Hyper-real worktime

Following on from the last post, one way to change for the good the sonic deficit is to listen more intently, to be more locked in, via the iTunes© and headphones at work. A freer day on Friday allows an intensification of sound (not loud enough so that other people can hear). We R IE’s Blogariddims has joined the various d’step mixes in being inspirational if you can zone off for a while from the Microsoft documents. Throughout the week, however, I have been discovering the joys of, and have been in enormous debt to, the MP3 bloggaz. On the work G5, at first my parasitic self resented the fact that you can’t save the file to the system and play it forever off the iTunes hub, then I began to appreciate the transient joys these temporary links provide. File-spreading but faithful sorts like Headphone Sex, the defunct Spoilt Victorianette, Moistworks , Moebius Rex, Some Disco and Silence is a Rhythm Too represent in deliciously titled portals, and in feeding the imagination surely encourage more music sales.

Booming out of speakers has always been the preferred aural feeder, I never took to Walkmans, Discmans or now the drug-white Pods (all of whose owners seem to play them too loud in a misguided statement of cool), but current circumstances are making a virtue out of the cans. And in further dissemination, here is a little list of recent online favourites. Hopefully they’ll all stay up for a bit, and I hasten to add I’m adding the links out of love, either that of instant attraction, nostalgic rushes or some other sensation. If you open them all up in separate windows you can mix between tunes using the volume player as a fade. This is my order, but remix the reality, make new connections. Do that before some suit asks you a question staggering in its banality:

First off, blogfaves JUNIOR BOYS go dance-synaptic from the new album. Twice as nice these cold as ice flavours. They’d remember
EDWYN COLLINS when he was good, as well as ULTRA NATE from 89. Basic Basement Boys business from Baltimore can still stir the senses.
Dance can be distorted as well as pure and clean, the unwilful meeting of minds like MR OIZO vs JAMELIA for example, but be careful not to pastiche Marvin Gaye too much like SHADOW and GUEST on track 1 of his new album (nice audio player on his site though).

Back to charged nights in the cold narcosis of hermetic pleasure, with those guys who were just out of their Joy Division nappies, it’s NEW ORDER with 586. To think of them as bloated djs, scenesters, zelebs and musical rockists now breaks my heart. Bollocks to that, let’s head out for the communal empathogens, aided by lovely stuff from electronic gazers THE FIELD, JUSTUS KOEHNCKE and DIRK LEYERS and DFA, all over Soulwax. The pulses have tuned my prisms. After that, let’s finish on a non-matriculated high and let loose amens that skip and slide from your grasp, riddims that dazzle in their slight of mind. In the hands of Foul Play and Omni Trio, breakbeat dance was this good once.