Javelin are well worth keeping your eye on to see what they come up with next.

Check out : I can't choose between the aforementioned 'Oh Centra' and 'Moscow 1980' so give them both a whirl. From 'Canyon Candy' try 'Estevez' complete with Young Guns tribute vid.

New : Frankie Rose - 'Interstellar' / Mirroring - 'Foreign Body'

Another indie double-bill, this time with two offshoots from some of the cooler girlbands doing the rounds Stateside right now; Frankie Rose did stints with Crystal Stilts and Vivian/Dum Dum Girls and Mirroring is a side project of drone matriach Grouper plus some other chick I don't know. I'm assuming both of these releases are designed to allow the ladies chance to lay down some stuff that didn't click with their other projects, in any case they're both pretty cool albums. 'Interstellar' is Frankie going pure pop à la Cocteau Twins, free of any trace of garage scuzz - I didn't really see the point of this when I first listened to it but it's grown on me since then and now I can't stop playing it. Her secret is keeping things short - like last year's bitchin' 'Cats Eyes' album, 'Interstellar' clocks in at half an hour with ten catchy potential singles, only with Liz Fraser as a reference instead of Nancy Sinatra. It's direct enough to avoid sinking into a lake of twee and and the ethereal pop hooks are deftly delivered to sidestep any self indulgent wankery. One for the Sunday morning session I think, this is a great one to start your day to. 'Foreign Body' on the other hand is one to put on when the sun's gone down - if you missed out on Grouper's awesomely spooky 'Dragging a dead deer up a hill' in '08 then go bag that one as a priority but Mirroring are worth checking out in their own right. 'Foreign Body' retains the soft focus ghostliness of Grouper's other stuff but the additional vocals lift it more into Cowboy Junkies territory and give it a structure that might appeal to listeners put off by her more wacked-out freeform material. The vocals are a key part but they don't dominate proceedings, and the trippier moments here kinda remind me of the Aphex Twin's twisted lullaby electronica, like the soundtrack to the closing stages of a slightly unnverving dream. Overall this is a comfortable compromise between Grouper's free-floating tripadelica and the more accessible indie folk that dudes like this would listen to without losing the inherent charm of either. So there you have it - two slices of girly indie which will improve your life without either being entirely essential. 'Interstellar' will light up your morning and 'Foreign Body' will soften up the evening, so why not keep your options open and bag 'em both?

Check out : 'Know Me' from 'Interstellar' and 'Mine' from 'Foreign Body'.

New : The Men - 'Leave home' / 'Open your heart'

I haven't really been paying much attention to what's been going on in Stateside indie circles recently unless girl groups have been involved, so this viril bunch of Brooklynites were a real wake up call. The Men (good name!) use garage punk as a starting point but prang off in all sorts of directions over these two records that dropped within months of each other in late 2011/early 2012 - I'm not sure if their 'Leave Home' is a nod to the Ramones record of the same name but if they're capable of cranking out a stonking album every six months then they're already in the right bracket. These dudes have been touring for a while I think but have only just shown up on the radar outside New York so keep your eye out for them on the road cos this shit is going to sound GREAT live. 'Leave Home', probably the beefier of the two albums, kicks off with woozy opener 'If you leave' before racking up greasy garage nuggets that'll spill your drink from across the room, matching facemelting scuzz guitar with atonal brass and some full-on throat martyr vocals - 'Think' sounds like Jesus Lizard in a wind tunnel and blistering freak-out 'LADOCH' almost reminds me of Khanate's suffocating black metal filthfest. Though it gets weighty in places, track titles like 'Shittin' with the Shah' suggest that these guys aren't all doom and gloom.

The more upbeat and varied 'Open your heart' still kicks your butt from the get go but mixes in brighter influences than its predecessor - if 'Leave Home' was recorded during an all-night Melvins & reefer session, they definitely laid down 'Open your heart' with the sun out. There's a a spot of surf rock on here à la Midway Still/Swervedriver ('Please don't go away') and even some mellow country acoustic stuff ('Candy'). They don't even bother with lyrics for some of the tracks, just lock down and bang out a big greasy riff until they run out of ideas of what to do with it ('Oscillation') or meander of into drowsy psychedelia ('Presence', 'Country Song'). How much forethought goes into putting these records together is debateable, but that's perhaps part of the charm - these two LPs are brimming with enough good ideas and arse-kicking riffs to suggest that The Men are cranking out killer material quicker than they can lay it down in the studio. Watch out for tour dates and another one of these before the end of the year, they're on a great run of form right now.

Check out : 'Bataille' from 'Leave Home' and 'Oscillation' from 'Open your heart'.

New : Tribes - 'Baby'

Indie seems to be in pretty rude health these days - whilst there isn't the same glut of British guitar bands that we've seen in previous years, the ones that do make it through are pretty bloody good. If you filled your nappy with excitement over the Vaccines' rollicking debut last year then Tribes' own arrival on the album market should prompt similar results. Less punked up and frantic than their forebearers, this lot are more laidback and grungey but with a brutally infectious pop edge to their songwriting. I'd go as far to say that they don't really sound British (which they are), not because they're pretending to be anything else but because 'Baby' lacks the weighty UK-centric social realism that's bogged down a lot of other bands - and, more importantly, there's way too much sunshine on this album for it to have come out of Britian. I can't put my finger on who this lot sound like, the closest I can get is the Atlantic-facing Scottish indie of the Vaselines, Teenage Fanclub and 'Good Feeling' era Travis (before the drizzle set in they were actually quite a lively lot). Tribes aren't Jocks mind you, they're straight outta Camden which is kinda surprising as their record appears blissfully free of scene-conscious posing and comes across as honest, good-natured sunshine indie. Like the Vaccines, these dudes remind me of the Britpop era when you couldn't move for cracking debuts from guitar bands across the British Isles - perhaps it's no coincidence that lead single 'We were children' references that very period (you were CHILDREN in the mid 90s???? I was watching Menswear get pelted with beercans at the Leeds Heineken festival!). Those times may not quite be upon us again but for now this is more than enough - sky high choruses, scuzz-drenched riffs and tunes that will decimate the festivals come summer, in the meantime this is your soundtrack to the springtime sunshine. Stonking stuff!

Check out : 'Sappho'. It's about lesbians! BRILLIIIIANT!

New : A Place to Bury Strangers - 'Onwards to the Wall'

Fuzz pedal fetishists return to the fray with a new stopgap release. Wooo! These guys have been keeping it pretty quiet since their face-melting second album 'Exploding Head' back in 2009 so it's good to have some new shit to wreck your eardrums again. 'Onwards to the Wall' hits the ground in much the same way the more accessible bits of their last record did, opener 'I Lost You' matches 'Keep Slipping Away' for psychedelic slipstream and the title track has a cool female vocal part to sweeten the mix. If you're not familiar with these guys already then think Black Rebel Motorcycle Club on warped vinyl with vocals recorded at the bottom of a swimming pool. As it the case for most of the new guitar music I like these days, this sort of stuff gives me a nostalgia boner for primetime shoegaze back in the early 90s - you can imagine these guys on the ITV Chart Show's indie rundown gazing menacingly from a publicity still while their music throbs in the background. Infact, I think the EP format probably suits them better than the full album alternative - as addictive as this stuff is, eking out 10-12 tracks with enough variety isn't always easy and it's probably a safer bet to crank out a 15-minute fuzzbomb every so often to keep things sounding fresh. These guys still slay live too - I don't think I've ever been so glad that I brought earplugs to a gig as the first time I saw them lay waste to La Maroq. It was positively seismic, I nearly shat my brains out via my trouser leg. Remember kiddies, plugs aren't always necessary but keep a pair in your jacket just in case! Health warnings aside, APTBS still put a foot up in that ass and Dr Sykes recommends you get on this quickety quick.

Check out : 'So far away'. I don't know what the deuce is going on in this video but the song rules.

New : Weezer - 'The 8 bit album'

After a lifetime searching I have finally found the geekiest album of all time in the shape of this little gem, a tribute album dedicated to reworking the back catalogue of dork rock denizens Weezer via bleepy 8-bit music software. This should be agonisingly irritating, especially to the hungover shadow of myself that found it here whilst poking around online this morning but it somehow manages to eschew the trappings of hipster nerd culture and comes off as a decent collection of catchy bleep tracks. Nordloef's manic rehash of 'Buddy Holly' will put a smile on your face and Bitshifter's Europop take on 'The world has turned and left me here' would slot nicely into any DJ set with the likes of Crystal Castles, Teeth etc. What's more, it prompted me to revisit 'Pinkerton' and 'The Blue Album' for a reminder of what a good songwriter Rivers Cuomo was before his band turned into a corporate soundtrack for nerd culture and Threadless T-shirts. Despite my better judgement, I think this is ace. Scott Pilgrim would certainly approve.

New : Christian Mistress - 'Possession'

What can I say? It's just all about the metal the moment. After a rush of surprisingly diverse heavy releases over the last few months, Christian Mistress popped up on my radar with this rather fine slab of female-fronted trad metal. I don't really know much about this lot, I think this is their debut and if so it's certainly a promising start - musically they've got a lot of NWOBHM in there, think the first two Maiden albums when they were still basically a pub band rather than a stadium act writing galloping heavy metal epics. The guitarists get to noodle away a fair bit but their solos don't slow the songs down, these guys have a real aggressive motor to them and a singer whose voice fucking RIPS. She sounds like a mix of Janis Joplin, the chicks from Heart in their 70s heyday and the guy from Bad Company if someone jammed his nuts in a cutlery drawer. Without her upfront this would still be good but it'd probably get lost in the fog of stoned retro-metal groups already doing the rounds, whereas with her onboard they've got something really potent going on. This fits nicely in with the new wave of occult rock bands gaining popularity at the moment - if you caught last year's bitchtastic 'The Thousandfold Epicentre' by Dutch kooks The Devil's Blood (check out 2011's best of list for more on them) then you'll probably like this, likewise if the last Ghost record floated your Satanic boat. As the name suggests, Christian Mistress are more irreverant than genuinely Satanic but this is still a serious kick in the balls and they're not messing around with their delivery. Line this one up against some classic Diamond Head and Di'anno era Maiden, get your sweaty denim on and start annihilating beers and banging your head to this slab of stonking modern metal.

Check out : 'The Way Beyond', starts slow but you'll feel the weight soon enough.

New : Napalm Death - 'Utilitarian'

I was indulging in my typical float around the online music sites this weekend and chanced upon Napalm Death's unfeasibly great new album 'Utilitarian' which came out about a week ago. Their charming bile-spewing vocalist Barney gives the record a track by track guide here and most of the album is up on YouTube too if you fancy having a listen yourself. And as if that weren't thrilling enough, I noticed during the interview that their promotional tour for the album was coming through Paris on Sunday night so I had the pleasure of hearing most of the record live at La Maroquinerie too! I'll admit to having paid relatively little attention to what these guys have been up to over the last few years but a glance at the banker-baiting cover art for 'Utilitarian' made my prick my ears up and check this out. And I have to say I was pleasantly surprised - Napalm have lost none of their savage delivery and the current political backdrop in the UK couldn't be better suited to them returning to the fray with another potent dose of extreme metal bloodrush and politically-savvy thematic dissection. If you're unfamiliar with Napalm, let's just say they picked up where political punks like Crass and Discharge left off in the mid 1980s and fused their energy with the emergent extreme metal trends of UK Grindcore and, further down the line, the global Death Metal movement of the late 80s. Fast forward 25 years of playing in toilets, cranking out over a dozen stonking albums and steadfastly refusing to compromise and that gets you to 'Utilitarian'.

In truth I wanted this to be the blisteringly angry record that the whole 'Occupy' movement needed to shock itself into cohesive action - 'Utilitarian' doesn't quite address the matter as directly as you might hope, veering off into a diverse range of anti-establishment topics such as social exclusion, sexuality and the arms trade but the band stick to their guns as they always have and Barney give it both barrels like an angry pitbull trying to shout over a carrier jet during takeoff. They played a fair chunk of it on Sunday too and it sounds fucking great live - I last saw these guys in about 2000 and they're still as relentlessly savage as they were back then, only this time I got right down the front for a proper facefull of it all. Barney' still loveably furious onstage and bassist Shane Embury seems to be straddling the same stage of pattern baldness that he was at 12 years ago which is impressive to say the least. My pint got spilled all over my shirt in the first song and I even ended up losing my wallet getting tossed around in the pit, although one of the stewards very kindly fished it out from the post-gig swamp and gave it back to me, albeit covered in black crap and smelling of lager and footsweat. Still, my cards still seem to work. The fact that nothing got nicked surely acts as proof that these guys are still the vanguard of modern musical socialism. Anyway, 'Utilitarian' is as potent and pertinent today as 'Scum' was back in '87 - get the album and check out the tour if you get the chance, Napalm are still flying the flag for angry fucking punk rock after all these years and this is as a savage as they've ever sounded.

New : Alcest - 'Les voyages de l'âme'

I've had a rough few days recently so it was a real thrill to come across something fresh and new that captured the mood so nicely - the latest issue of Terrorizer prompted me to check out the latest from French post-BM stars Alcest and it's a real joy to behold. These guys started out playing shit-ripping black metal about a decade back but have since then evolved into a more sensual, considered take on the genre - in fact, aside from moderate swathes of harsh vocals on a couple of the tracks here, you'd be hard pressed to find anything on this album to remind you of Darkthrone and co.

Some reviewers have labelled these guys 'shoegaze black metal' which perhaps misses the point slightly - there's passages on here that remind me of the more romantic end of shoegaze, à la The House of Love or perhaps more poignantly Terry Bickers' post-HOL offshoot Levitation (check out their lost gem 'Nadine' here) but this has more in common with Justin Broadrick's Jesu project or, dare I say it, post-hardcore stormbringers Cult of Luna. If Jesu is essentially Justin distilled into album form (melacholy and sensitive but still coming from the same guy that recorded 'Streetcleaner'), Alcest is frontman Neige's soul laid bare - heavy-hearted and romantic, free of spite and more focussed on redemption and lucid headspace. I've rattled on about Jesu and Cult of Luna to plenty of people but ultimately they're never going to be entirely palatable to folks who get put off by the harsher elements of metal and punk - I wouldn't anticipate any such problems with Alcest though, this is mellow at the front end and only scathing in glints below the lush surface. One to listen to whilst coming round from a weird dream about someone you fell in love with back in school if you like, laced with regret but ultimately a warming experience. I started out lost on planet headfuck when I put this on for the first time and by the end of epic finale 'Summer's Glory' I was ready to take on the universe. Go forth and bag this one without further ado.

Check out : 'Summer's Glory', eight minutes of King Kong gorgeous.

The crappest music videos of all time

Hi folks,

My time spent meandering curiously around YouTube has resulted in a number of fine musical discoveries, gems unearthed that otherwise would have surely lain dormant and undiscovered for years to come. But no such searches are made without certain unpleasant side effects. My voyage across the vast ocean of music promo clips inevitably shook loose a few turds from the underbelly which floated unattractively to the surface to be inspected in full lurid detail. And there were some absolute scudders in there, let me assure you.

In the interest of being balanced (and, dare I say, positive), I've set about putting together a list of some of my favourite music vids of all time but as per usual it was easier and a lot more fun to pick my least favourite ones first. So here's a selection of some of the worst music promo clips I could drag up from the depths of YouTube - feel free to add any more I might have missed.

10. Pat and Mick - Use it up and wear it out

Here's a real stonker to get us started. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these two gents, Pat and Mick were London-based radio presenters in the 1980s who decided that their talents would be put to good use releasing aerobic pop revamps of yesteryear's disco classics. Mick is the one in the oversized jacket that looks like a disgruntled estate agent who's been dragged along to the office Xmas party against his will, Pat is the tall one in denim sporting what is possibly the worst haircut to have ever existed since the birth of mankind. Though their intention is clearly not to be taken entirely seriously as a musical prospect, this still merits its place on this list for the sheer rubbishness of everything and everbody involved. The duo's lipsynching is embarassingly off-kilter, the assembled dancers represent acid house culture as seen through the eyes of a balding advertising executive and the whole thing looks like it was knocked together in half an hour for the overall production value of a packet of crisps (check out the camera swinging off-set at 3:09!). The somewhat lacklustre performance from both vocalists doesn't exactly help, nor does their 'child-molesting uncle at a wedding' style of dancing and even a series of somewhat desperate comedy costume changes from Mr Sharp late on can't save this from toe-curling crapness - Pat appears wholeheartedly convinced that we are all laughing with him rather than at him and his daft hair and shit-eating grin. Nevertheless, enough of the record-buying public fell under the duo's charm for this turd of a single to reach number 22 in the spring of 1990 so it obviously appealed to someone. Let's just be grateful that Chris Moyles hasn't followed in their footsteps and started making his own records, he'd probably make this sound like fucking Led Zeppelin in comparison.

9. Joshua Kadison - Jessie



There are certain tell-tale signs that a video is gonna suck from the get-go and the sight of a bronzed gonk in a silk waistcoat playing upright piano on the fucking beach is as clear an indication as you could ask for that things are going to get pretty rough. Barefoot and sporting freshly-conditioned shoulder length locks, Kadison gets his smoulder on as he recounts his lover's flights of romantic fancy into the camera and gazes plaintively out to sea. This shit is so earnest that you almost feel it'd be harsh telling Josh that you'd rather spend four minutes sitting in a bathful of diarrhoea than have to listen to his gacky sentimental pizzdrizzle of a song ever again, let alone have to watch the equally nauseating music video. He genuinely seems to think that thousands of viewers are going to applaud him for 'bearing his soul and sharing his musical vision'. I personally would rather lean into shot and blow him off his piano stool with a blunderbuss full of cow dung before chopping his instrument to pieces with a fire axe and telling him to stop being such a pussy. 'Jessie' indeed! As for the lyrics, what kind of dork calls his cat 'Moses'?? Do you have a hamster called Jehovah as well???? And as for your bird calling you up in the middle of the night wittering about moving to a Third World trailer park with her at the drop of a hat, I'd tell her to fuck right off and not bothering calling back until she'd sobered up! Rather predictably, the Germans loved this tune so much that they kept it in the charts for over a year solid, but then what do you expect from a nation of lederhosen-clad coprophiliacs?

8. Gazza and Lindisfarne - Fog on the Tyne (Revisited)



Football/music crossovers are generally the source of some pretty dreadful records, but even against such a mediocre backdrop this one stands out as an outstandingly work of utter shite. Given that Gazza was the most mercurial talent of his generation and was about to win 'Sports Personality of the Year' when this was released in late 1990, you'd have thought the video budget would have stretched to more than four minutes of him goofing around onstage in a piss-stained shell suit flanked by a fairly haggard looking Lindisfarne along with some footage of them all galavanting around Newcastle on a drizzly Saturday afternoon. There aren't even any clips of him playing football - instead, we are treated to side-splitting clips of Gazza playing his leg like it's a guitar, gurning into the camera and leading a dance routine that looks like a stag party in Marbella after fifteen pints of Skol. At least he doesn't get his arse out. His rap delivery isn't exactly stellar either, although he's still a better MC than Dee Dee Ramone. I have a theory that the inherent crapness of this video was infact totally intentional - as Kevin Keegan points out, Geordies don't go for high culture, they like it cheap and cheerful (don't take my word for it - ask these guys) so a tinny remix of their local folk anthem with Gateshead's finest rapping about sausage rolls over the top was always going to go down well. Thankfully, aside from one minor follow-up hit in the wake of this single's success, Gazza has stayed away from the music business in more recent years preferring to spend his time managing lower-league football teams for about a week at a time, pinballing between rehab clinics and attempting to befriend local mass murderers. On this evidence, it's surely time well spent.

7. Vanilla - No way no way



If you trawl far enough back through the archives on this blog, you may well come across a series of articles I wrote on girl/boybands of the 1990s - it's due a bit of a polish, I might re-post it sometime soon - and somewhere in there are this lot. For those of you who don't remember the split-second in 1997 when these four trolls were briefly in the charts, Vanilla were either a music industry in-joke or a genuine attempt to crack the girlband market gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong. The singles charts were dominated by female pop ensembles such as All Saints and the Spice Girls who had racked up a string of hit singles and become omnipresent media personalities - predictably there were various attempts to cash in on this phenomenon such as Ireland's B*witched, Manchester's Cleopatra and Vanilla from......Essex. It's unclear what the marketing strategy behind them was - neither musically gifted nor conventionally attractive, the quartet were presumably selected for their 'girl next door' appeal (or, perhaps more accurately, 'girl getting fingered behind your local bus shelter after three litres of white cider' appeal). Their promo video only accentuated their inherent trashiness, depicting them clad in day-glo swinsuits and trowelled on make-up (despite the fact that they're at a swimming pool) warding off potential suitors with a coquettish 'don't get fresh with me!'. Heaven forbid we should make such assumptions ladies - surely women such as yourselves expect to be serenaded by moonlight or wined and dined in the finest restaurants before compromising your dignity? This aural and visual abomination was either the result of some industry competition to create the worst pop band to actually score a hit single (a rumour which persists to this day) or otherwise a thoroughly misjudged attempt to tap into a cultural trend. Either way it's a pretty disparaging spectacle and one that's earned them a permanent fixture on the 'worst record of all time' lists alongside Black Lace and Mr Blobby. Mind you, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity.

6. David Hasselhoff - Crazy for you



Let's face it - in the United States of Shit Videos there would only be one choice for president : Mr David Hasselhoff. His recent career resurgence on the back of several knowingly ridiculous promo videos masks the grim reality that, back in the day, the Hoff was no laughing matter. Having scored a massive hit in Germany the summer of 1989 with his zeitgeist-nailing 'Looking for Freedom', this was his follow-up single which scaled similar heights in the Fatherland but failed to chart anywhere else. Watching the video it's not hard to see why. Soundtracked by a robust Europop stompalong, the video sees the Hoff majestically zooming around on his Harley in lurid technicolour before getting stuck on a rollercoaster thanks to his mischievous pet dog. Shitty video effects like the motorcyle jump cuts and some mildly psychotic screen lettering late on make this a true assault on the senses which is only augmented by the music's apparent aim of driving the listener to the brink of insanity with its rumpeting marching band synths and some key changes that make me want to gouge my own eyes out in sheer despair. This is just so impossibly awful it becomes almost traumatic to witness - I'm practically reduced to tears watching this crap, yet it's just not possible to avert your gaze for even the slightest instant. Even by the Hoff's own standards this is excruciatingly bad - musically it's fingernails down the blackboard and visually it bombards you with enough gaudy colours and bombasticly camp bravado to provoke an aneurysm or make you throw your own TV out of the window. Compared to this the video of him attempting to eat a cheesburger shitface drunk while his own daughter cusses him out is comfortable viewing - this is the Hoff at his diabolical worst.

5. Steklovata - Novi God



Think you've seen some shit so far? Folks, you ain't seen NOTHING yet. Let me introduce you to Steklovata, Russia's contribution to the world of boybands. I can't find much online about the group's history but on this evidence you have to wonder whether they were selected at random by a board of blind (and possibly deaf) record executives. Eschewing the standard attire of their decadent Western counterparts in favour of a look based on jaundiced dole monkeys hanging around your local needle exchange kitted out in clothes from the British Heart Foundation bargain bin, they certainly stand out from the crowd (indeed, it's reassuring to know that you don't even need a full set of teeth to get into a boyband in Russia). No expense has been spared on the video either - lavish computer graphics from a ZX Spectrum game circa 1986 provide the backdrop for a dynamic dance routine consisting of them reluctantly bopping around in fraternal fashion. I can't understand the lyrics but the more I watch this video, the more I find myself thinking that the two smaller guys are new arrivals at a Russian prison pleading for the other two big blokes to go easy on them when they take them off to the shower block after they've finished filming. Perhaps any Russian speakers out there could enlighten me? In any case, this little gem has clearly experienced a resurgent success due to the numerous Eastern-European parodies available on YouTube so maybe they'll be touring again soon. I have to admit the song is rather catchy too, even if I still think the lyrics are about prison sex.

4. Honeymoon Suite - What does it take?



Remaining in the cultural backwaters of the music world, let's take a trip to mid-80s Canada for our next treat. Honeymoon Suite were apparently quite the domestic success story back then with their brand of inoffensive soft rock, though for some reason they never appeared to reach global megastardom. This might have something to do with the fact that their music is so lame it makes Bon Jovi sound like Cannibal Corpse, but you could also point to their fuck awful videos for further proof. 'What does it take?' is my personal favourite for its cack-handed symoblism and hideous fashion sense - it make have been 1986 but there's still no excuse for the state of these fuckers. I'm going to be generous and assume they had some kind of running bet for who could grow the worst mullet when they filmed this video - I think my vote goes to the guitar player (check out 1:05 to see it in its full glory). The oh-so-subtle visual depictions of the trials of domestic partnership aren't exactly great either - there's nothing more risible than seeing a band trying to infuse their video with a clever subtext only for it to trample over everything like a drunken elephant with a flashing neon 'MESSAGE!' sign on its head. And don't even get me started on that fucking perspex piano. Fellow viewers on YouTube don't seem to share my scorn for this particular video though, declaring that it 'brings back great memories of growing up in 80s Canada'. Yeah guys, I'm sure that was a BLAST.

3. Jan Terri - Losing You



I'm not sure exactly what credentials you needed in 1993 to make a professional music video - I'm fairly sure plenty of the indie bands I liked back then couldn't afford to make a promo clip so it's somewhat difficult to understand how this one ever saw the light of day. Jan appears to have had a record company behind her on this plus a dedicated video crew including someone responsible for 'hair and make-up' who must have gone on to great things since then - whatever role she had in dolling Jan up like a 3ft tall bondage warthog in a blond curly wig surely deserves recognition. It'd be mean to pick on Ms Terri for the fact that she's not exactly blessed in the looks department but it would also overshadow the not inconsiderable issue that she's totally tone-deaf. Even the crappy 80s synths can't mask the fact that she sounds like a badly oiled door and her delivery is so unenthusiastic that you're wondering whether she's singing about mislaying the love of her life or the TV remote control. Nevertheless, her talents seem to finance a luxury lifestyle featuring limousine travel and romantic escapades with Hells Angels, so who I am to judge? She may look like Gimli from Lord of the Rings crossed with a 50 year old Ukrainian prostitute but she's out there showcasing her talent and that's all that matters.


2. Take That - Do what you like



Take That's immense success over the course of the last two decades has been the result of them (or rather their management) catering to the tastes of their target market - for the 1990s read pre-pubescent girls, for the 2000s read fat legal secretaries wishing they were 17 again. However, their debut single way back in 1991 appeared to cater to an entirely different market. If you haven't already experienced the promo clip for 'Do what you like' (and to be fair they've made no attempt to hide it), it's worth setting aside a few minutes to potentially have your image of the quintet distorted forever. There's no subtle pandering to the gay market going on here, this is the sort of stuff that's usually seen only in sticky-floored Amsterdam porn booths - Gary Barlow and co frolicking around in tassled leather, indulging in homo-erotic jelly wrestling and licking lemon curd off each other's nutsacks (OK, I made that last one up). This is so fucking blatant that they might as well have grown Freddie Mercury tashes and filmed themselves dancing Maypole style around a giant plastic penis. Unsurprisingly, the single stiffed at #81 and the group swiftly adopted a marketing strategy catered towards little girls, one which paid dividends - almost exactly two years after the single's release, 'Pray' netted them the first of 11 #1 singles. So let this be a lesson to aspiring hitmakers - having someone film you cavorting around in a studded jockstrap whilst smearing whipped cream on another man's nipples might seem a bad idea at the time, but these are the sacrifices it takes to become a true musical legend.

1. Wilson Phillips - Hold on

After such a landslide of rhinocerous dung, my choice for worst offender on this list may come as somewhat of a surprise and an anticlimax. Let me explain myself. Though it doesn't feature poorly choreographed dance routines, cheap special effects, garish colour schemes or disturbing leather-clad food fights, 'Hold On' makes me grimace in utter disgust more than all the previous videos combined. This insipid slab of early 90s balladry and its accompanying promo clip embody everything I hate about American pop music - all bright white teeth, wholesome landscape shots and simpering declarations of self-belief. Despite the lyrics acting as a paean to the disheartened and needy, nothing makes me long for the encroaching apocalypse more than this nauseating wet fart of song and its shitty fucking video. I hate the hideous fucking clothes, I hate the whining naivety radiating from the face of each of these three harridans and I hate the beachside march of strident self confidence as the song's coda erupts like Beelzebub evacuating his bowels after 38 pints of Guinness and vat of undercooked seafood. I can only sit through this hideous vaginal belch of a video by imagining Poseidon rising enraged from the ocean and skewering these three hags on his trident before slow-roasting them over the nearest volcano and feeding them to the flying monkeys of Satan whose high-pitched cackles as they scatter the bones of Wilson Phillips to the four breezes finally drown out the unholy din of the song itself and leave the world in blissful, exhalted serenity. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Anyway, that brings us to the end of our rollercoaster ride of visual excretion. I hope you enjoyed it (OK, 'enjoyed' might not be the right word but I hope you found it vaguely stimulating) and please feel free to use the comments to point out any glaring omissions. And if you feel I've not done Wilson Phillips justice, I'd just love to hear from you.

2011 - Not feeling it

My intentions on re-starting this blog were to spend less time ranting about stuff I don't like and more time raving about stuff that I do like, so my first instinct was to bypass a 'Worst of' list altogether. But, then again, why miss such an opportunity? With that in mind, here's my list of disappointments from last year's recorded output - rather than picking stuff like Ed Sheeran that I was never going to like and ripping on it, I've stuck to records that I was at least halfway interested in hearing, only to discover that they were a bit crap. Feel free to listen to them yourself and make up your own mind, but for my money the following ten albums fall way short of the mark. Or, in modern parlance, they blow dick for skittles.

WU LYF - Go tell fire to the moutain

These guys should be renamed WTF in honour of the slew of unremarkable bollocks they threw out by way of a debut. What exactly is so great about a bunch of guys from Manchester singing about 'Bros' over a church organ and some flaccid Afrobeat riffs? Another exercise is misjudged hype for an upcoming UK act, I had high hopes for these dudes but their record was a turgid load of soundalike crap with no outstanding tunes and some of the year's most irritating vocals. For clarity's sake let me assure you that they have no connection with the Wu Tang Clan, their record is shite and any attempt to engage with their music will make your LYF miserable.

Tuneyards - Whokill

A favourite of the Guardian/Pitchfork crew, I had a sneaky suspicion that this wasn't going to be my cup of tea before I even heard it. But you have to remain open-minded about these things. Ten tracks of meandering free jazz bollocks later I wished I'd listened to my instinct and ignored the fucking thing. This is the sort of crap those irritating hippies at the Occupy protests probably cream themselves over - pretentious pseudo-African jam session wankery churned out by some bird that everyone is proclaiming as some sort of musical genius because she records drum loops live on stage and plays the fucking ukelele. And she spells her band name in a daft way too. What more do you need to know? tHiS FUcKiNg SUckS.


Morbid Angel - Illud Divinum Insanus

OK, not one that would have crossed the path of those of you uninterested in death metal but this merits a mention for the way in which Morbid Angel managed to surprise and offend huge sections of their fanbase with their first new material in eight years. David Vincent's return to the fold was widely applauded and yielded some amazing live shows but his interval years spent playing as part of Genitorturers was always going to rear its head at some point. It wasn't so much the excerpts of Skeletor techno the band tried to crowbar in, it was the weakness of their straightforward death metal material that prompted disappointment (at least when they still had Steve Tucker at the helm they could break out the humongously heavy shit). A brave move but ultimately a futile one.

Dropkick Murphys - Going out in style

When I first got into them, DKM were full-frontal punk rock, fast and aggressive in all the right places without the holier-than-thou humourless of standard hardcore. Fast forward a decade and they're throwing out increasingly toothless albums of cartoon Irish punk to audiences that look like they'd be more at home at an Avril Lavigne show. I've got nothing against bands growing up, and it's perhaps inevitable that their material was going to become more and more family friendly and consequently less potent but did they really need become so fucking domesticated? All they need now are recurring cameos on some shitty US sitcom about the average Irish-American family and we'll have a full on career prolapse on our hands.


The View - Bread and Circuses

In retrospect, The View's debut 'Hats off to the Buskers' dropped just before the door slammed shut on the British rock boom of the mid-noughties. They managed to notch up a #1 album and rack up a few hits but their fall from grace since 'Same Jeans' went top 3 in early 2007 has been tragic to behold yet somehow inevitable. Even a stonking follow-up in 2009 couldn't stop the rot - all the singles flopped and they disappeared from view completely (no pun intended). 'Bread and Circuses' will change positively nothing in all that - it's not an awful record by any length but the sheer lack of ambition of it seems doomed to keep them in indie obscurity for the near future. I still believe they could come back with something brilliant if they can stay off the drugs long enough to record it, but for now they're back in the bargain bin. Bummer.


Panda Bear - Tomboy

The Bear's previous effort 'Person Pitch' (also a highlight of 2007) was an absolute belter and proved the gateway (at least for me) to the world of Animal Collective and their oddball hypnotic charms. Thing is, the Collective have still only done one decent album for my money (2009's 'Merriweather Post Pavillion') and the rest of their stuff tends to veer towards nondescript sonic mush, nice enough if you're sat around too sedated to change it to something more interesting but ultimately not worth shelling out actual money for. 'Tomboy' unfortunately falls into this category - where 'Person Pitch' was fascinating and trance-like, this is just meandering and vaguely ethereal but won't have you rushing back for a second listen. Four years is a long time between albums too and you have to wonder if anyone's still interested.

Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Another Radiohead album. Great. Am I the only one who found 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' pleasing on the ear but had to practically force myself to give a shit about any of their later releases? So they bypass record companies and sell their own stuff for negociable prices? BIG DEAL. That just sounds like a gimmick to distract you from the fact that nobody apart from anally-fixated Radiohead fanatics and smarmy music journalists give a flying fuck when they put out a new record. This whole album flew by without diverting my attention once from scratching my bollocks or whatever I was doing whilst streaming it - hardly justification for the number of 'best of 2011' lists it's made its way onto. Unless you're one of their long term advocates, there are ZILLIONS of other records worth listening to right now above this.


Metallica & Lou Reed - Lulu

Do I really need to explain this one? Truth be told I gave up on Metallica a LONG time ago but even my inherent cynicism towards their new stuff couldn't have prepared me for this. The metal equivalent of that Kevin Rowland record where he started performing in drag, 'Lulu' is a masterclass in patience-testing pretentiousness that will satisfy fans of neither artist. You have to feel for 'tallica followers, they've been put through a lot over the years with shitty covers albums, classical reworkings, rehab movies and numerous money-grabbing attempts to capitalise on their 80s heyday but THIS? Look up 'I AM A TABLE' on Youtube and watch their fans quarrel over whether Hetfield and co have lost their minds, it's hilarious.


M83 - Hurry up we're dreaming

This is maybe a little harsh as I'd originally shortlisted it for the best-of selection but changed my mind as the charm wore a little thin. Basically a double album soundtrack to a brother and sister locked in 80s nostalgia dreamland, the more I listened to kids' voices wibbling about 'cupcakes', the more it reminded me why I don't like Michel Gondry films and this could be the perfect soundtrack to one of his more dorky efforts. Not ultimately an unpleasant listen, it just feels a wee bit contrived and stuck in and inwardly looking rut of cultural nostalgia. Twee, self-indulgent and overlong, it just lacks BALLS. Again not a bad record per se but doubtless one made for folks more forgiving than myself. It's just too fucking NICE for my tastes.


PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Hahahaha! Go ahead and choke on your drink. Let me explain myself - this is actually a really good album. My logic in including it on this list is just to point out that it's not significantly better than any other PJ Harvey album out there, she's been cranking out consistently good records for two decades now and they only seem to get picked up on when the rest of the contenders for 'most awesome album of the year' are so far below par that her record rises effortlessly to the summit (see 'Stories from the city....' in 2000 for another example). Polly Jean merely acts as a barometer against which you can measure the mediocrity of the rest of the music industry - right now she's showing up how average the competition is. Don't let that put you off this record, it's great - just no better or worse than her other ones.

(Nearly) Best of 2011

Obviously there were more than ten decent records released in 2011, so here's another ten that could easily have made my list but fell just short of the final cut :


David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time

Nothing too surprising on here if you're a serious Lynchead - eerie Americana much like the incidental music from his flicks. Karen O guests on the opening track but he's resisted bringing in a bunch of hipster indie guest vocalists to rake in the cash and done most of the hard work himself. This sounds like the audio equivalent of those photo exhibitions he does with stuff like half-melted snowmen in Mid-Western back yards and bleak landscape shots. Nice stuff Dave, now quit wasting your time opening Parisian nightclubs I can't afford to go to and make another fucking film.

Wild Flag - s/t

Girl band royalty form new band (I don't like the term supergroup) and crank out bitchin' debut record! I was never that into Sleater-Kinney but when I heard that two of them had teamed up with the chick from 90s grunge starlets Helium, I was pretty keen to hear the results which turned out to be pretty damn good. Four-way girl rock in the vein of early Breeders, the pop end of L7 and the best bits of all their previous groups, this is a big colourful treat of a record. Everything on here is bright, snappy and life-affirming - they slot in perfectly with the current crop of girl groups that they influenced back in the day and keep it fresh, new and catchy. Welcome back!


Jesu - Ascension

Justin Broadrick nails it AGAIN - nobody else can do sad/heavy in quite the same way as this guy. In the post-Godflesh landscape he's started well and gotten even better - 'Ascension' matches their unfeasibly great debut from 2005 and see their sound swell and evolve to new heights of gorgeous melancholy. Jesu are like the audio equivalent of Vicks Vapo-Rub - a tonic to your ills that makes the recovery process almost worth getting sick for. Visceral yet soothing at the same time, this is a redemptive journey to the higher spheres of guitar music. Ascendant, if you will.


Cat's Eyes - s/t

Faris from The Horrors plus some chick that sounds like Nancy Sinatra go retro and pull off an unexpected blinder. I say that because side projects often suck, mainly due to the fact that they often represent vanity projects made up of material the creator's other groups rightly turned down because it wasn't any good. Fortunately, The Horrors are a group of such weirdos that any one of them could probably go away and knock together something decent that sounds nothing like their other stuff. This is half an hour of sublime 60s style girl band pop, great for playing in the club and a cracking debut, whether or not they follow it up.


Dum Dum Girls - Only in dreams

Another one that goes without saying. I'd have probably put this in my top ten had I not already done that with their debut in 2010 - this one sounds a bit more polished than their first one but they've lost none of their charm in the transition, Dee Dee's songs have just taken a step closer to becoming the massive hits they deserve to be. Every track on here is punchy, catchy and guaranteed to put a smile on your face - put all that in a live setting with four black-clad babes playing it and the smile gets even wider, at least in my case. Same time next year ladies?


Africa Hitech - 93 Million Miles

Looking back at my list it seems somewhat dominated by rock music, which is probably as good a reply as you'll need to the continued assertion in the hipster press that 'guitar music is dead'. That's not to say there wasn't any decent electronic stuff this year, but there's plenty of zeitgeist-chasing to put you off the genre. '93 million miles' fall through the cracks a bit, eschewing underground scene trends as well as anthemic commercialism to bring you an eclectic mix of noobly bleeps and ponderous techno twiddling that's ideal for a bit of public transport headphone action. Mellow but not bland, colourful but not invasive, it's one tasty electronic slurpy.

The Pains of being pure at heart - Belong

Even the NME called these guys out for being pussies when this LP landed early last year. The NME!! I felt the same way about their first record but this follow-up had enough 4AD-style indie crunch to it to make me sit up and listen. This sounds like all those jumper clad Scottish indie groups, all girl/guy vocals and lyrics about general inadequecy offset with swathes of guitar noise - anything too twee and wimpy still gets balanced out with a good chunk of robust feedback and infectious volume. Nothing too original admittedly, but 'Belong' surprised me by how much it didn't suck and stayed on my stereo for much of early 2011.


Windmills by the Ocean - II

This is probably more of an EP than a full-length, five tracks clocking in at just under half an hour - that said, the LPs from Teeth and Cat's Eyes both lasted about that long so I suppose it depends what you do with the time at hand. I know absolutely nothing about Windmills apart from that they play colossal post-rock soundscape stuff and this is presumably their second record. This reminds me of Cult of Luna when they whip up a racket that makes you feel like you're on a cliff edge watching a sonic shitstorm bearing down on you. It's pretty fucking epic. If they can figure out a way to power wind turbines with this they'll coin it in.


The Fall - Ersatz GB

Another year, another good Fall album. Mark E. Smith is a bit like Lemmy these days - gnarly old dudes stuck in their ways who having been doing this shit so long that they can knock out a good album every year or two despite touring constantly and being about 1000 years old. I saw The Fall in April 2011 and they still knock you out - Smith's gone the tried and tested route of drafting in younger musicians to keep it fresh, including a rhythm section that look like they're fresh out of the local rugby league squad and another female keyboard player he's probably shagging. We need dudes like him to keep standards high. Keep 'em coming Mark!

Suuns - Zeroes QC

Another one I know virtually nothing about - I can't put my finger on what these guys are doing, there's elements of loopy electronica on here plus weird saxophone noises and plonky keyboard stuff, but they can lean back and rock out pretty hard when they want to. Their main strength is that every track on here is almost embarassingly catchy - this shit is addictive, I can't work out what's going on but I like it a lot. Like the Witch House stuff that landed in 2010, this holds a certain fascination for me because I don't know who the fuck they're making this music for. It's all too much to deal with. I love it, I just don't know why it exists.

Best of 2011

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to these year's countdown of the most bitchin' records in the universe. At least the ones I've taken the time to listen to - a man can only do so much. The following ten album all grabbed my attention at some point in 2011 and held on to it, so these are the ones I'd recommend to others - there's a few stock choices from the other 'Best of 2011' lists but also a couple of oddities that I chanced upon over the last 12 months, so I hope it gives you a few pointers or puts a smile on your face. Feel free to use the comments to suggest stuff I've missed - there's a list of an extra ten that nearly made it on the way plus the inevitable list of records that pissed me off too, but for the moment let's start with the good stuff.

1. The Vaccines - What did you expect from the Vaccines?

Probably a bit of an obvious choice for some, but if I had to pick one record that put a massive smile on my face last year then this is head and shoulders above the rest. I repeated the same error I've made countless times in the past by initially ignoring the latest pretty-boy indie sensation on the grounds that they were just another bunch of posh boys making shitty music that would be forgotten six months down the line - you'd think I'd have wised up seeing as I did exactly the same thing with The Drums, Bloc Party, The Strokes and various others only to adopt their cause further down the line. Anyway, once I'd pulled my head out of my arse and given their album a proper listen it turned into one of those records I played so much that I ended up having to wean myself off it so I didn't wear it out (figuratively speaking of course - I'm not sure you can wear out an MP3....).

'What did you expect....' rules precisely because it's nothing new - like most of the great indie debuts of the last two decades it's crammed full of potential singles and festival anthems, all of which are capable of prompting skinny jean stampedes towards the dancefloor. Growing up through Britpop and the noughties Strokes/Libertines fallout, I've been raised on this kind of shit so it's hard not to love it and it's probably even more endearing because nobody seems to make these kind of records any more, they're all too busy leaning over mixing consoles or growing beards and fucking off to live in the woods. The Vaccines know the value of short bursts of guitar pop, clever lyrics and massive anthemic indie choruses and they turn everything up to the max so that nothing gets stale, songs end before they get dull and singer Justin Young belts it all out at the top of his range (so much so that his vocal chords are apparently fucked already - go Justin!). 'Wreckin' Bar' sounds like the Ramones and probably sends the crowd mental, 'Norgaard' makes me smile because it's about a teenage supermodel, 'Wetsuit' gets me choked up, 'If you wanna' is on a par with 'I predict a riot' for indie omnipresence, 'and 'All in White' is probably gonna be used by the BBC sometime soon for one of their 'upcoming attractions' montages. There's no crap on here, and if guitar music hadn't totally disappeared from the singles charts then they'd probably have at least half a dozen hits at their disposal. This stuff is so catchy that the boy Sykes needs to be forcibly restrained when he hears it after a few drinks, lest his atonal singing along wake the neighbours and his poorly coordinated dancing result in him stomping on your foot and spilling your drink. The mark of a classic!

Check out : 'Norgaard', which just edges it as my favourite track. But check it all out and pick your own.

2. The Field - Looping State of Mind

It's all about the loop these days! Hypnotic repetition in 2011 was like mullets and saxophone solos in 1985 - indispensable to critical and commercial success. Which of course means that every fucker out there is trying to hop on the bandwagon and create the next 'classic', mostly to fairly tedious results. The one to break the mould and actually come out with something special turned out to be some weird Swedish guy known as The Field who totally knocked me sideways with this little gem (I normally make a point of ignoring anything Swedish and electronic on account of the long list of clever bugger hipster bullshit like The Knife that's come out over the years, although this dude gets a pass because he's ugly and his music rules). I liked the last Animal Collective record because they'd finally managed to merge the whole loop thing with tunes you could actually dance to but I still felt they didn't take it far enough - 'Looping State of Mind' does exactly that. This sounds like the stuff you'd hear emanating from the dance tent at some festival at 3am and end up wandering in only to get drawn into bopping away for hours, transfixed by the pulsating sounds that open up a private universe. Like The Orb's live record from '93, this guy establishes the arena he'll be working in upfront and then lets the hidden ingredients rise to the surface - only instead of appreciating all this whacked out on a bean bag in the chill-out room, it'll hit you when you're already out there on the floor. He's not trying to pump out anthems, he's in it for the three-hour DJ sets where the true experts can command the crowd like they're conducting an orchestra, like he knows what we want but only he has the skill to bring it out of us. Andrew Weatherall, Leftfield, Underworld.....only a chosen few can claim to do this, and I think this guy's on his way to joining them. And the coolest thing is that, as the title indicates, the whole album can be played on repeat without breaking the chain, meaning that you can loop this shit for hours until you finally get cramp and have to crawl back to your tent while everyone else is having breakfast. Maybe that's why he's called 'The Field'....it's already a festival classic!

Check out : Opener 'Is this power', a 9-minute orbit of this guy's planet. Stooopendous!

3=. Beady Eye - Different Gear, Still Speeding

3. = Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - s/t

I can't be arsed trying to choose between these two so I've just put both of them in to save argument. Which is perhaps ironic, seeing as Noel and Liam have spent most of their time slagging off each others' output in the press since Oasis fell apart a couple of years back. But, as is often the case when a decent band breaks up, the seperation yields better results than you'd expect. Instead of putting up with each other's shit for long enough to crank out another average Oasis record that their heart wasn't truly in, the two of them managed to go off in totally different directions and indulge themselves to come out with some cool new shit.

Both sound like they're free of the limits imposed by Oasis - Beady Eye is all about Liam pitching the tunes to his strengths as a vocalist, meaning lots of the Paul Macartney end of The Beatles in the melody department and some stonking Stones-esque rockers that the rest of the band can get their teeth into. 'Four Letter Word' boots the door wide open with some prime sonic sleaze, 'For Anyone' and 'The Beat goes on' sound tailor made for sweaty blokes in Reni hats to bellow along to at gigs and 'Bring the Light' sticks in a huge piano riff that Noel would've never allowed near an Oasis record. There's loads of retro revivalism going on here but it all sounds fresher than late period Oasis and with the band Liam's got behind him you know this stuff is going to sound great live - thumbs up to the boys!

Noel, on the other hand, gets a bit of peace and quiet for once and makes the most of it to lay down some seriously mellow stuff - whilst Liam is off perfecting his peacock strut, Noel's brought in strings and horns to augment his old-school melodic songwriting style. This is one to put on your headphones to smooth out a metro journey or a long car ride - catchy singalong tunes that showcase the dude's strengths not only as a songwriter but also as a singer (he only seemed to sing in Oasis when Liam couldn't cope with the vocal or didn't like the song - no wonder he's more chilled out now). This record's more Ray Davies than Mick Jagger, with Noel's lyrics planted in pastoral English pop - stuff happening on the village green, him living a dream in his record machine, that kind of thing. It could sound cheesy done by someone else but you know you're in good hands with Noel, just as with his political comments - he's an old-fashioned kind of guy but he's very rarely wrong.

So it's heads you win, tails you win with these two - who'd thought Oasis breaking up would turn out to be such a good thing? I'm still pissed off for these guys bailing on me at Rock en Seine a couple of years back but on this evidence I'm prepared to forgive them.

Check out : 'If I had a gun' from Noel and 'The Beat goes on' from Liam. It's a score draw.

4. The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

This nearly didn't make it on account of it being devilishly difficult to track down - I acually had to buy the fucking thing on CD in the end. On CD!!!! Are we back in 1997 or something???? Fortunately, Dutch 'Horror Soul' purveyors The Devil's Blood are worth the effort - I got a tip-off from Terrorizer magazine that this was worth a pop and it turned out to be the standout heavy record of the year. Built on the same premise as Japan's Ghost who broke through to the festival circuit in 2011, these guys play heavy psychedelic rock infused with a diabolic dose of Satanic imagery and occult mysticism coupled with a live act that will make you shit your pants with either excitement or terror, depending on what floats your boat. Their enigmatic female vocalist 'The Mouth of Satan' belts out the tunes like a creepier Grace Slick and regularly douses herself in pig's blood onstage, whilst the instrumental side of things is upheld by a leather-clad frontline of three hairy guitarists and a bassist sporting a similar stage garb of beards 'n' blood. You have to see this shit to believe it - she stands motionless onstage sporting a thousand yard stare while the rest of them trade solos and straddle monitors like modern day Iron Maiden, except that these folks are deadly serious. Their songs frequently rumble off towards the 10 minute mark and bear all the hallmarks of classic heavy rock - towering riffs, wild vocals and headbanging heavy metal rhythm. This is like an evil Jefferson Airplane, trippy psychedelia channeled through decades of sinister metal folklore and classic hard rock showmanship. Like a darker cousin to fellow psychedelic revivalists Tame Impala, The Devil's Blood draw on the same influences but take you somewhere different - if new psych rock is your thing, listen to Impala's 'Innerspeaker' on your headphones on the way to work and 'Thousandfold Epicentre' on the way home in the evening (dousing yourself in pig's blood while doing so will also guarentee you a seat on the metro). I can even recommend getting the CD version for the woo-hah batshit crazy artwork included with the deluxe edition - it's worth the extra investment, although there's no Ouijaboard included unfortunately. This is one intoxicating ride to the darkside - take advantage of their relative anonymity to catch these folks while they're a well-kept secret and indulge your senses in this diabolic delight.

Check out : 'Fire Burning' is the potential hit but check out the live show for a glimpse of the real deal.

5. The Horrors - Skying

If you'd have told me back in 2007 when their atonal goth-garage debut was one of the features in my 'worst of the year' list that The Horrors would be one of my favourite bands a few years later, I'd probably have punched you and poured my drink on your shoes. Times change I guess. There is also the not inconsiderable difference that these kids learnt to play their instruments in the meantime, allowing them to move away from the clunky scenester indie that had gotten them onto the cover of the NME before they'd even released anything towards richer fields of sonic scenery. It was a pretty steep learning curve too - 2009's 'Primary Colours' was a true shock to the system, prompting comments along the lines of 'Holy Crap! This is really good' from cynics such as myself. 'Skying' continues the journey, though it covers as much new ground as its predecessor - where 'Primary Colours' took in a love of drone and shoegaze, 'Skying' goes on from there to nestle in more synthetic, bass-driven elements. Their new sound is hard to put your finger on - weirdly, it reminds me a lot of The Human League, not just because Faris' voice sounds a fair bit like Phil Oakey's but more for the the way synths are the backbone of the entire sound rather than intrusive stabs into the song structure. If you check out 'Dare' it sounds like everything on there was built on top of the synth foundation and 'Skying' works the same way, keeping the guitar sound from the previous record but letting the keys lead the charge. It works astoundingly well - once again, the production nails it and you can really lose yourself in this shit on a good pair of headphones. In fact that's what I did coming up from a heavy dose of the flu over Xmas, much in the same way that I got into Underworld's 'Beaucoup Fish' over a decade earlier which ended up becoming my favourite record of the time. Sometimes it takes stuff like that to cement an album in your memory - if so, it was worth it, 'Skying' looks set to become my quintessentially 2011 record much like 'Beaucoup Fish' was all about 1999 (and, retrospectively, 'Dare' is totally 1981). Not bad from a bunch of kids I'd originally dismissed as clueless hipsters with shitty haircuts - I can't fucking wait to hear what this lot come up with next.

Check out : 'Endless Blue' - first you're floating on a lilo in the Tropics for a couple of minutes, then you get hit by a tidal wave of fuzz pedal. Best track by a country mile.

6. Arctic Monkeys - Suck it and see

Another band that's getting better with age, the Monkeys understood some time ago that songs about wearing trainers and getting beaten up in the queue for shitty nightclubs weren't gonna pay their way forever. Their position at the top of indie's food chain could only be maintained by changing tack, thus their Yorkshire stomping ground was abandoned both lyrically and physically for them to move Stateside and get Josh Homme on the case to beef their sound back up. 'Humbug' was a decent album but on the strength of their latest offering it seems increasingly transitional - 'Suck it' is a more solid setlist, free of any form of cultural jetlag and striking the perfect balance between their Northern feistyness and the encroaching influence of meaty US blues-rock. It's a totally logical evolution when you think about it - the Monkeys started out as a pretty funky bunch in their earliest days before tightly-strung indie was in vogue, and they now sound like they're taking their time and cranking out more potent, matured slabs of indie-rock rather than three minutes smash 'n' grab affairs about losing your bus fare. Alex Turner's always been good at writing from the crotch too, although here he's actually on more of a romantic trip - the title track sees him almost Elvis it up; 'Be cruel to me, cos I'm a fool for you'. That's probably why the quiff came in. Elsewhere, they get ballsy with cuts like 'Brick by Brick' and the ridiculous yet brilliant lead-off single 'Don't sit down cos I've moved your chair'. Their sound is seductively heavy and should sound amazing live - you tend to forget how tight a band they've always been - but the cocksure charm that brought them to the fore back in the mid-noughties hasn't dissipated, instead it's given them the balls to go out into the world and soak up other thrills. They're back stronger than ever, and this latest platter is meaty enough to satisfy lovers of solid, groovy rock without alienating the British indie crowd that fell in love with their wit back in 2005. Go get yer gums around this dear reader, you'll be glad you did.

Check out : The title track. I fucking love this song.

7. Battles - Gloss Drop

Is it rock? Is it art? Is it a great big pink blobby thing? Battles' second record is a hard one to categorise - having started off as a sort of angular noise-rock project, they promptly disappeared for a few years before returning to dump this generous dollop of weirdness into your speakers. I found their debut (2007's 'Mirrored') a bit difficult to get into, it just seemed like another bunch of dudes playing sproingy instrumental stuff. However, this new one conquered me pretty much straight away, mainly due to the embarassingly catchy lead single 'Ice Cream' which landed early in 2011. Built around a warped ice cream van jingle gradually accelerating into oblivion before bursting into a jarring dancefloor smash, it was probably the year's coolest single. Buoyed by this discovery I bagged the album when it landed and, though a few listens were needed before I could claim it as a favourite, overall they've kept up the quality where it matters. I think the main difference (though I'm loath to admit it as someone who hates musos) is that these guys can really play their instruments - they're not afraid to veer off into territory that would put a smile of the faces of jazz buffs, though they fortunately stay the right side of pretentious and manage to balance the avant garde with the eminently danceable throughout. There's plenty of high-end stuff like steel drums, bells and tambourines to bring a pop feel to it all but there's nothing lightweight going on here - these guys could lock in and blow you across the room if they wanted to, but in exercising restraint with the feedback pedal they've actually come up with something way more potent. There's elements of world music, jazz, afrobeat and what sounds like kids' TV theme music in here but none of it is throwaway or token - everything these guys have mixed in has been absorbed from the beat upwards, they've spread the net wide and come through with their own multicolour end product. In an age of fake whiteboy Afro-rock, frigid electronica and plastic synth fetishism, here's a bunch of guys who figured out how to strap in and play tight, dynamic rock before getting eclectic - they came through the hard way and it's proven worthwhile. And there's even a Gary Numan cameo!

Check out : 'Ice Cream', obviously. But check out the Numanoid on 'My Machines' too.

8. Chelsea Wolfe - Apokalypsis

More spooky shit. I couldn't decide between this and the David Lynch record when I was compiling this list but Chelsea got the winning vote on the grounds that I had a pretty good idea what Lynch's 'Crazy Clown Time' was gonna sound like, whereas this was a real surprise. Female singer-songwriters are ten a penny these days, and that's totally a good thing - the wide variety of musical ladies out there means there's something for everyone, or at least there should be. The post-Winehouse nu-soul stuff like Adele isn't really my cup of tea (though I have no particular objection to it either) but towards the murkier end of the female pysche there's some dark, dazzling stuff coming to the fore. Lana Del Ray pretty much out-Lynched the Lynchster with 'Video Games' and she's odds on to drop a stonking debut LP in 2012, but the fact that the track swamped the end of year polls and even got a nod from David Cameron made me think that she's destined to become the oddity in a lot of bland music collections, the audio equivalent of guys who fast-forwarded to all the lesbian bits in 'Mulholland Drive' rather than embracing the dark heart of the film as a whole. Chelsea Wolfe is at the other end of that particular spectrum - she's like 'Wild at Heart', part Laura Dern in bright red lipstick but mixed in with a stiff dose of Willem Defoe blowing his head off with a shotgun and that guy who wants it to be Christmas all the time. There's an AAARGH factor here that will shake off part-timers (notably the feral shrieking on 30-second opener 'Primal/Carnal') built on the echoic vibe of a sultry cabaret act. 'Apokalypsis' reminds me of Jarboe, though there's moments where she gets closer to Beth Gibbons of Portishead in all her mournful and despairing glory. And she's not leaning heavily on production or A-list musical support - the backing band keep their distance throughout, leaving her voice to put in the work and dominate proceedings. The thing I like about this most is that Chelsea seems happy to play the role full time - she's not just some college girl going through a burlesque phase, this is the real deal. She even does Burzum covers when she plays live! I'll admit I have a weakness for girls like this - ones with flashing neon signs above their heads saying 'This bitch is crazy!' but who nonetheless remain fascinatingly seductive. They're always bad news bears of course, the sort that'll give you a great night but as soon as you pop out for a pint of milk they're painting your wardrobe doors in menstrual blood. Save yourself the heartache and pencil in a late night session with a pot of strong coffee, 'Apokalypsis' on your headphones and the door firmly LOCKED. Even Varg Vikernes would be hiding behind the mixing desk from imaginary Tippex-eyed sirens after such a session. Surrender to the Wolfe gentlemen, you know it makes sense.

Check out : 'Demons' is CW at her most radio-friendly, but check out 'Pale on Pale' for a swim in murkier waters.

9. Weekend - Sports

This year's obligatory shoegaze release. I set myself the challenge of buying records that didn't all sound like My Bloody Valentine early in 2011, though not before I'd bagged this little gem. Weekend have their priorities straight from the get-go, vocals low in the mix and waves of fuzz pedal and feedback upfront over relentless bass and drums that propel you forward through a veritable wind tunnel of gorgeous noise. They take the blueprint one step further than their forerunners A Place To Bury Strangers, phasing out the grandstanding and filling in any empty spaces with swathes of white noise and rumbling bass. You'd expect watching these guys live would be like drowning in sonic soup, there's no air in there anywhere and the echoic vocals sound like they've been recorded in the lowest sublevels of the shoegaze netherworld. Think the Stone Roses' 'Don't Stop' spliced with early MBV and Joy Division's rhythm section, all black and white cold case aesthetics - the singer even reminds me a bit of Ian Curtis, not a compliment you dish out very readily. 'Sports' isn't totally lost to the darkside, there's enough in the way of hooks to make this every bit as listenable as their shoegaze contempories but no extremes are tuned down on the way to making a catchy record, everything on here is heavy, heavy stuff. One for running at night, sliding into the heavy end of a red wine stupour or simply disappearing into yourself in the wee small hours, 'Sports' is 45 minutes of drowning in low-end lysergia at the end of the universe. Go get.

Check out : 'End Times' and watch the stars collapse around you.

10. Teeth - Whatever

'Y'all think we care? Cos we donnnn't....'. Cue screechy Chicks on Speed vocals and clunky synthetic bompf bompf bompf. Teeth's second record pretty much spells it out to you from the start - this is hipster London electro and they're way too postmodern and cool to give a shit if you don't like it. Thing is....it's actually pretty good. I should stop reading NME reviews - 'Like unexpected prison sex on Christmas Day, it may provoke a mixture of conflicting emotions but none of them are likely to be boredom' wrote John Doran, a better music scribe than I'll ever be. 'Whatever' is a full-on racket, ten slabs of thumping electro-rave jammed with frantic bleeps and early 90s car alarm hardcore. None of it sounds like a labour of love, but the lack of finesse makes it all the more appealing - this is the sort of stuff music students come up with over all-night programming sessions on the wrong sort of drugs, a frantic mix of their favourite records of the previous 10 minutes all mashed into a series of bite-size chunks ready to fling out during their next DJ set hoping for the best. It probably speaks volumes that the band couldn't even be bothered to come up with a proper title or album cover for their endeavours. There's more than a passing resemblence to Crystal Castles here, though in truth Teeth probably have more in common with Atari Teenage Riot in their full-frontal delivery and reluctance to deviate from their chosen formula, eschewing Castles' more varied take on electro-rave in favour of pummelling you into submission with more of the same. It doesn't do them any harm though - 'Whatever' clocks in at just over half an hour, every second put to good use and any of the tracks on show would slot right into a hi-NRG DJ set at your local strobe temple. Deicide used to record death metal records along the same lines - keep it brief, stick to one theme (in their case, Satan rather than glowsticks), hammer your point home then get the fuck out before you start to bore people. Teeth, the electro legacy of Glen Benton is yours to treasure.

Check out : 'Flowers', three minutes inside the mind of every hyperactive child.

There you have it folks - stay tuned for the (nearly as) good, the bad and the downright ugly of last year which should be up here shortly.