“A drone attack in a volatile tribal region of north-west Pakistan has killed at least five suspected militants, officials say.” (Source: BBC News)
Remember, suspected = innocent. But those people are still dead.
The frequency of the attacks has increased since President Barack Obama took office in 2008. More than 100 raids were reported in the area in 2010, and more than 60 took place last year.” (Source: BBC News)
Obama – a more efficient murderer. More here.
I liked NATW when I first started hearing them. I DJed their pop breakthrough, ‘Five Year’s Time.’ But I didn’t really like what I’d heard of the new album. I thought ‘Life Goes On’ (can’t be arsed to type in all the full stops) was a weird mix of Paul Young’s ‘Common People’ singingly and ‘Copacabana’ thematically.
Then, on Monday, I got infected by ‘Give It All Back.’
I was driving home after dropping my mate Nat at an exam. Driving along Acorn Way to Oakwood, the sun was out and the sky was a cool blue. A song started on Radio One. Then I heard these lyrics:
Oh well the world never seemed bigger
Than the summer of ’98
Living out in the suburbs
Planning my escape
I grew my hair to my shoulders
Formed a band with a couple of friends
And we called ourselves The Devil’s Playhouse
Influences like Bruce and The BandAnd we’d sing and play
Simple three chord rock and roll
And miles away
The other kids would just grow old
But we’re making our own way out
Yeah, we’re making our own way outWell we’d practice every week in my bedroom
While my parents were working in town
And one morning in our school assembly
Played a cover of “Don’t Let Me Down”
The performance was nervous and awkward
But the passion was real and profound
And the kids in the audience laughing
While the band just stared at the groundBut the victory
For the kids who believe in rock and roll
I know for me
That performance lives, it never grows old
But we’re making our own way out
Yeah we’re making our own way outWell I’d give it all back just to do it again
Yeah I’d turn back time, be with my friends
Yeah I’d give it all back just to do it again
Turn back time, be with my friends
Yeah I’d give it all back just to do it again
Turn back time and be with my friends
Yeah I’d give it all back just to do it again
Turn back time, be with my friends
Tonight
By the end of the song, I was crying. Not enough to crash the car but enough to drip onto my coat. I had to buy the album yesterday and since then I think I’ve listened to this song around fifty times. I’m infected by it, it’s hijacked my cells.
In the 2.56 the song lasts, NATW have managed to encapsulate perfectly my life as a musician.
I left school at 16 specifically to join a band. And I did. I played my first gig at 16, in 1982. I wrote my first song then. Yes, it was about a girl at school I was in love with, why are you even asking? And, yes, she was beautiful. I remember looking through the gaps between the buttons on her blouse when she sat next to me, seeing her breasts nestled in her bra. How could I *not* write my first song about her? She wore braces and I loved her lisp even more than her huge, soft eyes.
In the thirty years since I have grown and changed and matured and I have stayed exactly the same. I’m still writing songs about girls I’m hopelessly, stupidly in love with. I still spend a long time looking at their boobs, though I have permission nowadays. And I still have the dreams that NATW put into this song.
When you’re 16 and in your first band with your mates, there is a union, a bond you will never have again. Those first gigs, the drives out to fucking nowhere in crappy cars, not getting paid, arguing about petrol money. The post-gig grub and post-mortem. The stupid pranks boys in bands play on each other. All of those moments which seem so unimportant at the time are the most fleeting, magical things when you remember them.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my life as a musician now and I’m eternally thankful I’m able to do it as my full-time job.
But sometimes, I would give it all back just to do it again.
I’m a bit in love with my fairy lights + coathanger lighting. I think it brings out some lovely detail in people’s faces and particularly eyes. Now I’m trying to think of other new lighting options. Hrrmmm…
Click the pic for more of Kat looking cute! 
The astute Bzangy reader may have noticed a lot of new faces in portraits lately. Yep, I’m trying to push my portraiture further by working with as many new people as possible. Every new person is a different interaction and poses a different set of challenges. Sooo… I think novelty will help push me further. Let’s see! Not doing badly for 2012 already.
Click the pic for more!
Here’s some more pics from the day with Ellie, this time inside using my fairy light and coathanger advanced super-pro lighting!
Click the pic for more!
Had a great day with Ellie, she’d never posed for pics before but I think we got some lovely shots. Click the pic for more!
Some snaps from when I popped over to see my mate Mikey and have a walk across Branston Golf Course when it was bloody freezing! Pretty pics, though. Click the pic for more!
My mate Matt looking very dashing. He’s such a poser!
Sorcha wandering and doing a bit of horse-whispering. Click the pic for the gallery!
This year, I was stupid busy finishing off my new album so I didn’t have time to DJ for the last half of the year. But still, fuckloads of amazing new music came my way, both from new artists and old faves. As ever, although there is an order to this list, just to get on here is doing well as I had to narrow it down to forty albums out of around ninety!
These were my fave albums of 2011, click the bandname for more info!
More floaty than their previous album, glacial with an edge of electronic menace.
Brooding, pulsating, minimal electronic soundscapes. Some bits remind me of Terry Riley.
The opposite end of electronica, defiantly ’80s, phat and throbbing. In the best possible way, Miami Vice incidental music.
Dubby, toasty, blobby, farty and wonderful!
I don’t understand why this lot don’t get more hype – they’ve got lovely little pop songs, clad in the finest of bloopery and rattley reverb.
Such a fucking great pop band! And to be this shouty and loose but still catchy is a lovely surprise!
Marc Bianchi has this knack of being intimate and universal at the same time. Check this out if you’ve ever liked any indie pop/rock ever. Hints of Jon Brion too!
Fuck, I love this album! But how do I sell it to you? It’s beaty, electronic pop that’s a bit askew, like an off-centre wheel. There ya go!
This is a disco album, a funk album, an electronic album a dance album. Cut Copy keep on flowing, effortless pop.
AHK are mistresses and masters of twee, summery, golden indiepop. And if you like that, you’ll love this.
I’ve loved Reks for goddamn years and here he ropes in Premier and other luminaries to frame his awesome delivery with majestically awesome beats. Fuck.
Although I’d heard them, I didn’t really “get” CS till I saw them play a storming gig at Indietracks 2011. Now I’m in love with their dour channelling of Echo & The Bunnymen doing Felt covers.
More off-kilter pop. Some of it a bit scary, to be honest. But mmmm…
This is minimal, intimate electronic music. It whispers in your ear as it strokes the back of your knee. Oh, Robag!
SYG rock! Awesome live, too. Standout track, ‘Product Of The ’80s.’ Which I don’t really understand unless they’re all old fuckers like me?
If you can listen to ‘Talk-Along’ without getting a bit sniffly, your heart is made of dogpoo. Beautiful, heartfelt songs!
This is all that’s good about hip hop in 2011: rubbery, flubbery beats that make your head nod coupled with lyrics that echo around your head for weeks.
Ochre has this knack of constructing nanosymphonies of joy/sorrow, played by happy-faced millipedes. Clicky, leggy, often stridulating electronic beauty.
Why haven’t Pains broken through to Radio One? Plenty of people that rip them off shamelessly seem to have done just that this year. But those biters haven’t got their class or, most importantly, knack with a killer chorus.
Seven albums in and TLT sound like a band who find making lyrical, swoonsome pop music easy. The bastards.
Welsh popsters CC sound sooo fucking assured on this album, it’s chocker with little twiddly bits, massive choruses and a skipload of heart.
Laid back, country-tinged folkpop. Like being wrapped in a warm towel by your lover prior to a ravishing.
I love pop punk. Sometimes, people take the piss out of me for this. But as if I care ~ it means I’ve known perfect little worlds like the ones shared with me on this album.
Beautiful hip hop, can’t fault it. The beats, the rhymes, the life described in precise, sharp detail. Reminds me a bit of Native Tongues which is always good.
I can’t pigeonhole M83 easily. Yeah, the electro foundations are there but there’s so much else going on. Anguish, celebration, snippets of atmosphere between the songs proper. All of it great.
DCFC (heh) seem to be exploring more Krautrocky directions lately, whether it’s on ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’ from the last album or ‘Doors Unlocked And Open’ from this one. Whatever, they twist it into their own shape. When the chorus kicks in, that’s pure sunny delight!
Absconding from Dilated Peoples for a minute, Evidence uses his holiday to… well, make yet more fucking great hip hop. THANKS, EV!
CG are perfectly, raggedly raw on this album. ‘Yoona Baines’ just clangs and shreds along, all twisted tendons and bleeding lips. Shows the scope within the pop known as indie.
Fuck, I hate how BT can just launch into a song and within thirty seconds I’m singing along like I’ve been a country rock fan all my life. This album is irresistible pop.
I love AOQ but this album stunned me. The Kraftwerkian vocoders floating over the intertwining melodies before being battered by distortion, the pounding beach drums, all of it makes me want to jump around till I hit my head. As I said, stunning.
I fell in love with Digitalism the day I heard ‘Zdarlight’ and they don’t break my heart here. I fucking love them even more just for bringing a track as stupidly, four-on-the-floor addictive as ‘Blitz’ into my life. I lost myself in this album.
Alumni of Sage Francis’ label, Metermaids rock it hard and heavy. But their hip hop is as thoughtful as it is uncompromising. Immense lyrics.
Sublime, sunny synthpop, overflowing with catchy riffs and ‘eh?’ lyrics (the best kind). Do yourself a favour and check out ‘Wait And See’ at the very least.
Brilliant, wonky guitar pop. Whenever I DJed ‘This Night’ earlier in the year, I’d always get peeps asking who it was. That’s great pop for you!
Now, I must declare bias here: I loved this album so much that I got in touch with the band. And I’m meant to be remixing a track of it. But, in my defence, I have done fuck-all as I’ve been too busy making my own music. But if you’ve ever loved The Beatles, The Monkees, The Lemonheads, Teenage Fanclub or any other amazing guitar (power) pop, buy this album!
Another year, another Deerhoof album in my top albums list. STOP BEING SO FUCKING AMAZING, DEERHOOF! If you don’t like this album, you’re insane.
My favourite indie / rock / guitar album of 2011. I have sung along to this sooo many times in the car. Take ‘Annihilation Eyes’ ~ I’ve played this to everyone and every time, they sit up, perk up and want to know who it is. And then they’re singing along by the end of the song. Davey von Bohlen, you are a pop genius and I love you.
Pure UK hip hop that makes me sooo fucking proud to be British. The skills on display here are formidable, the imagery is visceral without being literal. If you have ever liked any hip hop ever, you better fucking buy this album.
Dude’s got to be my favourite current hip hop artist. His choice of samples, his flow, his themes, his humour, his heart, his sincerity. He makes every other rapper look paper-thin and silly. This is what should be on every radio and TV station, not the pimped, preening pretenders who aren’t even fit to suck Eso’s little toe. If you don’t buy this album, your life will be immeasurably more impoverished.
I have listened to this album more than any other this year. I have driven mates barmy by hitting repeat in my car. I have watched all Yelle’s vids and of course, I’m in love with Julie and would like her to have my fat, brown babies.
This is a perfect electropop album. Nothing is wasted, everything works together. Every note hammers home Yelle’s agenda of (primarily) sexy dance fun. The synths weave around Julie Budet’s incredible voice like lovers’ arms, tickling and teasing. The beats are undeniable, every fibre of your body starts pumping in resonance.
I’ve sung along so many times to ‘Comme Un Enfant’ in my terrible French, it’s ridiculous! How can you not love these lyrics:
“J’aime les fraises tagada et je rêve d’un
Wayne’s world 3, je veux une méga happy
End enlacée dans tes bras
J’en ai pas de dents de sagesse, ça ne me
Manque pas, quand je mords la nuit à
Pleines dents pour faire la nouba
Je suis un enfant, comme un adolescent
Je suis un adulte, comme un adolescent
Faut-il vraiment choisir son camp (choisir son camp)
Le faut-il vraiment, comme un adolescent
Je chante et je pleure, comme un enfantJe joue à me faire peur,
Comme un enfant, comme un enfant
Je pense tout et son contraire,
Comme un enfant, comme un enfant
Je danse, j’ai le coeur à l’envers,
Comme un enfant, comme un enfant”
Here, sing along for yourself:
Yelle have made the best pop album of 2011 and they have made me sad with their mastery of electropop. It means I have to try much fucking harder!
Enjoy Yelle and the rest of my 2011 albums. But hands off Julie, she’s mine! ♥♥♥