The World Cup is now three short days away. My glossy wallchart is up, my life has been rearranged down to the least significant detail to accommodate every single game, and the ANBAD donkey has grown Colombian nutcase Carlos Varderrama’s hair.

And, lo, this midweek mixtape is hastily crowbarred into the realms of the World Cup Tie-In. Brace yourself for a glut of tenuous associations…

FIRST! Radiant Dragon has popped up on ANBAD not once, but twice now. There’s no secret agenda – what else can you do when faced with a relentless barrage of monster tunes? Here, he remixes Teenagers In Tokyo to bass-worrying, bowel-loosening effect:

Radiant Dragon: so far, so yummy. Be sure to check out the Entrepreneurs Neuromancer remix of Preseli too. Disorientating, ace.

SECOND! Big Charlie are from Bari in Italy, not Barry in south Wales. But if their bunny-masked get-ups are as upsetting as Barry Island’s funfair, their glossy, dreamy songs are as warm, rich and comforting as  a Bari calzone. Bite hard.

THIRD! Detox Retox like bashing drums. Not in a Keith Moon/Animal from The Muppets way, but in an insistent way. Insistent. INSISTENT, OK? Other than that, they’re tight, bright and perfectly formed, and not many bands manage even one of those.

FINALLY! Slow Motion Shoes – can you even begin to imagine the chaos if you owned a pair of slo-mo shoes? Just navigating an escalator would be a nightmare. Life would be like living in a bad Steven Segal fight-scene. And the band themselves? They claim to, ‘make music mainly based on the life and struggles of the greatest actor of our generation – Brendan Fraser.’ Now tell me you’re not interested.

Done! Indeed, done.