Al bums

To be perfectly honest I would've expected a far less puerile and immature title for this post on my favourite albums of the year, but it just goes to show what a dreadful state this country's in today. Absolutely disgusting - I make myself physically sick. Sometimes I just stand in my bathroom staring in to the mirror and thinking "You, sir, are a foul git". This blog is even the number one most common aid used by bulimics to induce large vomiting fits (recently over-taking listening to audiobooks of Piers Morgan reading Peaches Geldof's memoirs), such is the repulsive nature of the writing style and "humour" it contains. But until I learn to grow up and start thinking of genuinely amusing post titles, I'll just have to sit here and type out my list of the top ten albums of 2009, pausing after each entry to spew my guts out on to my computer through sheer revulsion at what I've just written. So, once I've finished scooping bits of regurgitated broccoli out from under my Caps Lock key that have found their way there as a result of re-reading this introduction, please feel free to carry on perusing through this blog and sneer/marvel/snarvel at my favourite long playing records of the year - just remember to keep a bucket to hand.




10. Dorian Concept - When Planets Explode


If truth be told, When Planets Explode isn't exactly an album that I could put on any time of day and think, "Wow, yeah, this is so the tenth best album I've heard in 2009". When I'm not in the mood it can even start to sound a bit like Jones' music in Nathan Barley, as my brain struggles to make sense of it all. But when I am in a suitably glitch-hoppy state of mind, I find that nothing hits the spot quite like a bit of Austrian quirky beat-making c/o Dorian Concept. If anyone reading this is temporarily suffering from enough of a sanity deficiency to actually take interest in my words and decides to track this album down, I'll take advantage of your weakened sense of judgement by chucking a drink-based metaphor at you - treat this record like a pint of Guinness. Don't grab it and down it as soon as it's been poured, that'll leave you with a foul taste in your mouth. Instead, give it time to settle, nurse it, sip it, and then at the end you'll have enjoyed it a lot more. No harm in buying a couple of packets of pork scratchings as well to offset the taste, y'know... just in case.


Dorian Concept - Color Sexist


Further listening: Hudson Mohawke - Butter


9. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport


Phew, glad we're back in to much more accessible music territory here.......NAHT. If you're sat or crouching at your computer thinking "who the fuck buttons are Fuck Buttons?", they're two men from London who take Super Hans' maxim in Peep Show that what is needed in music is a powerful sense of dread, then making the aforementioned powerful sense of dread seem otherworldly and actually quite uplifting in a dready kinda way, before bundling the whole lot in to an epic-o-meter and cranking the 'epic' up to 11. Acid dealers were probably creaming themselves when this one came out.


Fuck Buttons - Olympians


8. Dam-Funk - Toeachizown


Dam-Funk should actually be written with a little circumflex accent over the 'a', but I don't know how to do those on keyboards and whenever I try to copy stuff in to here the formatting gets messed up all over the shop, and I'm not adept enough at the finer side of this blogging bizniz to sort it out properly. But enough about my blog formatting woes - the Toeachizown LP is a collection of the 5 Toeachizown EPs that the L.A. electro-funkster released in the past year or so. If Prince and George Clinton had made a film in the 80's about their vision of how life would be if we all lived in space by now, this album would pretty much be the soundtrack. It's slick, it's sultry, it's soulful, it's funky - would it be completely lame and cringeworthy to finish that sentence with "- it's Dam-Funk"? It would, wouldn't it? Good. It's slick, it's sultry, it's soulful, it's funky - it's Dam-Funk.


Dam-Funk - Let's Take Off (Far Away)


7. Fever Ray - Fever Ray


Fever Ray's début album sounds very much how you'd expect an album by The Knife to sound if you took away the more dance-fuelled half of the group, and were left with the unique vocals of the other half. Which is exactly what this album is, as a matter of fact. The pulse on this record is slower than is often found on productions by The Knife, with Fever Ray's rhythms and beats tending to take a supporting rather than leading role in the songs, leaving it to Karin Dreijer Andersson's exquisite voice and lyrics to take prominence. The album is mournful in parts and hopeful in others, and beautiful all the way through.


Fever Ray - Keep The Streets Empty For Me


6. Few Nolder - New Folder


Directly beneath Fever Ray in both my iTunes and this list is Few Nolder, a Lithuanian techno producer who is probably one of the greatest people alive on the planet at the moment, a statement that may or may not be due to the fact that he somehow picked up on my inclusion of his track 'Chika' in my top 10 songs of 2009, which resulted in him posting this blog on his Facebook fan page, leading to an influx of visitors from Lithuania. So, ačiū labai, Few Nolder! New Folder is a refreshing techno record, an album that declines to comply with standard techno etiquette (techniquette?) and is instead clearly crafted in Few Nolder's own specific style. Often such a description would really mean "it's shit, there's a reason why people follow conventions", but this album is honestly really impressive, and of course contains the best musical moment of any song in 2009, the melody in 'Chika'. Long live the Lithuanians.

Few Nolder - No Mo (Chika can be found on previous blog posts)

Further listening: Rone - Spanish Breakfast

5. Moderat - Moderat

This album was a latecomer to my 2009 ears - it was released in April, but it wasn't until the staff of the wonderful Polish website that I fairly inexplicably write for (I'm just generally a big deal in Eastern Europe) started waxing lyrical about Moderat during discussion for our end-of-year round-up that I felt I needed to get myself moderatted. I'm sure that literally 0% of you had been worrying how successful the link up between eclectic electronic Berliners Modeselektor and experimental techno producer Apparat would turn out, but I can now assure you that it's been a very successful partnership indeed. Both Modeselektor and Apparat are mighty fine creators of music in their own right, and while there was obvious potential for their unison to flop, they doggedly stuck with the project (it actually started in 2002, so seven years is a mighty long time to wait for a début album - what happened to German efficiecy?) and this record is a really great fusion of techno, dubstep, glitch and idm. Apparently their live show was absolutely the greatest thing ever as well, so if it ever pops up near you then lock on dat shit, ja?

Moderat - Seamonkey

4. Nosaj Thing - Drift

Hailing from the same school of thought as Flying Lotus, Daedelus and the rest of the L.A. Low End Theory gang, comes Nosaj Thing. Following up the exquisite track Aquarium, his first LP 'Drift' is "glitch-hop" at it's absolute finest. I still don't quite like the term "glitch-hop", which is why I feel the need to humiliate it by putting it in inverted commas. The album is more ambient than the work of Mr Lotus and Daedelus, yet the record is still well stocked in the beats department. It has a floating, delicate and haunting feel throughout, making the album title highly appropriate - every track is captivating, the production skill is immense, Nosaj is a frickin' genius.

Nosaj Thing - Light 2

3. Clark - Totems Flare

Gentlemen, we're no longer in ambient country. Totems Flare is an absolutely nuts firecracker of an album, evoking the image of someone trying to re-wire a computer using a drum stick in the midst of an acid-apocalypse while being attacked by a wild beast. Or if it doesn't evoke that image for you, then you're blatantly proper weird, innit. Some of the tracks are so chaotic that I'm having to break my habit of re-listening to the albums while I write about them, because my brain is just getting too melted. This is all in a good way, of course. Clark has long been a mad professor in the music world, and it'll come as no surprise (or, to many of you, interest) that Warp Records is responsible for unleashing Totems Flare upon the world, carrying on their fine and long tradition of experiMENTAL releases. Totems Flare has a very powerful energy to it which can often sound very raw and primal, but the album is actually very expertly produced and there's an excellent balance between grit and melody throughout the record. To use a bit of a hackneyed phrase, Totems Flare is 'controlled chaos'.

Clark - Rainbow Voodoo

2. Martyn - Great Lengths

I've ranted a bit about certain types of dubstep before, but for the very few of you out there who haven't been steadfastly piecing together all my blog posts in to a form of religious manuscript, I'll quickly recap my qualms. When dubstep first hit, it was great. Wobble wobble wobble, whom whom whom, bass bass bass. All well and good. But this was a good few years ago now, and although classic tracks from the likes of Caspa and Rusko are still classics, there's been an infuriating lack of imagination from many producers ever since. Get a little sample of a song or film/TV show, chop it up, throw in some slow off-beat drum patterns and then crank the LFO up and make the bass as wobbly and slamming as possible. The result is a type of music that gets boring very quickly, and unsettling only slightly slower. "Dubstep remixes" are now simply a song played in it's normal manner, but with a ham-fisted punch of whomping bass underneath. Both Caspa and Rusko have been maintaining a distinct level of crapness for a long time now, yet for some reason they seem to be the benchmark for many budding bass-merchants. So to counter this sea of dubstep trash, it's probably about time I got round to actually talking about Martyn. For me, Martyn has been the most innovative producer of 2009. Taking dubstep as a loose basis, he's crafted an album that transcends any kind of previously existent genre, and although other producers had been starting to move in a similar direction at around the same time, Great Lengths is a masterful talisman of the emerging dubstep/techno/minimal sub-genre. It's clear that a lot of effort and soul has been put in to the making of the album, something which is so grossly lacking in the sadly probably more widely popular style of dubstep that I've been blathering on about in this section. If you want to listen to good dubstep, do yourself a favour and listen to Martyn, Untold, Pangaea, Guido - don't listen to Caspa and Rusko. OK? Good.


Martyn - These Words (feat. dBridge)


Further Listening: 2562 - Unbalance

1. Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue

Whilst I was compiling this list, I was often scratching my head over which albums stood out above the rest I'd acquired last year, and in which order to arrange them. However, there was absolutely no ambivalence (groan) when it came to picking Bibio as number one. Sorry folks, but that had to be done really didn't it? Seriously though, Bibio's record was easily my favourite of 2009, and oddly enough it was actually his second album of the year - and even then it wasn't his last. Having released his third studio album, Vignetting The Compost, in February to a lukewarm reception (at this stage I hadn't even heard of the lad), Bibio decided to take his musical career in a new direction, and left Mush Records to hook up with Warp. I've only listened to bits of his first three albums after I heard Ambivalence Avenue, but I can tell you that they're all fairly uninteresting, not-particularly-bad-yet-not-particularly-good creations, and as it's transpired his move to Warp has probably been the best decision of Bibio's life. Strongly influenced by Boards of Canada, Bibio's typical style is electronic folk (folktronica, if you will), a sound which is at the core of Ambivalence Avenue but far from dominates it. Upon his move to Warp, Bibio opened himself up to a variety of new influences, and this is immediately and emphatically obvious as the olde English folky opening track 'Ambivalence Avenue' drops in to the glorious funk of 'Jealous of Roses', an audacious move that completely blows the album wide open. From then on there's wonky hip-hop on 'Fire Ant' and 'Sugarette', the blues-y 'Cry! Baby!", and elegant folk ballads in the form of 'Haikuesque (When She Laughs)' and 'The Palm of Your Wave'. And this isn't just experimentation for experimenting's sake - each track feels perfectly at home on the record, and despite the variety of genres influencing it the album flows remarkably well. I'm aware that Fuck Buttons and Clark are hardly going to be to many people's tastes, and the albums by Martyn and Few Nolder might not appeal to anyone not previously vaguely interested in dubstep or techno, but I truly believe that if you hunt down Ambivalence Avenue and give it a listen then you'll be a fan. There's still enough of Bibio's folk-pop leanings present to give the album a gorgeous quality that should be accessible to pretty much everyone, even the most hardened of Soulja Boy, Cascada or Meshuggah fans. Of all the albums in this list this has the most obvious 'real' instrument presence (namely Bibio's guitar), but combines this with various electronic elements to create a unique sound. A really brilliant album.

Bibio - Jealous of Roses

Further listening: Bibio - The Apple and The Tooth (a follow up to Ambivalence Avenue, containing remixes of tracks from AA as well as a few new songs)



So that's that - about 3 weeks after I first started writing this post, I've finally finished my run down of my top 10 favourite albums. I reckon we should celebrate with a bloody great classic track and a bloody great special edition of songs I'm currently loving, don't you?

Classic Track:

I don't really know much about Arthur Russell, other than he died young and I like the songs by him that I've got, so instead of trawling Wikipedia to make it seem like I do I'll just get on with it and cough up the track. This is a lovely down-tempo song with an enchanting backing of cello (I think) and bongos behind Arthur's beautiful vocals. Very blissful.

• Arthur Russell - This Is How We Walk On The Moon

Songs I'm Currently Loving: World Music Special

• Tinariwen - Lulla - political blues rock by a band from the Sahara Desert - ticks all my boxes, dunno about you.
• Amadou & Mariam - Sebeke - already legendary duo from Mali, who were easily the best support act on the day I went to Blur's reunion in Hyde Park (Florence & The Machine were pretty good, Vampire Weekend were dull as mud). This track is actually the last on the album and features a hidden song in it after a period of silence, meaning that the whole thing is about 11 minutes long, which I apologise for. It's a banger, though.
• Pedro Laza y Sus Pelayeros - Navidad Negra - old skool Colombian jazz here, perfect for a summer's day in the garden in a deckchair with a glass of cool home-made lemonade.
• Omar Souleyman - Shift Al Mani - if you haven't heard of Omar Souleyman already, you pretty much definitely need him in your life. Just when you thought the world of Syrian psychedelic folk couldn't get any better (come on, you were all thinking it), along comes Omar and gives the ever-popular genre a booster shot of greatness.
• N.O.H.A. - Balkan Hot-Step - otherwise known as the opening song on Rob Da Bank's (peace be upon him) excellent Fabric 24 mix, this is Balkan at it's most ecstatic, and I'm still dreaming of the day when this is dropped in a set while I'm present.
• Bangs - Take U To Da Movies - YOUR BOY BANGS! Bangs is a self-proclaimed "Superstar Hip Hop Artist!" (from his website), and is easily the jewel in the crown of the Sudanese rap world, and these days that's really saying something isn't it. Other highlights include My Special Girl, and all of Bangs' other YouTube videos.

Peace etc, yeah?

The Final Countdown

Da-na-na-naaaa, da-na-na-na-naaaa....

Yes yes indeed, with lesser competitions such as the X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing and BBC3's Young Butcher of the Year already falling by the wayside, it's time for the most hotly talked about contest of the year to slam it's final axe stroke in to the craggy mountain of music that's been piling up this year, and haul ourselves over the apex to reflect upon the marvels on offer.

I'm already busy at work in the lab, conducting devious genetic experiments so that I can offer myself a shoulder to sob on as I begin to realise the gems that I've missed off the list. There are two that I'm thoroughly kicking myself over, which I missed off for various careless reasons but would have easily been bothering the top 10 - 1. Memories by Pangaea, a track that the wider population (or at least, the demographic of the population who listen to down-beat soulful dubstep) had been enjoying for the best part of half a year before Muggins McPhee here latched on to it, and 2. the hugely fun and danceable Why Don't You by Gramophonedzie, a song that I love greatly but for some reason thought was from several years ago.

And THEN there are the various tracks that Chris, Tom and Richard listed in response to my appeal for your own favourite songs lists (suggestions still warmly encouraged by the way!), so mad props to the aforementioned badmen, their lists can be found in the comments section of the previous post and are all well worth a listen.

Despite these exceptions, this top 10 is a good reflection of what I've been enjoying on a whole other level of enjoyment this year. Each one is the kind of song which lures me into putting it on again straight after it's finished, because I just can't get enough of its goodness. You may well take one listen/look at the list and emit a big fat WTF (c'mon guys, how could I NOT include Fight For This Love??), but I'd like to think that if you welcome these tunes on to your hearth and in to your hearts then we'll soon be reading from the same hymn sheet.

Unlike the YouTube links of ye olde sections of this countdown, all the ten songs have got download options, as a Christmas present from me to you. You can even download the whole lot in one fell swoop by clicking here, and choosing 'Select All' from the options at the top and then clicking 'Bulk-download Selected'. That should work. I think.

10. Florence & The Machine - Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)

Although I'm not a wholly devoted F&tM fan, they've been really good whenever I've seen them live and there are a few tracks of theirs that I greatly enjoy. This, the second track off 'Lungs', is my favourite. A stirring, vocally wonderful song, full of mythical and mystical imagery, Rabbit Heart is a cryptic battle cry that will have you throwing your hands up in the air and saying "Lord I just don't care" much more emphatically than certain other Florence tracks that have just been released YET AGAIN.

9. Fever Ray - Seven

A voice that's instantly recognisable from her work as one half of The Knife, Karin Dreijer Andersson flew solo this year under the name Fever Ray with the release of her bloody excellent album, also entitled Fever Ray. Chock-a-block with great songs, Seven is the pick of the bunch in my eyes. The lyrical content is superbly simple and mundane - "we talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets", "I ride my bike up, I ride my bike down" - but there's an ever present sense of nostalgia and longing in the song, which could readily relate to romance, or death, or both. Seven has also been remixed well by Martyn, and less so by Crookers - or should I say, Crookers have cut up the vocals and plopped them on top of the same beat they use for every song.

8. Joker - Digidesign

The future's bright - the future's purple. Apparently Joker 'hears' purple when he makes his music, which means that his sound is now referred to as 'Purple Wow', he makes songs with purple in the title, he wears a lot of purple etc. So, dubstep's answer to Prince then? Well Digidesign is certainly sultry and sexy enough to tick at least some of *unpronounceable symbol*'s boxes, with a luuuurvely synth pattern that will have any dance floor 'bom-bomming' along when dropped. You'll know what I mean when you listen to it. Hopefully. Digidesign was released on a 12" with 2000F's You Don't Know What Love Is (#12 in this list), which surely makes it the sexiest EP of the year, possibly ever. If most dubstep doesn't convince you, GO AND FIND THAT EP, it's an absolute delight.


7. Few Nolder - Chika


This track from oddly named Lithuanian producer Few Nolder contains one of the cutest and most infectious tunes I've heard in a long time. The track is minimalistic techno, without actually being minimal techno -  it provokes a feeling much more euphoric than your bog standard minimal, and even has hints of dancehall throughout. When the quivering little tune finally drops after the build up, it never fails to leave me with a smile on my face.


6. Deadboy - U Cheated


In the year that saw UK urban music getting increasingly funkier, this is probably the finest example to date of the 2-step revival. A great R&B-esque vocal hook that injects a soulful mood in to the track, combined with tropical drum patterns and a funkier-than-thou bassline all make U Cheated one of the great songs to have emerged from the UK underground this year. Lovely stuff.


5. Dance Area - AA 24/7 (Diplo Remix)


I was pretty surprised when I was compiling this list to find that this song was only released this year (admittedly the original was released at the end of 2008, with the remix dropping in January), as it seems that Diplo's high-powered reworking of Dance Area's infectiously child-like AA 24/7 has been slaying dance floors for an eternity now. I believe the story behind the original goes thus: someone (quite likely to be Erol Alkan) recorded the bathroom attendant of London's The End club, Austin Boston, doing the 'rap' that features in this song on an iPhone, then Dance Area (also quite likely to be Erol Alkan) used it to form AA 24/7, a tune that was then widely played in clubs around the planet (largely by Erol Alkan). Diplo's remix crunks the track up in to a huge electro banger, even greater than the original. Never have the words 'DO IT' been such a trigger for mayhem.


4. Dusty Kid - Nemur (Wall of Guitars)


I probably shouldn't like this song as much as I do. Two things in particular should really point to it being utterly naff - the 'European singing emotionally in English' vocals, and, er, the pan pipes. Yep, that's right - pan pipes. An instrument which has sensibly been left out of the majority of songs since the likes of E-Rotic's Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex walked the earth. But I feel that Nemur has managed to emerge triumphant, despite giving itself these two notable handicaps. The constantly pulsing beep throughout the track is what first attracted me towards it when I heard Dusty Kid use the song to close his set at Fabric in the summer, and when I went home and tracked down his album Nemur grew and grew on me. The lyrics are certainly a bit pants and don't make a whole lot of sense, but the singer (I'd guess Dusty Kid himself) sings them with a good level of feeling, and combined with the gentle guitar strumming it makes for a very sweet little track. Even the pan pipes are A-OK in my book, adding an earthy sound to the song. Could Europop vocals and pan pipes be THE sound of 2010? This excited blogger certainly hopes so.


3. Crystal Fighters - Xtatic Truth (Xtra Loud Mix)


Given the ever dwindling quality of the Kitsuné Maison CD series, this track was a real delight to find nestled on the seventh edition of the French label's compilations. This song is truly remarkable - it starts off with a kind of traditional folk guitar melody, before the ecstasy starts to kick in, hard. First with the hushed vocals reassuring us that "there's nothing left here to worry about", and then with the soaring rush of synths that come thundering in, inducing a genuine sense of rave love. If the government were to take a dab of MDMA and put this song on whilst coming up, they'd soon be on their BlackBerrys busy sending texts to Prof. David Nutt along the lines of: "David, man.... i love you. ur just such a fucking sound guy. soz about sacking u and all that, u were totally right all along man. i'm in fucking outerspace right now nutty, there's like totally nothing left to worry about. we should go to fabric sometime yeah? i fucking love you david, peace out xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"


2. Gui Boratto - No Turning Back


No sooner have we finished with one entrancingly euphoric beast of a song, but another one pops up. No Turning Back is somewhat like the 'Green Mile' of the music world - it's not the subtlest when it comes to piling on the emotion, but the end result is a thing of beauty nonetheless. The melody rises optimistically with synthetic distortion before mournfully sinking back down with a feeling of inevitable despondency, with this sense of melancholic futility reflected in lyrics such as "I can show you the way but I know that you'll never be there". However the track still maintains a euphoric atmosphere, in the kind of way that you can imagine it closing a set in a club and you'd leave feeling thoroughly contented and at peace.


1. Joe McElderry - The Climb
    Florence & The Machine - Drumming Song (Boy 8-Bit Remix)


So, here we are. This, ladies and gentlefolk, is my favourite song of 2009. And what better song to top the list than this outstanding reworking of an already excellent song - Joe's voice compliments the lyrics of Hannah Montana's original perfectly, and he really makes the song his own in - oh wait, I'm confusing myself again.


No, my favourite song of the year has actually been the superb Boy 8-Bit remix of Drumming Song, a track which showcases both Florence Welch's vocal prowess and David Morris' masterful production skills, both of which have been a regular fixture on my stereo throughout the year. Boy 8-Bit slices out the finest vocal cuts of the original - which although good in its own right will plod along painfully slowly when listened to in the aftermath of the remix - and forges them in to an exhilarating force that seizes and drags you in to the world of Florence's inner emotional conscience, with Boy 8-Bit's commanding drums holding you firmly fixed in place as the drumming noise inside her head gets louder and LOUDER. It's that bit, at the heart of the track, that really pushes this track from great to truly amazing - the loop of "it fills my head up and gets louder, and louder" steadily grows in volume and strength until it's one of the most gripping things you'll ever encounter in any song. With each repetition it builds in fortitude - if it had continued any longer then it'd probably have been classed as a realistic threat to the nation.


Boy 8-Bit's had a great year, with other highlights including the Baltic Pine EP and a remix of La Roux's Quicksand, but for me this his finest work, and the finest work of the year FULL STOP.




So there we are, that's the end of my Top 50 Favourite Songs of 09 list. All that's left to say is that I hope you agree with at least some of my choices, as well as WELL BLOODY DONE TO RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE AND MR AND MRS MORTER, definitely one of my favourite music-based days of all time.


And I've just realised I uploaded some songs the other day which haven't been used yet, so here's a quick Classic Track + Songs I'm Currently Loving...


Classic Track: J Dilla - Workinonit - this blog would have a lot less musical content on it if it wasn't for the influence that J Dilla has had on artists in the Flying Lotus mould, he was a true master of innovative hip-hop who tragically died of blood disease in 2006. Genuinely up there with the biggest in terms of losses to music, but his legacy looks set to be manifested long in to the future.


Songs I'm Currently Loving:

• Rustie - Inside Pikachu's Cunt - it's immediately obvious why it would be an abomination if I didn't post this song, fortunately it's also a very enjoyable listen.
• Inside Out Boy & Vogel - Cazzo! - what do catchy electro bleeps and the operatic stylings of Andrea Bocelli have in common? Answer: they both feature on this track by Inside Out Boy & Vogel, which is one of two tracks from their newest EP which, in keeping with the festive spirit, they are gift-wrapping for free download: Cazzo! / Adrenochrome EP. Adrenochrome is equally great, this time deploying a Fear and Loathing sample on top of a sinisterly creeping beat that could easily soundtrack one of Hunter S. Thompson's more spookier trips.
• Movado - Neva Believe You - soulful Caribbean vocals? Check. Downbeat dancehall riddim? Check. 90's-rave-sounding piano riff? Check. Lazy 'end of blog' unimaginative use of a check list to replace writing a proper summary of the song? Check.

An End of Year albums list has been compiled, but probably won't be along til the start of 2010. So if the magic of Christmas is waning for you, then that'll be something to keep your heart pumping and eyes eagerly wide open as you lie in bed at night. Merry Christmas one and all, I hope you all get what you want in your stockings. All I got last year was feet.