Yes, I've done a roundup of the 2000s, with particular reference to, y'know, The Technical Music (this includes folktronica and cosmic disco, mind, so hopefully there's something for almost everyone). It was painful, as I am naturally allergic to lists on the whole, but - though I say so myself - I think it's come out alright. Certainly it explains the rise and rise of certain genres and subgenres in a way which I hope you may find edifying.

There's a few other interesting retrospective pieces up at http://theartsdesk.com too - all feedback as ever very much appreciated.

This is apropos of nothing really - just something stimulating while you try and prise yourself out of post-Xmas torpor. If you are interested in new/innovative/strange/psychedelic/electronic/groovy music, can I introduce you (if you're not already familiar with him) to Steven Ellison:

His grandma wrote and produced 'Love Hangover', and his auntie was Alice Coltrane. That's a pretty decent starting point I reckon. For the last 10 years, Steven, or Flying Lotus as he's now better known, has been making... well he's been making all sorts - I guess the easiest way of putting it is to say he makes what you might imagine trip-hop was like if it was genuinely trippy. There's everything in it from RZA-style looping and cutting up of old soul samples to electronic tweaking that the Aphex Twin would be jealous off - but the vital thing is that it all grooves. It can get pretty wiggy on occasion, and it's sophisticated even when it's silly, but it's all still about the groove - and this is kind of the direction that a huge section of the electronica world has been heading lately, which is nice.

Anyway, to celebrate his decade in music, he got his mate Gaslamp Killer to cut together lots of his unreleased tracks into a 35 minute summation of what he's about... it's here: http://www.brainfeedersite.com/

Further to the interesting insights into the perceived gap between the elctronic/club world and the rest of music that came up in the 'the Technical Music' thread a while back, I would be very interested to know what The Massive make of it, really.

Hello everybody. I'm not counting this as spam as a) it's 100% labour of love and b) I think you might be interested.

http://veryverymuch.com

It explains the whys and wherefores on the "about" bit of the site so I won't repeat that. There is a (much) extended version in two parts of the Mary Anne Hobbs interview I linked here a while back, with some extraordinary extra bits of colour, and some interviews with mavericks of the British music world who, while they may or may not be to your tastes musically, have a lot of interest to say. And there's a rather spiffing mix of Colombian music on there to boot. All feedback very welcome.

One interesting point: the data I'm getting back from the first few days online is that quite a lot of people are spending a long time looking at each page - that is to say, against all received wisdom, people are willing to read very long articles online.

You can't accuse him of making life easy for himself...

http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5601833/benefits-of-a-multicultural...

Let's not be cynical - while there are hundreds - thousands, even - of vacuous celebs, a lot of people who become famous are intelligent, ambitious and driven... So, who are the famous folk who have managed to make a side project or second career work well off the back of their celebrity? Ideally more interesting than Caprice's lingerie range, not that any of you were thinking of that anyway.

Off the top of my head, Woody Allen's trad jazz band isn't bad, I really like Lloyd Grossman's pasta sauces, and Ken from Bros has done pretty well for himself in the music industry... any more?

...you MUST like this, surely?

Easily the best Muppet thing post the death of Jim Henson, I think.

I would not normally spam on here; I present this purely because I think it might be of interest to the Massive, containing as it does stories about Peel, Paxman, Lydon and the like among much else of interest...

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=526:qa-m...

N.B. it is long, so make a cup of tea and maybe even a sandwich before you start.

I know The Word doesn't hold with "next big things", and rightly so, but I really feel that it would be criminal not to alert The Massive to the sounds of James Blake. "Cyborg Tim Buckley" were the words that sprung to mind... he's a great electronic producer (less audible on this track than some of his others) but also a singer and multi-instrumentalist of no small talent, as you can hopefully hear from this.

He's only got an EP and a few demos floating around but I believe an album deal is being "inked" and I think you'll be hearing a fair bit of him next year. I think he's only about 20, too.

The mention of Mark King in a previous thread made me remember that my ex-girlfriend's dad installed King's kitchen in the Isle of Wight.

but I have an even lamer claim to fame thn that:

My brother's best mate when he was 15's trombone teacher was Miles Hunt from the Wonderstuff's Uncle!!

Can anyone do lamer?

OK this is partly market research, partly pure curiosity.

I work for both The Word and Mixmag, and even allowing for reader demographics, it consistently surprises me how much they are worlds apart - and indeed how it feels like dance/electronic music is STILL somehow "other" to the general music fan.

It's 20 plus years since rave begun, and we've all seen Massive Attack, Orbital, The Orb, Leftfield, Prodigy, Bjork etc etc sit squarely in the mainstream - and nowadays there are endless areas of crossover, whether it be Goldfrapp, Burial, Hot Chip, La Roux, the gorgeous melancholy techno of Kompakt records or whatever - and yet there is still a sense that if we talk about a dance record in the mainstream press we need to be apologetic towards rock fans, to make excuses, to say "it's not all doof-doof-doof-doof pillmonkey music, honest!".

The Word is far better than most on this front - lots of the regular writers enjoy and write eloquently about electronic music: the wonderful Radiophonic feature this month and Rob's sterling advocacy for the Prodigy last month being cases in point. But even so, it's hard to shake off this idea of "otherness" that hangs around anything that goes "bleep".

So I'd just like to ask The Massive: does dance and electronic music feel like a separate realm to guitar-based stuff, or even somehow alien, and if so, why? And more important, what dance/electronic music do you like?

I was wary when I heard about Staff Benda Bilili, a crew of guys all rendered paraplegic by Polio who live rough in the grounds of Kinshasa zoo in the D.R.Congo and play Cuban-influenced grooves featuring a 17-year-old kid playing solos on a one-stringed tin can instrument of his own invention - it just sounds like it's too good to be true, or like there's some sort of freakshow or pity or gimmicky element to their appeal... and then I heard their music.

They. Are. AMAZING.

Check out the cheeky James Brown "interpolations" in this rough version of a song that appears on their forthcoming album...

I like 'My Family'. There, I've said it.

Kris Marshall's gurning aside, I think it's an excellent British sitcom in the tradition of domestic fear-and-loathing that gave us Hancock, Steptoe, Rising Damp, Alf Garnett and co. People seem to think it is somehow "cosy", but sit down and watch a whole episode and you realise it very often reaches right into the dark heart of family life.

Anyone else care to join the tv bad taste confessional?

Lucas Hare's "Wetrock" comment and mention of "Jeff Buckley's legacy" in the "Bands It's Fashionable To Hate" thread got me to thinking...

...would anyone have given two hoots for Jeff Buckley if he wasn't really really goodlooking?

I'm serious - ugly people aren't really allowed that degree of broodingness, are they?

So I never really got with the Plant/Krauss album. I liked it and all but it never grabbed me, you know, right there. Then I read the current issue of the very fabulous Believer magazine - http://www.believermag.com/ - and saw Greil Marcus discuss it as follows:

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - the old rocker and the bluegrass queen: Very nice people. Very polite. To each other and the songs, and to you. But all the singing is whispering and it was the dullest album of the year.

Onstage, though, fevor comes out - especially for Led Zeppelin songs that go back through the woods. On YouTube videos from this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Druids in "Battle of Evermore" take to the skies: two final minutes of furious mandolin slashing and Plant's snaggletoothed hair bucking ("Bring it back! Bring it back!" My God, are you sure? Bring that dragon back?) as if the notes have him on a trip wire. For "When the Levee Breaks" with Plant quieting Krauss's keening fiddle to let lines from Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" float through to be lost in the flood, the song sweeps up Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy, who recorded it in 1929, and walks their ghosts across the stage.

I bring this up because: a) He's entirely right about how astonishing the live renditions are. Watching it now the hairs on my arms are standing up all over again. b) It made me realise how much I think the Believer mag hits the same spots as The Word, and thus I felt I should recommend it here.

At last I've worked it out! There is only one category of rock artists who manage to maintain any creativity past middle-age: ones that sound like old men to start with.

Neil Young
Robert Wyatt
Leonard Cohen
Tom Waits
Bob Dylan.

All started their careers sounding like ornery old gits, and all still write good songs many decades later. So if you want to be creatively active into your dotage, the answer is clear: start croaking now!