Mouse On Mars - 'Wipe That Sound'

It’s hard to think of a song that wouldn’t be enlivened by the presence of Mark E Smith. Perhaps he should have been asked to appear on Band Aid 20. He’d have pepped up that moribund tune, and certainly the video would have been more entertaining. (Not that I can see what all the fuss is about, mind. A bad version of a bad song is released, and no one has to buy it.)

So here comes MES collaborating with German electronicists Mouse on Mars, whose offerings I have always found rather cold. The results are, of course, a triumph, recalling Smith’s earlier and seminal collaboration with Coldcut back when Fall fans didn’t like dance music. Mark E witters on about lord know what to great effect while the keyboards do their thing. There are two versions here, one a thumping, squelching behemoth and the other, which I prefer, a lighter, dancier take. Both are tons better than anything on the latest, crushingly disappointing collection of unfinished odds and ends from the Fall, Interim. The MES numbers come on a four track 12” from Sonig records of Germany, and as was always going to be the case, the other two, one an instrumental, the other with some unnecessary rapper, sound lame by comparison. He hasn’t lost that mordant magic. Now let’s have another proper Fall LP, soon.

Piney Gir - 'Peakahokahoo'

This is already in danger of getting overplayed in our house. I have to resist the temptation to stick it on again and again. It sits enthroned atop the listening pile.

I knew little about this women until she supported the inevitable Broken Family Band at a ‘secret’ gig in a very strange location (the Department for Education and Skills Social Club!) a couple of weeks ago. BFB were as great as they always are of course, but I liked her too. She played, with a backing band, an all too short set of daft, cute, sleazy, keyboard-driven country-ish tunes, and I knew then I need to hear more.

She’s not scared to try to turn her hand to anything, this Piney. All kinds of things go on in here. One minute she’s Peaches, the next Suzi Quattro. A gorgeous country number, and my favourite, Greetings, Salutations, Goodbye, gives way to the dreamy nursery rhyme of K-I-S-S-I-N-G, which is followed in turn by Nightsong, a romantic, easy listening duet with the always puzzling Simple Kid. I’ll always fall for a song with whistling in it. Elsewhere, My Generation and Que Cera Cere lie trembling, assaulted. All kinds of different styles rub against each other and the result is good, dishevelled fun.

Her website’s here - www.pineygir.com - the LP’s on Truck Records - www.truckrecords.com - and clicking the link to buy online will take you to the Oxford Music shop - www.oxfordmusic.net.

65daysofstatic - 'The Fall of Math'

Do you know, this is brilliant. Perhaps you already do. Again, I suspect I was slow to pick up on this. I thought for once I might have been ahead of the pack, but when I mentioned to my friend Phil that I’d bought this record, his response was to yawn that he’d had it ages, and if I thought that was good, I really ought to hear some terribly obscure band whose name I forgot instantly. Hmph. As it happens, I saw this lot ages back, supporting someone else, and liked them, but the early records were on some label that produces 15 copies of a release no one ever can find, and until now they’d eluded me.

Anyway, as I said, this is great. Perhaps in the future all music will be like this. Or perhaps the end of the world will sound like this. 65daysofstatic (the only annoying thing is their spaceless name) are where you end up when you get past post rock. Impossible here not to mention the kings of this territory, the esteemed Mogwai, but 65dos seize the baton and run with it a bit further. Or rather, they sit down for a pint with dance and electronica and then decide it would be more fun to pour the pint over the equipment and see what it all sounds like. The tunes come encrusted with technology. These are the sounds machines make as they wheeze their last and expire. I like music that grabs my head and I like music that grabs my body. This does both.

This is one of the best records of the year, and if you don’t have it that makes you worryingly less cool than me. The LP is out on Monotreme Records - www.monotremerecords.com - and this one can’t be that hard to find because HMV in London sells it, or you can get it on their website. The new single, Retreat! Retreat!, is out too, taken from the LP, with two other great tracks. (I particularly love the major cities of the world are being destroyed one by one by the monsters, and not just for the title). The band’s website is www.65daysofstatic.com, and they’ll let you download some more tunes there as well. Off you go.

Bearsuit - 'Chargr'

I couldn’t understand the suggestion that came from some quarters after the awful loss of John Peel for the Undertones’ Teenage Kicks to be released, in the hope that it would make Christmas number one. To me, this missed the point of John Peel. It was about new sounds more than old, and chart placings were never a barometer of success. Far more appropriate would be if everyone went out and bought a copy of the new Bearsuit single. (Okay, apparently they only pressed 500, so we’d have to demand some more.) This is a fine example of a band I owe to Peel. Without him, it’s unlikely I’d ever heard of them, never mind having probably more of their records than is good for me in my music accumulation.

It would be fair to describe Bearsuit as an erratic band. They’re daft, whimsical souls. Live, they veer between brilliant and dreadful, and are not averse to finding percussive possibilities in pots and pans. On record, they think it’s boring if a song doesn’t change tune, speed and direction at least two or three times in a couple of minutes. It’s like they’ve got a million ideas in their heads and only a few songs to cram them into. Hey, it’s better than vice versa, and one thing you can never accuse them of is being bland. It just so happens that I think their first single, the irresistible Hey Charlie, Hey Chuck, was their best, and it’s also the simplest, most singalong thing they’ve done. Recent LP Cat Spectacular! was patchy, but I have some fondness for single Itsuko Got Married with its insane binary chanting, so maybe they’re a singles band.

And Chargr is great, perhaps their best since the immortal Hey Charlie. Inside it, chaos reigns. Two people appear to be having an argument in a factory, a man shouts at us, there’s a saccharine interlude – now I will always think of summer as ‘midriff season’- and then the whole things over before you know it with an urgent, abrupt ending. Best play it again, and again. The b-side’s a sort of Christmassy number, not their first. I’d quite like to spend Christmas round at Bearsuit’s house. I think it might be interesting.

The single is on 7” vinyl only – quite right too – from Fortuna Pop - www.fortunapop.com - or you can download an even scratchier sounding MP3 of it – no substitute for the real thing – from the Bearsuit website at www.bearsuit.co.uk. While there, download some other stuff, particularly the divine Hey Charlie, Hey Chuck.