Happy New Year

I hope you're well and that 2011 is an exciting and prosperous one for you. It feels good to have a fresh start; it is purely a mental thing as you can make a clean break whenever you so choose but the changing of a calendar year is reason enough to leave the celebratory season behind and start again anew with earnest.
I had a wonderful Christmas break. I was able to catch up with lots of friends, spent lots of time with my family and just enough time doing what I needed to do. As tends to be the case, my highlight was NYE, a fantastic and exhilarating set at PA and then the party at my flat involving disgusting amounts of alcohol, the breaking of our banister, more Spice Girls than I care for and more than one Love Train. A brilliant time with brilliant friends.

So, 2011 begins. The BBC Sound Of 2011 countdown has already begun. Soon enough, festival lineups will start to be announced/flesh out, new albums will start to appear and wonderful remixes will also surface. I feel that I'm heading into this year almost musically blind. I cannot wait for the Jamie XX/Gil Scott-Heron remix album to appear on XL Recordings in the near future. There's also the long-awaited new album from Explosions In The Sky. Apart from that, my musical mind is drawing blanks. There'll probably be another Mumford album but will the pressure be too much to handle? There's also in theory a new Portishead and Radiohead album. Who knows. It'll be tough to beat last year's output but that's what the industry should always be striving for.

I'm going to give my ears a little rest for a few days, the pressure of a 4.5 hour set at PA meant I listened to an awful lot of music to prepare and though I flew blind for almost my entire set, it was an exhausting experience.

In the meantime however, I'd recommend reading this very interesting article by the always brilliant Alexis Petridis regarding the Radio 1 takeover and their policies on New Music and Playlisting.


Happy New Year to each and every one of you.