Clubland January

There's something to be said for a sultry, disaffected German vocal electronic tune. The first time they won me over was back in 1983 when Nena's 99Luftballoons filled my ears with it's soft yearning incoherence. One year earlier Falco did the same thing when he cooed cool warnings about cocaine excess with Der Kommissar but I later found out he was Austrian so I'm not sure if that counts. In more recent years the Kompakt Pop series have catered to this penchant of mine for Kraut pop and steely synth tracks.

Peaches Geldof

FAME AND THE GIANT PEACHES
You'd be forgiven for forming an opinion on Peaches Geldof without meeting her. Splashed all over the tabloids, you can chart her ill-mannered escapades and impetuosity almost weekly; a marriage here, a near overdose there, a bitchy jibe sprinkled on top. Dig a little deeper and you can also find a young girl trying to forge her way in the world on her own merits, escape the endless comparisons to her dead mother and perhaps lastly, trying to enjoy a youth that all of the above has so far seemed to deny her.

Clubland 2008 in Review

So another year's diary heads towards obsolescence, presents are bought for nearest and dearest and we here at Real Groove mark off the time by summing up the year that was in music. 2008 has been an interesting year as far as techno and house are concerned. As an inevitable backlash to the rise of minimal that was suddenly branded as big and cool in 2007, house music made a proper comeback this year. It's not a necessarily fair comment to say that house music was foundering before that, because further inspection of some of the keys players this year (label Drumpoet Community, producer Sascha Dive for example) reveals a success achieved in 2008 but groundwork that stretches back many years.

The Killers

As one of the biggest bands in the world puts the finishing touches on album number three Real Groove ponders the cost of being at the top with Brandon Flowers.

If Brandon Flowers isn't guarded, then he's at least being a little bit weary. Arranging himself on a nondescript designer sofa in a roomy hotel suite, he appears coiled, ready for flight, ready for anything but than to answer another run of inquisitions about forthcoming album Day & Age. It is his last interview of three days solid questioning by international press so we can forgive The Killers front man for a certain reticence.

DEADBEAT

These are exciting times we live in. No, no, please keep reading. I'm not going to talk about the US elections. I couldn't give a toss, really. I'm referring to the astounding quality and fair quantity of albums being released that are patiently stacking themselves into my listen-to list this year.

Earlier in the year Sascha Funke, Loco Dice, Minilogue and The Mole all released superb albums. In the latter parts of 2008 we've had substantial additions from Shed, Stefan Goldmann, Headhunter and the topic of today's discussion, Deadbeat, with Roots and Wire.

Alton Ellis

The Godfather of rocksteady, the man with one of the sweetest reggae voices in the business has died from lymphatic cancer at the age of 70.
Despite being a huge influence on other successful artists, Ellis never enjoyed financial prosperity from his many successes. His biggest hit "I'm Still In Love", which he made at Clement "Coxone" Dodd's Studio One label was a source of controversy between the two men, as were the royalties of many of his other songs he recorded there.
Ellis had lived in England since the early seventies continuing to perform and record, though more sporadically. Listening to his music, you couldn't help but feel happy, whether he was singing songs of praise, lover's laments or hymns of repatriation.
R.I.P.

Keane

Rehab, the Berlin record, alternative media and hyping Dead Prez. Hang on, is this Keane we're talking to?

You don't expect soft rockers to have problems. They make their emotional ballads, play them to adoring fans, sit around with a cup of tea afterwards and head off back to the manor for a kip before the next Royal gala show.

Things are never what they seem though; beneath the veneer of culpable tenderness, cracks appear and soon enough large amounts of mind altering intoxicants are needed to keep that veneer in place.

Oasis: Dig Out Your Soul

Can the last great apes of rock pull out another rabbit from their velvet swag bag?

Liam Gallagher has been bounding around the old boozer like a young chimp, his jaunty swagger giving way to near scampering as he ascends and descends the rickety stairs with quad-pedal aplomb. His brachiating calms as he approaches the lounge where Real Groove is already ensconced with Gem Archer and Andy Bell, though it would seem things are off to a bad start as I’m sitting in Liam’s seat. Deferring to the alpha male I shuttle myself over to the couch.

Kerri Chandler

Clubland


Kerri Chandler once said that in order to enjoy your (house) music all you needed was “a basement, a red light and a feeling.” The simple truth spoken many years ago still holds today, as does the career of Mr Chandler, with his ongoing production of impeccable classic house cuts and a slight tweaking of that red light into a red laser.
House music in 2008 is seeing a renaissance, partly thanks to a backlash against formulaic minimal-by-numbers releases finally reaching a point of unsustainable dehydration. It's not that house music went away or anything, just that more DJ's are switching back to something a little more hefty in the soul department for their sets.

14 Tracks

It's a fast paced world out there. Too fast to nestle down to the computer night and day to forage for hidden delicacies of the musical variety, let alone group a bunch of them together in one silken, sonorous swag bag.
Good thing is, there's someone out there doing it for you.
14 Tracks is an affiliate of the mighty Boomkat on-line store out of Manchester. Those gorgeous little dance-wise goblins serve up weekly release sheets of the top end techno, dubstep, far out electronica and experimental whateverness. Most of it is on a dub tip, all of it quality.
Anyway back to 14 Tracks. Subscribe to this modern marvel of the new musical age and get a slippery electronic slice of mail inserted into your inbox on a weekly basis, updating you on the latest fourteen nuggets of sound gear assiduously assembled on whatever that weeks theme may be.
The best of dubstep, the most coveted covers, rootical radness, Kompakt's finest moments... the list goes on. A single track will run you 99p, the whole bunch you can net for a measly £6.86. As for the quality of the tracks selected, well just go to the site and find out.
Utterly ridonkulous!