The problem is there is so much happening and I’m such a lazy sod most of the time that by the time I’ve sat myself down to update the blog it’s old news.

In an effort to get myself up-to-date I’ll cut back on my waffle and just let you know about what tracks are available either right now or in the very near future. If you like what you hear be sure to follow the them on Twitter and Facebook as you’ll find out whenever they have gigs lined up elsewhere. I guess in ye olden dayes they’d have had all that on their MySpace but is anyone other than Tom still using it?

A few weeks ago Skittles released a new track, Dot to Dot, from his forthcoming album Poor with £100 trainers. The track features remixes from Zed Bias, Dub Phizix and Joe Kalius. Have a listen to the track, what do you think? It’s been getting a lot of airplay from Mary Anne Hobbs on XFM, never a bad sign!

Next up, celebrating two years in the game, Utopia Records are offering a free download. Dubbed Out by Mute and Mako is a slice of modern British D n B and its yours for free if you Like them on Facebook.

Mute and Mako are also responsible for a couple of rather sublime offerings on the Mars Recordings label. Essential Forms and Who Knows was released on 14 November and should, if you are lucky, transport you back to the 90′s when D n B had a nice soulful sound. Made me think wistfully of the good old days of listening to Grooverider more than was probably healthy!

Still on a Drum n Bass tilt, something that looks really quite exciting for vinyl lovers, but more importantly those who play and listen to vinyl. Samurai Music are launching the Horo, an exclusive 10″ vinyl limited edition series that will come as a pre cursor to a release by the same artist on Samurai Music or Samurai Red Seal. Having listened to the snippets on the site I can’t wait to hear the full length tracks, looks like there’s some tasty shit coming our way soon! What do you think?

Now for a couple of things that will be with us very soon. First up, Andyskopes will be releasing Readings from The Lake and Distance from You also on the Utopia Records label on 28 November. I particularly like the quiet, seductive vocals that opens Distance from You that moment when the BPMs kick in…very tasty!

Leaving Drum n Bass behind the second release to look forward to will be on 5 December when Mindset Records release a new offering from Troy Gunner. The three tracks, Fools Gold, Heads in Hands and Dancing in the Leaves are a very nice selection which I think a lot of people are going to enjoy.

Finally, It’s impossible for me to ever say enough how much I like and enjoy the output of Kelly Sylvia, whether she is DJing, making or producing she can do no wrong in my ears. If you like House music and I surely do, then Kelly is certainly someone you want on your iPod.

Kelly has just released a terrific deep house track on S*mplified Recordings called White Lies which comes with an extremely tasty remix by none other than Soy Mustafa, under his S2000 guise. I implore you to listen to it and not find yourself wanting to groove a little.

Obviously it’s easy enough to listen to the track on Soundcloud but as with all these tracks, shelling out a couple of quid for the high quality files will makes your ears happy and your feet dance, so grab your debit card and buy a couple of tracks today so these poor musicians can have some gravy with their Christmas roast this year!

It was a great experience and one of the acts I was fortunate to witness was The Boxettes, a five piece all-female acapella outfit with the most amazing beatboxer in Bellatrix. I’m guessing the fact she is the current female world beatbox champion might explain why she is so good but hey, what do I know?

What I do know is I had pencilled them in as a maybe on the guide but that afternoon Sonia and her daughter (the girl) had taken part in a workshop that the Boxettes had run having just arrived from Austria of all places!

After Sonia & the girl raved about the workshop and the girl demonstrated her new-found beatbox skills I crossed out the question mark I had placed in the guide and circled their name instead. The Boxettes were hugely impressive and incredibly friendly on stage which made me slightly regret not going to the workshop however when I think of how embarrassing it would have been to attempt to beatbox in public, the feeling of regret was very fleeting.

So, you can imagine that when I found out that the final Last.fm Presents Live Fridays in 2011 would be headlined by The Boxettes there was a smile on my face. I should mention that this will be the final Last.fm Presents Live Fridays event to be held at The Garage, from January 2012 the venue changes to the HMV Forum in Kentish Town.

Support on the night will be provided by Clement Marfo & the Frontline, Daley and Stooshe as well as the ever present Last.fm DJs. Ticket inc. booking fee are £11.50 however before you reach for your debit card why not enter my competition to win a pair of VIP tickets?

LAST.FM COMPETITION

As with previous months, Last.fm have kindly given me some VIP tickets to give away but as it’s the final event of the year instead of 1 pair of tickets they’ve given me 5! So, if you want to win a pair of VIP tickets just answer the following question:

What is the name of the current female world beatbox champion?

If you think you know the answer email it together with your name and a contact number to lastfm@mr-omneo.co.uk

Your entry has to arrive before Noon on Monday 28 November 2011, the winners will be the first 5 (five) correct entries selected at random. Over-18’s only. Prizes are non-transferable. No cash alternative. Travel to and from the event is not included.

In just 2 weeks it will be time to flock to Highbury to experience The Violet May, The Lysergic Suite with the headline act being Art Brut. November’s Live Friday event will take place on Friday 4 November 2011; doors open at 7pm and can be purchased from HMV Tickets and Ticketweb but read on (or scroll down if you really must) and enter my competition to win a pair of tickets.

So why no blogging? Well, the honest answer is I’ve just been remarkably lax at making time to blog. I’ve been enjoying a period of film watching now I have a bigger display. This has caused me to go through most of the DVDs the kind folk at Stella Artois sent me as well as blu-ray versions of some of my favourite Spaghetti Westerns. I even picked up a copy of Westworld on DVD; I had to watch it again after reminding myself about it after I mentioned it in a blog a few weeks ago.

For it’s time Westworld wasn’t a bad movie; it had some hilarious dialogue. Just as the robots start playing up technicians are monitoring a situation where a guest is coming on to a pretty female robot but she rejects his advances. Now, bear in mind Westworld is the place where you go to live out your fantasies for $1,000 a day, which I’m sure was worth more in the 70′s than now. Anyway, one technician comments, “Something’s not right, she’s rejecting the guest’s seduction!?” to which the other technician replies, “Yes, that’s not supposed to happen…and she’s a sex worker robot!” If that version of the future had been realised then that French sex pest Dominique Strauss-Kahn wouldn’t have got into so much trouble.

Films, books and music and a little elbow grease has been the order of the day for the last few months which, as I say, has been to the detriment of the blog. I picked up the new Haruki Murakami book 1Q84 but I’ve never managed to find myself in the right mood to start it, after a few pages I find my mind wandering, tho to be fair this is true of quite a lot of books I pick up.

Thankfully reading the London Review of Books can prove just as enlightening, the in-depth reviews sometimes leave you feeling that you have just read the book, perfect for an easily distracted mind.

So, returning to music. I used to listen to Art Brut, who are headlining November’s Live Friday gig, quite a lot. I prefer the raw energy of Bang Bang Rock & Roll to It’s a bit complicated but never really bothered with Art Brut vs. Satan as the first few times I heard it I wasn’t sold and then they dropped off my radar.

It’s fair to say that until last month I had assumed they’d split up which was the first thing a friend said when I told her of the gig. However little did we know Art Brut were not only busy writing an album but Eddie Argos was learning to sing!

I think that’s why I wasn’t so keen on the 3rd album, his shouty singing style was wearing a bit thin. In May this year Art Brut released a new album Brilliant! Tragic! and I’ve had a listen or two on Spotify. Those singing lessons of Eddie’s have paid off if you ask me, finally we get a slightly grown up sounding Art Brut that still has the energy of old but not so harsh on your ears (I guess I’m getting old huh?)

LAST.FM COMPETITION

As with last month, Last.fm have given me a pair of VIP tickets to Last.fm Presents Live Friday featuring Art Bru to give away. If you fancy getting your hands on a pair just answer the following question:

What is Art Brut’s newest album called?

If you think you know the answer email it together with your name and a contact number to lastfm@mr-omneo.co.uk

Your entry has to arrive before Noon on Monday 31 October 2011, the winner will be the first correct entry selected at random. Over-18’s only. Prizes are non-transferable. No cash alternative. Travel to and from the event is not included.

It’s also party conference season in the UK, last week it was the Liberal Democrats (given that they are not really either of those two words it’s no wonder they prefer to be called the Lib Dems) and this week it’s Labour who will be turning Liverpool into a bit of a ghost town, other than from political groupies who will probably be fewer in number now that the purse-strings on MP expenses are that little bit tighter than days of old.

The first thing that caught my attention was  the news that Pegasus Global Holdings is building a real ghost town, called The Center, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This town will occupy an area of 20 square miles, that’s the size of Bristol and house 35,000 hypothetical people. It will resemble a mid-sized American town, complete with highways, houses, apartments and commercial buildings in a mix of old and new styles.

The Center is intended to be a test site for emerging smart technologies such as next-generation wireless networks and self-driving transport. Pegasus will be leasing The Center out to Government labs, private businesses and universities who want to test their innovations in real-world conditions; I guess they need to do something to get back the $200m they’re going to spend building it. What do you think about an automated ghost town? I just can’t get Westworld out of my head whenever I think about it.

Another thing that caught my eye was the news that customers at a music shop in Ireland were banned from playing Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ when trying out the keyboards. Now this was interesting, not because I like or dislike Adele but because it linked up with a rather geeky stat I received from Last.fm concerning Adele.

Last.fm delved into their massive database and crunched some numbers and deduced that between 5 and 11 September Adele was the most listened to artist with a staggering 96,408 listens by Last.fm users. With a worldwide user base of 40 million, 4 million are registered in the UK, that’s quite impressive by anyone’s standards. Adele now has the distinction of knocking The Beatles, who have a fan base in the hundreds of millions, from the number 1 spot. The Beatles are so popular they are Last.fm’s most played artist as much as 40 weeks out of every year. Not bad for a handful of bubblegum pop songs!

The funniest thing I find is I have never knowingly heard an Adele song (she might have been music on hold or played in a shop somewhere), I mentioned this to someone a few weeks ago and they thought that would be an impossibility but in actuality it’s not that inconceivable. I tend to list to Planet Rock Radio which, as the name suggests, plays rock music. Now, unless Adele has done a rock track, she’s unlikely to get played there and as I don’t have a television I’ve never seen/heard her song covered on any of the karaoke talent shows that litter the screens; I’m so uninterested I’ve never been curious enough to look for her on YouTube…Sorry Adele but I learnt my lesson when I had a look for Susan Boyle…10 minutes of my life I’ll never get back!

I wonder if Pegasus Holdings decided to fill their ghost town with music, if they would have to pay royalties given that the music won’t be heard by anyone? If so they could play Adele’s greatest hits safe in the knowledge that they won’t have any complaints, well not unless Yul Brynner turns up!

I’ve often wondered why I don’t hear more about gigs involving Last.fm. I vaguely recall things happening over the years but nothing regular. That could be either because there are no events happening or I’m not looking in the right places but as a long term last.fm user I would have thought they’d wanna tell me, or maybe they did and I’ve forgotten? That happens more than I can remember!

Well, from next month Last.fm are bringing Londoners Live Friday, a monthly event featuring a selection of DJs and acts who are chosen by and here’s the good bit, Last.fm users! OK, so you probably already guessed that, after all, what else is that massive database good for if not to find the kind of acts that people will want to see? If you’re even remotely geeky you’ll love the next bit…

This is how it works, Last.fm identifies music listening trends from their hype charts, the data is taken from real time listening and is unsullied. From the data they know what is trending helping them identify who to book. This results in Last.fm booking bands people want to see which ultimately means the event’s line ups being curated by Last.fm users. Pretty neat eh?

The events kick off on Friday 7 October when CocknBullKid will be supported by Jess Mills and I am Harlequin and then follows on the first Friday of the month thereafter. Now, I have to admit I’m not hipster enough to actually have heard of any of the three acts until I found out about the gig but thanks to the wonders of Last.fm, YouTube and Spotify that problem was quickly remedied. If you fancy going to the gig read on as there’s a competition at the end for a pair of VIP tickets.

CocknBullKid, real name Anita Blay, from Hackney has spent the last four years forging quite a distinctive pop sound, which appears to have worked as it won her a slot on Jools Holland.

Some might argue that’s no great endorsement. I just think you have to admire anyone who can use a line like You give me an asthma attack in a song and make it so catchy you end up singing it to yourself…or perhaps that’s just me?

When asked about her appearance at the very first Live Friday gig CocknBullKid said,

“All I’m saying is that there’ll be a story – a cradle to the grave journey.  And it will be very interactive. There may even be vogueing.”

If that doesn’t make you reach for your credit card to buy a ticket you obviously need to buy a ticket. Fair play to Last.fm, they’ve tried to keep the prices reasonable, they’ve said they want to keep the tickets around the £10 range but of course you’ll have service and delivery fees on top so except to pay closer to £13-£14. Don’t get me started on being charged to print out your own tickets, on your own paper, using your own ink. You can buy tickets to Last.fm presents Friday Live featuring CocknBullKid here

The next gig will take place on Friday 4 November and will feature the Indie band Art Brut supported by The Violet May and This Many Boyfriends, those tickets are priced at £11 before fees and you can buy them here.  From October-December, the gigs will take place at The Garage at Highbury Corner before moving to the HMV Forum at Kentish Town in January 2012.

Competition

Now, you could buy tickets to see CocknBullKid or you could enter the competition I’m running and win yourself a pair of VIP tickets that you can’t buy at any price. If you’re the winner you will have access to a VIP area for you and a friend and if that wasn’t enough you also go home with a very special goody bag of treats. (Apologies, due to unforeseen circumstances there will no longer be an opportunity to meet CocknBullKid)

How do you enter? It’s very simple, just answer the following question:

Where is CocknBullKid from?

*-*-* The Competition is Closed *-*-*

Your entry has to arrive before 10am on Friday 30 September 2011, the winner will be the first correct entry selected at random. Over-18’s only. Prizes are non-transferable. No cash alternative. Travel to and from the event is not included.