Super Tuesday

Animal Collective (above) and Andrew Bird (right)

Are you a music fan? Do you like music you can sing along to, but also challenges you as a listener? Do you like music that doesn't really sound like anything else you're currently listening to? Well do I have two albums for you!

Today features not one, but two great releases, with Andrew Bird releasing his follow up to my personal 2007 album of the year Armchair Apocrypha, titled Noble Beast (streaming here) and Animal Collective releasing their own, blog anointed "album of the year" in Merriweather Post Pavilion (streaming here), an album more steeped in pre-release hype than anything since last years debut by Vampire Weekend. It deserves a lot of it too, and Andrew Bird always deserves a shot from a pure talent standpoint.

Do yourself and pick up these albums. If you're a music fan, you owe it to yourself.

You shall not escape your fate..

Image from the gig of which we never speak. Andrew Bird London Scala 7th June 2007. Less said the better.

If, like myself, you think you've utterly lost your way, and quite possibly your mind too, then take 10 minutes. A hot drink. Download this little gem. And feel safe in the knowledge that all the most interesting and progressive people always have been and are ever so slightly tapped.

Andrew Bird - Imitosis (Four Tet remix) [via YouSendIt for 7 days]

J.S. Mill had a nervous breakdown at 22. So at least I've beat him to the punch.

Watch this space..

(Indeed, like bookmark it or get it on one of those RSS feeds or something)

I have just woken up very bleary eyed from two long days of travel and gigs.

Expect pictures and words of not a particularly positive nature.

I do love popping down to London though.

Coming up:

Andrew Bird

&

Calvin Harris

Now to my part-time job.

Andrew Bird tonight

It's tonight!

I seriously can't wait.

But I am going to cry like a girl.

Anyone sees me, give me a tap on the shoulder and say hello.

As random as Schoenberg.

So not at all.

But my mind is a little bit all over the place. This is a combination of a) suddenly having lots of money in the form of a student loan, b) having watched that documentary on 'The Race to Size Double Zero' and c) there being a new CD at work. Nice.

So just to set my mind and 90% of things in the world straight.

• Go buy Victor Bermon - Arriving At Night. It is beautiful and will make the needless heat and humidity of the impending summer all the more worthwhile.
• Get tickets to see Andrew Bird.
• Simian Mobile Disco are tantamount to most religious worshipped deities.

Other things will come to me when the upheaval of thoughts in my head settles.

I have also finally finished my March compilation CD, entitled Orite! (You facking cant!). The tracklisting is as follows:

Cut Copy - Hearts On Fire
Lemon Jelly - Ramblin' Man
The Shins - Turn On Me
Calvin Harris - Acceptable In The 80's
Maximo Park - Our Velocity
Mr Oizo - Patrick122
Klaxons - Golden Skans to Interzone (So Me remix)
Para One - Midnight Swim (Surkin Drowning mix)
Lemon Jelly - The Staunton Lick
Arcade Fire - Black Wave/Bad Vibration
Scissor Sisters - She's My Man (Goose remix)
Unklejam - Love Ya (Herve remix)
The Shins - Kissing The Lipless
Late Of The Pier - Space And The Woods
Thom Yorke - The Clock
Arcade Fire - No Cars Go
Lemon Jelly - Experiment Number Six

Took a while to finish this time. But it is good listening.

I shall be more coherent soon. Fingers crossed.

Andrew Bird

Armchair Apocrypha is out and I suggest you all go out and buy it. And then when you get back and are basking in the beautiful sounds of what may be the album of the year, think to yourself, "Can I muster a mere £12.50 to go and see Andrew Bird at The Scala in London on 7th June?". If the answer is yes then click here for tickets.

I'll be there.

Probably crying.

Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha

Last year in a period of extreme accumulation of CD's due to imbalanced psychological urges I happened to buy Andrew Bird And The Mysterious Production Of Eggs solely due to the artwork. I had never come across him at all previously. But that album became completely inseparable from my CD player. Fake Palindromes (stream it here..) became something I used to throw myself around any available space to. The Untitled tracks used to coarse and soar no matter how bad quality the sound of my speakers gave them. And, well, Opposite Day actually had the power to reduce me to tears just in the glorious foresight of it all.

So when my best friend presents me with a cheeky copy of the new album, Armchair Apocrypha I was delighted to fill my ears with that voice again.

The difference of Armchair Apocrypha and Andrew Bird's previous album is something almost ineffable. Tinged with a deeper melancholy Bird produces something darker and more subtle than the last. Listened to in the right way its beauty is something that could be impossible to surpass for a very long while in today's current climate.

And to hear that the reviews it has received so far have been that it is not, I can barely bring myself to say it, not, not as good as the previous album, its just beyond ridiculous and perculiar. I have held back from viewing such reviews for to do so may provoke an angry mob within myself. And it gain knowledge of a name of a said reviewer may stir my pitch-fork (no pun intended) wielding ways to maybe do something as radical as scowl viciously at their name.

Give the two tracks on the Andrew Bird MySpace a listen. They are the first two. And imagine more beauty and reverb, I know it is hard, but try, and at that point you may have an idea of how truly exquisite it is.