Is Dan Leno a man? A woman? A Victorian burlesque act? Or merely a puzzle to confuse us all?

I don’t think we’re supposed to know, and frankly, I like the idea of a band who bill themselves as a solo artist, confusing the unwitting audience members who have been as remiss to have not googled the band first. (Kids: real rock fans do internet research, yeah?)

Of course, all of the above is a moot point, unless you do go to gigs expecting the reappearance of (aforementioned) long-deceased Victorian burlesque acts. For Dan Leno are indeed, a band …

Today’s Midweek Mixtape ticks all the requisite boxes: an artist with an animal in the band name, odd breakbeat-pop, misspelings (geddit?!?), music from days of yore (OK, pre-electronica glut) and music from a part of the world that isn’t particularly remote, but – frankly – hasn’t produced any music I’m au fait with (not that that means much).

Fine, no more brackets (or ‘parenthesis’, if you like). Whoops.

MIXTAPE:

FIRST! Tiger Waves began their pitch explaining how they have squandered chances and got things wrong. I like people who have failed, because failures keep coming back and eventually do …

When asked about their influences, electronic artists used to trot out the same few names: Kraftwerk, Can, and the occasional Detroit house pioneer.

This narrow range of influencers were cited until relatively recently: electronic music was so new for, perversely,  so long, that the original shapers of the genre had a lingering effect on those who followed.

But now virtually all music is electronic, and artists can name influences willy-nilly; the more obscure the better, yeah?

So it feels kind of pointless to even try and figure out who or what has made Deklun the band they are today, even …

Anyone who has ever observed the music blog universe for more than 30 seconds will be under no illusions: music bloggers are the most narcissistic of all online keyboard-mashers, and the Music Blogosphere is their playground of self-absorption.

The Great Lingering Fear of all music bloggers is the lingering suspicion that all their efforts are not only pointless, but entirely mindless.

This is, of course, entirely true: writing about new music is the frivolity to obliterate all frivolities; and yet most music bloggers, ANBAD included, spend most of their time furiously treading water to appear relevant and plugged-in.

This is …

**Sponsored Post**

Nokia thrust a shiny Play 360° speaker into our clammy, outstretched palms, with the simple proviso of “let us know what you think”, and immediately gave all at ANBAD Towers a number of sleepless nights: tech reviews are not our forté.

Hell, reviews are not ANBAD’s forté, and that’s pretty much all we do. Still, when technology is as simple to use as the 360° speaker – you turn it on and it makes loud, clear noise – hopefully it is no longer classed as a tech review.

The speaker has no wires, which immediately makes it better than every other …

Perhaps no-one told Secretaire that artists usually spread their songs out, over the course of an album or two.

They didn’t listen even if they were told. Today’s new band are ADHD-made -flesh, or the logical conclusion of what happens when a group of individuals obsess over more ideas than they have time to play with.

The more-is-more ethos displayed in Prick On The Racetrack to be admired wholeheartedly: just as a pineapple is actually a collection of fruitlets that form a whole, this song is a constantly rotating, mutating, splicing, dividing collection of song-chunks.

And so when …

If we take for granted the notion that most bands have accepted that their only source of “jackpot” money now – that is, money that arrives in amusingly large quantities, of the sort that Noel Gallagher used to receive with frightening regularity in the music industry’s “good” old days – is to come from sponsorship and corporations, isn’t it time that these modern-day Medicis put a bit more thought into what they offer to the public in return?

I mean, I’m all for having Mmoths soundtracking a Bodyform advert, for example (NB: this has not happened. Yet.), but wouldn’t it be better …

Another week, another nugget of Alex James From Blur news: this time it’s news that Fat Les, his 1998 World Cup spin-off ‘project’, is reforming without their bassline wrangler extraordinaire.

This is clearly a mindless decision. How will Keith Allen even begin to cope?

ANBAD’s campaign to Reinstate Alex James In Fat Les starts here!

MIXTAPE:

FIRST! Starlight Girls channel the eeriness of  disused fairground ghost-trains, and 50′s shoop-shoop pop songs into their gently freaky pop.

This is the kind of music that could, and perhaps should, soundtrack Burlesque sideshows and Freakshow extravaganzas all over the land.

SECOND! Straight-up guitar …

I have long postulated that we have crossed an irreversible threshold in music creation.

The laptop and associated technology has freed individuals from the social constraints of being in a band, constantly compromising individual ideals for the good of the group.

Now anyone can make the exact music they want; as imagined by them, as controlled by them, as produced/promoted/distributed by them.

This has resulted in a veritable glut of terrific, dazzlingly original and gorgeously  individual music: just cast your attention towards ANBAD alumni Mmoths, D/R/U/G/S, Mujuice et al.

Life, however, works to a pattern as predictable as the ticking of a …

All artists hold a great secret: the source of their inspiration. They are happy to reveal everything else – their life and loves and mistakes – but leave exposition of the nuts and bolts to others.

And the reason it’s such a secret? Because if the fawning and rapt observers (that’s us, folks) were to discover the utter banalities behind our favourite heroes’ artworks, our carefully assembled and equally fragile interpretations would be dashed on the rocks of bathos.

So at least Elise Mélinand has the brass neck to reveal that her newest excruciatingly delicate, woozily gorgeous song is …