The duo began by remixing Simian singles whilst still in the band, including turning the Peugeot-endorsed ‘La Breeze’ into a dub nightmare, complete with the wailing of a snake charmer’s flute. Ford explains that it was around this time that Simian began to fall apart: “We were in a situation where we were trying to force something that we didn’t enjoy, it’s not a very good way to live and you don’t make particularly good music.”

Fortunately for us, this meant that the boys had an opportunity to pursue the offers coming in for SMD; remixes for artists as diverse as Air, The Go! Team, Klaxons and Peaches flooded in and Ford produced both the Klaxons’ debut and the Arctic Monkeys’ (more on them later) ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare.’

After releasing insanely catchy singles, like 2006’s ‘Hustler’ on the super-trendy Kitsuné label, the duo were picked up by UK label Wichita, home of Bloc Party, who offered them an album deal. Attack Decay Sustain Release, the long-player that followed, is one of this year’s most vital dance releases. It shifts from menacing instrumentals, like opener ‘Sleep Deprivation’ to more obvious party tunes like the aforementioned ‘Hustler’ and ‘It’s The Beat’ (an inspired re-imagining of rave classic ‘Pump Up The Jam’ with The Go! Team’s Ninja on vocals), and has a distinctly English flavour, garnering comparisons with the London-based DJ genius of Erol Alkan or early Chemical Brothers.

This “Englishness” is arguably reflected in the tolls of hedonism recently suffered by the band. Explaining the reasons behind the cancellation of a recent gig in Leeds, Ford says: “I broke my collarbone being a dick. It was the last night of the tour in the US and we were in San Diego. The Arctics lot were out and I was playing football with them in the car park at four in the morning pissed out of my brain with a beer in my hand. I tripped over my own legs, tried to save the beer and landed on my shoulder.”

It seems like there can only be more adventures like this to come; the pair are booked to support The Klaxons on their imminent UK tour, who are another band who certainly look as if they know how to have a good time. “Oh God” groans Ford, though he appears to relish the prospect, “we know them really well and we have a lot of fun together, but they do party really hard. I think we’re sharing a bus too, so it’s going to be pretty full on. There won’t be any avoiding it.”

To hear the rest of our interview with James check out the latest edition of The Nouse Music Podcast at: www.nouse.co.uk

The music reflects this easy collaborative spirit, where beautifully folky songs are spliced by electronic stabs, or swaddled by sampled clicks, whirs and slips. Running through the core of most of their material is a male/female harmony that promises to be even more prettily woozy live than it is on record.

All of this is provided in a distinctly English package, invoking little touches like the sampled fragment of conversation on ‘Bricks’, “I’m going to come up and put the kettle on while she’s doing that”, the perfect analogy for a band who are as warm as a nice cuppa, but don’t fail to provide the excitement of musical caffeine.

Taking music back to its basics so you can actually hear the melodics without straining through fuzzy synthesisers, Prinzhorn are reminiscent of what the White Stripes actually used to excel at.

This group of local lads have been gathering the kind of accolades that would make any new band rejoice: Zane Lowe dubbed them a “great-sounding band” and Steve Lamacq, who chose them as the support for The Maccabees at his Lamacq In The City night in York last week, made their demo ‘Just for Tonite’ his demo of the week back in January. This is by no means undeserved praise. The aforementioned ‘Just for Tonite’ comes on like The Killers if they had never been introduced to Bruce Springsteen, with a pop sensibility and a screaming synth intro that stirs the already excited pubescent crowd into a frenzy. Suddenly, the giggly group of surely sober-ish teens becomes a seething mass, throwing itself from one side of Fibbers to the other. This is the sort of dedication and all-out worship for a band that can only come before the onset of late-teen apathy, and this is what seems to have carried the band this far.

Elsewhere, live highlight ‘You and Me’ has the anthemic quality that comes from an inspired use of handclaps, arpeggiated synths and a sing-along chorus. They even fit in a second verse that sounds like a bluegrass take on The Coral at their most sea-shanty-esque.
This lot are certainly one to watch, and with the buzz still hanging around their demo, the band are spending some time in the studio recording an as-yet-untitled debut album. As the night wears on, it is easy to get caught up with the over-excited crowd. The enthusiasm is contagious, even for an aged pretender to their raucous new scene.

Fortunately some semblance of normality returns as we leave Fibbers and pass a couple of the audience members huddled outside cursing about how late their mums are in coming to collect them. Soon this bunch of kids are going to be graduating from their schools, taking. One Night Only with them as they graduate from a headline slot at their local venue to take
over the country.

The name Steve Lamacq may mean little to you but for a group of people, myself included, he was the voice of musical reason throughout secondary school. For a musically-keen generation that was too young for John Peel, the Evening Session on Radio 1 – presented by Lamacq – was essential listening. Each morning, my friend Alex and I would huddle for protection from the biting chill of the South Manchester weather and discuss the discoveries that we had made the night before: ‘Clint Eastwood’ by Gorillaz, or ‘Empty At The End’ by The Electric Soft Parade.

Taking a break before broadcasting his BBC 6 Music radio show live from Vanbrugh last week, Lamacq maintains that although he was initially shocked by fevered hero worship of him, it is something he definitely identifies with: “It is very much the equivalent of when I used to listen to the Peel programmes when I was a kid – there would be stuff where you thought ‘that’s alright’, ‘that’s ok’, ‘that’s laughably bad’… and then a song comes along where you just think, ‘that’s an amazing record’. You just hope that for every hour’s worth of radio that you do, one of the songs will be talked about the next day.”

The NME would be much, much better if the people who wrote for it actually had to go out and sell the bloody thing

His comment is welcome, not only because it is a comprehensive and highly quotable answer to my opening question, but also because it is delivered in the trademark Lamacq tone; a deep-voiced, Essex-accented roll, not unlike the sound of an engine turning over. The voice conveys to his radio listeners an immediate sense of gravitas, trustworthiness and humour. It also betrays his slight build and overall un-celebrity-like appearance, which later leads him to comment, “I just don’t look like someone in a band, I’m just not cool enough.”

He obviously feels that trust between a DJ and his audience is something of great importance. Back on the subject of John Peel, a colleague and friend from his time at Radio 1, he suggests that the DJ had “built up a level of trust over many years.” He sounds slightly disparaging about some of today’s new DJs, who try to emmulate, to some extent, the achievements of Peel. “A lot of people have tried to do radio shows that are vaguely Peel-esque in their eccentricity or eclecticism,” he says. “But I think that it’s very hard to do unless people will buy into you as a trustworthy figure.”

This is the aspect of presentation that Lamacq feels is missing from the numerous other sources of new music that have flourished in the age of websites such as Myspace. “I don’t think other places have the quality control that some of us have because we’ve heard so much music. Anyone could find these bands, but you would have to be listening to music all day, and even then you might not find what you want. You need people to lead you through this maze.”

Championing little-known bands is clearly something that Lamacq gets a kick out of. He smiles as he mentions how he managed to get a hip-hop band from his small hometown to number one. The only previous hit from a Harlow group was one that sounded like Haircut One Hundred, and Lamacq wasn’t satisfied with that. “I set out to get a Harlow band into the Top 40, and ‘Eat My Goal’ by Collapsed Lung became the second ever,” he says, obviously pleased with himself. It is commendable that the DJ had enough civic pride to try and improve the fame-status of his local area but despite Nihal, the rapper on ‘Eat My Goal’, going on to get his own show on Radio 1, these musical achievements can only be of scant relief to an area of Essex now known as the home of Jade Goody.

Of course, Lamacq was around the last time that Britain’s media blew up around a group of new indie bands: the golden age of Britpop. After finishing a journalism degree, he served a stint at The NME whilst presenting part-time at the fledgling XFM, then a pirate radio station called Q102 where “all the DJs had to pay about £10 a week to go on air because Ragga FM would come along and nick our aerial once every couple of weeks.”

I was so annoyed by how bad The Twang were when I saw them. It’s like having Frank Skinner fronting Flowered Up

As if this wasn’t enough, in what could be a wake-up call for anybody wanting to pursue a career in music journalism, he also says: “I got into the habit that for every job I was doing, I got another job as a hobby.” At this point, he made time to establish Deceptive Records, whose most notable signing was mid-90s indie-favourites Elastica. Lamacq left the label after the release of Elastica’s first album to avoid accusations of partiality on his radio show, but reveals that it wasn’t a long-term career prospect for him anyway: “It was brilliant for a time, but it’s a very easy way of haemorrhaging a lot of money. As an A&R man I wasn’t really hard enough. I just liked the people I was working with to the point that the biggest row I ever had was with Justine (Frischmann, of Elastica) about what the single was going to be before the first album. It went on for about three weeks and I got my own way, but she never forgave me.”

With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see that Britpop, like any scene, became diluted over time. Lamacq agrees: “The first wave was brilliant, but when they went to record their second albums there was a big gap, and the record companies thought ‘people are buying this stuff, so we’ll get something that sounds like it’, but it’s not as inventive.” However, he also suggests that the scene may have been a victim of its own popularity. “We’d find a band like Gene (a Smiths-esque band of the mid-90s) and Radio 1 would stick it on the playlist the next week. We’d only just found them and it felt like the music had been taken away. I think that’s one reason why Britpop eventually collapsed in kid’s minds, because what’s the point of being into a band if your younger sister or younger brother likes them as well?”

Record label short-sightedness is something that he feels continues to cloud the music industry today. Last week, during the promotional whirl for the release of their new album, a member of The Cribs criticised the state of popular music, describing it as a scene with only a handful of really good bands, surrounded by a large quantity of copy-cat groups, signed up by labels because they are guaranteed to sell records.

Lamacq agrees to an extent, but sees the problem as being more specific: “It’s a really strange time at the moment. We’ve arrived at the point where the media and audience are so single-led that it’s only big songs that matter. Some bands these days… I want to hear five tracks, tops.”

Coming in for particularly scathing criticism are The Twang, who receive more than their fair share of attention from The NME and other publications: “I was so annoyed by how bad they were when I saw them. One of the NME writers said ‘it’s like Mike Skinner fronting Oasis’. It’s not, it’s like Frank Skinner fronting Flowered Up.”

This isn’t the only way in which commercialisation has increased over the course of his career. After he left Q102 the station received its licence and became XFM. Recently, the station has taken a path of increasing musical safety, betraying its experimental, cutting-edge past. This, of course, is all about money because money, in the world of commercial radio, comes from advertising. “It’s difficult because you have to sell advertising, and to do that you need figures. For figures you seem to have to play very familiar music when we’re just asking ‘can’t you just be a little bit more inventive?’”

This is one of the benefits of working for the licence fee-funded BBC – especially if you can bag a role on one of the special interest, music-driven shows, such as those that Lamacq has presented. However, the DJ believes that inventive presenting of music radio should not be left to the privileged few, and that it can be beneficial for everyone. “It’s not very good for your short term career to say ‘actually, I think the playlist is wrong’, but probably, in the end, you’ll find that your career is longer. It’s better for the soul, but certainly not as good for the wallet.”

Of course, all this is changing as the world of music is revolutionised by the unstoppable rise of digital media. These days pretty much anyone can present a music show, be it on one of the rapidly proliferating digital music stations, a podcast or even an online music blog. Rather sweetly, Lamacq links this back to his own experience of producing his fanzine A Pack of Lies whilst studying journalism at Harlow College in Essex. “Technology is giving more space to people that previously would have produced a fanzine, but it is better because you can communicate much quicker with people around the country. It’s all out there, it’s just a case of finding it, really.”

What he doesn’t mention is that the majority of these outlets have no physical form, unlike A Pack of Lies which he describes as “probably very rare now… I do have a box under my bed…” An investigation, using skills honed from a million mornings spent in front of Cash in the Attic, placed the worth of an early Lamacq fanzine as literally priceless. Admittedly this was because there were no examples for me to quote from eBay, but a collection of other late 80s magazines is going for a pound, with postage twice that.

Not exactly an untapped pension fund then, but Lamacq is too busy thinking about where to focus his energy next to consider an early retirement. “I’ve thought about a music publishing company. It’s all about rights these days. I think there is a new blueprint to be had for publishing companies given the new technology, and I don’t think record labels are evolving quickly enough.” His eyes glaze over before a more practical side suddenly takes control. This is not a project we can expect to see the fruition of anytime soon, I realise, as Lamacq reminds me of his current commitments: “At the moment, doing seven radio shows a week is enough to keep me busy.” Not a project he will be starting anytime soon then.

And busy he is. The show in Vanbrugh last week was a prelude to a sold-out 6 Music showcase for The Maccabees at Fibbers the same night, part of the ‘Lamacq in the City’ tour, which takes his radio show to a different city every few months. He is one of The Maccabees’ biggest celebrity fans. Describing the moment when he first saw them live, he reveals, “I was very tempted to go into the moshpit for the first time in a long while.”

Somewhat flatteringly for those of us who have adopted it as our local live-music haunt, he describes Fibbers as “one of those classic venues”. He’s also enthusiastic about the area as a whole. “We’ve never done anything round this neck of the woods, and that transpennine axis of music is really important. A lot of the industry stuff has come from here over the years, partly from the rise of the scene in Sheffield, the BBC Raw Talent scheme and Sandman magazine, which has really galvanised local music scenes.”
It is clear that it is the grassroots end of the music business spectrum which interests him the most, something that he wishes more of the media would concentrate on: “I maintain that it would do a lot of people in London-based media a lot of good if they got out of town and found gigs, if they went to Nottingham or York and actually watched some bands.” The complacency of the media is something that he keeps returning to, stating controversially that: “The NME would be much, much better if the people who wrote for it actually had to go out and sell the bloody thing.”

This is evidently a reference to the hours he spent on his fanzine, an endeavour which he says almost ended in disaster. “I very nearly got chucked out of my digs at the time, because my room was above the landlady’s front room and she’d be trying to watch Coronation Street while I’m stapling a thousand copies of a fanzine. She’s sitting downstairs watching TV and I’m going… ” At this point he hammers his fist on to the table, re-creating a loud fanzine-stapling sound that would indeed make watching Corrie a less enjoyable experience than it obviously already is.

However, the years of strife paid off, something that even his landlady eventually recognised: “She emailed me about six years into my career at The Evening Session. Some years earlier her friend who was also a landlady had Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits when he studied journalism, and this was quite legendary. I think when I was on Radio 1 she could boast back. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a plaque up outside my bedroom.”

‘Bigger than Mark Knopfler’, then; not a bad result for a music journalist who got here with the mentality that “anything’s a progression from the news desk at the Harlow Gazette.”

Steve Lamacq came to York courtesy of University Radio York (URY). Listen to URY online at http://ury.york.ac.uk/

If they manage to overcome this minor setback, the band should be set for success. Riding the wave that propelled them to the top of indie charts last August with hits like ‘Bleak Days and Nights (Hot Summer)’, they have been hard at work on their follow-up. “We’ve spent the last two months in a studio in my brother’s house, and we’ve got the best part of an album,” explains House and, suggesting how the band’s sound might change: “some of the singles from the last album were songs that we thought were just jokes, but when we took them to producers they were like ‘this is great!’ We’ve enjoyed playing them, but they’re not what we really envisaged.”

It seems like the popularity or throwaway nature of singles like ‘She’s Attracted To’ has allowed the band to enjoy the creative freedom that success brings. House agrees and reveals that the new album will be “a lot less poppy than the last one. Although the sense of melody and the harmonies are still there, there are some minor keys and we have reigned in the silliness.”

Not entirely though; as well as revealing that “we are idiots, when it comes down to it, and we can’t write serious lyrics without putting in a stupid line,” House comments on the clues for the location of buried treasure hidden in the b-side to last October’s single ‘The Decision’. “We went and checked it the other day and it’s still there. I’ve got a feeling nobody will ever find it, the person who came up with the clues is well into their crosswords, Greek mythology and stars.” On a more hopeful note he adds, “maybe someone will find the single in a charity shop in 10 years time and work it out. It’s worth it!”

Back to the matter in hand, what’s their plan for cracking America? “We’re going to be horribly English, wander round in bowler hats and win them over with our English charm.” Lets hope so, because they’ll be bringing that charm and their collection of new songs back for a UK tour in late March.

One of Jonathan Ross’s favourite new bands. Does this say it all? Not really. Cuter and jollier than their wavy-haired celebrity fan, the single bounces around on a Space-Hopper beat through childhood memories of the British ska revival and its American counterpart. As it hits the cruel, cruel tarmac of the modern indie scene, new wave guitar makes sure it carries on nicely. Wherever Six Nation State are at the moment, it certainly sounds delightfully sunny.

Bondo Do Role, Solta O Frango

Now that CSS have thrown open the door for sublime Brazilian party music, we are surely in for countless treats like this, the debut single from South Brazilian three-piece Bondo Do Role. Opening with a blippy electronic pulse not a million miles away from ’21 Seconds’ the track collapses beautifully into a cacophany of whooping, beats and Portugese rapping. The Music team is split as to whether this sounds like the best party ever or the Tellytubbies on crack, and if the latter is, necessarily, a bad thing.

Gisli, Long Way Down

First Brazil, now Iceland; Bjork and Sigur Ros have set the tone for quirky inventiveness and floaty atmospherics, which emerging artist Gisli is now displaying with a similar level of national talent in the field of indie-pop. Whimsical lyrics with a dash of politics means that this is a sound to rival the Shins’ latest efforts, but inventive use of what sounds like Bertha the big green machine sets it apart.

Deftones, Mein

Dissonance? Brooding intensity? The emotive, experimental rock that is the Deftones’ stock in trade is starting to sound a little dated. Despite repeated claims by critics that the band are superior to the sounds of the late-90s nu-metal explosion, the first band that this single brings to mind is Limp Bizkit, minus the fun (which was, let’s face it, the only good bit). This is the sound of a band taking themselves far too seriously.

Archie Bronson Outfit, Dart For My Sweetheart

Don’t let the boarderline emo name throw you, this is rock ‘n’ roll in the vein of The Raconteurs or BRMC, with a na-nanana-nana chorus that sounds like the chant of a religious sect devoted to the blues, guitars and beards. Achieving the sort of brooding instensity that the Deftones single would sell its distortion pedal for, the third single from the band’s second album ‘Derdang Derdang’ is fantastic.

Ooh, the 80s! Since ‘opinion’ decided that it was a good decade for music, we have been inundated by the posturing electronics that define whatever notion of late 80s nostalgia is currently cool (which, Brandon Flowers, is never Bruce Springsteen). However, this range seems insufficient for Sweden’s The Sounds, who somehow manage to squeeze influences from three decades into Dying to Say This to You.

Opener ‘Song with a Mission’ takes 90s girl-bands Republica and Echobelly and devours them with a massive pop chorus seemingly designed to make you strut. Our own decade gets a nod on ‘Tony the Beat’ where Strokes-influenced guitar and drums twist and turn into a cacophony of blippy, synthy 80s pop sounds. Elsewhere, ‘Painted By Numbers’ merges all of these influences together and creates something both nostalgic and super-modern.

That said, the album does trail off towards the end, where the male vocals of ‘Hurt You’ seem weak in comparison to the pure energy of female lead singer Maja Ivarsson’s efforts. The Sounds, then, would appear to be a singles band, but this is no insult when the potential singles from this album are so promising. Even, I would venture, a tad brilliant.

Does the world need more indie bands trying to make dance music? “Genres are so irrelevant!” I hear you scream from your oh-so-cool discotheque. Well then, here’s some more indie with synths and a house beat. There are hypnotically repetitive swirly bits and brooding build-up-and-WHAM bits that make it tick along quite nicely. Is this a non-rubbish direction The Killers could have gone for? Only just.

band: mumm-ra
single: what would steve do?

More synth. More break down/build up bits. But somehow this is really, really great. The anthemic sing-along chorus with a profusion of ah-ah-ing and the naive yet burningly confident vocals of the improbably named Noo
means that this is smiling instead of glowering, a tune that pogos instead of performing a hairstyle-preserving nod to the beat. What more could you expect from a band named after the baddie from the Thundercats?

band: willy mason
single: save myself

There’s a lot to be angry about at the moment: war, inequality, and, on a more local level, the disintegration of the portering system. So where are all the protest songs? From the incomprehensible moaning of Thom York to the brasher American offering of Neil Young’s ‘Let’s Impeach the President’, there’s not much new for the demonstrating crowds to sway to… until now! Willy Mason is back to lull you out of apathy. ‘The culture’s drowning in a bad dream’, but he is offering you a raft.

band: Herman Düne
single: I Wish That I Could See You Soon

Calypso horns, bongos and swaying acoustic guitars evoking flip-flops, sandals and people with dreadlocks sitting round campfires could be painfully teasing in arctic York, but the charm of the male/female harmonies and chirpy love story of this single means that the beach scene actually seems a tantalising possibility. With flavours of Belle and Sebastian and ‘Graceland’-era Paul Simon, this is a fantastic tune for summer dreaming.

band: nelly furtado
single: say it right

Thank God all that Chris Martin nonsense is over. It’s back to the good stuff with Timbaland; crunchy beats and barely-there instrumental accompaniments ripple under floating vocal harmonies. Slower and not as club-driven as ‘Maneater’ or ‘Promiscuous’, and apparently inspired by the Eurythmics, this song captures a different side to the collaboration, with a subtlety that the current crop of British popsters can only dream of.

Lets get one thing straight: Mika is going to be absolutely huge. Huge like a mountain or the sky or some other traditionally large concept. You might have heard his single ‘Grace Kelly’ – not released until the 29th January, but currently riding high in the charts due to those handy new download rules – on the radio, or, as I did last week, over the speakers in HMV. But if you haven’t, it places him as the British answer to the Scissor Sisters and is the pop single of the year. No question. With a relish of retribution, this tour comes after years of rejection. Mika himself admits, “too weird for the record companies but too commercial and melody based for the Indie crowds”. Those musical parameters seem to have turned to his advantage, his Myspace plays rose from 400 to 45,000 in a week after a mention in the Popbitch newsletter and now he has a major label deal with Casablanca (ex-home to Lindsay Lohan, fact fans!). Oh, and he’s just been revealed as the BBC’s ‘Sound of 2007’. This is why it is so fantastic that he is playing a venue like The Cockpit; this is a night that promises either to be wonderfully intimate or like having a full-on pop band at a house-party. This could be the gig that you dream about in that ‘wouldn’t it have been amazing to catch (insert name of huge band now playing only stadiums) on their first tour?’ fantasy.

Unfortunate choice of title. Propelled into fame by Sofia Coppola and monopolisers of the ‘memorable ad music franchise’ Air, once upon a time, were arguably quite good. It makes you wonder where that inspired decision to release a filler-sounding track as their first single came from. Perhaps Jean-Benoit’s comment on his own track will shed

LCD Soundsytem – North American Scum

With an opening reminiscent of the Buffy theme and lyrics relishing, “I would love to bite your neck”, it’d be easy to say, “nuff said”, right there. Unfortunately, Marty’s Dracula-clad-in-60s-Mod and insouciant cigarette ‘look’ on the cover manages to jolt even the most indolent into passing comment. Watch out, he’s a dangerous kitty.

Sophie Ellis Bextor – Catch You

In which Sophie discovers electro-pop and becomes better than anyone ever imagined she could be. After having a baby and getting married to that bloke from The Feeling, Bex is back with the first single from her new album Trip The Light Fantastic. Catch You is like a slice of Goldfrapp coated in pop icing, and her best effort by a long way.

The Klaxons- Golden Skans

In which The Klaxons continue to edge towards being as good as the NME tells you they are. Falsetto oohs and aahs drag the single towards a chorus just earnest enough to distract you from the fact that it nicks its melody from Hot Chip’s ‘Over and Over’. More focused than previous singles, this is the sound of a band hitting their stride.

The Good, The Bad & The Queen – Kingdom of Doom

When a band has such remarkable credentials, Albarn of Blur, the Clash’s Simonon…you start to worry a little. Even Slash’s fro-mane couldn’t save Velvet Revolver. Thankfully, this time we were pleasantly surprised and just a little dazzled. Mixing haunting balladry reminiscent of the Beatles’ White Album with a melodious, catchy refrain, Albarn has again proven himself to be no one trick pony. As one review succinctly extolled Albarn’s talents: “Jammy bastard”.

If there was a barrier to commercial success in Field Music’s self-titled 2005 debut it was that the note-perfect pop was constantly interrupted by rhythmic innovations. The drums cutting through the vocal harmonies was both praised as part of their inventive sound and criticised as difficult to follow, with some critics dismissing the band as part of the ‘angular’ scene.

It is ironic, then, that the very thing that made the debut so interesting should add a note of banality to their follow-up. The tricks of rhythm that pepper Tones of Town have become such a familiar trademark that they fade into the background; fortunately the songwriting that this exposes is wonderful enough to take centre stage.

The playground melodies of upcoming single A House Is Not A Home and Supertramp-influenced piano of Sit Tight and A Gap Has Appeared underline a very British pop sensibility that sits beside the aforementioned inventiveness, especially in the fantastic bass solo that closes In Context.

This will not be the album that catapults Field Music to the heights of their fellow Mackam scenesters Maximo Park and The Futureheads but is all the better for having retained an endearingly knotty intricacy.

Out now.

The breathtaking acoustics of the Cathedral were put to a slightly different use last weekend, as the ambient electronica of Spire filled York Minster. The audience was invited to explore the space in new ways: the performance sandwiched electronic treatments of organ sounds between selections of predominantly twentieth-century organ pieces, lending the vast interior a dream-like quality.

Christian Fennesz’s improvised laptop soundscapes (incorporating the sound of the sea with inspiration drawn from the storm earlier that day) filled the Chapter House; Philip Jeck used two vintage record players and a Casio sampler to loop, scratch and distort organ records, and BJNilsen’s melodic washes of sound inspired one woman to walk sideways in a trance-like state along the front of the nave. The electronic ventures fit perfectly with the organ pieces that were at times as ambient, melodic and discordant as their electronic counterparts.

The final pieces, a fourteenth-century motet first sung, then played on the organ, placed Spire in a tradition of exchange between musical media and its roots in the Middle Ages. In the decorated vastness of the Minster we felt bathed in this history while experiencing its newest creation.

James Morrison tries to melt your brain with his new single as he replaces the upbeat soul of his previous releases with an aptly insipid ‘Christmas Number 1’-geared ballad.

“It’s time to surrender”, he croons in the chorus – no James! NO! We will not give in to your middle-of-the-road musical stodge.

Jeremy Warmsley – Dirty Blue Jeans

Like the musical equivalent of a hyperactive child, Jeremy Warmsley cannot seem to focus his attention on one melody or rhythm for more than a few seconds. The newest single from The Art of Fiction jerks from sublime moment to sublime moment, somehow managing to rise above the fragments with a soaring chorus. Wonderful stuff.

Jamelia – Beware of the Dog

Following the trend of sampling large parts of 80s hits and singing something vaguely associated with the original lyrics over the top (step forward Rihanna…) Jamelia pilfers the good bits from Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus and hollers something empowering and feminist over the top. To put it proverbially – a lot of bark and not much bite.

Lily Allen – Littlest Things

The London belle stops smiling for a while to deliver a collection of her feelings following a break-up. The fairy-tale melody means that it comes across a bit like the sad part in a musical before everything is alright again. This is the sound of the energetic Lily Allen of the summer months deciding to stay in with a bottle of Pinot and have a good moan.

Phunkin DJs ft. Pamela Fernandez – Kickin the Beat

Who needs new rave when old rave still has a pulse? Pamela Fernandez has the classic voice of 90s dance music, so by re-recording the vocal of the 1992 house stomper with the newly assembled Phunkin DJs she’s ready to blow away 2006’s indie dance pretenders. Get in early with the tune that you will be dancing your neon socks off to in Toffs next year.

Gruff Rhys – Candylion

It’s a hard world out there for band members gone solo. For every Robbie Williams there’s a Mel B, and for every Justin Timberlake there’s a Lisa Scott Lee. Fortunately the first single from the Super Furries’ lead singer’s second album is a lovely slice of wistful pop with the cheekiest strings put to record in living memory.