BREAK THE ICE

Britney Spears

It's songs like this that make me think that if I was ever to become a session musician, being a keyboard player would be my chosen career option. The trend these days seems to be leaning towards keyboard players getting the full royalty cheque for doing pretty much naff all - sounds like a plan to me. Picture the scene - you're asked to play on a Britney Spears single. Job's a good 'un, you know you're not going to be asked to do anything too strenuous, but then the producer takes you to one side and says, "all we need you to do is play a five note riff in the style of Freeez's I.O.U. for about three minutes". Easiest three minutes work ever, and before you know it you've got a royalty cheque in the bank account and you're home before the lunchtime news. Easy life. Mind you, things aren't looking quite so rosy if you're the bloke in charge of the drum loops. He does everything right for the first two and a half minutes or so, he presses the buttons to switch the beat on and off right on cue, but when Britney says "I like this part", he drops the ball. In fact, he drops the ball off the top of a skyscraper, just to make sure there's no chance of him fetching it, picking it up and sorting things out again before the end. Bless him, for the last twenty seconds he even gives up completely, which is a shame really, because what we've got here is a song of two halves - the first half is OK, Britney's going on about something or other (probably the usual "I'm thinking of going up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire if you fancy joining me" routine) and the tune's holding its own, but in the second half the song breaks down and nobody bothers to repair it, although to her credit, La Spears carries on as though nothing's happened. That's the sign of a consummate professional, apparently. I'm really not sure what to make of the end result, although a frisbee is currently the preferred option.

MACHINE GUN

Portishead

It's not often I hear a song that leaves me utterly speechless, but this is definitely one of them. This is hard, relentless, threatening, brutal and minimal all at the same time. Oh, and it's a million miles away from Glory Box - it's that different you wouldn't know it was the same band. I suppose the best place to start describing Machine Gun is by directing you towards the opening beats from Blue Monday - you know, the bit right at the very start before the melody fades in. Imagine playing that for nearly five minutes, occasionally distorting the sound to make sure the listener's paying attention. Actually, come to think of it, this is another song of two halves, but this one works for both of them. The first half features Beth Gibbons, and her singing provides virtually the entire melody for the first half. In the second half, the big guns (no pun inten- oh, who am I kidding?) are brought out. The singing stops and it's all about the drums, and thanks to the wonders of technological trickery, even though the beat itself remains constant the sound changes constantly, going from hard to soft to really, thoroughly messed up. And as if the feeling of doom and gloom wasn't complete, right at the end along comes the keyboard player (you see, I told you that's the way to go) to see us out with something that sounds like it was inspired by The Terminator. When you think about it, there's really not much happening on this song, but what makes it stand out is that they've done as much as they possibly can with what they've got. This really is astoundingly good.