yoyo zebra

I've been listening to a lot of Neil Young recently. But any fool knows that if you don't have Decade (err... why?) and you want some Neil Young action, you should get yourself over to the peerless Aquarium Drunkard which regularly cover all things Young-ian amongst loads of other good stuff.

So I'm going to represent the letter 'y' with a cover of Neil Young's Heart of Gold by a rubbish German disco band from the 1970s.

Boney M - Heart of Gold (Neil Young cover)



Sorry.

Visit - Boney M
Buy - Night Flight to Venus

Richard Cook, co-author of the Penguin Guide to Jazz, sadly passed away earlier this year. That book (along with a stint in the jazz department at a local record shop), really led me to a lot of my favourite music ever. With Brian Morton, Cook wrote eloquently and simply. Best of all, he was nearly always right.

One artist that he led me to explore further was American polymorph John Zorn. My first exposure to his music came from the 1989 South Bank Show special about the New York music scene, featuring Zorn and Sonic Youth - I wish now we'd taped the whole programme, not just the SY section!

Over the course of hundreds of albums Zorn has covered a lot of ground so a guide like the Penguin Guide is pretty indispensable - unless you or a close friend has a completist bent and a lot of money.

The Guide rightly points to his breakthrough album The Big Gundown, featuring radical re-workings of Ennio Morricone's music, as an essential release. I think this is pretty much an extension of Zorn's earlier 'game' approach to music, where rules and signals govern the music, rather than a conventional score - for example, he gets legendary jazz harmonica player in to whistle the harmonica theme to Once Upon a Time in America. Most pieces are musical representations of the films they originally scored; in particular the theme to Once Upon a Time in the West pits two howling guitars against each other to represent the final duel. MP3 representations do these tracks no favours at all, so if you're interested, see the link below and buy it, friend!

Because of his love of hardcore (and in particular the mighty Napalm Death), Zorn formed Naked City in 1988, with Bill Frisell (guitars), Fred Frith (bass), Wayne Horvitz (keyboards), Joey Baron (drums), and occasional vocals from Yamatsuka Eye and Mike Patton.

There really isn't a huge amount you can say about this - it's ferocious and utterly visceral and your response is physical rather than intellectual. It mostly makes me nod my head with wide eyes and an open mouth. It's not all ear-bleeding stuff but mostly it's like cleaning your ears out with a switchblade. Mmm-mmm-good.

John Zorn/Naked City - Hammerhead



John Zorn/Naked City - You Will Be Shot



John Zorn/Naked City - Punk China Doll



John Zorn/Naked City - Reanimator



Another great album is the first Masada album, Alef. Masada was an attempt to create a radical new Jewish music - as Zorn said, the idea was to put "Ornette Coleman and the Jewish scales together".

I bought this after borrowing it from Ilkeston library - anyone who has any knowledge of South East Derbyshire will understand how truly bizarre this is.

John Zorn/Masada - Tzofeh

This song is so funky and really gives the lie to the idea that Zorn is just an avant-garde squawker. There are some beautiful lines and some great interplay with Dave Douglas on trumpet. Plus at 3.47 it has one of the best drum solos ever.

Visit - John Zorn / Tzadik
Buy - The Big Gundown
Buy - Naked City
Buy - Masada Alef (expensive import)

vase watch x-ray

I'll do you a deal - a couple each for V and W cos I'm buggered if I can think of anything to post for X - thankfully my 4AD obsession never got as far as Clan Of Xymox.

Violent Femmes - Add It Up [demo version not on Spotify]



Back in the mid-to-late 1980s we used to go to Nottingham's Selectadisc record shop at least once a week and spend hours and pounds browsing and buying music. On the wall of the shop people would pin 'band-members-wanted'-type notices. They would invariably need a bass player. And they would always have a long list of required influences which would ALWAYS include Violent Femmes.

I think they were included as a wild card, to wrongfoot people who might assume the bands in question were Blast First obsessives and Sonic Youth soundalikes (which I'm sure they invariably were).

It took me a few years to finally hear Violent Femmes but pleasingly they sounded like no-one else and their classic first album still sounds bloody great and utterly unique. OBVIOUSLY you've already got that so this is a demo version included on the recent Rhino "deluxe" version - Gano rushes the acapella intro but when the band kicks in, it'll take yr face off.

Buy - Violent Femmes (Deluxe Edition)
Visit - Violent Femmes

Velvet Underground - Foggy Notion



I know we've already featured the Velvet Underground way back when but this is for Brother Oxbow, who reminded me of this track the other week. Not the cool thing to say, but I much prefer the VU after Cale left and jobbing worker-bee Doug Yule took his place. Velvet Underground and Loaded are in much heavier rotation at Domino towers than ... & Nico and White Light (come on, don't you agree? I won't tell...)

Foggy Notion is from the sessions for the VU's missing 4th album, which all signs point to it being a bit of a belter. I love Mo Tucker's demented and precise drumming (over 6 minutes and she never lets up) and it's great to hear Sterling Morrison letting rip throughout. Plus even Lou Reed sounds like he's having fun! "I've got my calomine lotion", indeed.

Cheers for the reminder, Ox.

Buy - Peel Slowly & See
Visit - The Velvet Underground

DJ Vadim - Till Suns In Your Eye (feat Motion Man)



I can't pretend to know anything about DJ Vadim - I bought this album after hearing a track on a CD given away with Wire magazine. It made me laugh, which is a bit of a rarity for anything connected with Wire, let's face it - the usually required response is a look of intense and intelligent appreciation.

I like the stoner-pleasing voiceover and kazoo but it's the seemingly random drop-outs that make this track worthy of your further investigation. Try dancing to it.

Buy - DJ Vadim's U.S.S.R.: The Art Of Listening
Visit - DJ Vadim

Hank Williams - I Saw The Light



Hank Williams with "Little" Jimmie Dickens - The Old Country Church



I think the reason that Hank Williams' music speaks to so many people is due to his personality - it oozes out of the speakers on every one of his recordings. His voice is kind of cranky and croaky and worn - it's like he's singing down his nose with a comb and paper in the back of his throat. But if ever a voice had lived it was Hank's. And people loved him because he spoke to them about stuff that mattered.

This is another case where I find myself to drawn to the religious songs - I know the hip thing to do is to talk about Hank's women troubles and drinking ("There's a Tear in My Beer", anyone?) but as important as those were to Hank (and his audience), so was religion. There's a real passion and belief on these recordings... which makes me a little envious.

Buy - The Complete Collection
Visit - Hank Williams

M. Ward - Vincent O'Brien



Back in the day, after we'd been to Selectadisc, we'd invariably go to nearby Way Ahead which was run by Tom. Tom currently runs Derby's Reveal Records, which was the Music Awards Independent Retailer of 2005. He also heads up the accompanying record label, home to Joan As Police Woman, Poppy & The Jezebels and others.

A couple of years back, I was going through a fairly turbulent time - mourning the death of a family member, ending a relationship, selling a house, moving back into the family home and starting a new relationship with the future Mrs. Domino. It was a bit mad but everybody deals with this kind of stuff, don't they?

I found myself in Reveal one lunchtime and as was frequently the case, Tom was recommending good music to me. Actually, looking back, he practically forced me to buy M. Ward's Transfiguration of Vincent, which went on to become the soundtrack for my 30th and most important summer. I also bought at least 3 further copies to give to various people. Cheers, Tom.

This is M.Ward's best album in my opinion, a gloriously ramshackle collection of lo-fi homespun majesty and beautiful guitar playing, that was inspired by the death of a close friend. But it's one of those great albums that, despite (because of?) the subject matter, remains totally joyous and life-affirming throughout. If you haven't heard any of Matt Ward's stuff, I'd urge you to start here.

Buy - The Transfiguration of Vincent from Reveal Records
Visit - M. Ward

seal tiger unicycle

... and one month later, I finally get broadband hooked up at the new house! Hi there.

Stereolab are one of those bands that I seem to have a lot of records by, even though I don't love them (see also: Super Furry Animals). Unpacking the CDs after moving in led me to play a couple of the releases I do have.

And even though their earlier material (Switched On for example) is quite dated (does anyhody else remember Bleach?), and despite the fact that the dour-faced duo of Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier is a French & Saunders sketch waiting to happen (think about it - Dawn French as Tim, doggedly ploughing through the Roadrunner riff ad infinitum as Jennifer Saunders urges bloody revolution in a deathless somnambulent croon), I still found much to enjoy. Like this track - wherein they get off the Roadrunner riff and instead mine the end section to What Goes On to genuinely thrilling effect. Play loud for full effect.

Stereolab - We're Not Adult Oriented



They even replicate the Lou-Reed-fastest-guitarist-in-the-world rhythmic clatter from 4.46 onwards!

When I listened to their stuff again, I really enjoyed these tracks from the Music for the Amorphous Body Study Center EP.

Stereolab - The Extension Trip

Stereolab - How To Play Your Internal Organs Overnight



High Llama Sean O'Hagan had appeared on many Stereolab releases by the point this came out but this sounds more like a flat-out collaboration - the arrangements are pure Hawaii to my ears, especially the strings on ...Internal Organs...

Visit - Stereolab
Buy - Space Age Bachelor Pad Music
* The Wikipedia entry for Amorphous Body Study Center makes it sound like a real rarity - I got my copy for 99p in the HMV sale back in the day. But the tracks are all on Aluminum Tunes, so get that instead.

---

'T' was tricky - we've already featured Talking Heads, Throwing Muses, They Might Be Giants, Thin White Rope, Thin Lizzy, Trumans Water and Tripmaster Monkey, so where else can you go?

Tarnation - The Well



But this is a track that seems to crop up pretty regularly when I'm shuffling on iTunes and it never gets moved on. I genuinely know very very little about Tarnation - follow the link to learn ... er, not much, actually.

Anyhoo, this is a great epic slice of country Gothic, featuring a truly great vocal, all swoopy and tremulous, with some resolutely wonky slide guitar. Nice.

I only got this track from Facing The Wrong Way, one of those compilation albums that record shops gave away when someone bought a related artist that featured most of the 4AD roster at the time. This was easily the best track so I don't know why (considering my well-documented penchant for most things v23) I never investigated further.

Paula Frazer, lead Tarnat-or, is still doing stuff in between bouts of professional weaving.

Visit - Paula Frazer/Tarnation
Buy - Gentle Creatures by Tarnation, the album I never did...

---

Uncle Tupelo were a very, very special band for me and my friends in the early 90s. It's strange, but their widescreen tales of blue-collar life in the States really struck a chord with a bunch of pasty-faced middle-class slackers. I guess it's just because they wrote fantastic, honest, heartfelt and passionate songs. Yeah, I think that was it.

Uncle Tupelo - Looking For A Way Out



History seems to have picked the acoustic version of this track as the take to anthologise, but this is the keeper for me. I suppose all countries have their small, inward-looking towns - that might have been another link. Doesn't excuse us all singing along in crap American accents, tho'...

Uncle Tupelo - Postcard



I was lucky enough to see the band in Leeds on their last UK tour as a trio - if memory serves this was the first song they played, which neatly pinned my plaid shirt to the back wall of the Duchess of York.

Uncle Tupelo - Moonshiner



Their acoustic album March 16-20, 1992 was the first album of theirs I bought - I think I read a particularly glowing review in Melody Maker so thought I'd take the plunge. Tracks like this - a great track that, intentionally of otherwise, welds Heart of Gold to a traditional song - totally won me over, especially the tiny drum fill at 2.13 that's followed by a harmonica line that heads straight for the nape of your neck.

Uncle Tupelo - New Madrid



I've written before about the fact that, when UT split, everyone expected gruff-voiced-everyman Jay Farrar to go onto glory, rather than Jeff Tweedy. And I've kind of mirrored that with the tracks I've chosen, as all except the last are Farrar songs. Having said that, if someone made me choose my favourite UT song (and it's been hard enough choosing 4 for this post), I'd have to pick New Madrid, which is a Tweedy track. If anyone has a bootleg of the mighty glam-rock version of this that Wilco played on the Being There tour, please get in touch!

BTW - ignore the naysayers. Sky Blue Sky is the best Wilco album so far, I reckon!

Visit - Uncle Tupelo
Buy - Uncle Tupelo CDs

pencil queen rainbow

This alphabetical trek through my CD collection has thrown up some really interesting stuff for me, things where I'd forgotten how much I loved them - hope you're enjoying them too.

Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville was one of my favourite albums during my last year at university and is one of the few instances where I've had a real-life High Fidelity moment - where you're idly browsing in a record shop (Record Collector in Sheffield, fact fans) and ask the assistant what's playing then buy it on the spot. If I remember rightly the guy who served me moaned that it was the only copy they had... This was a phenomenon that would return to haunt me when I worked in the jazz department of my local Virgin Megastore - Coltrane's Giant Steps and Wynton Marsalis' Joe Cool's Blues were the popular choices, if memory serves.

Anyhoo, Liz Phair - I like to think my reaction to this album was more sophisticated than the thrill of a feisty American woman with a dirty mouth but I can't be sure... I do know that I really dug the sloppy lo-fi recording, her gnarly guitar playing plus her can't-be-arsed vocal style.

Liz Phair - Divorce Song



This track has one of the most affecting lyrics on the album and gets away from any accusations of stomping on the potty-mouth pedal for a cheap thrill.

Liz Phair - Stratford-On-Guy



On reflection this album is still well worth checking out if you can - a big sprawling and ambitious double-album. The second album Whip-Smart has a couple of decent tracks but gets a bit "auto-pilot". Later albums have resorted to collaborations with pop tyrants The Matrix and more explicit shock tactics, resulting in some comically stinking reviews.

Visit - Liz Phair
Buy - Exile in Guyville

Hand me the crowbar...

A Tribe Called Quest - Buggin' Out
(file under 'Q')



From their magnificent Low End Theory album, this is officially stevedomino's FAVOURITE HIP HOP TRACK EVER. This is just perfect - a smokin' beat, cool bass line, fantastic rhymes, the works. Awesome stuff and effortlessly cool, this is everything that I want hip hop to be.

I remember dancing to this in a club in Nottingham BACK IN THE DAY with our friend the Singing Detective - whaddup, homez?

Visit - A Tribe Called Quest
Buy - The Low End Theory

Rodan - The Everyday World Of Bodies



Second-string, Louisville-based, post-Spiderland math-rockers in 12 minute track shocker.

This is an album that I bought after hearing a track of theirs on a compilation tape from good friend the Archdeacon of Pop - think it was from a Simple Machines 7"? Anyway, the album was a bit of a disappointment but this tracks still rocks a fat-one. Fantastic chunky guitars and some great drumming - golly, they seem awfully cross about something... Great pay-off moment at 8.00.

You know how people who read books with small print can suffer problems with their eyesight? Do you think that people who came of musical age in the late-80s/early-90s and listened to a diet of mumblecore bands like Bitch Magnet, Slint and Rodan will develop hearing problems later on in life? Think about it.

Visit - Rodan
Buy - Rusty (limited availability)
Or you could try eBay

monkey necklace owl

Back to 4AD AGAIN for the B-Side of 1987's Number 1 smasheroo Pump Up The Volume. As any fool knows this was the collaboration between AR Kane, Colourbox and CJ Macintosh which really brought sampling into the charts. I'd love to say that I got this single at the time but let's face it, I was a real indie snob. I only bought the 12" after hearing this track, the double A side.

M|A|R|R|S - Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance)



Apparently (according to youknowwho) this wasn't a happy collaboration, with AR Kane and Colourbox working in seperate studios on the two tracks; Pump Up The Volume being mostly the work of The Box, with minimal input from the Kaners.

As far as Anitina went, AR Kane brought the elephantine-feedback and sheets of guitar noise (plus blissed-out vocals and ickle-baby-acid-head lyrics), while Colourbox supplied the monumental beats and heavy dub effects which really make the track - the best bit is from 4.37 when it all goes underwater before the gallop to the finish line. Still sounds great.

Back in the day, Simon Reynolds would have called this oceanic dub-rock.

Hmmm, Colourbox... methinks I feel a non-alphabetical post coming on...

Visit - M|A|R|R|S (Wikipedia)
Buy - Pump Up The Volume CD (import)

Nina Nastasia - Ugly Face



Oxes - Kaz Hayashi '01



These go together because they were amongst the last artists that I really got turned onto by John Peel. And both of them involved me staring open-mouthed at the radio as I heard something that I really wasn't expecting, which is an experience that I will never have again. Think about it - the media continue to move more and more towards narrowcasting, with genre programs increasingly ghettoised in their own little compartments. The opportunities for exposure to something unexpected are increasingly rare.

Ugly Face was in a late-night Festive 50 show and just gobsmacked me, it's so spine-chilling. I know I've (kind-of) featured Nina Nastasia on here before, but she really is a great artist. And it's so cool to hear Steve Albini's recording style applied to this sort of music, which it suits so well. Plus you don't hear enough bowed saw these days.

Oxes I heard on a live session from Maida Vale which entailed me sitting in the car outside my house, grinning like a tit and not being able to go in until the session finished. I guess they could come across as slightly academic math-rockers but I think they're genuinely hilarious.

I have a theory that they were all massive metal geeks as kids and are trying to get to the motherlode of Great Riffs (as it were), knocking out the keystones of rock lore ad infinitum until they achieve some kind of cosmic high. Whilst pulling rock poses, jumping off things and gurning.

Just listen - it's like Stars on 45 for metal riffs. For example, I reckon there are definite echoes of Iron Maiden in this track, especially the rumpty-tumpty-Run-To-The-Hills section at 0.37

Visit - Nina Nastasia
Buy - The Blackened Air

Visit - Oxes
Visit - Oxes (MySpace)
Buy - Oxxxes

jacket kite ladder

Apologies for the extended period of radio silence. I should explain that when I started on this alphabetical kick, I set myself some limitations - notably, that I would only post tracks by artists whose name began with the letter in question, that I'd choose only one artist per letter and that I wouldn't feature anyone who'd already appeared on Domino Rally. As such, I've been having a nightmare picking tracks for this post, and the results are possibly more random than usual.

Hank Mizell - Jungle Rock
(oh give me a break, when you've already featured Billy Joel where else do you go?)



This is, quite simply, one of the strangest songs ever, with a pretty weird story to boot. Recorded in 1956, the song wasn't a hit until 1976 when it got to #3 in the UK - leading to what must have been the odd spectacle of Mizell aged 53 miming along to his younger self on Top Of The Pops.

I first heard it on some Rock n Roll cassette compilations that my granddad had - I think he lent them to my dad. These were kind of the early 80s versions of those Time Life compilations that you see advertised on daytime TV between infomercials for Abdominizers, Thigh Masters and suchlike.

It always sounded creepy and unfinished, half-written and hollow sounding. The bass line is all over the place (is it even playing the same track as everyone else during the intro?) and the guitar moves into this strange minor-key thing for the chorus. Plus Hank keeps hammering away at those same two (and a bit) notes for the entire length of the song. Totally relentless nonsense - love it!

Visit - Hank Mizell at Wikipedia
Buy - Jungle Rock (import)

Kitchen of Distinction - The 3rd Time We Opened The Capsule



Surely one of the worst band names in history. But from 1989 to 1991 I loved this strange little band. Looking back, they were the shoegaze band for grown-ups - rather than writing lyrics where meaning was "up to the listener to provide their own interpretation (mumble, mumble)", KOD tracks were about stuff. But they still had that whole oceanic walls of sound thing going on - seriously, how many delay pedals do you need to get that guitar sound?

And having said that, I've got no idea what this track is about. I guess it's just about that fantastic, huge swell of noise that comes after "everything went...!". And to ask for any more meaning than that from a pop song is a bit silly, really.

This was the first track I heard by them and over the course of the next two years and many purchases I learnt that it was easily their best track. But the bit at 2.17 still makes the hairs on my neck stand on end EVERY TIME which is more than I can say for many records I bought at the time by their hipper contemporaries (see Moose, Lush, Slowdive, et al).

According to Wikipedia their sound influenced bands like Mansun, The Verve and Interpol.... err....thanks?!?

Visit - Kitchens of Distinction at Wikipedia
Buy - Love Is Hell

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross - Twisted



Awesome skwee-bo scat singing here. Lambert, Hendricks & Ross specialised in writing new arrangements and lyrics for jazz tunes and here is Annie Ross' amazingly liquid vocal to Wardell Gray's melody. I've never heard the original but Ross' lyrics fit the feel of the track so snugly, I can't imagine how it could sound any better than this. The lyrical flow on show here is simply astonishing and I love Lambert and Hendricks' semi-sung interjections throughout (especially at 1.30).

It swings hard, it sounds supercool and it's funny, too (their version of Art Blakey's "Moanin'" is cool, too).

FUN FACT - Annie Ross played the jazz singer (and Lori Singer's mum) in Robert Altman's fantastic Short Cuts, one of stevedomino's top 10 films of all time!

Visit - Lambert, Hendricks & Ross
Buy - The Hottest New Group in Jazz

grapes house ink

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart



This one was a Christmas present from Oxbow a few years back. Before that, as far as I was concerned Gorky's were just that Welsh band who did that annoying 'Patio' song. But How I Long to Feel That Summer In My Heart is still an album that I dig out pretty regularly. On first listen it can seem a bit slight but repeated listens make it stick with you, as bits of The Beatles and High Llamas drift by. It's good simple music, which is really hard to do well without sounding lazy or pat.

And it really does make me feel that summer in my heart. This track in particular sounds like late August evenings playing with your mates on the park, the sun streaming across the sky just before you have to go home.

The soundtrack to a Welsh "Wonder Years", if you will.

Buy - How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart
Visit - Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

His Name Is Alive - The Dirt Eaters



His Name Is Alive - Man On The Silver Mountain (Rainbow cover)



Nutty name, nutty guys. Back to 4AD for this one, a band I was pretty much obsessed with in the face of much shoulder-shrugging from my peers. Looking back they're the archetypal, precious, 23 Envelope/V23 project, with more than a whiff of This Mortal Coil about them. But I loved the air of mystery, the pick'n'mix song-styles and (let's face it) the pretensions so much that I persevered beyond their patchy and sublimely gothic first 4AD release, Livonia, through the fantastic 23-track "mental illness" album, Home Is In Your Head, up to their 3rd album, 1993's Mouth By Mouth, before I said 'enough'.

These two tracks are from The Dirt Eaters EP, my favourite of their releases. "The Dirt Eaters" made an appearance on Mouth By Mouth but in a rocked-out version; this is sparser and much better for it (according to ubiquipedia, the sample is Jack Nicholson from Ironweed. Not knowing the film, I always heard it as Ronald Reagan....). The Rainbow cover was the unlisted first track - I've always liked it 'cos it sounded like a HNIA piss-take (a hushed, folksy take on a stadium rawk belter? the very idea...), and hinted at a self-deprecating sense of humour hidden behind the Vaughan Oliver artwork.

His Name Is Alive are still going and still doing interesting stuff, going from gothic folk to Beach Boys pastiches to psychedelic R'n'B and back again. Check their website and particularly the tracklisting for the 10 CD wooden "Cloud Box" set. Hmmm, challenging!

Buy - The Dirt Eaters EP is only available on this import of Home Is In Your Head, or
Buy - Always Stay Sweet, a 21-song best-ofVisit - His Name Is Alive

The Ink Spots - If I Didn't Care



The Ink Spots - Whispering Grass (Don't Tell The Trees)



The Ink Spots - I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire



From the corner marked "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"...

The Ink Spots are a band who had loads of hits with EXACTLY THE SAME SONG. Check it out:

Rambling ascending guitar intro...
Plaintive tenor lead vocal...
Talky bit...
Refrain...
End.

I could have picked any three of their songs and would most likely have hit on the same structure in each. Listening to a whole album by them is weird, like being stuck in a lift where the muzak is looping indefinitely, or some weirdly soothing Groundhog Day.

I love these songs. And the balls on them to keep doing the same thing over and over!

Buy - The Ink Spots - The Ultimate Collection
Visit - The Ink Spots (Wikipedia)
Visit - The Ink Spots

deer elephant fish

Deerhoof are a band I "got" long after the cool kids but I love what I've heard by them. Hey maybe you "prefer their earlier stuff" but we're hear to talk about the music I like and I frickin' *heart* the 'Hoof. It shouldn't really make sense - spastic improvisatory drums, guitar pyrotechnics and strange little-girl lost vocals. I could theorise for ages but at the end of the day this is just POP.

Deerhoof - Wrong Time Capsule



I remember reading a quote about John Cale's bass-playing on "White Light White Heat", which praised the fact that it sounded like clods of earth and muck, and I think there's something similar here. Love the stumbling endlessly inventive rolling drums and the wildly creative guitar playing - John Dieterich is all over the fretboard on this one. Plus the fact that in a couple of minutes this song takes in so many different ideas, including one of my favourite guitar solos of recent times, a real face-melter.

Deerhoof have just released Friend Opportunity which is amazing too, featuring my favourite song of the year so far...

Deerhoof - The Perfect Me



Again in a couple of minutes there are more ideas than you can count. Plus the wood block is my new favourite instrument! It sounds totally joyous and uplifting to me and the whole album is well worth checking out if you like your pop with an experimental edge.

Except you probably downloaded it last year. Ah well...

Visit - Deerhoof
Visit - Deerhoof MySpace
Buy - The Runners Four
Buy - Friend Opportunity

Ella Guru - Noisy Insects



Here's a real mystery. I first heard of Ella Guru on the Rough Trade Country compilation I mentioned last time. I got the imaginatively titled First Album, and then the trail goes cold.

It's a pretty cool album in a Lambchop stylee (featuring Jimmy Carl Black, the "Indian Of The Group", on occasional backing vocals). Nice arrangements on some lovely and mellow Americana. From Liverpool (*ahem*).

The real star of the show is backing vocalist Kate Walsh doing her best Emmylou Harris impression.

Ella Guru - where are you now?

Visit - Ella Guru
Buy - The First Album

The summer we first started doing Johnny Domino music, I was working in a supermarket and Oxbow was working at the American Adventure, a fairly random theme park that was near where we lived - it closed last year but to be honest it was always a poor man's Alton Towers. Hell, it was a poor man's Drayton Manor Park & Zoo. The Magic Kingdom it was not.

We started getting obsessed with Country music at the same time when Ox brought some tapes home from work. One had Hank Williams one it, one had Hawkshaw Hawkins, and one featured Flatt & Scruggs. You'd think that after a hard day working at a fake Wild West theme park, the last thing we'd want to listen to was Bluegrass but there you go.

After leaving Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys Lester Flatt (guitar and vocals) and Earl Scruggs formed the Foggy Mountain Boys, to become one of the most successful bluegrass bands of all time. They were also responsible for the theme tune to the Beverley Hillbillies - "oil that is... Texas Tea...".

Flatt & Scruggs - Pike County Breakdown



Man, you can practically see the smoke coming off Earl Scruggs' banjo! I have no idea how you would move your fingers so fast. I love the way this song just keeps going, sounds like they could keep going for days.

Flatt & Scruggs - I'll Be Going To Heaven Sometime



I also love their more maudlin spiritual numbers. I'm not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination but I do find myself veering towards the god-fearing in my musical tastes. What's that about? Maybe I'm just jealous of people who have faith and like to experience it vicariously through their music. Who knows.

Visit - Flatt & Scruggs
Buy - A Proper Introduction to Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs: the Mercury Years

ant banana cat

With sincere apologies to The Art Of Noise [and their A-Z of Music feature] and to our good friend The Singing Detective. If an idea is good, it's worth borrowing from. And if an idea is worth borrowing from, you might as well copy it outright... Anyway, I'm going to be trawling through my music collection in an alphabetical stylee and featuring tracks that I really love, from artists that I mostly know very little about.

Animal Collective - Who Could Win A Rabbit


I bought Animal Collective's Sung Tongs after reading a review, something that we all do when we're feeling flush, out of touch or both. I know nothing about them and I don't really want to, either. To know that this music was made by rational humans would ruin it for me - in my mind these are field recordings of campfire folk-songs from a tribe of demented glove puppets. With a delay pedal.

Great stuff - I've always thought that if you wanted to upset a neighbour, a high-volume blast of this in the early hours would do the trick, more so than Metallica or whatever. Plus they'd probably think twice about complaining.

Visit - Animal Collective (MySpace)
Buy - Sung Tongs

The Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Choir - Kalimankou Denkou



In this alphabetical journey through my collection there will be a LOT of music released by the 4AD label. When I was at college I was a major 4AD geek. As such I bought a lot of beautifully packaged half-baked rubbish. I also got some really great stuff. Like Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, a collection of field recordings of traditional Bulgarian vocal music which is still quite unlike anything I'd heard before or since.

Amazing hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck stuff. No idea what they're singing about (although according to the CD this title translates to The Evening Gathering) but it's just beautiful. Considering that these singers are mostly untrained, the vocal harmonies they use and the blend of registers are simply amazing. There are all kinds of complex chord inversions and voicings - which become even more mind-boggling when you think that this is a recording of an oral folk-art tradition, passed down from generation to generation.

Visit - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares at 4AD
Buy - Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares Vol 1

Chickasaw Mudd Puppies - Nighttime (Ain't Got No Eyes)



Now this is a real unknown. I got this on the great Rough Trade Shops - Country Vol.1 album. Like They Might Be Giants, they were a duo - were there lots of these in the 80s? What were the sales figures like for drum machines? Where were the drummers at?

This is weird mutant swamp rock with a demented edge - me likee.

Visit - Chickasaw Mudd Puppies
Buy - Rough Trade Shops - Country Vol.1