Chart pimp

Miracles do happen: James Holden has finally served up a list of his favourite records for me to distribute throughout the internet to various interested parties – it has been so long since the last one that about half of the email addresses on my list bounced! On which note, “Yay!” for Rhythmism‘s nifty Web 2.0 chart auto-generating function, and “Boo!” to DMC‘s very Web 0.1 DJ Pages, where ten records is seemingly not enough and every single track has to be broken down into one of those same old tired narrow genre categories.

But it wouldn’t be right to make you good readers of our blog wait for some third party to publish his chart: which is why below you will find said list of records that James has been mostly playing recently, along with a bumper load of handy links, explanations and much-deserved big-ups that you just won’t find anywhere else. Don’t say I never do anything for you…

1. Nathan Fake – The Turtle (Border Community)
Who else? As featured on Fakey’s forthcoming ‘Hard Islands’ mini-album…

2. Margot – Goblin Think (Margot Records)
Italian duo Margot have been orbiting our universe for some time now: Extrawelt remixed their Torch cover for Great Stuff back in 2006, and the pair also have a track featured on the forthcoming Family Tree II digital compilation from former Lazy Fat Person Ripperton‘s Perspectiv label. Nowadays Margot-member Pepe is a reliable provider of quality mp3s from himself and his band straight into James’ inbox, for which James is very grateful: look out for ‘Goblin Think’ on Margot’s forthcoming ‘Goblin EP’.

3. Tomas Andersson – ? (?)
Frustrating, isn’t it? This came from a bumper 3 CD package that Tomas sent to us, but as he didn’t put names to any of those tracks I truly can’t tell you any more about this one…

4. Meteoric Black Star – World Eater (DFA)
The wonderful Gavin Russom kindly gave this to James after he played at one of our Border Community nights last year, but unfortunately the rest of you are going to have to wait that little bit longer to get your hands on it, as his eagerly-awaited series of three EPs under his danceable Meteoric Black Star guise on DFA have yet to materialise…

5. Petar Dundov – Oasis – Gavin Russom mix (Music Man)
This one you can get hold of however, on the flipside of Petar Dundov’s Sparkling Stars release on Music Man.

6. Animal Collective – My Girls (Domino)
We have talked about this one before – if you still haven’t picked up a copy of Merriweather Post Pavillion, what in the hell is wrong with you?

7. Xeno and Oaklander – Blue Flower (Wierd)
I have banged on about the wonders of Wierd Records on here before too – do keep up. Liz Wendelbo‘s vocals on ‘Blue Flower’ have a touch of Miss Kittin‘s deliciously raw collaborations with The Hacker about them; you can find it on that essential Wierd Compilation Volume II.

8. Ex-Pylon – Hammerfest (?)
Ex-Pylon is a mysterious character who we discovered on Myspace, and this is Mans Music and no mistake.

9. Computer – In The Air – Juho Kahilainen remix (Diskomafia)
Juho Kahilainen is another curious character, and I am rather taken with his description of his music as “depressive trance”. Featured on the Give Me Another Frame Remixes 12″, which came out back in September but still sounds as fresh today as it did back then etc…

10. Margot – Land Of (Margot Records)
Another appearance from Margot – James is quite the fanboy it would seem!