Upon reading the sentence 'Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke launches solo career' in this week's NME, I had the kind of reaction I get whenever there's a news story about a president being elected who'll end civil unrest in some troubled country that's had a spot of strife – in theory it's no bad thing, just nothing that is of any great immediate concern to me.
Then my eyes happened upon the fact that Spank Rock's XXXChange was on board. Now, Spank Rock on their own are perfectly fine, making stout electro party hip-hop that stands about 2ft to the left of almost everyone else. But XXXChange, whose passport should have his real name Alex Epton on it, is shaping up to be a fuck of a producer and remixer in his own right, as his work with the likes of The Kills, Amanda Blank, Bjork and Thom Yorke have proved. Mad prolific, he's also super-adept at genre diversity – he's just as home with a shirt-stuck-to-your-back tribal acid freakout (see his remix of Make It So by Daedelus) as he is with dinner-party Eric Bristow-pinky finger out gentrified electro (his mix of Thom Yorke's The Eraser), cheap lager scrunchy indie disco (Cheap And Cheerful by The Kills) or screwed up oddball hip-hop (Amanda Blank's album, I Love You). He's still at one with the B-More club thing – he's also involved with the Kid Sister album, which should also find its place in a meritocracy.
For those reasons alone, I'll be be keeping my mouse hovered over Kele's MySpace page.
