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Milo - Joff Winks Band

I've been meaning to blog this one for a while. I took a trip down to Oxford with my friend Sam (another kiwi) whose mate Andy used to pick the choons at XFM.

These days, among other things, Andy's the manager of Joff Winks Band.

Joff's a talented popsmith with one foot firmly in the jazzier end of Steely Dan's repertoire, a fondness for time signatures, an appreciation of complex chords, an ear for a good pop tune, a great vocal register for this kind of material and a kick-ass tight band.



They were great live, and they've been working on their website (I took about half of the photos in their gallery).

Joff and Andy said it was okay to put Milo up on The Wireless for you to download. Not my favourite song on the album (though it's my second favourite chorus) -- but live, it blew the roof off.

The story goes that it's about a young teenager flicking through the mass-produced pop trash on his mp3 player, and thinking 'Hold on -- there must be something else'... before (somehow) stumbling upon a Mahavishnu Orchestra track, thereby opening his eyes to a whole new world of musical possibility.

Download: Milo - Joff Winks Band

Have a read of the article in Nightshift magazine [pdf link], which is renowned for it's cruelly and hilariously cutting reviews. Joff and co. come out pretty much unscathed.

It's a really smart and good-sounding record -- a bit of a grower too, which is a good sign -- and you can get it on iTunes.

Just wish they'd come up with a better name for the group.

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Side one, track one

Okay, so this is out of step with my occasional mp3 posts, but you can start to expect a few changes to this blog (yet again) soon, so let's call this a toe in the water.

I've been messing with iTunes this evening, as I do from time to time. I really love what you can do with the smart playlists, where you can invent your own rules and just generally mess about with the whole thing.

Set up the conditions, light the fuse and stand clear.

One that I'm listening to tonight, which I sort of developed by accident, uses a number of conditions to make a really pleasant and surprising collection of songs... and sort of resembles the way I used to listen to records on a particularly attention deficit evening in my teen years (though without leaving record sleeves all over the lounge floor).

I've chosen just three of my 20-odd genres: Rock, Pop & Indie. I've left the jazz, r&b, funk & soul, reggae, ambient, electronic, hip hop, reggae, classical and everything else aside for the moment.

I've chosen songs that are between 2 and 5 minutes long. Songs must be from artist's albums, not compilations. Songs are from Disc 1 if from a 2-or-more-disc set. Songs are all track 1 on the album. Nothing before 1970. Nothing less than 192kbps.

What this does is it means I get only one song (the first track) from 'legitimate' (non-compilation) records, and only then if I have reasonable quality versions. I wasn't after too much eclecticism tonight, so I kept it rock/pop flavoured, but even so, as you'll see, I still managed a bit of diversity.

I couldn't work out how to get only one album from each artist -- though I'll give the matter some thought. For the moment, I'm just skipping artists I've already heard from tonight.

Surprisingly, only 700-odd tracks fit the criteria, so that playlist might find its way onto the iPod.

Although I'll lose cool points left, right and centre here, the resulting playlist was actually very pleasant.

This has been the soundtrack of my quiet Monday night:

Touch Sensitive - The Fall (The Marshall Suite)
The Lacemaker - This Mortal Coil (Blood)
Dissidents - Thomas Dolby (The Flat Earth)
Heartattack and Vine - Tom Waits (Bounced Checks)
Babooshka - Kate Bush (Never For Ever)
Coming Home - Richard Hawley (Richard Hawley)
Making Plans For Nigel - XTC (Drums and Wires)
Woncha Come On Home - Joan Armatrading (Show Some Emotion)
Tired of Hanging Around - The Zutons (Tired of Hanging Around)
All I Want - Joni Mitchell (Blue)
Not Yet - The Veils (Nux Vomica)
Love Burns - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC)
Wild Night - Van Morrison (Tupelo Honey)
New Day Rising - Husker Du (New Day Rising)
Finest Worksong - REM (Document)
Drain Cosmetics - Serena-Maneesh (Serena-Maneesh)
The Headmaster Ritual - The Smiths (Meat Is Murder)
Walk On - Neil Young (On The Beach)
Boogey Man - The Bats (Fear of God)
Because You're Frightened - Magazine (The Correct Use Of Soap)
Show Me - ABC (The Lexicon of Love)
Black Mirror - Arcade Fire (Neon Bible)
Danger - The Motels (Careful)
Here Comes A City - The Go-Betweens (Oceans Apart)
Wipe Me, I'm Lucky - The Clean (Unknown Country)
Wolf Like Me - TV On The Radio (Return To Cookie Mountain)
Fascist Groove Thing - Heaven 17 (Penthouse and Pavement)
Kid Charlemagne - Steely Dan (The Royal Scam)
Blue Bell Knoll - Cocteau Twins (Blue Bell Knoll)
Tiger Force Anthem - Tiger Force (A Wasp in a Jar)
Sky Saw - Brian Eno (Another Green World)

Not songs you'd probably put together deliberately, but as with so many of these seemingly randomised collections of music, they speak to you, because they reflect back little microcosms of your own musical history.

The computer's ablilty to pleasantly surprise within very specific and rigorous guidelines is one of the best features of a piece of software like iTunes. It's the sort of enjoyment I think I used to get from music radio before everyone became frightened of surprise and delight.

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