It’s almost exactly 6 months later. In which time, I’ve taken a mountain of painkillers, nearly lost my leg AGAIN,  had another two spells in hospital but still managed to notch up 4 festivals and some other (very ill-advised) lunacy.

Right now, I’m mostly med-free and pretty much in the hands of the physiotherapist, who I’d describe as a sadistic little bastard if he wasn’t such a nice guy.

Mostly I read and listen to music – and now the meds have worn off I’ve actually started taking stuff in again as well. Kicking the painkillers – especially the Oxycodone – was no picnic and I felt strange and woozy and disjointed for a few days. And listened to a lot of stuff like the tunes I’ve included in this new Oxycomedown mix. I’ve also found hauntology and opiates are a splendid combination, something they didn’t mention in The Wire.

Anyway, I hope to restore this blog to a living breathing thing now I’m a little more sentient, so consider this new mix a kind of reboot.

Dubversion Presents The Oxycomedown Mix

1. Max Richter – Vladimir’s Blues (Blue Notebooks)
2. PJ Harvey – The Garden (Is This Desire?)
3. Wild Beasts – We Still Got The Taste Dancing On Our Tongues (Two Dancers)
4. Glen Brown – Wicked Can’t Run This Dub (Termination Dub)
5. Saint Etienne – Carn’t Sleep (Foxbase Alpha)
6. Nurse With Wound – Spiral Theme (A Sucked Orange)
7. OOIOO – Be Sure To Loop (Feather Float)
8. Boredoms – 7 (Boriginal Mix) (Super Roots Seven)
9. The Mekons – Where Were You? (Heaven & Hell)
10. Igor Wakhevitch – Rituel De Guerre Des Esprits De La Terre (Unknown)
11. Can – Vitamin C (Ege Bam Yasi)
12. 24 Carat Black – 24 Carat Black Theme (Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth)
13. Mogwai – The Sun Smells Too Loud (The Hawk Is Howling)
14. Fuck Buttons – Mogwai Fear Satan (Mogwai / Fuck Buttons Tour 7”)
15. Coil – Further Back & Faster (Love’s Secret Domain)
16. Arthur Russell – Keeping Up (The World Of Arthur Russell)
17. Dead Man’s Bones – My Body’s A Zombie For You (Dead Man’s Bones EP)
18. Max Richter – Sarajevo (Memory House)
19. Sons Of The Pioneers – Happy Trails (Cool Water)

The last 6  months have been mostly soundtracked by:

Alela Diane / Ghostface Killah / Max Richter / Nurse With Wound / King Tubby / Boredoms / Dead Man’s Bones / Elizabeth Cotten / OOIOO / Orange Goblin / Gas / The Modern Lovers / Mariachi El Bronx / Supersuckers / Master Killa / Shackleton / Jessica Ray Mayfield / Morton Valence / Sunn O))) / Coil / NoFX / She & Him / Julian Cope / Honkeyfinger / King Midas Sound / Tragic Roundabout / Fuck Buttons  / Bill Callahan and Smog / Boris / Frontier Ruckus / Charles Mingus

which might be some indication of how fucked up Oxycodone makes you

(NB: i messed up the link earlier, but  it’s all working now)

Hello.

As some of you may know, I’ve not been well. The short version:

Take PROD to Wales. Fall off ladder, 8ft onto kneecap. Nearly lose leg (google “compartment syndrome”). Languish in Bronglais Hospital in Aberystwyth for 3 weeks till I get a transfer to Kings College in South London. Where they do this to me:

Since then, I’ve been back in with infections, and I’m on a daily diet of circa 25 pills (mmm.. opiates). Can’t walk, need crutches / wheelchair to get around. Likely to be like this for a few months yet, thus screwing my summer. In addition to which, I got made redundant whilst in hospital.

So, erm… bugger.

Anyway, that’s why I’ve not been blogging. But I’m cutting my meds dosage, and starting to see through the haze, so I’m back. I’m sure I’ve got lots to bore you with (especially how the whole drone / hauntology thing – Caretaker, Fennesz,  The Fun Years, Ghostbox – is a perfect fit for liquid morphine) but for now here’s about the most arbitrary mix I’ve ever made, basically a handy primer on some of the stuff that’s got me through a crappy few months.

(click the pic to get the mix)

The Shitborg Mix

1. Salem – Snakes

(know nothing about this lot except they make whoozy distorted noises which tickled my synapses)

2. Super Chron Flight Brothers – Broccoli

(my favourite indie hip hop outfit have offered up a free, dubstep soaked new album from which I think this is the stand-out track)

3. La Roux – In For The Kill (Skream Remix)

(aren’t I the trendy one?)

4. Terry Lynn – Kingstonlogic

(feisty and abrasive and enough to make a crippled man wish he could dance)

5. King Tubby – Great Stone

(as with the hauntology stuff, dub suits meds – I’ve been listening to more lately than any point since I stopped being a stoner. And it doesn’t come much better than this)

6. Bad Manners – Walking In Sunshine

(Yeh, I know… But this is actually REALLY good).

7. Kid606 – Mr Wobble’s Nightmare

(perennial brat 606 duffs  up 4Hero and wins, mainly through use of the word ‘wobble’.)

8. Boredoms – Ant 10 Remix (Lindstromm)

(handsome cosmic disco bloke does weird things to Boredoms and comes up with something amazing and otherworldly even by Boredoms standards)

9. Dangerdoom – The Mask

(I’m a recent convert to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force-themed Mouse & The Mask album, but it’s ace, like this)

10. Titus Andronicus – Titus Andronicus

(they’re like, cool, or something, and I suspect I’d try and trip one of them over in a bar, but this is enjoyably bratty)

11. Joe Gideon & The Shark – Civilisation

(Andy Weatherall announced that this was good on a recent radio show, and who am I to argue?)

12. The Horrors – Sea Within The Sea

(yes, you can add me to the swelling ranks of people going “eh? The HORRORS?”. This is brilliant, and so’s the album).

13. Das Damen – Noon Daylight

(a long-l0st old grunge / psych fave that isn’t lost any more).

14. The Chatham Singers – Queen Bee

(Childish’s raw blues side project sex up the Slim Harpo classic).

15. Alice Cooper  – Under My  Wheels

(just cos it rocks).

16. Little Richard – Soul Train

(somewhere in his besequinned journey from gospel to rock’n'roll to soul back to gospel and around we go again, the soul period gets ignored. Which is silly. Just LISTEN to this… )

17. Eddi Bo – Check Your Pocket

(died while I was in hospital, one of the funkiest people ever, and full of advice re: bucket maintenance)

18. Moondog – Lament No 1

(listened to lots of Moondog lately, mostly the more experimental Westward Ho!, but I thought I’d include this track to remind people once again what a talentless no-mark Mr Scruff really is).

19. Friends Of Dean Martinez – All The Pretty Horses

(Calexico-related country lounge outfit do supper club version of over-covered folk classic. And it works…)

20. April March  – Stay Away From Robert Mitchum

(she’s right, you know)

21. Les Paul & Mary Ford – Vaya Con Dios

(like all the Les and Mary duets, just pure sugar for the soul)

22. Festival – Fair & True

(everything about this namby pamby, over-mannered, over-annunciated, po-faced pair of tie-dyed bitches makes me want to kill them in the face.  But every time I was in real pain in  my bed back there in Aber, I’d put this on and  it somehow felt better. The bastards).

You have no idea how much I hope the rumours about the death of Lux Interior aren’t true.

We’ve lost a lot of legends lately – people I had huge respect for. But Lux, he’s been part of  my life for 25 years or more. And I hope to fuck he’s not dead

being mental takes up more time than I expected, so I’m afraid I’m totally failed to produce an end of year chart rundown.

Or much else, lately.

But I should be done with all the trick cyclist stuff in a few weeks and I’ll come bouncing back as full of shit as ever.

So anyway, I did compile a Top 20 of the year. Not a vintage year, and my top 10 especially is a bit predictable. But still plenty of goodies to be had.

Seems like a safe choice, my Number One, but it really is a cracking album

1 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Dig Lazarus Dig

2 Los Campesinos Hold On Now Youngster

3 Mogwai The Hawk Is Howling

4 The Bug London Zoo

5 Earth The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull

6 Night Marchers See You In Magic

7 Boredoms Super Roots 9

8 Atmosphere When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold

9 Adem Takes

10 Nurse With Wound Huffin Rag Blues

11 Those Dancing Days In Our Space Hero Suits

12 Shackleton & Appleblim Soundboy’s Gravestone Gets Desecrated By Vandals

13 Eli Paperboy Reed Roll With You

14 Melvins Nude With Boots

15 Fucked Up Chemistry Of Common Life

16 Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir 10,000

17 Shit & Shine Kiss Mich Mein Leibe

18 Bookhouse Boys Bookhouse Boys

19 Evangelista Hello Voyager

20 Lykke Li Youth Novels

So there you go. Might have more to say over Xmas if I get to relax.

After endless faffing, re-faffing and a bit of shouting, I’ve now signed up for a paid-for hosting thingy with Mediafire, which should mean downloads that are permanently available and ad-free.

So I’ll start uploading mixes ASAP. I won’t bother with individual tracks so if there’s anything particular you’re missing, drop me a line.

And now that’s sorted – starting on Friday, it’s my 2008 Top 20 Albums of The Year. And what a year it’s been.

Get ‘em while they’re hot:

Some of my best friends are racist scum

I know even less about Jewish music than I do about jazz, so I’d like to apologise to any Jews or jazz experts for this latest entry.

I briefly dabbled with acts like Acoustic Ladyland that were all modern and fusion without being THAT kind of fusion. The kind that makes you want to start shooting the hostages. Their track Iggy was great, but then I lost interest.

The hairy drummer from Acoustic Ladyland is also in Polar Bear, who are another modern, fusiony sort of jazz band, perhaps more conventionally ‘jazz’ than Acoustic Ladyland. Their Mercury-nominated album Held On The Tips Of Fingers didn’t really rock my world, apart from this one track, that I keep coming back to. I remember the first time I heard it, around the time it came out, I felt all trembly and possibly even a little tearful. It just….. soars.

it also puts me in mind of jewish wedding music or klezmer. I’m not enough of a musicologist (ie, I’m not in any way a musicologist) to explain why, but there’s something mournful and involving about this sort of stuff, even when it’s supposed to be happy music. Some tonal quality or a particular key. I’d be interested to get an explanation off someone who knows.

Anyway, to my ignorant little brain, Beartown by Polar Bear sounds like the exhilirating soundtrack to the saddest wedding in the world.

Polar Bear – Beartown
(on the Rub album Held On The Tips Of Fingers)