Hey look - this is a long list of faves for 2010 (compared to 12 last year, when I tried to "distill it all down"). But as I stated then that was a struggle so I thought this year I'd go back to an "au naturel" selection which has meant a few more on the list. It never ceases to amaze me how so much new and inspiring stuff can come out year on year. All the below were released in either 2009 or 2010.
Of this lot,
Beach House's Zebra just floors me each time I hear it (they were jaw-dropping live) and Jon Brook's work as the
Advisory Circle and
D. D. Denham has been inspirational. Close seconds after that were
Owen Pallett,
Dark Dark Dark, Caribou, Ariel Pink, Flying Lotus and
Emeralds (whose album I only just heard and has really hit me for six). But all those on the lengthy list below sound brilliant to me. One other special shout has to go to
Twin Sister (who I'm sure you'll hear more of next year) for releasing a very special EP completely free.
See also my lists from
2007,
2008 and
2009.
Most on the list have streaming links to listen from this page or you can
download one or all of three podcasts; a
haunting mix, a dance mix or a pop mix - all these feature seasonal 8bit Xmas intros from the wonderful
8bitPeoples. If you download, here are the
individual pod tracklists.
Zomby’s take on 8-bit (or chip tune as it’s known) results in a new micro-genre - chip-step (my term). Zomby is still a cut above the majority of the dance pack and constantly delights with unexpected left turns.
The signature sound of this year is the filtered, cassette-compressed half-rememberings of American 25-year-olds. Washed Out’s take on hypnogogic pop is certainly a dreamy joy but I detect the presence of a decent wadge of 70s disco in Washed Out’s old record collection, an influence which gives this a more pulsating edge than some of his peers.
The opening synth refrain lends this pretty lo-fi ballad a space-age vibe that takes it from being just pretty to being truly special (so often in music one magic ingredient can make that difference). The song comes from a consistently good EP released for free on Band Camp. It was later deservedly picked up and released by Domino so expect to hear more from Twin Sister in the near future.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe” sings Carl Sagan on this amazing melodicised reconstruct of spoken words from his 1980 landmark documentary “
Cosmos”. There are other variations of this on the
Symphony of Science website. It’s all free (though this one got released commercially on a 7 inch by Jack White’s label). It’s a great project to explore.
Ambitious, cinematic, epic - the usual hyperbole applies (yes Sufjan is back!!). As is his wont we got not one but two great albums by him this year after a rather long wait. He is like the proverbial buses.
I know little of this band but was entranced by this piece of Mazzy Star-ish haze-pop when I heard it on 6Music. They have one previous single out, they come from London and this was on a 7 inch on a label with a fab name “The Great Pop Supplement”. Oh - and it’s rather lovely.
Three tracks (see also Scuba, Joy Orbison) which represent almost perfect takes on minimal techno and dubstep. Each demonstrates how a mastery of using repetition dynamically (the core of good techno - but important in all music) can lead to beautifully nuanced and organic music in which microscopic transitions in sound and atmospherics evolve around the central motif. At it's best (as here) this hypnotic listening experience is immersive and near transcendental. It really does take some skill and love to make music as good as this.
The artist formerly known as Final Fantasy and phenomenal one-man orchestra delivers a(nother) euphoric pop-song taken from what amounted to his major (actually a big indie) label debut on Domino. He cemented his position in my heart as an absolute favourite artist but I wish he hadn't come on so late that we missed half his set in Cardiff earlier in the year.
I lump this and Emeralds (below) together simply because they are the vanguard of a whole swathe of dreamy-droney soundscape music that came out this year. At its best (as here) this is stuff you can just lie back and let wash over you - as huge reverb-drenched layers of of synth harmonics intertwine, undulate and evolve. Quite beautiful and a kind of wonderful fusion of the drone sonics of Japan’s Chihei Hatakeyama and the dense tecnho minimalism of the legendary Gas. Be warned though, the influences are not all good (well not to me anyway), the proggy meanderings of Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre lurk in the shadows. This could easily turn nasty!
Joanna Newsom is not one for brevity. Her songs and the albums they inhabit are long. Her latest,
Have one on me, runs to 3 CDs totalling around 120 mins of material (the 18 songs on it average 6-7 minutes and rarely follow a traditional verse chorus arrangement). Love at first sight is unlikely. But Ms Newsom is a rare talent and some investment in her work pays off. ‘81 is almost the shortest song on the latest album and I'd say one of its best. I just kind of hope she releases a 40-minute (10 song) album next time.
MGMT - Brian Eno
No introduction needed to the now very popular MGMT. This very funny song was my favourite off their strong second album.
Shouty Finnish trio channel Neneh Cherry in irresistibly catchy style. It shouldn’t work but it does.
Produced by Big Boi from Outkast, that outfit is also the most obvious precedent for the kind of high concept and wild style hopping shown here by singer Janelle Monae. Another, more distant touchstone would be Prince in his 80s pomp and glory. Fundamentally, though, despite its epic length (70 minutes) and scatter gun genre-hopping, this is a great pop album that “flows”. “
Tightrope” is one of the many stand-out songs from it.
James Blake is currently being widely touted as a dead-cert crossover act (as in from obscure dance-clique-darling to mainstream pop star). Boomkat (a shop), never short on hyperbole, said “It's like chamber music for the post-dubstep crowd”. Not sure about that, but he manages to meld minor chord melodicism with dusty dubby sonics to create concise (like pop songs) organic-sounding vignettes which always keep a good vibe (essential for dance music). Jeez, maybe he will be a star next year!
A welcome return after a long hiatus for Norway’s finest (yes they are better than Aha) Jaga Jazzist. This is a brilliant epic featuring repeating piano and celeste cycles and a huge brass motif. Basically it’s the Jazzist do musique concrète. Amazing stuff.
Here We Go Magic is yet another in the seemingly endless succession of bands from Brooklyn. Just what is in the water there?! This track is off the album
Pigeons and it really reminds me of Crazy Rhythms-era Feelies - and that is high praise indeed.
The utter strangeness of Gonjasufi's cracked voice is probably one of those love it/hate it phenomenons. I’m pretty much in the “love it” camp but to me it needs the right musical vehicle and this haunting track (which sounds like it uses a Morricone sample - the “ahh ahh ahhs”) is just it. The rest of the album (
A Sufi and A serial Killer) is a mixed bag. The tracks with the harder, grainier, bluesier edges remind me a bit of Tom Waits at his most obsturate and don’t quite do it for me. But the more atmospheric stuff (more typical of Flying Lotus who is connected with this) brings out the special other-worldliness in the voice perfectly.
Gold Panda - You
Cut-up sampled electronica from the more melodic end of the spectrum. The titles on Gold Panda's debut; You, Parents and India Lately signal it's autobiographical feel. There's no time-line here though, rather, a series of separate but interconnected memories. The listener is left with the sense that these fragments put together are the significant things that make the writer what he is. Overall - a very affecting album.
Enveloping psychedelic sound collage from LA pioneer of - uhm - “enveloping psychedelic sound collage”. Nobody does it better.
Cosmogramma is an album of the year.
There’s not really much that I can say about Brian Eno that hasn’t been said before so I shall refrain from adding my two-penneth’s worth to the thinking on this music colossus. I picked this track mainly because it actually reminds me of some of my favourite Eno music from the past - especially the Apollo album. As you might expect from that comparison it has a very “outer-space” feel to it. A truly lovely track.
A song that begins as plaintive country-tinged rock and builds spectacularly to an emotional crescendo. It’s very evocative of the wide-open spaces of East Anglia, where its authors reside. It’s also extremely catchy and has that most precious of pop commodities - a bloody great hook.
And I LOVE the Divine Comedy. A brilliant uplifting song without any cynicism at all from (Sir) Neil Hannon. I really do love Neil Hannon!!
The best Strokes song they never did. A song that is hard to not “repeat play”. I’d describe this as “direct-injection” power-pop and like all such music it's “so simple” and yet so hard to do well.
A moody semi-acoustic piece from the wonderful Daedelus who has cropped up on many of my end-of-year lists. He is prolific but remarkably consistent.
The best thing about Dead Man’s Bones is that I like them despite becoming aware of an unwelcome backstory. Let me paint the picture - I picked this up in Rough Trade around Xmas last year. The grainy sleeve, obscure label and echoey 50s sounds, coupled with the haunting use of a children’s choir on many tracks, lent the whole package a coolness record crate-diggers like me skip heartbeats for. I was sure that I (and I alone) had unearthed a gem for which I could claim some nebulous credit for later when the rest of the world woke up to them (PS - this did happen with Animal Collective - I must remind you all of :-). Imagine how crest-fallen I was when I later discovered that this was a kind of vanity side project involving one Ryan Gosling - a far-from-obscure Hollywood actor - and not the product of unknowns from the fringes of the Austin scene. I have no gripes about Ryan (and little actual knowledge to be honest) but his presence in itself was enough to stoke feelings of betrayal. But worse than that it called into question that most precious of things for a record collector - judgement! Was this record really as good as I thought it was now I was fully aware of its provenance - could such a “side-project” really be up to scratch? Well, I’m more than pleased to say that in the intervening year - having calmed down and rested with the truth - I can honestly say that this is still very much a wonderful record full of spooky atmospherics and doowop melodies. And one very good fringe benefit from the Hollywood connection is the beautifully shot videos that accompany the record (see them on YouTube or Vimeo).
Apart from mentioning the talents of Jon Brooks (Advisory Circle) again it’s worth pointing out that the album this comes from,
Electronic Music in the Classroom, is more at the sound-lab end of the spectrum. It’s lighter on melody and focuses more on sound experimentation. But it’s a wonderful album full of texture, and interesting tonal mood shifts. It does live up to comparisons with Radiophonic masters like Delia Derbyshire or the mighty Raymond Scott’s Manhattan Research Project.
Dark Dark Dark - Something for myself
A spine-tingling ballad from a band that manages to conjure otherworldly textures with traditional folk instruments. In Nona Marie Invie they are blessed with one of the great female singers of the day. I have to give a shout here to Tom Ravenscroft – who has championed this band on his excellent 6Music radio show. They were magical live just a week ago in my local pub.
Mesmeric repetitive beats. A mantra and possibly the best one word lyric ever. The
Swim album has deservedly been Dan Snaith’s “breakthrough” moment - richly deserved for an artist on top form.
Pure ‘n’ sweet califor-nye-aye bubblegum pop from a rapidly ascending indie group.
There’s a school of thought that has Belle & Sebastian morphing over the years from hallowed protectors of a kind of C-86-indie purity - to MOR traitors getting into bed with all sorts of evil music industry behemoths like Trevor Horn. The recording location of this album (LA) and the presence of one minor dud (a very MOR duet with Norah Jones) might give this nonsense some credence. But the truth is B&S (from Tigermilk onwards) always had a sophistication about them that could be misconstrued as blandness (but is actually just a very clever modern band with lots of classic influences). I think they reached a zenith (so far) on the last album 2006’s
The Life Pursuit which strangely I have played more than any other this year. So in a very tiny sense the new one does represent a slight dip. But for all that it was great to get a new album and it still features some of the best and sassiest songs you’ll hear all year, including this gem.
Dubby and disorientating electronica from the kings of hauntological pop on the rather wonderful Ghost Box label. If the folk musicians of the
Wickerman had old analogue synths this might be what they sounded like.
Much as I loved Beach House over the last few years there was a sense that pre-eminence in their signature sound - a kind of shadowy dream-pop - might just be it. But with a sprinkle of gospel here and a hint of 70s soul there they have somehow super-charged their own sound while retaining its unique essence. And in the process they created a song as jaw-droppingly beautiful as “
Zebra”. The rest of the
Teen Dream album is wonderful too.
I’m reluctant to repeat the “return to form” tag that seemed to crop up in many reviews of BDB's new album, because in truth, I think he’s put out a lot of decent stuff in the years since his first excellent album (
The Hour of Bewilderbeast from a decade ago). BUT - this is probably his most consistent outing for many a year. Maybe it’s the return to the lo-fi reverb drenched production aesthetic as much as the great songs.
80s-referencing sound collagist and a former one-man hypnogogic pop-meister does his thing with a full band to great effect on this great new album
Before today.
Boy/Girl duet that lives up to the grandest tradition (i.e. Lee and Nancy as opposed to Peters and Lee). This also scores high on the “direct-injection”-o-meter mentioned in relation to Mr Deez. Mind you the name of the band is dubious.
This is one of a few tracks on this selection by Jon Brooks (see also D. D. Denham). In his Advisory Circle guise he makes some of the catchiest and evocative analogue electronic ditties since Plone in the late 1990s.
Actress - Hubble
Post-dubstep minimalism from London's Actress who in Splazh has made one of the best electronica (as opposed to dance) albums of the year. Actress himself has called his music "R&B concrète," which might sound a bit pretentious but sort of captures what's on offer on the album.
