Victoria Beckham has previously called her feet “the bane of my life” — and not just because of her obsessive compulsion to toss away millions on shoes, shoes, and more shoes. according to U.K. paper the Daily Mail — and more than a few icky close-up photos of Beckham’s dogs — the world’s most fabulous footballer’s wife has a raging case of bunions.

“She is suffering from shooting pain from the bunions,” a snitch told the paper.

“Normally, she kicks off her shoes in the house, but she has been out so much recently in high heels that she is really feeling it.” (We don’t totally buy that last statement. Posh wears five-inch Louboutins when playing with her kids in the sandbox; if Isotoner makes a stiletto, she’s wearing that around the house.)

According to reports, Beckham’s been advised to get surgery on her feet, but is ignoring the advice, instead doing therapeutic exercises, trying out insoles and dousing her skin-wheels in ice to stave off the inevitable. (Because an eternity of fabulous pain is so much better than wearing flat shoes for a two- to six-month recovery period? maybe someone should tell her Jimmy Choo makes a fine flat.)

this is Eddie Davis’ Grey Cup homecoming.

And not just because the Saskatchewan Roughriders defensive back is expecting to see thousands of watermelon-wearing fans in the stands at McMahon Stadium for tomorrow’s Grey Cup matchup with the Montreal Alouettes.

Davis, who spent five seasons with the Stamps and won his first championship ring in Red & White in 1998, made Calgary his adopted hometown more than a decade ago.

“I’m just enjoying this whole week — enjoying being back at McMahon Stadium, being back at my old locker. this is going to be a great week,” Davis said. “I’m loving this right now. You couldn’t ask for anything more.”

not to mention sleeping in his old bed.

Most of the imports suiting up for Riders and Alouettes won’t see their families for a few more days, but the 36-year-old Davis is an exception.

even though he’s following the same hectic schedule as the rest of the Cup participants, he’s seen his wife and two children more often this week than he normally would during the football season.

in fact, the talkative defensive halfback just moved into the Riders’ team hotel last night after spending a few nights with his loved ones at their southwest home.

Davis grew up in St. Louis, Mo., and is quick to admit he dreamed about earning his paycheques on a 100-yard field.

after 15 years in the CFL, though, he’s a staunch defender of the Canadian game.

“I’m very grateful for this league, for these fans, for Canada, in general,” Davis said.

“This is where I made my living. this is where I’ve made my family. this is my new home.

“I’m grateful for having had this opportunity to play up here. I’ve seen a lot of NFL guys come up here and think this league is a rinky-dink league, but most of those guys can’t stick in this league.

“You’ve got some great athletes up here, and I think we can play with anybody in the world.

Ironically, Davis had to move south for his first taste of three-down football.

after a stellar collegiate career at Northern Illinois, he signed a free-agent pact with the Birmingham Barracudas in 1995, spending one season in Alabama before the CFL scrapped their failed American expansion plan.

He was scooped up by the Stamps in the dispersal draft and spent five seasons in Red & White before signing with the Riders in 2001.

Davis ranks among the active leaders with 34 career interceptions and has also racked up nearly 1,000 tackles in his CFL career. Tomorrow, he’ll try to add a third championship ring to his resume.

What a journey it’s been.

“Honestly, I didn’t even think I’d been playing CFL football when I came out of college,” Davis said.

“I was fortunate enough to get a contract sent to me from a guy named Roy Shivers and I said, ‘What the hell? Let me go down there.’

“It was a $30,000 contract. that was my first contract and I loved it. I thought I was making big, big money.”

WES.GILBERTSON@SUNMEDIA.CA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) -All signs point to another lopsided affair.

Top-ranked Florida has a higher-rated offense than Florida State, a considerably better defense and more at stake when the in-state rivals meet for the 52nd consecutive year Saturday. The Gators (11-0) have the nation’s longest winning streak (21 games), have won five straight in the series and are trying to put together the program’s first perfect season.

Could the Seminoles (6-5) mess it all up?

“You never know,” FSU coach Bobby Bowden said. “That’s what makes it exciting. That’s what makes it fun. All these big rivals play and you never know. a lot of times it’s a good game and it shouldn’t have been a good game.”

The last two have been routs, with Florida winning by a combined score of 90-27. The Gators totaled 1,075 yards, 51 first downs and their most points in a two-year span against FSU since 1972 and ‘73.

Many believe this one could be just as bad, maybe even worse. The Seminoles have an undersized defensive line, a porous secondary and have given up 332 points – the most in Bowden’s 33 years. although E.J. Manuel has been effective in two starts, he also has throw four interceptions.

“We’re getting closer,” Bowden said. “Next year, we should be neck and neck. … I think we’ll be able to compete next year.”

The oddsmakers must feel the same. Florida State is a 24 1/2-point underdog in a rivalry that used to be as much about national championships as bragging rights and recruiting battles.

Players and coaches insist little has changed, though.

“A lot of people say the rivalry’s changed,” Florida linebacker Ryan Stamper said. “If you look back in the ’90s, this game pretty much was the game that decided who was going to the national championship. even though we’ve been the most successful the past couple years, that still doesn’t change how we approach the rivalry as far as the way we prepare.

“Just because Florida State had a bad year, we know that’d make their season to beat us. even though they’re having a bad season, just because we beat them we won’t be like, ‘It’s Florida State, they’re sorry anyway or whatever.’ It’ll feel real good to beat them just because it’s Florida State.”

A win Saturday would be special.

Not only would it give Florida its second undefeated regular season in school history and set up a national championship elimination game against No. 2 Alabama the following week in the Southeastern Conference title game, it would give quarterback Tim Tebow, linebacker Brandon Spikes and about 20 other seniors a victory in their final home game.

The seniors, who have more wins (46) than any class in SEC history, will be honored before the game. Tebow certainly will get most of the attention; several groups spent the week urging everyone to wear eye black in honor of the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner’s home finale.

Tebow and his fellow seniors don’t want to disappoint the 90,000-plus fans who will watch them play in person for the last time.

“There’s something extra about winning a rivalry game, especially against Florida State,” senior receiver David Nelson said. “It’s Senior Day for us. It’s your last chance to run into The Swamp. It will be your last chance to sing the fight song with the student section.

“There’s a lot of things that we can accomplish by winning this game. It’s a rivalry, undefeated, your last game at The Swamp, so there’s a lot of motivation for us.”

The Seminoles eked out a win against Maryland last week to become bowl eligible for the 33rd consecutive season. although there’s still plenty of talk about Bowden’s uncertain future, a victory in Gainesville probably would bolster his case for sticking around another year.

Another blowout might flame the fire under Bowden’s seat.

Bowden recalled several upsets in this series, specifically the one in 2004, when the Ron Zook-coached Gators beat FSU 20-13 on the night the Doak Campbell Stadium field was named after Bowden. could the Seminoles return the favor by ruining Florida’s season Saturday?

“I don’t even want to think about that,” Stamper said. “That would be a bad, bad day around here.”

Bowden believes things have to turn sooner or later.

“There were times we beat them four in a row and they beat us five or six in a row,” he said. “It will change. Nothing lasts forever.”

Eli Roth and Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds Photograph: Weinstein/Everett / Rex Featur

Inglourious Basterds
DVD & Blu-ray, Universal

It’s taken a decade for this to arrive (no time wasted on spellcheck, though), and Quentin Tarantino’s epic second world war romp is the best thing he’s done in ages. It’s deceptively Tarantino-esque; just because it’s a period piece doesn’t mean he skimps on his trademark pop-culture references. It’s just that here he geeks out not on Les big Macs and exploitation movies but on 1920s/30s German cinema, which certainly separates the men from the (fan)boys. You don’t need a diploma in German mountain movies to have fun with this, though. the tale, delivered in five generous interlocking chapters, is told masterfully. Just when you think one segment is beginning to outstay its welcome, a stylish twist is performed. Unusually for Tarantino, there’s a good spread of performances too. where his films normally play like a group of actors taking turns to quote from a lengthy QT monologue, here we get proper characters. while Brad Pitt and his team of Nazi-haters get snappy one-liners and plenty of scalping action, it’s the German actors who quietly steal this show, especially Christoph Waltz as an arrogant, ruthlessly efficient “Jew hunter”. He’s the scariest thing Tarantino has ever created. There’s no commentary or behind-the-scenes stuff among the extras, but the extended outtakes do reveal a lot about his working methods, and Eli Roth’s complete Nation’s Pride film captures propaganda film-making at it’s best/worst.

Life
DVD & Blu-ray, BBC

More top-notch, high-def, Attenborough-lubricated nature-porn from the BBC’s Natural History Unit.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
DVD & Blu-ray, Paramount

Hollywood spectacle at is biggest and dumbest, in Michael Bay’s robotic sequel.

Orphan
DVD, second Sight

Effective scary-child adoption paranoia horror, starring Peter Sarsgaard.

Gambit
DVD, second Sight

Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine lead a frothy 1966 heist movie.

Boom!
DVD, second Sight

Flamboyant 1968 flop starring Liz Taylor and Richard Burton – camp classic potential.

Edinburgh’s tram bosses have insisted they are on schedule to complete work on Princes Street in time for this weekend’s festive shopping deadline.

Buses and taxis are due to return to the capital’s main shopping street in time for the Christmas period.

The street has been closed to all traffic since February for work on Edinburgh’s new tram system.

Retailers are concerned that the nine-month closure may have damaged the street’s reputation.

Richard Jeffrey, chief executive of Tie, which was the company set up to oversee the trams project, said Princes Street would open to traffic at 0500 GMT on Sunday.

He said: “Princes Street has never been closed to pedestrians but obviously once it is reopened to buses and taxis and everything is restored to normality, it will be a big pull for people into the city centre to do their Christmas shopping.”

Gordon Bell, a Scottish retail consultant, said: “A lot of shopping has been done already, however, the other problem is shoppers are creatures of habit and we have given them the opportunity to go elsewhere to experience new shopping.

“Just because we have reopened the street doesn’t mean they will come rushing back.”

Gethin Jenkins will lead Wales against Australia after Ryan Jones failed to overcome a back strain suffered during weight training. Photograph: John Gichigi/Getty Images

Gethin Jenkins will tomorrow become Wales’s fourth captain this year after Ryan Jones pulled out of the side with a back strain sustained while weight training this week. The last time the Lions prop led his country was the match before Warren Gatland took over as head coach at the end of 2007 and he was overlooked when Jones missed two Six Nations matches this year; the armband went first to Martyn Williams and then to Alun Wyn Jones.

Jenkins’s elevation is an indication of the importance that Wales, for all the talk of running rugby and providing a spectacle for spectators at the end of the international year, are placing on the scrum. As captain, he will be in regular contact with the referee, Wayne Barnes, and the set piece has become the second most contentious issue in the game after the ruck.

No one feared Australia’s scrum a couple of years ago, but Wales, who have got away with playing Paul James out of position at tighthead this month, now rank it as the best in the world and an obstacle to a fourth win over Australia in the last five meetings in Cardiff. The Wallabies have become streetwise in the tight, as they showed at Twickenham when the prop Benn Robinson collapsed a scrum near England’s line but won the penalty to give his side a lead they were not to lose, but they have fallen off in other areas and defeat tomorrow would be their eighth of the year, equalling the worst international campaigns, 1958 and 2005, in their 110-year history.

It is a day when the top six of the world rankings are in action against each other. Australia start the afternoon in third, but they will drop out of the top five for the first time if they lose to Wales by more than 15 points and results in Marseille and Dublin go the way of the Six Nations sides.

Robbie Deans, the Australia coach, has come under pressure after his side, which finished at the bottom of the Tri-Nations, lost to Scotland last week despite dominating possession. their running instincts may run counter to the prevailing trend of kicking and chasing, but the average age of today’s side is 24 and if the International Rugby Board finds some way of restoring the balance between attack and defence at the breakdown, the Wallabies will be well placed next year when the countdown to the 2011 World Cup will start ticking loudly.

Wales are upwardly mobile having recovered from the ignominy of failing to make the quarter-finals of the 2007 World Cup, but it will be a defining evening for them. since winning the grand slam, they have lost to South Africa three times, new Zealand twice and France and Ireland once. their only major victims in 2009 are England, hardly the scalp it used to be.

Robert Howley, the Wales attack coach, conceded that the ugliest of victories would do, never mind the concerns that professional rugby union is becoming unwatchable. so for all the mutual backslapping in the build-up that the two sides are the most creative and adventurous in their respective tournaments, the need for victory may curb any desire to finish the year on an aesthetic high.

Wales will miss Ryan Jones, who has rediscovered his best form this season. Andy Powell moves to No8, with Dan Lydiate, who is 22 next month, coming off the bench to take over at blindside flanker after winning his first cap as a replacement against Argentina last week. Two years ago this month, Lydiate feared he would never walk again after breaking his neck playing for Newport Gwent Dragons in Perpignan.

“Pulling on the Wales jersey is like putting on armour for battle,” he said. “You almost feel like Superman.” he will be up against the Australia captain, Rocky Elsom, regarded as a superhero by Leinster supporters last season and if Wales have the more prolific finishers, the Wallabies have the edge up front and in the back row. Wales talk about owning the sky and kicking is likely to prevail, but the day will surely come again when players are encouraged to reach for the sky, not just because that is where the ball will be coming from.

The other day I met the perfect prospective Conservative parliamentary candidate. She was young, she was very bright, she was seriously good-looking and she had a thorough intellectual grasp of Tory values.

“God, you should seriously stand for election. You’d be a shoe-in with Dave Cameron’s new all-female shortlists,” I told her.

“I already tried and they rejected me,” she replied. “I think what swung it was when a question about the environment came up. I told them I didn’t believe all that nonsense about Man-Made Global Warming.”

How depressed does that story make you feel?

Here are some of the things I think any prospective Tory candidate should believe in:

1. a commitment to lower taxes, both corporate and personal.

2. An immediate repeal of the Climate Change Act of 2008

3. Cancellation of all alternative energy projects – most especially of wind farms, because of the damage they will do to the British landscape – and an accelerated nuclear programme.

4. Tougher stance on immigration.

5. Tougher stance on Islamist extremism, particularly on Foreign Office collaboration with extremist groups.

6. a real bonfire of the Quangos – as in, actually destroying them, rather than simply replacing favoured Nu Lav apparatchiks with favoured Nu Tory ones.

7. a radical rethink of the NHS (as opposed to Dave’s current we’ll-spend-the-same-as-if-not-more-than-Labour-but-we’ll-be-a-bit-more-efficient non policy)

8. Withdrawal from the European Union (except as part of a trading bloc)

9. Repeal of all PC or nannying social legislation such as the Human Rights Act and the Independent Safeguarding Authorities “all adults are paedophiles”

10. Repeal of the ban on foxhunting.

You probably suggest a few more of your own. How many of the above would Cameron’s current Conservative lot pass?

by Michael Baggaley
michael.baggaley@thesentinel.co.uk

SALIF Diao has urged Stoke fans to lay off controversial Blackburn forward El Hadji Diouf tomorrow – and not just because he is helping with the City midfielder’s charity project.

Diouf is one of several stars who will play in a game in Turin on December 21 to promote anti-racism and raise money for Diao’s African children’s charity, CAAP Afrika, and for research into motor neurone
disease.

Didier Drogba, Patrice Evra, Samuel Eto’o and Pavel Nedved are among the big-name stars who should also be playing in the Africa versus Europe game.

Diao and Stoke captain Abdoulaye Faye will pair up with Diouf in Torino’s Olympic Stadium, although that won’t mean they will go easy on their Senegalese compatriot at Ewood Park.

The battle between Faye and Diouf should be a mouthwatering one, even though the former Bolton team-mates are friends as well as neighbours in the North West.

Diao said: “It is going to be a good game between those two. every week they are on the phone together talking about what they’ve done. he lives right next to Abdoulaye so, when we lose a game, he will park his car in front of Abdoulaye’s house and give him a bit of stick on his way home.”

Diouf is clearly a brave man, but winding up the fearsome Faye is typical of a player who likes nothing better than having thousands of fans on his case.

Diao explained: “He is a really top class player, but he loves the adversity. If he’s not having a good day, he will do everything to provoke the fans and everyone else around him to help him raise his game. I would advise fans, whatever you do, just leave him alone. Don’t wake him up.”

There’s not much chance of the Everton fans ignoring Diouf the next time he goes to Goodison after the midfielder was at the centre of controversy there in September.

Blackburn’s ex-Liverpool forward was alleged to have racially abused a ball boy, but countered with claims he was racially abused by Everton fans and had bananas throw at him.

The Merseyside club was furious with Diouf after finding no bananas on the pitch or in the stands.

Diao, who arrived at Liverpool at the same time as Diouf in the wake of Senegal’s impressive displays at the 2002 World Cup, said: “He needs to watch himself because, whatever he does or says, people will always blame him. but I know him personally and he is a very good lad, even if he is a bit eccentric.

“He likes to be the centre of the world and that can be good because he does very good things for charity. but in another way it can be something not nice, and that’s why he needs to be careful and try to avoid those things.

“But he has hot blood, so if people provoke him he will react. He’s not scared about being in the eyes of everyone – he loves it.”
Diao is a more thoughtful character, although the 32-year-old City midfielder is not to be tangled with on the pitch.

He’s leaner and meaner this year having lost half a stone thanks to changing his diet. Blood tests showed Diao has an allergy to wheat, a problem he believes has contributed to the succession of muscle problems he’s suffered over the last few years.

He said: “I’ve had to change my diet completely, which I found weird. It was difficult for the first two weeks, but I’ve lost weight and feel a lot sharper at training. That’s helped me a lot.

“I’ve also had a lot of good advice from Robert Huth, who had the same problem when he was at Chelsea.

“When they told me, I thought ‘why did no-one think of it five or six years ago?’ but it’s all good. I think every player should have that blood test to make sure they are doing the right thing.”

Diao missed Stoke’s disappointing home draw with Wolves and their defeat at Hull because of a groin strain. he played an hour in the home win against Portsmouth last Sunday, but was not at his best as he hadn’t done a full week’s training.

But his performances at Tottenham and Everton earlier in the season show why Tony Pulis was keen to get the combative holding midfielder back in the side.

Pulis sanctioned a one-year deal for Diao at the end of last season just as it seemed he was on his way out of the club.

Diao would love to stay beyond the end of this season, but says he needs to state his case for a new deal by being fit enough to play regularly.
He said: “I love the club and really feel at home here. I feel wanted here and it is a family for me. but the only way I can make that happen is by playing week in, week out, and making sure the performances are there.

“Then, maybe we will sit down with the board to talk about a contract extension. but for the moment, it is up to me to keep my fitness levels up and deliver on the pitch.

“I have played just four games this season and I don’t think that’s good enough.”

November 19th, 2009

Chris Brown receives ‘extremely favorable’ report

LOS ANGELES — A judge says Chris Brown has received an “extremely favorable” report from probation officials overseeing his felony assault case.

Brown appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom Thursday afternoon to offer a judge his first progress report since being sentenced for beating ex-girlfriend Rihanna earlier this year.

The R&B singer is serving five years of probation and must attend domestic violence counseling and perform six months of community labor in Virginia, which he has already begun.

Brown’s attorney, Mark Geragos, says Brown has already done 100 hours of community service in Richmond, Va.

Both Brown and Rihanna are trying to put the beating behind them by focusing on their careers. Rihanna has a popular new single titled “Russian Roulette.” Brown is due to release his third album on Dec. 8.

Filed under News | Tags: Assault and Battery, California, Celebrity, Celebrity Legal Affairs, Los Angeles, Music, North America, United States | Comment Below

Brown denies leaking Rihanna’s photos

May 11th, 2009 LONDON – Singer Chris Brown has denied rumours suggesting that he leaked ex-girlfriend Rihanna’s nude photos on the Internet, insisting he had nothing to do with the scandal. A set of photographs apparently featuring Rihanna in various states of undress surfaced online Friday.

Chris Brown has low-key 20th birthday

May 6th, 2009 LONDON – Singer Chris Brown reportedly had a low key birthday celebration with family and friends in Virginia. Still facing two charges – felony battery and making criminal threats – for beating ex-girlfriend Rihanna in February this year, Brown quietly brought in his 20th birthday Tuesday, reported aceshowbiz.com.

Rihanna back in studio as Chris Brown struggles to cope

April 15th, 2009 LONDON – Singer Chris Brown, who was in the news recently for allegedly beating his then girlfriend singer Rihanna, is still depressed, but Rihanna is working on a new album. Rihanna is in the studio in Santa Monica working on her new album.

I did not assault Rihanna, says singer Chris Brown

April 7th, 2009 LONDON – Singer Chris Brown has pleaded not guilty to two felony charges after his alleged fight with ex-girlfriend Rihanna in February. The R&B star showed up at Los Angeles County Court on April 6 with his lawyer Mark Geragos.

Music star Chris Brown allegedly involved in assault case

February 8th, 2009 LONDON – RnB star Chris Brown, who was supposed to perform at the 51st Grammy Awards, is now being investigated by police in an alleged assault on an unidentified woman. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) questioned Brown Sunday night, but are refusing to reveal the woman’s identity.

Back in 2007/8, Brooklynite trio (then quartet) Yeasayer were a tricksy proposition, their debut album All Hour Cymbals lurching wildly between utter genius and slight tedium, their curious blend of world music, pop and prog alternately staggering and dull. You may therefore not be entirely prepared for the frankly magnificent follow up Odd Blood, a fantastic Eighties and Nineties flecked electro-pop album that ditches the quasi Africana and the pomp in favour of hooks so shiny you could stab a man with them. a review to come in the new year, but for now enjoy this here write up of DiS’s recent chin wag with Anand Wilder, Chris Keating and Ira Wolf Tuton.

DiS: Hey all – so when did you come to write Odd Blood?

Ira Tuton: a lot of the music we had written on the road, and then in January or February of this year we all got together and started slamming our ideas together.

DiS: did ‘Tightrope’, your song off the Dark Was The Night compilation predate it all, then? It sounds very different to anything on Odd Blood.

Anand Wilder: we made that right after the first album.

IT: during the first album.

AW: Yeah, during I guess. It was actually written around the same time as ‘Wait for the Summer’, for the same reason, actually, we wrote some music for a fashion show, instrumental stuff, and then we started writing songs based on that material.

IT: Yeah, and then it was the first song we played on our first ever UK tour…

AW: Yeah, they thought we were just going to play new songs.

Chris Keating: we showed them.

AW: Yeah, we played the hell out of those old songs.

IT: we played them over and over and over…

DiS: so would it be fair to say Odd Blood represents something of a change in direction?

IT: have you heard it?

DiS: Yeah.

AW: How come you haven’t leaked it?

DiS: To be honest, I actually don’t quite know how…

IT: You don’t know how to be a criminal?

CK: Could you not just put these songs in your iTunes library?

DiS: Yeah, I have.

CK: Oh, well it’s simple then. Just open up share and everybody can listen to them!

IT: Yeah, you don’t have to be internet savvy, somebody else can do it for you.

Some pastries arrive. there is a light kerfuffle.

IT: so you think this album sounds different?

DiS: Yeah, I dunno if electro-pop is quite the correct way of describing it, but certainly it is by comparison to the first record.

IT: It sounds like the sun coming out after a cloudy weekend.

CK: It’s like a 40 degree day.

DiS: Oh come now.

IT: Yeah, I think we always make an effort to explore new sounds. also this time we were making a conscious decision to write songs that were inspired by other pop songs, love songs, you know? The first record is very much about the weather or the seasons… this record there’s a lot more love and sentiment in there in the traditional pop sense, it was fun for us to try it. And sonically we’re tired of sitars. Though we never used sitars.

CK: Whatever that was that sounded like a sitar.

IT: Yeah

CK: Snakey guitars

DiS: did you ever find it riling, being dubbed ‘world music’?

AW: I’ve never been unhappy with any comparison that anybody’s ever made, because the idea is to be as broad as possible. We’ve never taken on any aesthetic prejudice, preconceived notions of what is cool or uncool, and so it was all like ‘what can we take from this?’ ‘what can we be inspired by?’ but world music is kind of silly. We’re all city guys, we live in new York.

CK: but in the end you want a strong reaction, and if that’s what people take then so be it. You know, it’s one of a few that kind of caught on in some way, and who knows what the next one will be.

AW: We’re putting ourselves out in the open, it’s not really in our nature to be critical of other people’s opinions about us.

Video: Yeasayer: ‘Ambling Alp’

DiS: Are you happier people than before, would you say? This record feels a lot more upbeat and positive than the first, especially ‘Ambling Alp’, the lead track…

CK: I think I am a happier person now, I think we all are, because I get to make music, got rid of a job I didn’t want to do and an ex girlfriend that I don’t like.

AW: all my lyrics on this album are really dark and not happy at all. Bt I don’t know if that gives you any perception of my own happiness, I feel… maybe it’s just because I’m too scared to write really positive cheery lyrics.

DiS: I guess maybe I mean it was a much more musically upbeat, dancey record.

IT: I think when it comes to that, the first record was very ambient and ethereal and cloudy and heady and kind of felt like you were fogged up from your head inwardly. on this it’s clear – the drums are clear, the guitars are clear; it’s head bobbing just because of the way we recorded it, to punch through those speakers a little more. And that was a conscious decision.

CK: Yeah, I think it was a reaction to our first record. I think people saw it as, like, subliminally apocalyptic in a way that we didn’t see in the subject matter, but the more so through the production.

DiS: The better end of early Eighties British electro-pop would seem an obvious influence…

IT: Yeah, well I guess that’s always been my influence. I got into some industrial music, some Fad Gadget, some experimental early Eighties dance. but I think hip hop production from the early Nineties was an influence, more so than the pop Eighties stuff… I think I was afraid to have done that on the first record, be influenced by that stuff, but now, reflecting back… maybe it’s just because I’m getting older, reflecting on my early teenage years. I really love the way that first Nas albums sounded, I really like the production on that Black Moon record; I mean obviously some of the Eighties stuff is always going to be there – I mean Cyndi Lauper, whatever – Kate Bush.

DiS: Do you think that indie band plus hip hop production is at all a new York type thing? I guess I’m thinking of the Dirty Projectors as peers here…

IT: Everybody moves [to new York] because there are so many people making so many different kinds of sounds, so you’re surrounded by a very accepting environment, so long as you’re productive, you’re constantly seeing all these different avenues being explored and advanced and accepted… we were coming from a different place on the first record, it was kind of like being in a bubble, it wasn’t like ‘man, we’re in new York where this will be accepted’; if anything it was ‘I’m glad we’re doing this together – nobody’s going to accept this but I’m glad we’re doing this together’.

CK: but I haven’t heard any pop bands really embracing the Tribe Called Quest production aesthetic. but I think as it turns to the new decade of the 2000s, then we look back and think ‘oh, Nineties music, that was pretty cool’. I think you need that differentiation, before you can start to think, ‘oh, there’s some really good one hit wonders from that era, some really good pop stuff’.

IT: Yeah, lots of jock jams… Ace of Bass style or Snap or Haddaway.

AW: Haddaway!

IT: but you know, I would never have even thought of liking that stuff when I was in high school, but now I revisit it and think ‘there was some pretty cool production on some of those songs’, you know, those three minute dance pop songs.

DiS: How did you come to sign with Mute?

IT: They’ve been pretty supportive ever since we first came over here. they wanted to put out the first record, and it just didn’t seem right, we wanted to have a go at it ourselves first,. but yeah, some of the people at Mute had been to our show at like, the Windmill in Brixton, or something like that, when there were only 20 or 30 people and we stayed in touch… even when we talked to other labels, it’s like some A&R you don’t know trying to be your friend, and we’re like ‘but we’re already friends with those guys!’

DiS: presumably its roster and history was some attraction?

IT: definitely, like they own the Kraftwerk catalogue, can, and then obviously Depeche Mode and Cabaret Voltaire, Nitzer Ebb, it just demonstrates a certain willingness to experiment and be weird and not give a fuck.

SK: Yeah, Liars… even stuff like Moby, it feels like they’re willing to take some risks and they’re not interested in selling anyone out… it seems like a cool family.

DiS: why call the record Odd Blood?

IT: I’m interested in the ides of the influence of technology on the progression and evolution of human society and the way that technology integrates more and more through life, and also the way that globalisation breaks down borders, everyone intermingling into one giant population… so I liked the phrasing, like a big term for somebody who didn’t fit into some THX 1138 fascist computer chip in your brain regime.

DiS: Do you spend a lot of time thinking about the future?

IT: Yeah I guess so… doesn’t everybody?

DiS: not every band writes songs about it.

IT: Yeah, but to me it always seems like the most interesting thing – what is technology going to be in ten years? What will we be doing in 40 years? How are we going to fuck up the world? How are we not going to fuck up the world? I’m interested in futurist writing, that stuff to me is always the most exciting and I think as a band that’s very exciting for us, it’s not like ‘how do I get that vintage 1968 guitar sound?’ it’s more like ‘how do you get a sound that sounds like it’s from 2068?’. What is that going to be? What is music going to be like to 20 years time? That’s what I feel like I’m trying to think about, like the thinnest, weirdest, stupidest production.

DiS: in Hollywood the music of the future is always some shitty industrial band.

IT: It is, it’s always like Rob Zombie or the Fifth Element with the blue alien singing opera with an electronic beat… I don’t think that’s what it’s going to be like. but we’re consciously trying to make music with that in mind, that band in that film in that future club scene… and it always sounds like the Eighties!

DiS: Finally, would you care to offer some records of 2009?

All three: Major Lazer.

IT: I liked Bat for Lashes.

All three: Little Dragon.

SK: I thought the new Jay-Z album got totally shit on.

DiS: okay, thanks, and see y’all next year.