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/
Welcome to Episode 64 of This Is Not Happening. An Album of the Month podcast.
In Part 1, we review and Album of the Month. This month Joey brings perhaps the most critically acclaimed album of 2025, Rosalia’s ‘LUX’.
In Part 2, we play Spin It or Bin It, we pick a theme and all pick songs that represent that theme. As it’s January and everybody is back in the gym or re-starting running program’s we’ve picked ‘songs to get injured to’.
_______________________Part 1 | Album of the Month | Rosalia | LUX________________________
This is a big one. Big in many ways. Massively popular, globally. But more importantly MASSIVE in scope, scale and ambition. Rosalia’s 4th album takes a major turn from the reggaeton, digital urgency of Motomami. This a symphonic, spiritual, complex and challenging collection of songs presented in 4 movements (if you’re on vinyl). It requires you to focus, engage and consume with purpose.
It’s undeniable that it is ambitious, its brilliance is clear … but will any of us actually like it? Does it make you want to listen to it? Are you drawn to come back to it?
Check out the Zane Lowe interview with Rosalia here.
___________________Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | Songs To Get Injured To _____________________
New Year New Me. The gyms are packed. People are begging to get injured. What should you chose as your soundtrack to that achilles rupture or that rotator cuff tear? The answer is probably in this 16 track play list that we created.
We each pick 4 tracks for the playlist and submit 1 track and ask the simple question ‘Spin It Or Bin It’?
Time was when you could bank on a new Chemical Brothers album every few years, like a gift transported from some muddy field or mega rave somewhere in the UK right to your cranium. They have spent the last two and half decades making music that often assaulted the senses, and live they’re an act that not only cracks your eardrums, but imprints images in your head that you may not always want to remember: their visuals are memorable, and often overwhelming. Just look at the video above (and add it to Do It Again (Live) for starters) and you get the picture. However, much as I love their music and have never had a Chems album that I’ve not liked, after 2010’s Born In The Echoes (itself a comparatively long five years after 2010’s Further) I wasn’t sure we’d even get another record from them.
Ed left them as a live outfit in 2015, and though visual collaborator Adam Smith admirably filled in – they were still incredible at Glastonbury in 2015, where I buzzed to them in their traditional Sunday night Other Stage slot – it felt like it may be the end of a road for a band that pretty much taught me how to dance in a field. In fact as a band, they’ve pretty much soundtracked – like anyone else of *cough* a certain age – my entire raving lifespan. Exit Planet Dust came out a whopping 24 (yes, TWENTY FOUR) years ago, but it blew my socks off then and still sounds absolutely crisp and fresh as it did then. Named after their previous Dust Brothers moniker (they reputedly nicked it from Beastie Boys producers, never thinking they’d ever be successful enough for it to matter) the album introduced us to many Chemical Brothers staples: acid 303s, growling leads, huge drum fills, sampled vocals, guitar licks and whooshing, discombobulating sounds and melodies. It wasn’t all eye-popping peak-time bangers though, because they have also made a name making more blissed-out tracks (see One Too Many Mornings from that very album) and seeking out collaborations with artists that fitted their unique template.
I say unique ironically, as one criticism through their hugely successful career has been an accusation – lazy, in my opinion – that they keep making the same record or that they’re unoriginal. I think that would be on firmer ground if a) anyone else consistently sounded like them and b) there wasn’t the great variation within their sound across all their albums. Some of the songs I most love from the last 30 years of electronic music (and that I still own on vinyl) are from the Chems: It Began In Afrika, Come With Us, The Golden Path, Hey Boy Hey Girl, Chemical BeatsOut Of Control and The Private Psychedelic Reel (god, I’m getting nostalgic here) and of course their enduring work with Q-Tip, Galvanize and Go (two of my favourite tracks). They sounded amazing, their videos were groundbreaking (I still love watching Hey Boy, and thinking ‘oh, I used to dance there’) and live they were almost unrivalled in the electronic music scene. I’ve seen them live half a dozen times, and they’ve never disappointed. Though I still wish I’d been to Red Rocks.
So the news that Ed was back and a new album was coming left me with mixed feelings. Was it going to be up to their standard? And if not, should you bow out gracefully? We’re not getting any younger, and it’s a long time since we were freewheeling hedonists in the 90s and 00s. Of course, i shouldn’t have worried. Even if there is a little of the law of diminishing returns in play, a few listens to No Geography and it feels like slipping on an old pair of jeans. And I still get that Proustian rush back to some memorable live experiences as soon as those familiar sounds fill the ears. The fact they’ve made it with just the kit from their early albums feels a nice pushback against the over-compressed, quantized, perfectly melodic electronic music we’ve been bred into these days.
I hope it gets them some new fans too. I know they’re touring, and I know I’ll want to go. And part of me feels a bit sad that younger crew today won’t get to hear Hey Boy Hey Girl for the first time back when, and this ‘what the FUCK it this’? Whatever you may think of them, few have lasted as long as they have, and there’s a reason for that.
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