ANBAD likes nothing more than to wallow in abject failure,. So these last two weeks watching the England team flop around like caught fish, hopeless, hapless and helpless, have been strangely enjoyable.

Moreover, watching England’s star striker have a hissy fit engaged emotions that teetered somewhere between deep sadness and sniggering. The ANBAD New Bands Donkey, perhaps a fitting animal to draw comparison with a player who apparently left his first touch back at Heathrow, has responded in kind.

Mixtape:

FIRST! The Good Gods may well have had their name yelled in exasperation many times when England misplaced yet another pass against Algeria. Clever viral marketing.

The Good Gods // Lying On Our Bright Red Backs

Why are their backs red? Are they England hoolies who have spent too many hours drinking in the baking sun, and are about to thrown their plastic chairs at police armed with water cannons? We may never know. But their songs are noisy, sharp and clever – as if we’re listening to the secret rock ‘n’ roll recordings of the uncool kids at school, unleashing their frustration with the world for the first time. Really good stuff.

SECOND! Personal Space Invaders have a name that made me do a little half-chuckle when I first heard it, and Lo, they were in the mixtape. It’s that easy. That their music, especially You’re Not My Boyfriend, sounds like the Boss level on one of the Metal Slug video games just seals the deal.

THIRD! Love In The Asylum, eh? Whatever gets your engine running, I suppose. I know Angelina Jolie has said in the past that she likes crazy sex, but I think even she would rule out having sex with mentally disturbed people. The band’s song Pull The Plug is a curious mix of jaunty jangle-pop and RAWK-vocals, and is therefore highly recommended as a curio, at the very least.

LAST! War Eagle Rising – how could you fail to love a band with a name like War Eagle Rising? It’s literally impossible. Their music is of the superior chugga-chugga type that Beavis and Butthead would love, and frankly, so do I. If you’re a man, and want to feel the electric buzz of your teenage years again, listen forthwith. If you’re a woman, and still can’t figure out why men are so mindless, listen too, and see if it becomes a bit clearer.

DONE!

Poor old Robert Green. First his hilarious butter-fingers attempt at saving a pea-roller shot from Clint Dempsey is a huge failure, and now the ANBAD Donkey is mocking him callously. What sort of world do we live in?

A world where this ace mixtape can make all of England’s World Cup hopelessness disappear in a swirl of good tunes, that’s where:

FIRST! Jacob Faurholt wants to know if you’re in the mood for love. After hearing the creepy A Fish In A Bowl, I’m not sure I am. He promises to be waiting for you on the coach, with ice cream, a movie and a fish in a bowl. Now here’s a man who knows how to treat a lady.

Jacob Faurholt / A Fish In A Bowl

There are moments in this song which sound extremely normal, and others that sound extremity strange, threatening and unnerving. Which exactly is why I like it, and you might too.

SECOND! The Maybenauts are an indecisive lot. Or are they? I dunno. Or do I? Etc. Either way, songs like You Are Here is a strange hybrid of clanky pop, do-wop and My Bloody Valentine-esque warped fuzz-rock. Maybe.

THIRD! The Lone Wolf Project have the most rock name I’ve heard for ages. You can imagine the call-and-response with the sweaty crowd. Singer: Lone Wolves! Crowd: A-wooooooooooo! Actually, after having shed what seems like a million members, the band now makes crunchy, tactile and, above all, satisfying old-gold rock. Fiddles, harmonicas, the drumbeat from ‘Be My Baby’ and preacher-vocals all stew together to form this rock porridge.

FINALLY! Substatic. So – is that like when you rub a balloon against your hair and it almost starts to stand on end, but not quite? Scientists, please comment below. Songs like static will distract you from such concerns however, building, as it does, a head of steam with such precision and craft that you can’t help but be slightly hypnotised.

DONE! Done. That’s it.

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.

Unlike the last inexcusably late addition to the Midweek Mixtape canon, this week’s melting pot of wonky tunes, clanky noise and loveable misfits that couldn’t be crowbarred in anywhere else is, just like late -80s House popsters Black Box, ‘Ride On Time’.

And so by way of celebration, this week the increasingly tenuous ANBAD New Bands Donkey is upset by, this time, an extra heavy load of Black Box 12″ records. Sigh. Here’s the mixtape:

FIRST! Bellevue’s Finest somehow channel The Kinks through their Casio keyboards and emerge from the ensuing dysfunctional smoke, eyebrows raised and wry quips readied.

Bellevue’s Finest // In My Dreams (ur txting me)

Bellevue’s Finest might well be post-post-modern, which might make them pre-modern, or just plain old, if you take the logic to its conclusion I suppose. Either way, and whatever you think of their quaintly-electric-pop approach, their infectious tunes are still going to be bothering your mind an hour from now.

SECOND! Elephant Stone unwittingly reminded me of a genuinely dreadful, overwrought country-folk cover version of The Stone Roses‘ I Wanna Be Adored I heard recently. I’m not claiming that it is their fault entirely, but then it wasn’t me who named them after a Roses single. Still, armed with dreamy, urgent and blissful songs like the shimmering How Long, you won’t be pondering on Manchester’s most over-rated band for long. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

THIRD! Ka So Re – one day, Finland and the rest of Scandinavia will suddenly exhaust itself of astonishingly tuneful new bands, and deflate like a popped party balloon under the exertion. Until we wait for such an exciting climax to one region’s dedication to melodiousness, enjoy Ka So Re for what they are: yet another bouncy, fun Scandi-pop group.

FINALLY! Fredrick Carlsson is here to prove the theory that you can wait ages for one Scandi-pop-donkey-themed-mixtape track, and then when two come at once, you immediately hate yourself as you realise that actually, you anticipated it all along. If you thought that Fredrick makes generic housey-pop, you’d be wrong – his songs pulse with the blood of thoughtful songsmithery.

DONE! Indeed, done.

So, yes, this week’s Midweek Mixtape is a week late. But hey – there’s no merit in consistency, right? Especially when an institution as fixed as the calendar is involved.

But compensation is still probably necessary – so this week the ANBAD New Bands Donkey is sporting a fetching mask in tribute to everyone’s favourite back pain victim Boneo from The U2’s.

The tape:

FIRST! Ton Spender is German, and may or may not spend money in increments of 100. Whatever his fiscal habits might be, his musical ones involve making downbeat techno that meanders between minimal and full-on crunch. Music like this fools you into assuming that it is a simple one-off buzz – though repeated listens reveal hidden nooks, crannies and reversed samples of hi-hats fed through a flange.

SECOND! Chief took their name from the character played by Isaac Hayes in South Park, and formed a band in response to his ridiculous Scientology-led departure from the show. Oh, wait. Anyway – Cheif cook up (ho!) Big Songs that are surely pointing them towards Big Fame, and Moderate Fortune. No-one makes money from record sales these days. Lovely sleeve art.

THIRD! Headtapes uses the power of his mind alone to record his bloopy music onto magnetic C90 cassette. He then uses his mouth to mumble quasi-pleasantries over the top. The resultant songs straddle the line between ludicrous and acceptable, which is quite a wide line if you think about it.

FINALLY! Redtrack craft melodic, slightly labyrinthine power-pop songs. They are the second band in this mixtape who could feasibly hit the Big Time. This may affect your opinion of them, and so it should. But you ought to listen, because whilst a lot of you might equate Big Time Power Pop with The Kooks, this band are actually engaging, talented and un-punchable – a huge head start. Cigarette has a lovely, hesitant riff too.

NO MORE! Really. But just look at Bono’s head on a donkey. Look.

Like the pendulous testes of a rampant bull, time swings gracelessly back and forth from one Midweek Mixtape to the next. And so, here we are again, metaphorically clunking the C90 of destiny into the Sony Walkman of doom.

Prepare to be overwhelmed by another collection of odds, ends and buried audio treasure from the ANBAD pit o’ bands. (Midweek Mixtape Completists please note the donkey has a novelty hat and googly eyes this week)

FIRST! Dandelion Snow has written a song called Belly Of The Beast, which , as all Steven Segal fans will know, is one of the chop-socky moron’s most truly terrible movies. This is not that song:

Dandelion Snow // You, In That Hospital Gown

You, In That Hospital Gown is indeed the kind of song you’d play from an old boombox to a loved one in a coma. As such, prepare for feelings of infinite insignificance and prepare to hug your nearest and dearest a bit tighter.

SECOND! Keramick and Lobo‘s jittery yet slick sounds are a bold attempt at fusing glitchy twinge-noise with commercial pop. It’s not their fault. They’re from Finland, and so can’t help but inject lush pop into everything they do. I stayed over at their house: for breakfast they have Cheery Melody-O’s.

THIRD! Flotilla also sound a little Scandi-pop in some ways. Their vocals are naive and cute, and in songs like Charlie, I’m Through, they deftly avoid the  potential schoolboy euphemisms, and craft a slight song of actual – well – emotion. They also have that lovely knack of sounding like they’re playing the song in the next room, which seals the deal.

FOURTH! The Mauxms are a Jazz-Rock-Experimental-Progressive-Punk-Latin-Psychadelic band. Talk about covering your bases. Their EP cover has a picture of a naked woman hugging a purple octopus. What else do you want to know? OK, have this: their music is nowhere near as bad as it sounds like it should be – in fact it’s great fun. Curses.

STOP! No more!

So this weekly bunch of new bands post  is officially A Feature now. Under the guise of  ‘a new band clear-out’, it actually serves a number of purposes – chiefly allowing twice as many bands to feature per week – though if truth be told, it’s mainly existing as an excuse to keep re-running the accompanying photo.

The title’s changed, you’ll notice. A New Band Clear Out kind of undersold it a bit. Midweek Mixtape is nicer – it’s not only an alliteration, which always looks clever, but it also implies that coherent thinking was involved in its construction. This is, of course, a fallacy, but the illusion is comforting.

Thus: this week’s mixtape! Take in the slack with a biro, blow the dust off the tape-head, perform other reminiscently generic C90-cassette tasks, and press play…

First! Razmataz Lorry Excitement – You’re expected to fall into the trap of wondering under what circumstances ‘Razmataz Lorry Excitement’ became this band’s first-choice pick for their name.

Razmataz Lorry Excitement // Trial and Errors
You can download this song for FREE! here

This would be a mistake, because you might be distracted from cowbell-infused bass-groove-laden songs like Trial And Errors. Imagine a super-luxuriant Mr. Oizo, and you’re halfway there. Excellent.

Second! The Half Rabbits – In Spain, I once ate paella from a pan the size of one of those satellite dishes you see on the top of TV broadcast vans at sporting events. In the paella was an entire rabbit, cruelly chopped into six pieces. Thus The Half Rabbits have an advantage of sorts over the one I greedily devoured. These rabbits make the type of cut-and-thrust tinny rock that you though wasn’t made any more. Excellent QUIET-loud straight-laced razor-rock.

Third! Bark Bark Disco – Apparently Song For Lovers is a tribute to 70’s French ‘porn star legend’ Brigitte Lahaie. I’ve never heard of her *cough*. The song, fittingly, is cheap ‘n’ cheerful, pretty and surprisingly tender. Just like porn. Right?

Last! Jonathan Sakas has one hell of a fringe. Seriously, just look at the damn thing on his Myspace page. It’s like a huge comma on his forehead. A delightful sight to behold. His music is like a pop version of the Blade Runner soundtrack, and so is as synth-drenched, overblown and borderline ridiculous as that sounds. But all good music teeters on the brink of mockery, and so his songs are part of a grand tradition of tip-toeing along the tightrope of failure and surviving – smiling, resplendent and triumphant.

Another mixtape will be furtively passed to you, under the table during French double class, next week. Naturellement.