musical best of 2008

[laerm]

Hunh, I feel oblig­ated to do it this year, not because I think peo­ple give a damn, more because I think last year had a lot of music that went overlooked…by me! I didn’t recall being too excited by music last year, and that’s why I didn’t want to write one of these, but I went back and checked and I was wrong, so this is kind of like my penance for neglect of these fine releases.

As is my method­ol­ogy, I will not rank, but I will tier them in groups, start­ing with the really good stuff.

• Lindstrøm Where You Go I Go Too
• Studio Yearbook 2
• Fennesz Black Sea
• Gang Gang Dance Saint Dymphna
• Hecq Night Falls
• Current 93 Birth Canal Blues
• Cut Copy In Ghost Colours
• Aidan Baker & Tim Hecker Fantasma Parastasie

Up here at the top, we have a slightly manic-​​depressive mixed bag. Literally four albums drip­ping with good, poppy vibes, and four filled with unease and darkness.

Cut Copy give us one of the best pop albums in a long time, inspired by early-90’s techno, brit­pop, and new order. The Gang Gang Dance album also draws from a vari­ety of inspi­ra­tions - I hear Peter Gabriel’s Birdy sound­track, Cocteau Twins’ later work, My Bloody Valentine, and early Biosphere. Lindstrøm and Studio will cover slightly dif­fer­ent angles of the new Scandinavian house world. Lindstrøm chan­nels late-70’s/early-80’s Tangerine Dream & Vangelis and puts them up against mid-80’s italodisco, mak­ing the best cos­mic disco album so far. Studio refine their off-​​kilter balearic sound, with gui­tars and con­gas, but man­age to trans­late each artist rep­re­sented on this, a com­pi­la­tion of remixes they’ve done of oth­ers, into their own world while keep­ing it recognisable.

On the other side of the coin, stal­wart David Tibet brings us a short Current 93 ep that’s pretty schizo. A cou­ple tracks in his usual neo­folk vein, capped of by one hell of a tor­rent of noise. Aidan Baker brings some heavy gui­tar noise to Tim Hecker, who per­forms his always-​​miraculous treat­ments and cre­ates some won­der­ful noisy drones. Getting a lit­tle bit darker, though on the same lines, is the new Fennesz, pos­si­bly his best album. More melodic and more min­i­mal­ist than Baker & Hecker, yet some­how less uplift­ing. Finally, in a thrilling mix of iso­la­tion­ist and upli­fit­ing, we have the best Hecq album yet, and truly one of the best ambi­ent records ever.

A great year for oddly retro pop and dark’n’noisy.

• Beach House Devotion
• Bersarin Quartett Bersarin Quartett
• British Sea Power Do You Like Rock Music?
• M83 Saturdays = Youth
• Crystal Castles Crystal Castles
• dj/​rupture Uproot
• Curses “What I Need”
• Shackleton fea­tur­ing Vengeance Tenford “Death Is Not Final”

Beach House bring a slightly poppy angle to the 4ad sound, and Crystal Castles make real 8-​​bit pop music. M83 also get a bit schizo on their (his) fourth album, though “Colours” has gotta be one of the best songs of last year. Bersarin Quartett bring cham­ber music and dark ambi­ent together, and dj/​rupture brings every­thing together in one of the best dj mixes i’ve ever heard. British Sea Power add on to their rep­u­ta­tion as the per­fect band for some­one who really likes to think and really likes to rock. Shackleton gets vocals from Vengeance Tenford on a truly epic piece of dub­step, car­ry­ing a solid solid solid mix by Monolake’s t++ on the flip. Curses’ “What I Need” 12″ Is a fan­tas­ti­cally bouncy piece of revival­ist techno.

• Portishead 3
• The Daysleepers Drowned in a Sea of Sound
• Junior Boys “No Kinda Man”
• Hercules &Amp; Love Affair fea­tur­ing Antony “Blind”
• Distance Repercussions
• Luomo Convivial
• Nôze Songs on the Rocks

We waited a long time for Portishead’s third, and when it landed…well, I’m still try­ing to get my head around it. I per­son­ally waited a long time for the Daysleepers’ debut album, and it was no dis­ap­point­ment, shoegaz­ing a lit­tle bit of the Cure into Slowdive. Junior Boys finally gob­s­macked me last year with this 12″ (Doubtlessly helped by the excel­lent Chloé mix). Also finally gob­s­mack­ing me was some­thing on the DFA label, in the shape of Antony doing his best pained diva on a great lit­tle house tune by Hercules & Love Affair. Luomo’s recent album, a cross between the first two, slowly grew on me, unlike the new ones from Nôze and Distance, both of which floored me: Nôze being Tom Waits gone french-​​cabaret-​​house, and Distance with another great noisy/​melodic dub­step record.

• Byetone Death of a Typographer
• Thomas Brinkmann When Horses Die
• Trentemøller “Miss You”
• Paavoharju Laulu Laakson Kukista
• John Foxx Tiny Colour Movies
• The Raveonettes Lust Lust Lust
• Rod Modell Incense &Amp; Black Light
• Sebbo “Watamu Beach”

Another odd col­lec­tion here… Thomas Brinkmann tries a “song­writer” album, which ends up dark­dark, show­ing lots of Swans and Coil influ­ence. Paavoharju with one of the year’s sur­prises for me - and it would prob­a­bly sur­prise you - Finnish freak­folk with lots of synths and ambi­ence. Trentemøller com­pletes the Norwegian ø pair in my list with a catchy, min­i­mal sin­gle and some excel­lent remixes. Raveonettes con­tinue to refine their 60’s girl pop-​​via-​​Jesus & Mary Chain sound, though admit­tedly they’re ranked this high based on the first cou­ple tracks on this album, par­tic­u­larly “Aly, Walk with Me”. John Foxx gets all won­der­fully haunto­log­i­cal with this col­lec­tion of min­i­mal instru­men­tals, Rod Modell con­tin­ues doing min­i­mal dub techno very well, and Sebbo has a tribal piece of min­i­mal with a smooth Maurizio remix on the flip.

• Grouper Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill
• Radio Slave “No Sleep Part Five”
• Snowman The Horse, The Rat, &Amp; The Swan
• Vladislav Delay “Recovery Idea Pt 2″
• Luke Dzierzek “Echo”
• Aaron Carl “Crucified”
• Kasey Chambers &Amp; Shane Nicholson Rattlin’ Bones

Last group starts out with Grouper, a one-​​woman act from Portland, Oregon, who does the blurry ambi­ent folk thing super well (and has a really creepy album cover to boot). Radio Slave still man­ages to bonk and clank his way suc­cess­fully through 10-​​plus-​​minute min­i­mal house songs. Snowman, hail­ing from Perth, Australia - some­place I bet has never seen a snow­man - do a sort of early-​​Swans-​​gone-​​country-​​with-​​the-​​Sun-​​City-​​Girls-​​thing, and it really works. Sasu Ripatti, a/​k/​a Luomo, shows up again with his orig­i­nal pseu­do­nym, Vladislav Delay. Luke Dzierzek’s “Echo” is another piece of slightly-​​revivalist, slightly-​​minimal techno, and Aaron Carl’s “Crucified” makes it on the list exclu­sively based on the two remixes by Rod Modell and Quantec (bonus points for mak­ing a corny house song into what they both did). Wrapping it up, a record I’m really glad I stum­bled across, Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson. Possibly Australian and pos­si­bly mar­ried (info a lit­tle thin out there), these two put out a gritty lit­tle coun­try album, full of heart­break and law­break, and lots of distortion.

• Coldplay (& Brian Eno) Viva la Vida

I had to say some­thing about this, didn’t I? Brian Eno pro­duces an album by the world’s fore­most U2 clone. Ok, so maybe they’re not a U2 clone any­more, but if Eno man­ages to keep lead­ing them down the path he’s started them on with this album, i’d gladly trade in U2’s next album for Coldplay’s next album.