Lou Reed

Not a perfect day, but a most enjoyable evening. Simply sitting and playing football on my 360 and listening to some new CDs. Not much, you may think. This has been the first evening that my mind and body have both been functioning to a sufficient level to allow me to apply my motor skills to moving virtual players around a pitch.

The music is more important, however, as this is one of the first time I have sat down and listened to a whole album in months. Usually, as is the way when you have a portable music player of any type, you forward to the songs you like, and with an MP3 player, you don’t even get the joy of snatches of songs as you stop to hear how much more of the cassette you have to fast-forward.

Secondly, it is actually an event - I remember that there was a slightly ritualistic nature to playing vinyl - it is a large black disc that you have to turn over after 30 minutes or so, and there is something tangible to the experience - this is less so with CDs, but it is unusual for me to sit down uninterrupted without reading or doing the cleaning. And without, again skipping tracks (although this is mainly due to the lack of batteries for the remote control).

So, I hear you ask, what are you listening to? Well, dear readers, Leonard Cohen features quite strongly. His delightfully miserable first three albums have just been reissued, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Beyond this, I have been engaging with German dance music (not the standard dreadful techno) in the form of Compost’s Black Label series - a wonderfully eclectic mixture of the sounds that appeal to the more left-field dancefloors of Europe.

The final CDs have been an attempt to engage with youth - firstly revisiting my own in the form of Rumble in the Jungle - these are tracks I remember hearing John Peel play back in the day - parallel to dub reggae - and I remember being entirely mystified as to how someone so beloved of the NME at the time, and someone who played grunge and American indie music (as was the fashion at the time) could play this music that sounded like angry Jamaican men shouting at a drum machine that kept malfunctioning - as far as I was concerned at the time, one could like one form of music only. For the rest of your life. Ironic, no? Anyway, here is General Levy and M-People (not that one) with ‘Incredible’

The final CD, an attempt (of sorts) to engage with the youth of today has pleasantly surprised me. I had heard masses about ‘dubstep’, as it is termed, a musical movement from the south of London that seemingly has grown out of the UK garage scene and mixed it with reggae, jazz, hiphop, brokenbeat and jungle sensibilities. I had envisaged a form of music utterly impenetrable to me - although the influences are my bread and butter, my fear was of Craig David-style pap. Burial, as those of you who have received a recent set of CDs will know, sound like Massive Attack with slightly unusual beat sand time signatures, and this is the way I would categorise the little dubstep I have heard.

Today’s offering was the album by Skream!, and it reveals a depth of understanding and musicianship that belies his youth - there are all of the influences above on the album, and they are all part of an organic whole. The standout track for me, so far at least, is ‘Check-It’, featuring the talents of Warrior Queen - a wonderfully warped dancehall track. Anyway, I am pausing and hesitating now. The point is, it is rather good.

Paranoia

OK, so my X-box 360 has just given me a heart attack. DVD tray would not open. Repeatedly. For 45 minutes. Finally managed to open it manually. Then it wouldn’t close properly. For an hour. Cue visions of my entire day off tomorrow being spent on the phone to a call centre. Turn to trusted British tradition of shaking faulty electrical items. Magically starts working.

I am sure the corporation that produce it have been spying on me and are punishing me for using Mozilla and being in the process of buying an infinitely more fruity laptop. Or maybe not.