i’m still in country victoria, and still communicating with you via time delay.

nearly everything basement jaxx touches turns to gold. i am a big admirer of their micro-production techniques, and how they really just seem to continue to nurture their own sound without too much influence from whats going on in the greater dance/techno world. and they must be like billionaires. with this lady sovereign track, they’ve taken a track i already liked and gotten more out of it (as they often do). they’ve left my favourite bit in there - the guitar jangles - and removed everything else bar the words, throwing in the obligatory kitchen-sink-ful of unexpected percussion sounds, the usual indiscriminate yelling and weird vocal processing that i associate with jaxx. bring on summer.

Lady Sovereign - Hoodie (Basement Jaxx remix) (6.2 MB)

i’m not actually here this week, i’m on holiday in country victoria, drinking wine and eating cheese and olives, and just generally partaking in ‘revelry.’ i’m actually sending this post via a combination of telepathy, cybernetics and chicken wire. if everything has gone to plan, then one of my tracks “white light” has been featured over at xlr8r magazine today as a free download. hope they don’t make a liar out of me. i don’t have an mp3 for you today - head over to xlr8r.com and download some of theirs.

i considered doing a year end list but decided there’s enough of them out there. i’m not really that good at describing why i like things anyway, i find it very hard to justify why i think music is good or bad. i guess thats why i didn’t cut it as a cd reviewer although i did give it a go…

when i was assembling music for last night’s show i ended up putting together a cd that is a pretty accurate representation of the tracks and albums that got me cooking this year. if you jump on your favourite p2p program you can assemble it yourself - put on 10 pounds, make yourself a coffee, and voila! instant faux-pas-ness! this ain’t an exhaustive list of what floated my boat, and doesn’t include all the pre-2005 stuff that i got into this year. like afrobeat. fela kuti! w00t!

1. mountains in the sky - noah’s arkestra
2. isolee - schrapnell
3. the knife - heartbeats
4. the juan maclean - tito’s way
5. of montreal - wraith pinned to the mist and other games
6. gorillaz - dare
7. gavouna - three
8. jens lekman - sweet summer’s night on hammer hill
9. feist - when i was a young girl
10. architecure in helsinki - do the whirlwind (halma’s remix)
11. unkle ho - grace of the guru
12. minotaur shock - vigo bay
13. caribou - hello hammerheads
14. jose gonzalez - crosses
15. animal collective - did you see the words
16. lady sovereign - hoodie (basement jaxx remix)
17. the presets - girl and the sea
18. pivot - montecore
19. emiliana torrini - sunny road

faux feels got a great write-up in this week’s zebra magazine, which is the electronic music liftout that comes with melbourne’s inpress mag. i could get used to reviews like this. here it is.

hi gang, (is there a gang?… hello?)

its been a busy week, much of it spent focusing on faux pas rather than on other things, which makes it a good busy week. support continues to grow for this cd so once more a big hearty thanks to all the radio djs who are playing the songs and the friends (old and new) who are touching base with me. mmmm ‘touching base.’

i’ll be down at the corner hotel in richmond tomorrow night with my men the basics. i will be the man responsible for the music that fills the gaps. look for me by the bar, guzzling free booze.

i don’t know much about gavouna, an athens-born londoner who is doing that whole classically-trained-guy turned organic-electronica-maestro thing. i came across this track earlier in the year, through an mp3 blog called uncritical thats now ‘defunct’. god i love that word. the gavouna album ’stings and dum machines’ is the kind of thing i’ll put on if i need to clear my head, its about as ambient as i get in terms of my tastes (which are generally anti-ambient) and tracks like this are just jaw-dropping, so simple and immediate and also deep and crafted. so here it is - for matt:

Gavouna - Three (6.3MB)

Cornelius - Bird Watching At Inner Forest (6.0MB)

cornelius is japan’s keigo oyamada, and his 2002 album point is one of my favourite things. its one of the most focused, complete and rewarding albums that i’ve heard. point! if anyone can tell me what cornelius is doing now i’d love to know, because the english-language version of his website is not very up-to-date. i completely fell in love with this album, and then he vanished. point!

hi to all you crazies from 3hive.com. buy a faux pas cd - its only $10 Australian dollars including postage, which translates into about 30c in most other currencies.

i’m kind of turntable-phobic - i grew up in a household where the compact disc ruled, in the front-most wave of the generation that doesn’t know how to cue up a vinyl record or how to properly care for your stylus, or whatever. now i’m the kind of digital music geek that vinyl-loving sticks in the mud revile, all mp3s and internet and shit. i’m not heavily into turntablism though i appreciate the skill involved and hell its a great way to make otherwise normal sounding things sound really stupid. wikkity wikkity wack. though i suppose chickens always sound kinda wacky:

Kid Koala - Like Irregular Chickens (2.7MB)