December 2010, my uncle came round to the house from Australia to visit for the holidays. Was the first time I’d seen the dude since he moved in about 2005 or something. He was always into gadgets and technology, so when he visited he did the nice thing of getting my mum a new TV – a 3D one at that – a soundsystem that wasn’t really needed and a Playstation 3 for me with a few games. It was a bit much. I honestly would have been fine sticking with the PS2, even at that time. But a PS3 was now what I had, and FIFA 11 was one of those games that he stuck in there for good measure.

Now, you frequent readers know I’ve got a history with the FIFA series and a huge appreciation for its soundtracks. If you’re not playing a football match in-game, the other times you’ll be navigating the menus or, now on this “new” generation of console, in the practice area shooting the ball at the keeper or trying to figure out skill moves. The soundtrack was the backing to all of this. 11 had its fair share of bangers, including LCD Soundsystem, Gorillaz, Massive Attack… I could go on. A fine selection was made by the people of EA Sports yet again. But what ended up being my favourite of them all was a song by an artist/band I’d never heard of, which is usually how it went with those types of games, and was the one I would probably get the most excited about hearing if ever it popped up in the background.

Malachai are a two-piece band from Bristol, round here in the UK, of vocalist Gee Ealey and producer Scott Hendy. Ealey has quite the soulful but gritty tone his vocal, and it’s on show on the featured song for today, ‘Snowflake’. The more I listened to the song, the more clear it became that it was about being very horny. Lonely, but horny too. At least to me The track was censored on FIFA, which led me on to wondering what the muted part was. The lyric was “When all of a sudden I’ve needs from below”. The “from below” part was muted. And reading the rest of the words, making references to chewing over sweetness and being down “on bended knees and elbows”. Well, the deduction came ’round pretty quickly. But I really like it though. The production fixes everything into the centre channel, essentially making it a mono recording, but I feel it really works in the music’s favour. Everything sounds that little bit grimier as a result.