Tomorrow could be boring

Soy milk with my Ozric Tentacles, please

Ozric Tentacles is a brand of psychedelic prog-rock flavour breakfast cereal that every creative person should try at least once. Why? Because the mesh of riffs and melodies that is their sound, will make its way through the ear canals and slowly seep out of your eyeballs in an exquisite kaleidoscopic colour fantasy.

If you have Ozrics in the background and pen, pencil, chalk, Photoshop, typewriter, pasta collage - anything to create with - in front of you and nothing happens, then there's something wrong.

Let me re-phrase: if nothing good happens.

Ozrics are mind-food. Medicine against blank-page-panic.

Prog rock is such an irritating label. Perhaps even more so than "pop" or "rock". Deep Purple and Pink Floyd have their place, but it feels wrong that they should be cheek-to-cheek with the Ozrics. Nothing is in the same category.

I perceive the world around me through mild synaesthesia (although so do most people without realising it; I guess what I'm saying is: my synaesthesia is stronger than average). Ozric Tentacles hit the Syn nerve on the spot. (I just made up the Syn nerve, but go with it).

In fact, I'd venture as far as to say that the perfect treatment option for someone who's a little stiff and rigid in the creative department would be to gently introduce a course of Ozrics, starting, perhaps, with Jurassic Shift, one of my favourites. The dormant Syn nerve would twang into action equally well with Strangeitude or Pungent Effulgent.

The group has released 20-odd recordings since its formation in the mid eighties, yet is classified as "underground". This is no Tony Tiger; I'll admit that Ozrics won't appeal to the masses. It's not an easy sell. It won't fit into a bite-size chart show. It's not revolutionary. It doesn't deviate too much from its central theme. You can listen to some samples on the official website and decide for yourself. I recommend longer than a few seconds though - so if you are of the Napster persuasion, go, download!

All of the above form part of the appeal for me. I enjoy sharing this under the table secret with the select few. So, I'll admit - every time I find myself enjoying a chart-topping act, I wince just a little. This is, of course, terribly contrived and silly of me because if I'd truly achieved the state of being free of mass influence, I would go with whatever takes my fancy, regardless of whether a few squillion others fancied the same thing too.

And this brings me nicely to Röyksöpp. An indie band from Norway. Nay, a chart-climbing indie band  from Norway. They're good. Really good. Maybe there's some kind of secret Nordic code hidden in the tracks; a native memory of a sound just so, that happens to appeal to the Finn in me - who knows, I'm just babbling now - but some of the tracks are "little hairs at the back of your neck standing up" good. I'll have to throw the contrived snobbery out with the rubbish; this stuff is becoming popular, but I like it. Maybe the snobbery is more to do with my regard for the faceless general public: can it really tell mass-produced talentless hacks from true gems? Just a rhetorical question.

Röyksöpp could be described as dance, as pop, as indie - again, no befitting category there. This, I find, is always a good sign.

Categorisation fails completely when talking about Lamb. Is it drum and bass? Is it pop? Is it dance? Who knows. It's like a warm pebble you happened to pick up from an otherwise bleak beach; it's nestled in your pocket and keeping you warm, all in secret. You smile to yourself because B-line is stuck in your head and most people associate mint sauce with Lamb, not this.

Fear of fours is the raw - and in my opinion most appealing - example of the Lamb-effect, but the 1996 debut was enough to get me hooked. If you like Portishead, Bjork, or, indeed, Röyksöpp, I recommend you give Lamb a whirl.

This is part of The Sunday Review series.

On the nature of arrogance in blogging

Anyone who creates something and wishes for their creation to be public, could be classed as arrogant. After all, they have a vision or an object - a voice that they hope others would hear. They have made something they are proud of and want to share with the world. Or perhaps they have an opinion that they feel must become known to more than just the random relative, or work colleague who cares enough to listen. So we could call authors, artists, journalists, columnists, stand-up comics; a whole heap of people, arrogant by default, but we, as a society, tend not to. Instead, bloggers are sometimes referred to as no better than monkeys with typewriters. What is so different about bloggers? Why do many producers and consumers of the more "traditional" media often make statements like these:

Bloggers are no better than those bloody awful senders of Round Robin Christmans letters. Self centred and arrogant. Greedy for more than 15 minutes of fame.

Left as a comment by Josephine Bennington to an article about the digital revolution, at BBC.co.uk.

What is so wrong about wanting more than 15 minutes of fame, I wonder, Josephine? That's not a new thing in the world. It is not the exclusive right of Bloggers. The "Look Ma!" instinct is strong in people. I would also love to ask her a few questions, such as: Do you ever answer in more than one word, when asked "how are you?" Because surely, that could be considered bloody self-centred. Ah, but bloggers announce "how they are" to the whole world! Stuart doesn't like that one bit:

Blogs: Badly written, mundane drivel from under-informed, over-opinionated people. All the digital revolution has achieved is to give a platform to the "me, me, me" generation. It has given the pub boor a megaphone. (As before), Stuart, UK

But Stuart, a megaphone is something you can't ignore, whereas a blog is handy in that you don't have to read it if you don't want to.

Obviously Stuart's opinion, given online, to an article from where both of these comments came, is so important that he can begrudgingly put his distaste for opinionated people making themselves heard through the aid of the evil digital revolution to one side.

Blogs are pathetic - suddenly every person on the planet has an opinion that just has to be heard. (As before), Paul Charters, Sutton, UK

Paul, this is not "suddenly". Everyone on this planet has something they wish others could hear. Whether that's a personal take on something mundane, or a shared feeling, or a criticism of world affairs - don't we share these things with each other every day? What has happened "suddenly" though, is that a new medium, through which everyone can reach a wider audience has made an entrance and it looks like a little more than a fad.

Blogs do not have much of an access barrier, apart from the ability to get to a computer that has an online connection. That's beginning to be a very low rim these days, though there are, of course, millions to whom reaching for this barrier would still be impossible (and unimportant).

Bloggers can, and do come in all flavours. There are arrogant ones among them, but that doesn't make all bloggers arrogant by default, just like one arrogant newspaper columnist doesn't make all newspaper columnists arrogant by default. Blogging is accessible, and at its basic level - incredibly easy, but just because it is possible for an absolute ignorant moron to start one, doesn't mean that all bloggers are absolute ignorant morons. Only an absolute ignorant moron would make a statement that suggested this was the case.

The World Wide Web is a way in which people can reach out for other people. It's a tool with which to engage yourself with the world in a way that has not been previously possible. Blogging is just one expression of that. The critique of the faceless readership is often very simple: "will read that" or "don't want to read that", which means that whilst there are many blogs that have barely evolved from Txt MsgIng, they won't be the well read or influential ones. The surfing blog reader will choose exactly what they find entertaining, or informative. This frightens many of the producers of "traditional media" and in cases of well researched and well written political blogs, the influence of which has sometimes surpassed that of the news broadcast or a newspaper, the world of current affairs and political reporting has been irreversibly altered as a result of the humble Blog.

It's funny to see some people getting all uppity about blogging, podcasting, etc and whether they're new or not, or faddish or not, sad or not... we who blog, blog, those who don't, don't. Nothing more to it. There is good and there is bad and, naturally, the best and most interesting stuff rises to the top and stays. (As before), Vitriolica Webb, Portugal