Monday, July 31, 2006

avenue q

to commemorate the eye-opening wonder that is minifig's and mine 8 year anniversary, i did what any self-respecting girlfriend would do and dragged her boyfriend to a musical, and he loved it.

fair enough, avenue q has been billed as the musical for people who don't like musicals, but i love a good spontaneous song and dance number somewhere inappropriate (e.g; revolutions, saigon brothels, women's prisons etc).

i was also brought up almost exclusively by roald dahl, michaela strachan, eighties dance movies involving shy girls with flexible limbs and sesame street. avenue q was made for me. the first line is 'what do you do with a BA in English', sung by a 23 year old muppet, and joy of joys there is even a song about mix-tapes. i might as well just be in the damn thing.

i urge anyone with a couple of spare notes to get down to the noel coward theatre and see avenue q. ridiculously silly, this musical sees the cookie monster transformed into compulsive porn addict, the trekkie monster, and shifts the whole bert and ernie saga of repressed desires up a notch. the bad-idea bears are every tex avery good angel/bad angel cartoon made a little bit dirtier.

in this age of 80s re-releases, simpering nostalgia and (i'm so bored of it) irony, avenue q should be more smug and annoying, but in truth, it is just very very funny. using classic pre-school TV techniques such as simple animations and phonetic repetitions, avenue q provides surprisingly sweet answers to both the irritating undying optimism of kids tv and the sheer horror of adulthood.

there is also the added pleasure of watching talented comic actors giving the performance of their life almost entirely with their left arm

stand-out songs include everyone's a little bit racist, the internet is for porn, my girlfriend who lives in canada and schadenfreude.

sounds good dunnit?

song of the week: willie




i'm still not sure if i really think cat power is any good. i only have the greatest, quite a wishy washy album which strays between fairly-good beth orton and nora jones snoresville. there's also a cruel voice in my head that suspects she wouldn't be so famous if she weren't a junkie. ouch, that's not very nice.

but then, as with good woman, cat power will sing something and before i've had time to think anymore about it - blink - it's under my skin.

willie, i presume a cropped version of 18-minute epic willie deadwilder, is one such song. all week i've been listening to this, obsessively replaying it back, and i'm still not really any the wiser as to why i like it. it's good - but on first listen it's sort of easy chick listening, not really my thing at all. but it's so much more too.

there's that solid piano opening, a little bit of bass, shuffly drums, shy guitar, that breathy refrain, and a chirpy, knowing saxophone sol0. sweet, slightly elusive little love lyrics, a sound that makes you feel like you're sitting on a porch, overlooking a prairie in your rocking chair, or taking a long journey in a rickety old train on a warm afternoon.

it's a quietly confident song, self-assured in its own deceptive simplicty and gorgeousness. it's like a shrug after thanking someone for a compliment.

and Charlyn Marshall's voice is like a big smokey hug or like someone stroking your hair until you fall asleep. in other songs she can sound angry, or pathetically vulnerable, or just plain bored, but in this song, her voice sounds like the most complete woman on earth watering her plants, or doing something equally throwaway but necessary.

and yet - i know if you go away and listen to this, you'll think, what IS she talking about? it's just m.o.r. pop-rock trying to be a bit folky. but first impressions are so often misleading.

this song makes me feel quite happily withdrawn into myself. it makes me smile and feel a bit dreamy and a little bit wistful. it has made me feel lonely, and sad too. in fact, i'd go so far as to say i have a big dopey crush on this song, which is sort of fitting, being as it is a, big dopey song about love.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

quote of the week

Regent's Park, Dusk, with three good friends, beer and a light breeze. the reassuring, recurring thought that's it still only 9.30pm, and it's friday. blissful...and then caliban makes the following observation and breaks the spell:

"I guess felching is rather like learning Old Icelandic"

yep. put that in your pipe and smoke it.




Monday, July 24, 2006

song of the week: road to nowhere

separated at birth?



there are so many reasons why i adore talking heads' road to nowhere and why you should too - but i'm not going to indulge myself and list them all today. all i shall say is this - to those of you unaware of the brilliance of talking heads, but wetting yourselves over the new razorlight album, if you like recent single in the morning, i'm prrreeeettty sure you'll like road to nowhere.

johnny borrell - meet me at the cemetery gates.


Monday, July 17, 2006

song of the week: marx & engels

this here is put the book back on the shelf, a beautifully inventive collection of comics based on belle and sebastian songs. featuring some of the best talent in graphic writing and belle and sebastian's exceptional lyrical ability - i highly recommend this. i uploaded all the songs on which the comics were based onto my i-pod, and nerdily compared music, words and pictures on a recent train journey to the cotswolds. it was brilliant.

so, my song of the week is my favourite belle and sebastian song/comic marriage from put the book back on the shelf: marx & engels. i adore this song - it's softly melancholy and gently lilting and the girl/boy harmonies (yes, one of my favourite things in the whole wide wide world) are extremely satisfying and kind of affecting. but above all, the lyrics to the girl's harmony, sung breathily and lightly are: The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a revolutionary part to end all feudal, idyllic relationships. It has resolved personal worth and in place of freedom is exploitation for profit alone. There is a spectre of the past in my bold assertion. We could learn much from the past."

Surely that makes you smile just a little bit?

plus, the closing little instrumental ending is gorgeous and, as a former (just) riot grrl buff, the ending always makes me smile.

There was no intellect / That she could respect / If it couldn't see /That the girl just wants to be
Left alone with Marx and Engels for a while / She's writing in the style....of any riot girl

mark and engels is a very sweet, pure little love song which isn't really about love but kind of is, too, with a teasing dose of old fashioned prententious -undergraduate mocking. the comic is equally sweet and funny, but....perhaps a little bit bitter (tho still adoring) in its depiction of the girl from Wallasey. It's also pretty much every conversation I've had in any Student Union launderette - although, variously I've experienced the conversation from both the boy's and the girl's perspective.

I left university a year ago now, and i'm feeling quite nostalgic for the good old gower street days. Fortunately this will be cured soon when i meet up with my amazing former department office angel for drinks tomorrow - once she's regaled me with tales of intellectual bullying and horrific gossip along the lines of when-one-night-stands-go-wrong, i'll be sated for a few weeks.

anyway, must dash to watch university challenge now - at least its the professionals' series - they get easier questions, which is easier on my brain-mush ego.

and if they ask a question about t.s. eliot, the answer's probably the waste land - it has a 60% hit rate i've noted.

Friday, July 14, 2006

love is...

Minifig stumbled upstairs a moment ago, looking scared and crestfallen.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I’ve done a bad thing.”

Hmmmn.

“I broke one of your cups”.

He held out one of my 1960s teacups, now in two pieces, and looked sad.

I took a deep breath and said ‘it’s okay’, and turned back to my writing.

You want to know what love is? That is.

brownie


tony evans, swansea rubber-band ball creator whose 2,600lb beauty created a massive crator in the Mojave Desert when it was thrown out of an aeroplane for Ripley's Believe It Not to see if it would bounce.

Eleanor sat at her coffee table and turned on her television. She edged the volume up, notch by notch, to quash the incessant whistling that drifted in with the sunlight through the open window of her husband in the shed. Sunlight picked up dust whirlpools that swam in the air like bees, and lighting a cigarette, she amused herself with the ribbons of blue, curling smoke that pirouetted between her lips. Edward was in his element, lightly tapping away at his old fashioned typewriter and smiling at the bell when he reached the end of each line. Every so often, he risked a glance over his shoulder, to check that she was still there, waiting for his return, before inwardly beaming, newly inspired. Edward had been creating Brownie now for eleven months. She sat proudly, a beige, over-inflated lump in the middle of the shed. It made Eleanor want to vomit every time she caught its synthetic taste in her throat.

Eleanor sighed a heavy gulp of resignation as she heard the ominous thump of thick envelopes on the welcome mat. The bands, or, the sponsors, as Edward affectionately referred to them, had been arriving steadily since his appearance on the local radio breakfast show. Callers had chirped across the airwaves, offering sympathy for Edward’s predicament, applauding him for his drive and vision. Queues of people, all sitting in their condensation coated cars, willing the day to be over, listening to the fairy story of the man with no job, but a dream - with the promise of television appearances.

So notorious was Edward and his curious obsession that donations had begun to arrive in envelopes with little more than Mr E. Robinson, Norfolk scrawled upon them. Thick, padded, brown paper envelopes. Small, colourful, sparkly envelopes for thank-you letters and party invitations. Envelopes containing post-it notes of encouragement or neatly hand-written letters of admiration. Initially the parcels had arrived silently, although not surreptitiously, with little more than a grin to salute their presence. But as the ball got bigger, so did Edward’s regional reputation, and with that, so did the fan club. Frequently now the doorbell rang and Geoffrey, a young, ruddy faced postman, greeted Eleanor’s husband with a hi-five and a stack of letters, tied together with a coloured rubber band. Even the tinkle of the doorbell made Eleanor seethe with rage.

She walked into the hallway, her heels click click scraping across the laminate flooring, and bent down with a sigh to pick up the post. She rifled briskly through the stack of letters and retrieved the gas bill and an anonymous looking white envelope addressed to her. Smiling slightly as she observed the pile was smaller than yesterday’s, she clicked out into the garden and placed Edward’s post through the rusty red cat flap on the shed door.

‘L!’ came a muffled cry.

Eleanor crept inside, holding her breath at the tacky smell.

‘L, how does this sound?’ He cleared his throat.

Edward’s voice deepened into his reading voice, his media voice, a new voice he had adopted when telling the story to local journalists and young children.

It begins rather innocently. After seventeen years loyal and punctual service at XTC Energy, Edward had been presented with a modest cheque and a chunky but disappointing nine-carat gold-plated watch. Following four months of temping, the disillusioned Edward Robinson began working at the computer support department of Baden & Baden. Low level, low pay, low libido, low volume; at thirty three he felt sixty-three, not least because he’d already survived his first redundancy.

And then, he met Stephen Perry.

Eleanor knew this was her cue to chuckle at the insider’s reference to the great inventor of the rubber band. She smiled wanly, careful not to let the bile seep through her dimples. Edward continued.

There he had been, just idly sitting in a sterile little cubicle, following the spiral motion of the screensaver and toying with a rubber band. Thick and fat, Edward wrapped and unwrapped it compulsively around his index fingers before subconsciously -as if, Edward added, guided by some supernatural force - taking a thinner band and wrapping it tightly around the first. Now on the threshold of a powerful and primitive rhythm, Edward snatched another into his hand and swept it around the two linked, elastic friends, before twirling another into the bouquet, and yet another, all the time staring into the vortex of the monitor.

Leaving the office with a record-bag full of stolen rubber bands and a small but satisfyingly solid and round beige ball in his pocket, Edward felt somehow at peace. That evening had been spent with Eleanor, drinking wine and laughing at each other, while Edward added to the ball, looping his fingers around band after band, fingers tingling slightly and palms sweating as the bands slipped around each other with a twang and a ping and all the while it had felt like music.

As Edward’s story continued, Eleanor’s eyes glazed over.

Clicking back to her coffee table, she eased the letter out and began to read. Her heart flipped up onto her tongue as she recognised the large, flat, irregular writing.

Eleanor

You may be wondering why this has come now, and I’m sorry that it never came sooner. Truth be told, everything I told you was a lie and I had no intention of ever contacting you. I forgot all about you, not completely, not all, that’s another lie, but almost.

I opened the newspaper last week and saw you with your husband. I remember him, rolling around after you. Bad teeth. I was surprised. Still, I gather he’s quite the local celebrity these days, so I hoped that if I wrote, it would reach you soon enough, now that everybody appears to know you. Anyway, I live in Brighton now and you should know I own a business, a wife and three children. Always have.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is, would you like to meet again. I just want to see you and explain myself, if you feel you want an explanation. I appreciate that you might not, or even, that you might, but would rather not see me again.

I would come to you. I feel that would be easier, and more courteous in light of all of this.

Forgive me

Lars

Eleanor cast her eye to the shed. There was no sign of Edward, although the ball appeared to be rocking slowly. A mobile telephone number beckoned below the signature. Eleanor paced across her living room before clicking out the front door and down to the glass phone booth outside the pharmacy. Her hands quivered so much, she could barely press the keys.

‘Hello’.

Eleanor remained silent.

‘Hello’.

The voice sounded different somehow.

‘Hello?’

and then ‘Who is this?’, this time slightly irritated.

Then, ‘Eleanor?’

Alarmed, she slammed the receiver down.

The letter from Lars stayed in a long forgotten drawer stacked with postcards and blurry photographs. Eleanor continued about her daily business.

Edward gave an interview to a men’s magazine, slotted between a spread of seductive pouts and a retrospective of Stanley Kubrick’s films. A photograph of Edward, arms around the ball, rested between text detailing the technicalities of rubber-band-ball construction, framed with the caption;

‘I love Brownie, she’s become my life. It seems like the most natural thing in the world –

beautiful things in nature tend to be round’.

Beneath this was a series of photographs, for the enthusiast, of the biggest ball in history and its 400mph descent from an aeroplane – not Edward’s. Crackling sparks had created a filigree halo around the dust swept up by the collision of the 2524lb mass of the ball with the sands of the Mojave Desert. Finally, there was the crater left in the earth, surrounded by broken strands of rubber bands, camera crews and reporters.

Like Eleanor’s letter, this magazine had been relegated to a disused drawer - for Edward, a reminder of his irreconcilable failure.

The ball reaches a point where your ordinary common or garden bands begin to break, unable to reach around the circumference. With relatively little difficulty, Edward had succeeded past this minor hurdle, the 30lb crunch point, at which many enthusiasts are forced to fall. With assistance from his ex-boss in exchange for a plug on local radio, Edward kept himself in rubber bands. But no sponsers would commit themselves. Edward could find no one who had faith in his dream to smash the world record, many companies believing it impossible or unprofitable.

He began to realise, to Eleanor’s silent delight, that he was little more than a curio, an oddity to fill the space in the local news when there was a drought on violent crime and celebrity scandal.

For a brief and blinkered period, Edward had comforted himself by building accompanying balls for Brownie with the remaining donations. Soon, the shed floor was blanketed in a precarious sea of balls, the larger orbiting the now defunct Brownie, who presided over her entourage of lesser companions. August turned to September turned to October. Gradually the smaller balls disappeared, given away as gifts to neighbourhood children or prizes in community raffles, until Brownie was left standing isolated in the shed, insulated by a thin coating of dust.

Defeated, Edward sheepishly attempted to inch his way back into the house.

Initially, Eleanor appeared reluctant. A series of inevitable rows followed…

But gradually, as the nights stretched out and mornings arrived with a heavy frost. moss began to hug the shed walls and rust sealed the door shut. Eleanor found herself in a photograph, placing the angel on their Christmas tree, at the end of a ream of now redundant images of Brownie. To her knowledge, Edward discarded all but that last picture he had taken to finish the film. In fact, it seemed so long since he had taken those photographs, he had forgotten what they had been of.

One Sunday morning, in an upmarket restaurant where the happy couple sat eating brunch, the proprietor enquired how Brownie was doing.

‘She’s doing fine, I think,’ replied Edward. ‘We don’t see each other anymore’.

So, it came as something of a shock when a still-hung-over and post-coital Eleanor accidentally opened a letter addressed to her husband. It read:

Dear Mr Robinson

We have been following your progress with ‘Brownie’ your rubber band ball, and understand that you have since abandoned your project due to a lack of corporate interest. We feel that this is a great national loss, and consequently, we are delighted to be writing to you with the offer of an eighteen month contract with Persuasion Suppliers Ltd., enclosed for your perusal.

Persuasion Ltd., amongst other things, is the major wholesaler of rubber products in the UK and Europe. Based in Brighton, we specialise in industrial rubber bands. We would be honoured to assist you in your endeavours by producing customised bands for your exclusive use in the creation and completion of Brownie. All we ask for in return for our support is that you allow Brownie to become our registered trademark, and following her completion, that you permit Persuasion to use Brownie in our subsequent promotional campaigns, for which you will be paid a substantial amount (see contract).

We sincerely hope that you will agree to our offer, and we greatly look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

With best wishes

Persuasion Ltd.

The signature below was unmistakeable.

Without a word, Eleanor walked to the kitchen and spreading the letter flat on her coffee table, took a pen and wrote in bright red ink diagonally across the document:

Lars - Not now. Not ever. Else I’ll tell your wife.

E.

Replacing the letter in its envelope and resealing it, she affixed a new stamp and triumphantly wrote Return to sender across the top, before slipping it into her handbag. Then, without giving it another thought, she put the kettle on and set about making breakfast.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

my angelica

i went to visit my nieces a few weeks ago. they are twins, and toddlers, and every inch the archetypal cute little girls. they have matching ringlet blonde hair and rosy cheeks, they speak their own mysterious twin-language and "help" with the gardening and ride their scooters naked except for kneepads and wellies. let's call them indigo and edith.

unsurprisingly they also have a rather idyllic relationship with their next-door neighbour. i have never met these people - but imagine him to wear deck shoes and her to have a large collection of scrunchies. I am going to call their daughter Angelica. I have never met her either, but I picture her as rather pale and sickly looking with an alice band and black hair - rather like the sort of child who would haunt you if she were a ghost. i very much doubt she looks anything like that at all.

indigo has recently taken to believing that she is, sometimes Angelica, and when she feels like it, will only answer to the name Angelica and demands to be carried everywhere - like Angelica.

my niece is sooo smart.

this is the only time in her entire life where she can legitimately stand her ground and demand to be treated like somebody else. indigo can take a holiday from herself anytime she wants - and presumably she's successfully taking a holiday from her twin sister edith, who looks so much like her that even i hesitate sometimes to call their names until i've recalled and computed their ever-so-slightly-different face shapes.

i WISH i had my own Angelica next door to switch with. I, Darling Vicarage could continue with the washing up and working, the daily make-up and hair straightening and renewal of travelcards, whilst the other I, Angelica, could pack up her stuff and go rent a studio flat in Prague and write on good quality paper and smoke cheap Lucky Strike.

minifig and i had a chat about free will today - he reckons human beings don't have free will, but i think we do, else the daily struggle of not throwing my entire life in the bin in exchange for returning to Prague wouldn't feel so real every morning when the alarm sings to me at 6.20 . but then, we do need to pay the morgag
e. perhaps i feel like this because today marks exactly one year of service in my not-so-bad McJob..... i was meant to be going my Masters this year, but somehow i've ended up with a job I (quite) like, and a mortgage ... how did this happen?

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

read drift NOW, or i'll find you, and cook you and feed you to the pigeons

firstly, please visit the link above for some really funny cartoons. i spend a significant proportion of my day submerged in so-called "cute" graphics so i appreciate any person who raises one elegantly manicured figure up at sanrio, dick bruna et al. (although, for my sins, i love miffy) i had dinner with my very lovely former uni writer-in-residence a couple of weeks ago who looked up from his noodles and mused, "you must have one of the ultimate postmodern jobs". i was secretly v.v. pleased. i think i might start hanging out in shopping malls and theme parks until i truly become a douglas coupland character.

anyway, this cute picture is here for a reason. this post is a follow-up to the angsty "i hate mix-tapes" post of 28th June. apparently, my CD was not
that bad (although, the track listing is now online, so you can all laugh and point if you wish)

i also direct your attention to this website to implore my miniscule readership to read one the best books i read last year. it's up there with houllebecq and b s johnson for writers-i-officially-love-2005 and it's published for the first time here. it's also written by a bloody good bloke, but i'd only met him twice when i read it, so i wasn't exactly obliged to like it.

and finally, welcome to the first member of my writers-i-officially-love-2006 club - ali smith. my esteemed prof. john sutherland said of
the accidental, there are lots of orgasms. But intellectually written orgasms' and if that isn't recommendation enough, i don't know what is.

saying that, she's still not as good as this

Friday, July 07, 2006

song(s) of the week: svefn-g-englar & staralfur

I’m a sentimental old soul. I have ticket stubs from films minifig and I saw together in 1998. I have a box full of printed e-mails from long dead accounts from people I don’t even speak to anymore, but think of, often. I have entire written conversations passed surreptitiously between me and the other girls in my class at school, and every single game of consequences played on the coach taking us to the Isle of Wight or Covent Garden or Blenheim Palace.

In Christopher Nolan’s ‘Following’ , Cobb the middle-class burglar says everybody has a box full of secrets that they leave out in order to be seen, because that’s who they are. My box will tell you everything you need to know. Every crush, every petty fight, every film I’ve seen, every gig I’ve been to, every country I’ve visited. I keep on a high shelf, out of reach, and it’s very very difficult to open.

I’m very sentimental about places. The Student Union Bar of Essex University. A particular room in a hotel in Bury St Edmunds where I used to work, where I stood out on the roof overlooking the grounds, smoking a cigarette in my pyjamas at midnight as it became Christmas Eve, as the snow fell. The pub near school where we used to go for chips, beer and cigarettes before afternoon classes, that we took our teacher to for our last lesson so she could see why we were so dozy in the afternoons. Upstairs in the Jeremy Bentham. Valerie’s in Soho with my girlfriends. Victoria Street and the walk I used to do to work that replicated Elizabeth Dalloway’s walk of freedom. Tavistock Square and the pitter-patter heartbeats before a tutorial, or worse, a creative writing workshop. Tavistock Square was where I lit up – crossing at the junction by Woburn Place, waiting for the lights to change, that was my cigarette moment.

Of course, it’s also the place where the number 30 bus blew up on 7th July last year. I had left university by then, just. I was about to start my new job – I had accepted it the day before. So I hadn’t done that walk for two years. But, terribly, perhaps, it wasn’t seeing the pictures of the bus that made me cry last year, but of seeing my place, my road, my cigarette junction, changed beyond all recognition, and yet, terribly recognisable. Russell Square is my tube station – it’s my first home away from my parents, between King’s Cross and Russell Square… and Bloomsbury - is my playground. And there it was on television, these beautiful broad streets and leafy squares become a nightmare.

Like many people, I had a little cry on 7th July 2005. I felt sad for people I didn’t know, which always makes me feel false, but I still feel sad all the same. I was a bit spooked for a while, but got on the bus on the 8th (got off a stop early, admittedly), and used the tube on the 10th. Nobody I knew was hurt – and the likelihood of this happening was obviously tiny. A couple of people I once worked with fell into the “walking wounded” category, as they were referred to that day. The sooty, largely unharmed, but pretty messed up bunch. To my knowledge, they still commute.

I went back to my hometown that weekend to see a band play. Leaving London felt so strange, like I was being somehow disloyal, abandoning her. When Jean Charles de Menezes was shot inside Stockwell tube, our local tube station on 22nd July, minifig and I also left London to see a friend, a long overdue trip. Again, it felt wrong to leave.

In my mobile phone, ‘Home’, stored under ‘H’ used to be my parents’ place. But, also around this time last year, ‘Home’ became SW9.


*

London is a canny little phoenix. Around the time minifig and I started getting serious about each other, homemade bombs went off in Brick Lane, Brixton and Soho.

But Brick Lane is still where you go for knock-off DVDs and curry, and you can still get a pink pint in the Admiral Duncan in Soho. And, let me tell you, Electric Avenue in Brixton is always heaving.

My A-Z automatically flops open at page 37 even now. Despite its straight lines and orderliness, Bloomsbury’s tough to navigate when you first get there. And even though this morning, and this lunchtime, and this evening, seeing Tavistock Square on the news, over breakfast, for the two minute silence, for the Fiona Bruce evening special, I still got a funny sick feeling in my belly, and it will always be the place where the bomb on the bus exploded, Tavistock Square will also still be my beloved cigarette junction.

I may not have been born within the sound of Bow Bells, and I am really a suburban girl at heart, but I’ve been here long enough to realise that London is a canny little phoenix, and don’t you forget it.


*


So, anyway song of the week?

Bit of a cheat, but I’m picking two.

Tracks 2 and 3 from Sigur Ros’s Agaetis Byrjun, Svefn-g-englar followed by Staralfur.

I listened to this a lot in my first year at university, and although I have no idea what Sigur Ros are singing, I love London in the same way I love those two songs.

Like you care.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

song of the week: windowlicker


As that crafty little thief, minifig, admits, i've been thinking about doing song of the week for ages - largely because it would mean i would at least be aiming to post something once a week. like minifig, it will be selected from my most played songs of the week. and my choice for the last week of June into early July? sheer filth.

in this sticky heat, waking up in bright sunlight after a relatively mellow night out, there was only one song for Sunday morning.

aphex twin's windowlicker is unashamedly commercial and poppy, yet manages to retain a very cocky air of irony. it's impossible not to dance to it and it's impossible not to laugh at it.

the opening vocal, a distorted snarl over a kind of fuzzy thumping electronica followed by some nasty break-ups and then that unforgettable sleazey groove complete with messed-up porn sighs and shuddering cuts is sheer genius - kind of unpredictable and yet instantly familiar. superficially, windowlicker pretends that the same sounds are being played over and over again, when it's really just gracefully building up to the massive champagne-popping crescendo ending on a jarring, warped bleed of weird synthy-esque sounds. (what a load of bollocks that paragraph is)

like mary poppins, aphex twin's windowlicker is practically perfect in every way - and that's before you see chris cunningham's (everybody's favourite sick bastard) nastily funny pastiche hip-hop video.

clap in time everybody!