>I once found myself chatting to a man in a pub who worked in a Hi-Fi shop. He was the kind of guy you’d expect to find working in a Hi-Fi shop – gawky, not quite fully aware of other people’s personal space, that kind of thing. But he was nice, even if he was one of those audiophiles who obsess about sound quality over what’s actually being listened to in the first place. I got the feeling he listened to a lot of Bruce Springsteen. But I digress.

I asked him what songs they play to test the quality of new CD players, amps and speakers. He said that for quite a while now, they’d used Angel by Massive Attack, by virtue of its ridiculously heavy bassline, which, Hi-Fi geek speaking, separates the Separates from the Separates.

As much as I love Mezzanine, the album that opens ominously with Angel, I’m not sure if I’d want to take it out of context as an enjoyable bit of dubby music and make it into an everyday quasi-scientific experiment. Music is enjoyment for its own sake, isn’t it?

Speaking of enjoyment, music and experimentalism, here’s Today’s New Band, The Furbelows. “I’m a fun-loving, heat-seeking pleasure machine,” they howl excitedly on Pleasure Machine, a song that’s so much fun and so good, I was almost positive it was a cover, but if it is, I can’t find any traces of the original anywhere.

This can only mean it’s all theirs and this is a good thing. Pleasure Machine rips up the carpet, stomps its Cuban heeled feet into the floorboards and before you know it, has created a clammy, uninhibited party. It’s as simple, attractive and as much fun as a Playboy Playmate, and twice as pleasant to listen to.

After a start like that – and I assume that The Furbelows will start their gigs with it, not to mention every single public engagement forthwith; weddings, funerals and doctors appointments included – it’s not too surprising, or unfair, that none of their other songs match it for bombast, at least.

That’s not to say they’re no good, though – What Whiskey Is For is nearly the kind of song that Spiritualized would write if they had a sense of humour. But, if you want a blast of pure, eccentric, in-capital-letters-FUN, you could do no better than clicking here and putting Pleasure Machine on loop.