I’m usually very good at flat pack stuff, but this one is more Shenyang than Sweden. More Oh Dear than Ikea. And so I haven’t managed to get much else done today (including the damn census). I did listen to Kae Tempest’s half hour live show/session on Mary-Ann Hobbs’ show this lunchtime though. It’s available online for another 29 days from today and you might want to give it a whirl, because they were excellent.
No, not this blog. And not cocaine, either, before you go rushing in there.
Neither of those accurately fit the description if you actually think about it.
Obviously, I’m talking about the new collab between Soft Cell and the Pet Shop Boys. This one:
It’s not great in any way shape or form except that it’s Soft Cell and the Pet Shop Boys and also… it’s obviously great. Because what’s not to like about Marc Almond in an ice cream van or the boys playing dominoes together in a quiet corner of a late 1970s pub?
Well, it’s the music, which is disappointingly ordinary and unremarkable. It’s terrible. And it’s also great. And addictive.
The sample seems to have been lifted from Love Is A Bourgeois Construct (which has history on this blog) and the synth from Always On My Mind. And these guys have all repeatedly earned their musical full colours years and years ago: they don’t have to prove a damn thing to anyone.
It’s terrible, but it’s also addictive. I’ve listened to it 37 times since yesterday.
No. Not me. And probably not you, statistically speaking.
But 6 Music turns 20 today, so happy birthday to it.
My spiritual, musical home, not always a harmonious (pun actually intended) relationship, but sometimes things need to be a bit challenging and difficult. It’s also both the reason that I use Spotify, and the reason that I don’t use Spotify very much. Because I don’t have the luxury of a local record store, so I need to get my (non-radio) music fix somewhere, but I’m more often listening to the radio in the first place.
And on those odd occasions when I do accidentally tune into some local station, whether it’s one meant for my demographic or not, I thank my lucky stars that the internet and the BBC Sounds app exists. Because there would be misery and death all around if I had to listen to the aural pollutants that SABC and Primedia push out 24/7.
So here’s to another 20 years and beyond. Happy Birthday, 6 Music.
I mean it. I’ve looked at the audience that I know this blog has, and I can’t see anything but derision and incredulity coming my way for sharing this. I know that already a lot of people don’t go for the music posts I put on here (but MMIRIM), and even more people won’t like this song. Perhaps even people who don’t read this blog. In fact, almost certainly people who don’t read this blog. Many people.
They – Visages from Toulouse, Strategy from Salford (shame) – won’t mind. We’re all well out of their target audience.
Because it’s niche, it’s underground; it’s not usually even my sort of thing, but I heard it at just the right time and in just the right mood for it to make its mark. But it’s really very good.
It’s deep and bassy. It’s dark and brooding and sinister and threatening. You can only guess what sort of mood I was in. (I mean, the adjectives are all there.)
In fact, it wouldn’t have even made it onto the blog were it not for one particular line which I had to triple listen to just to make sure I had got it right. Because I thought I had heard all the insults there were to hear. People seem to love to tell me them in emails, comments, on social media and in person. I am insult magnetic. But there is always room for new blood in the insult game. And this one was full of fresh plasma and red cells. Because from about 3:56 in (and please pardon the language), I think he’s saying:
Go with the flow, yeah I wrote this one On an old iPhone with a broken screen Think you’re gonna try test man with a verse like that You’re a fucking aubergine.
I mean, look, it scans. It somehow works (it’s mainly thanks to the drawn out tri-syllabic eggplant reference), but still… Is that really the best the he could come up with? Or is this characteristic – common, even – as the sort of diss what the yoof is frowing down these days?
Wow. Specific vegetables* as slights and slurs now? Really? Well, just bring it on, you bloomin’ heirloom tomatoes!
*technically, aubergines, fucking ones or otherwise, are berries, but: “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.”
