2006 Favorites, Part 2
Most Honorable Mentions:
Beans ft. William Parker + Hamid Drake: Only (One of the more noble experiments in jazz/hip-hop fusion. It has moments, but with the greatest living rhythm section in jazz in the pocket, they're pretty impressive freakin' moments.)
The Black Keys: Chulahoma EP (It would be on my main list if only it were longer.)
J Dilla: Donuts (almost parallel to Madlib's 30-some track hip-hop mashup, out in the same year on the same label. Not as inventive, but with added poignance, for this was Jay Dee's final work in this world. RIP.)
Matmos: The Rose has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast (their most highly conceptual work yet--take the guided tour!--and in execution the most baffling, disturbing, and ultimately rewarding. I can do without the rape alarm, cow uterus-and shears sampling tribute to Valerie Solanis, thankyewverymuch, but their "Rag for William S. Burroughs," which morphs from ragtime piano to adding machine IDM to a full-on Jajouka trance freakout and back again, is among the things I was put on earth to hear.)
William Parker: Long Hidden- The Olmec Series (in which the greatest living jazz composer and bass plucker channels the cosmic consciousness of the Great Stone Head of the Olmecs right into your third eye chakra. Free jazz merengue is a lot more fun than you imagined; 14-minute bass solos, not so much.)
Prince: 3121 (Hey, he could be showing up on your doorstep with a Watchtower. Instead, he's back to making swollen purple electro glitter booty jams. The decade is looking up!)
Kokanko Sata: Kokanko Sata (If you buy her album she can build a house in Mali and take care of her family. Says so in the liner notes. Also, if you buy her album it will fill your heart with butterflies of joy. So, whichever.)
Sonic Youth: Rather Ripped ("Sonic Youth are the best band in the universe," according to Robert Christgau. And not just because they wrote a song about him. What once spilled over the banquet table and out into the hall, they can now stuff into peppermints and gumballs. But it still has the same mass: approximately that of the sun.)
Spank Rock: YoYoYoYoYo (I cannot in good conscience recommend what amounts to a brilliantly snazzy and futurized pomo cut 'n' paste of 2 Live Crew--sample song title/full lyric of song: "Put that Pussy on Me"--but I'll tell you about it anyway. 'Cuz it's pretty brilliantly snazzy.)
Reissues:
Miles Davis: The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 (It came out, like, after Christmas in 05. So not really cheating. Thanks, mama_k! Talk about a gift that keeps on giving. This is the Holy Grail, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and, like, the Da Vinci Code of Miles lore. Or like the Ark of the Covenant: everytime you play it, evil people melt and explode. If only I could get a hold of the White House PA...)
Brian Eno/David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Ideologically unsound? Sure. Better executed since? Probably. But for a primitively spliced-and-sampled ball of ethnic gobbledygook, it doesn't sound dated: it's just too unsettlingly...off... to sound dated. Like a slow cigarette burn through the veil of "reality." )
Soul Jazz presents: A Tom Moulton Mix (Disco? No, no no, child. *removes cap, tousles hair* This is disco TIMES TWELVE. *pats behind* Now move along, child. I've got gettin' down to do.)
Arthur Russell: First Thought Best Thought (acquired with a Jackpot gift certificate from gl. and sven. I wrote this by way of thanks, for the "gorgeous double CD of recordings by my favorite late and long-lost avant-garde composer/disco auteur/singer-songwriter/gay Iowan electric cellist...it's like traveling through the most heavenly sad pastoral America in a moth-winged tugboat." Thanks again!)
Wire: Pink Flag/ Chairs Missing/ 154 (Cold, brittle, steely, bitter, arty austerity never felt so good. Seriously.)
Compilations:
The Beast presents: Invaders (It's Metal, folks! Growling! Pummeling! Crunching! Lyrics cribbed from D&D and H.P. Lovecraft! It's back! And now it's hipster friendly!)
Compost Black Label Series Vol.1 (Unlike this! The Pitchfork/Vice crowd wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot fiberglass hash pipe. Deep, acid-jazzy electro-housey goodness. So 1996. So nothing to be ashamed of. Just dip me in it. Double dip me. Aaaahhhhhh.)
Soul Jazz presents: Tropicalia (That this single helping of Brazil's--and the Galaxy's--most innovative, funky, erotic, soulful and psychedelic music is just the merest sampling of what was produced in the 60s and 70s just makes my eyeballs spin just thinking about it. So I try not to much. SO worth the import price, if you don't happen to live in the indie record store capital of the Northwest. Nyaah nyaah.)
Zealous Records presents: Soul Sides Volume One (No, I wasn't cool enough to download them for free from the blog, either. But I'm here to tell you, brothers and sisters, there is hope.)
Disappointments:
Beirut: Gulag Orkestar (If you have internet access, and you know who you are, you've probably heard some of these songs. I don't want to have to break off some backlash on the baddest ex-Albuquerquean since zevhonith and the Shins, but though the concept is brilliant and a couple tracks I love love love--"The Bunker," "Postcards from Italy"--the album is just too samey, too formless, too blah. I'll rush out and buy his next one, when he's had time to tour and write tight songs. Heck, I'll carry his ukelele.)
Calexico: Garden Ruin (Well, I pre-ordered this big chunk-O-artistic-stagnation-and-compromise-and-why-don't-you-ask-me-how-I-really-feel from one of my favorite bands of all time, and I'm glad I did, because the first pressing came with the password for some MP3-only bonus tracks, of which one, "Cast Your Coat," is the best thing they ever did. And it's NOT ON THE ALBUM! Hellooooo...? How did this get a positive review in every blog and website from Tucson to Tukumkari? Has the world been taken over by zombies? Anyway. A couple songs are growing on me: "Cruel," "Panic Open String." And I understand how they didn't want to coast forever on their patented spaghetti-Western mariachi desert-noir schtick, that they're artists and have to mature and yadayada... but to reduce their vision from such a brilliant and bracing and wide-OPEN schtick to what amounts to bland, if virtuosic, Adult Contemporary Alt.Country is a reductive and depressing move. It's like a widescreen epic shrunk down to an iPod screen. I'd still see 'em live again in a heartbeat, though: the live setting might help. And if anything, I appreciate the rest of their stuff even more.
Various: Ghostly International Vol. 2 ("21st Century avant-pop." Whatever. Plop-plop-fizz-fizz. Blah blah blah. Pthpthpp. Still love Vol. 1, though.)
That is all.
Beans ft. William Parker + Hamid Drake: Only (One of the more noble experiments in jazz/hip-hop fusion. It has moments, but with the greatest living rhythm section in jazz in the pocket, they're pretty impressive freakin' moments.)
The Black Keys: Chulahoma EP (It would be on my main list if only it were longer.)
J Dilla: Donuts (almost parallel to Madlib's 30-some track hip-hop mashup, out in the same year on the same label. Not as inventive, but with added poignance, for this was Jay Dee's final work in this world. RIP.)
Matmos: The Rose has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast (their most highly conceptual work yet--take the guided tour!--and in execution the most baffling, disturbing, and ultimately rewarding. I can do without the rape alarm, cow uterus-and shears sampling tribute to Valerie Solanis, thankyewverymuch, but their "Rag for William S. Burroughs," which morphs from ragtime piano to adding machine IDM to a full-on Jajouka trance freakout and back again, is among the things I was put on earth to hear.)
William Parker: Long Hidden- The Olmec Series (in which the greatest living jazz composer and bass plucker channels the cosmic consciousness of the Great Stone Head of the Olmecs right into your third eye chakra. Free jazz merengue is a lot more fun than you imagined; 14-minute bass solos, not so much.)
Prince: 3121 (Hey, he could be showing up on your doorstep with a Watchtower. Instead, he's back to making swollen purple electro glitter booty jams. The decade is looking up!)
Kokanko Sata: Kokanko Sata (If you buy her album she can build a house in Mali and take care of her family. Says so in the liner notes. Also, if you buy her album it will fill your heart with butterflies of joy. So, whichever.)
Sonic Youth: Rather Ripped ("Sonic Youth are the best band in the universe," according to Robert Christgau. And not just because they wrote a song about him. What once spilled over the banquet table and out into the hall, they can now stuff into peppermints and gumballs. But it still has the same mass: approximately that of the sun.)
Spank Rock: YoYoYoYoYo (I cannot in good conscience recommend what amounts to a brilliantly snazzy and futurized pomo cut 'n' paste of 2 Live Crew--sample song title/full lyric of song: "Put that Pussy on Me"--but I'll tell you about it anyway. 'Cuz it's pretty brilliantly snazzy.)
Reissues:
Miles Davis: The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 (It came out, like, after Christmas in 05. So not really cheating. Thanks, mama_k! Talk about a gift that keeps on giving. This is the Holy Grail, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and, like, the Da Vinci Code of Miles lore. Or like the Ark of the Covenant: everytime you play it, evil people melt and explode. If only I could get a hold of the White House PA...)
Brian Eno/David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Ideologically unsound? Sure. Better executed since? Probably. But for a primitively spliced-and-sampled ball of ethnic gobbledygook, it doesn't sound dated: it's just too unsettlingly...off... to sound dated. Like a slow cigarette burn through the veil of "reality." )
Soul Jazz presents: A Tom Moulton Mix (Disco? No, no no, child. *removes cap, tousles hair* This is disco TIMES TWELVE. *pats behind* Now move along, child. I've got gettin' down to do.)
Arthur Russell: First Thought Best Thought (acquired with a Jackpot gift certificate from gl. and sven. I wrote this by way of thanks, for the "gorgeous double CD of recordings by my favorite late and long-lost avant-garde composer/disco auteur/singer-songwriter/gay Iowan electric cellist...it's like traveling through the most heavenly sad pastoral America in a moth-winged tugboat." Thanks again!)
Wire: Pink Flag/ Chairs Missing/ 154 (Cold, brittle, steely, bitter, arty austerity never felt so good. Seriously.)
Compilations:
The Beast presents: Invaders (It's Metal, folks! Growling! Pummeling! Crunching! Lyrics cribbed from D&D and H.P. Lovecraft! It's back! And now it's hipster friendly!)
Compost Black Label Series Vol.1 (Unlike this! The Pitchfork/Vice crowd wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot fiberglass hash pipe. Deep, acid-jazzy electro-housey goodness. So 1996. So nothing to be ashamed of. Just dip me in it. Double dip me. Aaaahhhhhh.)
Soul Jazz presents: Tropicalia (That this single helping of Brazil's--and the Galaxy's--most innovative, funky, erotic, soulful and psychedelic music is just the merest sampling of what was produced in the 60s and 70s just makes my eyeballs spin just thinking about it. So I try not to much. SO worth the import price, if you don't happen to live in the indie record store capital of the Northwest. Nyaah nyaah.)
Zealous Records presents: Soul Sides Volume One (No, I wasn't cool enough to download them for free from the blog, either. But I'm here to tell you, brothers and sisters, there is hope.)
Disappointments:
Beirut: Gulag Orkestar (If you have internet access, and you know who you are, you've probably heard some of these songs. I don't want to have to break off some backlash on the baddest ex-Albuquerquean since zevhonith and the Shins, but though the concept is brilliant and a couple tracks I love love love--"The Bunker," "Postcards from Italy"--the album is just too samey, too formless, too blah. I'll rush out and buy his next one, when he's had time to tour and write tight songs. Heck, I'll carry his ukelele.)
Calexico: Garden Ruin (Well, I pre-ordered this big chunk-O-artistic-stagnation-and-compromise-and-why-don't-you-ask-me-how-I-really-feel from one of my favorite bands of all time, and I'm glad I did, because the first pressing came with the password for some MP3-only bonus tracks, of which one, "Cast Your Coat," is the best thing they ever did. And it's NOT ON THE ALBUM! Hellooooo...? How did this get a positive review in every blog and website from Tucson to Tukumkari? Has the world been taken over by zombies? Anyway. A couple songs are growing on me: "Cruel," "Panic Open String." And I understand how they didn't want to coast forever on their patented spaghetti-Western mariachi desert-noir schtick, that they're artists and have to mature and yadayada... but to reduce their vision from such a brilliant and bracing and wide-OPEN schtick to what amounts to bland, if virtuosic, Adult Contemporary Alt.Country is a reductive and depressing move. It's like a widescreen epic shrunk down to an iPod screen. I'd still see 'em live again in a heartbeat, though: the live setting might help. And if anything, I appreciate the rest of their stuff even more.
Various: Ghostly International Vol. 2 ("21st Century avant-pop." Whatever. Plop-plop-fizz-fizz. Blah blah blah. Pthpthpp. Still love Vol. 1, though.)
That is all.