The Final Countdown

Da-na-na-naaaa, da-na-na-na-naaaa....

Yes yes indeed, with lesser competitions such as the X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing and BBC3's Young Butcher of the Year already falling by the wayside, it's time for the most hotly talked about contest of the year to slam it's final axe stroke in to the craggy mountain of music that's been piling up this year, and haul ourselves over the apex to reflect upon the marvels on offer.

I'm already busy at work in the lab, conducting devious genetic experiments so that I can offer myself a shoulder to sob on as I begin to realise the gems that I've missed off the list. There are two that I'm thoroughly kicking myself over, which I missed off for various careless reasons but would have easily been bothering the top 10 - 1. Memories by Pangaea, a track that the wider population (or at least, the demographic of the population who listen to down-beat soulful dubstep) had been enjoying for the best part of half a year before Muggins McPhee here latched on to it, and 2. the hugely fun and danceable Why Don't You by Gramophonedzie, a song that I love greatly but for some reason thought was from several years ago.

And THEN there are the various tracks that Chris, Tom and Richard listed in response to my appeal for your own favourite songs lists (suggestions still warmly encouraged by the way!), so mad props to the aforementioned badmen, their lists can be found in the comments section of the previous post and are all well worth a listen.

Despite these exceptions, this top 10 is a good reflection of what I've been enjoying on a whole other level of enjoyment this year. Each one is the kind of song which lures me into putting it on again straight after it's finished, because I just can't get enough of its goodness. You may well take one listen/look at the list and emit a big fat WTF (c'mon guys, how could I NOT include Fight For This Love??), but I'd like to think that if you welcome these tunes on to your hearth and in to your hearts then we'll soon be reading from the same hymn sheet.

Unlike the YouTube links of ye olde sections of this countdown, all the ten songs have got download options, as a Christmas present from me to you. You can even download the whole lot in one fell swoop by clicking here, and choosing 'Select All' from the options at the top and then clicking 'Bulk-download Selected'. That should work. I think.

10. Florence & The Machine - Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)

Although I'm not a wholly devoted F&tM fan, they've been really good whenever I've seen them live and there are a few tracks of theirs that I greatly enjoy. This, the second track off 'Lungs', is my favourite. A stirring, vocally wonderful song, full of mythical and mystical imagery, Rabbit Heart is a cryptic battle cry that will have you throwing your hands up in the air and saying "Lord I just don't care" much more emphatically than certain other Florence tracks that have just been released YET AGAIN.

9. Fever Ray - Seven

A voice that's instantly recognisable from her work as one half of The Knife, Karin Dreijer Andersson flew solo this year under the name Fever Ray with the release of her bloody excellent album, also entitled Fever Ray. Chock-a-block with great songs, Seven is the pick of the bunch in my eyes. The lyrical content is superbly simple and mundane - "we talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets", "I ride my bike up, I ride my bike down" - but there's an ever present sense of nostalgia and longing in the song, which could readily relate to romance, or death, or both. Seven has also been remixed well by Martyn, and less so by Crookers - or should I say, Crookers have cut up the vocals and plopped them on top of the same beat they use for every song.

8. Joker - Digidesign

The future's bright - the future's purple. Apparently Joker 'hears' purple when he makes his music, which means that his sound is now referred to as 'Purple Wow', he makes songs with purple in the title, he wears a lot of purple etc. So, dubstep's answer to Prince then? Well Digidesign is certainly sultry and sexy enough to tick at least some of *unpronounceable symbol*'s boxes, with a luuuurvely synth pattern that will have any dance floor 'bom-bomming' along when dropped. You'll know what I mean when you listen to it. Hopefully. Digidesign was released on a 12" with 2000F's You Don't Know What Love Is (#12 in this list), which surely makes it the sexiest EP of the year, possibly ever. If most dubstep doesn't convince you, GO AND FIND THAT EP, it's an absolute delight.


7. Few Nolder - Chika


This track from oddly named Lithuanian producer Few Nolder contains one of the cutest and most infectious tunes I've heard in a long time. The track is minimalistic techno, without actually being minimal techno -  it provokes a feeling much more euphoric than your bog standard minimal, and even has hints of dancehall throughout. When the quivering little tune finally drops after the build up, it never fails to leave me with a smile on my face.


6. Deadboy - U Cheated


In the year that saw UK urban music getting increasingly funkier, this is probably the finest example to date of the 2-step revival. A great R&B-esque vocal hook that injects a soulful mood in to the track, combined with tropical drum patterns and a funkier-than-thou bassline all make U Cheated one of the great songs to have emerged from the UK underground this year. Lovely stuff.


5. Dance Area - AA 24/7 (Diplo Remix)


I was pretty surprised when I was compiling this list to find that this song was only released this year (admittedly the original was released at the end of 2008, with the remix dropping in January), as it seems that Diplo's high-powered reworking of Dance Area's infectiously child-like AA 24/7 has been slaying dance floors for an eternity now. I believe the story behind the original goes thus: someone (quite likely to be Erol Alkan) recorded the bathroom attendant of London's The End club, Austin Boston, doing the 'rap' that features in this song on an iPhone, then Dance Area (also quite likely to be Erol Alkan) used it to form AA 24/7, a tune that was then widely played in clubs around the planet (largely by Erol Alkan). Diplo's remix crunks the track up in to a huge electro banger, even greater than the original. Never have the words 'DO IT' been such a trigger for mayhem.


4. Dusty Kid - Nemur (Wall of Guitars)


I probably shouldn't like this song as much as I do. Two things in particular should really point to it being utterly naff - the 'European singing emotionally in English' vocals, and, er, the pan pipes. Yep, that's right - pan pipes. An instrument which has sensibly been left out of the majority of songs since the likes of E-Rotic's Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex walked the earth. But I feel that Nemur has managed to emerge triumphant, despite giving itself these two notable handicaps. The constantly pulsing beep throughout the track is what first attracted me towards it when I heard Dusty Kid use the song to close his set at Fabric in the summer, and when I went home and tracked down his album Nemur grew and grew on me. The lyrics are certainly a bit pants and don't make a whole lot of sense, but the singer (I'd guess Dusty Kid himself) sings them with a good level of feeling, and combined with the gentle guitar strumming it makes for a very sweet little track. Even the pan pipes are A-OK in my book, adding an earthy sound to the song. Could Europop vocals and pan pipes be THE sound of 2010? This excited blogger certainly hopes so.


3. Crystal Fighters - Xtatic Truth (Xtra Loud Mix)


Given the ever dwindling quality of the Kitsuné Maison CD series, this track was a real delight to find nestled on the seventh edition of the French label's compilations. This song is truly remarkable - it starts off with a kind of traditional folk guitar melody, before the ecstasy starts to kick in, hard. First with the hushed vocals reassuring us that "there's nothing left here to worry about", and then with the soaring rush of synths that come thundering in, inducing a genuine sense of rave love. If the government were to take a dab of MDMA and put this song on whilst coming up, they'd soon be on their BlackBerrys busy sending texts to Prof. David Nutt along the lines of: "David, man.... i love you. ur just such a fucking sound guy. soz about sacking u and all that, u were totally right all along man. i'm in fucking outerspace right now nutty, there's like totally nothing left to worry about. we should go to fabric sometime yeah? i fucking love you david, peace out xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"


2. Gui Boratto - No Turning Back


No sooner have we finished with one entrancingly euphoric beast of a song, but another one pops up. No Turning Back is somewhat like the 'Green Mile' of the music world - it's not the subtlest when it comes to piling on the emotion, but the end result is a thing of beauty nonetheless. The melody rises optimistically with synthetic distortion before mournfully sinking back down with a feeling of inevitable despondency, with this sense of melancholic futility reflected in lyrics such as "I can show you the way but I know that you'll never be there". However the track still maintains a euphoric atmosphere, in the kind of way that you can imagine it closing a set in a club and you'd leave feeling thoroughly contented and at peace.


1. Joe McElderry - The Climb
    Florence & The Machine - Drumming Song (Boy 8-Bit Remix)


So, here we are. This, ladies and gentlefolk, is my favourite song of 2009. And what better song to top the list than this outstanding reworking of an already excellent song - Joe's voice compliments the lyrics of Hannah Montana's original perfectly, and he really makes the song his own in - oh wait, I'm confusing myself again.


No, my favourite song of the year has actually been the superb Boy 8-Bit remix of Drumming Song, a track which showcases both Florence Welch's vocal prowess and David Morris' masterful production skills, both of which have been a regular fixture on my stereo throughout the year. Boy 8-Bit slices out the finest vocal cuts of the original - which although good in its own right will plod along painfully slowly when listened to in the aftermath of the remix - and forges them in to an exhilarating force that seizes and drags you in to the world of Florence's inner emotional conscience, with Boy 8-Bit's commanding drums holding you firmly fixed in place as the drumming noise inside her head gets louder and LOUDER. It's that bit, at the heart of the track, that really pushes this track from great to truly amazing - the loop of "it fills my head up and gets louder, and louder" steadily grows in volume and strength until it's one of the most gripping things you'll ever encounter in any song. With each repetition it builds in fortitude - if it had continued any longer then it'd probably have been classed as a realistic threat to the nation.


Boy 8-Bit's had a great year, with other highlights including the Baltic Pine EP and a remix of La Roux's Quicksand, but for me this his finest work, and the finest work of the year FULL STOP.




So there we are, that's the end of my Top 50 Favourite Songs of 09 list. All that's left to say is that I hope you agree with at least some of my choices, as well as WELL BLOODY DONE TO RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE AND MR AND MRS MORTER, definitely one of my favourite music-based days of all time.


And I've just realised I uploaded some songs the other day which haven't been used yet, so here's a quick Classic Track + Songs I'm Currently Loving...


Classic Track: J Dilla - Workinonit - this blog would have a lot less musical content on it if it wasn't for the influence that J Dilla has had on artists in the Flying Lotus mould, he was a true master of innovative hip-hop who tragically died of blood disease in 2006. Genuinely up there with the biggest in terms of losses to music, but his legacy looks set to be manifested long in to the future.


Songs I'm Currently Loving:

• Rustie - Inside Pikachu's Cunt - it's immediately obvious why it would be an abomination if I didn't post this song, fortunately it's also a very enjoyable listen.
• Inside Out Boy & Vogel - Cazzo! - what do catchy electro bleeps and the operatic stylings of Andrea Bocelli have in common? Answer: they both feature on this track by Inside Out Boy & Vogel, which is one of two tracks from their newest EP which, in keeping with the festive spirit, they are gift-wrapping for free download: Cazzo! / Adrenochrome EP. Adrenochrome is equally great, this time deploying a Fear and Loathing sample on top of a sinisterly creeping beat that could easily soundtrack one of Hunter S. Thompson's more spookier trips.
• Movado - Neva Believe You - soulful Caribbean vocals? Check. Downbeat dancehall riddim? Check. 90's-rave-sounding piano riff? Check. Lazy 'end of blog' unimaginative use of a check list to replace writing a proper summary of the song? Check.

An End of Year albums list has been compiled, but probably won't be along til the start of 2010. So if the magic of Christmas is waning for you, then that'll be something to keep your heart pumping and eyes eagerly wide open as you lie in bed at night. Merry Christmas one and all, I hope you all get what you want in your stockings. All I got last year was feet.

And That Is That

"Mother, I can never come home again,
cos I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere,
somewhere in a field on the Isle of Wight."

(Cocker, Jarvis 1995)

You'd hope that things can only get LESS pretentious after you open a blog post with a quote, and considering that the wonders mentioned in this edition of The Hardcore and The Gentle include a man-size, all-flashing, all-boogying robot called Titan and an eight year-old dancing around dressed as a 10 foot alien, I think we're safely moving back in to less-than-Pulitzer-winning territory. Such spectacles were, of course, to be found at this year's Bestival, during which Rob Da Bank proved yet again why his Isle of Wight shindig is really the only festival worth going to. Now, as Kanye West might interject at this point, I'mma let you finish but Bestival 2008 was some of the best fun of my life - despite a heavy mud and rain presence - so this year had a tough act to follow. Soaked in sun, however, and with a line-up even better than last year, there was little chance that Monsieur Da Bank would fall flat on his face and end up being labelled a jackass by Obama. So without further ado, here's a brief lil run-down of the weekend's cosmic happenings...

Friday

For me, Friday kicked off with an introduction to a bit of Latin ballroom dancing in the form of a Rumba lesson in the Come Dancing, er, construction. An edifice that couldn't really be described as a tent, the wooden, 1930s dancehall-esque set-up of Come Dancing is glorious fun. Hosting a number of hour-long classes which teach a variety of hops, jigs and shuffles, and led by a chap who refers to himself as 'Warren Peace', Come Dancing is great fun and an excellent way to pass time in the early afternoon when perhaps the pick of the bands and DJs are yet to come. In terms of live music, my first Bestival act was Gilles Peterson in the ever-superb Bollywood Tent. If you want to boogy, any time of day, you go to Bollywood. If you want to boogy to the most eclectic mix of world music, jazz, funk and basically everything and anything you can conceive of shaking your tail-feathers to, you go to Gilles Peterson at Bollywood. In high spirits, we mooched around the festival site for a while after GP, reveling in the colours and the costumes that had invaded Robin Hill country park for the weekend. Next came Florence & the Machine, who delivered a great set despite the sound and location downfalls that it was becoming clear were plaguing the Main Stage (relocated from last year after all the mud troubles). Next on the Main Stage came the Dewaele brothers in their first incarnation of the night, as part of their live band Soulwax, and they did not disappoint. The sound seemed to have been corrected slightly on the stage, meaning that their live fusion of original Soulwax tracks and Soulwax remixes was given the strong technical support it deserved.

Hang on, this is all going too perfectly! Quick! Someone stink the place out! Ahhh, thank-you MGMT. Someone had to take the bullet of flopping on stage, and the American 3-trick ponies decided to step up to the plate. They adeptly proved why they're only really known for three songs, and the time in their performance between Time to Pretend, Electric Feel and Kids was the kind of uninspiring filler that could be a strong contender for 'Elevator Music of the Year' award. Even when Kids finally appeared (probably at the end, no further tunes registered on my radar whether they were being played or not), the crowd seemed to be putting more effort than the band in to the performance simply by doo-dooing along to the hook, while the undynamic duo wandered aimlessly around the stage. All this after a 45 minute delay as well. What a pair of twits. After the Main Stage had been given a thorough spraying in Oust to cover up the stench left by MGMT, the first headliners of the festival, Massive Attack, made their way on stage. I still can't quite decide to what degree I liked MA; they were certainly enjoyable and the performance was good, but I didn't find it particularly captivating. They seemed to disregard the fact that Teardrop is to date their biggest hit, and quite probably the sole reason some of the crowd were there watching them, as it passed by inconspicuously in a uber-gentle and minimalistic fashion half-way through the set. Nevertheless, Massive Attack don't make music to get a crowd of 20,000 people rocking and throwing their hands in the air, and it was certainly a fine example of live trip-hop.

After the main bands, I set off on the dance tent circuit. Justin Robertson delivered a typically strong set in Bollywood, and was followed by Fake Blood, who was equally great. We decided to leave mid-Blood to catch the last bit of 2manydjs' set in the Big Top, which wasn't a particularly worthwhile move for me personally as it turned out to just be exactly the same set I'd witnessed in Benicassim a few months earlier. Bit boring, but the set itself is pretty entertaining.

Saturday

This "brief lil run-down" is promising to turn in to a post that is neither brief nor little, but is definitely run-down. Festival-wise, the dilapidation carried on nicely in to Saturday, where Diplo and his Mad Decent Soundsystem were bringing the tropical noise in the Big Top. The skankin' kicked off for me with Major Lazer, who all you The Hardcore and The Gentle nuts out there (your numbers have reached 277 million in 26 different countries, according to most recent statistics) may remember I was sceptical about in a previous posting. The scepticism still lingers, seeing as their album just isn't anything that special, but their live act is pretty solid. While the MC stormed about the stage, bumping and grinding with the dancers and scaling the rigging of the tent, Diplo and Switch dutifully pumped out their brand of tropical baile funk, albeit with a lack of anything extraordinary. Major Lazer were then made to seem even more average by their successor to the Big Top stage, Boy 8-Bit, who delivered one of the best sets of the weekend, which included his recent ace Florence & The Machine remix (available for download below). Next came my second favourite Portugese export of all time (after Nandos), Buraka Som Sistema. The level of crunk-ness instantly rose from 'fairly crunk' to 'you crunk my battleship', and the predominately white middle-class crowd was flexing like a bunch of Angolan street dancers, getting down and dutty to the sound of kuduro.

As with many things in life however, this dancehall madness was to be interrupted by a group of knob-twiddling Germans dressed as robot dummies. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Kraftwerk, but they ended up producing one of my favourite shows of the whole festival. Standing almost motionless behind their laptops for the entire performance, their gently pulsating low-key techno washed over the Main Stage field, full of delightfully rubbish lyrics and accompanied by a spectacular light show. Then over to the modern-day kingpin of techno, Erol Alkan, for what was probably his best set of the eight times I've now seen him. Surely electronic music can't get any better than what I'd already witnessed tonight? Oh. Wait. DJ Yoda. Right. It would be hard to imagine that any of the other 200 or so performances at this year's Bestival were more entertaining than the one delivered by the Jedi master of turntablism, performing his live audio/visual show which chops video and sound clips together at an amazing rate. Yoda is the king at knowing just what the audience wants, and his 1 hour and a half set opened with a clip from Rob Da Bank's own video blog, and included shoes being thrown at George Bush, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Tetris, Susan Boyle, Inspector Gadget and a fat man singing along to Paper Planes, all soundtracked by a mash of electro, dubstep, hip-hop, drum and bass, classic rock, Tetris theme tunes... you name it, Yoda played it. A truly awesome show, the chants of 'Yoda, Yoda' at the end are probably still echoing around the depths of the Isle of Wight countryside.

Sunday

This post is really starting to bug me, due to it's length, the fact that I'm now writing it a good week and a half after the festival finished, and not least because in doing so my heart is aching to be back there and I'm having to resist the urge to straight away splash what little money I have left on a ticket for next year. If you've actually read this far in the blog then congratulations, you've read further than 98% of other readers who probably rightly high-tailed it off this page after scrolling down and seeing just how long this post is. But for those who have made it thus far, as a little treat we'll take a break from all this text for a moment and gaze at a picture. The picture is actually of a naked man collapsed on the floor of a Bestival disabled portaloo, with excrement smeared on various parts of his body and the toilet crammed to the point of overflowing: http://h.imagehost.org/view/0158/bestival. Let's just for one moment ignore the likelihood that, due to being in the disabled toilets, this man could well be disabled and this scene may be the result of a horrible accident relating to his handicap, AND also ignoring any sense of puzzlement as to how I came across such a picture and why I decided to repost it on here, and let's just concentrate on having a jolly good giggle at some naked poo bloke's expense while heartily spewing up our guts at the same time.

Due to the realisation that I've just used up valuable music reviewing space with a review of a shit-smeared muggins, and a desire to get this post over and done with pronto, Sunday's spectacles will be summed up in bullet point form:

• Speech Debelle - No point in disguising the fact that this post has had a massive drop-off in quality for quite a few lines now, so might as well come clean that I actually saw Speech Debelle on the Saturday, not Sunday, but forgot to include her in that bit and am too lazy to go back and correct it. Drawn by her recent Mercury Prize win, I was pleased to have seen her live but her show was a bit boring, and she was slightly swamped by the large setting of the Big Top. Songs sounded better on the album.
• DJ Derek - A fairly non-spectacular daytime line-up meant that it reached 7pm before we finally felt compelled to head to the arena, seeking out the veteran beats of 67 year-old reggae spinna DJ Derek. His set was packed with reggae and ska classics and left me cursing the fact that I hadn't visited the Afterburner stage before now - a flame-shooting tower that had apparently been borrowed from Glastonbury, this stage definitely seemed like a winner and will hopefully return next year. Here's an interesting nugget of information by the way: according to Wikipedia, DJ Derek has visited every single Wetherspoons pub in the UK. Blimey.
• The Field - I was muchos excited about seeing this Swedish producer performing in a live set up, and I was not to be disappointed. Accompanied by a very good drummer and some other bloke doing something with some machinery, The Field played a mix of songs from both his new and old albums, adding a new dimension to each track through the live performance. Great set.
• Squarepusher - The second instalment of Big Top Sunday madness came from Squarepusher, performing on bass guitar with his laptop and other electronic instruments as well as a live drummer. I was really quite sure that I knew what 'mental' meant before this set, but as it turns out - I was wrong. Squarepusher himself was clad in an orange tracksuit and a little floppy hat, and his on-stage routine consisted of slapping away at his bass like there was no tomorrow, then pausing briefly to give a little point in to the crowd, before merrily resuming his slapping. This cycle occurred many times during the performance, while all the while the crowd was half-dancing, half-spasming to the incessant scattering of beats and funky bass. In many ways, a really mind-blowing performance.
• Carl Cox - Rounding off the night in the Big Top was techno legend Carl Cox. Playing an old skool set consisting of early 90's rave, which was often gloriously cheesy, Mr Cox proved just why he's known as one of the best DJs on the planet. And as if the night hadn't been barmy enough up to this point, he was joined on stage half-way through by a 'robot' the size of a tall man, who proceeded to plod around the stage and do the robot, metallic suit flashing all the while. After a while Carl decided to have a chat with his companion, asking, "Alright Bestival robot, how ya feeling?", to which the robot, in a fully robot-y tone of voice, replied, "This insanity just gets crazier, and crazier".

And that, I feel, is the perfect quote to end on. Nothing sums up the nature of Bestival like a giant flashing robot addressing a crowd of people dressed as a variety of galactic beings while in the middle of an old skool techno set. Fun, freaky, fantastic. See ya next year, Rob Da Bank.

Five of the best of all from Bestival

• Major Lazer - Pon De Floor - This song was everywhere over the weekend, including appearing 3 times in as many DJ sets we witnessed on Saturday night alone.
• M.O.P. - Ante Up - This was oddly probably the second most played song I heard over the weekend, with inclusions in DJ Yoda's set and Rob Da Bank's festival finale set.
• Kraftwerk - Computer Love - An example of the many fine tunes that the German outfit played suring their Saturday headline set.
• Squarepusher - A Real Woman - The type of bonkers hyper-funk that the 'pusher performed.
• Florence & The Machine - Drumming Song (Boy 8-Bit Remix) - THE tune of the weekend. Dropped at the end of Boy 8-Bit's own set, it was made all the sweeter having seen Florence belt out her original version on the Main Stage the day before. Immense remix.

And now, following growing worldwide frustration that culminated in these angry scenes in Bolivia which were attributed by local media to "a lack of peng beats", here is the long-awaited return of...

Songs I'm Currently Loving:

• Gold Panda - Mayuri
• Jaylib feat. Talib Kweli - Raw Shit
• Boris Brejcha - Der Krieg Der Maschinen
• Orbital - Halcyon (Tom Middleton Re-Model)
• Bei Bei & Shawn Lee - Make Me Stronger (Floating Points Remix)

Much Love.