The Listening Club - 26th October 2014

Greetings to you all,

Hope you're doing fine. A gentle weekend here in Amsterdam for a change, partially due to a cancelled gig, but a good opportunity to recharge batteries, make plans, and pop down the road for a few random Belgian beers. All well and good.

Meanwhile, last week, @andershanson was in the chair, sending out "Feel It Break" by Austra, to a warm response from the assembled. Many thanks to Anders for the pick, and for flipping the frisbee across to @mrhig for next week's selection.

But now.... wowzers, it's time to reveal the wonders of the #exquisitecorpsevortex! Yes, 16 tracks, each connected to the one before by one of our selectors to create one mighty Frankenstein's monster of a hive-mind mixtape (see this post for the full explanation of how it came together, too lazy to type it all out again). This is about as wide-ranging a selection as we've ever had, not surprisingly, but does it flow? Hang on to your pants, folks, we're about to find out...

Direct download is here and the Mixcloud (let's see how many of these it recognises, eh?) link is here.

Clocks have changed here in Europeland, so see you at 8pm GMT!

The Listening Club - 19th October 2014

Hello hello,

Fine weekend here in Amsterdam, hope you're all doing okay - Yesterday's freakish warmth (22°C) and sun brought out pretty much everyone in town and provided a lovely backdrop to the Stedelijk Museum's Alvin Lucier festival - a bucket list achievement for me to see the man himself (a very well preserved 83) perform "I Am Sitting In A Room", which blew my tiny mind when I discovered it on late night radio as an early teen. Meanwhile the rest of the city has been throbbing to a 4-4 pulse, as the annual Amsterdam Dance Event goes off all around, and the city's hipster quotient consequently goes through the roof for a few days.

Thanks to everyone who volunteered for the #exquisitecorpsevortex experiment - we're six tunes in, and ten more to go, so if you can turn your choices around as quick as possible it would be very much appreciated! I've avoided listening to what's coming in, but going by the names and reasons for choice, this is going to be quite an impressive beast when it's completed - can't wait to play it all back next Sunday!

Last week, @JonnyDaPigg was in the chair, and hit everyone with Kate Tempest's "Everybody Down" to almost overwhelmingly positive effect - many thanks to Jonny for the pick, and for pushing @AndersHanson back into the front line for this week - and here he is with the pre-match...

"Just two months after my debut pick for Listening Club, the baton has been handed to me yet again.  After rummaging through my albums (if rummaging is something that's possible to do in iTunes) I ended up settling on the album that was the runner-up the first time round.

This band I discovered once again through an iTunes free single, but after my first listen it was forgotten and just languished in the dusty recesses of my laptop before I rediscovered it late last year when I then played it obsessively for several weeks, found the full album and then listened to that obsessively too.  

It's a bit electronic, a bit dreamy, very synthy, with a bit of pop, some theatrical vocals and with some dark moody beats thrown in.  With every listen I discover something new."

Direct download is here and the Mixcloud (doomy gloomy song title warning) link is here.

See you at 8pm BST!

The Listening Club - 12th October 2014

Hey there,

@kleptones here, back again after wringing the last few drops out of the Summer in Brighton - Seriously, sun-kissed drinks on the beach in October? Veh nice. Mind you, B-town is now pretty much under water following a few days of hyper-torrential rain so looks like we got out of there just in time, Snowy, eh?

Couple of admin notes to, er, note - I'm away now last two weekends in November - Jim's not around for the first one either so as usual we need caretaker-managers to run the 23rd Nov and the whatever-it-ends-up-being vortex on the 30th Nov. So don't be shy, step up and help a brother out!

Speaking of vortexy things, I had another one of those kerrazy kleptone koncepts (no acronyms please) occur to me the other day, which I'd like to propose either for this or future times - An "Exquisite Corpse" Vortex (appropriate for Halloween? Maybe...)

Kind of inspired by @akx asking if he could submit his own mixtape the other week, I thought, well, "What if we all made a mixtape together? but twisted in a way that only #LC can do?"

So here's the proposal - Everyone that wants to participate lets me know, I put you all in a list, starting with me (cos I'm da boss, innit). I start by picking a tune, I send that tune to the next person on the list, they listen, and pick a tune that is linked to the previous one somehow, either in style, meaning, artist, whatever, etc.... and send it back to me the next day with the reason. I send that tune to the next person sans reason, they pick a tune to go with that one, etc.. etc... so we end up (hopefully) with an exquisite corpse of a mix, that might make some sense, or might go off on a million tangents.... you get me?

Anyhoo, pitching this now so folks have time to think and respond... if everyone's in favour I'll start collecting names for the list tonight - would love it if as many of you as possible can join in, even if you won't be around for the playback (26th Oct) - only proviso is that folks need to be able to respond in 24hrs, so we have time to get through it all without me having to do any hassling.

Okay. Last week, in my absence, Jim was running things, and @akx was in the chair, picking out Crystal Fighters "Star Of Love", which got some highly positive responses from you all. Big thanks to Aarni for the selection, and for flipping the frisbee across to @jonnydapigg for this week, and here he is...

"Rights then, not gonna say a massive amount here other than this would have been my last pick had the pesky world cup not been a distraction. 

This is one of those rare albums in my collection that wasn't a recommendation (I actually saw track five randomly on soundcloud and caned it). I draw comparisons to another album in my collection as the flow/style has a similar feel, be interesting if anyone else makes the same.

Hope you all enjoy,"

Reety ho, Direct download is here and the Mixcloud (doomy gloomy song title warning) link is here.

See you at 8pm BST!

The Listening Club - 5th October 2014

Greetings and salutations!

@JimMcCauley here for the last time until, well, next time @kleptones goes off on his travels, I imagine. Summer's giving it a last hurrah here in Bath and I've pretty much shaken off the last of my hangover from my Friday night leaving drinks; much alcohol consumed and shit talked, and I spent most of yesterday feeling completely dreadful yet pleasingly short on remorse. (Cheeky aside: need a freelance writer? Get in touch!)

Last week! Oh yes, last week. Whether it was songs you love by bands you hate, or just the one song you like by a particular band, last week's #sylbbyhvortex was a troll-tastic assortment of tunes that provoked plenty of internet rage and the very real threat of the lot of us leaving in a huff. All the best of friends again in the showers afterwards, though, so well done, all.

(We should get thinking about this month's vortex, now; are we going to do something Halloween-related or is last year's Scary as Fuck Vortex too much to top? Have a bit of a ponder.)

And so to @akx with this week's selection. Take it away, Aarni!

"Hello, hello!

So! I originally had a couple options lined up for this week's pick, but then I started second-guessing myself and picked a couple more for a shortlist (after my thought of making a mixtape was shot down – on good grounds, too, mind). Then I began having trouble deciding which of those to pick, so I ended up just choosing this one, which was my first option to begin with. So it goes.

So yeah, (shortly – I'm not good with this blurb thing) about this particular pick! I came across this album some months back and more or less immediately figured "yeah, this might be interesting to play for the LC massive", so here we are.

Oh, and it's not avant-garde black metal, sorry @samsmitter."

Right right! Direct download is here, Mixcloud (and we all know about Mixcloud and song titles by now, don't we?) link is here.

See you at 8PM! BST! (And if you want to ensure you start bang on time, this is a good place to synchronise watches.)