Bitchee Bitchee Ya Ya Ya - 'Fuck Friend'

Typically, I'm months behind the curve on this one. But it's all relative, huh? I know I'll the only kid with my postcode to be into this, for example. I always have been, and always will be, interim hip. Cooler than most, but with a broader and shallower perspective than the true scenester. Take that Youthmovies gig I went to the other night. I love that band, but the venue, amidst the Turkish shops and restaurants of Stoke Newington Road, was full of Dalston trendy scene wankers who'd drifted northwards. Lower Dalston is North Hoxton these days. There was not a sensible haircut to be seen. And I bet they've been downloading this stuff for months. Fuckers.

Anyway, tedious work and life having intervened these past weeks - the two are distinct but subtly related - it's been a while since I last confessed my love of a particular record to no one in particular on here. I don't know if it's a coincidence but I seem to be going through one of those areas of poor reception where very little music is doing it for me at the moment. Most things sound standard; little really inspires. The only things that are exciting me just now are mixed up, mucky stuff like this, and like the Fuck Buttons record, and to some extent Munch Munch, and of course Crystal Castles. What this grab-bag might have in common I'm not sure, apart from a certain willfulness and willingness to defy formula, and the offering of a refreshing possibility that there might be people making music just for the playful hell of it all, rather than seeing it as a career.

So this is yet another Euro-trashy record put together by doubtless fearless 16 year-olds who I would despise if I ever met in real life, where they would be hanging around a bus shelter and filming my mugging on their 3G mobile phones. There's a lot of this stuff around at the moment to be sure, and it all comes from Kitsune in 12"s with those generic sleeves. Through all this CSS remixes run like a golden thread, pulling all these tunes together. You know, something interesting happened when the internet became the prime means of disseminating music and all the barriers came down and people started making records that just mixed stuff up without even realising that you weren't supposed to do that. Remember when you were only allowed to like certain things? We were wrong, weren't we? At the same time, of course, this internet generation grew up with instant, permanent access to eye-popping hardcore pornography, so there's a certain blank, whatever, grubbiness to proceedings, as captured brilliantly by our old friends The Teenagers. I'm convinced our civilisation is doomed and we're all going to hell, but at the same time I rather enjoy the soundtrack.

Naturally regardless of the internet I still demand the physical object by way of affirmation - people were blogging about this lot back in May, but it's only in December that the record came out and made it real for me. And what you get on this 12" is ludicrous and brilliant. A big crash bang wallop of a start yields to seriously distorted, squelchy keyboards. It sounds like something taped off the radio onto a gnarled old C90 tape (ask your parents). Amidst all the crunchy filthiness of this tune which is rock and dance simultaneously lurks a sweet, naive vocal and a memory-grabbing unashamed pop chorus. Is that I hint of Baccara I hear? Plus all the good records these days have gratuitous swearing in them, like this does. Fact.

Anyway, go and buy the record from someone, and then you get the mandatory not-as-good-as-the-original remixes too. Where would we be without them? No wonder Brazil's economy is booming. And then go and download The Anthem by the same. It's almost identical, and nearly as good.

Paul Rooney - 'Lucy Over Lancashire'

Dandelion Radio's Festive Fifty has again justified its existence. Dandelion, an online radio station moved by the spirit of John Peel, which is streaming the Festive Fifty all the way through January, inherited this venerable yearly poll from Radio One, which has been predictably careless with Peel's legacy (compare and contrast, say, one of Peel's final tracklistings with those of minor celebrity Colin Murray, who now occupies that slot, and weep). Thus the annual ritual - a highlight, surely, of any yuletide - of picking through, disagreeing with and being occasionally enthralled by half a hundred of the year's choicest musical offerings, could be fulfilled once more. I listened to it in one great five-hour glob on the afternoon of New Year's Day, giving grateful due thanks to an understanding partner, and felt somewhat guilty and slightly queasy afterwards, much as one might when one has consumed an enormous amount of tasty but nutritionally dubious food in one sitting, a feeling which obviously I got more than once over the holiday period.

As is customary with Festive Fifties, my own choices fared fairly badly, with only one of my three votes making it in there and not a lot on my shortlist surviving the cut either. There was a particularly pleasing sequence where The Fall and Von Sudenfed rubbed close shoulders, and overall there was little I could object to. I like Battles, although obviously consider it a travesty that The Teenagers, with whom I am obsessed, were overlooked. But as I said, it utterly justified its existence by banging me over the head with a tune I really ought to have known but which has somehow passed me by until this point.

Cards on table time here. I guess I was always destined to like this one, having been born, grown up and spent some twenty years of my life in the shadow of Pendle Hill, referenced heavily herein. Pendle is famous for witches, you see, and the subject matter of this extraordinary record is the many satanic connections of Lancashire. Plus I'm a lover of dub reggae and this is what you get here: a sprawling 14 minute slab of best heavy Northern dub, on which sits atop a sprite of the air, an unreliable narrator, misinformed by the mysterious Alan (or Allan?), who delivers in a spot on parody of a now slightly antiquated East Lancashire accent - not a full definite article to be heard - a bizarre, twisting monologue. This touches with varying accuracy on, amongst other things, from memory and doubtless missing lots, Satan, the aforementioned Pendle witches, the A666 road, the colour red, cotton weaving, (dark satanic) mills, Marx and Engels, climate change, the slave trade, immigration from South Asia, the BNP, Mick Hucknall, dub reggae, Radio Lancashire's legendary On The Wire programme (one of the finest of all things about the County Palatine, and for which this apparently was first made, and thanks to which I've just discovered you can now listen to the show via the web, which I hadn't realised before), rival Red Rose Radio, Liverpool band The Beatles and of course Mark E Smith and The Fall.

You see, it all joins up. The title winks of course to The Fall's now 20 year-old b-side minor classic, Lucifer Over Lancashire. Don't underestimate the importance of Lancastrian folklore in the brew that makes up the greatest group of all time. See particularly 1979's sinister Dragnet. Bear in mind always that The Fall is a north Manchester (Lancashire) child rather than south Manchester (Cheshire). The difference is vital. Recall also The Fall's early 1990s invention of a unique hybrid of northern and reggae with their magnificent kitchen cover version of Lee Perry's Kimble and cut-and-shunt job of two tunes to make Why Are People Grudgeful? It's all about making connections. And all the connections are in this record.

I'm always thrilled, but at the same time embarrassed, when something I've missed resurfaces, but that's the joy of music and that's what keeps me listening. If I'd heard this before, I'd have voted for it too. Apparently it first came to light last May, which was a busy time, so there are my excuses made. Although, I recall this fellow (and a quick bit of googling confirms), then Rooney only, doing moody, spoken word and music pieces played much by Peel in the late 1990s. It's all joining up again. One about touts in the Barrowland, wasn't there? I could dig out the tapes if I get a spare day. And one turned up again on a Sonic Arts Network CD 'curated' by comedian and Fall fan Stewart Lee last year. I love connections.

Anyway, the shiny red 12" of this has now been ordered, and in the meantime I have the thing downloaded from that last link to listen to (in unwieldy 'ogg' format, whatever that may be, which eventually I turned into something I could hear... best have a twelve-year-old to hand to decode this). The MP3 player is currently being used for little else. This is a top three choice, in any year.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - 'New Year's Kiss'

By now, the whole world of course knows about Daytrotter. The idea is brilliant and simple: when suitable bands tour themselves around the country we know as America, they are invited to stop off at a town called Rock Island (about which I'd like to retain my own mental picture, thanks, without adding any factual details to spoil it) and record a session. Brevity usually encourages a stripped-down, somewhat acoustic sound, which obviously suits some better than others, and there's a distinct lean towards Americana in what they offer. It's part of the jigsaw, but not the whole jigsaw. We are not Uncut magazine here, after all. This is, you feel, a world where Bonnie Prince Billy is revered as a god, and Iron and Wine as at least a minor deity (but hey, I really liked that last Iron and Wine LP, you know, played it a lot).

And what do you want, you miserable bastards, anyway? It's regularly updated, it's done with wit, it's free, it's legal, so none of that liberal guilt you get from downloading MP3s (you do get liberal guilt, I hope?) and it has a great cartoon strip too. Just now I grabbed a session by the Papercuts (it's okay... heard-it-before gentle indie) and a couple by the Dirty Projectors (despite myself I've recently found I've warmed to their pretentious art thing).

Anyway, Casiotone. They/he are/is utterly wonderful, and if you don't know this already, just what the hell do you think you've been doing with yourself for the last few years? Owen Ashworth is a short story writer and film-maker who just happens to work through the medium of short, bittersweet, observational pop songs. Cheap, generic keyboard sounds bang their noses against glimpses of stories, shards of life, snapshots of lives lived on the margins or in surprised disappointment, with these occasional moments of hope. Vocally, and in his ability to wring sad poetry from the mundane, he reminds me a bit of David Gedge of the wrongly-maligned Wedding Present. His 2006 LP, Etiquette, is a modern masterpiece. I hardly ever go back to old stuff - the new listening pile only seems to totter further upwards - but I still listen to this a lot. More instruments and voices are added to the brew in this one, and on the whole, and somewhat messily, love triumphs. Get it from Tomlab, which would be our record label of the year, or something, if we did such things here.

My favourite tune on there, over time, is probably New Year's Kiss, which resurfaces in a new form in this recent Daytrotter session. To be honest, I prefer the original, but I felt like making a lame stab at topicality, what with the recent arbitrary date change. Go here to download the songs. And don't miss the first session, too, which includes a heart-breakingly definitive reading of Tonight Was A Disaster.

There are mercifully few songs about New Year, compared to the endless glut of Christmas tunes. (Anyone, by the way, who has ever seen fit to give a spin to the appalling U2's ghastly bombastic offering on 1 January is surely going to hell.) New Year's Eve is, of course, the single worst night of any year, an annual wankers' charter where the basest excesses of group mentality are not only tolerated but positively encouraged. It is an evening to shun humanity. (This one just past I counter-intuitively went to the theatre, and then, after pushing my way through Sodom and Gomorrah crowds to get the tube, made my way safely indoors ere midnight. I always say that the perfect New Year's Eve involves a locked door and a bottle of scotch, which if I got the timings right would see me snugly passed out by eleven.)

Anyway, yer man Owen gets it spot on as usual, capturing the anticlimax which greets each January 1st, with this tale of a girl's less than perfect NYE encounter, from waking up in a strange boy's bed backwards. He's one of the few men around who can write as good a song from a woman's point of view as a man's. Every line's a delight from first to last, and I'll long treasure a phrase about 'champagne lips'. I'm currently learning to play guitar, largely so next December 31st I can head down Embankment tube station and busk this to an unappreciative crowd.

Next stop, Half Man Half Biscuit's Epiphany, January 6th.