Lord Kitchener – London is the Place for Me (MP3)

Pulp – Mile End (MP3)

So that’s it then – in 2 weeks time I’ll be saying my goodbyes to the homely grey Mancunian skies, and heading down to “that fancy London place” to for the next chapter of my so-called life.

And in anticipation of this, I’ve been digging through some London records, and thought these two sum up the mood perfectly. Lord Kitchener, with lovely piece of upbeat calypso, fills me with hope of the possibilities of one of the world’s leading cities, and makes my pasty skin tinge in anticipation of those lovely London summers. The other paints a picture of a different side of the city, the seedy underground of Mile End, where Jarvis Cocker lived after first moving to the city, where “the kids come out tonight / they kick a ball and have a fight /and maybe shoot somebody if they lose at pool.” – Jesus H Christ, is it too late to change my mind?!?

For London-based regular readers (yes, I am assuming we have any), I’ll be resurrecting Best Foot Forward in it’s “nice people drunkenly dancing to bearded people playing records” in some type of London-guise, if anyone’s got any tips, or fancies getting involved, or is at all arsed in any way, send me an email or leave a comment below.

Smell you later Manchester!

Moondog – Fujiyama 1 (MP3)

Okay, so I may have a slight propensity for going on a little too much about the same old stuff, drunkenly gassing-on all the way through perfectly ace Phantom Band gigs much to the chagrin of a chap from Hull (ask Rob: I’ve already apologised and am blaming going out straight after work) and, well, just talking a load of complete nonsense.

But I do have my quiet moments.

Bright & Early – Love Is Overtaking Me (MP3)

Bright & Early – Planted A Thought (MP3)

I have a new favourite pop group and they’re called Bright & Early. Unfortunately they existed for about a week in the late 80’s and to the best of my knowledge only two of their songs ever made it on to a release (and to the best of Discogs’s knowledge too!).

Fortunately for posterity’s sake they had a no-talent bum singer/guitarist/cellist/songwriter in the band called Arthur Russell, and the release containing these two songs just so happens to be the excellent ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ compilation Audika released late last year as not only another excellent piece to the Arthur Russell puzzle, but also as a companion to the also wonderful ‘Wild Combination’ documentary about Arthur Russell’s life.

I read a comment around the time of the release of ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ describing it as “further raping the corpse of Arthur Russell”. What a load of bollocks. Without the posthumous releases we’d have what? A handful of 12”s and ‘World Of Echo’. As Tom Lee, Arthur Russell’s boyfriend explains in ‘Wild Combination’: this is all music that Arthur wanted to be released for people to hear but no-one would touch it at the time (and the bit where Tom plays the original tape of ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ for the interviewer is a really lovely moment). Okay, this compilation starts with some scratchy early demo stuff from the absolute beginning of his career, but there’s also the beautifully produced alt-pop of ‘Love Is Overtaking Me’ and ‘Planted A Thought’ and crucially none of it’s been heard before. All of it is also so fantastically different from pretty much everything else that’s been made available so far: ‘Close My Eyes’ and ‘Maybe She’ are two simple acoustic country-folk songs and they’re beautiful.

With that rant over, here’s another: now Mr and Mrs Audika, how’s about a vinyl version of this since you’ve bloody done one for all the others?

Royksopp – Eple (Black Strobe Remix) (MP3)

The Norwegian duo are getting a lot of hit heat at the moment after their new LP has leaked online alongside a rather hot Holy Fuck remix, and it’s prodded me to dig out this old remix of “Eple”, from way back in those hazy electro-fueled nights of 2003. It was a simpler time back then, when Black Strobe’s Ivan Smagghe was riding high and at the top of his bleep-infused game. There’s a great flow to their take – it slows down, it speeds up, it’s up, down and all around town (well, Paris and London, mainly). This ranks up as one of my favourite remixes of all time, and it gives me great pleasure to break it’s blogosphere virginity (so says the Hype Machine search anyways!).

Phoenix – 1901 (MP3)

MGMT are so last year, and things are looking pretty cloudy for Empire Of The Sun. On May 25th Phoenix rise, well, phoneix-like from out of the ashes of ‘It’s Never Been Like That’ with ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ and if 1 minute and 20 seconds into ‘1901’ is any indication: folks, they’re back.

Master bastards indeed.

* Apologies for the swearing but if music can’t make you giddy every once in a while then what’s the point? (And besides, it’s from a comment on their MySpace and it seemed to far more eloquently summarise in four words what I felt after the first three listens than I could in fifty four).

Tape – Beams (MP3)

I’ve been a bit busy helping out with my parent’s charity over the last few weeks, so BFF has been put on the back burner whilst we were organising and running an event that raised £71,000! A nice side effect of the party was that the ever-awesome (and sorely missed “oop north”) Danny Webb came up to play a few records. And whilst we were sat at home supping red wine till 3am, he put me onto Tape, a instrumental trio who released Luminarium this time last year.

This is beautiful stuff. If you want more, pick the album up here.

La Compagnie Creole – Sans Chemise, Sans Pantalon (MP3)

This post is nothing but a blatant plug for a new little venture of mine. wearetuktuk is an on-line (soon to be in a few independent shops, hopefully) store which sells bespoke shirts and accessories that are heavily inspired by their surroundings. Take a look over at the store, and if you like what you see, you can get a cheeky 10% discount by entering BESTFOOTFORWARD when you check out…

I have been racking my brain for days trying to think of a good song that is loosely affiliated with shirts/men’s threads but, unfortunately, results were minimal (suggestions are still welcome?). I have chosen this chirpy French pop medley purely for the title and nothing else, “without shirt, without pants”…

Le Jete – La Cage Aux Folles (Instrumental) (33.3 Version) (MP3)

Yes, yes, yes; this is so good! Released on Patrick Cowley’s Megatone records in 1983, ‘La Cage Aux Folles” (”The Caged Insane Ones” ), is, initially, Hi-NRG disco at its lightening speed, 45rpm spinning worst.

However, pitch it down to a nice and easy 33 1/3, and what you now have, is a daunting, moody, chugging electro-disco bomb. What a difference a pitch change makes…

Invisible Conga People – Cable Dazed (MP3)

Here at Best Foot Forward, we don’t like to stick with the crowd, who ramp up their output for end of year lists. We’re much happier to take December off, as no doubt evidenced from recent postings.

Lazy? Us? No: we just balk in the face of convention.

But you know, if all those lists are out there. It would be rude not to take a gander. Yer Mam are working their way through 100 tracks and 50 albums (I bet you’re regretting that now James!), and I’ve been spending the afternoon listening to Pitchfork’s Top 100 Tracks of 2009 (thanks Black Country Grammar) and having my ears pricked up by some bits that I missed over the year.

And top of the “stuff I hadn’t heard” list has to be this – coming in at #50, Cable Dazed is a track by little known Invisible Conga People, released on Italians Do It Better. It’s a real low-key techno stormer – but don’t let the dreaded ‘T’ word put you off – think Villalobos with soul, or Carl Craig and Can doing the Conga. Basically, I loves it.

Happy New Year.

Addendum: As I was posting this, I was searching for an image and found it on 20JazzFunkGreats, who had this in their Best Of 2007 post. Those fuckers are so far ahead of the curve that it looks like a speck of dust in their rear-view mirror, and if they’ve beaten Pitchfork by 12 months, I don’t mind posting this now. Ah, to be as cool as the cool kids, that would be something indeed.

World Of Apples – Chroma (MP3)

World Of Apples – Prelude (MP3)

Christian Zimmerman – Diary Of A Lost Girl (World Of Apples Mojave Rehab Mix) (MP3)

After a 3 day/night New Year blow-out, 2009 didn’t exactly start as was intended. Albeit 4 days behind schedule, the objective is to now have a stress free, relaxed, and healthy year; we shall see…

World of Apples, one of Ewan Pearson’s lesser known nom de plumes, more than personifies the above feelings. Released solely on his own Giant45 label, and with only three releases in total, the tracks posted here transcend various genres and styles…

‘Chroma’ is a mellow nu-disco cut, that first appeared back on the ‘Chroma EP’ back in 1997. ‘Prelude’ is an even mellower, whistle happy, samba track, which was the last of the Giant45 releases, back in 2000. And the ‘Diary Of A Lost Girl’ remix, is an ethereal, melodious journey – and also a personal favourite – that was released back in 1999…

Happy, relaxing 2009!