The Top Albums of 2013

The Internet is arguably the world's most vast, most unnavigable ocean. There's so much online content out there in such a fluid, inconsistent state that the mind would boggle a thousand times before it was able to comprehend even a fraction of just how boundless the world wide web is.

With such immensity comes the problem of deciphering what it is within this great digital mass that's really worth devoting your precious attention to. For instance, there are literally hundreds of amusing spoof news sites, Miley Cyrus parody videos and Buzzfeed lists of the cutest pugs available for you to peruse at the drop of a hat, but, if you spent your time consuming every single instance of these that the Internet has to offer, you would find yourself sitting at your computer for weeks on end in piss-encrusted boxer shorts because you just couldn't tear yourself away from a baby pug wearing a beret for long enough to visit the toilet.

There's a similar problem when it comes to experiencing music through the Internet. There's just so, so much of it uploaded with such frequency to YouTube, Soundcloud, MySpace and Bandcamp that only a fool would attempt to keep even vaguely on top of every musical happening around the world at any one given moment. That, dear reader, is where the End Of Year list comes in to its own. Sifting through all the music released in 2013 to leave only the finest, most enduring output of the past 12 months, consolidated in to handy list-form and presented to the audience with a few lines of supporting text, the End Of Year list is one of society's unsung heroes. Where's the tax break for the End Of Year list, Mr. Cameron? Where's their parade? A good End Of Year list is truly a thing of beauty, to be marvelled at and cherished - a monument to human achievement, signifying the lengths that man will go through to cast appreciation upon the culture that surrounds him. A good End Of Year list is in itself a work of art.

The problem is that, if you've read this far, I'm afraid to say you're currently wearing the proverbial piss-encrusted boxer shorts. I update this blog so laughably infrequently that it carries pretty much no relevance, and any End Of Year round-up I publish is little other than a further waste of Blogspot's server resources. I mean, I haven't even published an End Of Year list in two years - do you honestly think reading this one will be worth your time? What are you even still doing here? Did you not see Buzzfeed's list of '17 Hilariously Tragic Holiday Baking Fails'?! They're hilariously tragic! Those people can't bake for toffee! Go, see for yourself!

If you do still insist on drawing your daily dose of hilarious tragedy from these pages rather than those of an international media hub, then please, as I detail my top ten favourite records of this year, let us meekly accept the futility of the situation and just hope we make it to the bottom of the list without anyone getting hurt.

In which case: are you sitting as comfortably as someone who's been wearing the same piss-encrusted boxer shorts for the past three weeks can be? Then I'll begin.


10. Daniel Avery - 'Drone Logic'

Listen: 'Water Jump'

Daniel Avery is a man whose name would probably be familiar to anyone who's interacted with a club in London over the past decade, whether through attending it, seeing a flyer or poster for a night there or lurking outside to throw red paint at its owner for having skinned your cat and turned it in to a snazzy scarf after running it over the month before. Anyone not so au fait with the capital's nightlife would be excused for being alien to his presence, as while he has built up a strong reputation over his career so far, it has predominantly been for being a DJ, and predominantly for DJing in London clubs. His steps in to production, though, prove that often some of the best electronic music is made by those that are record selectors first and foremost, as he demonstrates a winning knowledge of grooves, lifts and drops over the course of his debut album 'Drone Logic'. Flecked with acidic splashes and junglist breaks, it is a record that proves ensconcing from start to finish, with the smart dancefloor sensibilities that you'd expect from a resident at Fabric coupled with obvious production skill, no doubt finely honed during all those years of keeping dancefloors pulsing.


9. Four Tet - 'Beautiful Rewind'

Listen: 'Aerial'

That a Four Tet album will be immaculately packed with enticingly offbeat flourishes and a romantic sense of adventure is never in question. What is more up in the air is just what the resultant record will sound like. Originally a purveyor of lush folktronica, over the past years Kieran Hebden has been delving in to the realms of glistening, transcendent techno, with an eye much more firmly on the dancefloor than his initial gently loping offerings. His DJ sets can often be the best indicator of just where the man's head's at during any given moment - anyone that's caught him recently will have noticed his love affair with grime showing through, and it is this same passion that informs much of 'Beautiful Rewind'. While many of the tracks are not of the ilk for an MC to readily hop on during a late night Rinse FM session, there are constant nods to the electricity of the UK's most singular genre of this millennium - bursts of incomprehensible spitting pepper even the more tranquil corners of the album, while the likes of the heaving 'Kool FM' and 'Aerial' are clearer homages to the rugged underbelly of British club music, packaging 'hype' in the most serene, most Four Tet of ways.


8. Parquet Courts - 'Light Up Gold'

Listen: 'Stoned and Starving'

The only 'straightforward' guitar album to make the list this year, and I almost didn't include it because I thought it was released in 2012... but it wasn't! There's no more to that anecdote, it's over and was as mundane as you thought. Hailing from Brooklyn, Parquet Courts make the kind of punky garage rock that can often succumb to the same fate as many DIY creations, and limply fall apart through poor construction. 'Light Up Gold', though, oozes with fine guitar riffs and song-writing, and for a record that's 15 tracks in length impressively never sags or drags. It's punk without the overly shambolic workmanship, with songs bursting in sub-two minute frenzies when they need to (see 'Light Up Gold II'), and stretching in to longer, more considered form when appropriate - 'Stoned and Starving' is a brilliantly churning five minutes of humdrum frustration. What 2012 in my mind's loss is most definitely 2013 in reality's gain.


7. TREE - 'Sunday School II: When Church Lets Out'

Listen: 'The King'

I have fairly little patience when it comes to hip hop mixtapes - if I can refer you for one moment to my own words slightly further up this page, they are one of the biggest culprits for online over-saturation, leaving it nigh on impossible for those of us who just don't care enough to keep up with what's worth investing time in and what's not. More often than not I'll find myself listening to five minutes of a rapper telling me that he's going to stick his dick in my bitch over a background of generic trap beats and audio idents from whatever ridiculously named mixtape site I've signed up to in order to download the tape, before realising that I'm bored and putting on some Kate Bush while trying to work out why it's almost impossible to unsubscribe from the aforementioned mixtape site's mailing list that I've now found myself on. So it's always quite a treat when a good quality mixtape presents itself, and a good quality mixtape is what TREE's 'Sunday School II: When Church Lets Out' is. This may not come as a surprise given the nature of the rest of this paragraph, but I know absolutely fuck all about TREE other than I like his music, hence why most of the space I'd allotted myself to write about it is taken up with me whinging that hip hop websites now send me too many emails.


6. Donato Dozzy - 'Plays Bee Mask'

Listen: 'Vaporware 05'

Even though I myself am someone that regularly listens to what would be described as more serious, textured music, for some reason I still wrinkle my nose whenever the term "headphone music" is bandied about. I guess a part of me still wishes that everything sounded as fucking amazing as 'Hybrid Theory' did through my computer's tinny speakers when I was 13, but I sometimes think that if a record really can't be appreciated outside of two cups placed directly over your ears then surely it can't be all that amazing really now can it. The thing is, though, I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about, and anyone that pays any attention to what I have to say is probably an even bigger idiot. For I would strongly prescribe a pair of whatever decent quality ear-pieces you can lay your hands on for listening to Donato Dozzy's 'Plays Bee Mask', a record that's so ball-shrivellingly delicate that to lose any of its exquisite intricacies to outside noise would feel almost criminal. The constitution of the album is a strange one, as the whole existence of the record stems from the peddler of experimental oddities that is Bee Mask sending his track 'Vaporware' to cult Italian techno producer Donato Dozzy for remixing. Dozzy apparently felt that it'd be an insult to Bee Mask to rework his track a paltry once, so instead crafted for him seven different versions which were then assembled here to form one of the most entrancing and hypnotic releases of the year.


5. Forest Swords - 'Engravings'

Listen: 'Ljoss'

While there are undoubtedly still those that think electronic music can be any less emotional than its more lyric-based cousin, these are the same people who would have you believe that Keith Lemon's legendary status is rivalled only by that of their own penis, and in fact in years to come revisionists will look back upon my mockery of them in a manner akin to how we perceive curators of Victorian freak shows now, as my snarky cynicism is held up as an example of baiting the weak and helpless of our time. Anyway, while that day remains yet to dawn allow me to guide you through my menagerie of cultureless abominations as we point and laugh at them to the soundtrack of Forest Swords' 'Engravings', which contains more emotion in one distorted pluck of the Manchester producer's guitar than occupies any of the whining ballads that fill Miley Cyrus' misleadingly named 'Bangerz' album. With only the faintest scattered hints of the human voice, the songs on 'Engravings' are enough to bring any grown man to his knees, shivering and sobbing through the excruciatingly restrained power with which the record aches.


4. Omar Souleyman - 'Wenu Wenu'

Listen: 'Wenu Wenu'

I don't know about you, but I can't think of anywhere in the world more at the forefont of human endeavour right now than Syria. Oh, err, right - that stuff. OK, so while Syria may not exactly be the new Magaluf at the moment, one positive thing to have emerged from the region is without a doubt Omar Souleyman. While your favourite ahead of the curve blogs were bigging him up years ago, Mr Souleyman gained greater exposure in 2013 through collaborating with a man that he's now beaten in the coveted rankings of this very list, Four Tet, with the resultant record signed to the largest label of his career so far, Domino. I'm not going to lie to you - an Omar Souleyman album is an Omar Souleyman album. If 'Wenu Wenu' had been pretty much any other entry in his past discography it would probably still be occupying this #4 spot, as Souleyman makes music that is just so universally joyous to listen (and, more importantly, dance) to. His unique brand of psychedelic Middle Eastern acidic craftwork proves time and again to be bewitching and impossible to resist, appealing to the more primitive sides of human nature that will tease a dancer out of even the staunchest of kill-joys.


3. Dawn Richard - 'Goldenheart'

Listen: 'Return of a Queen'

Probably the biggest criticism I'd level at most R&B albums is that they too often descend in to excess. The tracklists and running times could generally do with some trimming, the production usually leans towards the overblown and the lyrics can be so cheesy that, if they could, Wallace & Gromit would try to land their ramshackle spacecraft on them. In a way, Dawn Richards' 'Goldenheart' is no exception. However, in this instance the slightly rambling album length is welcome, the production majestic in its grandiosity and the lyrics drip with genuine passion, rather than Wensleydale. R&B is ultimately about marrying an infectious melody with potent vocals, and 'Goldenheart' has such unions in abundance. If I ever follow through with the 'Top Tracks of 2013' that I intend to write on top of this post, you'll find the album's second track 'Return of a Queen' riding very high - it's a stunning demonstration of wistful anguish and unwavering determination delivered with impassioned, raw emotion, and lays the foundation for many themes that will recur across the record. Writing this a couple of days after Beyonce dropped her surprise self-titled album, I'm uncertain that even after a few more listens to that undeniably excellent effort whether it'd dislodge 'Goldenheart' as my top R&B album of the year. Not that I'm purposefully limiting myself to just one, of course - that might be racist. And I'm not racist, some of my best friends are black. Actually, they're not - does that make me racist? Probably. I am probably just a massive racist.


2. Blue Hawaii - 'Untogether'

Listen: 'Try To Be'

You! You there! Try finding a more gorgeously plaintive track from this year than 'Try To Be' by Blue Hawaii, that's linked to above. You can't, can you? You big dick. If I was to continue to express in words the utter contempt that I feel for you, the reader, then I'd go on to mock you for not only having failed to top 'Try To Be' in the head-tingling beauty stakes, but also for not being able to find an album that so perfectly marries such poetry with a keen rhythmic drive through much of its duration, as is demonstrated on the 'In Two / In Two II' double-header, or that ties all these themes together with an exquisite delicacy that will have your ears tip-toeing across it as if on eggshells for fear of breaking anything. What in more boring hands may be a fairly pleasant but ultimately insignificant ride, Blue Hawaii have washed their dreamlike ruminations with seductively engrossing production work, meaning that while your brain is reflecting contemplatively back to memories of that cat you had that died when you were 11, your feet are tapping away like 1920s telegram operatives. And let me tell you something - release 'Untogether' mid-way through that decade and your Great Depression can go whistle. [Author's note: I realise that the album in reality has been released during a time of similar economic turmoil and has of course made no significant difference, but just let me have my pretentious poetic license OK?]


1. Tricky - 'False Idols'

Listen: 'Is That Your Life'

Contrary to popular opinion, my nerve is not incapable of wavering. Often when I form an opinion on music, it's rarely a case of 'that's the end of that', all's done and dusted for my thoughts and assertions to be carted off to my brain's Big Room of Immutable Conclusions. I generally can't help but subconsciously seek assurances about my reasoning from popular outlets, as if to try and gain external justification for my thinking. It's for this reason that over the years, I've often developed self-doubt when I've liked or disliked something but my peers and the media don't seem to share my view. I remember feeling genuinely worried when coming to the conclusion that The Kooks were shit, yet at the same time most around me were lapping up their nauseating brand of wipe-clean indie pop with gleeful abandon. I'm not just trying to rewrite history to align with current popular opinion by the way, I genuinely always thought The Kooks were shit. I have similar restless nights about Drake now as well - is Drake not just, y'know, shit? But everyone likes him! Should it be his 'Nothing Was The Same' album occupying this top spot right now? I must be doing something wrong.

It's this sense of critical insecurity that I must confess made me take a reflective moment before finalising my top choice for favourite album of the year. For Tricky's 'False Idols' has received little by way of similar esteem for which I hold it. I should probably point out at this stage, that I'm no Tricky fanboy. I'd given the producer's most highly acclaimed album, his debut 'Maxinquaye', little more than a few cursory listens since it first entered my music library a few years ago, and I'm largely unfamiliar with the rest of his work. So no, I have no kind of rose-tinted reverence of the Bristol artist, in a way that made me try slightly too hard to enjoy Bjork's - incidentally an ex-girlfriend of Tricky - last offering 'Biophilia', before accepting that it was merely a good album compared to her other exceptional work.

So I found myself approaching 'False Idols' with fairly indifferent ears, however those same lugholes quickly became hooked after the first listen. There's a deliciously menacing presence that underlies the whole record, and whether it seeps through in the slicker funk-driven likes of 'Is That Your Life' or the sweeping 'Nothing's Changed', it maintains an aura of uneasiness and poised threat that makes for an engrossing listen. The vocals of Tricky and an array of female vocalists weave smokily together in a way not dissimilar to The xx, and each track on the album proves to be compelling in its own distinct way. I'm probably wrong, and that album of Miley Cyrus covers that Drake recorded with The Kooks is probably infinitely better, but for me, 'False Idols' was my album of 2013.

enjoy.

Long Players

2010 was not a particularly great year for albums. I realised this when I was trying to compile my Top 10 list, and realised that, with a handful of exceptions, nothing really made me sit up and take notice. Further evidence of the LP's annus horribilis came when various journals released their own End Of Year lists: FACT Magazine's top spot belonged to Forest Swords' 'Dagger Paths', which is a great record but is by all accounts an EP rather than a full-length album. Pitchfork even decided that all three of James Blake's EPs from the year could be rolled in to one and dumped in eighth place, as if no-one would notice that they sounded completely different from each other and weren't one complete record. And, of course, Kanye West dominated the higher reaches of almost every list that popped up. The entire music critic world went in to complete meltdown when 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' became a beautiful dark twisted reality right at the end of '10: while Pitchfork and FACT - amongst others - were excitedly slapping their maximum number of stars on the record, it was less well received in other quarters, with The Guardian dubbing it an, "uninteresting echo chamber that maintains the steady downwards trajectory of West's albums", while some viewed it as overindulgent and pretentious.

While I would firmly spurn the haters on this one, Yeezy doesn't feature in my final selection of favourite albums from the past year. Here are 10 records that do:

10. Baths - Cerulean

::: Aminals :::

'Cerulean' sounds somewhat like an extended collection of the abstract hip-hop tracks that pepper Bibio's 'Ambivalence Avenue' - and seeing as that album was numero uno in this list last year, that's definitely no bad thing. The basis of Will Wiesenfeld aka Baths' music is akin to that of beat-makers such as Flying Lotus and Teebs, but - as with Bibio's hip-hop outings - his songs contain a more intimately human quality to them than some of his peers. This is helped by the fact that, unlike many manufacturers of beats and bass, Wiesenfeld contributes his own vocals at points on the record, adding to the warm, personal feel of the album. Could 'Cerulean' be to the world of abstract hip-hop what 'In Rainbows' is to the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue - namely, the first appearance of a romantic record? If it is, it'll of course require it's own genre name. Heart-Hop? Lovestep? Rom-Hip-Nol? Maybe not...

9. Four Tet - There Is Love In You

::: Sing [YouTube] :::

In times gone by, folk would express their incredulity or shock with phrases such as, "Ye Gads!", or, "Gordon Bennett!", or, "Shit!". Nowadays, it's hard to tell if a person is surprised unless they exclaim, "Oh no he didn't!", with the "didn't" of course pronounced as "dih-ent". Sideways movement of one's fingers in front of one's face is a suitable replacement when communicating with the deaf. I bring this up because, back in January of last year, this was the only suitable way to greet the news that Four Tet, with a glittering career that spanned back to the late '90s, had just released what was probably his best album yet. 'There Is Love In You' arrived like the culmination of the increasing prevalence of house and techno in Kieran Hebden's work, as hinted at with 2008's 'Ringer EP' and his pulsating collaborations with Burial in 2009. Despite seeming a world away from the 'folktronica' of early releases, Four Tet had steadily been making the transition to more beat-driven work rather than making any sudden departures, so the only real surprise on this LP is that, after over a decade of releasing material, he's still churning out brilliant, innovative music. Oh no he dih-ent!

8. Grimes - Halfaxa [available for free download]

::: Devon :::

If I was to make an album, I'd probably record myself reading Treasure Island to a cat as it slinked around our neighbourhood, intermittently playing blasts of Rihanna's 'Only Girl (In The World)' on my phone when I felt that the track needed an injection of oomph. After I'd finished recording, I'd probably copy it on to no more than 20 CD-Rs and give them away free to friends and family, and then assume that this would suffice as their present whenever their birthdays next came along. I wouldn't be making any money out of the venture, but neither would my album be considered to be one of the year's finest releases. This, I'm sure, is only the beginning of the differences between me and Canadian experimentalist Grimes. Whereas she also released her début album for the grand total of zilch, hers happened to be brilliant, whereas mine will be under-appreciated in my own lifetime, to say the least. 'Halfaxa' is a collection of delightfully twisted 'n' psychedelic yet cute 'n' dreamy songs, full of infectious vocals and toe-tapping beats. Think Bjork smoking weed with The Cure at an abandoned '80s discotheque. But, like, in Narnia.

7. Lone - Emerald Fantasy Tracks

::: Moon Beam Harp :::

Although admittedly it hasn't made the Number 1 spot, when I listen to this album there seems very little point in any other music ever made. This is a record that's perfect for pretty much any situation. It's an ideal pre-, mid-, and post-rave soundtrack. It's great for a countryside cycle. It's great for an inner-city stroll. Why not listen to 'Emerald Fantasy Tracks' while shopping for groceries in your local supermarket? Why not indeed. The heart of this album pumps out blood in the form of classic old skool rave riffs, but this is not necessarily music to don your hi-vis jacket and flail your arms in the air for seven hours non-stop to. Lone has taken the kind of acid piano stabs that filled fields in '92 and given them a deep rinse, creating a string of songs that are subdued but still euphoric. It's blissfully easy to submerse yourself in the album, letting it bathe you in gloriously ecstatic sunshine. Or, if you're on an inner-city stroll, heavenly-scented smog.

6. Daughters - Daughters

::: Our Queens (One Is Many, Many Are One) :::

One of the most famous catchphrases to emerge from Monty Python's Flying Circus is the immortal line, "and now for something completely different", used to introduce a scene that was radically unrelated to what had preceded it. To give you an idea of the propriety of the phrase for this situation, let us briefly study the Last.fm tags for Lone, and the tags for Daughters. Lone: 'chill', 'deep', 'ambient', 'idm'. Daughters: 'grindcore', 'hardcore', 'mathcore', 'noisecore'. As you might be able to tell, this is music that will not only rudely awaken you from that Lone-induced hazy trance you'd slipped in to, but it'll then force you at screwdriver-point to run a double marathon through torrents of mud and sludge, only to inform you once you've finished that it hates people who run muddy sludgy double marathons, before stabbing you in the eyes with the screwdriver. I know very little about hardcore punk / 'noisecore', and can't entirely remember how I stumbled upon this album in the first place. Each song is a ball of contained, calculated raw energy, channelled through an experimental-yet-coherent blast. It's the most savagely uncompromising album I've heard all year, and all the more enjoyable for it.

5. Oriol - Night And Day

::: Joy FM :::

I can assure you that, if you haven't already experienced it, that track there will be one of the funkiest things you've heard in a while. While last year's albums list had Dam-Funk's 'Toeachizown' on groove duty, this year sees Oriol representing all things sleek and sexy. Being myself a product of the pretty but as a whole musically uninspired university town of Cambridge, I was first drawn to Oriol when I found out he was a resident of the 'Bridge, and was signed to Planet Mu. In terms of musical exports, the drum'n'bass holy trinity of Logistics, Nu:Tone and Commix loom heavily over the town, so I was interested to sample this different flavour being stirred up in the city. While Planet Mu sometimes has a tendency for fairly inaccessible bleeps and groans, Oriol's music is nothing of the sort: smooth, chilled-out sultry vibes, bursting forth from the 1980s like a swarm of synth-playing cherubs. A record similar to 'Emerald Fantasy Tracks' in it's ability to soothe and induce warm, comforting rapture, 'Night And Day' should really rank alongside great Cambridge achievements such as the discovery of DNA (I was gonna try and work in some clever little play on 'Night And Day' having the same initials as DNA, but felt that it might be a bit pointless and long-winded, a bit like this caveat that I'm now dragging out way longer than is literary acceptable).

4. Guido - Anidea

::: Way U Make Me Feel :::

Having boasted two of the most impressive singles of 2009 with 'Orchestral Lab / Way U Make Me Feel' and 'Beautiful Complication / Chakra', Guido was already, as they say, shit hot. With his début album in 2010 - on Bristol label Punch Drunk, as with the singles - also transpiring to be brilliant, Guido currently boasts an impressive 100% success rate: three records released, three masterpieces. While 'Anidea' does include three tracks from the 2009 singles, the rest of the album has been fleshed out wonderfully, with fresh tracks like 'Cat In The Window', 'Mad Sax', and the title track all further demonstrating Guido's production prowess. However, there's one master-stroke on this record that trumps everything else. When it was released in '09, 'Way U Make Me Feel' was already a great track, but at the time was an instrumental. For the album cut, however, the vocal talents of Yolanda (not of '...Be Cool' / We No Speak Americano fame) were employed, and the result (available for d/l above) should really be considered one of the greatest R&B/soul songs of at least the past few years. As many producers from dubstep roots have been doing recently, Guido is transcending the mother genre and experimenting with other styles. However, few other producers follow the same line that Guido does, meaning that 'Anidea' is a truly unique and exciting album.

3. Scuba - Triangulation

::: Tracers :::

When I first heard this record when it came out in March, I immediately felt that this would be the best album of the year. As it turns out, thinking that after only quarter of the year was a bit premature and it's eventually been squeezed down in to third place, but 'Triangulation' is still an album of undeniable quality. Pushing in a more techno-infused direction than his 2008 album 'A Mutual Antipathy', Scuba conjures up a world of urban metallic machinery on his tracks, with the mood often bewitchingly repressive. The production is meticulous, each track haunted by a swirl of musical antimatter that seeps in to the song and then proceeds to squeeze itself back outwards through every minuscule gap, emitting snatches of crackling noise at timely intervals. While generally quite a reclusive album, there are still offerings that could easily command a dancefloor's attention, such as the romping 'On Deck', the Untold-esque 'You Got Me', or the slightly more expansive 'Tracers'. 'Triangulation' is very much an album that belongs to 2010, encapsulating the leaps and bounds that dubstep has gone in recent years.

2. Robyn - Body Talk

::: Dancehall Queen [YouTube] :::

Robyn is somewhat of a glorious oddity in the world of pop. She released three studio albums between 1995 and 2002 before finally finding proper mainstream recognition in 2005, when tracks like 'With Every Heartbeat' heralded the arrival of one of pop music's all-time great albums, the self-titled 'Robyn'. She then waits five years to release her follow-up, and when she does, it's not one record, it's three. 'Body Talk Part 1' marked Robyn's return in June, followed a few months later by 'Part 2', culminating in November with the release of 'Body Talk', which draws on tracks from the previous releases as well as adding on a few more to form a full album. And oh my sweet Jesus Jones, what an album it is. Robyn has a talent for making music that any of her American counterparts would eat an entire dress of raw meat to be able to recreate; penning most of her own lyrics, her production team-mate on 'Body Talk' is fellow Swede Klas Ahlund, who crafts the kind of wonderful electro-pop that must make David Guetta smack himself repeatedly in the face with a garden trowel through insane jealousy whenever he hears it. The album has some big singles: the incredible 'Dancing On My Own', the entrancing 'Indestructible', and 'Hang With Me', which at points sounds somewhat like 'Handle Me' from 'Robyn', but both are great songs so no gripes there. Then there are the songs that comprise the rest of 'Body Talk': the pulsating self-conscious/rebellious 'Don't Fucking Tell Me What To Do'; the Back To The Future-referencing 'Time Machine'; the horribly cruel 'Call Your Girlfriend'; the bonafide dance anthem that is 'We Dance To The Beat'; the collabs with Royksopp and Snoop Dogg; and 'Dancehall Queen' that I've linked to above, which is arguably one of the best dancehall songs in recent memory - and it's from Sweden. Those are just a selection of highlights, but there's not a dud moment on 'Body Talk'. If it's gonna take Robyn another five years to release her next album, so long as it's as world-beating as her previous two outings then I'll be happy to wait.

1. Eleven Tigers - Clouds Are Mountains

::: Songs for You :::

Since I started writing this blog last year and compiled my Top 10 favourite albums at the end of 2009, I started keeping an eye out in 2010 for records that I could seize upon for this year's list. Having fallen in love with last year's list-topper, Bibio's 'Ambivalence Avenue', I was eager and excited to discover an album of similar calibre this year. So it was with disappointment and frustration that the winter months slipped by, then Spring turned to Summer, and eventually Summer began to shrink in to the final throes of 2010 - and I was still without any album that conjured up any kind of real interest. I started to reflect back on albums such as Flying Lotus' 'Cosmogramma', Pantha du Prince's 'Black Noise', Ikonika's 'Contact, Love, Want, Have', and thought, "OK, I know these are good, but they don't really arouse a whole lot of emotion from me - is this what I'm gonna have to settle for? Is 2010 just gonna have to be written off as a fallow year in terms of truly outstanding LPs? Where's my effing Bibio, bitch?!"

Then one day in October I was idly indulging in my favourite past-time of scouring the web for potentially good music when, through a fortuitous chain of clicks on Last.fm, I happened across this Lithuanian guy called Eleven Tigers who'd moved to London a few years ago and been inspired by Burial, and had a shoutbox full of gushing praise for his album, 'Clouds Are Mountains'. One user was particularly enthusiastic, and I followed a link to his blog post he'd written about the LP where he further lauded it, so I decided to track the album down to check it out for myself. It has 14 tracks and is just shy of an hour long. After less than six minutes, spanning just over two and a half tracks, I knew that this was without doubt the most incredible thing I'd hear all year.

Since I obtained the album, there are few occasions when I've started listening to it and haven't ended up listening to the whole thing. Sometimes this'll involve me lying in bed just gazing at my iTunes library while it plays, while the clock plods along to times like four in the morning, ignoring my need to be asleep around then. What sets 'Clouds Are Mountains' apart from other albums I've heard in 2010, and what makes it so spell-bindingly hard to leave, is that the majority of the record is segued in to one continuous run. Individually, the tracks are brilliant. However, when they're seamlessly flowing through your ears they become really quite magical. The style of music is a kind of dubby techno, which as a genre can be hypnotic enough at the best of times, but when it's so expertly produced as the tracks here are, it feels like a crime to tear oneself away from it. It's a largely instrumental record, but while vocal samples may be sparse they are so spot on when they do appear that they really brush proceedings with a haunting, yearning beauty. As a musical creation it couldn't be much more different from Bibio's gentle folk-leanings, but it is nonetheless a more than worthy successor to the Number One spot.

Honourable mentions: 

• Actress - Splazsh
• Darkstar - North
• Earl Sweatshirt - EARL ('nother freebie]
• Jimmy Edgar - XXX
• John Roberts - Glass Eights

Percy Thrower

20. KiNK - Existence

Combining deep house with the spirit of early '90s rave, this was both a euphoric, point-your-fingers-to-the-sky banger and a considered slow-burner in equal measure. After a steady, tightly produced intro, the acid rain clouds that are gathering overhead suddenly burst, unleashing a downpour of old-skool piano riffs to leave you with a big grin on your sopping wet face.

19. Zola Jesus - Night

A leading figure in the rising gothic ambient movement that's reared it's mascaraed head in 2010, Zola Jesus released an experimental collaborative EP with LA Vampires as well as solo album 'Stridulum II' this year, and it's from the latter that this towering, atmospheric number comes from. Starting as it means to go on - i.e. ominously - a scattering of whispered voices pave the way for Zola's majestic, Siouxsie Sioux-esque voice to tread alongside the unforgiving and powerful beating of the drum that drives the track, creating a strong contender for 'anti-anthem of the year'.

18. Pantha du Prince - Stick To My Side (Four Tet version)

Reading like a list of the most highly talented but potentially conversationally awkward dinner guests that one could invite round for some Christmas turkey, Pantha du Prince, Noah Lennox (aka Animal Collective's Panda Bear) and Four Tet combine to make a track that easily lives up to its production credits. Taking the already excellent original from the heart of Pantha du Prince's 'Black Noise' album, Four Tet leaves the vocals more or less in tact but injects some of his trademark warm, chiming techno to give the song a bit of a mood lift, and to my mind pushing the song to an even higher level.

17. Girl Unit - Wut

'Wut' is like a more brazen, in-your-face version of Joy Orbison's 'Hyph Mngo', which I can assure you is in no way an insult. Featuring the same sense of wistful euphoria as Joy Orbison's masterpiece, this became a staple of many-a DJ set across the land, often serving well as an end-of-night closer. The Night Slugs label released a bountiful amount of quality material this year, and Girl Unit's seven-minute epic is a fine pinnacle of their 2010 catalogue.

16. Darkstar - Gold

As has become the norm amongst heralded dubstep producers recently, here was Darkstar's turn to cover one of The Human League's obscure early '80s B-sides. Er wait, what? In fact, 2010 was a year in which Darkstar did very little by the book, switching from the beat-driven dubstep style of early tracks such as 'Need You' to, well, mellow synth-pop. After a bit of confusion it became obvious that it worked, as this exquisite cover of 'You Remind Me Of Gold' proved.

15. Deadboy - If U Want Me

Deadboy strode on to the scene in impressive fashion towards the end of 2009 with his 'U Cheated' EP, and his love for a R&B vocal and a funky bassline showed no sign of dwindling as we moved in to a fresh decade. This lusciously captivating delight filled mixes and sets for months, and further fuelled Numbers' ability to consider themselves as one of the year's top labels.

14. Fritz Kalkbrenner - Facing The Sun

Brother of legendary German techno producer Paul Kalkbrenner (of, amongst a wealth of other things, 'Berlin Calling' fame), Fritz took further steps towards his own solo career this year with the release of his début LP, which was led by this blissful brain-warmer. While the guitar is an often overlooked instrument in the worlds of house and techno, the delicate riff on 'Facing The Sun' is really rather gorgeous, especially when layered with the poignant beauty of the vocals. The production on the track is deep and organic, resulting in one of the most enchanting treats that you could bestow upon your ears this year.

13. D Double E - Street Fighter Riddim

To my thoroughly unqualified and amateur grime mind, this was this year's 'Next Hype'. I think by that I mean 'Street Fighter Riddim' was one of those tunes that transcended the confines of the grime community, and made a name for itself in the wider world. A bit like P Money's brilliant '1 Up' last year, the lyrical theme here is retro console games, but the real appeal of this tune is in the production, namely the brutal bass stabs that pepper the track behind D Double E's snarled spitting.

12. Débruit - Nigeria What?

Let's face it, an EP that comes complete with 3D specs to observe the cover art properly is either gonna be brilliant, or shit. Delightfully, the entirety of Débruit's internationally-flavoured 'Spatio Temporel EP' was great, but the particular highlight was the disarming closer, 'Nigeria What?', which expertly fused squelching bass bubbles with a sub-Saharan riff and hot vocal snaps. 3D glasses may have been required for the artwork, but the music itself belonged to a whole other dimension.

11. Flying Lotus - Do The Astral Plane

I don't think I'll ever find an intro to a song that makes me as happy as the gentle, abstract scatting that ushers in 'Do The Astral Plane'. The most danceable track on his latest 'Cosmogramma' album, and possibly the most danceable of his career to date, Flying Lotus deploys a joyfully simplistic tune which has become perfect 'call and response' fodder for the close of his live shows. Featuring his typically micro-managed production, 'Do The Astral Plane' is like it's own little world, where hip-hop, jazz and string samples coexist happily together in permanently sun-soaked fields. This song is probably what would emit from your computer speakers if you typed 'bliss' in to that programme that speaks what you write.

Never Mind The Boris, Here's More Counting Down

After the songs listed as 50 - 40 in my Top 50 Favourite Songs of the Year were announced in the previous post and immediately saw sales of said songs rocket (Chris Moyles got so excited that he played Shackleton's Moon Over Joseph's Burial seven times back-to-back during his show on Friday), I felt that I'd try and press on with the rest of the list as quickly as possible, if only to snap Moylesy out of his atmospheric dub trance.

So here are 10 more aural masturbation aids for you to erotically rub against your eardrums, just remember to give them a wipe after you've had your way with them:

39. Sub Focus - Rock It

38. Mount Kimbie - Sketch On Glass

37. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Zero (Erol Alkan Remix)

36. Dusty Kid - Here Comes The Techno

35. Slagsmalsklubben - Brutal Weapons

34. Mount Kimbie - 50 Mile View

33. Bullion - Young Heartache

32. Lazy Jay - Float My Boat

31. The Ian Carey Project - Get Shaky

30. Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo

Seeing as this is just a titchy little post so far, I'll take this opportunity to encourage you to leave your thoughts - whether they be good, bad, or just plain ugly - on my choices of songs for the Top 50 Favourite Songs of the Year (or anything else in this blog for that matter), by using the comments section below. I think it's quite easy to do, and I don't believe you have to sign up for a Blogger account either. So, why not give it a go eh kids?! I think there's the option of posting anonymously, so you can spare yourself some blushes by not having to reveal that you're a reader of this blog, which I'm fully aware has been the cause of many marital splits and coup d'etats in the past.

Classic Track

The second in this new and already widely revered 'Classic Track' section takes us hurtling back to the mid-90's, and to one of hip-hop's all-time classic chilled out anthems. A gentle piano melody loops in the background while New York's finest lay down some tough truths about the dependence on and continual struggle for money in the city - Cash Rules Everything Around Me, it's:

Wu-Tang Clan - C.R.E.A.M.

Songs I'm Currently Loving

• Boris Dlugosch - Bangkok (Dub) - I'm thoroughly atheist when it comes to believing the hype about Boris Dlugosch's Bangkok (original version here). I've read people waxing lyrical about it, anointing it as THE track of 2009. My ears picked it up twice during the course of Annie Mac Presents at the Warehouse Project, and I can imagine pretty much every electro club the length and breadth of Britain/the World is rinsing a bit of Boris pretty heavily these days. Well, I THINK IT'S A BIT BORING. It's certainly a pretty catchy tune, but I just feel it lacks that extra bit of punch - when the hook drops, it drops a bit flat and limp, and the whole song sounds like it's the wind-down to itself, as if the real dance floor-smashing element of the track has actually occurred before the track's begun and now we're just left with the shadowy outro. It's basically a less emphatic version of Pon de Floor, from which it seems to steal both a similar sounding hook, and at one point an almost identical drum pattern. And I know it's primarily intended for dancing to in a club, but if you listen to the full original mix just through home speakers or headphones it gets bloody tedious after not too long at all. I'm still waiting to find a remix of it that really adds some oomph to the track, but for the time being this 'ere dub version from the EP is actually a superior cut to the original if you ask me.
• Four Tet - Love Cry (Joy Orbison Remix) - Four Tet's latest track Love Cry makes it's second appearance on the trot on The Hardcore and The Gentle, this time having been rubbed down with a hot towel by Joy Orbison, a producer who's really at the top of his game at the moment. This remix focuses attention on the lush vocals from the track, and makes for equally (if not more) pleasurable listening than FT's original.
• Ellie Goulding - Under The Sheets (Jakwob Remix) - a track in a similar mould to the likes of Emalkay's When I Look At You (but less overplayed) or the Joker remix of SMD's Cruel Intentions (but without the irritating lead-singer of The Gossip on vocal duties), Jakwob has here sliced up Ellie Goulding's vocals for his second top notch remix of one of her tracks, and given them some whomping bass for company.

That concludes this particular post, the next tracks in the Year's Best Songs countdown will appear soon enough, as will the list of my Top 10 Favourite Albums of 2009. Oooh I do spoil you something rotten, don't I?

B

Y

E

(remember, don't be afraid to leave a comment!)

County Down, part 1

When I was a child, I went on a family holiday to Switzerland. While we were there we took a wee day trip to the Large Hadron Collider, to see if we could spot the Higgs boson for ourselves. However, DISASTER STRUCK. I, convinced that I'd just spotted the Higgs boson bombing past, rushed to the edge of the machine to take a closer look, but in my excited haste I failed to notice a crate of low-fat Dairylea Dunkers that had been set down just beside the collider -I tripped, and was sent tumbling in to the collider.

I cannot recall much of what occurred once I was inside. All I'm aware of is that what I had perceived to be the Higgs boson was in fact Higgs' bassoon, which Higgs was carrying on his way to wind band practice just further down the collider. From then on, my memories are nothing more than blurry, incomplete shapes and whirls, until I suddenly snapped back in to full consciousness to see my family and Dr Fox anxiously peering down at me. Heaven knows how long I was in there until I was fished out, but I appeared to have emerged unscathed.

Or, at least, it appeared that way at first. After I'd been comforted and given a steaming hot mug of cocoa and a low-fat Dairylea Dunker, Dr Fox took me to one side, out of ear shot of the rest of the group. He explained to me that his experiments with the LHC were not quite what the public were being led to believe. Instead of trying to recreate the Big Bang, he whimpered, he had in fact been using the machine to try and recreate Big Brovaz, who at the time had been the height of musical innovation until their tragic volcano-based demise. He explained that if he could just unleash another R&B/hip-hop collective on the world with the talent and vision of Big Bro, then he might finally be able to convince Simon Cowell to revive Pop Idol and give him a slot as a judge again. The good doctor explained that he wasn't sure what, if any, side effects I would feel from my brush with the collider, but that he would personally ensure that I was looked after properly for the rest of my life, and given all the funding and resources I needed to ensure that this experience wouldn't hinder me, and I would be able to build a successful career in the future.

Of course, just like all the others who had received the same pledge from Dr Fox or any other talent show judge, my prospects were soon to implode. I was haunted by my ordeal in the collider: I couldn't sleep properly, I got jittery whenever I heard the sound of a bassoon, and I massively went off low-fat Dairylea Dunkers. Like, MASSIVELY. But the most significant effect of my experience was the most mind-blowing of all: I could now see in to the musical future. I knew as early as 2002 that Take That would reform and that Robbie Williams would fall from stardom, only to return years later with a comeback that everyone heralded as magnificent but in truth wasn't particularly impressive. I had a vision in 1997 that over-the-top europop synths would make passionate love with the scrag-end of the hip-hop world and their offspring would rule the planet, and lo and behold in 2009 the love-children of the affair, Taio Cruz and Tinchy Stryder, stormed the charts. At this very moment, I know that the winner of this year's X Factor (who I can't reveal on here due to legal restrictions) will go on to land the Christmas number one, do fuck all for the next 7-8 months then return to prominence briefly with a series of heavily American-influenced hits interspersed with weak cover versions.

Why am I telling you this? you might ask, probably about 70 lines ago. Well, I've used my superpower of being able to gaze in to the future of music and have decided that there won't be a sufficient amount of stingin' toons released between now and the end of the year to stop me from entering the initial stages of an End Of Year countdown. The top ten has actually already been drafted but will be left for a later date, partly due to the recent emergence of a tune that is making a strong argument to be catapulted to the top end of the list (said tune is to be found in Song's I'm Currently Loving).

So for now, let me present to you the songs that I have listed as 50 - 40 on the list of My Favourite Songs of the Year, and the rest will be portioned out in the coming days and weeks. There's a mixed bag there, so if you pick one out you don't like then just try and swap it with someone else, and for heaven's sake don't just put it back in the mix once your grubby fingers have been all over it. Learn some manners, you filthpot.

- - - I'm providing YouTube links for these as far as is possible, if you wish to own the track then either buy it as I can guarantee that it's propah good, use some form of YouTube song downloading tool, or it could already be on this blog so check tha side list of artists yeah? - - -

50. Jesse Rose - Well Now

49. Lady GaGa - Poker Face

48. Sticky K - Bandari Funk

47. Shitao - We

46. Shackleton - Moon Over Joseph's Burial

45. Zombie Nation - Worth It pt.1

44. Burial & Four Tet - Moth

43. Martyn - Elden St.

42. Luke Vibert - We Hear You

41. Rye Rye feat. M.I.A. - Bang

40. Joy Orbison - Wet Look

So there we go, I hope that's wet your appetite for the even more heavyweight tunes yet to come. Before we get to the customary Songs I'm Currently Loving, in my infinite wisdom I've decided to add even more length to this already lengthy-enough post through the introduction of a new little segment. From now on, the downloading section of each post will also include a 'Classic Track'; that's to say, an absolute gem of musical brilliance that you should own by law, so if you don't already have it then download it fast and avoid a 7 year jail term.

The début Classic Track is a stunning combination of one of the finest voices ever committed to record, enigmatic and beautifully romantic lyrics, and set against a driving yet hypnotically soothing techno backdrop. So please, stop what you're doing, lay yourself down somewhere, and immerse yourself in:

Bjork - Hyperballad

Songs I'm Currently Loving:

• Gemmy - BT Tower - Gemmy combines the best bits of both the past and future of dubstep, with a throbbing filth-fest of a bassline fused with the more atmospheric side of the genre that's becoming increasingly healthier
• DatsiK - Southpaw - more dutty thumps and squelches c/o Datsik, here sampling Wu Tang Clan to create a propah nawty banger of a tune
• Tricky - Slow - I recently discovered the 'Tricky Meets South Rakkas Crew' album and am currently enjoying it greatly, hunt it down if you haven't heard it already.
• Shinichi Osawa - Maximum Joy (Van She Remix) - Another bad-ass album that's recently wandered in to my life is Southern Fried & Tested vol. 2, a compilation released by Norman Cook aka Fatboy Slim's Southern Fried Records. Got some real treats on there, including the next song as well.
• Touché - Vampires - even if you don't think you've heard anything by DJ Touché (one half of The Black Ghosts) before, you have. Here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iODdvJGpfIA&feature=related
• Pom Pom - Untitled - I am currently in love with Pom Pom, and this is currently my particular favourite of his hoards of untitled tracks.
• Slagsmalsklubben - Brutal Weapons - one of the few saving graces on the new Kitsuné Maison compilation. Band name is Swedish for 'Fight Club', FYI.
• Four Tet - Love Cry - a lovely bit of new Four Tet, which is a precursor to a new album which should be out early 2010 me believes.
• Ill Mana feat. P-Money - What Did He Say (Remix) - currently my favourite example of the newly crowned 'Greatest Genre In The World' - Bassline (of course)
• Deadboy - U Cheated - This is the song which has thrown my previously nicely settled 'Top 10 Favourite Songs of the Year' in to disarray, as it only got released a few days ago but is already infecting my brain at every given opportunity. Definitely one of the biggest tunes of the year, I only wish it could have revealed itself sooner and saved me the hassle of having to shoe-horn it in on the upper platforms of my End Of Year list.

Bye.