the new issue of glossy street mag mess+noise is out today and is worth tracking down at your local trendy record store. it features some best australian albums of 2006 polls which make for interesting reading (the lists are also up on their site), i recognise most of the names on there, but honestly i don’t think i even heard 20 australian albums last year. and i’d definitely struggle to even fashion a top 5 out of them. i need to listen more. the folks at mess+noise also kindly voted ‘entropy begins at home’ in at 20th place in their top 20 album covers of 2006, which feels a bit like coming last at the regional cross country carnival (and i know what that feels like) but is still cool. at least it wasn’t voted the worst cover of 2006, that dubious honor of course went to the abortion that was the sleepy jackson’s album.

oh and if you flick to the last page of mess+noise you’ll find a lame message from yours truly. my defense: i was having way too much fun in japan to write anything better.

edit actually reading again through this mess+noise mag, is it just me or is there a lot of japan/melbourne musical love going around, even more than usual..? even an interview with the guys from deloris, which doesn’t even mention japan at all, features a photo of them in a japanese fast food joint. is ‘going to japan’ the new ‘going to london’? i know where i’d rather be..

i want to be posting more music on this blog but the problem is the only acts that i want to write about or share are the same old same old ones. but anyway here’s a list of tracks, thrown at you more or less at random, that i think you should track down and listen to on a hot summers day like today:

homelife – harder
mid state orange – summer in disguise
cornelius – omstart
do make say think – minmin
hood – i cant find my brittle youth
nomo – book of right-on
dionne warwick – you’re gonna want me back