this is the thread where the ILM massive teach mark s a *LESSON*

you crack me up duuude!

well since you don't buy that many recs I suspect that my tape is of a newish model. its a TDK 90 minute tape (do you have many of those with that length?).

Open the case and inside you should have the sticker labels attached. in fact it doesn't just have the sticker labels but it has other more 'colourful' labels (one is of a car, another is a guitar, and another has a cup of a tea , a star and a heart).

Cabinet, available online as well, is a brilliant read if you find yourself intrigued by these sorts of things:

How does his lifelong habit of nosepicking bring Jonathan Ames to the subject of the word 'bice'?

Might 'the cute' be as important as 'the sublime', and might one put together 15 theses about it?

How might Brian Dewan do a school slideshow (deadpan, absurd, horrific) of the Book of Deuteronomy?

Why don't you listen to, say, the first half of his LP DON'T GET WEIRD ON ME BABE (1991)?

(Momus, can it be set up so that everyday you send me one link of 'required' reading - your internet mobility is astonishing and that link above is amazing). (Can I get that magazine sent to me in Scotland, I wonder.)

Dyke & the Blazers - The Wrong House. The funkiest group of all time go on a medium-paced workout while Dyke goes on this ridiculous spiel about breaking up with his girl and then coming back and finding this huge bloke there. The best "brrr!" sounds this side of General Johnson, and very funny.

Willie Tee - Walking Up A One-Way Street. The most delightful clash between lyric and music ever. The title is a metaphor for how tough Willie's life is, as if he is walking up a one-way street, going the wrong way with everything against him (yes, it is a fucked metaphor because they're only one-way for vehicles), but the music makes the Archers theme sound dour, as cheery and perky and whistly as you can imagine.

Daddy Freddy - Pain Killa. Remember that chugging, clanking reggaeish rhythm from Oh Carolina? This is sort of like a poppier and more soulful version of that. I find it irresistible.

George Jones - Honky Tonk Song. We all often assume that the classical country style is a thing of the past, but this is from 1996. George was a major league drunk who was married to Tammy Wynette. Once she hid the keys for their 11 (I think it was) trucks and cars. They lived in a big ranchhouse ten miles out of town. George was picked up by the police riding their lawnmower down the highway. This is the song about that. It features the line "My wife took my car keys away, and she won't drive me to drink."

UltraViolence - Hardcore Motherfucker. Extreme hardcore industrial techno, with a woman with a voice something like Princess Diana's repeating the title over and over, for about eight minutes.

Trammps - Penguin At The Big Apple/Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart. From their debut, The Legendary Zing! Album (warning: there's a cheapo comp out now, and it is inferior rerecordings), this is gloriously beautiful string-based early disco, with as good a "Hah!" as you'll find anywhere as the first vocal bit, and two great vocal performances.

Esquerita - Maybe Baby. Imagine if Little Richard was more camp, more outrageous, more colourful, louder and faster and a more potent and raucous pianist. Imagine that the godlike Little Richard was in many ways a watered-down version of another performer. You don't have to imagine. My favourite pianist ever.

DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince - He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper. Jeff still gets respect from other DJs, but not much wider fame, except as a hopeless minor figure in an old sitcom. Will Smith is one of the world's great movie stars, so we don't take his records seriously (but wasn't Nod Your Heads terrific?). But he was an exceptionally nimble and witty rapper, and Jeff is one of the greatest hip hop DJs of all time. This is I think their punchiest number, but the whole album is wonderful.

Brainbug - Nightmare (Sinister Strings Edit). If you wanted the perfect modern housey theme to match the shower scene music in Psycho, this is it.

Luther Barnes & the Reverend F.C. Barnes and the Red Budd Gospel Choir - My God Can Do Anything. An insanely rocking disco gospel number, with about a dozen great singers roaring away while the bass and drums and piano storm through what could almost be classic rock 'n' roll. Goes off the boil when they don't finish it properly, but the first couple of minutes are astounding.

Billy Ward & the Dominoes - The Bells. They called that overemotional crooning style of the late '50s 'sobbing' at times. I bet they felt stupid when they heard this. Clyde McPhatter was a pretty bonkers singer most of the time (Clyde : Jackie Wilson (his later replacement in this group) :: Esquerita : Little Richard), but on this he goes completely batshit, screaming and crying and wailing when he isn't hitting mad falsetto notes. The most over emotional record ever made, no contest.

Clarence 'Frogman' Henry - Ain't Got No Home. Most of you'll know him for 'I Don't Know Why I Love You But I Do', smooth New Orleans R&B singing. But why that name? Here's why. He sings the first verse of this more stompy R&B number normally. For the second, he takes on the identity and voice of a girl. For the third, he claims to be a lonely frog, and sings as if a frog. Yes, honestly. I sometimes think it's the greatest record ever made.

Louis Prima - Basin Street Blues/When It's Sleepy Time Down South. Louis is one of my favourite singers ever (you all know his King Louis in the Jungle Book), not unlike a sillier Louis Armstrong. I love this one especially for its transition between the two songs, always a strong point of his - he did loads of these pairings. It's untranscribeable, but it's something like "You know the moon is pale and the sun is, and the sun is gone, and and the steamboats are coming and they're splashing and they're going WOO WOO ah babazooza" and he's into the next tune. How someone comes up with that is a mystery to me.

(also listen to Jordan re the Rebirth Brass Band - they are magnificent)

so the suggestion:
Garmarna's Hildegard von Bingen alb (2001)

or if you should not care to listen to the entire record -- seven weird-to-wonderful folk'lectronic reworkings of the saintly abbess's songs + one a cappella + one original Garmarna instrumental; 'bout forty minutes all in all -- then take just one track, "Unde Quocompque"
that one 'has it all', more or less: bumping house-y beats and subdued micro-pulses, violin & hurdy-gurdy hoedowns, Emma's angelic plainchantin' & vocoder vox -- alternately or simultaneously

i dunno whether it'd change your views on Hildegard or Garmarna (in case you have any), but it could incline you to think different 'bout, say, Enigma's take on pop+medieval

...Garmarna's Hildegardiana should be downloadable, i supppose - if not, i can make you a cd-r

Which one? Interstellar Space or A Love Supreme?

ALS hamish.