Earlier this year, my favourite music writer Simon Reynolds – who runs everybody’s favourite music blog blissout – characterised two kinds of listener in his long-running discussion of rockism: ‘Tricky types’ and ‘Sleater-Kinney types’. Personally, I don’t see why I can’t be both kinds, and in that spirit I hereby present my humble year-end list…
Favourite album (international): Burial, Burial
When I wasn’t listening to this album, I was thinking about it. It creates an immersive sonic universe like few other records that I’ve heard over the past few years: seductive, off-kilter and dreadfully spooky. If 2006 was the year that dubstep began to infect even clueless dolts like me, then Burial surely shoulders a large square of the cross-over blame. It’s beautiful, and I didn’t even try to resist it.
Honourable mentions: Matmos, The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast, Beirut, Gulag Orkestar
Favourite album (local): The Crayon Fields, Animal Bells
Gorgeous, shimmering, unashamed pop music. The 60s never sounded this sweet.
Honourable mentions: Seaworthy, Distant Hills Burn Bright, Because of Ghosts, The Tomorrow We Were Promised Yesterday
Gig of the year: Castings/Nathan Thompson/Seaworthy, Yvonne Ruve, August
A night of sounds so slow to unfold that the collective heartbeat was gradually lowered – what with a corresponding lack of oxygen in the room, comatose states were close at hand. Which might not sound like everybody’s idea of a fun night on the town, but this gig was a tiny, perfectly-formed thing. It also served as an introduction to NZ laptop/noise artist Nathan Thompson, whose supremely impressive new album, Star Obsolescence, under his nom-de-guerre Expansion Bay, is worth tracking down.
Tied for first place with: Sleater-Kinney, The Gaelic Club (Sydney) and The Corner (Melbourne), January
Storming, booty-shaking sets from the first ladies of rock. Then they went and broke up, and I was very, very, very sad. Old riot-grrrls die hard – but they play harder. Long may their incendiary spirit live on, reincarnate in other guitar-windmilling women.
With honourable mention to: Animal Collective, Always, Aleks and the Ramps, Pivot, Jaime Fennelly, Skist, Fabulous Diamonds, Sigur Ros, Low, Crayon Fields
Venue of the year: Yvonne Ruve, (Hibernian House, Sydney)
It’s the size of a lounge room, its largely unsignposted, you get a nice view of the local rats on your way up, it’s an unventilated fire-hazard, and wonderful, intriguing music happens there.
Hype of the year: Hauntology
Hauntology is the new black! Or maybe, since we’re talking about ghosts, the new white! It has something to do with Derrida! And dubstep! It’s very highbrow! But it sounds good!
Mystery of the year: Thurston Moore
This man obviously knows the secrets of human cloning, because by my calculation he has appeared on an average of 7.2 records out of every 10 released this year. Does he never sleep?
Records I meant to buy, but haven’t yet, AKA my Christmas wishlist:
Lady Sovereign, Public Warning, On, On, Post, Post, Broadcast, The Future Crayon, Six Organs of Admittance, Sun Awakens
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Comments (9)
Lyndon December 13, 2006
cool…i was wondering when we were going to start the “best of 2006″ lists…
Mine will be up shortly!
PS – Don’t bother yourself with the Lady Sovereign, aka this year’s MIA, who is just as overrated – but, hey, that’s just me
matt December 13, 2006
indie rock, hah!
i’ve dug listening to beirut’s album – it’s like calexico if they replaced their tex-mex with balkan folk – but it raises loads of questions, which i’m still kinda working through, especially with a bunch of sydney bands plotting a gypsy-esque path right about now.
i hear what simon was saying, but i think they’re pretty much the same kind of listeners compared to the whole other world of ears.
Matt Moore December 14, 2006
Matt => Which are these Sydney bands plotting a gypsyesque path? Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen are definitely on that tip but are Melbournians no?
Emmy => “Burial” is a great album but Dubstep? Maybe. It reminds me equally of Tortoise/Low and all those 90s Postrock outfits. With those klaxons and the undercurrent of nostalgia within it – Postrave?
Lydon => Lady Sov – not heard the album but the singles are pretty fantastic. Does she get beyond “I’m short, I burp a bit” tho?
Tom December 14, 2006
Sydney Gypsyesque bands: Waiting For Guinness, Arabesk, and Monsieur Camembert…
matt December 14, 2006
cheers tom.
burial’s kinda post-whatever it was. it was a next step. but the scene around dubstep and grime and sublow (and whatever it’s called next week – below 40!) has always been characterised by a wilful rejection of rules or tradition – as each generation of artists gets set in their ways, the scene moves on, discarding the old. kode9, wiley, burial, geeneus, soundproof productions, horsepower, timeblind, maxximus and so on and so on. obviously it’s that reflectiveness in burial’s record that’s endeared it to the indie crowd though.
Matt Moore December 14, 2006
Tom => Cheers, will keep an ear out.
matt => i remember hearing some of kode9’s death garage attempts 6-7 years ago and thinking how rubbish and thin they sounded. and now he’s taken that somewhere really interesting.
it’s revived by love of 2step – been caning some comps (locked on vol 3) from about 98. it’s such odd music. in its own way, much more weird than jungle because it’s so much more accessible the sheer rhythmic density doesn’t hit you until you’re way into a track.
i think burial is definitely “post-something” – the aftermath of a nuclear war maybe?
Marmiteboy December 18, 2006
I saw Lady Sovereign when I was stewading at the Reading Festival this year. Not my cup of tea but she was a lot of fun and really rocked the tent.
I’ll definitely have to check out Burial as they sound right up my street.
Greg December 21, 2006
More 2006 favourites…………
*The Ladies – They mean us (Temporary Residence)
*Grizzly Bear – Yellow House (Warp)
*Laura – Radio swan is down (Alone again)
*Danielson – Ships (Secretly Canadian)
*Joanna Newsom – Ys (Drag City)
*Red Sparowes – Every red heart….(Neurot)
*Tunng – Comments of the inner chorous (Full time hobby)
*Because of Ghosts – The tomorrow we were promised
today (Feral Media)
*Nobody & the Mystic chords of memory – Tree coloured
see (Mush)
*Department of eagles – The cold nose (Melodic)
Check out ‘The Ladies’ it is an absolute killer!!!!!!
emmy hennings December 24, 2006
Yes, Burial is definitely post-something – I’d say post-industrial. And I mean that less in a musical sense that with regards to the context (political, social, geographic) that the music has been made in.
I mean, innovative British music has had very strong links to a sense of economic and social decay for many decades now. It’s almost a cliche to say that early post-punk/industrial stuff was a reaction to Britain’s declining economic power, disappearance of traditional manufacturing industries, decline in public housing, early warning signs of ‘economic rationalism’ and Thatcher, etc etc… The hauntings of decaying, forgotten spaces. I’ve always liked that Bernard Sumner quote where he explains that the reason Joy Division were so miserable was because as kids they all got uprooted from their family homes and tipped into public housing towers. The mourning was real.
Anyway. All this is by way of getting ’round to the point that, twenty-five years on, Burial is a music for cities where endemic decay battles with slick, pre-fab, simulated ‘public’ spaces. Or old warehouses made over as new – perhaps strangest temporal/spatial disjunction of all. Hence with Burial you get those slippery, obsidian-shiny beats colliding with hiss and crackle. Like some super-smooth club record got buried (hah!) in the rubble of a building site for a few years, was rediscovered, and chucked on the stereo. At least, that’s what is sounds like to me. It’s perfect music for wandering to, stalking the city late at night.