Bulldog

Hey guys, guess what month it is!

...you probably won't because I only just made it up. Anyway, as you'll know by looking in the Last Album You Downloaded thread, I only picked up a copy of David Sylvian's 2010 compilation of collaborations and rarities Sleepwalkers the other day and, to put it mildly, I fucking love it. Owing to work of varying kinds I haven't really listened to much music for about 10 days before yesterday, so I've listened to practically nothing but David Sylvian. Which is why I pronounce January 2011 to be...


...at least as far as this thread's concerned.

All it basically means is that each time I update this thread this month, I'll be indulging in my rampant fanboyism for part of each new update here. This means I'll flag up a cool song he's been involved, type up a paragraph on an album of his, talk about an artist connected with him, or just talk about him in general. When the next month comes around, I'll give another one of my absolute favourites the same kind of attention, and the same after that, and then after that and so on and so forth. As for the rest of each update, normal service (dronings about random albums or songs) shall be resumed

So then, kicking off David Sylvian Month...


I swung by on some old peeps on another message board I used to moderate on. It was one of those once in a blue moon-type deals, as I very rarely go back there these days. Anyway, there happens to be another Sylvian anorak there who flagged up the upcoming release of the aforementioned Sleepwalkers album and in a bid to promote it, this song was released as a free download on Sylvian's website.

I was quite disappointed when I got hold of said Sleepwalkers and this track was nowhere to be seen among the tracklisting (which incidentally was about the only disappointing thing about the album). While it's true that it's nothing spectacular (I can see him recording this one over a bowl of cornflakes), I still love it as a piece of work. For me, it sums up all the progress Sylvian's made over the last 10 years. True, it's much more melodic than anything on either of his solo albums from the 00s, but its got a really great vibe to it, that's at once warming and cold. It's got a lot to do with that voice. I know I've said this somewhere before, but this guy's got easily my joint-favourite voice of the last 50 years of music.

And enough of the randy fanboy act for now, here are a couple of tunes I can never get enough of...

Artist: High Contrast vs the Future Sound OF London
Tuneage: Papua New Guinea [remix]


First of all, a few of you may know that the Future Sound Of London (and all 750 of their other pseudonyms) are also in the top tier of my favourite artists ever, and High Contrast is quite possibly my favourite guy to emerge from under the label of dnb. Put 2 and 2 together and ask yourself 'how can this not be bloody amazing?'

Funnily enough, before I heard this sometime last year, I never really payed much attention to remixes. Despite the odd good 'un, I always saw them aas wastes of space, filler for B-side material and such. Let's not kid ourselves - in the more commercial cases, they are! High Contrast, though, is the king of remixes when all's said and done. It was an old flatmate of mine who was a few rungs higher than me on the ladder to dnb bliss who introduced me to this very tune, which kinda got me started on both looking for good remixes and investigating dnb further myself.

Artist: Natalie Imbruglia
Tuneage: Torn


And fuck you, this song's amazing

Well, maybe amazing's taking it a bit too far. Like a few more songs I'll probably get to in good time, hearing this song basically brings me back to my childhood. I was 9, maybe 10 years old when I started taking a taxi across the county to get to school, and this one was all over the airwaves. One of the first songs outside my parents' music collections that I not only remember really well, but also still really like to this day.