LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver (2007)

If any band defines or describes or embodies or typifies or captures the spirit or whatever of the 00s, for my particular transatlantic faux-hipster white-boy lower-middle-class web-savvy music geek demographic, then it’s LCD Soundsystem. From the moment I heard “Losing My Edge”, well over a decade ago now, with its litany of tongue-in-cheek, cooler-than-though boasts and name-drops, I was hooked; the references I got excited me and made me feel cool, and the references I didn’t made me want to go and listen to them.

Now that LCD has passed, dissipated into the ether, James Murphy’s schtick is even more patently obvious than it was at the outset: talent borrows; genius steals. His techniques may have been different, and the references he stole from slightly uncommon with, but, with LCD Soundsystem, he was essentially doing something very similar to early hip-hop; taking familiar, established pieces of music and putting his own stamp on them; it’s just that he used a band and a synthesizer to do it rather than a sampler.

So instead of sampling and looping James Brown or Buffalo Springfield or Incredible Bongo Band or Steely Dan or Curtis Mayfield or Sly & The Family Stone, he’s apeing Brian Eno’s vocals, copying Talking Heads, ripping off “Jamaica Running” by The Pool, nicking the chords and the drums from “Dear Prudence”, surfing on a song named after Daft Punk, stealing bits of Detroit techno, and heaven only knows what else. Someone once said of another band that “the original bits aren’t good, and the good bits aren’t original”; I vaguely suspect that with LCD Soundsystem, if you look hard enough, there aren’t any original bits. But that’s all good.

For those early singles and the eponymous debut album, being the coolest record collector and musical thief on the planet was enough. But there’s only so much mileage in being a name to drop, and with their second album, Murphy managed to inject a dose of emotional heft into LCD Soundsystem’s work; not too much that it became self-serious or uncool, but enough that their music was able to take the step-up from fashionable to genuinely rewarding.

Most of that emotional heft comes from a brace of tracks back-to-back at the centre of the album that deal with mortality and rebirth. But I’ll come back to them in a moment. Elsewhere it’s business as before, but just a little bit better. So “North American Scum” is a rocking dancefloor cry not unlike “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”, but just a little more raucous and fun, a little bit cleverer (“New York’s the greatest if you get someone to pay the rent” basically distilling Lena Dunham’s Girls into twelve words), while “Us V Them” finds a groove just a touch more sophisticated and compelling than anything on the debut, and “Get Innocuous!” is the most strutting, brilliant Bowie-meets-Talking-Heads-in-Detroit moment imaginable. The title track, meanwhile, is a semi-ludicrous but incredibly self-referential piece of meta-house, which seems to comment explicitly on the very emotional reactions that the rest of the record is inspiring in the listener. The whole album just sounds that little bit better than the debut, too, a little more natural space and room to breathe in the mastering, a little more physicality in the timbres of the instruments. It’s sonically delicious.

And then there are those two songs in the middle: the plangent acid pads of “Someone Great”, and the effervescently profound krautrock of “All My Friends”. The first ruminates on mortality, specifically the death of someone close, personal observations colouring a picture vividly but with essential narrative details left out, which, when combined with the (mostly) detached vocal delivery, allows the listener to project oneself deep into the song’s emotional core. If it matters, for a while I thought it was about the death of a child, but time and interviews and a little digging suggest it’s actually about the death of a therapist – which is perhaps why the narrator can’t talk about it with anyone else. Musically, a relentless synthetic hum and thump is juxtaposed with an incredibly delicate and simple glockenspiel melody working over the top, which creates an analogue safety space for the emotional narrative to play out in. It started life, crazily, as part of Murphy’s 45:33 composition for Nike; literally a running soundtrack. Wow.

“All My Friends” on the other hand is a skittish, febrile, accelerant trip through growing out of one’s youth, jitteringly repetitive piano chords and distracted high-hats and drum rolls backing observations about growing older, accepting responsibilities, one last big night out before stepping into middle age. Possibly. It’s a touching reminiscence, a greying hipster looking back at his irreclaimable youth and deciding against regret. One of my favourite things about music is the ability it has to instil in you a deep sense of nostalgia for emotions and situations you’ve never quite felt, and these two songs do that in spades.

Six years on, Sound Of Silver is still an amazing record. I don’t get it out all that often now, but that’s largely because I listened to it so much and identified with it so hard at the time that I’ve internalized it. Yes, of course, it’s a total homage to James Murphy’s favorite music, but the man has good taste and it’s a surprisingly, disarmingly moving homage that frequently eclipses its influences, both emotionally and physically.

Top ten songs with the Motorik beat

I don’t remember when I first heard the ‘motorik’ beat – it’s one of those things that feels as if you’ve always known it. Over the last few weeks, having been listening to a lot of Bowie’s Berlin period, and reading Hugo Wilcken’s book on Low, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, revisiting favourite songs and albums that utilise it, from the progenitors like Neu! to latter day pretenders like The Horrors, and discovering new examples of it.

To clarify, the motorik beat goes like this:

Beat	1	+	2	+	3	+	4	+
Hi-hat	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
Snare	–	–	x	–	–	–	x	–
Kick	x	x	–	x	x	x	–	x

If that doesn’t quite make sense, then think of it as dum-dum-dum-tsh-dum-dum-dum-tsh-dum-dum-dum-tsh-dum-dum-dum-tsh in perfect 4/4 time forever and ever.

An ILM thread has helped immeasurably in my quest for new examples, as has #motorik on Twitter, and this great article on The Quietus. I’ve come across a plethora of songs, some of which I already knew but had never thought of as motorik, and others which I’d assumed were faithfully motorik but which, on closer inspection, have turned out not quite to be. Some of them have been so faithful as to be redundant – Sons of Rother by Death In Vegas is a kind of weird Xerox of an idea of what motorik is, the electronic equivalent of Ocean Colour Scene writing a song called We’d Like To Be The Beatles – whilst others have demonstrated variations on the theme that have stayed truer to the spirit of the beat as I understand it.

As a result I’ve assembled a playlist of some 60 songs that use it, whether fastidiously or loosely – there are, I’m sure, many hundreds if not thousands more, and now the playlist is started I’ll keep adding to it in future. These following 10 songs, which I’m sure you can Spotify or buy from iTunes or wherever pretty easily, are just some of my personal favourites from that longlist. As usual, they’re in no particular order.

Kit and Holly – Echoboy
Not every song in this list is 100% faithful to the rigidity of the “pure” motorik beat. Kit and Holly varies the kick drum hits, but it’s no matter, because the spirit of the song – one of discovery, of progression, of propulsion – is entirely in keeping with the motorik beat. Echoboy is Richard Warren, former guitarist in retro Britpop also-rans The Hybirds, who seemed to have some kind of epiphany wherein he discovered techno, dub, and krautrock, and embarked on a solo career where he tried to meld all three together. Kit and Holly seems to be a paean to this epiphany (“I’ve gotta keep on runnin’ / I’m a 3-chord clown… I’m not a tough man / but I know the rules / I’ve gotta break ‘em / I’ve gotta start again”), icy synths and linear guitars embellished with filtersweep oscillations and echo, all underpinned by jittery, repetitious hi-hats and clockwork snares. And it’s a great little pop tune to boot.

Just Like Everyone Else – Field Music
If it’s not playing slightly ahead of the beat with excitational hi-hats, then a deadened, mechanical take on the motorik beat can become soaked with sadness, which is what happens in this beautifully vulnerable song.

Shoot Speed/Kill Light – Primal Scream
You’d think, for all their talk, that the Scream’s catalogue would be littered with the motorik beat, but it’s actually not all that common. This awesome, relentless, unstoppable climax of XTRMNTR uses it in excelsis though; it’s been just about my favourite moment from their catalogue for a dozen years now.

“Untitled” – Six.By Seven
A small, electronic motorik pulse sets “Untitled” on its way before real drums pick up the pattern and drive Six.By Seven, sans bassist at this point in their history, on a mechanised trip through their own contradictions and follies. Six.By Seven’s career is littered with other examples, from metronomic pop songs like I.O.U. Love, to full-on kraut workouts like Wallflower. This, brilliantly, falls somewhere in between.

Doors Unlocked and Open – Death Cab For Cutie
New to me from recent recommendations, this is almost the biggest motorik hit ever, like Ben Gibbard set out to find the platonic essence of the beat. Normally I’m not a fan of Gibbard’s voice or lyrics, but here he’s sublimated in the face of momentum and percussion, bass and guitars in service to the beat and him in service to all of it, the beat out in front, pulling everything else along with it.

Knickerbocker – Fujiya & Miyagi
A new discovery via this mini-project, Fujiya & Miyagi were a name I was aware of but knew literally nothing about – I had assumed they were an actual Japanese duo, and weird and experimental, like Keiji Heino or something, but actually they’re a gang of krautpopping Brightonians. This seemingly meaningless and chirpy pop groove (which almost pinches the chorus from Kokomo) about ice cream becomes intensely sad when you realise it namechecks Lena Zavaroni.

Spiders (Kidsmoke) Wilco
I like Wilco most when they branch out away from alt.country and do something different; this 10-minute kraut-verse, powerpop-chorus excursion has nothing to do with the Midwest and a whole lot to do with Europe, and is brilliant. The actual drumbeat isn’t pure motorik in pattern, but the formula they concoct atop it with guitar and bass gives it a deliciously metronomic feel. Glen Kotche is an awesome drummer.

Hallo Gallo – Neu!
This is, of course, the mother lode; I feel faintly silly including it because it’s so obvious, but clichés are only clichés because they’re truths that have become horribly apparent. Two related tunes, the little electronic shimmer of Heiße Lippen by Cluster and the chugging rock monster of Monza (Rauf Und Runter) by Harmonia, plus Mother Sky by Can (and about a dozen other Neu! songs, most probably Isi, Negativland or After Eight), were all vying for my token “actually German” choice on this list. But Hallo Gallo is the foundation and platonic essence of this beat, and it’s still fantastic.

Big Ideas – LCD Soundsystem
Like Primal Scream, you kind of expect that LCD Soundsystem would have oodles of pure motorik in their catalogue, but actually this tune from the soundtrack of a film that no one ever watched is their most faithful (Great Release follows the pattern closely, but is closer to Eno than Neu!, so loses out), and is also terrific. It was my go-to LCD track for playlists for an age. Which leads very nicely on to…

Roadrunner – Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers
I’ve been aware of Jonathan and his band for an age, but never investigated them. Until now. Roadrunner is terrific; not krautrock but still motorik, shot through with the feverish, can’t-sit-still spirit that informs the best rock and pop and punk. I’ll be digging further.

Honourable mentions
Stammtisch by Barbara Manning, Like Foxes Through Fences by American Analog Set, A Final Warning by Caribou, Bells by Electrelane, Touch Sensitive by The Fall, Honey Power by My Bloody Valentine, Sea Within A Sea by The Horrors, Destination Tokyo by Nisennenmondai, Got Nuffin by Spoon, Hard To Explain by The Strokes, Pric by Super Furry Animals, What Goes On by The Velvet Underground, and Forever by Working For A Nuclear Free City.

Albums of 2011 (so far)

So it’s about that time that I wax lyrical about the records I’ve bought, listened to, and enjoyed so far this year, as much to keep my mind clear with what I think of things as for the sake of spreading a little listening love around. So here goes.

Elbow – Build A Rocket Boys!
I’m unsure what I think of this, and indeed, by extension, Elbow, in 2011. On a phenomenological level, the act of listening to this is pleasurable; it sounds gorgeous. But I never do want to listen to it. I suspect, partly, that there’s a sense of darkness, of bitterness, of spite, that’s been eroded from Elbow’s music slowly since their debut, and I need that contrast to their wide-open humanism in order to give contrast, subtlety, and emotional drama. It’s lovely, like the last album, and I’m glad people like it, and I admire it, but I don’t love it.

British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall
I want to like this more; I’m not sure why I don’t. Here’s what I said back when it came out.

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Diamond Mine
I listened to this very intensely, and with great frequency, during darker evenings. I have no doubt I’ll pull it out again when the nights draw back in; it’s that kind of record.

LCD Soundsystem – The London Sessions
A clandestine ‘greatest hits’, perhaps; a posthumous wave to appreciative fans. I dearly wish I’d seen them live. I’m pretty sure I’d got guest-listed for a Bristol gig in 2007, but circumstances changed and we couldn’t go.

Primal Scream – Screamadelica (Remastered)
I love this as much as ever; I thought I didn’t / couldn’t.

Ron Sexsmith – Long Player Late Bloomer
The melodies are delicious, but the arrangements are a little too slick for my tastes. I must investigate his early stuff soon, in the hope that his compositional gift hasn’t changed, and that he started out more minimal.

Josh T Pearson – Last Of The Country Gentlemen
I’ve only listened to this once and only vaguely; it made me feel like a voyeur, and I don’t want to be made to hear the feelings contained within songs called Honeymoon’s Great: Wish You Were Her. But Pearson is such a talented that I know I’ll come around eventually. It’s only art.

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
This is magnificent. Strangely, Americans I know seem not to get it as much as Brits.

Joan As Police Woman – The Deep Field
Ostensibly Emma’s (she loves Joan), but I like this a lot too; it’s an r’n’b album, essentially, but the kind of r’n’b that’s played live in a room, with long, crunchy, richly-textured guitar lines. A little bit Maxwell, a little bit… Second Coming by The Stone Roses, almost. Modern electric blues I guess (not Griff Rhys Jones stuff).

Iron And Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean
I like this a lot when I listen to it, but I don’t remember to listen to it quite enough (possibly because the opening track is maybe my least favourite); it feels like a journey through the whole of American popular music, from country to soul to jazz to indie rock and back again. The tunes deserve more attention.

The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck
I’d hate to repeat myself, so just read this.

Bill Callahan – Apocalypse
Likewise.

Tyler The Creator – Goblin
Above and beyond anything else, this is too long; 15 tracks lasting 73 minutes is just far too much to take in, and it becomes boring. In fact, it starts boring; the opening track is a 7-minute “woe is me” monologue with a pretty tepid backing track. Beyond that… sonically, Goblin is Fisher Price El-P / Def Jux, a kind of lo-fi, schoolroom version of The Cold Vein without the sci-fi vision. It’s not got the concision, incision, or, and this is crucial, hooks of Dizzee Rascal, for instance, who was perhaps the last rapper this youthful, energetic, and (almost) controversial to get so many words typed about him.

And as for the controversy… lyrically, Goblin is the Aristocrats joke, but without a punch line. “I’m awesome / and I fuck dolphins” is absurd enough to elicit a laugh; “I raped a pregnant bitch and told my friends I had a threesome” is reaching so far for controversy as to cause a nasal snort as you try and decide whether laughing at is as bad as laughing with. To my mind the only things it’s not acceptable to make jokes about are rape, and infant death; the latter is what turned me off Chris Morris’ Jam TV program a decade ago.

The Lex nailed many of my feelings regarding Odd Future Wolf Gang in his blog for The Guardian; Tyler may be gifted (I’ve not listened enough to appreciate his talent for internal rhymes or his flow yet), but he’s not transgressive. He’s just very, very young, and trying very, very hard. But so were the Beastie Boys, and they grew up from snotty misogynists into something far more palatable, without losing their musical verve along the way. Because there is something somehow compelling about kids yelling “kill people / burn shit / fuck school” and “golf wang!”

Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
I’ve listened to this about four times, most of them in the car while driving to the airport. My initial impression is that it fits, sonically and in mood, almost exactly halfway between Check Your Head and Hello Nasty. This is where Beastie Boys ought to sit in 2011, as far as I’m concerned. The tunes, hooks, noises, beats, etc, are far more catchy and enjoyable than Tyler.

Radiohead – The King Of Limbs
People bitching about the brevity of this annoy me; it’s longer, and with far less songs, than Revolver. I like it; I really like about half of it. They seem, to my ears, to have finally interpolated the influences they’ve been wrestling with for the last decade. It’s not got the tunes or approachability of In Rainbows, or the impact of Kid A, but it’ll do nicely.

Panda Bear – Tomboy
I pretty much standby what I wrote a few weeks ago; I like this a lot. It doesn’t have the absolute peak, sublime moments of Person Pitch, but it’s more consistent, more structured.

Wild Beasts – Smother
I’m only a few listens into this, and none of them at volume of with intensity, but I’m enjoying it immensely; Anthony Hegarty and Guy Garvey / Paul Heaton fronting a subdued, sensual, 21st century Tears For Fears; which is not surprising given the Talk Talk name-drops made in the run up to its release. Could perhaps do with a little more energy, a little more chaos, a little bit of loss of control

Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise
This might be the album I’ve played the most (proportionally to the time I’ve had it for) this year; there’s a mix of electronic textures, live instruments, technoness, jazziness, etc etc, that is just bliss to my ears; vatic enough to stand calmly in the room and be ignored if needs be, but gorgeous enough to entwine around you and take your full attention if you want.

There’s a lot of white spines this year, so far.

The Original Bits Aren’t Good

It was pointed out in a thread about LCD Soundsystem on ILM the other day that Dance Yrself Clean, probably my favourite track on This Is Happening, is a rip-off of a tune called Jamaica Running by The Pool. This revelation caused a little bit of consternation in some people: that Dance Yrself Clean was just Jamaica Running with some singing over the top; that it was “rotten” of James Murphy not to credit The Pool; that if you stripped away the unoriginal bits from LCD songs you wouldn’t have much left over…

I remember a quote about The Verve from years ago: “the original bits aren’t good, and the good bits aren’t original”. At the time, maybe 1997, I was too young to have the breadth of musical knowledge that I have now, and thus didn’t find myself recognising what Mad Richard and co had robbed, bar realising that the openings lines of History had been “adapted” from William Blake’s poem, London. If The Verve had nicked a riff here, a lyric there, that was fine; I couldn’t tell, so it was new to me.

But then I remember hearing the orchestral version of The Rolling Stones’ The Last Time for the first time, the Andrew Loog Oldham version that Bittersweet Symphony sampled. I’d read something which suggested that all The Verve had borrowed was a chord sequence played by the string section, that the drum pattern and main string hook, the two most vital identifying parts of the song, were their own work, Ashcroft’s own work, and the sample was buried and barely audible, and that it was pure avarice that made Loog Oldham seize songwriting credits for himself, Jagger and Richards.

Rubbish. That whole sweeping string hook, the double-thwack rhythm of the drums, the stately pace, the swell and poise of Bittersweet Symphony all came directly from The Last Time. Ashcroft had said they’d “made it like a hip-hop record” but it was more like dancehall; this wasn’t someone stringing together a batch of varied samples and creating a new tune from elements of old ones; it was an MC making up a new vocal over an old backing track. Except that the backing track was being played by a house band rather than on a battered 12”. Years later I heard Funkadelic’s I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing, Everybody Got A Thing for the first time, and discovered where the intro for The Rolling People had come from, and the quote about the good bits not being original started to make much, much more sense.

As teenagers, some of my friends had been of the “sampling is theft” mentality, which never made a great deal of sense to me, or, luckily, many fine musicians. Sadly it made sense to lawyers to a degree, which is why only Kanye can afford to sample someone else’s music these days, and why, say, the reissue of Paul’s Boutique (which, of course, features the lyric “there’s only 12 notes that a man can play”) couldn’t append any bonus tracks – legal issues would mean they’d have to classify it as a new release and thus pay to clear all the samples. Maybe that’s fair enough, but I know for a fact that I’ve bought records on the back of them being sampled on other records, from Jimmy Smith and Curtis Mayfield albums to those Blue Note compilations laden with treasures like Marlena Shaw’s live version of Woman Of The Ghetto; surely that benefits artists more?

Intriguingly, I doubt The Pool could sue LCD Soundsystem for appropriating the rhythm from Jamaica Running anymore than CAN could sue The Stone Roses for half-inching the bassline from I’m So Green for Fools Gold, even though Men At Work got sued for Down Under having a flute solo that was a little bit similar to the melody from the Kookaburra kids’ song. Maybe this is a western cultural thing, a privileging of melody over rhythm in terms of musical importance and the rights of authorship. G.C. Coleman has never received, nor looked for, any royalties from the use of The Amen Break, pretty much the most famous and widely used drum sample ever. I’m pretty sure the Incredible Bongo Band never has from their Apache break either. Which makes, despite the flagrant nature of the steal, Loog Oldham look even more mealy-mouthed and greedy regarding Bittersweet Symphony.

So what is musical theft? Is it stealing a chord sequence? A melody? A rhythm? A sample? A bassline? An idea? I know of bands who, in moments of existential songwriting crisis, have jammed around the chord-sequences of other people’s songs and come up with their own songs, not reinterpretations or reimaginings but completely different, new, unrecognisable songs with their own unique arrangements and character, but who are petrified of this creative methodology being talked about lest they look like thieves or, worse still, people whose own creative well has run dry. This is madness, especially when, with one band in particular, a couple of key early-career moments were comprised of wide-eyed, blatant, loving homages to musical ideas from their influences.

There’s another big, loaded word: influence. “Influenced by” and “sounds like” being worlds apart almost all the time.

Sodcasting

So I’ve made what might well be my last ever visit to Exeter Fopp today. It’s possible I might go back tomorrow, but unlikely. Which means that my final ever purchase in the record store at 191 High Street (I doubt whatever comes next will be another record store), where I’ve been buying records since I was about 13, was London Sessions by LCD Soundsystem. Somehow it strikes me as fitting that it’s both a new record (out last Monday), and an old one (in that it’s live versions of songs any LCD fan already owns).

Before I bought London Sessions I checked the user-reviews on Amazon.co.uk; there’s only one at present, and it’s remarkably erudite. The author uses the marvelous term that titles this post: “An album may be fractured, broken into pieces, ignored by those with short attention spans and mobile phones sodcasting their awful racket all over trains the country wide”. I’ve never seen or heard it used before, though Urban Dictionary tells me it’s been around since 2007. When I used to catch the train from Dawlish to Exeter circa 2003 there was one notable bastard who nearly drove me to homicide through sodcasting Britney Spears and Sugababes from his tinny Sony Ericsson speaker. I like the term a lot.

I was thinking about over-used terms in music reviews the other day, I think inspired by reading yet another writer use the deadening phrase “the [something] is all [something]”, as in “the chorus is all heavenly choirs” or “the guitar solo is all angular electric shocks” or “the intro is all pounding drums” or “the guest rap is all boasts about the size of his penis” or whatever.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that I used to trot out “the [something] is all [something]” like a crutch in reviews where I was otherwise grasping for sonic metaphors, similes, or descriptors or some other kind, and I think this is why I’ve grown to hate it so much. It makes me clench my fists.

But it’s not the phrase I hate the most in music writing. No, the peak of my ire and disgust is saved for the pseudo-objectivity and desperate-clamor-for-authority that runs through the phrase “album of the year”, especially when used in any month other than December and in any context outside of “my favourite album of the year is [something].” My particular least favourite usage is when it’s preceded by the phrase “may just be the”, the definite article adding yet another layer of obnoxiousness. I find something ugly in the desire to crown an album king, in the rush to have your voice be heard as one of the first to canonize.

I also find something stupid in the whole arbitrariness of the end-of-year wiping of the slate within music journalism and music geekdom in general. I do it myself; for the last couple of years I’ve kept new CD acquisitions in a growing pile and only filed them away into the alphabetical stacks on New Year’s Day, where they get almost-forgotten about, their useful lives ending with December whether they were bought 11 months ago or 1 days ago. Those late-in-the-year purchases don’t get a fair crack of the whip.

Because the wiping of the slate makes everyone rush out in January eager for the cool new thing, whether that’s the BBC’s “Sound of” list or whichever opportunistic indie band decided to hold their new record over from a late-autumn release in order to try and catch a conspicuously high chart position in a quiet week. I’ve seen too many contacts on Twitter or Facebook in the last week or so singing the praises of Adele or whoever because they’re desperate to listen to something that’s new and call it good; sod that. Don’t put away last year’s records yet. Or those from the year before, even. Listen to something you know is awesome one more time, and stop hankering for the “album of 2011” already.

Stand-Alone-Songs

Standing in the living room earlier, eating some pizza, listening to the 90s playlist on the Zeppelin (Madonna to Supergrass to LFO to Skee-Lo), and on comes King Biscuit Time’s I Walk The Earth, a stand-alone solo single by Steve Mason who, at the time, was much better known as the singer in The Beta Band. In fact I think it was his debut solo material; it felt much of a kind to The Beta Band’s own music and so seemed strange that Mason released it solo, but he never did quite follow the rules.

But anyway, the song’s status as Mason’s solo debut isn’t what interested me enough to sit down and type; its status as a stand-alone-song did.

What I mean by stand-alone-song is that it never featured on an album. Nor was it really part of an EP, even though it was accompanied by a handful of (not too shabby) b-sides. It’s contextless. Isolated. Anyone who’s aware of my faint obsession with b-sides knows that I feel a strange compulsion to look after songs that have no home, the ones that are in danger of being forgotten, that I want to celebrate them. So that’s what I’m going to do in this post. I keep a playlist of stand-alone-songs on the iPod that sits in the Zeppelin’s dock. These are my top ten. In no particular order.

Orbital – Satan
Originally released in 1991, this got to stand-alone again when a re-recorded version came out on New Years Eve 1996. Only this time it was a 3CD set (remember those days) composed (bar one studio version of Satan itself) of live tracks. Consider the length of Orbital songs; it’s a live album by the backdoor for the princely sum of £6. The title track, Butthole Surfers sample and all, delights me every time. Sandwiched between Firestarter in 1996 and Come To Daddy in 1997, it made a lot of sense.

The Beatles – Paperback Writer
Of course The Beatles did loads of stand-alone-songs, as did almost every artist in the 60s; it was a different time. This Revolver-era slice of enormous bass, timeless riff, and cheeky backing vocals is probably my favourite, bar We Can Work It Out, which doesn’t qualify because of its double-A status.

The Stone Roses – Fools Gold
Of course Silvertone have done their damndest over the years to relinquish Fools Gold of its stand-alone status, sticking it on a billion compilations and appending it to every rerelease possible, but in my mind this is always the strange, beamed-in-from-another-planet moment that came significantly, decisively after the debut album.

Electrelane – I Want To Be The President
A single that fell between debut and sophomore album, this marked an important turning point in Electrelane’s career. Because it’s where they started to sing. Produced by Echoboy (him from The Hybirds), it also propels them into markedly different sonic territory, escaping postrock instrumentalism for electronic discopostpunk. The final third is irresistible. And oh that analogue burping to open…

Bark Psychosis – Blue
The swansong of Bark Psychosis mk1, even though they’d actually already become Bark Psychosis mk2 (by dint of just being Graham Sutton on his own), this is how I always wanted New Order to sound. It’s a slice of surreal dancepop, existing at the edges. There’s a glockenspiel or xylophone or maybe just a plain old keyboard chiming single notes at the end while tiny glistens of sound trip up and down on either side. It’s beautiful. I found the 12” white label of this in the corner of my office after working in the room for 2 years. Strange.

Spoon – My First Time Volume 3
So stand-alone that there’s no physical version at all, this 2005-download-only single is cut from the same cloth as Gimme Fiction and just as good as any cut actually on that record. But barely anyone’s heard it.

Blur – Music Is My Radar
Damon Albarn said before each new Blur record that it was inspired by Pavement and CAN. This single, released to coincide with their Best Of, is the only time they ever actually have sounded even remotely like CAN. But of course, ‘inspired by’ and ‘sounds like’ are massively different concepts. The mumbled vocals, the scratchy guitar, the weird sideways drumbeat; whenever I think of this, I want to play it. But I don’t think of it often enough.

LCD Soundsystem – Losing My Edge
I feel vaguely like a cheat for including this, given that a bonus disc with LCD’s debut means that pretty much everyone has it on what might as well be an album, but in spirit this is most definitely one of a kind.

King Biscuit Time – I Walk The Earth
Enormous bass drum, hi-hats that jerk you upwards; until the vocal comes in this could almost be Got Your Money by ODB and Kelis; it’s certainly Mason’s most overtly hip-hop moment, I think. It’s also blessed with some fuzzing, buzzing guitars (are they guitars?), an irresistible but understated chorus, and Mason’s voice. No matter what he sings, with whatever backing, when he layers over himself, sings harmony lines with lyrics you can’t quite make out, it breaks my heart every single time.

Aphex Twin – Windowlicker
This is 12 years old and still absolutely, completely, utterly insane. I think it’s going to destroy either my speakers or my brain every time I hear it. And yet, basically, it’s a really catchy piece of r’n’b. But twisted. So twisted. An album of stuff like this would be impossible to negotiate.