It’s quite possible this may be the greatest thing ever in the history of music.

Giant isopods are great big bastard things which are relatives, I believe, of sea lice. Or at least, they are certainly relatives of more familiar crustaceans, and hence more distantly of insects, including the woodlouse, which they strongly resemble.  Except they’re fucking massive.  Really fucking massive.

Giant, carnivorous underwater woodlice.  No wonder I stick to swimming pools and bathtubs.

Anyhow, for no other reason I can imagine other than the fact that he might be fucking mental, Pagan Wanderer Lu has put together a compilation album dedicated entirely to the giant fucking isopod!  And incredibly, despite the subject matter, which can only be described as highly unusual, as pop songs go, it is really, really good.  I mean, it’s as eccentric and downright baffling as you would imagine given the concept, but nevertheless really good.

So, general lunacy aside, this was actually made to be a charity record to benefit the Marine Conservation Society, so please go here and make a donation if you intend to download it, that’s only fair.  The songs on Pagan Wanderer Lu’s page for this project are hosted on Fileden, and they can be pretty mean on bandwith, so I have added a zip link download of my own below, but please go and check out the page anyway and again, please do make a donation.

Then sit back and marvel at the levels of mentalism required to assemble seventeen fucking songs about giant isopods.  Seventeen!  Mental.  And utterly fucking brilliant.

Pocus Whiteface – Giant Isopods Ate My Well-Known Brand of Corn Chips

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Pagan Wanderer Lu – An Isopod is Cute in the Eyes of an Isopod

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Various Artists – Songs About Giant Isopods zip download (right click, save as)

This is a not entirely accurately-titled podcast, in that the whoring only takes place over a couple of songs at the tail end and does not at all influence any of the rest of the playlist.

What am I talking about, you ask?  Well when I played a few trendy songs a few months back the listership of the podcast doubled over the course of a few weeks.  I noticed this back when I was a bit more rigorous about the blog in the early days: if I reviewed high-profile new releases in the week of release it generated a large spike in readership.

So I’ve dropped a couple of very hype-friendly songs into the end of this podcast to see if that actually has any influence on anything at all.  I found nice ones – ones I actually like, I mean – so don’t worry, your normally glittering listening experience will not be tarnished one bit.  But bear in mind that this week we are all the guineau pigs in a silly internet hit-whoring experiment.  Sorry.

Toadcast #125 – The Whorecast

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01. Burnt Ones – Sunset Hill (03.46)
02. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – The Mercy Seat (09.34)
03. Girls Names – You Should Know by Now (18.32)
04. Pagan Wanderer Lu – Banish Negative Thoughts (20.26)
05. The Cure – Pictures of You (28.01)
06. Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (35.37)
07. Taken by Trees – Watch the Waves (42.12)
08. Wild Nothing – Summer Holiday (49.21)
09. The Beets – What Did I Do (53.20)
10. Silver Columns – Warm Welcome (56.17)
11. Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs (62.41)