Sunday 7 October 2012

Listening Club - 7th October 2012

Greetings to you all!

A crisp sunny day here in London, so I think an afternoon of fine lunching and city strolling is in order. Days like this I rather miss Hove seafront, which on a clear, windless day is a mighty fine place to promenade, however, in reality, a windless day down there is about as likely as somebody picking "The Dream Of The Blue Turtles" for #LC, so the bulk of the fun usually comes from watching parents trying to stop their toddlers being elevated by the elements and swept off by their mittens into the middle distance. Ah, the beauty of the rose-tinted imagination, eh?

Back on planet #LC, last week @FaberFedor chose to stretch the non-existent Rules Of The Club in a most excellent way, by picking episode 1 of Tim Baker's "Digital Debris" podcast, which was all very Hell-themed indeed. The longest #LC to date, but pretty much everyone went the distance and were considerably rewarded. A great mix, thanks to @FaberFedor for the pick, and for flipping the #LC frisbee across to @JayeSoFine for this week's choice...

"Here we go again…

OK, before we go any further if you can’t stand miserablist thought provoking lyrics walk away from this Listening Club NOW! If you’re of the disposition that Morrissey* makes you suicidal then I don’t want to be the one to send you over the edge, we don’t need ‘Listening Club Suicide Pact’ plastered all over the tabloids, do we now…

So, this Listening Club is the first album that I’m bringing to the twitter/download/Mixcloud table that people should get/have heard straight off or at least in my head everyone should’ve heard of this artist and be fully signed up to the ??????? is a genius fan club. To me this is the equivalent of choosing Radiohead’s OK Computer**, surely you know it?  But maybe you’ll not, you never really know who’s heard of what on the internet these days.

I’ve been following the tribulations of this guys career almost since the beginning thanks to a track slipped into a 2 Many DJ’s mix around 2003/4 to which I instantly became hooked. For a few brief years he was the cool kids name to drop, producing some amazing remixes for Kylie, Chromeo and Soulwax but thanks to a leaked second album and a supposed hissy fit with his record label he appeared to disappear.

In 2010 he returned with tonight’s album, and I have to say initially I was a bit disappointed after the grinding dirtiness of the first two albums. With hind sight I think that this is probably his best and shows far more subtlety and restraint as well as showing off his song writing skills, musicianship and production skills. I think this album has similarities to the Dan Deacon album as well as similarities with all the albums I’ve bought to Listening Club, Andrew Weatherall, Leslie Winner, Bonaparte in so much as it’s just one person who made this album.***

One person who does everything, writes the music, the words, records the music, makes it gleam, mixes it to perfection and then designs the graphics too. I just find that level of involvement and drive inspirational.

What also beggars belief about this artist is that up until recently no record label would touch him, every cool label it would appear has turned him down at some point which is insanity! The advantage of this is that he’s released his entire back catalogue as well as his amazing new album on Bandcamp.

Anyway, I’ll stop my gushing and see you at 8pm Sunday for the usual random tweets, factual inaccuracies and thinly veiled innuendo…

Enjoy!

*This album is not by nor in anyway related to the works of Morrissey, he was the first most popularist miserablist I could think of.

**A vastly over rated group.

***may be factually incorrect as there is so little info about him."

Okay, there you have it. Download is here (direct Dropbox link) or you can listen via Mixcloud here, if the gods are merciful!

Start time, as always, is 8pm BST (GMT+1). Search #listeningclub to see what's going on, and follow@listeningclub for the admin.

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