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 music usually gets short shrift here on ANBAD. It’s not the guitarist’s fault, you understand. It’s just that, well, it always works out that way. Mind you, ANBAD doesn’t have a lot of Kenyan music either – so here’s Arnavah to redress two balances at once. Guitar lullaby-pop that is almost lighter than air.

THIRD! Beatroot crowbar “Latin, African, Caribbean, funk, soul, hiphop and rock… records, movie soundtracks, dancehall themes, 1950s surf tunes, fanfares and cheerleading chants” into their cut ‘n’ paste hip-skank-pop songs. Just think how long picking the samples must take. Yikes.

FOURTH! ANBAD is always, always swayed by odd names, and so Raven Fur had me at “Raven Fur”. Fortunately Saline is a crumbly, distressed lo-fi crunch through fields of oddness.