Here is my list of my ten favourite records this year. I left off a few records that I thought were amazing (stuff like Antony and the Johnsons,Sufjan Stevens and the Go-Betweens) but will be included on so many year end lists that listing them here would be redundant. My list also includes a compilation and reissue. I know that is probably breaking the rules of year end top tens, but I refuse to bow to artificial constraints like time. All in all, I reckon it has been a great year for music, you just have to know where to look for the good stuff.
Animal Collective – Feels (FatCat)
For me this really is the best thing released this year. It looks as though these guys are finally going to be huge (I heard a Triple J announcer compare them to the Flaming Lips, which is odd) and I gotta say, I think it is a wonderful thing. To hear this beguiling, inexhaustibly creative music coming from car stereos and in suburban lounge rooms all over town would be something to hear
In an interview published in The Wire earlier this year the band claimed they were influenced more by Kompakt style techno than the free-folkers many expect them to feel a kinship with. On tracks like ‘Banshee Beat’ the connection is easy to spot, an insistent drum beat backs subtle melody complete with heartbreaking chord changes and zoned out lyrics about ‘trying to find the swimming pool’. The lead single ‘Grass’ is pure ecstatic lunacy.
These guys are long-time favourites of mine and I could not be more impressed by this record.
Christopher Bissonnette – Periphery (Kranky)
Thinkbox member Christopher Bissonnette’s solo record is an example of computer process music that doesn’t neglect to be beautiful and utterly moving. Bissonnette uses samples that are often only seconds long to create extended pieces that bear little resemblance to the sound source. Though at times reminiscent of a more minimal version a Tim Hecker record, Bissonnette creates a soundworld that is entirely his own. Periphery is a near perfect thing of beauty constructed from tiny moments.
Alvarius B – Blood Operatives of the Barium Sunset (Abduction)
This is the second solo album from the Sun City Girls Alan Bishop. It is work of sublime acid fried nastiness. Over the course of the album’s thirteen songs Bishop tells the stories of some very bad men in his oblique, foul mouthed way. Mostly he accompanies himself with his unadorned Arabic inflected yet scattered guitar playing. A fascinatingly blasted document from a renowned globetrotter who clearly hangs out in the places that the Lonely Planet tells you to avoid.
Prurient – Black Vase (Load)
This guy out-harshes Wolf Eyes in the unleashing of black noise. This record is a surgically abrasive ode to sexual perversion and self-immolation. I’m really not sure what ‘Whipped Hole’ is about but after listening to the song it sounds like it would be rather unpleasant. Opener ‘Roman Shower’ is 14 odd minutes of headache inducing pure tonal mayhem. If you make it through that, added percussion makes the rest a little easier to swallow. At the end of this long and wonderful record silence sounds very strange indeed.
Various Artists: Invisible Pyramid Elegy Box (Last Visible Dog)
This 6CD box is a truly monumental slab of sound. A pretty comprehensive selection of the global drone/psych underground each deliver an EP length contribution dedicated to an extinct animal. The set is inspired by the writings of naturalist Loren Eisley who often lamented the extinction of species and America’s decision to explore space when so much of earth remained uncharted. The box set features Black Forest/Black Sea, Birchville Cat Motel, Wolfmangler, Loren Chasse, Bardo Pond, es, Andrea Belfi & Stefano Pilia, Sunken, Kulkija, Tomu Tonttu, UP-TIGHT, Flies Inside the Sun, Uton, mudboy, Steven R. Smith, Keijo, Doktor Kettu, My Cat is an Alien, One Inch of Shadow, Fursaxa, Ashtray Navigations, Peter Wright, Geoff Mullen, Urdog, Miminokoto, Area C, Ben Reynolds, Seht, Avarus, Renato Rinaldi, Matt De Gennaro. Bardo Pond’s skyscraping psychedelia and Renato Ranaldi’s inspired use of field recordings are my personal highlights, but it’s all great.
Vashti Bunyan – Lookaftering (FatCat)
I must admit I was a little nervous about hearing Vashti’s second album, after having loved and lived with Another Diamond Day. Any fears I had were allayed within minutes of putting this record on. This album is shot through with the same magic that made Another Diamond Day so inexplicably beautiful and infinitely playable.
Sunburned Hand of the Man – Wedlock (Eclipse)
This musical collective’s live releases have always felt like embers from a once blazing fire. Sure, they sound great but they don’t really seem to capture what it was like to be present at what sounds like a Pagan ritual of sound. I get the feeling Wedlock comes as close as humanly possible to capturing the Sunburned live experience. Wedlock was recorded in 2003 in the Alaskan wilds where the group was celebrating the wedding of two of its members. The double LP features several outbursts of the bands ritualistic and loose funk, as well as percussion meltdowns and more abstract pieces. It’s like Can’s Tago Mago relocated to the wilderness and played by a bunch of disenfranchised punks high on Emerson’s Walden.
Metope – Kobol (Areal)
I’m sure there are other contributors to this blog who could speak more eloquently about why this record is really something else. Great Detroit inflected minimal house with neat use of overdrive and odd noises. I really wish there were more clubs that played this kind of thing really loud.
Birchville Cat Motel with Lee Ranaldo – 30th December 2004 (Celebrate Psi-Phenomenon)
Recorded at New York experimental nightspot Tonic this record sounds like the public airing of a very private musical communication. Campbell Kneale and Lee Ranaldo’s contributions meld seamlessly to create an extended ascending drone that crackles with controlled electricity. This record is pure white light.
Albert Ayler – Holy Ghost (Revenant) (LP Vinyl Version)
OK so the Holy Ghost box set came out in 2004 but this first instalment of the vinyl version didn’t come out till April this year. Like the box set the presentation of the three LPs is excellent, they are pressed onto slabs of clear vinyl and packaged with a poster, postcard and an informative essay about Ayler’s brief life. The music is, of course, absolutely beautiful. Ayler combines old-timey Americana (marching band themes, spirituals and militaristic clarion calls) with his wild sax improvisations in a way that has to be heard to believed. The final piece of this set, with Pharoah Sanders, sounds like Wolf Eyes trying to wrestle a saxophone off Anthony Braxton while Borebetomagus provide the sound track. Wild stuff.
It is as Thurston Moore and Byron Coley wrote in their review:
“As Sun Ra so aptly put it, ‘It’s a motherfucker, don’t ya know?’ Seems quite unlikely that there will be another release with such gushing importance and pleasure, mixed so sweetly, in our lifetime or the next.”
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