King Curly – Family Life
Ross McLennan – He Seems To Think We’re His Family
High Pass Filter – Skint (Ross McLennan’s Skinflint mix)
Aluf – Marinated Rizlas
Ryzla – Bushed
Alex Jarvis & Friends – My Life In The Bush of Ghosts
Because of Ghosts – Bright Things Come to Confusion
Telemetry Orchestra – Confused Muscles
Primitive Calculators – Pumping Ugly Muscle
Muscles – The Lake
Blank Realm – Lake
Chasm – Don’t Let Your Guard Down (feat Dialectrix & DJ 2buck)
Tooth – Avoiding the Road to Recovery
New Buffalo – Recovery
New Waver – Monday Mornings All Right For Working
Naked On The Vague – Brown Sun/Sydney Lane Rd
Shannon O’Neill – Vaguely Familial
Beardwagon – We Rock So You Don’t Have To
David McComb & Adam Peters – Don’t Go Home With Your Hard On
Daughters – A Room Full Of Hard Ons And No Place To Sit Down
Autistic Daughters – The Glasshouse and the Gift Horse
Voxtrot – Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives
Sons and Daughters – Johnny Cash
Peregrine – The Good Ship
Mark Walton Fretless – Kahana to Hana
Christian Prommer – Beau Mot Plage

Jackie O Motherfucker – Valley of Fire
The Hepburns – Jackie O
Anthony Rochester – Greased Llamas
Bad Luck Charms – Let’s Talk About the Weather
Bad Luck Charms – You’re a Long Way From Home With Nowhere to Run
End Show – Wires
The Pixies – Where Is My Mind?
Shellac – Be Prepared
Die! Die! Die! – Franz (17 Die! Die! Die! Fans Can’t Be Wrong)
Die! Die! Die! – Blue Skies
Crow – Paper Eyes
Songs: Ohia – The Old Black Hen
Joanna Newsom – Cosmia
Purplene – Cahoots=1
Ricaine – Polevault
Big Black – Bad Penny (live)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – 09-15-00
Blacklevel Embassy – Woman, Here Is Your Son
Shellac – Steady As She Goes
Time of the Assassins – Math
The Mark of Cain – Fire In Her Heart
Los Campesinos! – Police Story
Minutemen – Corona

The Scientists – Frantic Romantic
X – Degenerate Boy
The Mark of Cain – The Unclaimed Prize
Helmet – I Know
Melissa Auf der Mar – Head Unbound
Prefuse 73 – Smoking Red (feat John Stanier)
Tomahawk – Ghost Dance
Battles -Tonto (Four Tet Remix)

Matt Cousins is a producer and engineer at London’s Golden Hum Studios. Daniel Lea (aka By The Fireside), his partner at the studio, has just released a second album called The Great Hartford Fire, and Matt played on the title track. Playing in bands since he was 12 (it was all about the shoegazer and L7 covers back then), Matt’s recorded as Rises, and produced/played with expat Canberran Martin Craft, Swedish singer/songwriter Alma No Fear, By The Fireside and is just about to head back to the UK for touring and recording with his regular gig Findlay Brown (who’s just signed with Peacefrog).

By The Fireside – The Great Hartford Fire
Rises – Saved My Skin
Alma No Fear – Lullaby For Puck
Findlay Brown – Losing The Will To Survive
By The Fireside – Battlefields

M.Craft – I Got Nobody Waiting For Me
Sidewinder – Come Inside
Jarvis Cocker – I Will Kill Again
The Gossip – Careless Whisper
Roisin Murphy – Standing In The Way Of Control
Moloko – Fun For Me
Seiji – Loose Lips (feat Lyric L)
Seiji – Todo Mundo (feat MC Dolores)
Bugz in the Attic – Waiting (Afronaught remix)

Matt Cousins from London’s Golden Hum studio heads into the FBI fortress tonight for Join The Dots (from 9pm). He’s all about Americana, alt. country and classic AM radio, and as a producer, engineer and musician has worked on records by M.Craft, Lightspeed Champion, By The Fireside and Whitey. Listen!

Richard In Your Mind – 13 Stingrays (Mailer Daemon remix)
Richard In Your Mind – The New Sun
Mink Jaguar – Rhythm & Booze
The Urges – The 13th Floor
The Shimmys – Nobody But Me
The Laurels – Turn On Your Mind
Brother Brick – See You Tonight
The Years – Catherine Fields
Dom Mariani – Too Late
The Stems – Under Your Mushroom
Orange Humble Band – Better Just Fake It
Orange (Andrew Klippel, Mike Nock, Nick Littlemore, Pete Mayers) – Track 5
Mike Nock – Doors
Triosk – I Am a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake
Unique 3 – Weight For The Bass (Original Soundyard Dubplate Mix)
Unique 3 – The Theme (Autechre remix)
Neil Landstrumm – The Underground King
Parson – Throw Some Ds
Mu-Ziq – The Wheel
Julian Fane – Exit New Year
Matt McBeath – New Year
The Initials – South For Summer
Khancoban – Everywhere I See the Sea

Christmas was so tense when I was a kid.

It took me ages to start enjoying it. I think it clicked as friends and family spread interstate and overseas (not because they’re away, because they come back!). So I like it, but it’s got a melancholy I can’t kick. Love, family, friends. Things that’ve happened, years racing past, the distance between people. It’s charged with paradox.

That’s the background to why I’ve got a lot of love for xmas and xmas songs. So for the once a year special there were loads of them. Wholesome, raucous, risque, oblique and beautiful – not all at once though.

Emmy Hennings brought Phil Spector and Sufjan Stevens’ xmas compilations and xmassy songs from Sleater Kinney and The Fall for a festive edition of her segment The Voice.

I played songs from Traffic Sounds’ xmas compilation I Don’t Want Anything For Christmas and Mistletone’s one, Mistletonia. The Desks song comes from the Sydney expat’s downloadable compilation, The Christmasness (available here). And I threw in the Don Burrows version for the Creative Vibes guys, because I used to love their gospel xmas specials on 2SER.

Christmas Decorations – Rough and Tumble
Barrage – Xmas in July
The Knife – Christmas Reindeer
Easy E – Merry Muthafuckin’ Xmas
Alan Vega – No More Xmas Blues
Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Cold White Christmas
Darlene Love – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
Sleater Kinney - You’re No Rock’n'Roll Fun
The Fall – No Xmas for John Quays
Sufjan Stevens – Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Kid Cornered – Dean Versus Bing
Wayne & Wax – Remix-mas
De La Soul – Millie Pulled a Gun On Santa
Louis Armstrong – Zat You Santa Claus
Belle & Sebastian – Santa Claus
The Mendoza Line – Fox In The Snow (live)
Fountains of Wayne – Valley Winter Snow
Jack Ladder – All You Get’s A Song
The Desks – The Christmas Song
Teenage Fanclub – Christmas Eve
Afxjim – Assassination on Xmas Eve
Parker Lewis – Xmas Carols NYC
Don Burrows – Jingle Bells
Wild Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire – Dear Santa Claus
The Ronettes – Frosty the Snowman

Join The Dots is on FBI 94.5 in Sydney from 9-11pm on Thursdays.

Fire Engines – Big Gold Dream
Jesus & Mary Chain – Just Like Honey (Peel Sessions)
Primal Scream – I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have
Primal Scream – Loaded (Weatherall remix)
Two Lone Swordsmen – Rico’s Helly
23 Skidoo – Vegas El Bandito
Two Lone Swordsmen – Wrong Meeting
Link Wray – 5-10-15-20
Touch Typist – A Laughing Mouth
Comatone – Winter Diary
Underlapper – Fallen Face Moon (Shoeb Ahmad’s Nightlight Remix)
M. Rosner – 180706 – Untilted
The Ghost of 29 Megacycles – The Eye
Dave Miller & Pablo Dali – Summer to Winter
Roam The Hello Clouds – Phases
Om – Pilgrimage
Earth – The Driver
Oren Ambarchi – Inamorata

Daniel Songs – I Could Save You
Kompis – All Ears (feat. Erland Oye)
Whitest Boy Alive – All Ears
Whitest Boy Alive – 24K
Morgan Geist – Most Of All (feat. Jeremy Greenspan)
Junior Boys – In The Morning (Hot Chip remix)
Bostro Pesopeo – Bisogna
Glass Candy – Rolling Down The Hills
Chromatics – In The City
Henrik Schwarz – Jazz Book #2 (Music For Little Hands)
Wilco – My Darlin
Okkervil River – Savannah Smiles
Feist – We’re All In The Dance
Moldy Peaches – Anyone Else But You
Jim James & Calexico – Goin To Acapulco
Calexico – Not Even Stevie Nicks
Midlake – Roscoe (Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve remix)
Findlay Brown – Losing The Will To Survive (Beyond The Wizard’s Sleeve remix)
Gavin Clarke – Never Seen The Sea
Harmonic 313 – Word Problems
Trickski – Sunshine Fuck
Jamie Lloyd & Jimi Polar – Dr Flash

John Cale – BrotherMan
Died Pretty – Life to Go
Scientists – Swampland (live in London)
Darling Downs – Circa ’65
Fabulous Diamonds – 2:54
Sly Hats – Bleach (Fabulous Diamonds Reincarnation)
The Crayon Fields – The Crayon Fields
Manitoba – Dundas, Ontario (remix)
Caribou – She’s The One (Hot Chip remix)
Mountains in the Sky – Pt 4 The Rupture (radio edit)
Explosions in the Sky – Catastrophe and the Cure (Four Tet remix)
Dirty Three – Stellar
Seaworthy – Map In Hand Pt 4
Low – Venus
White Rainbow – Pulses
The Polyphonic Spree – Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (live)
Cuthbert & the Night Walkers – Trash
Frente – Ruby’s Arms
Tom Waits – Way Down In The Hole
Holidays On Ice – Diamond in the Mine
George W Bush & Wax Audio – War Is Over

New Horizons in Violence – The Preserved Head of John Howard
Die! Die! Die! – Promises, Promises
Ivens – Well Oiled Machine
Naked On The Vague – Old Leader
Indelible – Left Right Left
Burial – Untrue
Lyrics Born – I Changed My Mind
Wax Tailor – The Man With No Soul (feat Charlotte Savary)
Shawn Lov – Can’t Complain (feat Tony D)
Dan Kelly & the Alpha Males – Drunk On Election Night
Faux Pas – Changes
iLiKETRAiNS – Death of an Idealist
Institut Polaire – Lullaby For a Warmonger
Built To Spill – Liar
By The Fireside – Join The Circus
Prefuse 73 – I Knew You Were Gonna Go
Jape – Always Knew
Thief – Does It Make Any Sense
The Heavy – You Don’t Know
The Lucksmiths – To Absent Votes
Yo La Tengo – Fourth Time Around
Psapp – Leaving In Coffins
The Darling Downs – Every Time We Say Goodbye
Clairaudience – A Big Dose of Love is What’s Needed
The Royal We – Back and Forth Forever
Black Lips – Step Right Up

Thanks to Leigh Tran, Bim, Alistair, Emmy and Mel for the suggestions.

If you’re still wondering just who to vote for on Saturday, Get Up’s How Should I Vote site might help. They’ve polled candidates in every seat in the country on a range of issues. Complete the 20 question quiz and see how your views stack up against the candidates in your seat. It also has primers on the election process and a guide to each electorate.