Posted in Album of the Month, Music chat, New Albums, New Tunes, podcast, Spin it or Bin It, Tracks of the Month, Uncategorized

Podcast Episode | Sudan Archives | Natural Brown Prom Queen

Welcome to Episode 68 of This Is Not Happening, an Album of the Month podcast. In Part 1, we do a deep drive review of our Album of the Month. This month Guy brings a Robyn's latest release 'Sexisitential'. In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. This month, the theme is 'Sad Bangers'.           —— Part 1 | Album of the Month | Robyn |  Sexistential ——Robyn is a unique, iconic figure in contemporary music. She's been making and releasing music since 1995, her career spans 4 decades already and she shows no signs of slowing down. Her pop career started when she was 15, she's about to celebrate her 47th birthday, this is insane staying power!Sexistential is her 9th studio album if you count the Body Talk series as full albums? It's only 29 mins long, it doesn't mess about and no track or the album in full overstays it's welcome. There is lots to get into in the discussion, has she still got it? Is she doing new things? Is this still relevant and if so who for? How artists change and what we expect from them as they age?Have a listen, tell us what you think.Listen to the original album here.Watch some of her videos here , particularly the singles from this album.Buy this album or some merch here.  And listen to her talk about the album here.                 —————- Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | Sad Bangers —————- Robyn's biggest track is 'Dancing On My Own' is the archetype of a genre that Guy made up 'Sad Bangers'. This is our theme for Spin It or Bin It this month.  It's got to be sad, and it's got to bang. Simple (in theory).The task is pick a track that fits the theme, the objective, get more 'spins' than your friends. We each pick four tracks for a 16 track play list . We then each pick select 1 track and ask the simple question 'Spin It Or Bin It'?David chose Destroy Everything You Touch by Ladytron.Joey chose 'Teardrops' by Womack and Womack.Guy chose 'Lovesick' by Friendly Fires.Nolan chose 'Blue Monday' by New Order.What would you have chosen? What's missing from our playlist?We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP.68 | Robyn | Sexistential
  2. EP.67 | Eliza | The Darkening Green
  3. EP.66 | Jill Scott | To Whom This May Concern
  4. EP. 65 | Zach Bryan | With Heaven On Top
  5. EP. 64 | Rosalia | LUX

Guess who’s back. Back again. TINH’s back. Tell a friend.

This month, in Part 1 we go deep on this month’s Album of the Month by Sudan Archives. In Part 2 we play ‘Spin It or Bin It’, where we choose a theme and each bring our choice of tracks. This month the theme is ‘Our own personal entrance music’.

Part 1 | Album of the Month | Sudan Archives | Natural Brown Prom Queen

It’s my (Joey’s) choice this month and we’ve gone with a belter of a sophomore album by Sudan Archives that easily claims the best titled album of the year ‘Natural Brown Prom Queen’  

If you’ve not heard it and this inspires you … 

  • Go listen to the album – Here
  • Go watch some videos – Here
  • Go buy some merch – here

(personally I’ve got my eye on the ‘I just wanna get my titties out’ t-shirt –here)

As always we kick off with what we expected from the album and what we got. Then we explore favorite tracks, sequencing of the album, why ‘OMG Britt’ nearly ruined the whole thing for Guy’, the creative process of making the album and the influences that we hear.

We mention a few things that we’d highly recommend checking out, so here are the links;

Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | ‘Our own personal entrance music’

The theme for Spin It or Bin It is a bit different this month. We’re choosing our ‘Entrance Music’ and describing the event or circumstances that we’re entering. If that doesn’t make too much sense, just listen to the episode!  This month, the 4 tracks were …

  1. David chose – Adriano Celentano | L’Unica Chance (plus David’s blog post)
  2. Joey chose – Joey Valance and Brae (Feat. Logic) | Tanaka 2 (plus Joey’s blog post)
  3. Guy chose – The Beastie Boys | Sabotage  (plus Guy’s blog post)
  4. Nolan chose – Macklemore and Ryan Lewis | Can’t Hold Us (plus Nolan’s blog post)

Next Month

The big one! The end of year review. Hold on tight. 
We count down our 10 favourite albums of the year, featuring lots of moaning about David’s album scoring algorithm. We also present our tracks of the year. Can you sum up the year musically in one track? It’s a lot tougher than you’d think.

Other episodes of the pod and 10 years of the blog;

If you enjoyed this episode, please check out the others. If that’s not enough for you then there’s 10 years worth of music discussion on the blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which runs alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. 

Posted in Spin it or Bin It

Song for an Entrance | David

So this month, we’re all choosing a song for our entrance. Our entrance to what? Our own entrance to our biggest party? To our funeral? To our birth? To our wedding? To the beginning of our best DJ set? Well, that’s for us to decide. It’s the moment we arrive, we walk in, we’re wheeled in. It’s our entrance!

I immediately knew what kind of track I wanted to choose, because of my day job. I spend my life collecting tracks that I’d love to use one day in an awesome film or TV script. Of course, it almost never transpires that I get to do that, but it doesn’t stop me imagining. And over the years, I’ve amassed quite a collection. Now and again, I’m either delighted or dismayed (or a bit of both) to see them used in other stuff. Killing Eve’s brilliant use of French Ye-Ye pop, well you can imagine how gutted I was about that!

Anyway, my choice is for an entrance to a fictitious character. A me, but a made-up me. And by sheer coincidence, I actually played this track on this Sunday’s Mondo Pop show. So the Gods are aligned. It was meant to be.

OK, let’s make up some daft scene, off the top of my head. Let’s say it’s 1979, and there’s an English businessman trying to do a deal with the Sicilian Mafia. Thing is, he’s not a businessman, he’s a spy or a diplomat, and the money he’s going to hand over is the first part of an elaborate sting to catch the Mafia head honcho.

So he’s shitting himself. He needs to pull this off. When he gets off the plane to Palermo, and gets in the waiting car, and is driven to the club to meet the man to whom he’s going to hand this money over – this is the song that kicks in as he walks into the club in slo-mo, palms sweaty, eyes fixed straight ahead, trying to keep it cool. Early 70s Italian pop-funk of the highest order, and a song Tarantino would be happy to slide into a soundtrack.

So this is my entrance. It’s the entrance I’m writing for someone who doesn’t exist, in which I get to play the lead role.

And in the meantime, back in the real world, I can at least slip it into our headphones, and walk down the road, in the middle of my own personal movie…