#The Mildenhall Great Dish

[escapismsworld]

The Mildenhall Great Dish

From the Cultures/period of the Romano-British (40s AD). The characters include the hero Hercules, drunk on wine, supported by two satyrs. This is a mesmerising, glorious relic from pre-Christian Britain.

Photos: Vinnie Sullivan

[theancientwayoflife]

~ The Great Dish from the Mildenhall treasure. Date: A.D. 4th century Place of origin: Mildenhall, England Period/culture: Romano-British Medium: Silver

[thesinglesjukebox]

HOT CHIP - MELODY OF LOVE

[6.43]

Spoilers: video does not end with Alexis shooting laser beams from his eyes...

Ian Mathers: Depending on your taste and/or emotional state Hot Chip are both easy to love and easy to deride, and honestly as long as they're determined to keep their hearts this firmly on their sleeves, I can't see either of those things changing even a little. Nearly 20 years (!) in they don't seem to be slowing down, but as you'd expect for a band that has few actual "hits" but still manages to headline festivals, I fully expect this to be manna for the faithful but not necessarily effect many conversions. To me, the lineage they're in stretches from more obvious references like New Order, the Pet Shop Boys, and house music, to plenty of other great UK pop weirdos/aesthetes like 10cc (cf. the video), and I find "Melody of Love", like many of their best songs, effortlessly moving in both a physical and emotional sense. It seems very Hot Chip that maybe the most directly soaring chorus from the new album is the one that has the most melancholy baked right into the text. Like many of my other favourite Hot Chip songs, it makes me think of some lines from Joe Goddard's solo album (sung there by bandmate Alexis Taylor): "make your own kind of problems/make something out of your fears/make your own music/let it bring you to tears." [10]

Scott Mildenhall: An amazing thing about Alexis Taylor is that the voice that's so suited to mess-arounds like "Night & Day" does sincerity just as well. One Life Stand wouldn't be half as good without his vulnerable quaver -- or for that matter Joe Goddard's counterpoint -- and it's the same here. Melancholy's full breadth was not known until it passed through him. So sad, but so secure, Hot Chip again come closer than all-comers to emanating the physical reality of human warmth through sound. [8]

Katherine St Asaph: I don't recall hearing any synthpop track recently with this much late-late-career-rock-band-touring-too-big-arenas (if the hyphenate's too unwieldy, substitute "U2") energy. [5]

Will Adams: Corny as hell (that sermon interlude!), but with Alexis Taylor's delicate warble and the numerous synth baubles wrapped around the track, it's dazzling enough to get lost in and surrender to its cheese. [7]

Alfred Soto: A song as sunlight room, with crisply buttered treats on white dishes. Hot Chip excel at tracks like "Melody of Love." Finding an equilibrium between the requirements of the dance floor and keeping our ears satisfied fascinates them as it did New Order. As their, ah, melodies become more dulcet they lose interest in kinetics. [5]

Iris Xie: A potentially pretty song ruined by some questionable choice in mixing. All the instruments seem stacked right behind the vocals, rendering the vocalist's light voice as competition against the synths. The preacher bridge sounds tacked on in order to hammer home the line, "Do you have faith to feel / In this world?" Thing is, this ode to wanting one to open one's heart and listen more to the world is at odds with this claustrophobic production. [5]

Nicholas Donohoue: I love space-y, synth-y, too repetitious for its length nonsense as much as anyone, and for 2019 this is especially strong nonsense. So much to the point that it has slipped out of my mind since I started writing this, which quite honestly I'm counting as a pro. [5]

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[joao-gomes-blog]

The Mildenhall Treasure is a large hoard of 34 masterpieces of Roman silver tableware from the 4th century AD, and by far the most valuable Roman objects artistically and by weight of bullion in Britain. It was found at West Row, near Mildenhall, Suffolk, in the year 1942. It consists of over thirty items and includes the Great Dish weighing over 8kg alone. Photo of the Mildenhall dish was taken by History Leak in 2018

[thesinglesjukebox]

PURPLE DISCO MACHINE - DISHED (MALE STRIPPER)

[4.62]

Our runner-up for post image...

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Well, it does what it says on the tin: takes Loleatta Holloway's vocals from the Ellis D "Dish Apella" and combines it with the beginning of "Male Stripper." The build is enjoyable and it's a decent length; I wouldn't mind hearing it in a club. It's harmless. [5]

Alfred Soto: The original Man 2 Man version synthesized early Depeche Mode, hi-NRG, and gay sleaze hits like Paul Lekakis' "Boom Boom (Let's Go Back to My Room)"; it's dinky fun. "Dished" plays like a gloss on "Male Stripper," a musical PowerPoint presentation, hence unsatisfying. [5]

John Seroff: Generally not a great sign if you're still waiting for the song to start after the beat drops. I'll stick to the original. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: It's the soundtrack to a 1990s Ministry of Sound commercial, being passed off as an actual song. Which it ain't. [0]

Tim de Reuse: The structure of late-nineties big beat, but coated in a glossy disco veneer with expensive 21st-century production. It's bouncy and fun-sounding and catchy, but you don't even get three minutes of it before the idea bucket runs empty. [4]

Ian Mathers: Not so much brief and repetitive as it is ruthlessly efficient, this is pretty much a tutorial on how to somehow achieve a significant build and release when you only have less than 3 minutes to work with. More effective than plenty of similar tracks more than twice its length. [7]

Iain Mew: There's some skill and success in recognising the groove potential of taking the first 20 seconds of Man 2 Man Meet Man Parrish's original and just letting it run and run. De-emphasising deep synths in favour of occasional disco string hits neuters it, though, and the incompatible vocal sample adds less than it distracts. [4]

Scott Mildenhall: In an era where everything's revolutionary if it'll get you clicks, the bowdlerisation of "Male Stripper" is a curiosity. Most likely, "Dished"'s thematic erasure is just the standard byproduct of ripping off a banger, but it nevertheless parallels a commonplace deceleration in the boldness of mainstream media and acceleration in praise for it. It wouldn't even be bold to make "Dished" about a trick-turning male stripper in 2018, not least because Man 2 Man did it years ago. More likely, such overt camp would be dismissed by the ever-shrinking number of gatekeepers, and it would get even less of a look-in. So while "Dished" is very fun, and in some ways even more amped-up than its forebear, it's just not -- and in fairness makes no claim to be -- a troupe of men removing their "hot cop drag" on Top of the Pops, the same year that Thatcher warned that children are being "taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay". Though maybe that's not entirely bad. [8]

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[thesinglesjukebox]

BETTA LEMME - PLAY

[6.43]

Roll another phat one, Dave...

Alfred Soto: The week's not over, plenty of time to review songs with hooks this obnoxious. [3]

Edward Okulicz: Da Hool's "Meet Her at the Love Parade" is such an obvious song to interpolate I can't believe nobody has done it before. It has a still-distinct sound, a hooky bit to repeat and a (comparatively!) boring bit to throw away to make it sound as fun on the radio as it was in the club. Betta Lemme has taken a fairly sophisticated and beloved bit of trance history and dumbed it down so effectively that it would make the Vengaboys sound like the epitome of subtlety by comparison. Of course, its cartoon carnality is nowhere near as fun as the airheaded confections it reminds me of, but that barked "I want to play" chorus is infectious. [7]

Will Adams: "I want to play," and play she does. How else to describe a song that combines the post-verbal chorus of ATC, the brashness of Haiku Hands and the suggestive, circular hooks of Vengaboys' "Up & Down"? I could do without the parts where she sounds like Poppy, but overall this -- like our most recent visit with Sofi Tukker -- manages the impressive feat of delivering fun, disposable Europop without turning it into Deep House Dish parody. [7]

David Moore: Imagine the delight when my son pulled the trigger of the battery-operated bubble-blower we bought him on vacation and out came "Boom Boom Boom Boom," followed by peals of manic laughter from three-quarters of our family (sorry to the remaining quarter). The Vengaboys were big and loud and shameless, so relentless in selling their big-tent Eurocheese that you could even convince a kid that they were just talking about a sleepover -- which they were, technically. Betta Lemme gets at the earworms and the goofy synths but misses the sincerity -- if you're gonna do stupid shit, do it with integrity. I for one can't imagine anyone putting this song in a beach toy. [6]

Leah Isobel: Great pop music is always a little self-reflexive, and "Play" presents us with a perfectly circular set of referents. Betta Lemme's recorded output to this point has been on the more chilled end of the dance-pop spectrum, even at its most bombastic, so when she asserts that she doesn't usually come to parties, you believe her. But Danny L Harle's banging Eurotrance synths prove impossible to ignore, replaying in her he-e-ead until she can't help but integrate herself into the groove. The joyful scream she lets out as the last third of the song fires up gives the game away. She's decided she wants to play, on the dancefloor and in your earbuds; you'd better let her. [9]

Jessica Doyle: It's a trifle, sure, but a Eurodance-infused trifle with an Icona Pop glaze. I couldn't eat too many in a row, but one is pretty yummy. [6]

Scott Mildenhall: Assuming that Betta Lemme wasn't looking to inspire the Proustian rush of expectation that Lucy from Bedford is about to shout out all the Sunday night ravers in the Somerfield massive and ask for a bit of Rui Da Silva, then she's succeeded at even more than she intended. [7]

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