Thermal

If you’ve a spare five minutes and fancy listening to some new music, click on the audio player to hear my personal favourite song, pretty much ever.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

As it says, it is ‘The Sides’ by Ataxia, and even thinking about the song raises goose bumps on my arms.  I can’t put my finger on it completely, but just everything from the effects on the drum intro, to the bass line and especially the quite beautiful guitar just hits every spot for me.

It’s a song that deserves to be listened to over & over, as each time you can pick out a different layer to it. It’s a song that can be listened to quietly, or extremely loudly, and I’ve yet to tire of it. Even better, the second album is out at the end of the month

For those of you using WordPress, who’d like to insert audio into your blog posts, the player I used for my previous post was the Audio Player WordPress Plugin from 1 Pixel Out.

Very easy to install, it enables you to play any MP3 file from a blog post. It can also be used for podcasting, so I could start talking to you: Who wants to hear my cockney-Australian twang? (don’t ask).

The other good thing about this plugin is that it doesn’t start playing until you press play: I hate those blogs that start playing music at you as soon as you land on them-apart from their taste in music usually being awful, they have no means of switching it off, and it clashes horribly with whatever you’re playing on your PC at the time

Just trying out a new audio player plugin. Please give it a try & let me know if you have any problems.

If you can’t see the audio player below, please disable your ad-blocker and see if it appears then.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I love long car journeys (to pleasant destinations at least!) and a highlight of my childhood was definitely our annual family trip to Austria, as it involved driving over a thousand miles across Europe. Given that Britain’s only about 870 miles long tip to tip, you can see why it feels impressive, but I guess those of you from the US, Canada and Australia are far more used to loooong road trips.

I bring this up because Melissa of the excellent Grossly Unimaginative blog (Totally misnamed, and an essential read) has just completed a series of brilliant posts about her 2000 mile trip from Michigan to Las Vegas, delivering car & booze to some friends who have moved house.

There’s tales of road kill, explosions barely avoided, dubious near porn-movie-plot encounters with mechanics and high-rolling at the casinos. Part 1 is here, and there’s plenty more to read after that. I am both envious of the trip, and faintly releived I wasn’t there

This piece of music is eminently suitable for listening to whilst reading:

…recently. A slight cheat as the tag from RT at Untwisted Vortex is ‘today’, but I’m one of those boring people that still listens to one album at a time, all the way through, which would make for a rather dull post.

Here are ‘ze rules’ from RT:

The person tagged is supposed to repost my 10 songs before listing his or her own songs. Then he or she is to tag only one other person who does the same thing, but includes both sets of 10 songs before posting his or her own. When the list reaches 90 songs, the final “taggee” is supposed to tag me, the originator, and I fill in the final 10 for a total of 100. This creates a circular chain. Anyone within the chain can create a new chain at any time before this chain is complete.

So, please note that the first 10 are RT’s not mine – I really can’t emphasize that enough

1. Phil Collins – Sussudio
2. Patrick Swayze – She’s Like The Wind
3. Steely Dan – Hey Nineteen
4. Christopher Cross – Ride Like The Wind
5. Olivia Newton-John and ELO – Magic
6. Frankie Valli – Swearin’ To God
7. All 4 One – I Swear
8. Boyz II Men – End Of The Road
9. Electric Light Orchestra – I’m Alive
10. Spandau Ballet – True

Right, now mine:

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Turn It Again
2. Ataxia – The Sides
3. Rollins Band – You Didn’t Need
4. Gorillaz – Dare
5. John Frusciante – Going Inside
6. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Stagger Lee
7. White Stripes – 7 Nation Army
8. Queens Of The Stone Age – Go With The Flow
9. Foo Fighters – All My Life
10. Janes Addiction – To Match The Sun

I’ve listened to them in the last week, so I think that’s fair enough.

I know how much she enjoys tags, and how wonderful her musical tastes are, so I vote Claire for the next 10. I know you’re busy right now matey, but later in the week?

It’s meme-tabulous time again, as I have been tagged by Amiswere Waswerebeen to tell you 7 songs/CD’s that I have been listening to recently. If you’re interested, here you go:

1. Stadium Arcadium by the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Both CD’s, the whole double album, pretty much every song.  Just some amazing musician-ship, and beautiful songs.
2. Demon Days by Gorillaz: Something very different, and n eclectic range of songs on one album. Gentle electronic music, symphonic strings, rap nd hip-hop it’s all on here, and all very good.
3. Go with the flow by Queens of the Stone Age: I haven’t really got into the album this is on, but I absolutely love this track – can’t pin down why exactly, but some rabid drumming by Dave Grohl always helps. Top video too.
4. Into The Gap by the Thomson Twins: 80′s electronica ahoy, this was one of the first albums I owned some 23 years ago. I still have it on tape, and have recently obtained a digital copy, and it’s still pretty good. Very atmospheric & a tad nostalgic.
5. Lyre of Orpheus/Abattoir Blues by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: I have all of the Bad Seeds albums, and there’s not a bad one amongst them. This double album is full of the usual dark and humeorus lyrics, sepulcharal vocals and brilliant music that you come to expect from Nick Cave & his cohorts. Reminds me, must pick up Grinderman
6. Odelay by Beck: It’s weird, it’s odd, but I still love it & listen to it 10 years after buying it. Where does the time go?
7. Automatic Writing by Ataxia: John Frusciante, Joe Lally & Josh Klinghoffer meet in a studio and just play. The result is stunning.

Again, I’m not going to impose a tag on anyone, but if you want to do it, go ahead, then leave me a comment with a link to it& I’ll come have a read

Top song and a funny video

My blogging for the last couple of weeks has been accompanied by the excellent Demon Days album from Gorillaz. There’s some great tracks on there, and this is one of my favourites – at least now you can hear (some of) what’s going in my head as I type.

Who didn’t know who Iggy Pop was. Youngsters today!

It does for me certainly, things I did 10 years ago seem like ancient history now! But it’s also the title of a very good song by John Frusciante which you can hear by playing the video below. You’ll also get to have a look round his house and at some of his guitars (drool).

If you like the song, check out his album ‘Curtains’, a collection of beautiful, simple acoustic tracks with a little piano thrown in. Very relaxing, and almost painful in the beauty of the music

I’ve procrastinated long enough since Steph tagged me with this, so here they are:

1. Ataxia – The Sides Ataxia is a collaboration between Josh Klinghoffer, Joe Lally and John Frusciante (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers). They have only released one album to date, ‘Automatic Writing’, the whole premise of which was the 3 enormously talented musicians jamming together, fitting already written lyrics over the top of the music they created there & then. The result is stunning, and ‘The Sides’ is pick of the bunch. Six minutes & 43 seconds long, I would be happy if this songs lasted several days. It begins with an effect laden drum intro, which is joined by a simple repeating bass line. This is overlain by some beautiful introspective guitar and Johns singing. The song grows, and the guitar begins to dominate, launching into some absolutely blistering solos, before dropping back into quite, gentle note picking. The music rising & falling throughout, my hair stands on end just thinking about this song, and I’ve been known to play it on repeat constantly. A beautiful piece of emotional music, you can listen to free, and in it’s entirety at Johns website. Just click on the cloud at the top after the intro.

2. David Bowie – Heroes I like most Bowie, from the old to the new, but the guitar on this track makes me shiver, and the lyrics are just so uplifting, you get carried away on it.

3. Nick Cave – Do You Love Me?
“I found her on a night of fire and noise
Wild bells rang in a
wild sky
I knew from that moment on
I’d love her
till the day that I died
And I kissed away a thousand
tears
My lady of the Various Sorrows
Some begged, some
borrowed, some stolen
Some kept safe for tomorrow
On an
endless night, silver star spangled
The bells from the
chapel went jingle-jangle”

All over a track of dramatic piano & keyboard, and delivered with Cave’s stunning voice. Genius.

4. Rollins Band – Low Self Opinion Henry Rollins’ outlook on life, his humour, sense of purpose and example, have all been major driving forces in my life. I first became aware of him, as my sister was reading her music magazine. As she turned the page across the room, my eye was drawn to the photo of this huge muscle-bound, tattoo-covered lunatic screaming into a microphone. The energy just leapt across the room, and I had a read & thought he sounded cool – intelligent, self-effacing, yet 100% hardcore. That same evening on, of all things Beavis & Butthead, I saw the video to ‘Low Self Opinion’, and bought the album ‘The End Of Silence’ the next day. Angry? Pissed off? TEOS is the album for you. Heavy as lead, yet rising above the usual metal nonsense through the quality of the band, and the rawness of the lyrics, this album and song often propelled me across London at least 10mph faster than usual. ‘Tearing’ and ‘You Didn’t Need’ are also stand-out tracks.

5. John Frusciante – Cut-Out From John’s most accessible album (Not to say any of the Record Collection releases were difficult) ‘Shadows Collide With People’, this is another track that rides the emotions up & down. From simple melodic verses, the chorus gradually rises to a crashing of drums almost drowning out John’s heart-torn vocal. A song to be listened to very loud, and leaves me breathless at the end. It’s a crime that more people haven’t heard Frusciante’s solo work – they’re missing out on so much.

As was commented on Steph’s original post, this was an impossible task, and I would have trouble narrowing it down to 50. But these songs are all a few years old now, and I probably love them more now than when I first heard them. Honourable mentions must go to Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Jam, Hendrix, Foo Fighters, Beck and New Order.