The xmas season with a Reason to buy stuff and stuff your gills with Yule Logs and novelty cocktails rolls on like a fairy light covered white van with a drunk driver driving. It's a great time to relax, reflect and do less than work than usual. But not such a healthy times for feeding your ears and heart with great music, at least in public. Christmas Parties, usually Office oriented, are an auditory assault on the hip deserving special attention and advice for survival. So we have compiled the Top Three most trying Xmas Party music policies complete with medically valid advice about surviving the assault. Here's the skinny:1) The Saccharine Santa Syrup Souffl�This is the hardest scene to cope with. The plastic sheeple people behind the Policy really are into the whole tinsel scene. For them, The Fairy-tale of New York is not a vaguely homophobic silly Oirish cash in that sits on Shane MacGowan's neck like a processed cheese albatross, but rather pure poetry. Expect U2 as well with this one. You will be surrounded by people who really think that this guff is as wonderful for the season and the soul as a mistletoe massage. You don't want to look a dick, so the only way to respond is convince your funky self you are in fact IN an advert for a midmarket retailer. Imagine a blessed rain of John Lewis vouchers and smile along with the best of them.2) The Guilty Pleasures Piggy PieThis melange of mess is even harder to get out of with any cred. We're talking Gangdem Style meets Wham and Slade in some kind of sugar rubber twister. The people behind the policy are too cool to take it seriously, but too square to call time on the horror. Admin staff are likely to be barebacked on the copying machine before Bacardi tears flow quietly like a leaking toilet. The only way to survive is: Make matey with the smokers. Even if you do not partake of the raging revenge of the Native Americans a trip outside courtesy of our gesture politics masters offers sweet relief from the onslaught.3) Alterna-cool posing potatoesThe toughest challenge of all is to be hip amongst those who think they are rebels, much like a bloke in the gym showers scowling at all and sundry who do not use Body Shop shower gel. Expect a faux ironic injection from the likes of Rage Against the Machine. Or rather Rage of the Rich Suburbanite Against Hisself. There will be Angry all over the place, and probably a Banksy Nativity with profoundly challenging motifs like Santa with a skull for a head covered in McDonalds branding. The best way to Live Through This is to nod approvingly at each flaccid blow against the mirror and get as paralytic as possible.Of course, faking an accident opts you out from all the above. Do consider it. But a happier thing to consider is the magic we have in the New In this Saturday, which is an antidote to any holiday horror.we'll have a good bunch of reggae, ska and dub records, both on 7 and 12 inches formats.You'll also find plenty more of the jazz, the soul, the hip hop and the electronic/bass music collections people have been lapping up the past two weeks. Names spotted : Burial, Mathew Jonson, Carl Craig, Portishead and more obscure names club DJs will know better than I do. It's looking good, it's going to be double sized, as everything must go before the end of the year so we can clean up! We just bought a great collection of indie rock of the highest order, one leaning on the dark side. Big Black, tindersticks, Nick cave and Sonic Youth, Godspeed you Black Emperor, fly pan am, Aphex Twin and so much more! we'll try to put a sample of this one too.See you there!