Our new in-house stereo system is now in place, with speakers all over the building. This means that rather than having sound system clashes across the workspace (Creative Services’ reggae vs. the Designers’ grime) we can now have the same music playing throughout the building. Just like workers’ playtime on the old factory floor. The speakers have individually adjustable volume but don’t worry, neighbours: it doesn’t go up to 11.

We’re planning to create WK-FM, our own in-house radio station, with a mixture of music, chat and interesting stuff. At the moment it’s all music, all the time, courtesy of our friends at the Album Club. (This is an excllent service that sends you a set of albums each month, recommended by Rough Trade.)

This month’s selection, currently being broadcast coast to coast at 16 Hanbury Street, is as follows:

Ambient electronica recorded in the heart of a Swedish forest.

The last album got a lot of airplay on WK stereos; this is the long-awaited follow-up.

After the explosive ‘konono no1’, the congotronics series presents 6 other astounding bands from the suburbs of Kinshasa, playing urban electronic folk on home-made instruments.

Ted Barnes – underbelly

Second solo album of intricate (mainly) instrumental songs from the beth orton collaborator, somewhere between yann tiersen, angelo badalamenti and tindersticks.

Amadou and Mariam – dimanche a bamako

amadou & mariam’s  have been together for 25 years since they met at the institute for the young blind in bamako. RThis album was produced by and featuring manu chao and recorded in the malian capital of bamako.

Various artists – dream brother: the songs of tim and jeff buckley

Cover versions of some of the best songs written by tim and jeff buckley by the likes of sufjan stevens, the earlies, the magic numbers, kathryn williams, micah p hinson, adem, and matthew herbert.

Infadels – we are not the infidels

Punky funk electroclashy stuff.

Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – Ballad of the Broken Seas

Debut album from former Belle & Sebastian member Isobel Campbell and former Screaming Trees and Queens Of The Stone Age lead singer Mark Lanegan.

Clap your hands say yeah – Clap your hands say yeah

Hot US indie band of the moment. A top ten selection on many of the US critics’ best album lists of last year.

Cold Cut – Sound Mirrors

A varied mix of breakbeat, hip hop, dub and any other genre that fits with a huge amount of guest vocalists including Roots Manuva, Mike Ladd and Robert Owens.

Fascinating and surprising (to us) analysis of our Honda ‘Impossible Dream’ ad here at Adverblog. Mike says:

You have to know something about Honda to "get" this ad. It tells Soichiro Honda’s life story symbolically…and it is utterly brilliant. As such, it is the best commercial I have ever seen:
-Soichiro Honda the outsider… the guy living in a trailer by the sea, an outsider.
-Soichiro the grease monkey…this guy looks like a grease monkey.
-The seagull in a nest tending to its young…His dream in the earliest stages.
-Two Seagulls on the rock….Soichiro and Takeo Fujisawa (Honda’s alter-ego)
-He begins his journey with a simple mini-bike…symbolic of the Honda Cub.
-The dogs chasing him as he sings "to fight the unbeatable foe"… the resistance that dogged him from MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) and the Gakubatsu (Japanese old Boys network).
-The sheep moving together as a group… the Japanese culture of group over the individual. Meanwhile, he motors on by in the background on his individual journey past the group. Two horses overlooking the field in the background-…I haven’t figured this part out yet.
-The succession of cars and bikes as they progress through advances in development.
-The boat flying off the waterfall…his death.
-The balloon rising out of the mist, with him singing "to reach for the unreachable star"…on his way to heaven and still dreaming. A Very Happy ending.
-Underlying the entire commercial is the humor of this guy singing like Andy Williams as he blasts down the road. Honda had a great sense of humor.

This is great stuff but is news to us. Though the film is of course meant to be a metaphor for Mr Honda’s own impossible dream, and each of the featured products had an impossible dream behind it, we hadn’t deliberately created the images in the commercial to convey the ideas suggested above. Must be the unconscious mind at work. I think I kind of prefer this more poetic interpretation.

You can watch the commercial and get our version of the story behind it here.