Some updates, some news, some opinions.

So I'm temporarily home (literally just for a couple of hours) and I absent-mindedly returned to this blog and had a good trip down short-term memory lane and laughed and "gosh, how funny AM I?" etc. etc.

I'm not going to apologise, you'd never believe. Nor am I going to fawn over this year's selection of "talent", whom by now have all gently slipped off the radar near completely (save for Florence and The Machine, whom I accidentally heard on the radio today) meaning that, of course, the Festival Season has arrived to remind everyone of those bands who "we" all loved in those last cold dark weeks of December when every two-bit music site had us believing that this was the second coming.

A major karmic decision, based on something I did that was clearly so heinous that I managed to block it out completely means that Radiohead are headlining Reading and Leeds the year I decide not to go. On the night I definitely can't go, as I am on my way to Tokyo mere hours later. While the rest of the line-up is predictably sour and much too boring to describe here, I've promised the irrational part of my brain that if Animal Collective and the heavily rumoured Black Lips both play, I will be obliged to attend.

Unfortunately on the new music front I have kind of slipped recently due to the frightening prospect of a dissertation and the smoking crater of real life it has left behind, although I've been trying to keep abreast of a few recent albums. Notably Franz Ferdinand's latest, containing the wonderful "Lucid Dreams". Although if I hear "No, You Girls" one more time I might kill something. Also, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Its Blitz! was the darling of my speakers for a week or so some fortnights ago. The eagerly awaited Fatboy Slim remodelling of The BPA turned out to be so bad you begin to realise why he didn't want his normal moniker included at all. Royksopp's Junior was crazy and sedate in equal measure, in the way only these Norwegian advert musicians can. The tracks featuring The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson being by far the standouts.

I'm sure there were other albums I have listened to, as well as those that I will hit myself for missing (such as the aforementioned Ms Andersson's solo work as Fever Ray, which I eagerly await in the post). However, I have really taken a bit of a step back and instead listened to some old music, checking out post-punk geniuses (genii?) Wire for the first time to find that everyone was right and they are amazing.

Eagerly awaited albums for the remainder of this year are the much-delayed LCD Soundsystem and Beastie Boys albums, as well as Patrick Wolf's latest work. I would go into release dates and the relevant info on further albums, but the only reason I really came on here was because I'm meant to be writing a lovely essay on the co-evolution of the French and English languages and how we like to nick their words but they hate ours. Oh well, c'est la vie.