Join The Dots was all a bit pop this week, kicking off with The Clouds and Candle Records acts like Richard Easton, Happy Mondays’ gangly rhythms and Mnemonic Ascent’s killer new record.

Ratcat – Razor Blades (Shock)
The Clouds – Hieronymous (Red Eye)
Girls From The Clouds – Bye Bye Wintertime (Candle)
The Simpletons – Till the sky (Candle)
Darren Hanlon – Falling Aeroplanes (Qua remix) (Candle)
Richard Easton – Coffin (Candle)
Sodastream – Fitzroy Strongman (Tugboat)
Kiss My Poodle’s Donkey – Bad Hair Day (Hot)
Celibate Rifles – Jesus on TV (Hot)
Derwent River Star – Wanderlust (Mess & Noise giveaway)
Portishead – Mourning Air (Polydor)
Prop – Low Life (Oren Ambarchi Low remix) (Silent)
Mapstation – Loin d’Afrique (~scape)
Keith Fullerton Whitman – Lisbon (Kranky)
Happy Mondays – Loose Fit (Factory)
Happy Mondays – Freaky Dancin’ (BBC Peel Sessions)
The Heads – Don’t Take My Kindness For Weakness (MCA)
Chicks On Speed – Wordy Rappinghood (EMI)
David Byrne – Seaside Smokes (Thrill Jockey)
Fellini – Teu Ingles (Man)
DJ Dolores & Orchestra Santa Massa – Samba De Dez Linhas (Crammed)
Crackpot – Tippy Tippy Toe (Tummy Touch)
DJ Ransom – Tribute to Scratching (MXL)
Mnemonic Ascent – Hold Back (Crookneck)
Koolism – On Deck (feat Mnemonic Ascent) (Warner)

Not in Sydney? You can still listen thanks to FBI’s brand new stream. Stay tuned for more Join The Dots developments soon.

The big news as far as my radio show goes is that FBI is now streaming, so if you wanna hear my dulcet (depending on the circumstances it can also be awkward, excited and occasionally truculent) tones, and music, then it’s Tuesdays 9 ’til 11pm Australian EST/NSW.

This week’s all a bit pop. Ratcat, the Clouds, Richard Easton, the Celibate Rifles, Happy Mondays, Tom Ze, DJ Ransom. Somehow a trip from Sydney pop to Tropicalia and Aust hip hop will all make sense in the Join The Dots mix, a thread of music joined up for just one night. Drop me an email – ml(at)fortunegrey.com – if you’ve got feedback.

Memo from the grey people – hooked up by none other than Rupture – grime heads get the new roll deep mixtape Creeper Vol. 2 thanks to Unit One.

BTW I wanna redesign my page in a kinda magazine stylee – say with two streams of text and only the latest post featured on the front – anyone have any ideas for finding good wordpress themes? Or know how to put them together?

Take out your knife and slice a big chunk out of the Earth. Take care to poke the knife out somwhere near Chicago, Berlin and Sydney. That’s pretty much what this week’s version of my radio show Join The Dots was all about. New tracks from Mapstation, Loose Fur, Sonic Youth, Barbara Morgenstern and John Tejada got played, plus some absolute favourites from Sun, Archer Prewitt, Wilco and Blastcorp.

God, you know they’re all favourites, don’t you?

Tarwater – All of the ants left Paris (Kitty Yo)
To rococo rot – Sol (Domino)
Mapstation – The way things change (Scape)
Sun – Make it (Mapstation remix) (Preservation)
Sun – Sleepin’ (Preservation)
Oren Ambarchi – Lost time not found again (Opaque remix by Steinbruchel) (Room 40)
Saddleback – Scramble to (Preservation)
Archer Prewitt – Without you (Thrill Jockey)
The Sea & Cake – The leaf (Thrill Jockey)
Edith Frost – Playmate (Drag City)
Wilco – Shouldn’t be ashamed (Sire)
Loose Fur – Thou shalt wilt (Drag City)
Loose Fur – Elegant transaction (Drag City)
Sonic Youth – Turquoise boy (Geffen)
Masha Qrella – Luck (Monika)
Barbara Morgenstern – Quality time (Monika)
Pole – Raum 1 (original) (Scape)
John Tejada – The end of it all (Palette)
I’m not a gun – Blue garden (City Centre Offices)
Cyne – Haze (City Centre Offices)
Lali Puna – Micronomic (Boom Bip remix) (Morr Music)
The Remote Viewer – Last night you said goodbye, now it seems years (City Centre Offices)
Blastcorp – A thousand miles away (self released)

Listen!
Mapstation – Factory
Barbara Morgenstern – The operator

If you were in Canberra on Friday night and listening to 2XX FM you might have heard me in my old haunt doing Psycho Therapy with my good friend Leo. A few of the same tracks as above, with a few more for good measure: Grimus & Teknob, Burial, Palaxy Tracks, Calvin Johnson, The Gossip, Aceyalone, Faux Pas, Go Betweens, Boo Radleys, Calexico and Lylas. And that was just the start of the weekend.

Two albums I’ve been digging lately, though it took me a while to get my thoughts down. Yoko Solo‘s thing is soundtracky breakbeat with a Chemical Brothers/Com.A kinda vibe.

Yoko Solo – Infinite collapse pt. one: I blew it (infinite undo)

Macromantics – Conspiracy (Yoko Solo remix)

Kero’s fat new package of crunchy electro came out on the newly defunct Neo Ouija, and Kero’s own website really sucks, especially for a producer who doubles as a designer, so it’s not clear whether the record’s still available. Actually, the best place is Kero’s myspace page. Read about both at Stylusmagazine.com.

This week, on my radio show JOIN THE DOTS I’ll be playing new records from Mapstation, Loose Fur, Sonic Youth and Barbara Morgenstern, as well as tracing a line from Tarwater to Saddleback through to Pole and Blastcorp. From 9 ’til 11pm Tuesday night on FBI 94.5 in Sydney.

The mic breaks lacked inspiration, the segues were lumbering, the lo-fi dirt wasn’t just the music, it was also the sound of turntables starting up with a whir or chairs shifting with a gritty rustle. Yet several people called up to say they enjoyed the show. Bizarre. Maybe I’ve been reading out the wrong phone number for the past month. Thanks to everyone who called in.

The show started with the extended 4AD gang, with a touch of Bowie, including Wibutee who’ve been billed as Bowie if he hadn’t stopped experimenting. I shifted course into mid-80s electropop and Italo disco and finished with post-grime/post beats hip hop.

Seu Jorge – Rebel Rebel (FMR)
David Bowie – China Girl (EMI)
TV On The Radio – Modern Romance (4AD)
Celebration – War (4AD)
Wibutee – Playmachine (Scanner mix) (Sonnedisk)
Pale Saints – Fine Friend (4AD)
This Mortal Coil – Holocaust (4AD)
Chemical Brothers – Song to the Siren (Junior Boys Own)
Colourbox – Looks Like We’re Shy One Horse (4AD)
The Durutti Column – Sketches of Dawn (Live in Japan) (Factory)
Alexander Robotnick РDark Side of the Spoon (Cr̬me Organisation)
Grimus & Teknob – LFO Life (self-released)
New Order – Blue Monday (Factory)
Klein & MBO – Dirty Talk (Atlantic)
Mako & Bass Kleph – Like Abort Juan (Andrew Maher mix)(Floating Point)
Savage – They Don’t Know (Bass Kleph mix) (Dawn Raid)
Koolism – Warm & Easy (feat Rodney P) (Invada)
Blak Twang – Dirty Stopover Uncovered (feat Rodney P) (Wall of Sound)
Smith & Mighty – No Justice (feat Rudy Lee, Ratman remix) (!K7)
Sway – Pretty Ugly Husband (self-released)
Yoko Solo – Infinite Collapse Pt Three bang u up dummy (Quaketrap)
Macromantics – Conspiracy (Yoko Solo mix) (Quaketrap)

Direct your Canberra A-list-only invites here, I’m heading down this weekend.

But not before Damien Marley and Femi Kuti play at the Enmore on Thursday night!

In other news, JOIN THE DOTS is on again tonight. This week, it’s a trip from Bowie and This Mortal Coil to Mako, Koolism and Macromantics, with new records from Scott Walker, Sway, Alexander Robotnick and former Beta Band frontman Steve Mason’s new band King Biscuit Time. If in Sydney, tune into FBI 94.5 from 9 until 11pm. Non-Sydney people, FBI starts streaming soon.

If you’re into ‘new wave of new wave‘ bands like These Animal Men, S*M*A*S*H and Elastica, then you really ought to check out a band with the very unlikely name of Santa Dog. They are totally inspired by one of my favourite bands from that mid-90s scene, Echobelly (who’ve actually just reappeared with a brand new myspace page, which one’s the real one? ).

Anyway Santa Dog have released three EPs in just over a year and my review of the latest one – Belle De Jour – is up at Stylus. They’ve been pretty busy sending out their CDs to bloggers and it’s paid off with, if not quite a landslide, then at least quite a buzz of reviews and posts.

Santa Dog – Rosa (taken from the Belle De Jour EP)
Santa Dog – Chemical (new re-recorded version, originally on the Chemical EP)
Santa Dog – Delicate (new re-recorded version, originally on the Delicate EP)

This week’s show was relaxed, fun and in my opinion the best one yet – though I haven’t listened back yet – the music started with Melbourne’s extended Symbiotic crew, meandered into the way underrated Homelife, then deep techno territory (how good is that new Pier Bucci track?!) before eventually finishing with some Perth electronics.

I wandered out after the show and chatted to the presenter who’d come in to do the allnighter, who turned out to be Phillip McGarva (aka Microworld, who I’d played a track from in the show). It’s incredible how many of these sorts work at FBI – Peter Hollo, Pimmon, Soup, Jay Katz and the Naked City gang – despite what some say, there’s a pretty big pool of knowledge and experience at the station.

Diafrix – Hold On
Pisces, Rash Catch’em / 3rd Dek – Nothing in front
Music Vs Physics – Love is a 256 colour word
TZU – Summer Days (Mad Professor mix)
Curse Ov Dialect – Multicultural market
Spoonbill – Gumtree
Faux Pas – Cup of wonder
Homelife – Flying wonders
Homelife – Windytreehouserollerdisco
808 State – Timebomb
The Sugarcubes – Planet (Graham Massey Planet Suite Pt 2)
The Sugarcubes – Blue eyed pop
Cuizinier – Heartbeats
The Knife – Like a pen
Aril Brikha – Groove la chord
Microworld – Calypso
Ellen Alien & Apparat – Leave me alone
Ricardo Villalobos – Waiworinao
Pier Bucci – Tita
Leo Tardin’s Grandpianoramax – Starlite (Domu main mix)
Dave Miller – One light, dark room (Pablo Dali remix)
Miller & Fiam – Edge of midnight
Audio Cephlon – Wrapped in nori
Chris M & Fenris – Space ghost

The Observer lists Stylus at number 20 with a blurb by Simon Reynolds that says Stylus is the home of the best new music writing on the web. I’d better get writing a bit more!