Alan Titchmarsh

As befits the sloppy and lazy nature of this particular smudge on the face of the world wide web, rather than going to the trouble of thinking of my own words and writing with my own fingers as to why this blog has remained post-less for several months, I've chosen to plunder a website dedicated to "sorry I haven't posted in a while" entries that other bloggers have used. After skimming through a few, these are the entries that I feel best represent The Hardcore & The Gentle's absence:


"Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile. I just feel nobody reads this and my life hasn’t really been too interesting for awhile…."


"Sorry I haven’t posted.. and no I haven’t weighed myself since my last post.. I’ve been just way too busy."


"Okay ya’ll sorry I haven’t posted anything lately, buhuttt….

I’VE BEEN WORKING ON MY QUEEN MUSICAL!!!! Entitled, The Rhapsody."

I know that many of you have felt confused, angry, upset, and even - in certain cases - indifferently underwhelmed by the lack of posts that this blog's been churning out, but fear not friends: The Hardcore and The Gentle is back. Of course, much has been said about this blog in the past six months. Some have dubbed it 'the forefather of WikiLeaks', a trailblazer amongst websites that publish widely unpopular content that startlingly makes its way into the public domain for others to read. Elsewhere, a Snappy Snaps employee from the Hampstead Heath area described reading The Hardcore and The Gentle as, "an even more dismaying and sickening experience than staring deep in to the depraved red eyes of George Michael as he comes careering towards you through a blizzard of broken glass and blown-up sample school photos". Other sound bites relating to TH&TG from 2010 include Vince Cable labelling it (or should that be 'cabelling it'? *titter*), "irrelevant"; the Pope hinting that, under certain circumstances, it could be a necessary evil; and the entire panel of X Factor judges branding it, "unconditionally brilliant".

So now that you're pretty much up to date with the various perceptions of this blog since it went AWOL, let me begin to ease you in to another retrospective look back at the year. As anyone who keeps up with the mainstream British media will know, 2010 started way back in January. Then it was February, then March, and before we knew it, April had arrived. May came hot on its tail, June was no slouch either, and, while things looked sketchy at points, July, August and September followed, although to this day no-one's quite sure in what order. October came next, although some chose to skip straight to November - more fool them, I say. And now we've arrived in December. And it's at this point of the year that I'm going to stop listing months and embark on listing songs instead - my top 50 favourite songs from 2010, to be precise. While last-minute claims by Panorama concerning irregular betting patterns surrounding the Top 50 list threatened to destabilise both this and future posts, David Cameron, Prince William and David Beckham have spent the last 48 hours fervently sucking my balls in an effort to defuse the situation, when they really should have been running a fucking country, serving as an emergency rescue helicopter pilot, and not cheating on their wife instead.

But all is good now, so I'll leave you with entries 50 - 41 (with a download link for each thrown in for good measure) of my Top 50 Favourite Songs of 2010, while I go off to rub some Nivea Ball Moisturiser on to my now heavily chafing balls. Voila:

50. Foals - Spanish Sahara

In which the Oxford math-rockers slide from the frantic ADHD of their earlier work to the svelte, measured style that fills their Mercury-nominated second album, 'Total Life Forever' - to impressive effect.

49. Jaga Jazzist - One-Armed Bandit

The title track from Norwegian experimental jazz outfit Jaga Jazzist's latest album, with enough layers and changing patterns to make it the Norwegian experimental jazz equivalent of 'Paranoid Android' or 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

48. Teengirl Fantasy - Cheaters

A modern-day moral sermon, in deep, groovy electronic form.

47. DJ Nate - Footwurk Homicide

This list includes a handful of tracks from a couple of 2010's burgeoning genres, and this represents the first appearance of Chicago's 'juke' music in the Top 50. Now is not the time nor place to discuss the rise of juke, but basically it's generally not actually that good, despite what many websites may claim to the contrary. However there are some gems, with this swaggering effort by youngster DJ Nate definitely being one of them.

46. Kelis - Acapella

Kelis made the transition this year from sassy, milkshake-slurping R&B vixen to sultry, David Guetta-befriending electro queen. I for one liked it. However, David Guetta is a massive cunt. That is all.

45. FunkinEven - Heart Pound

With The Hardcore and The Gentle darling Floating Points not really doing much this year, it was left to others on the Eglo imprint to dazzle. FunkinEven had a stellar 2010, with this slightly Detroit-esque belter my particular fave.

44. Aeroplane - We Can't Fly

Aeroplane divided in two and released a patchy début album in October, but this cut of disco-house heaven was a great example of what's earned them such high praise in the past.

43. MMM - Nous Sommes MMM

One of the subtlest yet most devastating bangers to ravage dancefloors this year, the French duo's track was a deadly tool for any and every techno DJ the world over.

42. DJ Roc - King of the Circle

Mo' juke fo' y'all! This one starts off all film noir, before easing in to juke's characteristic high tempo beats and sampled vocal snatches.

41. Bag Raiders - Snake Charmer

I'm always a shucker for a jaunty and infectious little tune, and with this tune being as jaunty and infectious as they come it's just left to some solid electro beats and dissipated percussion to make this one a real shoulder-shaker.

Some shizzle from two thousand and tizzle

A lot has changed since the last blog post on here. The UK public have rejected The Strangler's maxim that there's "never a frown with Gordon Brown", leaving the country in the hands of men like this. Iceland and Greece, two countries that had previously been considered the height of cool, have proved themselves to be nothing more than ash-spouting, money-grabbing twatsacks, hell-bent on squatting over Europe and taking a big steaming dump, thereby stinking out the whole continent with the pong of dried fish and tzatziki-laced faeces. And the world was rocked by the injustice suffered by a young man who, despite allegedly committing nanacide, was still a much loved member of the community and would forever remain the subject of affection for one particular lucky lady. The world was rocked even further when it gradually, and then definitively, transpired to be a hoax, but the whole affair raised the important discussion of when it is and isn't justified to stab your girlfriend's nan, a moral dilemma which we can only hope is something that future generations will think long and hard about. Tehehehe, long and hard.


Anyway, there's also been plenty of bootylicious music released since the last post, so in one of the many moments of madness I experienced during my recent fortnight-long crystal meth binge I decided to bundle together some musical highlights from the year so far, and slap them on here for you to observe with little interest. Having laden myself with the stupid and generally irrelevant blog title of 'The Hardcore & The Gentle', I thought I'd attempt to make the most of a bad situation by dividing the tracks I'd collated in to 'Hardcore' and 'Gentle' categories. For the sake of making this pathetic attempt at descriptive shoe-horning work, the 'hardcore' tracks are generally faster, more dancefloor-orientated beasts, while the 'gentle' are more chillin' little numbers. Ya dig? Let it be known that this is neither a well-thought out nor comprehensive and thorough selection, but if you've been reading this blog for any longer than a minute then you'll already have realised that's just business as usual. Oh, and for any long-term fans of my online file-hosting habits, I've now switched from Mediafire to Zippyshare to upload the songs, as Mediafire is a gigantic piece of shit and was probably invented by a man with a Greek dad and an Icelandic mother. It should still be easy as peasy to download the songs, if for some reason you wanted to do that.

HARDCORE

• F - Energy Distortion - needless to say it can be a tough task finding tracks on Google by a producer known simply as F, but as the techno-dubsteppy skittering of Energy Distortion proves, the hunt is very much worthwhile.
• Deadboy - If U Want Me - Deadboy's U Cheated achieved the much-coveted sixth spot in my countdown of favourite songs in 2009, and he's followed it up with another excellent R'n'B-tinged dancefloor stormer. The man certainly knows how to conjure up a funky bassline and catchy vocal hook, and If U Want Me has already become a staple tune for any mix with even an ounce of self-respect.
• Scratcha DVA - Ganja - this tune uses a similar 'Clangers on pills' sound effect that Mujava used on one of the millennium's greatest dance tracks so far, Township Funk, and if listening to Ganja doesn't make you wanna wobble your legs and wave your arms around like a funky octopus, then you're not quite right in the 'ead mate.
• Kyle Hall - Must See - after dipping his toes in to the dubstep paddling pool with his Kaychunk / You Know What I Feel EP on Hyperdub, the young Detroit prodigy returns to the familiar realm of jazzy house on his latest release. Plus, all of his previous releases are now available to buy on Bleep, which would not be a bad investment at all if you've got a few spare bob lying around.
• Omar Souleyman - Ala Il Hanash Madgouga - Syrian psychedelic folkster Omar Souleyman has returned with another album packed full of frantic craziness with a delightful Middle Eastern flavour, perfect for white British boys such as myself to sit at home listening to while pretending that the majority of people from the originating region don't hate our guts.
• Ceephax Acid Crew - Castilian - if Arabia does ever grow tired of white British boys such as myself leeching off their psychedelic exports, then fortunately we'll always have United Acid Emirates, the latest album from Squarepusher's brother, Ceephax Acid Crew (funny names they have in that family, eh?). As usual it's chock-a-block with bleepy goodness, with a pH level so low it'd turn litmus paper the colour of Lenin's tongue. Cor, what a bloody brilliant string of references that was.
• MMM - Nous Sommes MMM - for those of you who, like Girls Aloud, don't speak French, the title of this song translates as "we are MMM". I think it's probably called that because it's produced by MMM. Therefore it's MMM making the track, and they're pointing out that fact to you through the song title. In French. Who says this blog isn't informative or culturally relevant?
• Actress - Always Human - Actress' last album, Hazyville, was pretty brilliant, and his follow-up, Splazsh - released on Damon Albarn's label Honest Jon's - is of a similar pedigree. Muffled, moody dub-techno flows throughout the record, affirming Actress' status as one of the top innovators on the British scene at the moment.

gentle

• Emeralds - Candy Shoppe - guess which one of the following descriptions refers to this song by American trio Emeralds, and which one refers to the song of a similar name by American one-man shit factory 50 Cent: 1.) an exquisitely crafted track of floating beauty, this is musical creation at it's most intelligent; 2.) typically posturing nonsense from one of the music world's most unnecessary and unwanted acts. Actually, there can be no right answers when 50 Cent's concerned, only woe and misfortune. So don't bother answering that question.
• Randy Barracuda - Streisand Effect - while the song and artist name probably aren't purposefully linked here, I imagine that if you called up a veterinarian in a moment of concern for your overly-horny pet fish, their response would be, "You've got a randy barracuda? Has it been watching 'Hello, Dolly!'? It has? Ah right then, it's just suffering from the Streisand Effect. Just put it in a cold bath for half an hour and play it Fergie's music videos on repeat - that should do the trick" ~ [half an hour later] ~ "Your barracuda's just slit it's wrists in the cold bath? Ahh shit..."
• Ramadanman - I Beg You - in which Ramadanman takes a phrase popular with both doomed medieval prisoners and modern-day young people from London and bases a song around it, using his characteristic pulsing drum patterns and a haunting vocal sample.
• The Crystal Ark - The City Never Sleeps - Gavin Russom follows up his awesome acid house project Black Meteoric Star by moving in to the guise of The Crystal Ark, with this track a deep, sprawling tribute to South American music. A twelve-minute masterpiece.
• Holy Fuck - Red Lights - the only way to express how continually brilliant Holy Fuck are is by simply exclaiming the group's name in sheer wonderment, as this track - along with the rest of their new album, Latin - is friggin' ace. With their last album, 2007's LP, being one of my top favourites from that year, combined with completely wowing me when I saw them live a couple of years ago, the Canadian outfit can do no wrong in my eyes, and fortunately the strength of their new record won't be changing that opinion anytime soon.
• Scuba - You Got Me - a few of the tracks listed so far feature on some of my favourite albums of the year, but Scuba's Triangulation is possibly currently sitting at the top of that pile. The album is class from start to finish, and I could've chosen any number of songs from it to demonstrate it's greatness.
• Mark E - Slave 1 - while not strictly from 2010 (as the album title 'Mark E: Works 2005-2009' would strongly imply), the compilation was only released this year so it blatantly still counts. This is the kind of deep house that Haagen-Dazs should be turning in to an ice-cream flavour, as it is absolutely delicious. They probably won't though, they never listen to my ice-cream flavour suggestions. All I've got for my attempts at helping is a draw-full of 'cease and desist' orders, and regular home visits from a psychotherapist.
• jj - Into The Light - this isn't actually the best song from Swedish group jj's newest album, which in turn isn't quite as good as their last album, but if you can show me a better example of a song fusing melodic synths and floating vocals with snippets of Italian football commentary describing Zlatan Ibrahimovic scoring a goal (or at least, that's what one would presume is happening), then by all means I would love to hear it. Oh, what's that? You can't find a better example? WELL FUCK OFF THEN.
• Toro y Moi - Lissoms - "lo-fi", "chillwave", and "glitch-hop" are all words that are bandied about a lot these days, often with the person using the words not really knowing what they're talking about, but this lo-fi piece of glitch-hoppy chillwave is really, erm.... really good. Yeah.
• Flying Lotus - Do The Astral Plane - the United Nations recently passed a motion making it illegal to say a bad word about Flying Lotus (the punishment for any dissident being to swear an oath to a block of wood with a smiley face crudely painted on, acknowledging that even it has superior musical knowledge to the FlyLo hater), which would be problematic and dictatorial if it weren't for the fact that it's very hard to say a bad word about Flying Lotus in the first place. I'm still undecided as to whether Steven Ellison's latest offering, Cosmogramma, is his best to date, but one thing's for certain - it's certainly very good. Or at least, that's what Reinhard - my crudely painted wooden superior - has told me.

BYE BYE !!!!!!!!!!!!