Al bums

To be perfectly honest I would've expected a far less puerile and immature title for this post on my favourite albums of the year, but it just goes to show what a dreadful state this country's in today. Absolutely disgusting - I make myself physically sick. Sometimes I just stand in my bathroom staring in to the mirror and thinking "You, sir, are a foul git". This blog is even the number one most common aid used by bulimics to induce large vomiting fits (recently over-taking listening to audiobooks of Piers Morgan reading Peaches Geldof's memoirs), such is the repulsive nature of the writing style and "humour" it contains. But until I learn to grow up and start thinking of genuinely amusing post titles, I'll just have to sit here and type out my list of the top ten albums of 2009, pausing after each entry to spew my guts out on to my computer through sheer revulsion at what I've just written. So, once I've finished scooping bits of regurgitated broccoli out from under my Caps Lock key that have found their way there as a result of re-reading this introduction, please feel free to carry on perusing through this blog and sneer/marvel/snarvel at my favourite long playing records of the year - just remember to keep a bucket to hand.




10. Dorian Concept - When Planets Explode


If truth be told, When Planets Explode isn't exactly an album that I could put on any time of day and think, "Wow, yeah, this is so the tenth best album I've heard in 2009". When I'm not in the mood it can even start to sound a bit like Jones' music in Nathan Barley, as my brain struggles to make sense of it all. But when I am in a suitably glitch-hoppy state of mind, I find that nothing hits the spot quite like a bit of Austrian quirky beat-making c/o Dorian Concept. If anyone reading this is temporarily suffering from enough of a sanity deficiency to actually take interest in my words and decides to track this album down, I'll take advantage of your weakened sense of judgement by chucking a drink-based metaphor at you - treat this record like a pint of Guinness. Don't grab it and down it as soon as it's been poured, that'll leave you with a foul taste in your mouth. Instead, give it time to settle, nurse it, sip it, and then at the end you'll have enjoyed it a lot more. No harm in buying a couple of packets of pork scratchings as well to offset the taste, y'know... just in case.


Dorian Concept - Color Sexist


Further listening: Hudson Mohawke - Butter


9. Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport


Phew, glad we're back in to much more accessible music territory here.......NAHT. If you're sat or crouching at your computer thinking "who the fuck buttons are Fuck Buttons?", they're two men from London who take Super Hans' maxim in Peep Show that what is needed in music is a powerful sense of dread, then making the aforementioned powerful sense of dread seem otherworldly and actually quite uplifting in a dready kinda way, before bundling the whole lot in to an epic-o-meter and cranking the 'epic' up to 11. Acid dealers were probably creaming themselves when this one came out.


Fuck Buttons - Olympians


8. Dam-Funk - Toeachizown


Dam-Funk should actually be written with a little circumflex accent over the 'a', but I don't know how to do those on keyboards and whenever I try to copy stuff in to here the formatting gets messed up all over the shop, and I'm not adept enough at the finer side of this blogging bizniz to sort it out properly. But enough about my blog formatting woes - the Toeachizown LP is a collection of the 5 Toeachizown EPs that the L.A. electro-funkster released in the past year or so. If Prince and George Clinton had made a film in the 80's about their vision of how life would be if we all lived in space by now, this album would pretty much be the soundtrack. It's slick, it's sultry, it's soulful, it's funky - would it be completely lame and cringeworthy to finish that sentence with "- it's Dam-Funk"? It would, wouldn't it? Good. It's slick, it's sultry, it's soulful, it's funky - it's Dam-Funk.


Dam-Funk - Let's Take Off (Far Away)


7. Fever Ray - Fever Ray


Fever Ray's début album sounds very much how you'd expect an album by The Knife to sound if you took away the more dance-fuelled half of the group, and were left with the unique vocals of the other half. Which is exactly what this album is, as a matter of fact. The pulse on this record is slower than is often found on productions by The Knife, with Fever Ray's rhythms and beats tending to take a supporting rather than leading role in the songs, leaving it to Karin Dreijer Andersson's exquisite voice and lyrics to take prominence. The album is mournful in parts and hopeful in others, and beautiful all the way through.


Fever Ray - Keep The Streets Empty For Me


6. Few Nolder - New Folder


Directly beneath Fever Ray in both my iTunes and this list is Few Nolder, a Lithuanian techno producer who is probably one of the greatest people alive on the planet at the moment, a statement that may or may not be due to the fact that he somehow picked up on my inclusion of his track 'Chika' in my top 10 songs of 2009, which resulted in him posting this blog on his Facebook fan page, leading to an influx of visitors from Lithuania. So, ačiū labai, Few Nolder! New Folder is a refreshing techno record, an album that declines to comply with standard techno etiquette (techniquette?) and is instead clearly crafted in Few Nolder's own specific style. Often such a description would really mean "it's shit, there's a reason why people follow conventions", but this album is honestly really impressive, and of course contains the best musical moment of any song in 2009, the melody in 'Chika'. Long live the Lithuanians.

Few Nolder - No Mo (Chika can be found on previous blog posts)

Further listening: Rone - Spanish Breakfast

5. Moderat - Moderat

This album was a latecomer to my 2009 ears - it was released in April, but it wasn't until the staff of the wonderful Polish website that I fairly inexplicably write for (I'm just generally a big deal in Eastern Europe) started waxing lyrical about Moderat during discussion for our end-of-year round-up that I felt I needed to get myself moderatted. I'm sure that literally 0% of you had been worrying how successful the link up between eclectic electronic Berliners Modeselektor and experimental techno producer Apparat would turn out, but I can now assure you that it's been a very successful partnership indeed. Both Modeselektor and Apparat are mighty fine creators of music in their own right, and while there was obvious potential for their unison to flop, they doggedly stuck with the project (it actually started in 2002, so seven years is a mighty long time to wait for a début album - what happened to German efficiecy?) and this record is a really great fusion of techno, dubstep, glitch and idm. Apparently their live show was absolutely the greatest thing ever as well, so if it ever pops up near you then lock on dat shit, ja?

Moderat - Seamonkey

4. Nosaj Thing - Drift

Hailing from the same school of thought as Flying Lotus, Daedelus and the rest of the L.A. Low End Theory gang, comes Nosaj Thing. Following up the exquisite track Aquarium, his first LP 'Drift' is "glitch-hop" at it's absolute finest. I still don't quite like the term "glitch-hop", which is why I feel the need to humiliate it by putting it in inverted commas. The album is more ambient than the work of Mr Lotus and Daedelus, yet the record is still well stocked in the beats department. It has a floating, delicate and haunting feel throughout, making the album title highly appropriate - every track is captivating, the production skill is immense, Nosaj is a frickin' genius.

Nosaj Thing - Light 2

3. Clark - Totems Flare

Gentlemen, we're no longer in ambient country. Totems Flare is an absolutely nuts firecracker of an album, evoking the image of someone trying to re-wire a computer using a drum stick in the midst of an acid-apocalypse while being attacked by a wild beast. Or if it doesn't evoke that image for you, then you're blatantly proper weird, innit. Some of the tracks are so chaotic that I'm having to break my habit of re-listening to the albums while I write about them, because my brain is just getting too melted. This is all in a good way, of course. Clark has long been a mad professor in the music world, and it'll come as no surprise (or, to many of you, interest) that Warp Records is responsible for unleashing Totems Flare upon the world, carrying on their fine and long tradition of experiMENTAL releases. Totems Flare has a very powerful energy to it which can often sound very raw and primal, but the album is actually very expertly produced and there's an excellent balance between grit and melody throughout the record. To use a bit of a hackneyed phrase, Totems Flare is 'controlled chaos'.

Clark - Rainbow Voodoo

2. Martyn - Great Lengths

I've ranted a bit about certain types of dubstep before, but for the very few of you out there who haven't been steadfastly piecing together all my blog posts in to a form of religious manuscript, I'll quickly recap my qualms. When dubstep first hit, it was great. Wobble wobble wobble, whom whom whom, bass bass bass. All well and good. But this was a good few years ago now, and although classic tracks from the likes of Caspa and Rusko are still classics, there's been an infuriating lack of imagination from many producers ever since. Get a little sample of a song or film/TV show, chop it up, throw in some slow off-beat drum patterns and then crank the LFO up and make the bass as wobbly and slamming as possible. The result is a type of music that gets boring very quickly, and unsettling only slightly slower. "Dubstep remixes" are now simply a song played in it's normal manner, but with a ham-fisted punch of whomping bass underneath. Both Caspa and Rusko have been maintaining a distinct level of crapness for a long time now, yet for some reason they seem to be the benchmark for many budding bass-merchants. So to counter this sea of dubstep trash, it's probably about time I got round to actually talking about Martyn. For me, Martyn has been the most innovative producer of 2009. Taking dubstep as a loose basis, he's crafted an album that transcends any kind of previously existent genre, and although other producers had been starting to move in a similar direction at around the same time, Great Lengths is a masterful talisman of the emerging dubstep/techno/minimal sub-genre. It's clear that a lot of effort and soul has been put in to the making of the album, something which is so grossly lacking in the sadly probably more widely popular style of dubstep that I've been blathering on about in this section. If you want to listen to good dubstep, do yourself a favour and listen to Martyn, Untold, Pangaea, Guido - don't listen to Caspa and Rusko. OK? Good.


Martyn - These Words (feat. dBridge)


Further Listening: 2562 - Unbalance

1. Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue

Whilst I was compiling this list, I was often scratching my head over which albums stood out above the rest I'd acquired last year, and in which order to arrange them. However, there was absolutely no ambivalence (groan) when it came to picking Bibio as number one. Sorry folks, but that had to be done really didn't it? Seriously though, Bibio's record was easily my favourite of 2009, and oddly enough it was actually his second album of the year - and even then it wasn't his last. Having released his third studio album, Vignetting The Compost, in February to a lukewarm reception (at this stage I hadn't even heard of the lad), Bibio decided to take his musical career in a new direction, and left Mush Records to hook up with Warp. I've only listened to bits of his first three albums after I heard Ambivalence Avenue, but I can tell you that they're all fairly uninteresting, not-particularly-bad-yet-not-particularly-good creations, and as it's transpired his move to Warp has probably been the best decision of Bibio's life. Strongly influenced by Boards of Canada, Bibio's typical style is electronic folk (folktronica, if you will), a sound which is at the core of Ambivalence Avenue but far from dominates it. Upon his move to Warp, Bibio opened himself up to a variety of new influences, and this is immediately and emphatically obvious as the olde English folky opening track 'Ambivalence Avenue' drops in to the glorious funk of 'Jealous of Roses', an audacious move that completely blows the album wide open. From then on there's wonky hip-hop on 'Fire Ant' and 'Sugarette', the blues-y 'Cry! Baby!", and elegant folk ballads in the form of 'Haikuesque (When She Laughs)' and 'The Palm of Your Wave'. And this isn't just experimentation for experimenting's sake - each track feels perfectly at home on the record, and despite the variety of genres influencing it the album flows remarkably well. I'm aware that Fuck Buttons and Clark are hardly going to be to many people's tastes, and the albums by Martyn and Few Nolder might not appeal to anyone not previously vaguely interested in dubstep or techno, but I truly believe that if you hunt down Ambivalence Avenue and give it a listen then you'll be a fan. There's still enough of Bibio's folk-pop leanings present to give the album a gorgeous quality that should be accessible to pretty much everyone, even the most hardened of Soulja Boy, Cascada or Meshuggah fans. Of all the albums in this list this has the most obvious 'real' instrument presence (namely Bibio's guitar), but combines this with various electronic elements to create a unique sound. A really brilliant album.

Bibio - Jealous of Roses

Further listening: Bibio - The Apple and The Tooth (a follow up to Ambivalence Avenue, containing remixes of tracks from AA as well as a few new songs)



So that's that - about 3 weeks after I first started writing this post, I've finally finished my run down of my top 10 favourite albums. I reckon we should celebrate with a bloody great classic track and a bloody great special edition of songs I'm currently loving, don't you?

Classic Track:

I don't really know much about Arthur Russell, other than he died young and I like the songs by him that I've got, so instead of trawling Wikipedia to make it seem like I do I'll just get on with it and cough up the track. This is a lovely down-tempo song with an enchanting backing of cello (I think) and bongos behind Arthur's beautiful vocals. Very blissful.

• Arthur Russell - This Is How We Walk On The Moon

Songs I'm Currently Loving: World Music Special

• Tinariwen - Lulla - political blues rock by a band from the Sahara Desert - ticks all my boxes, dunno about you.
• Amadou & Mariam - Sebeke - already legendary duo from Mali, who were easily the best support act on the day I went to Blur's reunion in Hyde Park (Florence & The Machine were pretty good, Vampire Weekend were dull as mud). This track is actually the last on the album and features a hidden song in it after a period of silence, meaning that the whole thing is about 11 minutes long, which I apologise for. It's a banger, though.
• Pedro Laza y Sus Pelayeros - Navidad Negra - old skool Colombian jazz here, perfect for a summer's day in the garden in a deckchair with a glass of cool home-made lemonade.
• Omar Souleyman - Shift Al Mani - if you haven't heard of Omar Souleyman already, you pretty much definitely need him in your life. Just when you thought the world of Syrian psychedelic folk couldn't get any better (come on, you were all thinking it), along comes Omar and gives the ever-popular genre a booster shot of greatness.
• N.O.H.A. - Balkan Hot-Step - otherwise known as the opening song on Rob Da Bank's (peace be upon him) excellent Fabric 24 mix, this is Balkan at it's most ecstatic, and I'm still dreaming of the day when this is dropped in a set while I'm present.
• Bangs - Take U To Da Movies - YOUR BOY BANGS! Bangs is a self-proclaimed "Superstar Hip Hop Artist!" (from his website), and is easily the jewel in the crown of the Sudanese rap world, and these days that's really saying something isn't it. Other highlights include My Special Girl, and all of Bangs' other YouTube videos.

Peace etc, yeah?

Bestival

Certain things in life are overrated. The Ramones, for instance. The Inbetweeners. Most American foods. Free periods at school. All might seem "cool" or "sexy" or "big and clever" at first, but when it comes to pouring the milk on the cornflakes they're exposed to be stale and unsavoury, and you find yourself miserably tipping the contents down the plug-hole. Bestival, however, is truly a pint of Cravendale's finest. Run by Radio 1's Rob Da Bank (who, by the by, recorded a damn fine Fabric Mix which is well worth tracking down) and set on the (probably) picturesque Isle of Wight, Bestival is a festival that transcends the usual festival experience and offers you a vast array of treats and distractions - so much so that you might well find yourself wandering around a forest the whole day, sitting on plastic toadstools and pretending to be a little fairy man, before slumping back in to your tent in a blissful daze and drifting off in to a contented slumber, thus entirely missing a whole Saturday's-worth of music. Including The Sugarhill Gang. And Aphex Twin (not together, you muggins). IT DOESN'T MATTER THOUGH, as all of this is wrapped up neatly in a bundle of good vibes and friendly atmospheres, so any music that may be going on is simply a nice little bonus to the already great times that you will be having. However, having an amazing array of music on the line-up sure does make that nice little bonus all the sweeter.

Here are a selection of acts on this year's bill that I think are well worth checking out if you're going, or cyber-investigating if you're in the sorry position of not having a ticket and aren't already aware of them. Needless to say, Elbow will not be appearing on this list. In fact, they should have led the list of 'overrated things' at the start of this post; they are truly cack. Since they won the Mercury Prize and were added as headliners to my two festivals this year, I've been earnestly trying to 'get' them, to appreciate their music as seemingly everyone else does. However the fiendish little buggers have consistently withheld any indication of their quality from me, and even after patiently standing through their headline set at Benicassim I am still none the wiser as to why they have not been chased from this country and sent in to exile in Boringville. Underworld headlined the Sunday last year: mind-bogglingly immense. Elbow this year: may the Lord have mercy 'pon our souls. Hopefully the following acts should shine some sunlight out of the musical arse that is Elbow.

The Field

Kate Bush-obsessed Swedish techno producer The Field is definitely in my Top 2 to see this year. Following ultra-amazing debut album From Here We Go Sublime in 2007, he's just released the follow-up entitled Yesterday and Today, which I have just downloaded but haven't listened to fully yet so I dunno if it's good. From a bit of listening though I'd say it certainly is. If you haven't come across him already and were put off by the 'techno' of the opening description, then allow me to clarify a bit. His songs are really a bit of techno, a bit of shoe-gaze, a bit of trancey stuff, a bit of ambient bizniz, and, er, all seem to lead back to Kate Bush. Well not ALL of it, really just a couple of tracks on the first album. And his MySpace profile quote. But it's all good stuff, and you should check him out. Here's a track from his new album, a cover of The Korgi's classic 'Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime', which will unfortunately probably be best known for Beck's not-very-good version used in Michel Gondry's not-very-good film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime

And here's a track from debut From Here We Go Sublime: Silent

Right, moving on to...

Diplo/Mad Decent Soundsystem/L-Vis 1990

The Bestival line-up has 'Diplo presents The Mad Decent Soundsystem' listed, which I think is fair to presume is just a glorified way of saying "Diplo's DJing". Which is good, 'cos Diplo is bloody nifty. I saw him at Wax:On in Leeds earlier this year where he was ace, and his Radio 1 Essential Mix from a couple years back is really most enjoyable: http://fiftyonefiftyone.com/2007/09/diplo-essential-mix-91507.html

His Mad Decent label has released a steady stream of bad-ass tunes over the years, including recently the work of Major Lazer, consisting of Diplo himself, along with Switch. Two DJs who are both individually great, but seem to have given birth to a distinctly average creation in ML. Their tropical-infused songs seem more fitted to the dancefloor rather than bedroom listening though, and I will be looking to give them another chance as the Lazer are also playing Bestival this year.

If you've read any music blog in the past 6 months or so then you'll most likely already be clued up to the eyeballs about L-Vis 1990, and until I've finished sifting through the contents of his wheelie-bin then there's really nothing else about him I can add here. For now all you need to know is that I spent ages trying to find this particular tune to upload on here, but have discovered that it's been completely wiped off the face of the free file-sharing world. Which, I'm sure I'll come to realise someday, is probably a good thing. Anyway, here's the YouTube video of United Groove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI2lUIsSdPs

Martyn

Now, be warned, in this next bit I'm gonna 'go there'. That's right - 'there'. So just a heads up before we go any further. Right - In my opinion, dubstep, 'the sound of the summer', is getting boring. I'm not saying that new dubstep releases are more boring than they were, say, two years ago, I just think there's only so much off-beat, heavily squelching bass that I need in my life. Quite a lot of dubstep tunes literally give me a headache when I listen at home, and I have to turn it off, or switch to something more ambient/shoe-gazy/trancey/techno-y. Much of what once seemed so gloriously shuddering has turned in to over-the-top sample-filled tat, and I don't like it, sir. What's needed, really, is something that will make the nation's 15 year-old's get their little heads in a whirl and think "hey, THAT'S not dubstep?!", before anxiously consulting their FabricLive 37 for guidance. That's why England needs to relinquish control of dubstep, and let the internationalists take over. Flying Lotus and his Brainfeeding chums (Daedelus, Nosaj Thing, Samiyam etc) are just what the doctor ordered, as is a chap from the Netherlands that calls himself Martyn. Forward-thinking music that takes dubstep and mixes it with a whole bunch of other goodies, without even a hint of a Guy Ritchie film snippet thrown in. If you're currently sitting at home scribbling down a list of 'Best Albums of 2009', then Great Lengths should hold a place right near the top. Here's a track from said album: Elden St.

Billed as part of 'Dublime presents Appleblim, Martyn & Reso', that should be a slot well worth catching.

And now, a quick run down of a few other acts that should make this year's Bestival pretty tasty:

• Squarepusher - One of Warp Records' finest, the legendary experiMENTAL producer/DJ should deliver a mind-melting set, so bring a saucepan to collect the drips. Planetarium
• Hudson Mohawke - Another Warpster, HudMo should, er, deliver another mind-melting set. He's got an album coming out in October, so this should be a good chance to have a little peek at material from that. Oh, what's this? A little peek of material from his album EVEN BEFORE BESTIVAL? Christ almighty, this blog is just quite brilliant isn't it. Rising 5
• Massive Attack - You might've heard of them. They're pretty good, really.
• Buraka Som Sistema - Here's a remix they did of an artist that you should sell your grandmother to go and see (but sadly isn't playing at Bestival this year), Lykke Li. She's awesome live. And I could do with your grandmother around the house. Dance Dance Dance (Buraka Som Sistema Remix)
• The Cuban Brothers - There's no trace of sarcasm when I say they'll probably be the most entertaining act you see all festival. Main stage, be there.
• I've saved the most obscure until last, in the form of three female acts who, although probably off your radar at the moment, I predict will soon rise to great things - La Roux, Florence & The Machine, and Little Boots. Don't be scared by these unfamiliar and strange-sounding names, if my finger is as much on the music scene pulse as I believe it is, you'll soon be hearing a lot more from these underground gems.

And thus concludes what is arguably the first proper post this godforsaken blog has produced so far. 1 out of 4 isn't too bad really now is it? As a bonus treat, here's a golden classic, by one of the mega-highlights of last year's Bestival:

George Clinton & Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove

Cyaz @ tthe festyval guyz!!!!!! ! ! ! !!!