Soca is as close to an ultimate pop music as I want to get. If you download any random soca track the chances are you will be presented with a song that’s exquisitely catchy, remorselessly danceable and entirely replaceable (by your next d/l, p[…]

COLDPLAY – “Clocks”
Surely the fact that I recommend this despite it sounding like a Jam & Spoon remix of David Gray is enough.[…]

DR. RING-DING – “Bombs Over Baghdad”
This starts out in typical dancehall-of-the-apocalypse mode, with the Dr. intoning some of the Ten Commandments, no less (“thou shalt not steal”, “thou shalt not kill”, &#[…]

The dark horse! In the last two weeks this has rocketed up my personal chart to the point where it’s starting to look like a serious threat to those tracks in the top 10 whose future is uncertain. One-bar loop tech-drum&bass bizness, but r[…]

Jess’s Preliminary Top 10 for 2003
Half-way done with the year!
(Please note that this list does not reflect the tastes or choices of NYLPM, it’s owner, or subsidiaries.)
10. !!! – “Me & Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard […]

The images in the pre-choruses — first

But now my take-out food is growing cold
And the candle’s burned a hole in the floor
And I’m still waiting for the ring of the phone

Since when do prog-metal showboats talk about take-out foo[…]

Instant Nostalgia, Not Quite Planned In Advance
The big summer hit, the summery pop song, the type of thing you listen to when you’re out BBQing or on the beach or merrily killing all the mosquitoes around you that adore your very presence, etc[…]

Wiley’s productions are simultaneously reaching IDM levels of abstraction while being the most dead simple physical records this side of ‘Grindin’. Nothing really happens in 8-bar productions after they make their opening statements[…]

Oh, go ahead and project — it’s not as if you can discuss royalty without discussing lineage and history. Of course, Lisa’s doing much to dissuade folks from talking about her father, and that’s to her credit. Even a casual […]

Boomkat fails in the method act with The Wreckoning. The surface has Moloko written over it, but then you scratch underneath and realize nothing’s THERE. So turn it over and revisit Flipside. (Gosh, I fell for that one, no?) That classique sing[…]