With the possible exception of attractive adolescent boys few people have observed Michael Jackson as pared-down and naked as the Z-Trip remix of the Jackson Five’s ‘I Want You Back’ renders him, focusing as it does on the trademark ‘5’ lick, the slinky descending bass run and the famous and dearly lamented vocal acrobats of the young fruitbat himself. Motown Remixed, if nothing else, draws attention to the delightful subtleties of the original Motown classics, baring their bones and providing Continue Reading

Some things fail to either dazzle or disappoint you. Take soap, for instance. Can’t get excited about soap, but quite happy that it’s around – especially when you’re due out on a date and you’ve got more cock cheese than you could wave a cheese-grater at. Or bread. Hardly the food of choice but get home from the pub after a few pints with your mates and it acquires a heavenly status. The same can be true of perky, popped-up Continue Reading

Even fatties have their moment in the sun and those lardy, enchanting London-based digits-four from Ealing, London, The Magic Numbers have clearly earned it with that tremendously bouncy and addictive slice of pop that is their ‘Forever Lost’ single – cross-pollinated from the earnest fragile vocals of Wayne Coyne and Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, the jingly-jangly buoyancy of the Lemonheads and a shot of California sunshine. And there you were thinking the achievements of fatties amounted to little more than making Continue Reading

Surfing the web before writing this review, Crud stumbled upon this piece of strange weirdness – some nutter’s tribute to Johnny Borrell involving him dancing round his room to ‘Golden Touch’ with a Borrell print out pinned to his face. Indeed. In the interests of impartiality, and for the converse viewpoint check this.  So for a man who implores such bipolar reactions in people (and that is by no means restricted to these two links), a man who knows there Continue Reading

When you get to this level, and Audioslave are undoubtedly as part of the machine as the next band, nothing ever happens without being pored over, analysed and justified (financially, not morally). So it can be no mistake that this album bears the name ‘Out of Exile’. And why is that exactly? Well here we have a band who exist under the premise that they are renegades, cast out and regrouping covertly on the fringes after their previous, more significant, Continue Reading

This a record of and for a moment. And because of many. It’s a result of love, or rather loss and inadequacy, but – and here’s the good part – it’s a big lummin’ oh-fuck-it celebration of those things, not a lament. We get chance to laugh with and at chief protagonist Eddie Argos, but most of the time we want to throw our arms around him. And it takes a true knack to inspire that kind of affinity. It’s Continue Reading

A lot of what follows depends a great deal on how you respond to the Gorillaz’ whole Marmite concept. They still attempt to give the impression of being a unique prospect (and maybe they are, for now, that is until the Crazy Fuppin’ Frog hits number 1 this Sunday), but that doesn’t change the fact that under the virtual costumes they are a super-group skillfully managed by the suits at EMI. And super-groups never work as well as those involved Continue Reading

If the London-based Four Tet’s third album, ‘Rounds’ confirmed Kieran Hebden to be master of ceremonies in the laptop-come-bedroom musician stakes and something of a contradiction in terms to boot, then ‘Everything Ecstatic’ should complicate matters further with its uneasy and often disturbing potpourri of buzz-saw jazz, ambient and loop heavy electronica. Whereas ‘Rounds’ focused on the all-together more beautiful organic matter of gentle European folk music, ‘Everything Ecstatic’ whittles a considerably more rough-edged beast based around mutating percussive samples, Continue Reading