Z-Trip – Obama Mix

A fantastic one-hour DJ mix of election fever and hip hop beats that was burning up on the internet in the weeks leading up to the big vote. As Dave Allen from Gang of Four (and OK Computer favourites Shriekback) recently explained on his blog (pampelmoose.com), “What happens when one of North America’s brightest lights in the DJ/Mix/Mash Up world, Z-Trip, gets fired up about the election? Well he teams up with artist Shepard Fairey and throws some fundraising parties. Then he puts together a 58 minute mix and gives it away online…”

djztrip.com

Keane – Spiralling

This is the first the internet heard of the new Keane album when it was given away as a free MP3 download from Keane’s official website. It was only available for one week but, in that time, clocked more than half a million downloads before being made available on iTunes and all the other digital platforms as a paid-for track. To OK Computer’s ears this is bog standard Keane – forgettable and anthemic, dreary and dream-like, all at once. If you missed the free download, another interesting taster can be found on YouTube – a radio recording of Love Is The End, recorded from Portuguese radio when it was accidentally played when the album was still under wraps!

keanemusic.com

Kina Grannis – The Goldfish Song

Kina is an emerging singer songwriter of – to quote Wikipedia – “half-Japanese, English, French, Welsh, and Irish descent.” Her home-made, hand-crafted songs and videos on YouTube are a delight and all we can hope is that she retains this humour and delicacy in the face of recently signing to a the major coproate empire that is Interscope Records. Time will tell. In the meantime, savour this and other live acustic numbers on her YouTube page.

youtube.com/kinagrannis

Goldfrapp – Clowns, Live from Union Chapel (guardian.co.uk)

Late in October The Guardian website gave away four completely free Goldfrapp MP3s. Three were album tracks but the first was this exclusive live rendition of Clowns from the band’s latest album, Seventh Tree. It’s stripped down, very acoustic and an essential addition to any Goldfrapp collection, digital or otherwise.

Andrew Poppy- …And The Shuffle Of Things (Field Radio)

The very first time I listened to this album it felt like a Best Of Andrew Poppy. This is not a compilation, though – it’s 10 brand new recordings – but it does draw many of the diverse threads of the electronica/classical composer’s work from the past 20 years together into one complete whole.

My Stress Mistress and Wave Machine Parts II and III will be the entry point for those who discovered Andrew Poppy via his early 90s album Recordings. What Else: What Then Now, on the other hand, links bank to the minimalism of his highly collectable early 00s CDRs and private pressings like Why Blink.

Text has always played a part in Poppy’s work, although this abstract poetry has hitherto been confined to record sleeves and CD booklets. But Shuffle has incorporated it into the music, with Andrew himself reading a mixture of memoirs, memories and ideas (which sometimes overlap with Yoko Ono’s instruction pieces) across the music.

Tracks like the rattling, dream-like My Father’s Submarine’s wouldn’t sound out of place on a Mute or 4AD sampler, but only Andrew Poppy can drop in an entire male voice choir (an original recording, not a sample) to make a finished piece that lifts this track – and the style of the whole album – right up into another world entirely.