Tag: dance

Posted in Album of the Month, New Albums, Uncategorized

AOTM | Honey | Caribou

Posted on by misterstory

I feel like I drew the short straw here. We have an artist that we all love and they have a new album out, easy right? Slam dunk. Everyone’s happy and we all have a 60 minute love-in on the pod about how amazing Dan Snaith (aka Caribou, aka Manitou, aka Daphni) is …

… wrong.

Dan goes and throws a curve ball (in some peoples opinion, in others, he follows an evolutionary path that he set out three albums ago) and release an album that I would argue not many people expected. I think a quick Caribou re-cap is in order;

  • Dan Snaith, Canadian dude who makes music and aligns these with 3 identities … but to keep this simple we’ll focus on 2 if thats ok?
  • Caribou is the identity that he tends to release hyper intelligent, elevated pop music with an electronic leaning (but TBF indulges many genres and sub-genres across it’s 6 albums). Caribou has traditionally been music for the headphones, the bedroom, the soul.
  • Daphni is where Dan embraces the elecronic more and specifically embraces the dancefloor, this has traditionally music for the club.
  • We all love Caribou.
  • We have different favourite Caribou albums.
  • This is important as I think what we expect or want from Caribou has a significant impact on our relationship with Honey.

Honey is Caribou’s 6th album. And it is different. But every Caribou album is pretty different. Andorra is 60’s Pysch Pop reinvented for the latter half of the naughties. Swim is my favourite Caribou album and is entirely different from Andorra in every way save for it’s inherent ‘Caribouness’. Anyone, any music fan especially, would be able to at least notice, if not describe the similarities between Andorra and Swim despite it’s significant differences. I resonated so strongly with Swim that I was almost in tears when Our Love was released. I was so disappointed. It literally took me years to come to terms with the album. I love it now. I don’t play it that often but I grew to love it and now recognise it’s inherent ‘Caribouness’ but I had a BIG, negative emotional response to it. I had a ‘mini-tanti’ as Hugh Grant calls it (basically he had a melt down on live US TV) … I had mine in Urmston, Trafford. ‘Suddenly’ was very much in line with ‘Our Love’ and was no surprise. It had ‘inherent Caribouness’ and followed a line from Our Love but was also a massive departure from Andorra in one direction and Swim from another.

Honey is another massive departure. It is 12 short tracks of very electronic music. They feel in one way, more Daphni than Caribou in that they feel more club focused … but they’re also all 3 min pop songs (more Caribou leaning?). There is pop brilliance and shine and it feels like it’s made for the radio as much as the club. I am not sure what radio but the tracks follow pop rules more than they follow dance floor rules (discuss)?

So, Dan is embracing the club. But he’s retaining the pop? For me, the album as a whole features much ‘inherent Caribouness’ but this is unevenly distributed across the tracks. With some feeling much less inherently Caribou, and in some people’s opinions, not Caribou at all.

We’ve already, mostly drawn our lines of battle.

On one side …

  • This is a great album.
  • If it was made by anyone else we’d be saying, it’s great, it makes me feel fucking old but it’s great.
  • It is inherently Caribou, you just have to work for that a little more than other albums.

On the other side …

  • … Well, some pretty uncomplimentary things.
  • ‘this is not for me’ vibes
  • Not a Caribou album.
  • ‘Like being attacked by toddlers with Protools’

I get both sides but align with the former.

Let’s touch briefly on AI cause it feels like I have to. Dan uses AI tools to alter his voice. This is freaking some people out. It isn’t freaking me out. I don’t care. Musicians have been altering their voices for as long as they could, with what ever tools they had access too. For me this is a distraction. I don’t care. But I also get that some feel very strongly about this so we will defo discuss it at some length on the blog. My side of that conversation will be short … unless I get drawn into it.

I thought it would be The Power Ballad Themed ‘Spin It or Bin It’ that might divide us … but it appears that it is one of our favourite artists (and AI) that might do that! I am half dreading, half looking forward to the chat on the pod.

Come at me bros.

Posted in Album of the Month, New Albums, podcast

Podcast Episode 32 | Raven | Kelela

Posted on by misterstory

EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025 – This Is Not Happening – An Album Of The Month Podcast

Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025
  2. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes
  3. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey
  4. EP.60 | Wet Leg | Moisturizer
  5. EP.59 | Little Simz | Lotus

In Part 1 we explore the mesmerising (but opinion dividing) 2nd album by Kelela, ‘Raven’.   In Part 2 we play ‘Spin it or bin it?’ … but do we really? The theme this month is our favourite De La Soul tracks … is anyone really going to bin a De La Soul track?

Part 1 | Album of the Month | Kelela | Raven

It’s Joey’s choice this month and we’re focusing on an intriguing, vibe of an album called Raven by Ethopian-American artist Kelela. It’s 15 tracks, over an hour and plays out like a late-90s, early-00’s post club mix tape. There’s lots of opinions on this album, in the critical sphere they’re almost universally (really) positive, the album being on of the best reviewed albums of the year. However, its a 100%, unquestioning love-in on This Is Not Happening.

  • Go listen to the album – Here
  • Go watch some videos – Here
  • Go buy some of their stuff – Here

A few ‘Raven’ that we highly recommend checking out;

  • A really interesting review of the album by BPM – Here
  • ‘Unmistakably Black’ interview with Mixmag – Here
  • Live Jimmy Fallen performance of ‘Enough for Love’ – Here

Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | De La Soul tribute

After the sad passing of Trugoy the Dove, we pay tribute to De La Soul. This is the 1st time that the question ‘spin it or bin it’ is completely redundant.

  1. Nolan chose – Stakes is High
  2. Guy chose – So No Go
  3. David chose – Trying People
  4. Joey chose – I am I be

Check out our 16 track De La Soul tribute playlist (4 tracks each) can be found – Here (this is a good one!)

Next Month

In part 1Nolan brings ‘Fuse’ by Everything But the Girl as our Album of the Month, in Part 2 we play ‘Spin it or bin it’ with new tracks for the last 3 months.

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

Podcast Ep. 26 | Hot Chip | Freakout Release

Posted on by misterstory

EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025 – This Is Not Happening – An Album Of The Month Podcast

Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025
  2. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes
  3. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey
  4. EP.60 | Wet Leg | Moisturizer
  5. EP.59 | Little Simz | Lotus

We’re back again this month with our usual format. In Part 1 we go deep on Hot Chip’s latest album, 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 ‘Dance-Pop’.

Part 1 | Album of the Month | Hot Chip | Freakout/Release

It’s Guy’s choice this month and he chooses the one of his favourite band’s latest release. It’s always interesting when one of us chooses a band that they love and have loads of history with. 

Listen to the album – Here

The chat focuses around our initial impressions, favourite tracks, the difficulty of maintaining relevance and engagement on your 8th album … and we all have something to say on the sequencing of tracks on this album.

Guy has curated a 28 track playlist called ‘Hot Chip’s Hot Hits’ – have a listen to it here

During the chat there were loads of references to Hot Chip side projects, here are a few links for you to check out;

Part 2 | Spin It or Bin It | We all choose a Dance-Pop Track

In tribute to Hot Chip, the theme for Spin It or Bin It this month is Dance-Pop. Over the course of the month we all create a play list of our favourite Dance-Pop, a shortlist of 4 tracks and then choose a track to delight (or in my case annoy) the team. This month, the 4 tracks were …

  1. Nolan chose – Robyn | Dancing On My Own
  2. Guy chose – Cassius | The Sound of Violence
  3. Joey chose – The Knife | Pass This On
  4. David chose – Soulwax | NY Excuse 

The 16 track playlist of each of our 4 shortlisted tracks can be found here and it’s a belter!

Next Month

I (Joey) will be running the show and hosting the discussion on Sudan Archive’s 2nd album – Natural Brown Prom Queen

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. So check them out so to see what we like and where we clash, and comment if something catches your eye. We’d love to hear what you think

Posted in podcast

Podcast Episode 18 – Our Top 10 Albums of the Year 2021

Posted on by David Allison

EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025 – This Is Not Happening – An Album Of The Month Podcast

Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
  1. EP. 63 | Our Top 10 Albums of 2025
  2. EP. 62 | Juniper | Joy Crookes
  3. EP.61 | Blood Orange | Essex Honey
  4. EP.60 | Wet Leg | Moisturizer
  5. EP.59 | Little Simz | Lotus

This Is Not Happening‘s 2021 comes to an end with a look back at the many musical highs of a memorable 2021 and count down our top ten  albums of the year. Despite the many challenges musicians have been facing in making music in a pandemic, it’s been a truly exceptional year,  from the likes of Wolf Alice, Japanese Breakfast, Arlo Parks, Billie Eilish, The Weather Station and many others, but there’s only room for one winner – who’s it going to be?

We’ll also be nominating our tracks of the year, from a very tough long list of amazing records. Here are our our 4 monster fave tracks of 2021, one from each of us, below. 

Guy: Feu! Chatteron – Écran Total
Nolan: Gheist – We Are Not Alone
David: Royce Wood Jr – Slush
Joey: Billie Eilish – Happier Than Ever

The full top 10s and playlists and all our music discussions over the last ten years can be found on the blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which will run alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. So check them out so to see what we like and where we clash, and comment if something catches your eye. We’d love to see what you think.  You can also find our longer tracks of the year here on Spotify.


Episode #19 will see us take on one of 2021’s most underrated albums – Joy Crookes‘s incredible debut Skin –  and we’ll be delving deep into it in January. The episode will land in the second half of January.

This Is Not Happening:
Created by Joey, Nolan, Guy and David.
Produced and Edited by Guy and Nolan.
Twitter: @thisisnothapng
Instagram: @thisisnothappeningpod
Email: thisisnothappeningpodcast@whyohwhyohwhy

This Is Not Happening Albums Of The Year.
Posted in New Tunes

Róisín goes Crooked….

Posted on by GuyHornsby

We all love Róisín. Who doesn’t love Róisín? (We won’t get on). And we all loved Róisín Machine. But there was never just one version of each track, so there’s another entirely different version of the album out there.

The amazing DJ Parrot, aka Crooked Man, Murphy’s long-time collaborator, has now released a new version of the whole thing, a sort of bastard after-party of Róisín Machine. And MY GOD, IT IS GOOD. If it was a month ago, I’d have been tempted to AOTM it… This is just one of the amazing tracks, a swirling rework of Kingdom Of Ends. ♥️♥️♥️♥️

Posted in Music chat, New Tunes

Bicep – Atlas

Posted on by GuyHornsby

As Nolan’s mentioned, we’ve had some new Bicep in our lives for a while and that’s a prelude to a new album in January. Three tracks – Apricot, Saku and Atlas – this is the latter and (just) my favourite of the three, but really they’re all superb cuts that gets me excited about the new album. Of course, they just make me want to get onto a dark dancefloor, so it’s tinged with sadness too, but I think that’s just life right now. Those first few parties are going to be incredible, so that’s the light at the end of my tunnel.

Posted in Mixtapes

Nolan Kane – Summer Sounded

Posted on by nolankane706

I did a mix a while back with the tracks I was feeling last summer; but I forgot to post it. Hope you enjoy it brothers!

Tracklist:

Life On Planets – Apollo
Daphni – Face To Face
LCD Soundsystem – I Used Tp (Dixon Edit)
Crazy P – One True Light
Peggy Gou – It Makes You Forget
Aleksandir – Yamaha
Ebo Taylor, Pat Thomas & Henrik Schwarz -Eye Nyam Nam ‘A’ Mensuro (Henrik Schwarz Blend)
Krystal Klear – Neutron Dance
Kink – Perth
Maribou State – Turnmills

Posted in Album of the Month

September – Chris

Posted on by GuyHornsby

Yes, I’m late, but it’s worth it, I hope. This album is the first artist to land a second AOTM, and after the effect the first had on all of us, it seemed almost too obvious to revisit it when there’s so much other music around. However, it’s actually a choice that makes so much sense, because really, there’s a definitive break from the past, and perhaps the appearance of one of the most exciting pop music artists for a long while.

So, what did we learn from Christine And The Queens’ sparkling debut in 2016? An album that was a spring sleeper hit (two years after it surfaced in France), relaunched in a post-Brexit haze where we all needed some musical escapism. In my case, I was one of those wandering around in a teary, beery, existentialist haze at Glastonbury whose day was transformed by one of those ‘moments’ that makes the festival so magical. Christine And The Queens’ set on the Other Stage as the rain fell was one that’ll stay long in the memory. There’s no way a French artist complete with slickly choreographed dancers should’ve melted muddy hearts but Tilted, iT, Narcissus Is Back and Here were pop music of the absolute finest. Rubbery synths, crisp percussion, and beguiling vocals singing about love and loss that sounded as enticing in English as in French. A star was born. But… what next?

The answer, flippantly, would be ‘Chris’. But for Héloïse Letissier it was more than just a change of title. The relentless touring and punishing nightly dance moves had transformed her into a leaner being, and with her success came sexual conquests too, but not man or woman, more whichever took her fancy. Pansexuality, freedom and inspiration. Yet the sonic inspiration for Chris – ‘Christine’s androgynous, confident, male-world-view alter-ego – harks back to the 80s and 90s, where r’n’b was in a renaissance with Michael and Janet Jackson at the fore. You can almost hear the Jam and Lewis influence in tracks like Girlfriend and Doesn’t Matter. But it’s original, punchy hooks and oblique lyrical references that are all her own rather than borrowed from the past, as she explores pansexual conquests from the side of the male gaze.

The result is an album that feels it could only be made by a French artist, such is the ambition, and openly artistic musings that would be sniffed at in England. A staggeringly individual collection of songs where Letissier writes, performs and produces almost every single note, and that should fire her even higher into the pop firmament. Fantastique!

Posted in New Tunes

Powerdance – String Groove

Posted on by GuyHornsby

This is dead good. In fact all their stuff is. Check out Power Dance too. But then you’d expect that when it’s Luke Solomon, Nick Mauer (of Greenskeepers fame) and a certain Al Doyle amongst others.

Like Disco: like Powerdance.