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- Audio advent calendar: Evening commute playlist
13 December: So you made it into work thanks to Domino's morning commute playlist. Now here are some songs for your journey home ...
Yesterday Domino Records brought you its playlist for a Monday morning commute. Now you need something to survive the rush hour, right? Well, here's a hometime playlist and some words from the label:
Our second commute-themed playlist is the sound of celebration, rejoicing in the fact that another day of work is over, and the options of bed or a bar are suddenly available. Animal Collective at their most triumphant-sounding and the Feelies' comforting brand of "things are gonna be OK" pop figure alongside the propulsive racket of Caribou and the Fall. Put on your headphones and the let the music take you to a better place."
Listen to the Domino hometime playlist hereguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Mon the Cardle: X Factor gets the Biffy Clyro treatment
Die-hard Biffy fans might not like it, but as this recording in our studio shows, Many of Horror (now retitled When We Collide) has all the makings of a pop classic
Casual pop observers reacted with amusement to the prospect of X factor winner Matt Cardle releasing a cover of Biffy Clyro's Many of Horror as his debut single – because even though the Scottish band have had two top three albums, they're a slightly leftfield prospect, and not the sort of outfit you can imagine Dannii Minogue (Cardle's mentor) having much truck with.
The prospect hasn't felt so appetising to all Biffy fans, judging by some of the comments on the fan forum of the group's website: "Never thought Biffy would sell their souls to X Factor, Shame on YOU!!!!!!!! x" is scarcely atypical. It hasn't helped that the band haven't commented on the appropriation of one of their most moving songs (it is, of course, a ballad) by the 27-year-old painter and decorator turned puppet of evil Simon's empire.
But Biffy frontman Simon Neil seemed to have judged the mood of most of the UK when he told Scotland's Daily Record earlier this year: "I don't think [The X Factor is] a threat to 'real' music at all. It's just entertainment. Simon Cowell isn't the devil. He just wants to make shitloads of money."
Perhaps, however, it was as a sop to Biffy's sensitive followers, Team Biffy, that Cowell and co have seen fit to rename the song When We Collide; or perhaps it's because they're patronising bastards who can't imagine that the public would ever take to a song with "horror" in its title. Anyway, which version is better? Helpfully, Biffy came into the Guardian's studios earlier this year for an exclusive acoustic performance of the song (above), as part of our How I Wrote series. Actually, the worrying thought is that the Cardle and Cowell based their version on this one, not the one on Biffy's album. Given the rumours surrounding the song that Rebecca Ferguson might have released, the disappointment is total.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Albums of 2010, No 09: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti – Before Today
Ariel Pink's first album on a big label was no sell out – it was a fractured, frazzled oddity that confirmed his position as the godfather of 2010's lo-fi scene
One observation you could make about music in 2010 was that rock stars – you know, those charismatic people who say ludicrous things and hold guitars in sexy ways – were pretty thin on the ground. Where Gaga, Kanye and Nicki Minaj provided retina-scorching entertainment, the indie scene threw up awkward teenagers making music on laptops and hiding behind faded pictures of palm trees.
Despite this, several alternative scenes – chillwave, lo-fi garage, nostalgia-pop – did share a godhead in Ariel Pink. Don't get me wrong, Pink is hardly a "rock star" in the conventional sense – that should be pretty clear from the fact he likes to make drum noises with his armpits. But as Pink has inspired a new generation of new musicians – from the hippy vibes of Girls (who have played in his band Holy Shit) to the nostalgia-sampling pop of How to Dress Well – he seems mysterious and weird enough to merit the description.
Before Today was Pink's first release on a big indie label after years of recording hundreds of songs on to cassette tape (his mini "break" came when Animal Collective signed him to their Paw Tracks label in 2003). Those fearing a "sell-out" could relax – Before Today was no big-budget production. Rather it remained defiantly strange and scruffy while littered with big, catchy bits. This first ambushes you on the second track. Following the trap laid by opener Hot Body Rub – skronking horns over a motorik beat and some ghostly post-punk yelping – Bright Lit Skies sounds like Love at their most acid-damaged before a chorus ignites, as joyous as anything on the Hair soundtrack.
From here it's a dizzying surf through fragments of pop history, be it fuzzed-up punk (Butt-House Blondies) or references to underrated west coast group the Tyde (L'estat (Acc to the Widow's Maid)) and Joy Division (Revolution's a Lie). Amazingly, the end result remains coherent.
As a time-capsule piece to remember what alternative music sounded like in 2010, this fractured, frazzled oddity was the go-to album. It left your head spinning. And naturally for Ariel Pink, it also left you with little idea as to what he might do next.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Why I'm backing Cage Against the Machine for Christmas No 1
You can hate The X Factor's chart dominance without hating pop, which is why I'm backing these Cage fighters to bring some silence to the festive top spot
Last Monday, a group of musicians gathered in the intimate surroundings of Soho's Dean Street studio to record a charity single that they hope will compete against X Factor winner Matt Cardle for Christmas No 1. Except they didn't record any music, as you might have heard on the Guardian's live stream of the recording or the video above. The silent musicians, including the Kooks, Orbital, Enter Shikari, Dan Le Sac, Scroobius Pip, Suggs from Madness, and (by phone) Billy Bragg and Imogen Heap, were recording a cover of John Cage's 4'33", which features four minutes and 33 seconds of an orchestra not playing anything. Dubbed Cage Against the Machine after the success of last year's Rage Against the Machine bid, the hope is this silent protest will beat Cardle to the festive top spot. The cliche about doing charity work is you're not supposed to talk about it. But this may be the first charity recording where the artists were not allowed to sing or play an instrument either.
The silent musicians were speaking, or not speaking, for the silent masses, those who would take some festive cheer in any statement against Simon Cowell's monopolisation of the singles chart. In his recent book No Such Thing As Silence: John Cage's 4'33", the composer and former New York Times reviewer Kyle Gann suggested Cage "may have conceived the idea of his silent piece as a reaction to a postwar urban America and its near-constant soundtrack of muzak". Given the suffocating near omnipresence of The X Factor, reviving this silent protest seems a fitting response.
Accusations of cultural and musical snobbery don't really wash. To dislike The X Factor is not to dislike pop – Cowell's creation is not about creating great songs, it's about managing what is more a coronation than competition. The X Factor's stranglehold is so far reaching, from the tabloids to the Guardian, from Twitter to Facebook, that it becomes increasingly difficult not to get sucked into Cowell's world.
Cage described 4'33" as his most important work. If Cage Against the Machine beat Matt Cardle to the festive top spot then it would undoubtedly be the greatest work of some of these Cage fighters. Some wags might argue that for a couple of the artists involved, 4'33" is a vast improvement on their previous output. A bit harsh. Still, I for one will be wishing for a silent night this Christmas.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Albums of 2010, No 10: John Grant - Queen of Denmark
Largely unknown a year ago, the former Czars frontman surprised many with his weird and wired take on soft rock
Exclusive session: John Grant performs Where Dreams Go To DieLast year, John Grant was known to perhaps a handful of hipsters as the former frontman of the Czars, a band who enjoyed a measure of critical acclaim if not commercial success. Twelve months on, his name features in many 2010 roundups for an album that is one of the year's word-of-mouth triumphs.
After the Czars imploded, Grant descended into booze, drugs, suicidal thoughts and self-loathing, but subsequently had the kind of epiphany that can follow such a crisis. The result is a scarred but revelatory album. Queen of Denmark recalls Dennis (brother of Brian) Wilson's 1977 masterpiece, Pacific Ocean Blue: it has a similar feel of gazing out on to something endless and darkly inviting.
With Midlake as his backing band, Grant assembled a tapestry of flutes, piano, strings, eerie synths and gentle drums; almost a weird, wired take on 70s soft rock with some deliberate, ironic nods to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Dean Friedman. Marz and Where Dreams Go to Die take cocked glances at capitalist America while the perkier Jesus Hates Faggots pokes fun at redneck attitudes, which Grant was forced to endure as a gay child in a religious Colorado household.
But the sucker punch arrived with the emotionally wringing ballads Queen of Denmark, Sigourney Weaver and Caramel, on which the 41-year-old croons like a latterday, acid-scarred Sinatra. Grant has written almost supernaturally beautiful hymns of love, despair, chaos and ultimate redemption. His are the sort of songs that some artists spend their entire careers wishing they had written.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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