Friday, September 17, 2010

First snow of the year


Ludicrous! Snow in September... well I am in Canada, but still. September...

The Lepki Chart - Summer 2010 iTunes Play Counts

Every so often I have to bin some music from my laptop. This time round artists twixt A and E felt the wrath of my delete key...


I love Manchester music, and the whole baggy sound, but when Ian Brown gets serious and over James Lavelle's his groove it all loses its sloppy charm somewhat.
Both Arctic Monkeys albums bit the digital dust this month as did some choppy changey Avalanches tracks. The early zeroes feels quite dated now as archives were plundered and remixed for the ADD generation.
Bjork's later albums - Medulla and Volta albums probably need some serious listening, but I can never quite find the mood. A few Tchaikovsky symphonies were worthy but largely unplayed and made way as did some unsorted Charlie Parker.


Jazz in general needs to be loved and have a back story. You can't just plonk 6GB of someone else's music on an ipod and start enjoying it - you need to have been in a record shop when a trumpet caught your ear, or in some east London flat at 3am as the conversation became quieter and slower and it was just Miles filling the pre-sunlight void.
Chemical Brothers, Deep Purple's Come Taste the Band, and Duffy bid adieu too.

So what was top of the pops in Summer 2010? Well you can listen on
Spotify here...
Melodic and largely acoustic music was flavour of the season, with Iron & Wine springing in from nowhere with their 2007 album
The Shepherd's Dog accounting for most plays.

Early days of having a child in the house meant gentle songs were the preferred accompaniment.


Next down the new entries is Caribou's Swim. In a classic piece of counter-programming, Caribou's electro heavy, slightly disintegrating melodic trance packs a punch of intruguing non-resolution.


Deerhunter - Microcastle is a logical continuation of the Atlas Sound Sound which has been popular on the Lepki Pod since this time last year.

Doris - Did you Give the World Some love today baby is a lovely timepiece from the late 60's which is a little bit of European Motown. I think of Doris Svennson as a cross between Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, with a little bit of Cardigans/Carpenters thrown in.

Finally, the Dark Night Of The Soul was the token melancholy album of the month, with the Sparklehorse collaboration heavy piece of work mixing up catchy lyrical hooks with moody menacing nightmares.

intercontinental cultural differences: 1


My complete cultural thesis is based on watching daytime TV feeds from Detroit...
We think that TV is bad and getting worse in the UK, well, the US has that nailed. OK, they produce Mad Men and Weeds and a few things like that, but the majority of output is so brash, and there is a lot of it.
Chat shows require you to a) dance (Ellen) b) cry (Oprah), c) give stuff away (Oprah) d) cook (Rachel Ray) e) talk incessantly (all of them) f) applaud (all of them).
The applause to content ratio is about 8 to 1.
Why so noisy?