LCD Sound System – Never As Tired As When I’m Waking Up
Justin Timberlake – My Love (Diplo mix)
Turbulence – Notorious (Diplo vocal version)
Diplo – Diplo Rhythm
Mekon – Yes Yes Y’all (feat Roxanne Shante – Baile Funk mix)
Mekon – GSE
The Mekons – Work All Week
The Dirty Three – Feral
Venom P. Stinger – 26 Milligrams
Sad Rockets – 26
Andrew Pekler – Mirrorise
Sunn0))) – BP/Simple
Fall For Days – Fight With Buddha
The New Days – Mary
The Devastations – Tomorrow Is A Long Time
Beasts of Bourbon – Let’s Get Funky
Breakwater – Release The Beast
Daft Punk – Robot Rock (live at Coachella)
Daft Punk – Teachers
Thomas Bangalter – Extra Dry
Daft Punk – Aerodynamic (Slum Village remix)
Slum Village – Raise It Up

Listen to Join The Dots every Thursday night from 9pm until 11 (Aust EST) on FBI 94.5 throughout greater metropolitan Sydney. Or stream it around the world at FBIradio.com.

Tune in to the show tomorrow night for records from Diplo, the Mekons, Sad Rockets, the New Days, Daft Punk and Breakwater.

By the way, can someone tell the choppers beating their way round my place that people seemed to care much more about a couple of overpriced cruise ships pulling into the bay in front than Cheney hitting town on a talkfest.

The hastily rebuilt military tribunal for Guantanamo Bay inmates including David Hicks was cut apart on SBS’s Insight tonight

Where else but Insight could you get key trial participants like US Colonel Moe Davis, Major Michael Mori, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, Hicks’s father and step-mother Terry and Bev Hicks, and constitutional lawyers, as well as a cast of expert and interested players in to debate?

The farcical court (and Australia’s five years of lame response) was repeatedly exposed to ridicule – Ruddock’s brandishing of an Amnesty badge, his hilarious comment that Hicks would appreciate having the case resolved in the US court rather than just come home, Davis’s attempts to sidestep Jenny Brockie’s questions. It’s become an election issue here in Australia, which is why things seem to be moving at long last, but the end result is still anyone’s guess.

Check Robert Richter QC’s ranty but excellent piece for The Age.

Karl Smith and Pete Cohen announced they’ve broken up their band Sodastream, in a short post to their website yesterday.

It feels like the moment the band’s waited a whole career for, given their music is so well suited to breakup and the ensuing bouts of melancholy. The Perth then Melbourne duo’s spectrum swamping double bass and keening vocals stuck out in Australian music from the time they were picked from obscurity by an excited John Peel. But after 10 years, five albums, a handful of EPs and live records, and truckloads of gigs, it seems like the right time.

In a recent interview to promote their UK tour, the duo came across as tired and generally over it all.

They will be missed. But there will be reunion gigs, and something tells me the resonance of Sodastream’s music will only swell and mature with time.

Spread-eagled on the grass behind his friend Leo’s apartment complex in Campbell, Palu Tabu contemplated the events of the previous eight hours. It seemed like a lot longer, he thought, but the air was warming up so he knew it must be morning.

He felt like himself. But something was different, the light flickered oddly. Palu found it unsettling, but didn’t think about it too much – “Weird,” was all he said, to no one in particular.

It wasn’t the first time Palu had found himself alone, not even the first time on that particular stretch of grass – colder though, because of the light dusting of snow that only added to his typically heightened state. He set about checking his extremities were in order.

Arms – okay; the legs seemed fine, but at the end his feet were just a blurry haze like he was trying to see through the bottom of a schooner glass. He had his clothes on, but his torn jeans were damp. His faded t-shirt, the one with the cute kitten, was soaked through. Passing a hand over his stomach he realised with a start he needed to eat.

His phone rang – Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love.’ Loud enough to hear it the night before at Toast bar, the harsh tone startled him. A window opened in the apartment above. Shaken, Palu picked up his phone and answered.

“Hello?” he asked. The voice at the other end was shrill and insistent, talking fast.

It’s a cliche for music geeks to discard the hyped sound by the time it’s getting column inches (should that be centimetres?) having moved on to something new and fresh. In my current series of great, patently obvious, observations that nonetheless enunciate something with a deeper meaning, here are some excerpts from Si Hindle aka Somefreak‘s review of the latest Villalobos beat, a 40 minute groove called ‘Fizheuer Ziheuer.’

Minimal, and this is defiantly minimal, is the ‘big thing’ right now. Si points out that ‘big things’ attract a bunch of people who are only interested in what he calls the “big thingyness” of it, rather than the “history or true nature behind the glitz.” You see it in all sorts of music, and scenes. Like at the moment the hyphy/Baltimore/Crunk thing in Sydney has flipped out of its Levins-driven niche into mainstream club culture – it’s getting Levins (who rocks these beats) loads of gigs, but all of a sudden a whole bunch of other DJs are playing the same records, with a lot less feeling.

“Of course, making something a Big Thing commodifies it, and reduces it to a set of rules which can then be clearly followed by craftsmen (yes Martin Buttrich, I’m looking at you) to create ‘new’ pieces of work that offer little new to the original form but help propagate the generic form associated with whatever label is applied to the Big Thing, to the point where it becomes caricaturised, hated and ultimately discarded for the next Big Thing (watch out, Dubstep!)”

I think it’s fair to say dubstep is pretty much there already – generic beats increasingly dropping as the scene explodes in the UK, and gets closer to it here – but that’s beside the point. Is there any way to avoid the NME style next big thing phase? Constant evolution can only take you so far – it didn’t work for dubstep, eventually the buzz brings in a crowd who aren’t interested in taking things forward, they want something they can get their heads around, describe in a buzz statement on flyers, and pitch to promoters.

But isn’t this exactly what happens with most (all?) music scenes? More to the point, isn’t it a great thing, forcing paradigm shifts, shaking up audiences, moving people along…

Martha Wainwright – Bring Back My Heart (feat Rufus Wainwright)
Leonard Cohen – If It Be Your Will
Robert Forster – Tower of Song
The Go Betweens – Draining The Pool For You
Rand & Holland – Caravans
Darren Hanlon – Happiness Is a Chemical
Rand & Holland – Let Me Down Gently
Ned Collette – The Laughter Across The Street
City City City – Spread Em
Eluvium – One
Mono – The Remains of the Day
Pretty Boy Crossover – Metaphone
Dengar – King of the Undead
Funki Porcini – Suck Acid Pearl & Dean
Up, Bustle and Out – The Dance of the Caravan Summer (De-latinised hip hop interpretation)
Coldcut – Autumn Leaves
Jalaluddin M Nuriddin and D.ST – Mean Machine
Tribe 2 What I Like (American Dreams)
Time Zone – World Destruction
Shango – Zulu Groove
Manu Dibango – Electric Africa
Golden Palominos – Boy (Go)
REM – I’ve Been High (Matthew Herbert mix)

Listen to Join The Dots every Thursday night from 9pm until 11 (Aust EST) on FBI 94.5 throughout greater metropolitan Sydney. Or stream it around the world at FBIradio.com.

Emmy Hennings skewered CW Stoneking in a review of his recent Lanfranchi’s gig.

“Taking on a voice the very timbre of which denotes isolated, rural, African-American poverty – everything that Stoneking is so patently not – does not make for “authenticity” any more than would painting your face with boot polish. His shtick is within half a centimetre of a Black & White Minstrel Show.”

It’s brutal. But on point.

I’ve listened to the record a few times. Collecting my thoughts for a review that seems almost unnecessary now. It’s a weird and outdated kitsch that’s been lapped up in unexpected corners of the music world. When I interviewed Alex Jarvis on my radio show the other day he raved about the singer, although Jarvis is compromised by the fact he’s worked with CW doing music workshops in outback communities. But he’s not the only one. The first time I heard CW’s name was when Tim Ritchie highly recommended the record on Radio National.

In any case, it’s a killer review.

He’s part of Drama for Yamaha and Melb’s ace Brothersister label, but this lovely record as Pompey comes from Pocketclock.

Here’s an old mix of mine for ITM. It’s pretty deep and dancey.

# Abstract Rude & Tribe Unique – Ab live at the Goodlife Cafe ’93 – Battle Axe
# Gray – Drum Mode (Paul Mogg version) – Gomma
# Circadian Rhythms – Seven Seas – Rhythm Love
# Eddie Flashin’ Fowlkes – Soul Train (Rae & Christian’s Soul Strain Mix) – Paper
# Mad Doctor X – Intergalactic Throwdown – Freskanova
# Coda – Latin Quarter (Berlin Mix) – Exceptional
# Daniel Ibbotson – 7 Future Wonders – Clear
# FBA featuring Jason Bruer – From DEIA – Ferox
# New Order – Your Silent Face – Factory
# L’usine – Haze – Ghostly International
# Alexander Robotnick- Dance Boy Dance (Paul Reynolds re-edit) – Art Of Disco
# Matthew Dear – Dog Days – Spectral
# Cassius featuring Ghostface Killah – Thrilla (A Bass Day Remix) – Virgin
# Farley Jackmaster Funk – The Acid Life (Swag’s WGCI Master Mix) – Square Roots
# Marco Passarini – I House U (Radio Edit) – Peacefrog