Log #27 - Four Tet Doing The Rounds

1. Rodriguez - Coming From Reality
2. Money Mark - Mark's Keyboard Repair
3. Fairport Convention - The History Of
4. Four Tet - Rounds
5. Wagon Christ - Sorry I Make You Lush
6. Van Morrison - The 1967 New York Sessions

Cover album is from Four Tet. I really like this DJ Artist, real name Keiran Hebden, who composes his own material. Seeing him live too was a good experience (not normally the case I find with DJ sets as a spectacle). This is the only album I have of his and by many accounts is the best one to start with. There are some great hooks and loops and lugubrious jazzy down beats similar to DJ Shadow's best stuff. Centrepiece is the piano piece Unbroken. And They All Look Broken Hearted is fascinating with it's phased Japanese koto.

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Log #26 - How to Tell the Temperature from a Cricket

1. Rodriguez - Coming From Reality
2. Money Mark - Mark's Keyboard Repair
3. Sly and the Family Stone - The Collection
4. Four Tet - Rounds
5. Wagon Christ - Sorry I Make You Lush
6. Van Morrison - The 1967 New York Sessions

Wagon Christ is one of the pseudonyms of Luke Vibert - a prolific DJ and mixer, like Aphex Twin, from Cornwall. What I admire about Vibert's output is that although he covers different styles (electronica, acid, disco, dance, trance) he always stamps his own personality on his music - a characteristic not all that common in the rather anonymous world of DJ mixing. I found my way into Luke Vibert via his Stop the Panic album with slide guitarist BJ Cole - an unusual marriage, but one that works brilliantly.

That cricket was chirping at 76 degrees fahrenheit.

Also on the playlist this week is an intriguing album from Money Mark. Money Mark is actually Mark Nishita who has played keyboards with The Beastie Boys. Hear this frankly bonkers but brilliant track Insects Are All Around Us and ponder if you have ever heard anything like it before.

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