Quarterfinals

It's Friday and it's July. There are Euro 20 quarterfinals on over the weekend, including England Marxists taking on Ukraine tomorrow night, and the Tour de France is well under way. The sun has been shining and the summer holidays are within touching distance. 

Here's some music for tonight's Italy versus Belgium clash, a real heavyweight quarterfinal between a Belgium side packed with talent and well placed to win their first international trophy against a young, revitalised Italian team. In the Belgian end there's Rheinzand, Ghent's top of the table Balearic/ house/ disco outfit and a slice from their recently released remix album which features versions from the likes of Superpitcher, Skylab, In Flagranti and Chris Coco and this funky delight, a remix of Queen Of Dawn by Pete Herbert.

In the the curva sud for Italy we have Pop Will Eat Itself, the Black Country's grebo sampling kings who made the still fantastic sounding piano house tribute to Italia 90 and porn star turned politician Cicciolina. New Order get all the plaudits for making a credible/ good football record in the summer of 1990 and there's no doubt that World In Motion was a sign that things were changing, but Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina is that summer's secret weapon, the supersub who scores the winner in injury time. 

Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina (Extra Time Mix)

And for further extra time/ Friday fun Lorde's new single, Solar Power, has been spliced together with Loaded to make Lorded. It's the from Joe Muggs and it works. You can find it here . The original's no slouch either. 

Oh Lorde

We've reached a point recently where if we go out in the car as a family I have to share the car stereo with my daughter, ET, aged 10. I get to choose the music on the way there, her on the way back, or vice versa. This sometimes leads to my routes being more circuitous and her's much more direct. The other day on her leg of the journey my music was playing when we pulled out of the multi-storey carpark and a few minutes later she cottoned on and asked for her turn. 'After this song' I said, knowing it was a seventeen minute and two seconds long Orb remix. One-nil to Dad.

Her in-car cd collection is made up of three Now That's What I Call Music! compilations (numbers 84, 86 and 88 I think. I don't know why it's just the even numbered ones). On the current one there are three good tunes, which over two discs and nearly forty songs is a low hit rate (for me,  not her- she likes 1D, Lawson, The Vamps etc). Now! 86 had a handful of good ones that helped soundtrack last summer's jaunt to France. The previous one had nothing on it that didn't want make me to want to cut my ears off.

To get to the point, I have actually discovered a new song from Now! 88 that I love. I may be late to the party here, but Lorde's Royals is stupendously good. In fact, seeing as it's had over forty seven million views on Youtube and has been number one around the world I am clearly very late to this party. The song is terrific, with a minimal backing track- just simple drums, some finger snaps and bass- and Lorde's wonderful voice, and lyrics about not being like the others, rejecting gaudy material goods, how she 'craves a different kind of buzz'. You can call her Queen Bee. It's stripped down, dramatic and moody, slinky too, a bit like The Xx with a more distinctive vocalist possibly. Lorde is a teenage New Zealander and seems to be outrageously talented. You probably know this already but it was a bit of a revelation to me.

Royals