The Day The Earth Stood Still

1. Air - Don't Be Light (Neptunes Remix)

2. Prince - The Greatest Romance Ever Sold (Neptunes Remix) ft. Q-Tip

3. Elan - Seeing Things

4. Cardan - Feelin' It

5. Alana Davis - Bye Bye

6. Shea Seger - Clutch (Neptunes Remix)

7. TLC - In Your Arms Tonight

8. Usher - I Heard A Rumor

9. Krayzie Bone - Who's House?

10. Maxi Priest - Mary's Got A Baby (Neptunes Remix) ft. Beenie Man

11. Beenie Man - Feel It Girl ft. Joe

12. Basement Jaxx - Romeo (Neptunes Remix)

13. Cole - I Can Do Too (Neptunes Remix) ft. Queen Latifah

14. 702 - I Still Love You

15. Total - When Boy Meets Girl

16. Keystone - The Day The Earth Stood Still

17. Ben Harper And The Innocent Criminals - Steal My Kisses (Neptunes Beat Box Remix)

18. Foxy Brown - Magnetic ft. Pharrell

19. Sleepy Brown - Life Of  a Hustler ft. Big Boi and Pharrell

Now this is more like it. This one has a theme. It is thought out and considered. The Day The Earth Stood Still is a curated mix of smooth Neptunes rarities and remixes and the chances of any one person having heard more than a handful of these songs individually without being a complete Neptunes stan are almost zero. 10 years later I am still quite proud of this selection, there are only a few changes I would consider making now. It should be noted that a great number of these tracks I would never had come across myself either if it wasn't for the good people at the Grindin.org forum.

Chad and Pharrell's re-working of Air's 10,000 Hz Legend single Don't Be Light is a strong opener. The original is a excellent cut from an underrated album but what the Neps did with it took it to another level. Before we hear anything else Pharrell whispers 'Ready?', it echoes softly and then the slightly pitched up vocal sample comes in; 'Don't. Be. Light.' which Pharrell harmonizes with and then repeats. Some piano, a strummed guitar and squelching synth syncopate gently as the vocals repeat the back and forth before Pharrell shouts 'DON'T BE LIGHT!' and then the drums kick in, as tight and snappy as they always are with Williams and Hugo at the boards, and they are joined by a phat bassline. It is one of my favourite ever beat drops. Like top 20 of all time.

Aside from the originals vocal samples very little else is kept, it is instead replaced by some whistling, (sometimes barely audible) vocal ad-libs, detailed synthesizer, piano and guitar parts and other odd sound effects and flourishes dotted around the track. Pharrell is on full creepy, freak mode, his whispered vocals are full of obscenities and sexual menace. The whole track becomes a bizarre blend of eerie and sinister with a funky vibe. But it works. Startlingly well. 20 seconds before it finishes all the instrumentation drops out leaving just the vocal samples and Pharrell quietly pleading innocence, telling us he's 'not sick', ashamed of the depravity of what he's done for a second before fading out. Whatever he's been up to sounds awful but it sounded very good indeed.

And then Prince croons in a way only he could, 'the greatest romance...' A single from his largely forgettable 1999 album Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic; The Greatest Romance Ever Sold is an exceptional song. It is a testament to the man and his catalogue that a song this good could be released as a single and still not really be considered generally as one of his greatest hits. Of course at the time he was The Artist Formally Known As Prince or  and he was nowhere near his peak creatively nor popularity wise. It only climbed to number 65 in the UK charts. Baffling considering how hook-laden and lush the soulful RnB ballad is.

It is a shame that Prince and The Neptunes never got in the studio together but at least we have this superior remix. A tantalising indicator at what might have been. After the brief acapella intro, funky drums and some piano dominate in the verses. That trademark snappy snare is high in the mix. Prince's vocal is left intact but the song becomes almost a duet with Q-Tip as they split the verses, Pharrell back at the ad-libs and some backing vocals. A lot of the drama of the original instrumental is ditched in favour of the future-funk The Neptunes made their name on but the middle eight features some synthesized string stabs to lift it and the vocals in the chorus have all the drama the song needs. I really love this tune. Man, I miss Prince.

At first some light symbol taps are the only accompaniment to Elan's voice on the intro to the next track on the disc, Seeing Things, as he ponders if 'this is all a dream'. He is then joined by some simple synthn chords. Signiture Neps stuff. Elan Atias is a Jewish American Reggae singer, one of I'm guessing... em... some? It may just be him and Matisyahu in this particular field. He'd been an off and on member of The Wailers for many years but this song it seems is the unreleased original mix of a track from his also unreleased debut solo album All Roads. It has another great Neptunes beat drop, those snappy snares once again and a wickedly stuttery rhythm. The vocals are beautifully produced and Pharrell vocally lurks at the fringes in the same way he has mostly done so far in this compilation. A post chorus bridge layers a second plinky synth part on top as he questions if the woman he is seeing might be a mirage. This is why he doesn't get high no more. An infectious rarity that earworms its way around my skull from time to time.

Feelin' It by Harlem World member Cardan from his unreleased solo album Hey Young World, is not a particularly great tune. It not bad, but the beat itself is a bit repetitive and annoying and Cardan is not a particularly skilled rapper. The song is interesting example though of how The Neptunes were able to take the best parts of a song that didn't work out and reshape them into hits; the clicking sound on the bridge went on to form part of the Drop It Like It's Hot beat and the hook (more obviously) went on to become Justin Timberlake's I'm Lovin' It which ended up being a massive pay day for Timberlake, Williams and Hugo when McDonalds used it as their ubiquitous jingle. Other examples of songs or beats starting one way for one artist and then being appropriated and sometimes reshaped for others down the line are the Wamp Wamp beat (with bagpipes and all) which was meant for Foxy Brown originally and ended up going to Clipse, Rohff's Where's Yours At? which ended up with Ludacris spitting It Wasn't Us on it and as I have discussed before; Long Night originally recorded by Latrelle but ultimately ending up as a Shakira song.

A couple of fairly obscure tracks by fairly obscure American singer-songwriters are next on the tracklist. First is Bye Bye, a wah-wah infused soulful funk rock number in the vein of Nikka Costa, by New York native Alana Davis. This is the first song on the disc that has a simple four bar intro before the guitar comes in, no beat drop. It is taken from her 2001 record Fortune Cookie and is one of three songs the Neps recorded for the album but the only one that made the cut. It is pleasant enough if slightly disposable fare. It is followed somewhat more successfully by a remix of a Shea Seger single Clutch. The original is a nice, fun alt-pop number but the rework that the Virginia duo give it elevates it greatly. It bears all the 'Neptunes sound' hallmarks of the time, spacey synths, a driving, funky bassline and detailed rhythms and percussion and it suits Shea's original vocals perfectly.

'Let's ride tonight and forget what we've ever known' goes the first line in the stupidly contagious bridge from TLC's In Your Arms Tonight. It is perfect and the verses and middle 8 are really strong too, so it is a shame that the chorus is a little bit of a let down. It just doesn't quite live up to the majesty of its surroundings. Still a great tune and I am always happy to hear it.

Unreleased and even in its unmastered state I Heard A Rumour by Usher is straight fire. Snare and whistles and Ush nailing the falsetto, naturally. No problems on the chorus in here either. It is crazy to me that this remained on the cutting room floor, the only unreleased collaboration between these guys that is more unjust is What's A Guy Gotta Do which had Justin Timberlake on back up and bridge duties and was the track with the highest play count on my iPod when it died.

Also fire is Bone Thugs-N-Harmony member Krayzie Bone's solo jam Who's House from his 2005 album Too Raw For Retail. It came out around the same time as Slim Thug's Already Platinum LP and it shares a lot of traits that Pharrell and Chad were into in that era; it is bombastic and aggressive with blaring horns, thumping bass drums, metallic, clanging snares and eerie synthlines. Krayzie's flow is hard and fits perfectly with the beat; 'And it will be World, War, Three/If you ain't willin' to die/The time is now for you to retreat'. Thugga would have murdered this beat though.

We take a turn next into Jamaican territory with a couple of reggae fusion/dancehall tracks; first the remix of the Lewisham born but of Jamaican decent artist Maxi Priest's Mary's Got A Baby. The Neptunes gave this one a complete overhaul, for the better. The original version is a decent but unexceptional fusion track, Pharrell and Chad give it a hard edge, the restructuring of the song makes it far more immediate and the simpler, more spacious instrumental really allows the hook room to breathe and the result is that it is much catchier. And Beenie Man has never sounded less than excellent on a Neptunes beat; and so the second in this pairing is the alternative version of his own single from the fantastic Tropical Storm album; Feel It Boy. On the album and the single version Janet Jackson featured on the hook, the version that appears here is the B-Side of the single, re-titled Feel It Girl and replaces Janet with RnB stalwart Joe. Either way it is a breezy, fun summer burner and I love it.

Another remix of a big electronic dance act, in a similar field to Air, follows with a flip of Basement Jaxx's Romeo from the seminal Rooty LP of 2001. The remix doesn't quite scale the euphoric heights of the original, it slows it down and the focus becomes a deep bass groove and the vocals, but it is a really nice alternative version. There are loads of lovely little flourishes and details that set it apart but I'd still rather hear the original out in a club.

Upbeat handclaps and castanets form the basis for the single I Can Do Too by Cole from the soundtrack of Girlfight from 2000. The remix that is included here is fairly standard and in keeping with a lot of the sounds and ideas that The Neptunes have explored and done better elsewhere on this mix.

From the relatively unremarkable to utterly sublime; The beat for 702's 2002 single I Still Love you is and absolute masterpiece of minimalism and space. It came out the same year as one of their other minimal masterworks Grindin' by Clipse and again shares ideas and traits but with an RnB slant instead of a hardcore rap one. Thunderous drums that sound like they were recorded in an aircraft hangar, crisp handclaps, a strummed guitar, two different string parts and a milk bottle rattling sound are all united and yet very separate. Huge sonic gaps between each sound but they all hang together perfectly. And then paired with a song and vocals that work in perfect harmony together, complementing each other. Cold and warm simultaneously. I Still Love You is close to the top of the pile for me of the best thing The Neptunes ever did and is a minor miracle.

The earliest production to appear on the compilation is a co-prodcuction with Sean 'Puff Daddy/Puffy/P.Diddy/Diddy/Ciroc Obama' Combs from RnB girl group Total's self-titled debut. It is called When Boy Meets Girl and is a rare track in the Neptunes discography to include a sample. It takes the intro from my favourite Bee Gees song Love You Inside And Out and loops it weaving it in and out of the track. You can hear a lot of their trademark moves even in these early days when they were just starting out.

A year later they went into the studio with RnB duo Keystone to record The Day The Earth Stood Still for their album A Tear Falls In Brooklyn. Listening to it I would never have picked it out as a Neps track without knowing. It is almost completely devoid of their trademarks and signatures besides an instinctive knowledge for what sounds good and an incredible ear for melody and how to produce vocals. The song is quite lovely, I suppose it does sound a little spacey and the titles Sci-Fi reference is absolutely typical of the perpetual nerds who named themselves after a planet, named their studio Hovercraft and their label after Star Trek.

The final remix of the disc is next in the sequence; Ben Harper's bluesy/country/soul track Steal My Kisses gets a makeover this time. It keeps the general vibe of the original but sharpens it up a bit and gives it a bit more colour and funk. 

Coming from the studio sessions for Foxy Brown's unreleased Ill Na Na 2:The Fever album circa 2003 is the boisterous Magnetic. Foxy always sounds great on one of their beats but so few of them have ever made it out unfortunately.

Finally we have Sleepy Brown's Life Of A Hustler featuring Big Boi. At least that's what the song was called when it first leaked in 2005 but by the time it was officially released in July 2006 it had been re-named simply Margarita. Another bright and breezy summer anthem here. Colourful and light and catchy as hell. Hearing Big Boi on a Williams/Hugo beat is a real treat too. 

And that brings the disc to a close. It doesn't feel like the right ending, if I'm honest. It is misjudged and doesn't suit most of the rest of the tape. The more rowdy and jaunty stuff doesn't sit well with all the more mellow and cold and spacey stuff. I mentioned earlier that there are only a few things I'd change about this selection and closing with this is definitely one of them. I like the song but it is out of place in this context. I could do without the last two songs if I'm honest. There are a few tracks from the other (less good) Neptunes only mix that I made, that would slot nicely in here. Closing with Latrelle - My Life followed by Natsha Ramos' In The Midnight Hour would be the preferred ending. Other changes, if I were so inclined might be the aforementioned Latrelle version of Long Night for example replacing the Cole tune and the Krayzie Bone one could be jettisoned in favour of N*E*R*D's Locked Away. But then maybe that's just me being a pedant. Overall I did a decent job of putting this together the first time. I really enjoyed listening to all of these songs again. And somehow I've managed to write another 2500 words about these two dudes from Virginia and their music and the impact that they have had on my life. A large part of the way I listen to and think about music is down to these guys. Thank you Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo for taking a music fan and making him into a music N*E*R*D.

Two Seconds Over

1. Ciccone Youth - Into The Groovey
2. The White Stripes - Walking With A Ghost
3. The White Stripes - Icky Thump
4. Giant Drag - My Dick Sux
5. Nikka Costa - Like A Feather
6. Gwen Stefani - U Started It
7. Raphael Saadiq - Still Ray
8. Lenny Kravitz - American Woman (Timbaland Remix)
9. Clipse - Young Boy
10. Notorious B.I.G. - Hypnotize
11. Timbaland - Give It To Me (Laff At 'Em) ft. Justin Timberlake & Jay-Z
12. E-40 - Quarterbackin' ft. Clipse
13. Fabolous - Block On Smash ft. Jay-Z & Young Jeezy
14. N.O.R.E. - I'm A G ft. Pharrell
15. M.I.A. - Hit That
16. Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. (Pollyn Remix)
17. Soft Tigers - Maria (Bumblebeez Remix)
18. Klaxons - Golden Skans (SebastiAn Remix)
19. ZZZ - Lion

Like making cassette mixtapes before it, curating a selection of songs onto a single compact disc is all about working within the limitations of a specific format. CD's are really only of any use these days to people who have cars of an old enough vintage to still have a player in them. And so, again like the cassette mixtape, it is an art form dying out fast. Having to put a lot of thought into your selections, the running order and if you wanted to take it that far, the theme and/or the artwork was all a meticulous process that song selectors won't necessarily have to think about these days or in the future. Giving or being given a tape or a disc by a friend or a significant other (potential or otherwise) meant something back then. It had taken effort and time and consideration. Being given a Spotify playlist or a USB stick is not quite the same thing.

Creating a mix was an exercise restraint. You had 80 minutes. But that's it. Make you're statement, tell your story, take your musical trip. You had to be careful and often merciless when it came to what to finally include and what to cut. Only the essentials could be permitted. Within that time frame though, those 80 mins were your playground. Some people had strict rules like; only one song by any one artist, unless themed around a particular artist or artists (and certainly if an artist was to appear twice the tracks should not be consecutive), or start and end big, or stick to a theme. I usually ignored these rules. Not always, but most of the time. 

During the period in which Two Seconds Over was made (probably mid 2007) I was mostly making mixes to be played while on shift behind the bar at The Southern. I liked to fill every minute the disc so it would mean having to go and change CDs less frequently. The title is a reference to the fact that my ideal tracklist for this one ended up being too long to fit on the CD by a minuscule margin, I can imagine this frustrated me greatly. I also rarely used themes, but to be fair, when I did I often made my best mixes. Two Seconds Over is not one of those. It isn't bad, it has some fluidity to it and I've obviously taken some time over the sequencing and has some excellent inclusions but there are also some odd choices on there.

Opening with Ciccone Youth is a nice and nerdy touch. Ciccone Youth is what Sonic Youth called themselves for The Whitey Album, a covers album celebrating (or mocking) 80s pop music. Into The Groovey is their wonderfully scuzzy take on Madonna Ciccone's hit with all its distorted vocals and feedback. It is followed by a more straightforward cover version of Tegan And Sara's Walking With A Ghost by The White Stripes, which doesn't really improve on the already great original but is more or less its equal. Breaking the rules right of the bat; that White Stripes song is followed by another, what would have been their newest single at the time I made the mix, Icky Thump. I loved it back then, I like it fine now but it is far from my favourite song by the band but it works to keep the momentum of the mix going.

The grungy stomp of My Dick Sux by Giant Drag stays in lane with the preceding three songs, dirty riffs and thumping drums were what I required to kick this one off it seems, but then I decided to slow things down a little with the comparatively minimal and quiter Like A Feather by Nikka Costa. I really like this song a lot. I've already discussed it with its inclusion on a previous mix but I will mention here that the live version from the Chris Rock Show was my preferred version for a while. Gwen Stefani slows things down further, as if to take a breather from all the riff-age, with the Neptunes assisted U Started It. The songs they did together for her second album, The Sweet Escape are among the most underrated songs The Neptunes ever did as far as I'm concerned. Lyrics about giving in and admitting fault after an argument with a lover over synthesized strings and typically tight Pharrell drums makes for a lush and catchy smooth RnB pop number.

Smooth RnB pop is Raphael Saadiq's bread and butter. Still Ray is a seductive gem, plinking piano, horns and buttery vocals warm the soul. And then we are back to the riffs. Lenny Kravitz gets a stuttery Timbaland remix treatment for his hit cover of The Guess Who's American Woman. Timbaland brings some weird electronic textures to Kravitz traditional rock arrangement. He keeps the riff intact but cuts up the rhythm and laces in staccato drums and arpeggiated synths. Timbaland greatly improves Kravitz's interpretation.

The mix then follows on from Timbaland's hip hop influence with the bombastic Young Boy by Clipse. With Hugo's horns, Williams' super tight snares and falsetto and the brothers Thornton, Pusha and Malice rapping hard bars about hustling form an early age a very special alchemy is at work. The Neptunes and Clipse went on to record one of my favourite rap records of all time together and this song shows a lot of the early promise that they'd later convert on.

We continue with Hip-Hop standard Hypnotize by the notorious Biggie Smalls which is... well you know... flawless. 'I diddy bop like Diddy back when Biggie cock-eyes/Hypnotized the masses behind Versace glasses' Jay-Z raps on the very next track in the mix, the remix to Timbaland's number 1 single Give It To Me. The orginal version was adequate, not one of Timbo's more interesting, adventurous or catchy beats but having Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake feature on it boosted it's appeal and popularity. For the remix Give It To Me(Laff At Em), Furtado was switched out for Jigga and the whole beat was flipped too, more fun but less poppy. Timberlake is relegated to the hook, which is fine and we could really have done without a Timbaland verse on it at all to be quite honest. He should have just given the whole thing over to Jay and Justin. I still fux wit it though. It never really attracted much attention when it was originally released and that is perhaps a little unfortunate. 

A similar strain of hip hop is tapped as we get a reprise of the crack slanging verses of Clipse this time as a feature on the single Quarterbackin' by the Bay Area's very own E-40 from his 2003 album Breakin' News. At the time it was a bit of a rarity to hear the Virginia natives rapping on anything other than a Neptunes beat so it was nice to hear that they could take to this one by E-A-Ski & CMT with similar ease. However it is by no means essential and neither is Fabolous' Block On Smash,, a mixtape track with a really fun Just Blaze-esque beat and cobbled together verses from other songs. Jay-Z makes a reappearance and here his verse comes from the Blueprint 2.1 cut Stop 2.1 and the Jeezy verse is from Over Here from Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101. The thing would have been a great listen if the mixing and mastering on it weren't a shambles.

A disappointing failure in a once fruitful synergy comes next. Until I'm A G, every single time Noreaga got a Neptunes beat magic happened. In fact The Neptunes got their first real break producing Super Thug for him and the fact is each time they gave him a track he bodied it and then... I don't know what happened. He fell off, hard. If they had gone to one of their many other collaborators with this beat they would have done something great with it. A Clipse or a Jay-Z or a Mystikal would have slayed this. Even Snoop or Fabolous. N.O.R.E. instead trips and mumbles his way through it with almost zero flow or memorable lines. In the video they had to put really bad comedy sketches over his verses in the hope you wouldn't notice how bad his rhymes were. It's weird but a few years later they gave him another shot and both he and Lil' Wayne managed to waste that one too. Just bad.

Bangladesh's beat for the unreleased M.I.A. track Hit That keeps with the fairly minimal hip hop style of the N.O.R.E. track and it works pretty well with Maya's vocals. The thing with most of M.I.A.'s music is that at the time of Arular and Kala I found her really fresh and exciting but now I really have to be in the mood to bear it, if I amn't then it is grating beyond belief and this song no different.

Number 16 on the mix is a mash-up/remix of the Gorillaz single Feel Good Inc. by Pollyn. This is the first in a string of three remixes placed back to back at the tail end of this compilation. Pollyn mixes the orignal Gorillaz accapella and some of parts of the original instrumental with a new beat centered around a sample of Daft Punk's seminal Technolgic. It works quite well but doesn't really elevate either song in any real way. The second in the trio is a remix by Australia's Bumblebeez (of whom I was a big fan) of Maria by Soft Tigers (whom I don't remember existing). The original is garbage and the remix less so but still not worth it's 4 minutes and 9 seconds it is afforded on this CD. A real waste of precious space.

Capping off the remix trilogy is the exceptional reinterpritation of Golden Skans (Klaxons single, this was 2007 after all) by French, Ed Banger producer SebastiAn. It knocks real hard. It starts out sounding like Justin Timberlake's My Love and ends up sounding like all the best electronic dance music coming out of Paris in 2007; glitchy, space-y and flowing beautifully between distorted and harsh and clear and gentle. SebastiAn, Justice, DJ Mehdi et al hat this shit locked down for a while there.

For the Big Closer I, in my wisdom, went with Lion by ZZZ. Seeing the name I could not begin to summon anything about the song to mind, it had faded far from my memory, but as soon as it started I recognised it instantly. It sounds like it should be playing over the end credits of an F-Zero-like futuristic race car videogame. I guess that might be why I chose it. Often I would structure mixes as though they were mini scores to unmade films. This would have been a terrible film.

Being pressed for time would be the only excuse I could offer for the creation of such a lukewarm mix. I had clearly started out with good intentions, but somewhere along the way it seems my ideas got muddled, momentum was lost altogether or spoiled in a messy bit of sequencing. Duff tracks were included seemingly just to make up the time. As a result I can't imagine that this one would have been played more than a couple of times in The Southern and then placed in it's sleeve in my CD wallet, never to be taken out again until I came to write about it. It is a fine art making a mix CD. Get it wrong and this is it's fate. Get it right though and the results could be unforgettable. It's a shame that it truly is an art form destined to be lost in the sands of time.

The lost art of making compilation CD's.

Council Pop

1. No Doubt - Hella Good
2. 2Pac - Hit 'Em Up
3. Chromeo - You're So Gangsta
4. Lady Sovereign - Ch-Ching (Cheque 1, 2)
5. Bobby Brown - My Prerogative
6. Devo -Whip It
7. Foxy Brown - Candy ft. Kelis
8. Fierce Girl - Double Drop
9. N*E*R*D - Thrasher
10. Ginuwine - Pony
11. Foxy Brown - Oh Yeah
12. Chromeo - Needy Girl
13. Har Mar Superstar - DUI
14. Jay-Z - Big Pimpin' ft. UGK
15. LCD Soundsystem - Yeah (Crass Version)
16. Mr. Vegas - Heads High
17. Rosco P. Coldchain - Delinquent (Club Mix) ft. Pharrell Williams
18. N*E*R*D - Chariots Of Fire/Find A Way

A hangover as punishing as it was deserved. Earned even. The Pica's Christmas party always inspired an unhealthy appetite for debauchery in us for some reason. Much of that party for me was spent sat on the toilet hunched over the sink in the downstairs bathroom vomiting or trying not to vomit while Katie rubbed my back and tried to make me feel better. Nick helpfully offered me a sausage and when words failed me he just left it on my lap. I wasn't the only casualty but I was among the numbers. There were always casualties at the Pica Christmas party. Every year. When you go that hard you're always gonna lose people. I threw up in my hat in the taxi home and we launched the soiled article at some poor passerby. I'll be honest, the 'vomiting in the sink/sausage' thing and the 'cap out the taxi window' thing may have been from different parties in different years but definitely at the same location. The party I have in mind though happened on the 23rd December 2004. Exact events of the night are hazy but what is without question is that when I awoke the next morning the inside of my skull was a dystopia.

Shaking so violently that dialing a number on my Nokia 3330 was outwith my capabilities I made my way to the couch in the living room at Gilmore Heights once the hellsound of my alarm raised me from the brink of an unconscious abyss. And once I was cognizant I was too damaged to sleep and unfit for work. This is how it was to end, and I didn't really give a shit. Luke was about to go to bed, I think, pretty sure this was during his nocturnal period managing The Venue club on Calton Road. I needed to get him to call my work to tell them I wasn't coming in on my last day. A bit of a dick move not going in for your last shift but to be fair the company had decided to terminate a number of people's temporary contracts early effective as of the 24th of December which is a much dick-isher (not a word) move.

Removing and replacing stickers and inputting new stock into the system was the general day to day as a temp Christmas stockroom employee at HMV on Prince's Street, Edinburgh. Blair had got me the job. One of four different jobs he got me between 2004 and 2006, which includes the 2 day van odyssey. I was like a disappointing child to him, constantly under-achieving and with little drive or inclination to change. He could see potential in me and constantly tried to get me to fulfill it. I never have. He helped me a lot at a time when I was drowning in apathy. I was young and bored and couldn't get the energy or will together to do anything creative or self-improving and Blair was always there to encourage me, to get me out the house, into gainful employment, he got me back writing and he was always up for going out to the pub. For someone on the dole as much as I was in those few years I was out partying a ton. I must still owe a lot of people a lot of drinks.

November, this particular job started and when we were hired, there was about ten of us, we were told it'd be a temporary position that would be until mid February. Fine. But then they sacked us all on Christmas eve. I believe this had probably been the plan all along but it's difficult to get people excited for a contract that is less than 2 full months with no possible prospects right before Christmas. Big corporations don't seem to care much about people on a personal level, really only as worker drones and consumers, so I treated the job with a similar level of contempt that it showed me. I made the most of it and to be fair it was actually an alright gig. We took turns in the stockroom to go out onto the shop floor to pick a record to play while we worked. This was a really great way to hear records that you were interested in hearing but couldn't find online yet and weren't quite interested enough to buy. It was also a fun way to wind each other up. Three discs worth of the Bonkers 3 happy hardcore compilation is like a particularly colourful and infuriating journey into madness that I decided to bang on one evening. I treated it quite scientifically, as a kind of endurance test, it was not appreciated by my colleagues. 

Perverse pleasure was also taken by inflicting the newest Girls Aloud album, What Will The Neigbours Say? on my new pal, Todd, a lad who only really listened to extreme breakcore and black metal. A Venitian Snares or Darkthrone kinda dude. However, I think he only hated the Popstars: The Rivals winners about a quarter of the amount he pretended to. And that second album is undeniably great. It helped ease the really weird pain that came from picking off about a million stickers from cd cases in a day that made it feel like your finger nails might be about to fall off. It was a really gross feeling sensation.

Council Pop was a mix of tunes I was enjoying around this time, that I threw together on a disc to play in the stockroom. It was named after the genre of music created (and performed solely) by Fierce Girl, a duo who, coincidentally worked together at an HMV in London. They were a couple of gay dudes whose music celebrated working class lifestyles, drugs and clubbing. They released only two songs, the first of which was included here, Double Drop is a rowdy dance-pop number which was infamously and bizarrely performed on Saturday morning music show CD:UK where it seemingly got by the producers that the song is about double dropping ecstasy. Not ideal subject matter to be souting about to kids having their breakfast. The second was released in February the following year, called What Makes A Girl Fierce and was a tribute to the likes of Eastenders character Kat Slater and the Sugababes member Mutya Buena. Neither single charted very high despite much excited media buzz. They disappeared shortly after leaving only a couple of other unreleased songs from an unreleased album sampler and an abandoned Myspace page.

Obviously there are a handful of Neptunes tracks on there; three standout N*E*R*D tracks taken from the second album Fly Or Die, Hella Good, the song they wrote but didn't produce for No Doubt, the Kelis assissted Foxy Brown banger, Candy, and the excellent Rosco P. Coldchain single Delinquent. And there are a couple of classic Timbaland productions on there too with the exquisite Pony by Ginuwine and the thrilling Jay-Z staple, Big Pimpin' with it's insane UGK feature. Foxy Brown pops up again as well with the dancehall infused floor-filler Oh Yeah.

There are two Chromeo tracks in mix; debut single Needy Girl in all it's slap bass, vocoder and electro-pop goodness and the tremendously fun You're So Gangsta which is about the best Les Rhythmes Digitales song that Jaques Le Cont/Stuart Price didn't come up with. Also this is the second disc that the Crass Version of LCD Soundsystem's Yeah has shown up on along with Lady Sovereign's Ch-Ching. They were both included on Mole's Mega Mix '04. I really, really liked these songs in 2004. In 2016 I like them both fine, though Lady Sov has lost her shine significantly more.

A recent and perfectly servicable cover version by none other than Ms. Britney Spears must have brought the excellent My Perogative by Bobby Brown back to my attention and Devo's Whip It is never out of fashion. I can't be sure why the astoundingly angry and profane Hit 'Em Up by 2Pac got an outing aside from it being utterly fantastic. And the last two to speak on are both party belters; the dancehall classic Head's High by Mr. Vegas which was a weekly grind-fest at the Establishment club and the under-appreciated, Michael Jackson indebted Har Mar Superstar single DUI which featured a pitched up Holly Valance in an excellent call and response bridge.

To my new colleagues in the HMV stockroom, I think that my eclecticism may have been a little puzzling. I guess I don't seem like the kind of guy who'd appreciate 2Pac, Devo and Girls Aloud. Time ran out though and they never really got a chance to know me. And I never got a chance to really get to know them. Ah well. Cold realities and being surplus to requirements can happen any time. Even at Christmas. And so we party on anyway.

Once the contract was terminated I wouldn't have another proper job until July '05, so this post-Pica party hangover was the start of the longest period of unemployment in my life. What that says about those parties is up to you to decide.

RnB For The Late Night From Star Trak

1. Ray J - Formal Invite ft. Pharrell
2. Natasha Ramos - In The Midnight Hour
3. Latrelle - Long Night
4. Beenie Man - Ola
5. Babyface - Stressed Out
6. N*E*R*D - Locked Away
7. Usher - Wifey ft. Pharrell
8. Latrelle - Dirty Girl
9. Q-Tip - For The Nasty ft. Busta Rhymes
10. Nigo - Planet Of The Bapes
11. Ms. Jade - The Come Up
12. Toni Braxton - Hit The Freeway ft. Loon & Pharrell
13. Latrelle - House Party
14. Natasha Ramos - Invisible
15. Handsome Boy Modelling School - Class System ft. Pharrell Williams & Julee Cruise
16. Ray J - Out Tha Ghetto
17. Hasan - Phenomenon ft. Pharrell
18. Latrelle - My Life ft. Kelis
19. Latrelle - Dirty Girl ft.. T.I.

Inspiration has just struck. The idea had been there the whole time, it just needed to be dug out. The loop had been going on for who knows how long. From the video we can tell it was at least 10 minutes, most probably a lot longer. There were synths, piano, some hi-hats. Phrases and sounds and melodies were repeated and stretched and squeezed, moved around and experimented with, like pieces of a puzzle, trying to find how they fit together. Parts were done, fragments ready to go but a vital part proved elusive and so he waited, just grooving and vibing. She seemed unsure that they were getting anywhere but he had a calm confidence. This is what he does. Better than most who have ever done it. He stopped the loop.

'I hope you read every line to this message/In these trying times/We gon' make it' he sang softly and then started the loop again. His production partner came into the studio and they greeted each other. The loop kept going as his partner picked up an acoustic guitar on his way through and disappeared to another corner of the room, strumming along. With the distraction he lost it for a second. Frustrated he tried to get back to where he was with the melody and within about 30 seconds of his partner starting to strum along, he has it back and then it hits him. Synergy and illumination. Bad timing for her, a phone call, so she missed the lightning striking. The camera didn't.

This moment of inspiration was the key to unlocking the song. A chorus; 'In the midnight hour when you sleep/I hope you dream of me/I hope you dream of me/in the midnight hour when you creep/come get a piece of me, my baby'. Everything else would fall neatly into place now. Verses, the already established bridge and then a middle 8 that his partner no doubt came up with in tandem. 'How crazy's that? Woo hoo! ' He asks the camera man.

In The Midnight Hour ultimately went unreleased. It was meant for Natasha Ramos' debut album but the whole record was shelved yet the track surfaced online around 2004 so the studio session it came from was probably a year or so earlier. When I first heard the song I liked it fine. It didn't blow me away or anything. Then a while later a video of the track being created ended up on YouTube. It captured the moment of inspiration I just described. For whatever reason, seeing it come together and seeing the excitement on the songwriter's face as he found his breakthrough, as I'm sure by this point in his career he had done thousands of times before, and seeing it still seem like the first time, it gave me a whole other level of appreciation for the song.

I'm not sure if it was the first studio footage I'd seen of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of The Neptunes at work but it made a real impact on me. I was already a Neptunes obsessive, listening to every track I could find by them, buying whole albums because one track on it was produced by them and visiting the Grindin' forum (then called the Star Trak forum) multiple times a day which was undoubtedly where I first saw the video in question in fact. There is quite a lot of behind the scenes footage out there of these masters at work, on YouTube and in various documentaries if you do a bit of digging, not least of which is an incredible eight hour plus series showing the creation of Justin Timberlake's 2002 debut solo album Justified. It has some really awe-inspiring moments scattered around its epic running time. Anyway the Ramos video really struck a nerve because it showed in its rawest form how amazing, satisfying and exciting the act of creation can be. It showed me some of the reasons why people make art, in whatever form. It also showed that against all odds, Pharrell, a guy with a crazy amount of success already, and especially at this time when according to one statistic (whether or not it was accurate it certainly felt true) 'almost 20 per cent of airplay on British radio and 43 per cent in the United States' was produced by The Neptunes, and he still wasn't jaded or cynical. He seemed so enthralled with the craft. The video shows him looking a little worn out and tired but still energetic with enthusiasm for music. Making music because it's what he loved doing not because he wanted to make hits. The hits came as a by-product.

Sounds that could have come from the future and the past at the same time. Old ideas paired with sci-fi sonics. Spacey and minimal or bombastic and full, The Neptunes could do both. Hard rap, hook-laden pop or lush RnB, they could do all that too. And more. They first grabbed my ear in the last quarter of 1999. Ol' Dirty Bastard's perfect Got Your Money featuring Kelis and then Kelis' own hit Caught Out There were everywhere. At some point me and Luke were in Home Economics (our last year at school we wanted to make some cakes) we were doing the dishes and we got to talking about how that 'I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!' song had taken its time but had really wormed its way into our favour. I went from finding it a bit annoying to liking it a lot, but I never went so far as to buy the single. Luke had Got Your Money on CD. Eventually, probably around the turn of the century, I picked up a copy of Kelis' debut album Kaleidoscope. I wasn't prone to buying a lot of RnB records at this stage in my musical exploration (I was still a bit of a snob about it to be honest) but the album had been well reviewed and I'd liked what I had heard of it so far. Plus that cover was cool AND she was a babe. So I gave it a shot. Due to having been reading a lot about Steve Albini, Rick Rubin and Quincy Jones I was starting to become more interested in producers and who was responsible for the sound of records behind the scenes and so when I was reading the liner notes on the Kelis album I saw that the whole thing had been written and produced by The Neptunes. 'Interesting' I thought.

Then in 2001 Kelis' sophomore album Wanderland was released and I read about it in The Face magazine, The Neptunes were once again behind it and they had their own album coming out too under the name N*E*R*D. So I bought both those records on their respective release dates. I liked them both but it wasn't until March the following year that I fully fell in love with the Neptunes sound when they re-recorded and re-released that debut N*E*R*D album In Search Of with live band instrumentals instead of the heavily synthesized original release. Then I was all in. That's when I started seeking out everything I could find by them, singles by Jay-Z, Noreaga and Mystikal to album tracks by Mary J. Blige and Jadakiss and the search is what ended up leading me to the Star Trak forum. Star Trak was Williams and Hugo's new record label and on their website the forum became a dedicated community for sharing and discussing anything related to the duo. I plunged deep into both everything they'd ever released and all the stuff, and there was a lot, that was never officially released but had one way or another leaked online.

This mix is mostly made up of underappreciated releases and some of that never released stuff. From the mix's title I guess I was going for a nice smooth mix that would be appropriate for playing at a low volume late at night but a few tracks that I selected don't really suit that mood. Beenie Man's Ola really belongs in a party as he clearly states right at the top of the song and Planet of the Bapes is way too lively for a chill session. The scuzzy lo-fi unmastered sound of lost N*E*R*D track Locked Away is also quite disruptive, but what a great song though. I really wish they would go back and polish it off and give it a proper release. I am not alone in wanting this, there is only one song I can think of that the Grindin' community would like to see a full release of more, the holy grail that is Cassie's Hide. Ms. Jade's bars are too hard on The Come Up for a relaxing time but the beat based around a comedic Pharrell vocal loop is great fun. Similarly Q-Tip and Busta's unreleased For The Nasty just about works in this concept but I think I maybe should have stuck to the RnB tracks if I wanted to stay true to the premise. This would also count out Hasan's Phenomenon with its typically catchy Pharrell chorus.

Straying further still from the thesis of the mix is Class System, which isn't even produced by The Neptunes, that credit belongs to Dan The Automator and Prince Paul. It does at least have a Pharrell feature on it. Weirdly and excellently it also had Julee Cruise on it whose single Falling was used as the theme song for David Lynch's Twin Peaks. The song is a nice oddity but I don't think it really belongs with the rest of these songs thematically.

What remains are two Ray J tracks, five Latrelle ones, a buried Usher joint, a second Natasha Ramos number, and a hit single each from Babyface and Toni Braxton respectively. Ray J opens the mix with Formal Invite, a track that manages to stay silky smooth despite Brandy's brother spitting some grim/lame sex raps on it. I'm sure Kim Kardashian liked his chat. The second Ray J track is Out The Ghetto which Pharrell laced with a repetitive but ultra catchy hook that appears throughout the song and an even catchier chorus. The lyrics on this one about aspiring to work hard to get out of the struggle of hood life are better than than those on the earlier track. The Neptunes and Ray J had one other track together and all three of those songs appeared on Ray J's album This Ain't A Game. Those three songs are the only things I'm aware of him ever having done with any value.

Latrelle is a singer and songwriter from New Jersey who wrote songs for the likes of Destiny's Child and Monica as a teen and when she came to release an album herself she hit up Pharrell and Chad for six songs. Unfortunately it never really happened for her, that album went unreleased when the lead singles underperformed. There are two versions of Dirty Girl on here, the original version and the version with T.I.'s verse on it and if I'm being honest neither version of this song were ever going to be strong enough to be a hit. It's fine, but by no means great. Second single House Party is a slightly better RnB tune (with a gorgeously awful video), it's got a nice vibe and a strong hook but My Life, which features Kelis, has more of that Neptunes magic in it. Great snappy drums and synths, an excellent chorus and a terrific bridge where Kelis pretty much steals the show.

The other Latrelle song Long Night was one I always loved and really it should have been the single to try to launch her as an artist. Again the drums and synths are on point, but Pharrell's songwriting really flies here. Wonderful melodies and harmonies. The 'Phooooom Phooooom' vocal laser sound, that Pharrell was so fond of in the early days is all over this track as well. Years later Pharrell reworked the track for Shakira when he produced the bulk of her She Wolf album. He flipped it to give it a more Latin flavour. I still prefer the original version but I'm glad the song got its shine eventually.

Usher has had a long running a fruitful relationship with The Neptunes with a string of hits whenever they collaborate, but there are a number of tracks that they worked on together that ended up on the cutting room floor. Wifey is one of those and it is hard to see why. It bumps. Spare jangly guitar parts and lush strings topped with Usher doing some impressive vocal acrobatics, and Pharrell has some sweet vocals on it too. It is another one that should really be properly mastered and released at some point.

Stressed Out is one of two excellent songs the Star Trak duo wrote for Babyface's Face2Face album. There She Goes was the hit single but Stressed Out is a nicely slick track in its own right. And Hit The Freeway has everything you want from a classic Neps production and Toni Braxton just Toni Braxton's all over it.

Carbon dating would place this mix as being created around 2007. I'm fairly certain I would have been working at The Southern and that this mix was put together to score a quiet Monday night when not much was happening. Nothing to boisterous or raucous in the soundtrack. Just keep it relatively chill in the dim lighting. Maybe a little sexy. I didn't do a great job curating it. I must have been pushed for time.

On their first meeting Pharrell wrote In The Midnight Hour for Natasha Ramos and despite being fatigued from a five day recording session with Rodney Jenkins and flying in to Virginia to work Pharrell in the middle of the night, she must have impressed him because he wrote her a handful of other songs after. None of them ever got officially released but they got out there somehow (thank you internet). I am glad Invisible found its way out. Again it marries classic RnB songwriting with some weird futuristic sounds. It is what he/they were able to do seemingly without effort for years there. I mean, they are still doing it, but the impact has lessened. That golden era produced some truly amazing, forward thinking (and sounding) music and each and every one of those songs started with a moment of inspiration like the one caught on film the night they wrote In The Midnight Hour. It must have been so exhilarating and inspiring to be around two people with so much talent bouncing ideas off each other with that level of skill, enthusiasm and inspiration, because here, more than 10 years later listening to a poorly conceived mix of far from their best stuff I am still exhilarated and inspired. Long live Star Trak and long live The Neptunes.

Celestial Blues

1. Gary Bartz NTU Troop - Celestial Blues

2. OutKast - Idlewild Blue (Don'tchu Worry 'Bout Me)
3. Nelly Furtado - Afraid
4. N*E*R*D - Waiting For You
5. Dead Prez - Bigger Than Hip-Hop
6. Lady Sovereign - Gatheration
7. Girl Talk - Smash Your Head
8. Eric Benet - Love Don't Love Me (Neptunes Remix) ft. Clipse
9. Uncle Charlie Wilson - Beautiful (Remix)
10. Jackson 5 - ABC
11. Michael Jackson - You Rock My World
12. Don Blackman - Holding You, Loving You
13. Fabolous - Can You Hear Me?
14. Fergie - London Bridge
15. Girl Talk - Too Deep
16. Nelly Furtado - Maneater (Remix) ft. Lil' Wayne
17. OutKast - Morris Brown
18. Snoop Dogg - Drop It Like It's Hot (Remix) ft. Jay-Z
19. T.I. - Kick It At The Hotel

Celestial Blues by Gary Bartz NTU Troop I first heard when listening to Giles Peterson's BBC Radio 1 show on July 2nd 2006 (it was after midnight when this track was played so I guess technically it was July 3rd) in my room at my dad's flat. It was during that spell of unemployment before the Rhythm Project and The Southern happened. I was sat listening to the radio online on my computer with headphones on. Pharrell Williams was a guest co-host on the show and for the first hour they played a selection of The Neptunes greatest hits up until that time. In the second hour Giles asked Pharrell to select some of his favourite songs and one of his picks was this Harlem Bush Music piece of wonderful. He told a story about how he'd been on tour with N*E*R*D and just got back home to Virginia Beach where some friend dragged him out to a club. He said he was just sitting, chilling, when the 'like, 19 year-old' DJ threw this song on. He was blown away and couldn't believe he hadn't heard it before. He immediately ran up to the DJ booth to ask the kid what it was.

It had the same effect on me. I was rapt at the majestic simplicity of the baseline immediately and was in love by the time the saxophone and vocals came in simultaneously and harmonised with each other. 'Expand your mind/Don't let it wither and die' the lyrics preached wise and enchantingly. It is a fantastic piece of funky, uplifting jazz. Bartz' audacious saxophone solos are gorgeous.

A year or so later I was playing it while on shift at The Southern and our resident vinyl junkie Robin 'Burnsey' Burns was sitting at the bar. His ears pricked up and he looked at me; 'Gary Bartz?! Nice.' He asked me if I'd heard the album the track came from, I hadn't and so the next time I saw him he came with a burned CD ripped from the Harlem Bush Music vinyl. Good music fans share great music with other music fans. Hell of a record.

Idlewild Blue (Don'tchu Worry 'Bout Me) and Morris Brown, 2 singles from the soundtrack/album from OutKast's lukewarmly received Idlewild movie would have leaked around the same date I was listening to that Giles Peterson show. Most likely I was sat in exactly the same spot for the first listens of both of these as I was for Celestial Blues. I remember that the general response to the new Andre and Big Boy music was that it was similarly underwhelming as the film it was made for. Both song struck a chord with me though. The bluesy guitars and harmonicas, the Doo-Wop vocals and 3 Stacks continuing his trend of singing in favour of rapping from The Love Below on Idlewild Blue, all worked for me. And the New Orleans-style first-line funk of Morris Brown made me want to second-line. 

This was also the era of Nelly Furtado's close affiliation with Tim 'Timbaland' Mosley. She'd been quiet for a while, 3 years since her commercial flop Folklore after the hit of her (actually quite rubbish) first album, the terribly titled Whoa, Nelly! Timbo had had a relatively quiet few years as well but was at the peak of a massive creative resurgence after having lost his way for a time following the death of Aaliyah in 2001. Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds was just around the corner and his name was enough to front his first solo record, Shock Value by the begining of 2007, but this was the first move in his comeback bid to take over the world. He signed Furtado to his label and he and his protege Danja handled production on the majority of her next album Loose. It was huge. Afraid is the album opener and is a decent tune, but once again; the same seat, in the same room, in the same flat would be the setting for my first encounter with it.

There is also a Maneater remix featuring the ascending Lil' Wayne on the tail end of the disc. It is fantastic. The beat is deep and atmospheric, Wayne sounds perfect, like a stoned alien, his flow makes rapping sound as simple and natural to him as breathing. And when the Nelly vocals come in the beat lends them a nice new context. Timbo was catching fire again. First play; same seat.

Waiting For You, the weird semi-interlude track tacked on to the back of Wonderful Place from N*E*R*D's prog-pop opus sophomore album Fly Or Die, I heard for the first time a few years earlier. That one was in my room at Gilmore Heights, before the unemployment and the moving back in to my dad's place. I had managed to resist listening to many of the leaks that were kicking about online from before the albums release and so my first experience of the song was in the context of the full record on the day of it's release. I went out early to buy it and rushed home to listen to it. The debut album, In Search Of, had fast become, and to this day remains, one of my favourite albums of all time, so Fly Or Die had a high benchmark to clear. It didn't. That first listen I felt a little disappointed. It was a strange record. An interesting record for sure. It was poppier in parts than I would have expected, with some bizarre collaborations (the Madden brothers?!) and a mad mix of musical styles all thrown into the blender together. I liked it but wasn't sure I was going to love it.

Later that day I went out to Oxygen bar on Infirmary Street, to have a few drinks with some mates and I remember discussing the album with Sod, who had liked the album a lot more on first listen than I had and Blair who'd had a similar reaction to it that I had had. It's interesting how Sod's enthusiasm for the record made me listen to it a little differently when I got home, and quickly the album grew on me. 2 years later I was still bumping it and obviously Waiting For You had called out to be included on this mix. It really is a weird little ditty, just Pharrell telling the story of a family fishing trip gone wrong over some strings, strummed guitar and some bongos in the outro. So we come back once again to that seat, that room, that flat, because it too was where I was sitting when I put this (and many others) compilation together.

A word about that seat; it was a deeply unspectacular and not particularly comfortable, black office swivel chair. No arm rests. It stayed at my desk, which is where I am sure it is still now as I write this. I sat there for hours and days in front of my slow but functional desktop computer, reading about film and music, messing around on MySpace and most importantly watching videos and listening to music. It was a starting point and also a stop off along the way. You see, many of the songs on this CD, as I have detailed already, started their journey with me from the same location; Celestial Blues, the new OutKast and Nelly ones along with new songs by Lady Sovereign and... Fergie's London Bridge?! Interesting. I never knew I liked this song. July 2006, I still wanted Lady Sovereign to happen, too. Sometimes things make even less sense with hindsight. That said; London Bridge is a bit of a banger.

All the rest of the songs on it had set of with me elsewhere and maybe took different paths before joining me again at this rendezvous point. Dead Prez' Bigger Than Hip-Hop was always around but it would have come to the forefront of my musical consciousness again with the near weekly trips to Medina on a Saturday night at that time where my big cousin Nasty P would DJ and could be depended on to play it. The 2 Girl Talk tracks were predictably played to me at George's place. He knew I would dig the insane genius of his multi-track mash-ups. These were both new and still fresh for me, hence their inclusion here.

The Eric Benet remix, Uncle Charlie Wilson version of Beautiful, Jay-Z featuring Drop It Like It's Hot remix and T.I.'s Kick It At The Hotel, I am fairly sure I would have come across using Luke's computer in his room at Gilmore circa 2004. The internet connection on his PC was better than mine (actually, mine may not have been able to access the internet at all at the time) so I used his to find new and rare Neptunes stuff on the Grindin' forum. Both the Benet and Charlie Wilson tracks I consider to be definitive versions, the Jay-Z verse on Drop It is a nice rarity, with it's R. Kelly diss and the beat is dope but still can't hold a candle to the original and the T.I. track is fine but not one of their finest collabs.

A Fabolous album track from 2004's Real Talk LP shows up on the mix and it is a nice enough number but I honestly couldn't tell you what had brought it back to my attention 2 years later. I guess I just must have been revisiting the album and it caught my ear again. I also can't be sure what brought Don Blackman's excellent Holding You, Loving You, a tremendous slice of soulful RnB released in the year of my birth, back into my consciousness.

The Jackson 5 have always been there. Their songs run deep in me. We started our journey together when I was very young and they have never been far away. And even in his waning years Michael was still capable of producing unquestionably perfect pop music like You Rock My World.

All of these songs started somewhere, and then they made their way into my life somehow. And we would hear from each other regularly or rarely but we all ended back together on one day in July 2006 sitting at that one chair at that piece of crap PC and I put them all in one place and now 10 years on that CD has gathered us again. This time I'm sitting with my laptop on my knees in my room in London and it's good to hear from them all again.