New Music from the Noughties.

Today’s ‘Observer Music Magazine’ sent me soul-searching by reviewing the best music of the decade. I wasn’t actually aware that the decade was already over, but these things happen when you’re getting older. There were some excellent reviews and interviews with artists I generally ignore or despise and for some reason none of the stuff that I discovered over the last ten years.

Now, as my friend C. regularly tells me, I have the worst taste in music ever. In the whole universe. Which would make my selection of favourite new artists from this decade probably rather unrepresentative. But what’s ‘new’ music, anyway? Does music count that I heard for the first time over the last ten years but was made forty years ago? Probably not. It has to be music by artists who released new material for the first time in this decade. Ever. But I can always open up a new category. So, let’s scour the ipod:

Fordiebianco’s favourite artists releasing their first material ever in the Noughties (in no particular order)

• Goldenhorse
• Old Crow Medicine Show
• The Klaxons
• Hot Chip
• Jazzanova
• Hollie Smith
• Anika Moa
• Steriogram
• Che Fu

…and next week we might compile the even more compelling list of artists who have been around for yonkers but who released some really cool stuff in the last ten years.

INDO!

Atmosphere Aplenty

I work in the East End, and all around me, pubs are dying. That means that these days I have to venture ever further to have my once a week post work pint. So today I walked for 30 minutes before finding it. I ended up at ‘INDO‘, and I don’t think I’ll ever leave. The punters might be a bit different, the music might be on the rubbish side of ‘ecclectic’, but the beers are heavenly, it’s quiet on an weekday night and it’s better than everything else around.

Praise indeed.

Manbags. Effeminate? What, really?

Charlie Porter is a fashion features editor for i-D and writes for the Guardian. He was recently given a new manbag for his birthday and when airing it proudly in Canary Wharf was promptly accused of nicking ladies’ handbags. That’s not nice. At all. But he is obviously oblivious to the impact a manbag has on other men.

It was a disquieting and humiliating experience, this apparent fashion crime. Humiliating because first he thought I was a petty thief, and then he judged me as effeminate.

Pic borrowed from the Guardian

Well, Duh.

Congrats, All Whites.

Rubbish game and Bahrain deserved to win, but on the other hand, if you cannae convert a penalty you have a significant problem (memo to the Bahraini team: it is not helpful to go up to the penalty taker seconds before the shoot and whisper something in his ear).

So, well done Kiwis. You have a great goalie, but the rest of you still needs a bit of work.

New Zealand – Bahrain

Up at the crack of dawn (no office jokes please) to watch 2 rubbish teams playing for the last place in the World Cup. Sorry to say, after 20 minutes the Kiwis are rubbish, and it’s looking rather ominous. The Bahrainies on the other hand are already falling over, clutching their calfs, if they think a New Zealander might have looked at them in a cross manner.

 

It’s going to be a long morning.

 

100% Generation Discofunk

Once a week I spend a whole day working from home, doing academic bits and bobs. This can be exceedingly tedious if you don’t have something that keeps you going. Being the old person that I am and having a rather peculiar taste in music, the Revo is playing 100% Generation DiscoFunk all day. Well, the station is French, so they rather pronounce it ‘foenk’, but you get the gist.

Note the kitchen stains. Tss Tss...

Even the driest meta-analyses can be fun if you have a bit of S.O.S. band in the background. And with the Revo it’s not a problem getting the station everywhere in the house (Internet Radio in the bathtub. The ultimate luxury).

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers. They Rock.

No, really.

Karmic Koala Problems?

The Register is reporting that an ever growing number of users is struggling with Ubuntu 9.10.

Not so here at Fordiebianco central. I installed KK on a freshly wiped Aspire One (the one with 120GB HD and 1Gb ram) and it’s been humming away happily: everything seems to work just fine, including my HSDPA modem dongle, built in wifi, webcam and ethernet. Battery time has improved and the new design looks much more classy then the annoying fruityness of Windows in all its flavours.

I usually do a fresh install when I change OS’s, and as most of my ‘mission critical’ data is lying on various servers around the globe, it’s not so much of a hassle.

So, from us at Messagedfromtheouthouse a happy and hearty ‘thank you’ to Mark Shuttleworth and his mighty team of geeks.

FB

P.S. Evolution is still shit, though.

Pubs dying in the East End?

In the last two months, two pubs have closed literally just around the corner: first my newly discovered favourite, ‘L’Oasis’, now it’s more grubby neighbour, the ‘Old Globe’.

There are few things sadder than the shell of a pub. Sniff.