"What you are about to see is a mix of unrelated Youtube clips edited together"

Kutiman - Mother of All Funk Chords


Amazing.

[Plenty more of this madness of Kutiman's website]

Labels: links, Music, video

That's according to The Times, at least, who called her 2006 release Victim Of Truth the year's most criminally overlooked album.

The Nigerian hip-hop singer is hoping to overcome the critics' cold shoulders with her second CD, No Longer At Ease, which is trailled by the insanely funky single Heartbeat. It scores a commendable 95% on our booty jiggleometer.

Nneka - Heartbeat

Nneka - Heartbeat
by FourMusic

Radio One have playlisted the following club remix of the song - apparently because their audience now consists solely of the sort of person who swears by wet look gel and thinks foam parties are "sexy".

It doens't completely rip the heart out of the song, but it certainly dials the subtelty meter all the way down to zero.

Nneka - Heartbeat (Chase & Status remix)

Labels: Music, nneka, Radio, video

After weeks of listening to it on headphones and car stereos, I finally played the new Florence + The Machine CD through a decent pair of hi-fi speakers this week. Suddenly, a 6/10 album became 8/10.

The cacophony of Howl and Rabbit Heart separated out like a light through a prism, and the rumbling underscore of the drums became as crisp and dry as a cracker. In short, the whole experience made me very pretentious indeed.

The stand-out track on the album has always been, for me, The Drumming Song, and that will indeed be the next single. Nice to see that the director, Dawn Shadforth (also responsible for Kylie's iconic Can't Get You Out Of My Head) resisted the temptation to fill the screen full of percussion and instead focused on the song's devotional lyrics.

Good work all round.

Florence + The Machine - Drumming Song


Dawn Shadforth discussed the video with Dazed and Confused. Read it here.

Labels: florence and the machine, Music, video

Another potential number one? It's certainly one of the most unashamedly commercial songs I've heard this year. Her personality comes through much better in this video, too.

Pixie Lott - Boys & Girls


I got into a lot of trouble last week when I jokingly suggested on twitter that Pixie's latest was in fact a new single from Billie Piper. But watch this video and tell me you can't see the similarities.

Billie Piper - Girlfriend

Labels: billie, Music, pixie lott, video

Hello there. We have sourced some "new" bands on the internet for you. It might be great, or it might rubbish. It's hard to tell at this early stage, so don't get your hopes up. But have a listen and tell us what you think. All comments appreciated.

1) IT HURTS
Spooky synth duo with a "mysterious" MySpace page full of scans from vintage Italian magazines. But - oh no, Pitchfork readers!! - they're on a "major label".

It Hurts - Wonderful Life


2) PHOENIX
Phoenix are a French band who sprang to life as a backing band for Air. They've been around for ages, playing to the cool kids in empty clubs around Europe. But they're new to us and they might be new to you, too.

The band's fourth album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, is a top 20 SMASH in Germany. But don't let that put you off.

Phoenix - Lisztomania


3) BIG PINK
Imagine that MGMT had been transgenically mutated with mid-90s trappist monk enthusiasts Enigma, and you have imagined Big Pink. They are from London, they can't spell Dominos, and one of them is friends with Lily Allen.

Again, don't let that put you off.

Big Pink - Dominos


4) MARINA & THE DIAMONDAS
Alright, we've mentioned Marina before, but now we've seen her in concert and fallen properly in love. Mainly because she dances like Kate Bush. But also because of her top-rank melodies and perfect teeth.

Marina and the Diamonds - Obsessions


Tomorrow: Normal service will be resumed with a silly pop video by Pixie Lott.

Labels: big pink, it hurts, Lily Allen, marina and the diamonds, Music, phoenix, video

The following is not her new single... it's a "buzz track", whatever that means.

Things to note:
1) Natalie's "I ♥ NI" tattoo. Who knew she loved the people of Ulster so much?

2) A dance routine! In a Natalie Imbruglia video!

3) Despite the promise that her new material boasts a "slightly electronic Kate Bush" sound, this song isexactly like every other Natalie Imbruglia song you have ever heard.

4) Which is a good thing, obviously.

Natalie Imbruglia - Wild About It


The "proper" first single Want is out September 28th, followed by the album Come to Life on the 5th of October. It features (Oh dear God, no) three collaborations with Coldplay.

Labels: Music, natalie imbruglia, video

Swedish-American band A Camp can barely raise an eyebrow in the UK, never mind sell a record - but their seond album, Colonia, is undeniably one of this year's best.

The CD has wangled a release in the US recently - which is why there is suddenly a video for the record's second single, Love Has Left The Room, three months after it came out in the UK.

Funnily enough, this very song popped up on shuffle as I was driving home from holiday and I'd resolved to write something about it when the opportunity arose. The sublime lyrics, by ex-Cardigan, Nina Perrson, liken the end of a relationship to a hangover, when your entire body aches in the most horrible, physical way and yet the nausea is precious - a badge of honour, even - for what it reminds you of.

Here is the opening verse:

Love has left the room
The party is over
But I can't get sober
Obsession is towing me
Deep down, down

Love has left the room
It fled out the back door
When all that I asked for
Was evermore, or a real bye bye
You never said bye-bye

The video is a suitably moody, and captures the band's retro Americana sound with the use of some beautiful, bleached-out Super 8 photography. If you don't get the song first time round, have a few listens. I promise x 1,000,001 that you will love it.

A Camp - Love Has Left The Room

Labels: a camp, Music, video

Usually, when I disappear off on a sabattical**, nothing happens. Over the last week, however, there have been up to three (three!) big events on planet pop.

Here are they:

1. SHAKIRA BREAKS HER SPINE

During the filming of her new video, She-Wolf:





It's all incredibly sexy, in a "there is no way I would let this woman into my house" sort of way. I would embed the clip here but the UK exclusive has been given to MSN, who operate the world's most ugly video streaming site. Here is the link, Click on it if you dare.

2. MADONNA RELEASES MEDIOCRE SONG
Celebration is the title track of Madonna's latest Greatest Hits album, and is almost certain to be her last number one for Warner Bros (unless Tinchy Stryder has something out the same week). Produced by Paul Oakenfold, it's what old people would call a 'banging club tune' and the kids would call 'a bit dated'.

It brilliantly recalls the summery vibes of Everybody and Holiday - and there's a clever nod to Into The Groove in the lyrics - but the tune is a bit of an afterthought. In fact, when Jo Whiley played it on Radio One last week, a lot of texts came in saying it would sound better withough the vocals.

For those naysayers, here is the dub mix (which, it has to be said, is a vast improvement).

Madonna - Celebration (Paul Oakenfold Dub)
(

US readers can buy the track now on iTunes. Everyone else has to put up with a preview on Madonna.com until later this month.

3. SUGABABES DO A QUITE GOOD VIDEO

Like Monty Don, the Sugababes new single is a grower (yes, even though it is basically a club mix of Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy). When you watch the video, you will come to the realisation that, following a brief internal struggle, the group now belongs to Amelle Berrocca, or whatever her name is.

In the panoply of British girl band videos, it is a solid 7/10. But, because the song is so obviously a top-dollar US R&B production, you can't get away from the niggling suspicion that Rihanna would have done it better.

At the very least, she would have spent another fiver on the choreographer.

Sugababes - Get Sexy


* "random blogger"
** attempt to drown myself in alcohol

Labels: madonna, Music, Shakira, sugababes, video

Sorry for the short hiatus on the blog - but I'm away for a week on an alcohol research project. Normal service will be resumed on Monday, 3rd August.

Toodle-pip!
Mrdiscopop

Labels: discopop

"It was very easy to film," Victoria Hesketh told the BBC.

You don't say.

Labels: little boots, Music, video

It's Queen! It's Andrew Lloyd Webber! It's a Cossack Dance! It's Frank Sinatra! It's a Bond Theme! It's the deranged rantings of a paranoiac! It's Chopin!

In other words: Business as usual for the Museketeers.

Muse - United States of Eurasia


For those of you paying attention, the accompanying video has something to do with Muse hiding bits of the song all over Europe. Fans have spent the last week tracking them down like they were secret agents (not the glamourous ones who do the killing, the other ones who keep notes about what time they turn the lights off in Westminster).

Once all the pieces had been collected, they were stitched together and - hey presto! - a literally quite good album track was theirs for free.

Some people have too much time on their hands, eh readers?

Labels: muse, Music, video

How long can you resist the evil forces of advertising? Thirty seconds? A minute? Two minutes?

How about five seconds.

That's how long Madonna thinks she needs to brainwash you into forking out for her new greatest hits compilation, Celebration. This is the one that will re-package the songs already available on The Immaculate Collection (amazing) and GHV2 (as bad as the oh-my-god-it's-2001 name implies) with all the best bits from off of Confessions On A Dance Floor and Hard Candy. A mixed bag, in other words.

Here she is, pushing her product into your face via Youtube (Youtube). If you're easily influenced, look away now.

Madonna - Celebration trailers 1, 2 & 3


Reversing the tracks is incredibly clever. "If you can recognise this song, in five seconds, after we've fucked about with it," the advert implies, "it must be pretty damn recognisable."

I suspect it's also a very Madge-esque two fingers to the people who have accused her of hiding satanic messages in her songs over the years. For example:



Question for people with working ears: Does it really sound like Madonna is singing "Hear us, save us, Satan" in this clip? To me, it sounds like "Hear us, save us, Sat Nav" - which is pretty impressive, given that Like A Prayer predates GPS navigation systems by an entire calendar year.

Wait a minute... What was the point of this post again?

Labels: madonna, Music

It's no Brimful of Asha, but the new Cornershop record is a decent rip-off of Primal Scream ripping off Joe Cocker covering T-Rex.

Cornershop - Who Fingered Rock and Roll?


Is there any song that can't be improved by a trio of wailing divas screeching "yeah, yeah, yeaaaah" over the chorus? (Hint: No).

Labels: cornershop, Music, video

Passion Pit's new single, To Kingdom Come, features the following lyrical couplet:

"So now I hide in piles of princely orange peels
It feels the way you told me how it'd always feel"

Tautology aside, we're confused. How does it feel to hide in orange peel? Do the stringy bits get in your hair? If you had recently sustained an enormous amount of paper cuts in a tragic stationery cupboard incident, would the citrus sting? If there were also rose petals and cinnamon sticks available, would you be a human pot pourri?

In any case, why would someone have to hide in a pile of orange peel? I'm guessing it would have to be pretty situation-specific - like carrying out industrial espionage at Del Monte, or taking paparazzi shots of the Munch Bunch.

But the disguise would never work if you were, say, stalking some girl you fancied. Sooner or later, she'd be bound to say to herself: "Hang on, there isn't normally a massive, festering heap of oranges outside my house. How did that get there?"


And what would she think once she'd discovered your body inside the rapidly composting food waste? If you were very lucky, the pigment would have seeped into your pores and she'd some filthy attraction to Dale Winton. More likely, you'd end up on the sex offenders register, receiving disturbingly explicit emails from blubbery Tory politicians.

Passion Pit offer no resolution to this quandary in their video, which features the Massachusetts' quintet dressing up as mad scientists and doing mad sciencey things with a conical flask.

It is very disappointing.

Passion Pit - To Kingdom Come


PS: Passion Pit were particularly good at the Latitude Festival last weekend, even though the singer looked a bit like Rory McGrath. There was practically a stampede when they took to the stage. Nobody did that for Nick Cave.

PPS: Did I mention I was going to Latitude? That's why there were no updates at the end of last week. But you can read all about my "adventures" here, and here and here and here and here. Ta-ra!

Labels: discopop, links, Music, passion pit, video

Mika - We Are Golden


(ducks and awaits barrage of abusive comments)

Labels: mika, Music

Seattle art-rockers Modest Mouse are one of those bands people don't expect me to like because I predominantly write about and listen to pop music.

Well, they're wrong. Modest Mouse are amazing. Deranged, awkward and often uncomfortable to listen to - but consistently amazing.

When they are being particularly obstuse, the quintet sound like Leonard Cohen gargling with razor blades - but also make songs like Dashboard (below), which would propel me straight to the dancefloor of any disco stupid enough to play it.



The band have been secreted away for the last couple of months making some delicious new cacophony, and the first result is an MP3 called Perpetual Motion Machine. A kind of New Orleans big band bluegrass track, it's well worth a listen... Just head over to Spin.com, where the exclusive track is streaming / screaming right now.

Labels: modest mouse, MP3, Music

You can't really go wrong with a Kate Bush cover, but it certainly helps to have a gorgeous, melted butter popcorn soul voice. Whatever that means.

Here's MPHO giving it some welly.

MPHO - Running Up That Hill

Labels: kate bush, mpho, Music, video

*

When it comes to writing lyrics in English, Colombian pop star Shakira is equally touched by genius and madness.

Has there ever been a more passionate declaration of love than: "For you, I'd give up all I own and move to a communist country"? And has there ever been a more confusing come-on than: "Lucky that my breasts are small and humble / so you don't confuse them with mountains"?**

The English-language version of the 32-year-old's new single came out this morning, and it is - even by Shakira's lofty standards - a literary classic. Here are the highlights:

"Darling its no joke, this is lycanthropy"

"To look at the single man, I've got on me a special radar,
And the fire department's hotline in case I get in trouble later"

"Nocturnal creatures are not so prudent
The moon’s my teacher, and I’m her student"

"I'm starting to feel just a little abused, like a coffee machine in an office"

That last one may be the best lyric of all time, don't you think?

There's an MP3 of the song over at the Hard Candy blog, should you want to hear Shakira's potty poetry in a disco setting.

* If this is the official art-work, I hope the proof-reader notices they've mis-spelled Shakira's name
**These are rhetorical questions. There's no need to send a letter.

Labels: links, MP3, Music, Shakira

My limited edition Girls Aloud singles box set arrived in the post yesterday, and it is genuinely stupendous.

Listening back to the singles in chronological order (why have I never done this before?) paints a vivid picture of just how much this plucky, reality-show-band-that-could has achieved. They've been going for seven years now, you know. That's as long as the Beatles.

Okay... that's a ridiculous comparison, but Girls Aloud genuinely did smash the golden pop formula of the 1990s into tiny pieces. Then they gathered up the dust and used it to dot the "i" above their name.

In the process, they finally threw off pop's twin obsessions with Carnaby Street and US R&B to come up with something unique - a culture clash of every amazing sound ever committed to record, from the surf'n'bass of Sound Of The Underground to the cappucino heartbreak of The Loving Kind.

I'm choosing to ignore I Think We're Alone Now, obviously.

The box set's liner notes (by Popjustice guru Peter Robinson) are note-perfect, too, giving full credit to the dark artists of the band's songwriting team at Xenomania.

Chief among the team, it transpires, is Miranda Cooper. It is she who managed to lyrically transcribe the exuberant hedonism of five freshly mojito-minted superstars, in a way the Spice Girls always aspired to, but only ever achieved on Wannabe.

Sitting absorbing all of this pop history, I suddenly realised that I'd never seen the moment when Girls Aloud came into existence, live in front of an audience of millions. Luckily, Youtube has captured it for posterity.



Awwww, bless.

PS: If you want to give the box set a try, there are still a few left.

Labels: Girls Aloud, Music, TV

The opening scene of Beyoncé's new video lifts shamelessly from Ghostbusters, but that only makes me love her more.

Beyoncé - Sweet Dreams


Apparently, there's a "video album" version of I Am... Sasha Fierce out in the US. Does anyone know if it is coming to the UK?

Labels: Beyoncé, Music, video