The Annoying Din

The builders are in next door. Their constant banging, awful radio and flatbed loading and unloading seem to be trying to cut through my records with alarming zeal. This is, as one can imagine, fucking infuriating. The most infuriating part of all, however, is the Geordie foreman, who seems to marshal the troops by speaking as loudly as he possibly can. It's as if the North Eastern Public Speaking Championships are going on right outside my thin-walled 2 bed Manchester apartment.

Add to that the chav-wear shop 2 doors down who insist on blaring JLS, Example and Ed Bloody Sheeran at full blast and the rattle of traffic spinning through Central Manchester and it's rather hard to concentrate on doing my work, reading or, most annoying of all, me time!

Looks like a gimp, doesn't he?

Quite why people feel the need to listen to Capital Radio or perfect their human megaphone skills every day is beyond me, but why they have to do it within any distance of me just pisses me off.

It has all got me thinking though. What have been the most annoying noises that have been everywhere we go over the last few years? Which God-awful songs have been in every pub, shop or club over the last half-a-decade or so? So I've made a list...

Rihanna - Umbrella: Now while Ri-Ri (as I'm told she is to be called now) is extremely easy on the eye and does have a few catchy tracks, dare I say it, even good ones, there was a time a few years ago when you couldn't move without hearing this. It was number one the whole way through a rainy summer (oh the irony!) and was, and is, utter dross.

Ed Sheeran - The A Team: Why does anybody think this or anything else he's done is good? It's not. Turn it off.

See Example photo for caption

Florence and the Machine in General: Seemed OK at first and then after four or five listens I realised it's shite. The problem is, since 2008, or whenever they decided to burst into our lives, they've not buggered off. Florence, Machine, please do.

Tinie Tempah - Written in the Stars: He has to be one of the worst rappers ever. Up there with MC Tunes (had a couple of tunes with 808 State, check them out on Youtube for a laugh) and Vanilla Ice. He took what was a great backing track for Pass Out and put lines like "I've been Southampton but I've never been to Scunthorpe" over it. This one, however, lacks even a decent tune behind it and is, in turn, a niggling, persistent annoyance.

N-Dubz in General: Don't get me started.

So there you go, I've most certainly not covered everything, these are just the ones that stick out as I'm writing this. If you're reading this and have a suggestion or two, feel free to comment below with them. It's always best to vent frustrations and get them off your chest.

Songs of the Year: The Horrors - Still Life

Gone are the days when The Horrors were just another annoying five minute flash-in-the-pan skinny band doing the rounds in Dalston or Camden. With their last two albums the band have hit their stride impeccably and have extended their musical boundaries to incorporate more than just two-and-a-half-minute post punk backward glancing.

This then, the biggest single to emerge from Skying, probably their best effort to date, sees the band going for it big. It has a large, all-encompassing, almost balladeer feel which treads the line between Joy Division and Simple Minds perfectly (namely, it leans towards the Joy Division side of it, only sometimes slipping into Simple Minds territory, which is good as Simple Minds are a grotesque outfit).

The Horrors

Farris Badwan's voice sound hoarse at points, in a good way, and his deep, searching baritone hits the spot perfectly on the anthemic "When you wake up, you will find me" parts.

Musically it's an array of string-like synths and well-worked harmonies which, although they at first seem large, are subtle. Subtly subtle then, if that makes sense.

In short this is an easy pick as one of 2011's best songs.

Songs of the Year: Kanye West - Dark Fantasy

Simplicity seems to be a staple in hip-hop recently. From the kick-snare drum patterns and heavy, catchy bass hooks applied to most songs in the genre these days, to the straight-up 'lifting' from other songs with all the cut-and-paste skill of a bad blog writer (see this blog for examples).

Kanye West, however, is one of the most interesting guys out there in all of music today. That is a given. Whether you love him or loathe him, you cannot deny that the guy's got talent.

Kanye West

This track, then, the first from what is arguably Kanye's best album to date, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, serves as a reminder to how astonishing his use of sampling really is. The focal sample used in this track is taken from Mike Oldfield and Jon Anderson's In High Places, pitching Anderson's voice in a slightly lower key and working the "can we get much higher" bits in between Kanye's verses and book-ending the whole song (at the start this is after Nicki Minaj's spoken-word part in a not-too-shabby English accent). In amongst the Oldfield/Anderson samples, some lovely backing vocals of "so high" are added which give a spectral feeling not unlike Gospel singing, yet not unlike some kind of devilish sound.

West seems hell-bent on ignoring many structural norms on this one and the song has a real sectional feel. It works to great effect as a mis-shapen, haunting piece of work which keeps in line with the idea of a dark fantasy. The bent synths in Minaj's aforementioned spoken-word part also lend a ghostly beginning to the tale.

The verses work as straight up hip-hop in many ways and Kanye's rapping is, as always, infectious, cool and markedly better than most others'. Name-checking Murcielagos (a car model from Lamborghini in case you don't know) and Leona Lewis it works lyrically as a what's what and who's who of pop culture in many ways. The raps are seemingly set against the song in the same way that cats and dogs are in nature in that weird leftfield-ish music like Oldfield's is being sampled at one end and at the other some of the biggest brand names around are mentioned.



Dark Fantasy

As a song Dark Fantasy works to stunning effect and introduces an album of many peaks. It is certainly one of the best songs to have come out this year.

n.b. The song is included as a 'song of this year', even though it was technically released last year, due to how late in 2010 it was released. Think The Clash's London Calling being named the best album of the '80s by Rolling Stone even though it was released late in 1979.

A Ban on Cigarette Packaging in Australia...

A law has been passed in Australia to encase cigarettes in blank packets. Now, as somebody who is trying desperately to quit smoking - and failing - one may think I'd agree with this. However, I don't! In the Western World (Oz is included in that for sure) we live under a system where many unhealthy things are marketed repeatedly in front of our eyes every day. From McDonald's and its eye-catching 'golden arches' to Coca-Cola's red and white semiotic hypnotics to, yes, major beer companies such as Foster's (an Australian company, might I add) and Carlsberg, whose products have a design on their outer casing.

A possible new look for ciggies.

Is this one rule for one and one for the others (those deemed more socially acceptable?)?  Have the Australian government agreed with many lefties (not a bad bunch really) that, in fact, brands and marketing promoting bad health is wrong, but then changed the rules to say "only if it's to do with smoking"? Many people may counter this argument by saying that cigarette companies are the worst of a bad bunch. Bull. Absolutely not true. McDonald's would happily have your children guzzling down their crap food morning, noon and night if they could (thus leaving your children in a health-state that would kill them arguably before smoking could) because it would turn a bigger profit. Do big beer companies not make money off of alcoholics ruining their own and their families' lives? Is Coca-Cola not marketed to people of all ages to strip their insides? Think "holidays are coming" at Christmas whilst kids sit and watch endless hours of TV (don't get me started on the problems that particular medium has caused).

Be good today kids and I'll let you clog your arteries up with a shite meal from Maccy-D's.


It is very simply unfair to hit one bad health-promoting industry and not others with this. Personally, I believe do the lot of them, we'll see how much a kid wants a Big Mac then compared to home cooked food. However the Australians who passed this are doing one of them which is completely unjust.

Full article in The Guardian on this story is here.

Some Thoughts

The Gallaghers - especially Liam - are starting to grate on me just a touch now. The press seem to be so wrapped up and in awe of the fractious (fractured) relationship at the moment that the time we are currently in could be mistaken for being 1995 again. The band broke up, you both made records separately, Noel's was better as expected, blah-di-blah, I'm bored. In fairness to Noel, he maybe shouldn't be slung into this rant as, as usual, he's come across as rather likable, witty and cool as of recent. Liam, however, has come out of all this looking, well, like Liam Gallagher: an irritating oaf, so perpetually ready to remind us how 'fooking cool' he is while most, other than Oasis sycophants, simply cringe at the sight of him.

Knob

The X Factor (UK) this year is a massive damp squib. Louis Walsh is tiresome, Barlow is fucking drab and Tulisa won't stop saying "you smashed it tonight", which is just a tad annoying. The contestants are terrible this year other than the fat lad with the bowl-haircut and in the last couple of weeks I've zoned out during performances before turning over. Especially last week's because there wasn't even the ever-gorgeous Kelly Rowland to supply me with visual pleasure (this is bordering on misogyny I know, but she really is the only respite and if it's any consolation to femmos reading this; I quite like the cut of her jib too). I'm not even going to start with the rather aptly-named Alexandra Burke by the way.

Sorry feminists... couldn't resist!

As a QPR fan I've been dreading the forthcoming weekend for quite some time. With the schooling at White Hart Lane last week fresh in the mind we welcome runaway leaders Man Citeh to Loftus Road. Ricky Hatton thinks Citeh will win 8-0... I hope he's not right, but I am pragmatic about our chances at best.

5 of the Best: Victory

With today's fantastic result for my beloved QPR against our superstar arch-rivals Chelsea (1-0 to the R's, in case you don't know) in mind, here's 5 of the Best to do with sweet, sweet victory.

Gregory Isaacs - The Winner: Syncopation - check, easy vibe - check, super-smooth vocals - check. It's definitely Isaacs then (the first two are emblematic of any given reggae track to be honest). On what is nearly the first anniversary of 'Cool Ruler's' death (Isaac's sadly left us on 25 October last year) it feels necessary to include this and place it at the top.
 

Abba - The Winner Takes it All: Most may not have me down as an Abba fan, but I am. There, I said it. Now let's move on. The melodies in this song (and countless others in their repetoire) are astonishingly catchy. Though it's about a break-up (generally not seen as something to cheer about) its title says it all for me today.

 PJ Harvey - Victory: Wonderful, stripped-back garage/alt rock. All the necessary ingredients are there: basic, slow-yet-somehow-frenetic bass line, sloganistic chorus, distorted guitars. Why it's straight out of the Stooges/MC5 songbook. Great song.

Patti Smith Group - Till Victory: Talking of a lady who likes a bit of garage rock... This, however, has a far bigger feeling of grandeur than the aforementioned Harvey track. Smith's vocals are, as usual, utterly enthralling and the Baba O' Reilly-ness of it all highlights the amazing contrasts which can appear from song to song with Patti Smith's back catalogue. Compare this with Rock and Roll Nigga, for instance, and you'll know what I mean. Also, that first burst of guitar does remind me of This is the One by the now-reformed Stone Roses. I wonder if they had this in mind when writing that...

David Bowie - Win: Just a lovely, calming sonic experience from Young Americans. That trebly, chorusy guitar, Bowie's equally chorus-affected vocal, those soulful backing vocals of "It ain't over, no", it all just makes one tingle a bit. There are very few people in his bracket.

Vinyl Sales Up - But, is this a Good Thing?

According to Music Week, vinyl album sales are "up 40% year-on-year". So, people care about buying records again. Good, hey? Arguably not. Vynil is a crap material, to put it bluntly. It is not of any use to us in terms of keeping the planet going and the production methods used to create vinyl are extremely harmful. See here for a great explanation on just how ridiculous our need for stuff is and how harmful all of our PVC possessions are. There is a big consensus in the music industry towards keeping independent record stores alive and while I can see the merits in terms of keeping businesses localised and what not, I really think we can forsake records and have independent stores totally online. Let's face it the rent's cheaper. If we are to move on from piles of plastic Western waste in the Caribbean and Africa, these are the types of steps we have to take. Just an observation.