Intrigue & Stuff - More new music I have.

Where to start given that this is about ostensibly UK - perhaps even English - music?  It is clear that music which is at least in part electronic is going to play a big part in trends in the UK in 2011 - the incredible achievements of Adele notwithstanding.
I'm going to start with the stranger option - from an artist much older than the others that I'm likely to mention - it has just been released and comes to us from Stockport via Berlin. In 2009 James Leyland Kirby released, in three tranches each of four sides of 12" vinyl, a stupendous collection of ambient, entirely lyric-free, electronica.
It was not mainstream - to put it mildly although it is now available on 3 x CD - but, for me at least, it fitted perfectly with the all-pervading mood of economic gloom and despondency at that time.
He has just returned with a follow up - which I believe is to be the first of a four-part collection, each on a single 12" - entitled 'Intrigue & Stuff - Part 1'. You have been warned. It also has award-winning cover artwork...

It is not likely to see you and friends - if you still have any after playing it - dancing around your vinyl player. In fact it might well be just as tentatively cheering as the post-Soviet glimmers of hopes of reform in Cuba; so don't think that it is going to be influenced by the likes of Buena Vista Social Club. If so much as a quiver in a Stalinist rictus is evident then that will have to count as progress.
  
Such considerations are probably not those that preoccupy the latest two widely-known frontrunners in UK electronic/dub-step-influenced music. My personal opinion is that Katy B will prove the winner out of these two in 2011 but their rivalry should prove to be for the good of all.

On A Mission - Katy B

Who You Are - Jessie J

    

I have listened to both albums in their entirety quite a few times now and my comment is not really to do with the music or its performance from track to track and artist to artist, although of course I have my favourites (on both albums) and I was immediately made to take notice by their respective lead singles.

  

Perhaps the clue is in the album titles - On A Mission appears to me to have a much clearer sense of what the artist set out to achieve while Who You Are has a slightly scattered feel - that of attempting to be something to as many people as possible.

No lyric, no track list, no future?

This apparently rather depressing resumé of the 2009 trilogy by James Leyland Kirby should not put you off the 3-CD set (or indeed the 12 sides of 12" vinyl if you can find it). There are no lyrics at all and, what perhaps I did not mention before, there is no track list either.

In fact it is not obvious what the three instalments are called...  certainly not on the CD version from which the above artwork is taken.  They are, however, thus:

• When We Parted My Heart Wanted To Die
• Sadly The Future Is No Longer What It Was
• Memories Live Longer Than Dreams

Thanks to whosoever asked about this just now.  I don't actually find this at all depressing and it opened my ears and consciousness to a whole genre of music that hitherto I would most probably have simply ignored. What was the catalyst? I don't really know, just curiosity I suppose.

It is not easy music for sharing but, given the luxury of two-and-a-half  hours of uninterrupted listening, it is magnificent in its entirety. It looks like being a cold, cold weekend and the thought of curling up in front of a coal fire and doing exactly this seems very appealing indeed. Music matters.