radiodangutan

You can say what you like about hippies (and, for me, it's mostly 'GET A JOB, HIPPY!) but there has to be some good hippies. Somewhere.

And Hawkwind are they, as this BBC set from just before the now-mythic Space Ritual tour shows. Nobody does cosmic wig-out freaknoise quite like them. And thank God for that.

In case of sonic attack on your district, follow these rules...

Scanner is probably better known for being a creepy wee baldie eavesdropper dilligent explorateur of privacy and communication, with ambient tracks strewn with captured fragments of radio and phone communication but, like all of us, sometimes he like to DROP DAT BEAT.

A fierce piece of drum & bass with weirdly prog wig-out synthtar wibbling all over the damn thing.

I know that Volcano is supposed to be the moment when Satyricon began their huge shark-jumping descent into ROFLdom but this track is the fucking business. Seriously. I mean, I don't even know if there's other tracks on Volcano or not any more, there's just this huge fucking track. I'm not sure whether it's the sheer riffication of it all or the fact that the damn thing never fucking ends but it blows me away every time.

If only Satyricon carried on doing stuff like this, or Thorns had managed to actually do something new, then we'd be in a better place than we are today.

Quite simply one of the finest pieces of music I've heard in recent times, aided by the fact that they sound quite a lot like a weird Lightning Bolt/Cardiacs crossover, they tried to be the Estonian entry for Eurovision (losing, staggeringly, to some ghastly Celine Dion clone) and EVERYONE IS FLYING IN THE GODDAMN AIR.

Get past the rather, um, hippy pics that have been put on this video and you have some superbly eerie, deep-space sounds; a quite beautiful blend of Lustmord-tronics and orchestral elements that manages to give the whole thing a most pleasing avant sci-fi feel, especially the 2001 worship from from 4'50'' onwards.

Proper bostin' remix of a great Bjork tune by King Cannibal, keeping the epic soar and adding just the right amount of wonky jump up (and a razor synth that, for reasons best kept secret, reminds me of the theme from Roobarb & Custard).

Probably the funkiest tune to include the line 'scrape those barnacles/off me'. I'm not saying that's definite. But it's likely.

The goddamn drums on this track. Jesus. Absolute madness tune.

Wait, hang on. You're saying this is Autechre? AUTECHRE?! This Autechre?

Oh, OK. Cool.

Yeah, so Autechre are usually known for bang-bang-whirble techno madness with sometime bits of ambient pluttering. Earth? Well, Earth aren't.

But the remix makes PERFECT SENSE, even without actually really changing hardly anything at all really.

Before they became kling klang kings of bleep bloop techno, Kraftwerk were a much more proggy, 'real' krautrock proposition. Recorded only a year after their formation, this live set shows the sound that would become Kraftwerk I & II before members of this line-up eventually wandered off to form Neu! and the classic Kraftwerk recorded Autobahn in 1974.

The live show would also change somewhat over the years.

Low-level Sunday-core from Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich (staggeringly, Flea is also involved in some aspect) where the Radiohead vocalist bewilders with his funky moves.

These tracks grew out of Thom Yorke's self-titled solo album so they're noticeably similar but that was a great album so it's all good.

Despite not containing the utter glory of Girl/Boy Song or being 'Selected Ambient Works Volume II', 'I Care Because You Do' sneaks ahead in the Aphex Album stakes for me because of this track, the fearsome Ventolin, Icct Hedral (which, forget ye not, saw him remixed by Philip Glass) and the fact it soundtracked a quite mental summer.

One of those few albums which is genuinely era-defining, if only for me.

He also did a terrifying Nine Inch Nails 'remix' which is a) pretty much better than most things Nine Inch Nails have ever done and b) probably not a remix at all.

Fuck knows what he's up to now.

I had absolutely no idea who these geezers were beyond a passing awareness of their name until tickets to their gig in Glasgow fell into my lap and I danced the night away like a crazy man.

Still one that gets my grumpy feet moving, even in the rainest of times.

This was a stand-out album for me when it was released but it quickly turned into something that I knew was exceptional but I never really listened to, possible with the fear that it wouldn't be as good as I remembered it.

Well, I dug it out the other day. And it's exceptional. The perfect soundtrack for sneaking through the shops and pretending you're a rogue spy.

A pleasant enough tune in itself but notable for one of those videos (from Cyriak) that goes surprisingly wrong, surprisingly quickly.

There's a lot of rumpus about the new My Bloody Valentine album but I'm just sitting here listening to early Jesus & Mary Chain singles. I could've easily posted Upside Down instead, so click that link as well. This terrified me as a kid and I don't think anything (apart from, possibly, the first time I heard Mayhem's Ancient Skin) has ever really blown my mind in quite the same way. And they're from East Kilbride! Fucking Eat Kilbride. Jesus.

Oh, and have a lookie-see at the video. The eagle-eyed may notice a young (and intensely ugly) Bobby Gillespie banging that drum like a chimp.