Today's Spotify playlist:

10 Songs - I used to bounce around the Mayfair to

featuring Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Whales, Rocket from the Crypt and other teenage loves.

Nothing like the music from your youth to make you feel young again.

Just when I think I'm about ready to give up on music, I get another spurt of inspiration. I've completed two remixes this week...one for Icarus and one for Alice Russell. The former will be out soon on Danish label Rump and I'm hoping the latter will make the grade, especially since it was way out of my comfort zone and I quite like where it ended up.

I've not been buying much music lately, mostly due to an extreme lack of money and a little because of a lack of inspiration in choices. There are lots of things I know I should check out, like Grouper and the new Xela album...but I really miss going to Smallfish and properly soaking in the tunes before sticking my cash down.

What I have done, however, is get stuck into Spotify. Much has been written in both the online and offline media about this revolutionary service but I've only been using it a month or so and am already an evangelist. What I particularly like are the playlisting system, and the vast array of classical music available on the service, which I work and chill to almost every day. I've even found all kinds of gems on there, like a recording of The Musicall Banquet on ECM that I never knew about, and the very cool bits of minimalism that I've found. We are, I'm very happy to announce, present and correct.

If you haven't checked it out yet, then I strongly suggest you do.

I'm going to start a regular series of playlist postings called 10 songs. basically 10 songs in a particular theme (kind of stolen off Boomkat but fair play...:o)

Firstly, 10 Early Music Classics:

http://open.spotify.com/user/dtnl/playlist/7nwx4iX6TwmkCgniJQvcnZ

There are a lot of reasons why I haven't kept this blog up as much as I'd like to. Primarily, I'm just out of the habit I guess. I'm largely a creature of habit, not least when making music, so if I stop for a while, it's hard to get the momentum going again.

...and anyway, isn't the web full enough of ego-centric communication methods? My wife doesn't indulge at all in things like this and I think often wonders where exactly I get off thinking that anybody would be remotely interested in anything about me, and why I would need to maintain so many methods of broadcasting the minutae of my life. But there you go I suppose...Andy Digitonal in all-about-me shocker.

Speaking of which, I just did an interview for a Russian music magazine :o) I don't quite discuss what I am doing RIGHT NOW, but it's pretty close...

I have another excuse which might fly a bit stronger...I'm going to be a dad in July. Aside from the sheer terror at the enormity of the responsibility, I have felt a distinct need, also not shared by my wife, to consume media, including the bewildering array of "dad blogs". I've always tried to avoid this blog becoming a single issue thing (plus I'm not a great diarist), but I can already imagine that it's going to be unavoidable talking about a range of daddy-related subjects in the coming months. Apologies in advance...I am destined for Competetive Dad Syndrome I suspect :o)

And so the music industry continues it's desperate slide into collapse. It really does feel like we're standing on the Titanic right now. Other blogs comment on this more effectively, but it's been very frustrating for me to experience this with my own output...the collapse of Pinnacle really, really screwed us badly. It's still (as of time of writing) not really possible to buy our album, either physically or digitally and so there's little point in my bitching about blogs or torrents when people that actually want to buy, can't. The label have sorted out a new distribution channel and have been working hard to sort it, but the sheer time these things can take is immensely frustrating and there are times when I wish I'd just DIYd the whole thing. But then I like the culture of record labels, of artwork and of the album...

That said, Spotify is perhaps the solution the industry has been looking for. Sam and I certainly use it daily now and it's one of those great bits of tech that just works. I'm definitely a great fan and still trying to convince the label that we should be on it.

We'll see.

Off to Bloc in my rave DJ guise this weekend (and for a final weekend with the boys before fatherhood!) and will tweet throughout the weekend. Follow it here.

"Leave him...pick me..."

:o)

A year or so ago I did a short mix of Christmas Carols for the now sadly defunct mixdownloads community. It went down very well and recently I have recieved many emails asking for a copy of it. Since I couldn't find the original file, I thought I'd recreate it and take the opportunity to expand and resequence it a little, as well as seek out better recordings of some of the tracks.

Now titled Lullaby, because most of the carols are actually rocking songs and lullabies for the infant Jesus Christ, this is a collection of some slightly more leftfield carols than the usual hymns that are sung at Christmas. So no holly and ivy or O Come (thank heavens), but a selection of mostly English carols and rocking songs, some in contemporary or unusual arrangements.

Many will be no doubt familiar to those that, like me, sang in choirs in their youths, but I've chosen them all for their particular beauty. Although not remotely religious myself, I am consistently moved and inspired by the music created by faithful devotion, especially at very sacred times of year like this, and if nothing else, it's a uniquely moving and peaceful collection of tracks which has soundtracked many a Christmas night for me.

Merry Christmas!

Stream and download a 192kbps MP3 at Postbocks