| It's come to that time of year again when the "Best Of's" for the year get trotted out. Perhaps I'm not the only one who is finding the question "What were your favourite albums of the past year?" an
increasingly absurd one.
During the year, I've discovered music
both new and old without really considering its year of release,
quite a lot of which didn't come from albums, and some of it
hasn't even been released in any conventional way. Only a small
percentage of the music that ended up in my iPod actually got
there by me hearing stuff on radio or TV or reading about it
in a magazine (although that doesn't mean I didn't get some
good recommendations).
I found music by somehow getting involved,
as a remixer or collaborator, or through my duties with PostEverything.
Also I found a lot through friend requests to the various MySpace
pages I maintain (yes -- I try to give everything at least
10 secs and I've found some real gems that way!) and also by
ripping old promo CDs I'd never listened to (before putting
them on E-Bay), and of course also through stuff that people
we know just send us.
So instead of a list of real albums I'm going to invent a
set of "virtual compilations",
presented in no particular order, each of which hopefully capture a mood that
I've picked up on through the year.
2006 Year of Pop
One of
the really significant aspects of 2006 is the way that good and interesting
pop music has made its way back onto the agenda. There are times when pop
seems to have no relevance at all, and other times when everything
is somehow touched by and striving towards a kind of pop which
is perpetually redefining itself.
For me, pop tinged with pathos
supplies can be a killer combination which is why I and a lot
of other people (many of whom wouldn't admit to it) gave The
Feeling's album Twelve Stops and Home some
serious attention this year. In spite of it being both retro & cheesy, the
album somehow escapes the tragic Coldplay/Travis/Keene trap of mawkish sentiment
couched in early 70's stylings by just so perfectly nailing the aesthetic
that defined what was special about early 70's Brit pop without actually
evoking any nostalgia!
Of course pop comes in many guises, but if you wanted
perfect indie pop in 2006 you could do a lot worse than checking out Swedish
act, The Concretes, who managed to turn a few heads by being
the first band daring to inhabit Carpenters territory. However
for me the pop discovery of the year was Samabassadeur, who
I found through the Labrador
label's free downloads.
They manage to be both cheerful and "autumnal" at the same time which is
just how I like it! The track Kate is the one that does it for me.
Then again, pop can also come in pretty leftfield varieties
too, as in my view something can be characterized as pop by
what the voice does regardless of the arrangement. In rock
the voice and the instruments tend to inhabit the same space
whereas pop can often be defined only by the voice, so there
has emerged a whole set of artists who are both pop and experimental
at the same time. I guess a prime example would be a band like
Psapp. I loved both albums, but the second, The
Only Thing I Ever Wanted even
more than the first. The music is often quirky with a range of peculiar
instruments, toys, and funny noises in with the more conventional sounds.
Often the rhythms are no more than skeletal, yet it's Galia Durant's
voice that pulls it all together. As instrumental music it's leftfield,
but with the voice it's pop!
But it gets weirder than that... You have
artists like Like a Stuntman who manage to cram catchy
melodies and some pretty off the wall stuff into their tunes (best
heard on their Stan
Places EP).
But perhaps my weirdest discovery of the year is Mrs. Tanaka, who is
on the Osaka Based label Towntone and
whose "Traffic Tune" manages to be cheerful, poignant, charming, extremely
lo-fi, and catchy in that way that only Japanese girls can be. And no
I haven't got a clue what she's singing about, even though I suspect
it might be in English!
Electronic
Music Ain't Dead
The
other major theme of 2006 is that electronic music refuses to die
in spite of the fact that MTV 2 (in the UK at least) is awash with
young rock bands thrown up in the wake of the Arctic Monkeys phenomenon.
Right across the board from the post dubstep dark urban atmospheres
of Burial's
self titled debut album to
the massive dancefloor success enjoyed by the drum & bass revival,
most notably pop-junglists Pendulum (who's Hold Your Colour album
contains some of my favourite air punchers) to the classic electronic
beauty of Redpoint, whose debut EP Stay at Home is
available for free download from the label Hidden
Music.
Others who have been slaving over their synths for many a
year have discovered a penchant for pop and some of the best "outsider pop" I've heard in
2006 came from people who, instead of throwing out their computers
and getting into rock bands, are staying the course and re-inventing
the genre from the inside. Artists like France's Laudanum (who's Left
Handed Right Mind from the Your
Place & Time Will Be Mine album is just one of the catchiest
and unlikeliest tunes I've heard this year) and Belgium's Styrofoam,
who does his own singing as well! Check out A Heart Without a Mind from
his I'm
What's There to Show That Something's Missing album.
But my absolute discovery in electronic music in 2006 was
someone who released his last album in 2003 and that's the
king of "shoegaze electronica",
Ulrich Schnauss, who's second album A Strangely Isolated Place is
somehow prescient of a style which may be a coming one for
2007: the one man pop/rock band, the effect somehow achieved
without the obvious guitar/bass/drums axis. I guess he's a
Todd Rundgren for the modern age (which in my view is a good
thing!) and On My Own is
just a fantastic piece of work.
Oh
My God, It's the 80's Again
I
guess you will have had to have been living in a box for the
past few years to notice just how much 80's revivalism there
is around. Apart from all the bands that sound a bit like The
Smiths, the punk-funk aesthetic still keeps on keeping on,
delightfully personified in 2006 by CSS, who are Brazilian
and bored with Sexy(whatever
that means). Still, Let's
Make Love & listen to Death from Above manages to strut
its funky stuff, be charming, and have a great title all at
the same time -- which is more than most can claim.
More absurd are Geyster who are either German or come from
Los Angeles (or both) and who audaciously revive 80's glam
disco, and actually sound a bit like Illusion (which is a lot
funnier than Scissor Sisters sounding like Elton John and,
errr, The Smiths of course).
But if you want to get really
serious about your 80's revivalism then you should check out
France's Celluloide, who sound like early Depeche Mode, only
insanely catchy and NOT weedy. Track down People Like
Me.
Interestingly enough, stuff that is actually from the early
80's also sounded at times alarmingly contemporary. Old track
of the year must go to Gina X's No
GDM which
Malka has DJed with to great effect and we have featured on our occasional
radio show (tip
- speed it up!) I have no idea what she's going on about but
she does it with great conviction! And it's just a thumper
of a Teutonic beat. Runner-up spot has to go to Kleenex with Heidi's
Head,
a song which is willfully obscure yet manages to combine harmonic
sophistication with totally naiveté! Genuine post punk in a
Swiss chocolate!
Acoustic
Is Here To Stay (At Least For Now)
There
has been a huge "folk" revival in the UK over the last few
years which has seen the absurdity of forgotten 60's hippy
Vashti Bunyan swept into the public eye (and into a T-Mobile
advert) as well as the dubious charms of Davendra
Banhart,
et al. However this has also meant that Bert
Jansch has received
a timely revival. People often talk about music being timeless,
but it seems crazy to imagine that his self-titled debut album
was released in 1965! It speaks as much to today as much as
it did to its time of release, and makes all those Third Millennium
Hippies sound like just that!
Of course, there have been people
doing smart things with acoustic instruments (played or manipulated)
this year. Notably there was Tunng who combine acoustic guitars,
folk melodies, electronic atmospheres, and glitch to great
effect on their Mother's
Daughter and Other Songs album.
Also Silver Pyre, who's Sovereign combines a kind of
bawdy traditional folk with electronic drone.
Then there's Phelan
Sheppard,
who manipulate a lot of "real instruments" into the sound pictures
on their debut album Harps Old Master. Stretching
the line of influence a bit further there is Modern
Institute,
who on the surface would be classified as Electronic but who
feature real cello and guitar in the mix. It would seem that
acoustic instruments and "real
instrument" textures
have a lot to offer to music styles well outside the realm
of "folk".
The
Album of Me & MySpace
2006 was the year in which MySpace
turned from being a thing that hip 20-somethings mused about
and that PR people co-opted into their publicity strategies
for the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Lily Savage, to being a
piece of virtual real estate anyone with a public name HAD
to at least check out to see who is claiming to be you. Having
discovered 20 or 30 Wire's (most of whom appeared to be giving
away our music) along side various Colin Newman's (one of which
was using my picture and biography to attract dates), I didn't
have much choice but to weigh in with the Identity Theft thing
and ended up taking over the most popular Wire page. This started
of what has come to be a daily ritual of dealing with the endless
friend requests for Wire. I'm conscientious, so I at least
try to check everyone out (see the
blog on Wire's MySpace for
more about this) and in spite of the constraints there have
been discoveries. Some of the more obscure artists above I
first found through MySpace, and there are others to add to
that list.
Often I just like one track but that's not to devalue
the artist, IMO one good track is more than 95% of all recorded
artists achieve! So here's a list – track
'em down on MySpace:
More added daily.
Of course, I don't just spend my days dealing with MySpace
friend requests. Most of this year has been spent working on
the second Githead meisterwek Art
Pop which
of course exemplifies all the best in contemporary
music.
Elsewhere I've done a few little collaborations.
I mixed a band called Celebricide from
Brighton. I think Resist
or Serve comes
out as a single next year. I also remixed the Japanese
band Polysics.
I know it came out, but I never got a copy. I also
did a collaboration with Tauchsieder one
third of which is Frenchbloke, I
sing on a track called Herd the
Shadows for their next album, this should also
come out next year.
The last couple of months I'm
re-immersed in Wire studio work but that, as
they say, is another story! |
