darkling

Tweet There are few sights as dispiriting as Christmas decorations at this time of year. At any given moment on the fifth of January, a piece of tinsel detaches from a hard piece of blue tack and see-saws slowly towards a floor, somewhere in Ireland, while a drunk man cries. In a thousand playrooms, a thousand interactive toys dimly light up for the final time, playing horribly distorted electronic lullabies as batteries (which will never be replaced) die. Meanwhile, blocks of barely touched stilton squat in fridges, unpopular quality streets make their inevitable greasy descent down the gullets of the self-loathing, and oddly coloured stains streak the nation's porcelain.

That first snowdrop or crocus needs to hurry the fuck up.

In the meantime, the Compost Heap will illuminate the blustery gloom with a countdown of my 25 favourite albums of 2011. This year, I am going to devote a full post to every album in order to apply a modicum of critical depth to the process. I'll try my best to post very regularly (ideally three times a week) and in between the albums I'll post up the remains of my series of doodles from last year.

The podcast will return tomorrow or Saturday. I was delighted to get some IRL feedback on it, and further to suggestions (ooh see how I just lapsed into shitty business speak, might as well run with it) I'm going to address technical issues moving forward - after all we are all climbing this strategic staircase together, and we will hopefully hit the ground running in the next quarter.

In other words, I'm going to cut down on the 'ems' and 'aws' when I speak, and integrate small clips of the music I discuss into the podcast. 

Before I go, here is Grimes's ace new song. She's going to take off this year, mark my words.

MP3: Grimes-Genesis