Paperjam

Heard this the other week on the nightmare that is Roundtable and loved it straight away. In fact I loved it as soon as I heard the title, before the music had even started I had a big grin all over my face. The song itself is a thing of beauty, on the one hand it is fey scottish indie music in the mould of Belle and Sebastian, meanwhile it is also a great pop song with a belting chorus featuring what I think was described by some muso on 6 Music as "dissonant chords".

Anyway, I got it today and have played far too often this evening already, which could mean that like a fifteen year-old with easy access to cider for the first time, I'll be sick of it soon. However fate has stepped in and helpfully broken my computer meaning that I can't put the song on my ipod and completely play it to death. Hooray (sort of).

This also means that I can't watch the video at Camera Obscura's web site either. They look about as happy about it as I do.

Black Ramps were kind enough to send me a copy of their Saucer Crash EP a few weeks back, due to the whole broken computer nightmare having a listen etc has had to wait. But I was able to admire the very nice bowling alley photo on the cover.

The Black Ramps are ploughing that melodic lo-fi furrow for all its worth; a bit scruffy but not really shambolic. Above all they seen to have been taking their Pavement tablets regularly, not necessarily a bad thing, it didn't do Blur any harm.

First track Saucer Crash is an audible Proust's Madeleine; A speedy rhythm section and crashing, clanging guitar over a yelped tale of alien-related girl enlargements, transporting me back to the staffs uni college road student union in the mid-nineties. Sonic Youth and Pavement are blaring out as I get pissed on cans of red stripe and conspicuously fail to arouse any interest in that bird with the tattoo and pink hair despite my dodgy donkey jacket. Oh well, Adidas t-shirt on and off to the Leek road disco nightmare for the next six months then.

Anyway, if Saucer Crash sounds reminiscent of Pavement, then Speak+Destroy sounds exactly like Pavement - a synthesis of Type Slowly and Transport Is Arranged. To my mind this is the best of the three tracks, but then I am a bit miserable.

Finally comes Rampenstein, which didn't do much for me, not as much fun as Saucer Crash and not nearly as dramatic as Speak+Destroy.

So there you have it, one for a bit of 90's nostalgia or for those who like a slightly rough edge to their indie -rock. I'm off to listen to Brighten The Corners. You can get more info on the nifty Black Ramps website, which has a rather cool Starsky And Hutch toy car on it and has other tracks to download plus the Saucer Crash video.

One thing, possibly the only thing, actually, that Jim (Morrissey fan and grim indie-loving chap) and I (electrodisco-loving hands-in-the-air dance person) agree on in the vast and frequently stinky field of music is that LCD Soundsystem Are The Shit. Also James Murphy is the sort of frontman (35, slight paunch) that we feel we could be. End every line with a Mark E. Smith "...aH!" and mess your hair up a bit, there you go.

The LCD production wing, the DFA, seem to remix something every ten seconds, and somehow they all seem to be quality, if fairly similar. It goes like this : Take a track. Strip out most of the original music, leaving the vocals. Add impossibly funky but straightforward tight disco drums. Mix in some handclaps, agogos, bongos, and anything else you can find lying around in that school percussion box. Extend the track so it lasts about three weeks - the listener will have to make sure that they are ready to spend that time furiously dancing, until the finale when they are just leaping up and down screaming "COME ON!" as the whole thing judders to a squalling, climatic and hip-shaking finale.

Goldfrapp's "Slide In" is exactly like that, only imagine it taking place onboard a train to a particularly disco part of the Weimar Republic. Vocals are dispensed with after about five minutes, reflex arse-shaking will have kicked in after seven minutes, your mind will have shutdown after nine, and you may need hospitalisation when it finally ends, at 12 minutes 51 seconds.

Adam, the man who doesn't like anything says, "it's just too long", but it really isn't. It's really the ebb-and-flow that Murphy and Goldsworthy have absolutely nailed. The track doesn't consistently build, it quietens down, has a bit of a think, gets in a bit of a mood, sorts itself out and then brings the noise for the ending. I imagine they've set themselves a target, to try and out-epic the Patrick Cowley mix of "I feel love", and I think they've done it.

It appears on the b-side of their recent single "Ride a White Horse", although I can't guarantee it's the full version, which I know appeared on a promo 12". Have a listen to a chunk of it over at Juno.co.uk.

Clearly I've had my head in a bucket since last August, 'cos I've only just discovered this new 7" issue of a 1981 record by a bunch of steel drummers doing a version of the Gary Numan robohit.

Apparently it was in a bit of a state and needed a bit of polishing up in the mastering by Red Hook, but it still sounds very funky and nearly completely ridiculous - check those lovely rough-arsed drums, Shitty Is Pretty in full effect.

As usual it was Shadow that got there first - this appears on Diminishing Returns. As well as the lovely 7", you can get it on the latest Rough Trade Counter Culture comp along with a bunch of other stuff from the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Sleater-Kinney and The Fall-ah.

Ed Banger Records (here's the Ed Banger website, there's sod all there right now) seem to be doing the business at the moment, with a couple of Justice tracks ("One Minute to Midnight" and "Waters of Nazareth") that have had me doing the traditional lame-horse dancing round the kitchen.

And now, here's Myspace sensation Uffie, who's impressed/made you run screaming in the opposite direction (delete as applicable) with her astonishingly inept but filthy spitting.

I love slightly rubbish rapping me - "Bad Young Brother" is still on my iPod somewhere, and our oddly named daft hiphop troupe the Cold Ghetto Suckers did a cover version of "Ice Ice Baby" with an Akai sampler and a Stylophone - Public Enemy meets Rolf Harris. You're lucky, there's no recordings available.

And Uffie reminds me of the sassy and squealing L'Trimm and JJ Fad, who came out with the bass-cone ripping "Supersonic" (produced by the Arabian Prince) at the arse-end of the Eighties.

Feadz and Mr.Oizo are on the production case here - but I recommend you head for the SebastiAn remix of "Pop the Glock", which sounds like a cute and sweet sounding vocoder rap. Until you realise how filthy she's being. Some have said this is all just a bit wrong, and "Ready to Uff" is near-guaranteed to make you feel pervy, like listening on to one-half of an 0898 'phone call.

She claims to be from Miami/Paris, but there's a British sound in her voice, particularly in some of the vowels, which suggests she's aping UK grime vocals to some extent. It'd be interesting to see how some of the UK styles could travel and affect the pop charts across the world - particularly the ponderous and evil dubstep sound. Or maybe I just prefer it if Lady Sovereign hadn't fallen off quite so badly...

Hear "Pop the Glock" and "Ready to Uff" over at Uffie's Myspace site. According to Discogs, the 12" is released on 27th Feb 2006 on Ed Banger Records in France.

Tom over at ace music-tech blog MusicThing has gone mad on our new favourite thing YouTube, and scouted out a fair few classic music videos, including a suitably mental early TV performance from Iggy and the Stooges, a cracking new Prince single, and the most arse-shaking beat from James Brown's funky drummer Clyde Stubblefield.

Also check that Chaka Khan drumming performance mentioned in the comments. So far I've managed to find a load of scary old Gary Numan doing his Bowie-as-a-robot schtick ("We are glass"), Joy Division being impressively bleak ("Shadowplay") and yet more France Gall ("Quand on est ensemble").

The good news is that the video streaming seems to work through corporate firewalls (Flash videos over normal HTTP?), so if you're at work and the YouTube website isn't blocked, you should be able to get your Chaka Khan fix at your desk. And slow everyone elses connection at the same time, marvellous.

As mentioned previously the new eight track album from the capital letter-hating bravecaptain aka Martin Carr is available for completely free download from his web site as of today. Thoughtfully, you can also grab the artwork to put in the CD case to make things look nice too.

Haven't had a chance to have a proper listen yet but did bung it on whilst doing some cooking and the first track "whatever happened to the fingertipsaint" is ace, with big organ sounds and very good for chopping up vegetables to. Unfortunately most of the album was then drowned out by the sounds of bubbling saucepans, stir-frying chicken and an extractor fan.

Once the food was ready I had reached the last two tracks, the juddering but tuneful "oh you" and the closer "jerusalem" featuring the politicised rap of Akira The Don, who you can read a onemusic interview with right here if you like.

All sounds good so far. More thoughts tomorrow when I've listened to it on the way to and, more importantly, back from work.

Feeling a bit down in grey old January? Cheer yourself up with Sixties French pop videos over at YouTube (via ilike).

Even the hardest of techno-loving hearts could not fail to be melted by Sixties teenage babypop star France Gall's hip-swinging "Laisse Tomber Les Filles". I love the stomping "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" which won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965.

There's also some rare film of Gitane-aholic Serge Gainsbourg not glued to a fag in the pervy-looking "Dents de lait, dents de loup" and "Les Sucettes", and then he's back with the cigs and Brigitte Bardot (toting a tommy gun) in the classic "Bonnie and Clyde". There's plenty of good stories on the indefatiguable Gainsbourg at the Guardian website.

Oh and don't watch "Tous les Gar‚àö?üons et Les Filles" if you've just eaten - Ms. Hardy is lipsyncing on one of those fairground boats and it's all a bit vertiginous.