David's songs of the year 2008

Hello all and happy Christmas - LOVE - from david, samantha and isobel - click & play the video below for a quick megamix and greeting - continue for details and downloads:



Here for you is this year's "David's selection" - my annual compilation and write-up of this year's best songs which I've sent you on CD or you can download it here (PART 1 and PART 2) - to be honest you should download it anyway as home-burnt CDs are basically shite and unreliable (cassettes were better from that perspective) . You can print off that image above and use it as CD artwork, if you want to have a hard copy to play in a CD player and to keep lovingly in your collection. As this is posted as a blog you can, if you wish, get in the spirit of things and leave comments.

I do hope that some of you will at some point in the future come to our place and listen to some of these under the comforting glow of multiple lava lamps.

Special thanks this year to:
Hamish - he turned me onto Disrupt - an amazing find.
Steve - alerted me to Destroyer who I saw at the Bowery Ballroom New York this year (bloody great gig - sorry you weren't there Steve!).
Fraser - belated thanks for diverting my attention to Daedelus (who apart from Animal Collective, is probably the most regular artiste on these annual mixes).
Dave - would I have found MGMT without your tip off?

TRAX: (in alphabetical order with CD track number in brackets) - DOWNLOAD THE CD (PART 1 and PART 2). Click the artist's names for more information.

Animal Collective - Water curses (4)
Animal Collective have been on most of my Xmas comps over the last 5 years which is a testament to their evolving magnificence. There wasn't a new album this year (it's due in Jan 09) but they seem to have got into the habit of releasing great 4-track EPs between albums. "Water curses", the opener from this year's stand-alone opus of the same name, is one of the band's more melodic outings. I noticed that Mojo magazine, a bastion of AOR, led its December review section with a glowing report on AC's imminent new album, a sure sign that the wider music world is waking up to this amazing, unique band.

Beach House - Gila (14)
Songs of warmth and gentle fuzziness abound on "Devotion" from Baltimore's Beach House. It's all echoey guitars lo-fi electronics and gorgeously gentle melodies. "Gila" is my favourite .

Bon Iver - re: stacks (1)
One of those "stop what you're doing", "pull the car over" "gaze out of the train window" "reflect-on-life-wistfully" type of songs. Plaintive and wonderfully direct it's a beautiful stand-out performance from a fantastic debut album. Probably my favourite song from my favourite album this year and certainly one of the most enthralling and mesmerising live performances I've ever been to. Go to the coast in winter, stare out to sea, and put this gem on.

Daedelus - I car(r)y us (17)
YouTube notoriety befell Daedelus this year with his Deelite-echoing, Obama-endorsing rap, which I must admit I found bloody irritating (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbjBHkKiS4c). It's now what he's most known for, such is the nature of fame these days. However, my admiration is undampened, and in fact enhanced immensely by the arrival of maybe his most "fun" album to date - it's as eclectic as ever but with a unifying nod to 90s UK/Euro rave (always good in my book - 88-92 4Eva).

Destroyer - Shooting rockets (5)
From Toronto, Dan Bejar's outfit Destroyer is now a firm favourite of mine. I was lucky to be in New York to see them perform in the Spring when they played most of the new album from which this song comes. This sprawling but enticing ballad is a good example of Destroyer's unusual style and wantonly verbose lyrics - which have the air of a stream of consciousness.

Disrupt - Jah red gold and green (15)
The founder of a micro-genre - "8-bit-dub" - and the artiste behind the wonderful Jahtari.net (where loads of his and similar artists' material can be freely downloaded), Germany's Disrupt has released one of the essential electronica albums of recent years with "Foundation Bit", an album showcasing the best of his bit-crushed rhythms, sub-atomic bass and eerie atmospherics. The judicious use of some great spoken-word samples (a few from the great John Carpenter film "Dark Star") is the icing on the cake.

Andre Ethier - Hard Landing (16)
This Canadian singer song-writer supported Destroyer when I saw them in New York. I'd never heard of him before but he was extremely impressive live so I bought his album at the gig. It's got quite a traditional bluesy style I suppose, but something lifts it from the pack.

Flying Lotus - Roberta Flack (13)
Wonderful dense, mashed-up electronica from LA's Flying Lotus on Sheffield's Warp records, a jewell of a release on what has become a patchy label of late.

Gas - Pop2 (19)
I have belatedly discovered Gas this year by way of an excellent (and very cheap) 4-CD box set which compiles all four albums to date. Gas is the project of Wolfgang Voigt, co-founder of the influential electronic music label Kompakt. These albums were all originally released in the 90s on Frankfurt's wildly eclectic Mille Plateaux label. It's a fantastic body of work featuring ocean deep textures and undulating rhythms which is truly hypnotic and other-worldly. Really something to lose yourself in.

Hercules and the Love Affair - Blind (18)
Antony's (as in "the Johnsons") appearance on many of the tracks on this album as guest vocalist really lifts it. His voice is perfect for these torchy disco grooves. The band really nail the sound too on a great album.

Hot Chip - Made in the dark (11)
At the beginning of this year I heard the unbelievably infectious electro-pop of "Ready for the floor" and was certain that it would make my songs of the year comp, but on digesting the subsequent album, I had to change my choice to this song, one of the sweetest lilting ballads you'll ever hear. I think that it's Hot Chip's ballads that make them one of the great bands of the moment.

Tesfa Maryam Kidane - Heywete (from Very Best Of Ethiopiques) (3)
There's nothing like an exotic discovery and tumbling over this album on a listening post in Fopp was a golden one. It's from a wonderful compilation of music from an Ethiopian scene in the 60s and 70s which, on this evidence, must have been on fire. Every track suggests a kaleidoscopic melting pot of global influences (jazz, rock, blues and soul) mashing with local styles. What really strikes though is the sense how all these inspirations fed so happily and spontaniously into the creation of some truly fantastic music.

Magnetic Fields - The Nun's Litany (10)
Stephin Merritt, MF's main man, likes to place conceptual fences around his projects, so following the epic "69 Love Songs" (as it says) and "I" (songs beginning with I) it's no surprise to find that his album called "Distortion" is a collection of songs bathed in fuzzy, crunchy sonics. What never changes is SM's knack for writing killer melodies with hooks that lock in the brain.

Mariee Sioux - Wizard flurry home (6)
Mystical imagery, native American pipes and earnest folkiness. These, my friends, are not qualities that usually inspire fondness on my part. BUT!! something just works about this for me. I guess ultimately it's her lovely crystal clear voice which has a Karen Carpenter-esque clarity, and the fact that it really does evoke a campfire in an Arizona desert.

Matmos - Les Folies Francaises (2)
The wonderful album from which this comes is like a study in 20th century electronic music, lovingly referencing everything from the BBC radiophionic workshop, through Raymond Scott, to Wendy Carlos (to which this synth take on classical music owes an obvious debt), Kraftwerk and Acid House. A must for all fans of experimental electronic music.

MGMT - The Youth (8)
Now here is one of Brooklyn's finest, MGMT. The album, "Oracular Spectacular" lives up to the second word in its title and contains at least four classics, including this anthemic ballad. Definitely an album of the year.

Aidan John Moffat - International Valentine (7)
Tricky to extract one song successfully from AJM's "I can hear your heartbeat" as, strictly speaking, it's a story set to music and is heavy on narrative segments which segue the music. The album even opens with Mr Moffat directing us to read its accompanying booklet before listening, in order that we make sense of what's to follow. Taken on its own, this track - and in fact much of the album's music - comes over almost as a marriage between his other two outlets, with the kitchen sink lyricism of sadly defunct Arab Strap and the lush sample-heavy orchestrations of L.Pierre. But try and hear the whole album if you can.

The Notwist - Boneless (12)
Another band (like Portishead below) who took their time to follow up their previous album and another worthwhile wait. Brevity has its rewards. "Boneless" is one of those understated songs that you don't notice at first, but then realise you are always humming it - and loving humming it at that. Beautiful.

Portishead - The Rip (9)
Who'd-a-thought-it! Portishead - almost "band-of-the-year" status. After seeing them on their live return at last year's All Tomorrow's Parties at Butlins Minehead (yes it was surreal), I suspected we might be in for a treat with the new album. And "Third" (the title, indicating its chronolgical place in the band's catalogue, is the only note of dullness) is a wonderful album. It arrives over ten years after the previous one, a gap befitting (though perhaps stretching) their native city's inhabitants' reputation for having a "laid back" approach. But the wait, variously put down to personal problems, writer's block and perfectionism, might ultimately be more to do with a band struggling to wrench themselves once and for all from the spectre of being (un-fairly) tagged a "coffee-table" band. The massive success of their seminal debut "Dummy" was undoubtedly a double-edged sword, as their sound quickly became appropriated as the wallpaper music for the "This life"- generation, spawned a genre (trip-hop), maybe another (downbeat) and "inspired" countless dull-dull-dull imitators (most of whom are indeed only worthy of playback in a lift). But it's hard to imagine "Third" soundtracking any 40-something's dinner parties - especially when we have Coldplay for just that purpose. No, Portishead are back to their innovative best - in fact they never really released a dud - it's just that society misunderstood them.