2007's Finest Music Downloads

‘You Got Me Blud?’ – Bash Ear

A purveyor of that most odious of post-grime genres, ‘stink’, fifteen year old Deptford hoolie Bash Ear excretes music consisting mainly of samples taken from his numerous court appearances over the top of someone mauling a blackboard with a hedgehog as

Jonathan King whimpers unnervingly in the background. The stink movement has been in and out of the

tabloids recently, thanks to its leading lights’ youthfulness and their unwillingness to change clothes or

bathe. Meanwhile, anyone who makes it out of the teens in Mr Ear’s ‘hood’ is instantly looked down

upon, Deptford being a place where true warriorz die in adolescence, shot repeatedly in the head for

looking at someone funny like. And, across the rest of the country, cosseted white kids refuse to

shower, offending parents as they spend their days making noises like this track’s hiccupping beat and

prowling the enormous gardens of their peers. Safe.

‘Lads In The Support Act’ – The Whippersnappers

The latest manifestation of 2007’s fad for girls in leggings to flock toward east end urchin-rock played by

men with ridiculous hair and no discernable musical talent, The Whippersnappers have been soiling the

charts for months, often quite literally. Yet the group actually consists of four stage school graduates who

got together at a village fete, adding toothless crack addict singer ‘Grim’ when the manager forced him upon

them. This, their third single, sounds exactly like the first two, only with better production values, and is

redolent of four buskers with portable amps playing at different speeds on the roof of a dodgy Docklands Light Railway carriage. Underneath them you sit, trying to read your paper, as around you teeth are ground in annoyance. It’ll be mostly arena tours and cokehead supermodels for the next few weeks, until it all goes horribly wrong for these Whippersnappers and they end up having to go back to their old jobs cleaning chim-ber-leys or working as brokers in the city. You mark my words.

‘Hey Matthew’ – Trolling For Poon

A self-styled hardline feminist collective from Helsinki, TFP demonstrate an ability to re-imagine pop history (as

well as remedial level competence with Pro Tools), by reworking Karel Fialka’s classic warning on the

mind-warping effects of the idiot box. This version starts with a haunting drone, then morphs into an insane,

happy hardcore-style rave up during the final verses. Trading on both the nostalgia exuding from tits of a certain

age, and the implied understanding that it would have been a lot fucking easier for Mr Fialka to sell his TV and

enrol ‘Matthew’ in the cub scouts rather than putting his anxieties into song and forcing the poor kid to rap on

it, Trolling For Poon initially master their over-familiar material, before losing control and letting it poo all over

them. As for me, I defy anyone not to join in with that anthemic final chorus by the time it bounces around.

Altogether now: “I see… The A-Team, The A-Team, The A-Team…”

‘Larf’ – Jamie Pissaprick

Former graffiti artist and the new voice of privileged urban youth, Jamie’s estuary vowels and recent attempts

to grope Lily Allen at a festival after-show mark him out as the kind of lad who, ten years ago, would have

been forced into a boy band as ‘the quirky one’, then buggered and swiftly tossed aside by voracious record

company executives. But this is 2007, and Pissaprick’s following has been built online through networking

and the recruitment of ‘street teams’ to spread the word; beautiful boys and girls who sing this trundling

story-song into the ears of any unbelievers on shopping precincts the length and breadth of the country.

Of course, Jamie can’t actually hold a tune, but nobody sustains a four-minute narrative involving trespass,

improvised murals, maxed credit cards (because spray paint don’t come cheap bruv), and getting ticked

off by his mother like Mr. Pissaprick. Indeed, Jamie’s ‘flow’ almost makes up for the music, which sounds

like a drugged monkey randomly pressing the buttons on a Casio keyboard while three bouncers bang

planks against a coal bunker and fart the national anthem.

‘No Restraints’ – Bimbo Thinktank

Avatars of the ‘U-Rave’ phenomenon, a fad that promises to be gone and forgotten by early 2008 thank fuck, BT

are all glo-sticks, whistles, garish sunglasses and Spongebob Squarepants merchandise. Yet this image crisis

can’t change the fact that, at its core, this song resembles late-period Echobelly, only with bleeps and sirens

instead of a skank in school uniform stage-front. As bland as a loaf sandwich, ‘No Restraints’ could be

played on the acoustic guitar by that guy you went to college with who thought he was Evan Dando and you

wouldn’t bat an eyelid (mainly because you’d fallen into a coma). But because this is the soundtrack to the

year’s most sleekly marketed bandwagon, kids as young as twelve are attending BT’s ‘all-ages’ gigs, off their

faces on sugary drinks and waving hands in the air like numpties. Those in the know are already predicting a

reign at the top of the charts to rival Rhianna’s ‘Um-ber-ell-a’, except with a plague of frogs replacing our

summer’s incessant rain.

‘Take Me Home You Silly Monkey’ - The Bethlehem Abortion Clinic

Finally, the mid-nineties chancers and general Britpop cunts from Scallyland have reformed! Apparently The

BAC decided to get back together for medium-level gigs when the core nucleus of Jim (guitar / vocals) and

Jimbo (bass / aggro) checked their bank balances and decided the time was right for a last creative splurge.

If only they could have just played the oldies, rather than recording new songs to try and prove they’d still got

it. All this ditty, taken from forthcoming LP ‘Lady’s Part’, illustrates, is how a gang of pot-bellied bald men in

their forties who were never much cop the first time round are all but unlistenable after decades ruining their

voices with fags and paying no attention to musical trends. Big in Germany, much like David Hasselhoff, The

BAC will no doubt spend their forthcoming live appearances throwing toilet rolls back and forth between the

crowd and rhythm section, an unfortunate visual metaphor for what is, frankly, a quite turdy musical approach.

As the way we consume music changes, so too does the route whereby songs are

made available. With the CD single all but extinct, and a downturn in retail holes (or

‘shops’), where albums can be purchased, our children will soon expect to have special

chips implanted directly into their brains by the major record companies. Music will then be beamed directly into their cerebral cortexes, without the need for aural hardware. The elderly will then watch in horror on buses as youngsters scroll through soundtrack options using an Ipod-style shuffle, located where their right ears used to be. Unfortunately recent experiments in cutting edge Japanese laboratories have led to some subjects’ heads exploding whenever they selected a Joss Stone album, suggesting that this technology may still be a long way from viable.

And so we remain beholden to the interweb as our sole source of new music, a medium that has replaced radio, compact discs, live gigs and karaoke for the discovery of fresh and exciting ‘toons’ in the 21st century. But what to investigate, and what to avoid like a yeast infection in this ever-undulating ocean of musical shit? Luckily Home Defence is here, bringing you a guide to current downloads, all of which are available from dodgy Eastern European websites for free, or iTunes. But before we begin, it is interesting to note that, even as the recording quality of such compositions improves, our race’s ability to write half-decent songs does not.