Ten records that are good and why I like them

1. Air - Moon Safari. The singles. Relaxing. The whole frenchness of it.

2. Massive Attack - Mezzanine. Heavy bass lines. Impending doom. Liz Frasers vocals on teardrop and angels. Darkness. A brilliant live show at the Glasgow Barrowlands.

3. Basement Jaxx - Romeo. The video is a favourite of mine. Happy music makes me small. Cute female vocal.

4. Lee'Scratch' Perry - Arkology. Chase the devil. Police and thieves. I've lost the third CD and I'm gonna have to buy it again.

5. 1000 homo DJs - Supernaut. Not cool nowadays but still cool. The black sabbath version is good too.

6. Toots & the maytals - monkey man. Live in concert and the air was green.

7. Dead Prez - hip hop. One thing about music when it hits you feel no pain. And the bass line

8. Bob Marley - trenchtown rock - where dead prez stole their lyrics.

9. Fugazi - song #1 - 'everybody's talkin about their hometown scene and hurtin peoples feelings in their magazines and you wanna know what it all means.......it's nothing.' I used to sing that one in my kiddie punk band.

10. Johnny Cash -hurt - Johnny was a massive hero of mine. My dad loves him as well. Hurt was a favourite nine inch nails song and he made it his own. You can hear the emotion in his voice. Progressive neurological illness and years of abuse taking their toll. Sadly beautiful.

9. Outkast - Hey ya! shake it like a polaroid picture. Fast, funny, joyful. Video full of pretty girls.

Albums in high rotation

OK. I'm kind of against the whole autistic boy thing of writing lists about the top 10 of everything so I am kinda conflicted on this blog. Nothing is really the best ever. It's always just stuff that you like a lot at any one time. So with that disclaimer here's my current top 10 CDs that are in heavy rotation with a bit of explanation about each one.

1. The Arcade Fire - Funeral. This is just a brilliant record. It sounds different to most of the stuff you hear on the radio at the moment. The arrangements are inventive and the lyrical content is very emotional. It's an album about death that reminds you of the best parts of life.

2. Sons & Daughters - The repulsion box. Angry, fast and gothic. Female fronted Nice Cave style darkness. Energetic. (Gossipy aside - while this band are all indie cred and cool I know that Scott, the guitarist is a qualified dentist so if no-one buys their records he does have a solid career to fall back on. Buy it anyway.)

3. Franz Ferdinand - you could have it so much better - On repeated listening I like this album more than the first one. Walk away is a beautiful song.

4. Bright Eyes - I'm wide awake, it's morning - Dylan-style protest songs. Good when I'm on the bus to work in the morning watching the neds fighting.

5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Abattoir blues/The lyre of Orpheus. His best album. He sounds unbelievably happy on this one. I saw them live in Glasgow on this tour. I actually travelled up from Coventry just for this gig and it was amazing. Get ready for love and There she goes, my beautiful world are both masterpieces. The line about Johnny Thunders being half alive when he wrote Chinese Rocks makes me smile every time.

6. Missy Eliott - Under construction. Work it and Gossip Folks are just class. She has such a sexy voice. If she asked, I would give her children

7. Modest Mouse - Good news for people who like bad news. It has a song about Charles Bukowski - 'yeah I know he's a pretty good read but who would wanna be, who would wanna be such an asshole?' Lit-crit in a punk song.

8. Low - The great destroyer. Just sounds really nice. Should be chart-toppers

9. The Replacements - Hootenany - another of the great '80s band that have been ripped off by everyone. Ryan Adams owes them his career

10. Bonnie 'prince' billy - i see a darkness. Heartwarming songs about the crapness of life. Timeless voice. Johnny cash even covered one of these songs before he died.

Ok, this is going past a top 10

11. Teenage fanclub - Grand Prix. Cos Mellow Doubt is the greatest song every about unrequited love.

12. Love - Forever changes - The 3rd greatest album of the 60s? If you like Belle and Sebastian you must hear this.

13. Ryan Adams - heartbreaker - To be young (is to be sad, is to be high) is one of those perfect songs. It's in the film 'Wonder Boys'

14 . Pavement - Crooked rain, crooked rain. It's just different. Stop breathing is class.

Honourable mention. MIA - london based Sri Lankan hip hop. The singles are great but the album doesn't really cut it. One for the Ipod.

oh and Grace by Jeff Buckley is always worth a listen

So that's a list of favourites. It's not an ultimate top ten but all this stuff is worth hearing. Ask questions if you have any and tell me what y'all think

Dafunk

One time I applied for a job

One time I applied for a job in a cool record shop. It was back when I was a cool young punk. Now this record shop was so fucking cool, it was so fucking cool that you had to write a list of your ten favourite records of all time and if they were cool enough you would get a job.

Obviously I wasn't cool enough. (Thanks missing records, glasgow. You Bastards)

Anyway, I ended up working in Our Price. It was shit.

Back then my top ten was something like

1. Primal Scream - Screamadelica. Cos it is really cool, chicks dig it, it has a great cover and you can dance to it.

2. John Coltrane =- A love supreme - Just fucking listen to it man. Its so good.

3. Husker Du - zen arcade - brilliant. intense. Never talking to you again is amazing. Angry and just god-like

4. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless - Sounds you can only dream of. Like being on drugs when you are not on drugs

5. Big Black - Songs about fucking - cos it's offensive and sounds like your head is in a shredder.

6. The velvet underground and nico - obvious. Lou reed is god.

7. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation - my love of sonic youth is well documented on my main blog

8. Belle and sebastian - The boy with the arab strap - it was glasgow. It was 1998.

9. Black Flag - the first four years - explosive singles compilation with Nervous Breakdown. Angry Angry Angry

10. Public Enemy - It takes a nation of millions to hold us back. Mainly to sound cool but I have shook hands with Chuck D, I have got his autograph and Public Enemy are one of the best fucking live bands ever. On a good day.

Anyway, that was seven years ago but the list is still good. All those records are valid and really say something to me. I don't like top tens but people should hear these records.

More soon

Funky

The philosophy

Ok. If I can be bothered and if (Big if) I have the time this site is gonna be a list of records I think are cool and that I think people should check out. I'm not gonna go into much detail but I'll try and say why I think each record is cool or put records into top5s or top10s.

A bit like hi-fidelity but more geeky