Tuesday 4 March 2008

I can't think of a witty subject line because it's 12:15am.

If you only have enough cash to buy two recently-released albums this month, I recommend Hold On Now, Youngster... by Los Campesinos! and Meet The Eels by Eels. The former because it's one of the most thrilling, intelligent and downright fun pop records you're going to hear all year (and probably all decade), and the latter because Mark Oliver 'E' Everett is pretty much the biggest maverick currently signed to a major label. I saw him play live last week (third row at the Royal Festival hall, get UB) and in two hours he managed to both bring me to the brink of tears and laugh like a fiend. He's a genius, simply put.

Oh, and some record called Man Vs Monster by some band called Fighting With Wire, although considering how many of the copies of it I've shoved into jiffy bags and taken to the Camden Town post office in the last two weeks, you lot out there don't need my coaxing to do this!

So I spent the afternoon today in Southern Studios with STA newboy Alan MX, watching him work on the mixes for his forthcoming Warpsichord opus with one Harvey Birrell (who's recorded loads and loads of bands, but is mostly known in STA-circles for doing the last Jetplane record). Kid-in-a-toy-shop doesn't even begin to cover it, he was absolutely hyper. The tracks I heard sounded incredible - crisp, punchy, and batshit insane with a million things going on at once in places. I found out that one song ('Flesh Emergency') currently has 49 tracks on it. As you can imagine, I'm somewhat excited to hear the finished product.

I was also roped into helping with a few screen tests for his forthcoming video shoot (for 'The Captain America Video'), which involved Alan chasing me up Wood Green High Road. I wasn't told how far I was supposed to run, so I kept on going. Obviously, he kept on chasing after me. All of this was much to the amusement of Lulu, the director of and brains behind the video. Dead professional, us. As always.

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