Desert Island Mixtape + Contest w/Prizes!

V/A: Desert Island Mixtape [.zip]

Recently, one of my superiors—best known for writing and singing songs for a kids' TV show that proved more popular with speed freak inmates in the capital's gaol than with the children of the nation—told me to compile a CD-R of the music most important to me. I don't know why. Presumably my mind and body for eight hours a day isn't enough; she wants my soul, too.

It was a ridiculous task. There are far too many excellent recordings in the world, all of them impossible to quantify or rate, to select a paltry 74 minutes' worth. In the end, a not very short shortlist had to be brutally whittled down to its bare essentials and, after a series of unhappy compromises, the entire thing was sequenced by hitting the «Random» button. (To reflect the unpredictability of day-to-day mood swings, y'unnerstand.)

Anyway, I thought I'd upload the compilation here because, well, though there's more music I'd recommend, there isn't music I'd recommend more. And this is a music blog.

Feel free to upload and email Toilet Guppies your compilation of absolutely unmissable essentials. Anyone who submits an mp3 album of their ultimate favourites (totalling no more than 100MB, please) shall receive a reading, consisting of a detailed analysis of their personality and predictions for the future, entirely for free. The person with the most moving/impressive/confounding/unsettling or unintentionally funny compilation shall win two tickets to see SWANS in Oslo, Norway on 6 May 2011.

Rare or Unreleased 10: Nurse With Wound

Nurse With Wound: «(I Don't Want to Have) Easy Listening Nightmares» [mp3]

Commissioned by a festival in Nevers, France—Musiques Ultimes—in 1995, Dada noise outfit Nurse With Wound a.k.a. Steven Stapleton's Alice the Goon was originally issued on vinyl, limited to an edition of 500. The album was re-released on CD in 2000, but now that one's out-of-print.

Which is a shame, because Alice the Goon featured the above doozy, my all-time favourite party number. It has everything: it's gutsy, it's danceable, it's warped and it's humourous. In fact, I'd venture to say it's the funniest a nightmare could ever be. It doesn't lend your ear as much as bend your mind. With no lyrics to anchor your imagination, the exotica—perverted by a child-like glee of noise and squall (the sonic equivalent to Schadenfreude, or of the messy anal stage)—makes you want to dance the chachachá, take hard drugs and punch someone in the tits, all at the same time. Like a crackhead sexual offender out on parole, making a living as a clown at children's parties, it's just wrong. I mean, how can anything that feels this wrong be so right? Don't look to me for answers; it just is.

No wonder new copies of the 2000 CD reissue start at $120.00. But fuck parting with that kind of green; here at Toilet Guppy's, we put the «arty» back into «party»—and you're all invited!