http://www.no-future.com/erutufon/showthread.php?t=29999

Further to The Technical Music thread in which The Massive raised some very interesting points about whether and why dance and electronic music are seen as somehow a whole other realm to the rest of pop culture, I would like to put forward a friend's mix of classic acid house music above - because I know some will enjoy it, but also because I'm very curious to find out what Word folks' criteria for judging something like this are. There are SONGS on here (like Charles B's sublime 'Lack Of Love') and purely electronic workouts... but the structure - blended by a very skilled DJ over 90 or so minutes - is perhaps more how the tracks are meant to be heard than, say, individually at the end of a youtube link. For me, this is among the greatest pop cultural output ever created, and by any measure is very "musical", but I know that there are some who would find it no more so than a roadworks. But give it a go. Dance around your office if possible, and let us know what you think, and - crucially - why.

Apols if this has been done, I couldn't find a thread on this topic though.

You don't get enough songs that tell proper stories, do you?

I was reminded of this by 'Sweet & Dandy' in the "Dancin' Fool" discussion below, but I think the greatest story song ever is:

Anyone care to outbid that?

Is this beautiful or what?

from http://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/

I've been wondering how feasible it is to get it printed as actual wallpaper...

If you have not seen Plinkett Reviews: The Phantom Menace, I heartily recommend you do. It's seventy minutes of comedic brilliance (no, really) even if you are not interested in Star Wars, and despite its flippant tone is a lesson to all critics in how to back their arguments up with facts, logic and wit. It's a bit gross too, but that makes it all the better IMHO.

Anyway, the next installment arrives tonight, and it's NINETY minutes long

It will almost certainly be more worthy of your time than the actual film under discussion.

The 'London Calling' thread made me think of this. It's not just Q-mag-style "50 greatest of all time" lists with their implicit ridiculous claims to definitive nailing of the "rock" canon (inevitably with the same embarrasing token 'other' albums like What's Going On and Nation Of Millions) - even the idea of a "my personal top 10 albums" just does not compute with me. My brain just doesn't work like that.

I can understand, say, the Desert Island Discs concept of picking eight records that you wouldn't want to be without, but that will always be flagrantly arbitrary - and actually ranking them in order just fries my synapses. Does anyone else find themselves getting a headache if they start trying to "rank" albums?

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?