Beauty & the beast

Ying & Yang. Ant & Dec. Black & White. One thing must always balance out another, it's like that yoghurt advert where they go on about every pleasure being balanced out by pain. Well, thankfully, independent record label Wichita have put this into musical form, with two new releases.

First up are Musick favourites, Those Dancing Days from Sweden. We wrote about them here. 'Home Sweet Home' is possibly the eighteenth single they've released from their oft-delayed debut album, In Our Space Hero Suits, which is finally out in mid-October. Unsurprisingly, it's more of the same, all break neck drums, keyboard flourishes and a chorus that will rattle around your cranium until Christmas...2010. We don't normally celebrate sticking to the same formula, but it works and for the time being it's enough. The video's ace too.



Ah, Bloc Party. We had such high hopes. Genuinely, I loved that first album of yours; 'Banquet' and 'Helicopter' were brilliant, 'So Here We Are' was a rush of sadness and even the mournful album tracks had something about them. But then you listened to the hype and decided to make an album that 'meant something' that 'stood for something' and all that happened was you became boring and predictable. As if to shake yourselves back into life you decided to offer up your third album, Intimacy, online only weeks after it was finished. Now, you're releasing a new single 'Talons' that isn't on the download version but is on the physical release that comes out in October. As Avril Lavigne once said "why'd you have to go and make things so complicated?" 'Talons' is all atmosphere and no substance, the musical equivalent of Lost.