With the kind of belatedness that has quietly, but clearly become ANBAD’s key trait, it has dawned on me that we are already over halfway through 2012.

These are usually pristine opportunities for a recap: taking stock of what has gone before, and where music may go now. This, of course, slipped ANBAD’s mind, and it took an email from a mobile phone manufacturer to actually cause these disparate thoughts to cling together coherently.

Nokia asked me to compile a “Best New Music of 2012 So Far” Mix for their Mix Radio service, and so I did. You can listen to it here (or on your Nokia phone) – and remember: it is not comprehensive, or even close to being definitive, but it might give you a cheap ‘n’ cheerful finger-on-the-pulse of now, and where it may go next.

Brooches are too late to appear on that list, but if they keep producing music as nuanced, chiming and lolloping as Swans, they may well crop up on the next list around Christmas.

Swans may be the sound of now, in a whole bunch of ways: soft sounds, crisp, snappy beats, and floating melodies are certainly de rigueur, but instead of castigating Brooches for such fripperies, why not simply drown in the drunken, woozy noise, and allow your mind to wander into the future?

MORE: soundcloud.com/brooches