This is the POLL POST for Round 5 of the League Of Extraordinary Tracks – and the theme is 21st Century Christmas records!

Here’s how to vote:

1. Listen to the 11 tracks in the playlist post
2. Choose up to FOUR favourites and vote for them below but –
3. DO NOT VOTE for any tracks you knew before the poll!

That’s all – best of festive luck and thanks as ever to our 11 nominators for their seasonal selections.

HO HO HO it’s the League Of Tracks CHRISTMAS SPECIAL. As his topic pic, Santa Jel chose “21st Century Christmas Records”, and our 11 nominators have brought the festive goods.

As usual this is the Playlist post, and once you’ve listened to these 11 songs – a compact stocking-full at 36 minutes – you should go vote for your favourites in the POLLS post.

For the first time all 11 tracks are on Spotify as well as YouTube so take your pick!

Our line up is:

1. GUILLE MILKYWAY AND THE JELLY JAMM SOUND ORCHESTRA – “Holding Hands Around The World”: from the 2012 compilation A Christmas Gift For You From Elefant Records
2. HI-5 – “…Santa Wear Your Shorts!”: from 2001’s It’s A Hi-5 Christmas
3. NICOLE ATKINS – “Every Single Christmas”: a 2020 single!
4. METROPOLE ORKEST ft CARO EMERALD – “Something For Christmas”: from 2017’s MO x Caro Emerald by Grandmono EP
5. SARAH NIXEY – “Christmas Without You”: a 2012 single!
6. THE SUPERIMPOSERS – “Chasing Christmas”: from 2011’s Christmas Again! If You Want It EP
7. MIGHTY MARK – “What I Want For CHRISTMAS”: a 2023 single!
8. THE X-MISSES – “She Gave Me Hell For Christmas”: from 2018’s Christmas Reminiscences
9. KACEY MUSGRAVES & LEON BRIDGES – “Present Without A Bow”: from 2016’s A Very Kacey Christmas.
10. IRMA THOMAS – “Christmas Without The Creole”: from the 2004 compilation Christmas Gumbo
11. CHILLY GONZALES ft JARVIS COCKER & FEIST – “Snow Is Falling In Manhattan”: from 2020’s A Very Chilly Christmas

A tricky theme caused nominators some difficulty but listeners had less of a problem this week, with a very clear winner in the side projects and line-up changes round.

Third place went to New Order offshoot THE OTHER TWO but! this was in fact a ringer put in by me to replace a missing track so it scores no points (sorry Mark!). So the bronze actually goes to synthpop rivals PROPAGANDA with the song from their difficult second LP. Silver goes to EKKAH, the side project of two Arcadian Kicks members. And the runaway winner this week was V/Z with “Habadash” – a collaboration between Valentina Magaletti (V) and Zongamin (Z) which is also a 2023 jam, always nice to see those do well.

Congratulations to Mondosalvo on snagging those 12 points, which puts him into joint 3rd on the overall leaderboard, while at the top previous sole League Leader Joe Kay is joined by Ed Still. Halfway through and things are still very tight…

Round 5 is our Christmas Special, with 11 21st Century Christmas songs to pick from – that’ll be up later today. Round 6 will be “No, not that one” – tracks which share a title, but nothing else, with a very famous song. Russ Abbott’s “Atmosphere”, your time is now.

Here’s where you can vote in the latest round of the League Of Extraordinary Tracks! Our theme this week is ALL CHANGE! – line-up changes, collaborations, and side projects.

How to join in? It’s simple:

1. Go to the Playlist Post and hear the 11 new tracks.
2. Vote for UP TO FOUR of your favourites but remember – you should only vote for songs you didn’t already know!

Welcome back to the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY TRACKS, our weekly (in theory) music discovery game. Eleven players submit tracks each round on a theme – the idea is to find stuff we the voters haven’t heard yet. This is the playlist post – once you’ve heard the songs, go and vote in the poll post.

This week’s theme is – well, it’s complicated. Originally the submitted idea was “Introducing…” – debuts by musicians on songs by others, like guest verses or debuts of later jazz bandleaders. A cool theme, but very tricky to research (since, by the nature of things, debuts of famous people tend to be well known in their own right). I asked to expand it to include more broad shifts like band line up changes, collaborations, aliases and side projects. And in the end line up changes and side projects were what almost all the players went for. So I renamed the week to “ALL CHANGE!”

The Spotify playlist is missing a final track – the Orb and Alan Parker collaboration – it’s the final song on the YouTube list:

I’ll leave it to the players to explain how each track qualifies. For now, just enjoy the sounds they’ve selected. Thanks to them for wrestling with a tricky brief!

Ringing The Changes:

1. HERBIE HANCOCK – “Wiggle Waggle”: From 1969’s Fat Albert Rotunda
2. BY STORM – “Double Trio”: From 2023’s Double Trio EP.
3. V/Z – “Habadash”: From 2023’s Sueno Assente
4. PROPAGANDA – “La Carne, La Morte e Il Diavolo”: From 1990’s 1234.
5. EKKAH – “Last Chance To Dance”: From 2014’s Last Chance To Dance EP.
6. THE OTHER TWO – “Selfish”: From 1993’s The Other Two And You
7. MAM – “Ongelofelijk”: A 1989 single!
8. LEAVES’ EYES – “Across The Sea”: From 2018’s Sign Of The Dragonhead
9. TSOL – “Flowers By The Door”: From 1984’s Change Today?
10. NANCY VANDAL – “Egg Sandwich”: From 1996’s The Interrogation Room
11. THE ORB ft ALAN PARKER – “Grey Clouds”: From the 2007 compilation Annie Nightingale Presents Y4K

Special note: One contestant was unable to submit this week, so I found a track instead. But I’m not going to tell you which it is!

We’re back! Apologies for the late running of this round – I’m juggling a lot of different projects at the moment (and writing a lot more for Popular of course). But we have Round 4 finally ready to go so here are the RESULTS of our League Instrumentals week. Thanks to our players for what I thought were a particularly strong and varied set of tunes!

Things are still pretty tight at the top but there was a clear winner last week, several votes ahead of the two joint-second place tracks: kosmische vibes from Ashra and post-(Daft)-punk electro fun from Ratatat. The winner though was the whistle-while-you-work rhythms of the Ghana Postal Workers, a field recording nominated by JOE KAY who moves into the lead in our overall scoreboard. He’s only a few points ahead of the field, though, with much to play for.

The Week 5 challenge is going to be a festive special – 21st Century Christmas Songs! As for Week 4, that’s a bit trickier to explain – maybe I should just put it up…