Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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22.8.05 Somewhat Confirming Dino's Assertion That All I Do Is Write About Music

When I was 15, going to RISD summer school in Providence, Rhode Island and spare-changing to get into punk gigs up and down the East Coast, my main method of musical discovery was the compilation tape. Usually a 90-minute cassette filled with third or fourth generation copies of songs, label caked with white-out and scrawled on with biro, the construction and trade of these items were the ne plus ultra of our teenage existence. Do a couple, bring them to a gig, swap them.

Over a decade on, and nothing's changed except that we've all gotten a little less lo-fi. Aside from the ongoing music trade between Messrs. Sarll, Brown, Watson, Nathan and myself, every year at this time the V organises a CD swap. You're given three victims to inflict your musical taste on, and a few basic rules. In return, you get three CDs full of songs you might otherwise never hear from people you've probably never met. It's cool. Introducing a little random chaos into one's life is always good.

Most of my victims this year are American, so my playlist is weighted heavily towards local London bands. It's not the careful, over-intellectualised construct that my mixtapes are; just an infodump of what I'm currently digging. Hence the name: The Bargain Basement. Liner notes here, in case you want to try this at home. Some assembly required.

Amanda from the Dresden Dolls has quite a good blog/diary. On the songwriting process: "My relationship to this new batch [of songs] is a weird one. These songs are, generally, a lot less personal than the batch on Record Number 1 and for some reason that makes me feel very funny inside. I'm just not as attached. On the last record, every song was The Song and had been The Song for some period of my life. Bad Habit was The Song for a few years and so was Slide and so was Half Jack. But on this record... none of these songs have rooted themselves inside me and festered. So they feel... well, not Not As Good but maybe Not As Real. I think this will be the case for every record I make from now on. I think the first record is like the first true love, or losing your virginity. For better or for worse, I don't think you ever feel that way again, ever." Haven't been initiated into the Dresdens' punk cabaret yet? Go, download Coin Operated Boy.

Lastly, best genre name ever: Spy-Fi. I discovered this via SomaFM's station Secret Agent, which plays sophisticated, loungey Continental tracks (Gainsbourg! Seks Bomba! Gare du Nord!) interspersed with audio clips from James Bond films. Yes, gentle strangers, it's like they created an entire radio station just for me.

( 6:04 PM )

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