On My Turntable: Witch Mountain, The Smashing Pumpkins, El-P and Decoder Ring…

Spot the hilarious joke….

Don’t be fooled, while there’s not much metal on this list, I’m not going soft. I’ve been hammering MDG favourites Book of Black Earth and Balaclava this past week.

*Masculinity assured, he stops swinging it around and slips back where it belongs*

Yet there’s been plenty of time for non d-beat at MDG Towers. I know. Shit’s craycray, huh?

I have also created a Spotify playlist so you bastards can have a listen. Not that you’ll bother, you James Blunts (that’s cockney rhyming slang my beloved American readers… you work it out).

The Sun Electric Band

Your head smells nice

When I am not up to my ears in filth, I like to frolic in a little jangly surf-pop and even dip my toe into the waters of country rock.

The Sun Electric Band, an unsigned group from Manchester, scratch that itch for me.

It’s wistful and yet celebrates melancholy rather than wallowing in it.

I’ve seen them a couple of times in various back rooms in Camden and Shoreditch and they are really good live too.

Although I sometimes wish they would cover Black Sabbath rather than Gene Clark.

Top 10 Albums 2011

Speed demons or sweet feelings. The great gamut of music boiled down to that binary definition for most of 2011.

Music had only two roles: to put fire in my belly or smooth my furrowed brow.

I’m not cut out for new fatherhood, even second time around. My synapses need more help than ever to fire and my cranium is forever creaking, aching.

This list – my top 10 albums of 2011 – reflects this.

No black metal, no doom. Neither hip-hop, post-metal nor bass fuckery. Just various blends of death metal, crust and hardcore, preferably with that heartstarting Sunlight tone, or the polar opposite: the pastoral, the dreamy.

Roundup: Lana Del Rey; Converge; Trap Them; and Miasmal

Mmmm, I just LOVE jam. More jam please Mummy.

It’s been a while since I posted some quick-fire nuggets of MDG “wisdom” about my week in music rather than hundreds of words of self-indulgent waffle about a single record.

As always, I’ve veered from one extreme to the other.

From the metallic hardcore cacophony of Converge and Trap Them to the twisted Lynchian torch songs of Lana Del Rey with a dash of dank death from Miasma.

It’s been a good week.

Lana Del Rey: Video Games

Lemmy? Lemmy? Is that you?

There’s a whole kerfuffle in certain corners of the internet about Lana Del Rey.

Inauthentic, mumble, grumble, fake, lips, grumble, manufactured, bitch, whine.

Much like the whole trve/kvlt metal nonsense, the whole debate is bollocks.