Lost in Translation

What can you really achieve from education? When I was seven years old I started learning French from Mr. Baker, a gargantuan and stern man with bristly nasal hair. Latin started at eight years and ancient Greek at about twelve. Italian lasted an "anno" when I started my new school and was swiftly replaced by Spanish.
All of this, quite honestly, has come to nothing. I can't understand a single word of these songs, though to be fair to Mr. Baker I suspect they might actually be in English.
Mr. Vegas is my new Linguistics mentor now and maybe, one day, I will understand.

Mr. Vegas - Wuk Di Money
Mr. Vegas - Nike Air (Hands In The Air)
Mr. Vegas - Heads High

Oh, and for good measure enjoy this old thing:

Carnival at Gaz's

I know it's Carnival when a five-trunked pink elephant is placed, calmly, outside Nahals cornershop. Its glittering array of jewellery and fearsome tusks confront me, lonesome and shuffling on a dawn quest for a fanta, triple A batteries and watery bacon. It is, I'm sure, one of the finest pieces of exotica ever to grace Talbot road. I almost left all my purchases at its majestic feet as an offering. The street, home to My Beautiful Laundrette, the Globe club and an upper-class waxing salon, gets its first taste of magic since I threw up a mixture of white-lightning and coconut...or this time last year. Gazs Rockin' Blues comes West. Over the morning, watching from a doorstep, I saw a square-rigged pirate schooner, the Taj Mahal and a crane/air balloon assemble. Peacefully, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary. I wish I had the set GRB played, a joy of easystepping beats and t'rilling ska. Everybody sort of lets loose, dancing like they're limbering up for some interprative drama, while a bloke in a fez blows bubbles, two ladies gyrate in leopard leotards and Gaz, in a top-hat and braces, brings his unique accent to a bunch of temporarily very happy people. Oh, and his band the Trojans played live; the second-hand bookseller from Portobello Market pigeon-heading out the bass. It's sweet smelling music.

Here's something from the Trojans, an example-

The Trojans - Ringo

The Trojans - Anti-Racist

http://www.zshare.net/audio/18187411a8d2b652/

All-embracing Floor-embracing

(he was alright)

Funeral Melody (7-5)

Morning Music. These are some of the songs I wake to. The worst thing is that early hours are not a good time for me and this means that it takes great effort and aural diligence to draw myself to my normal placid and focused ways of being. These songs are my mantras. They start slow and build up. They gently nag at you to brush your teeth, maybe even floss or get your breakfast and they now are all yours.
Enjoy.

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Old Panda Days (Removed by request)
The Embassy - Some Indulgence
The Blow - Hey Boy
Blur - Mellow Song
Minutemen - Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?
The Blow - Why Don't You

Juicy

RATATAT MIX

If this doesn't get you in the mood for carnival tomorrow then nothing will. 

Native Korean Rock - Karen O's Seoul

You get the feeling that Karen O wrote all the songs for her side-project out at sea, staring at a full moon from a boat surrounded only by sea and darkness. There's a swaying calm in all of the songs, even the background noise in the demos sounds a little like water. A couple of short gigs in NYC are, so far, the only places North Korean Rock have washed up. The malestromette of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is protective of her romantic side, vulnerable as a fledgling project but also in it's haunting lyrics: "on goes the switch / love is soft / love's a fucking bitch /do i really need another habit like you? You I really need / do you need me too? / I believe it's gonna feel like new" NKR have been gestating for years already. What emerges is a heartbreaking collection of songs that palpably yearn; a beguiling inter-racial handshake of american and asian folk soaked in Pacific sea-spray. The sparsity of extraneous sound, it's just a guitar and a voice, sometime static pacing and gentle lilt give the songs a refreshing purity, a bit like a haiku. And Karen O sings with the edge of a lonely ghost. Her voice has that rawness that catches you into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but here it's slower, forlorn and more beautiful. Native Korean Rock entrance.

Native Korean Rock - Sunset Sun

Native Korean Rock - Rapt

Native Korean Rock - OOO

Damon Albarn's most recent use of his time and talent has been translating a 16th century Chinese novel into an opera. Monkey: Journey to the West is the beautiful offspring of his Eastern experimentation. A record immersed in the different, difficult scale, the complicated, labyrinthine culture and the challenges of producing a popopera it can almost, or at least by someone with more authority than me, be called a work of genius. "Heavenly Peach Banquet" is one such moment. It's excitingly modern and excitingly classical, the singer's voice high-pitched voice works like a fluttering bird around the staccato but melodic woodchime beat. It's an aftertaste to Karen O. In fact this has been a blog post for the palette.

Monkey - Heavenly_Peach_Banquet_mp3

QUICK MILLIONS

Mystery Jets, Metronomy, Late of the Pier: a crescendo

Mystery Jets - Diamonds in the Dark (Dusty Cabinets Mix)


The beat that pushes Dusty Cabinets remix of Diamonds in the Dark track is heavy-lidded, hypnotic and resonant. Nodding, shuffling and beggar-jerking are suited movements to the casusal rhythym and sandy maracas. Distant vocals, sometimes layered with echo, sound like they've had to swathe through a Sunday morning brain-cloud. The occassional skittering violin, like everything else, is muffled. The whole track feels warm and hazy, like I would imagine post-Yoga catharsis with a quart of whisky in your prostate, helpless body. It's music with the drunk man's smile. A drunk man lying on a lilo in the sun, remeniscing about the good old last night. Mystery Jets' recent album "Twenty One", even though produced by demi-god Erol Alkan, lacked sparkle (except on Flakes and Two Doors Down...), this track, ahem, doesn't.

Metronomy - Heartbreaker Kris Menace remix

Kris Menace has produced beautiful music, rearranging the original Metronomy track through a kaleidoscope. My favourite thing, let along song, of the last month. A similar punctuating beat to Diamonds in the Dark kicks things off, but oh my, I could listen to the intro for days. It sounds like the gentle underwater rave scene cut from the Little Mermaid - synth bubbles start to rise to the surface, a sound, perhaps, like a smiling merman playing on large clam shells in the steel-drum style. Straight notes after the delicate lattice of the intro tear in for the chorus, raw and Siberian like a wind that's been coming for months from the coldest parts of the Tundra. Calmer towards the end, Joseph Mount melds the words "heartbreaker" and "i'll break her" with a slight catch in his voice. I like this. Definitely keeping a look out for more Menace tracks.



Late of the Pier - Focker

Late of the Pier said they wanted to make music to make drugs redundant. Focker's overdose of synth and raucous heavy noise is synesthesia, I swear I see flashing lights everytime I hear it. I blink sunpsots. It's like an adrenaline shot. Sweat mats the hair to my head. It's almost like someone has plugged the leather crotches of a dozen Hells Angels, the tail of a liger, and three synthesisers into a huge amp as they all have a convulsive epileptic fit. Try it, [shivers], just try it.

They supported Justice once and I wasn't there, hard to type that with a clenched fist.

Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl

Once, I watched two girls kiss. A faint fragrance of Pineapple lay heavy in the air as the Breezers were pushed away. Nobody moved or spoke. Beatific smiles flowered on every face. A boy's placid palm cupped an unguarded breast, in much the same way that beggar touched Jesus. Hands are all over Katy Perry's mouthful of pop fun, DJ's crowd around like the teenagers in that house in Putney. They spin, mix, scratch and paw at her, layering, splicing and redressing the track into an electro negligee. These two are my favourite: Mr GASPAR cuts it up with some style, moving with the original chord changes, like a breakdancer waltzing with a bellydancer. Publics Mcfly funks like cheerleaders tripping out in their pom-poms.

Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl(Mr Gaspar)

Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl (Publics Mcfly)

To call "I Kissed a Girl" provocative in a serious manner, not just provoking hardons on the school run but breaking taboos and liberalising the US charts, is absurd. It's frivolous, the aural equivalent of a cherry lollypop. If you want issues to be challengingly dealt with, why not hand Germaine Greer the mike and join in a sing-along of "I'm raising a kid with two mommies and I like it".