So, 17 years later, they’re still here, the Rolling Stones of dance – a tag with all the same associations of cred-yo-yo-ing, borderline ridiculousness and begrudging likeability.

And having long ago abandoned breakbeat thrills, The Chemical Brothers are now producing epic, fine-tuned songs like Swoon.

Swoon sounds remarkably like Orbital’s Lush 3.1. This is almost certainly deliberate, and frankly, is to be applauded – and yet it’s also their undoing. Listen to the two back-to-back – and, emerging from a nagging,  submerged state, the flaw in the Chem’s shtick…

Although usually far from a model of organisation and understanding, as far as today’s new band is concerned, I managed to outdo myself this time.

Having had Mariee Sioux earmarked for some time as a truly great new artist – one who had exerted a frisson of earthy excitement from the moment her ethereal voice melted into my willing ears – I duly and carefully noted, then noted again, that she was playing at Manchester’s Eurocultured street festival on the May Bank Holiday.

So, having made such careful arrangements not to miss…

Perhaps it’s the dizzying depth of the new bands sprouting in the Manchester music scene at the moment, or perhaps it’s sheer, dumb, laziness on my part.

Admittedly, the latter is the most likely, though there are just so many fascinating bands in and around Manchester now, that you, and I, would be forgiven for assuming the former as most probable.

Either way, I ought to have covered Young British Artists months ago. I didn’t though, so today am making amends by way of a breathlessly enthusiastic slew of praise-slurry.

It’s simple:…

When Bad Recommendations Go Good, Part Two. (See yesterday’s adventures for Part One)

When Takeda were pitched to me, I had little hope. Vague mutterings about a world-folk ‘outfit’ who were ‘getting attention in Norfolk’ just didn’t reach up my trouser leg and grab me by the balls, in all honesty.

Within this article, then, lie lessons on the benefits of ignorance, bloody-mindedness and the value of another weary click of another speculative URL. Because – and listen carefully – if A Million Years isn’t the most damn beautiful song I’ve heard for…

I saw Caribou last night in Manchester. The fact that I saw him at all was a minor triumph of extended haggling with the doorstaff, because the venue was packed sardine-tight with the usual array of haircuts, too-cool-for-schoolers and louts that populate ‘buzz’ gigs.

Still, it was worth it: ANBAD alumni Gold Panda was supporting, noisily, and the audience was mesmerised by both his heavy, muddy beats and his woolly panda-hat.

Caribou themselves were delicious – swirling and deft tunes with, alternately, dreamy, delicate punctuations and squelchy, heavy, house…

Sometimes a crock of comedy gold just falls into your lap.

Sometimes it is a hairy, confusing crock. For instance: the news story of a man who has been sneaking into a farm and having sex with a horse and a donkey.

I don’t know at which point buggering a donkey just doesn’t cut it any more and the step up to having sex with a horse is the only remaining option, but this man passed it with brazen certainty.

Regardless – a man having sex with animals isn’t funny, right? No –…

It’s rare to find a band that manages to wholly inhabit a different plane to the majority, and even rarer to find one that makes music in that place that’s palatable. Bermuda Bonnie has hula-hooped past these markers with flying colours.

Stepping into Bermuda Bonnie‘s world is to open the door of a musty pop charity-shop, a bewildered plunge into retirement-home kitsch. Normal rules do not apply here.

After ten minutes of listening to songs like Houseboat, an evening of piña coladas, Elvis impersonators and leafing through well-thumbed copies of National Geographic sounds…

Comparing one band with another is a mindless, but pretty much necessary, evil.

As a hack keyboard-basher, I try to avoid it as much as I can, but sometimes you’re left with no other option: how else to describe bande du jour The XX as anything other than ‘drab Zero Seven copyists‘?*

So when I heard Evan Voytas described as ‘the American M83′ by both those who have read his PR company’s press release and those who haven’t, my interest was piqued and repulsed at the same time. This is usually a good…

I knew something didn’t add up. The BBC 6Music kerfuffle drags on and on – with more and more music fans, politicians and BBC bigwigs all competing to see who can yelp their opinions the loudest.

And yet, all along, something just didn’t seem right. How could the BBC continue to make slack-jawed idiot-vision programmes like I Believe In Ghosts: Joe Swash and Hotter Than My Daughter, whilst cutting 6Music because of budgetary constraints?

The truth is now pretty much out: the BBC has been toying with 6Music’s fate as part…

We all have our curious nooks, fascination with niches, our inexplicable preferences and the feeling of being unfathomably drawn to subject X over subject Y.

So I’ll come right out and admit it, using a truly tortuous metaphor: if Broken Deer was a magnet, I’d be the spilt iron filings bristling all over it, irremovable, fascinated and twitching.

Broken Deer‘s music bypasses both the rational lobe of the brain and the musical one, and connects directly with the bit that makes me recoil with satisfaction, pleasure and a beguiling, bizarre sense of comfort.…