Under The Influence

I first discovered Tom Middleton when he did a mini set (like 15 minutes long or something) at the tail end of another mix set on a German dj website (4 or 5 years back). I remember being somewhat amazed. He was doing a rock set and I recall commenting on how great the variation of tunes was.

I then had the pleasure of witnessing him dj at the Big Chill festival a few years back. At the time he was working on Cosmosonica so he treated us to a fine mix consisting of cover after cover. His style live is brilliant, very casual, getting on the mic every now and again to tell a little tail or something. He ended up playing for much longer than he was meant to. Bonus.

This particular set consists of two discs. A chilled set and a party set, each perfect in its own way. Look out for Spanky Wilson's most excellent cover of Sunshine Of Your Love on the party disc (actually there are covers to be enjoyed throughout).

I look up to Tom Middleton - he's my hero.

All ukuleles, tubas and ridiculous covers, fun is definitely key with these guys. The whole album is like summer in a can.

I think half the tracks are original (certainly not songs I've heard before), which leaves a whole bunch of covers, yay! They've chosen to rework pop hits like Can't Get you Out of my Head and Crazy In Love in such a way that the songs themselves are very close to the originals. Luckily replacing the big synths with tubas gives them an entirely new flavour.

I almost don't want to mention this track - purely for selfish reasons. It's been high on my covers list for months now. I mean, a trash cover of an ABBA track - what could possibly go wrong?

High energy doesn't even begin to describe how powerful it is, with metal guitars backed up extreme synth action. Layers of vocals in the chorus and wailing guitar solos. Lord it's good!

I always think to myself that next time I'm going to do a party this song would be the acid test for acceptance. Not that I'm elitist or anything but you could guarantee that a party full of people who enjoyed this song would make for a hell of a fun night. If I played this at a party in London right now it would probably clear half the room - though it's probably a good thing ultimately.

If there's one thing I can say about The Triptych it's that it's too short - even though it weighs in at almost 4 hours. Now that's just unreasonable. When was the last time you sat down to 4 hours of music and were gutted when it finished?

Diverse doesn't even begin to cover it. Why the hell can't every mix set sound like this? Hang on, I know why - it's the same reason that playing this in my workplace elicits mixed responses. Actually, mixed responses is probably the wrong term. People's responses are exactly the same every time, and feel free to try this experiment yourself - at some point they will ask "what the hell are you listening to?". Later on they're going to say - "I really like that. What are you listening to now?". Though they won't quite understand the significance of your response - "exactly the same thing that you didn't like before".

The mixing is very nearly perfect. The tune selection is another matter. 100% hits the mark. Every. Single. Time. There's not a single song on here that I don't now love and given that a good many of them I hadn't ever heard before that's no mean feat. It almost seems silly trying to describe the nature of the tunes given that it's so eclectic but the choices are wild. I never thought I'd see day where "The Durutti Column" appeared in a mix set, and that's not even scratching the surface (check out the tracklisting on amazon). DnB, classical, banjo covers, old-skool hip-hop, rock, euro pop - man, take your pick, it's all there. It's music by music lovers for music lovers.

One day, when I know enough about music, this is exactly sort of mix I want to make. And that's the highest compliment I can give.

I heard a snippet of B(if)tek's We Think You're Dishy at a friend's party (a rather fine affair in a giant manor house in Devon) and have periodically hunted for a copy of the album since. Last week I managed to get hold of a copy but I guess I mustn't have been in the mood for it at the time as I just flicked through the songs and then filed it away. Listening to it now I'm pretty impressed. I guess if you were in to your genres you'd call it progressive house with a twist of breaks - not that I'm any sort of expert in that field but it reminds me a bit of Gabriel & Dresden.

There are TV/movie samples lightly dusted over the album - I can't pick where they're from but I've heard some of them before on the Kleptones most excellent Night At The Hip-Hoppera. Not just TV samples for that matter, Bedrock for example is built on a foundation of a sampled 1940s(?) horn.

Constantly twisting, turning and evolving the listener isn't fatigued by the repetitive beats that generally plague house music. It's very interesting stuff.

Oh, and you get a playful cover of Wired For Sound thrown in for free.

Thunder's passing has always seemed like such an injustice to me. OK, so he was the hardest rocking junkie punk in the whole industry... but still, he'd kinda cleaned up his act. Besides, he was still creating really kick-ass music - 1998's Copy Cats being a perfect example.

There are all sorts of interesting elements on Copy Cats (which, not surprisingly, is a covers album); Rockabilly, surf-guitar, rock, pop. Embarrassingly I'm unfamiliar with most of the covers on here. More research required methinks.

I always like to think of Thunders as a bubble-gum pop artist - the emphasis is often placed on the lighter side of the tunes. And listening to Love is Strange now I still think it's a valid description. As always his guitar work is exquisite - it always was on the studio recordings, it's when he stuck a needle in his arm and stumbled out onto the stage that things got a bit inconsistent.

R.I.P. Mr Thunders.

Desmond Williams is soft/mellow/pretty in my mind. His only album I'm really familiar with is "Delights from the Garden". Says it all really, doesn't it?

This cover was not what I was expecting to find at all when I fired up EM (eMusic). I skipped through it on first listen - not really impressed at all, however I've since changed my mind. Listening to it now it's nicer than I'd first thought. Rather dark, and very break-beaty. The disc consists of the original work + a bunch of remixes. They're all worth a listen.

It's moments like this I wish I had my NZ record collection to hand (I can barely remember what Delights From the Garden sounds like right now).

Ha! Two years ago when I was banging on about Mark Ronson you didn't want to know. Even at the tail end of last summer I struggled to drag people in to his tent at LoveBox (AKA the Sweatbox - a title well earned), though those who were there were treated to a nice sneak preview of Version. See? See what's happened now? Now he's lined up to be the DJ act of the upcoming UK summer.

This is the point where I'm meant to go, "his new album isn't as good as his first one". Sorry to disappoint but I'm not going to. His new album is a fine piece of work. Covers, all endorsed by the original artists. That's like musical heaven to me.

It's pretty typical Ronson styling. Each track is treated to funky rehashing, dowsed in horns and left out in the sun to spontaneously combust. The opener 'God Put A Smile Upon Your Face' being a prefect example of just that process done right.

As expected he draws on a great range of sources for the original material. The one that gets me is Amy, a track from Ryan Adam's criminally underrated debut, Heartbreaker. Even the Ronson cover risks drawing a tear from my eye.

I like covers. Covers are eventually going to be a key focus of this blog. Patti Smith does good covers.

I actually picked up on this album after hearing a few guys on the tube talking about it (thanks random strangers!). They were saying that the Tears For Fears cover was rubbish (mostly because Patti is meant to be harder than that). I happen to disagree. Every song on here is really nicely produced and there's a nice range of genres in the original material. There isn't such a great range of dynamics in the cover versions though. They're all set in a similar tone, a much mellower tone than we'd normally expect from Patti.