I. How in Dante’s nine circles of hell did a song by Oasis end up becoming the theme tune to a spring anime series?

II. And how did that end up actually working?

III. Okay, mockingly-snarky astonishment aside, Falling Down was probably the strongest track off of last year’s Dig Out Your Soul, so it’s not any particular surprise that it was eventually put out as a single. Sounding like a sequel to the terrific Wonderwall B-side The Masterplan, the song takes a lush, psychedelic backdrop and floats Noel Gallagher’s voice over the top of it all in an almost delicate fashion. (Delicate — now there’s a word I didn’t think I’d ever use to describe an Oasis number.)

IV. The remixes aren’t much to write home about, mostly being typical sample-shuffling affairs, with one major exception: Amorphous Androgynous’ massively-overblown Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Mix runs for twenty-two minutes like a kitchen sink convention gone overboard on Red Bull,¹ with two additional vocalists (one of them is something like eight years old), enough sitars to drown out the noise of a Delhi open-air market, and even (incongruously enough) a quiet piano interlude. You can almost hear Cobain and Dougans giggling madly behind the mixing board, and it just makes the mix all the more brilliant.

V. While I’m on the topic of remixes, I need a tenuous connection back to my previous entry, so — The Shock of the Lightning got remixed by Jagz Kooner, and the Chemical Brothers took Falling Down for a spin. Both of them contributed versions of Swastika Eyes to XTRMNTR. My theory: Oasis and Primal Scream are… [suspenseful drum roll] both… popular British bands who just happened to commission the same remixers nearly a decade apart from each other. Sorry, I’m bad at conspiracy theories.