Rob Dougan

Nice to think of course that this may ultimately outsell Heathen Chemistry. But don't hold my breath.

yes, i think there will be the dido/moby/faithless marketing, you only have to look at the posters covering the whole of town to see that much (not to say the change from rob d to rob dougan)

clubbed to death was one of the few half decent mowax records, mainly for the murky Peshay remix, who hollowed out the centre and stripped off some of the pleasantries

Bah..........clubbed to death, not really very original. The kind of song you hear once and wait for someone who doesn't like music to wet themselves over it. I hate all the classical wankery in it anyway, it tries so hard.

oh yes, its very try hard, and it hasn't dated hugely well (too stodgy) - this is why, ronan, you should try the peshay remix which dispenses with a lot of the fat (mind you, i haven't played that in ages so...)

Yes I will look into it.

It's one of those tracks my friends passed around to each other on minidisc until I couldn't spend a night drinking without someone playing it and everyong going ooh and aaah.

Peshay have remixed something else I like but I can't remember what.

The thing is, mixing classical and dance music does work occasionally ("The Green Man", "Madness On The Street"), but as Tom once pointed out most excellently a couple of years back on FT, it only works if the dance producer has a complete and utter disrespect for the classical stuff they're using as raw source material.

Also the track Dougan co-wrote/produced for Kylie a couple of years back - "Jump" I think - was a bit of a nadir of the whole nice-sounding but oh-so-tasteful trip-pop sound that led straight to Dido.

Thing is, Tim, "Furious Angels" is by no stretch of the imagination a dance album (indeed "Clubbed to Death" itself is a bit of an oddity in its surroundings) but utilises its elements to create something completely different and, arguably, new. Admittedly a lot of people are going to view it as Brel-does-Dido, but there's a hell of a lot more to it than "No Angel" - definitely no reassurance here.

And, like Gillian Welch last year, it just speaks to me, which few records these days do.

Well I'm not ruling out the possibility that the album is very good - I was utterly surprised by DJ Shadow and it may happen again. If anything, I'd say that it was *impossible* for "Clubbed To Death" to be as good as people said it was, regardless of who produced it - ie. I'm prepared to let Dougan off the hook.

"Clubbed To Death" sounded like a straight DJ Shadow & Massive Attack rip-off to me. I still enjoyed it. Nice video too.