MDNA is Madonna’s twelfth studio album, and the first since 2008’s Hard Candy.

Anticipation has been high for MDNA, particularly after the singer’s widely praised performance at this year’s Super Bowl XLVI half time show, which scored a record audience of 114 million.

Lead single Give Me All Your Luvin’, featuring Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., became Madonna’s record-extending 38th top 10 single in the United States, whilst the music video for latest single Girl Gone Wild, a throwback to the singer’s Erotica days, has been banned on open view on YouTube due to sexually explicit content.

Needless to say, this has all generated a huge amount of publicity for the singer’s latest album. Early reviews of the record were glowing, with Billboard referring to it as ‘sheer brilliance’. So, does it live up to the hype? In short, yes. MDNA is an eclectic album, full of dance tracks practically made for summer, pop songs and reflective ballads.

Whilst perhaps not as strong as earlier albums, such as Ray of Light or Like A Virgin, MDNA is a solid album that reestablishes Madonna alongside her contemporaries.

Highlights include I’m Addicted, I Don’t Give A…, Love Spent and Masterpiece.

I’m a hippopotamus
When I’m alone, just I.

But when there’s lots of us
We are hippopotami.

Sweet, sticky golden rain
forms puddles of goo
on dense, creamy goodness
and drips down to soak
graham cracker crumbs
and quickly disappear
with the quick swipe of
my grateful tongue

Look at these buildings
these massive temples
with all the facade
and the intricate stonework
and ironmongery.

Maintenance will be required.
and you will be the ones who wipe
the soot and grime off
with raw hands
in the depths of winter.

We will keep you.

These people who live here
These people who live here.
These are people who go jogging at 9am.
These are people who put up signs
like no ball games.

These people have nothing to do
with being hungover on a bus.

May
It’s like waiting for an invisible guillotine
an empty forest
without me in it
to witness
the orchestrated fall

And so,
soundless
your absence
2am will never be the same

I miss you
sometimes
your arms
surpass
my ability
to comprehend
history

Yesterday I found a moth.
Not just a moth. A giant moth.

A moth with wings like lengths of cloth.
Fat and soft as a mossy sloth.
A moth that made me go, ‘Oh, goth!’

It was a really big moth.
It was a behemoth.

is the city where the streets meet the sky in a grey agreement. The fierce love I hold for this city overwhelms me.

The grey sky… to describe it as grey would be acceptable once. The second time it’s an amateur watercolour painted too heavy and layered, a sausage-and-mash of the harshest muddy blue and black, smokey tones that lose definition and blend blend blend until the sky emerges. The buildings like it, I can tell – by the way they their mirrored faces welcome the clouds and rain and reflect the light, inviting them into the traffic. The bright cranes are in direct conflict with the sky – mechanical giraffes gracefully mating across afternoon windows. How many more metaphors can this city take?

Already swelling up to the brim with foreign matter. Already weary with tomorrow, the daily congregation of salmon, filing upstream on escalators. Sardine situations. Close up underground polaroids of fragmented commuters, burnt onto my memory in the harsh tungsten lights.

I want to blend in with the stations and Tesco’s and five a.m. pigeons. It glows, with pride and council housing. Explodes at me with tree blossoms at the start of spring, with embankment glitter on a sunny evening, the air smelling like rough jazz and overwhelming caramel.

I look around and see little bits of love happening. Amazing people you would, but won’t get the chance to, as they’re leaving in a day or in a month or a moment – king-crossing on a slip of parallell universe, a sliver of acknowledgment of an hour in this lifetime that meant more – the comedown. London’s gracious payback for making you so high.

balloonist.

               failed

                                 a

                  He’s

        Farouk.

                 uncle

                      my

                  to

                 that

                      Tell

                        down.

                    come

               must

         up

              goes

                      What

Dalston Cross Shopping Hall,
Time stopped, our eyes met,
Whilst looting T-Mobile
For brand new handsets.

Your smile stopped my heartbeat,
In burning car light,
(A torched Fiat Punto
Had lit up the night)

Though Clyde to your Bonnie,
You ransacked my heart,
Crime brought us together,
Crime tore us apart

My Angel! My Seraph!
Of Pembury Estate,
Fallen from floor fourteen,
Council flat eight

Your kiss was Lambrini,
Mixed with Mac Lip Gloss,
Your Blackberry message
Alerted the cops

My wing-footed Venus!
My Angel! My Muse!
The law tried to take back
Your new Fila Shoes

Though riot vans chased you,
True love intervened,
I tackled a copper,
To let you run free

But love’s strong arm wilted,
‘Gainst riot batons,
Whilst the Pigs battered me,
You laughed and ran on

I languish in Penton
Ville, send me a sign,
Your Primarni pants, or
A mixtape of Grime

I picture you often,
True queen of my thoughts,
In dreams you kick shop fronts,
Outside JD Sports

Give show that you love me,
Imprisoned, I wait,
I shall send a bouquet,
To Pembury Estate.

What’ll you do once you’ve finally concluded this book? Sigh, slam the thing shut and keep hold of the bookmark? So we’d perhaps optimistically hope… But what did Nick Zammuto do when he’d finally finished with the Books, a project he professes to have “loved” in the belly of the Barbican? Well, he went on to pen another zany opus under his very own “culturally ambiguous” patronymic Zammuto, that’s bloomin’ well what…

“Like most things I do, while I’m setting them up I have absolutely no idea what I’m getting into”, his voice caving in to a jejune chirrup of laughter. Never one to do things by halves, nor indeed by any fraction yet known to the human mind, he’s still learning.

However he concedes to losing his way somewhat following what sounds like a rather inimical breakup: “This record was like a do-or-die situation for me. And I felt as though maybe I should quit because, you know, it’s so hard on my family. But my wife and friends encouraged me 100%. To just go for it; to go and do something new.”

Although not entirely new – the rampaging bass lines of The Way Out slink through the ominous mechanical thunder of F U C-3PO; sample interlude Crabbing recalls the Books’ collagist approach; the self-professed ‘Grammar Stickler’ swoons through Auto-Tune on Too Late To Topologize, a searing denunciation of that dastardly Timbaland track perhaps – yet in scrapping the scraps of sound and opting to gallivant toward this unquanitified “something new”, Zammuto has galvanized his presence to inscribe a comprehensible future.

1998 – A man waits three minutes for an image to download. Half way through he clicks ‘back’.

2012 – A man waits three minutes for a 10 minute HD video to download halfway through he clicks ‘back’.

The heir to the Tippex fortune spent his inheritance on jets, cars, women and parties – it wasn’t long before he’d wiped it out.

Door bell.
Shake hands.
Coat off.

Push through.
Kitchen throng.
Warm wine.

Living room.
Background chatter.
Scan round.

Not him.
Not him.
Not him.

Eye contact.
Not you.
Not him.

But you.
Yes you.
And how.

And now.
Glide over.
Small talk.

Bigger claims.
Wider smiles.
Delicate touches.

Guiding hands.
Taxi called.
Coats retrieved.

Threshold crossed.
Eyes closed.
Forever started.

Earth tumbles.
Inside his bubble, Spaceman sweats;
remembers his mother. Luna waves goodbye.
And he writhes like a new-born, adorably:
ballet-panics across the stage of the sky.
In the corner, his tin-can ticket –
back to Sunday lunch
and long endless summer,
and the smell of her sweat and “daddy” –
fades, to a dot, and is gone.

EXT. GREAT TITCHFIELD ST- DAY

A girl approaches an old lady and a chicken outside a coffee shop.

GIRL

Is that your chicken?

OLD LADY

Yes.

The lady puts the chicken on her shoulder and walks off.

Think
Why are pigs pink?
Are they of a delicate nature and blush easily,
Or is it just their favourite colour.
I think they are pretty
And I’m sure you’d agree,
They wouldn’t look any good in Blue or Khaki.
Pigs are best pink.

The Adventures of Tintin
Explorers on the Moon
Hergé 1954

Benji
Fastest Dog in the West
Joe Camp 1978

2000 was the future
when I was a kid.

2000 is a thread count
for my mum.

2000 has a Wikipedia entry.

In 2000 I moved to London.

Gisbourne, New Zealand was the first city to welcome the year 2000.

Kubrick didn’t live to the year 2000.

In the year 2000 the world was supposed to end.

Enigma 2000 has nothing to do
with the above prediction.

United Religions target
date was 2000.

2000 was official year of
culture and peace.

2000 was a leap year.

In 2000 Barbie represented educational excellence and new opportunities for girls.

Sydney hosted the Olympics
in the year 2000.

In 2000 Ken Livingstone becomes the first mayor of London.

Al Gore loses the presidential election in 2000.

I will never live to celebrate my 2000th birthday.

—Knock knock.
—Who’s there?
—It’s the police.
—It’s the police who?
—It’s the police. I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident.