Your Random Playlist, What lurks? Dare you admit? Options

[Industrial Kybos...]

I often suspect that many of us here - myself included - try to make themselves sound more interesting by discussing only the more obscure or better-quality strands of music that we choose to listen to. Surely, however, there is more on our playlists than the quality stuff.

Here's the plan, and it requires TOTAL honesty:

1. Make a random playlist using whatever software you store your lovely music on - I shall be using iTunes, being a damn dirty yuppie Mac-bitch.
2. Make note of the first ten songs that appear. Ten shall be the number, and the number shall be ten. No correspondance shall be entered in to.
3. Post those ten songs in this thread, perhaps with a little bit about why you say you listen to Sigur Rós and Miles Davis when you actually have a hard drive full of East 17 and Spice Girls.

Let the games begin!

First up, to show willing, my random ten for the day:

1. Why Don't You Do It For Me? - 22-20s
2. Güero Canelo - Calexico
3. Hanging On The Telephone - Scheer
4. Debaser - The Pixies
5. Long Snake Moan - P J Harvey
6. I Wanna Rock - Twisted Sister
7. Needles & Pins - The Ramones
8. Paranoid - Black Sabbath
9. Aerodynamik (Kling Klang Radio Mix) - Kraftwork
10. Spiral Staircase - Kings Of Leon

Which just goes to show that I talk the talk and walk the walk. Hmm? No you didn't see Twisted Sister in there. Move along now.

[Wookiee]

I will play as I'm doing bugger all else.

1. August by Shooglenifty.
A band of Scots who play club-tinged celt-dancepop. Yeah, okay, but it's wicked, I promise. Their fiddler looks like Serj Tankian. Sort of. And he's also a wizard or something. This song is slow and mindful of it's vinyl-crackling beat and dubby bass, the banjo plucked so skillfully, with a superb violin melody that dips and weaves fluidly into a sparse arrangement of half-heard samples, instrument phrases and electronic wheezes before deftly picking up again and pulling the the band into line behind it. I love this. 'Tis perfect.

2. Black Holes In The Sand by Gravenhurst.
Spectral acoustic guitar music on Warp Records. Yeah, okay. Nick Talbot's bittersweet vocal harmonies are moved along on a neat four-four tom with expertly picked guitar and the occasional tempered squall of feedback. Haunting.

3. Omgyjya Switch7 by Aphex Twin.
A frantic mash of noise from Drukqs which deploys wonderful synth manipulation and beat-fracturing to cunningly disguise the fact that Mr. D. James isn't doing anything half as imaginative or original as he used to. Still fun, though.

4. Tried By 12 (Squarepusher mix) by East Flatbush Project.
Random playlists throwing up two Warp artists and a Ninja Tune track remixed by a Warp artist back to back. What fun. Excellent li'l spit chopped up and backed by Jenkinson's old drum 'n' bass trick of actually playing real drums and bass, and like the best of his old material, 'tis very jazz club. Then you got that wicked reeeewind and the whole thing kicks off again.

5. Manta Ray by Pixies.
One of my favourite Pixies b's, complete with "ooh ooh, yeah!"s and Kim Deal sweetly calling "it's alright!" while Black Francis simply yells it. I love Pixies. Don't you?

6. Faster by Manic Street Preachers.
Best. Manics. Ever.

7. Killing All The Flies by Mogwai.
I love Happy Songs For Happy People, and this is excellent. That vocodered vocal coming over like a heartbroken robot, singing in robot falsetto as the languid picked guitar phrase gives way to kidney-battering fuzz and great squalls of feedback in the finest of Mogwai traditions. Yeah, it's an old trick, but they do it so well.

8. Beep Street by Squarepusher.
I love the melody on this; it's so simple, kinda plaintive, sad. Set against the stuttering drum 'n' bass, it's perfect. One of my earliest memories of Squarepusher, and an enduring one.

9. Fixit Girl by Chris Morris.
From Blue Jam, this is seriously f***ked up. A man hires a four year old girl to dispose of the body of a man he's just killed. It's going to be a long night...

10. Don't Do Drugs by Danger Mouse & Jemini.
DM's choice of samples (a crackling 1940's dancehall, for example) and beats are inspired and Jemini's spit sits perfectly on the man's rhythm as he extols the virtues of narcotic substances and his willingness to share these virtues with anyone who's interested. And can pay.