A year is a long time in music, and although the fuss that surrounds end of year round-ups can get silly to say the least, nothing ever seems to tell the story of a year quite like a pulling down a big fat pile of records down from the shelf and arranging them in a more or less arbitrary order of preference.
We’ve already shared with you our favourite Mixes and Reissues of 2008; we now proudly present the third of our end of year round-ups, and undoubtedly the one that caused us the most conflict, strife and stress. Never have you seen four grown men argue more viciously, or lengthily, over whether The Chap’s Mega Breakfast is a 21st century pop masterpiece or mere camp twaddle.
In the event of it, The Chap, like Friendly Fires, Hot Chip, Shed, Autechre and countless other worthy combatants fell to the wayside in favour of our chosen twenty. And it’s too late to change anything now. Our nuts are on the chopping board, so chop away, dear reader, chop away.
20. M83
SATURDAYS = YOUTH
(MUTE)
Antony Gonzalez has always looked back to the ‘80s for inspiration and Saturdays = Youth sees M83 in full-blown new-wave pop mode. This is not an album of simple pastiche or homage; every song is lovingly crafted as to sound utterly fresh. In keeping with Gonzalez’s past work, the sound is still epic in scope, but it’s also his most focused and listenable album to date.
Each track embodies a different type of teenage experience; ‘Kim & Jessie’ is a love song of secret encounters and unabashed idealism, whilst ‘Graveyard Girl’ is the story of the misunderstood goth who at “fifteen years-old, already thinks it’s too late”. ‘Couleurs’ sees the band piling in vast brooding synths one on top of another to create the very embodiment of teen angst. Gonzalez’s nostalgia-tinted view of endless summers and teen romance might appear clichéd, but when tied to music this beautiful all is forgiven.
Jeremy Parkinson
19. HUSH ARBORS
HUSH ARBORS
(ECSTATIC PEACE)
I first stumbled across singer-guitarist Keith Wood as one-half of the raga-psych-folk duo Golden Oaks. For a while he seemed to be everywhere: hanging with Sunburned Hand and James Toth and releasing some terrific solo-sets on Harvest and 3-Lobed under the Hush Arbors umbrella. Here, he teams up with guitarist Leon Dufficy for what might be his commercial breakthrough.
‘Rue Hollow’ is stunning: a delicate, dream-smeared spider-web of acoustic guitar and broken-hearted vocals. ‘Gone’ is a bluesy acid-rock hymn that somehow coaxes Neil Young and Amon Duul into the same sleeping bag, while ‘Water II’ rolls home at 4am after getting wasted in 1971. ‘Sand’ is pure goosebumps: a sun-dazed horse-ride under endless blue skies. ‘The Light’ originally surfaced on the 7″ Swappin’ EP and though it doesn’t quite match the naked emotion of that earlier incarnation this lovely, fuzz-dappled version is as tender and moving as it is accessible. Given his current form, Wood’s place in some spectral pantheon of cult singer-songwriters seems pretty much assured.
Kek-w
18. CLARO INTELECTO
METANARRATIVE
(MODERN LOVE)
In a year positively besieged with dumb and/or boring techno albums, Claro Intelecto’s Metanarrative was a beacon of sense and sensuousness. The work of Mancunian Mark Stewart, this album’s debt to Chain Reaction, Model 500 et al was strongly evident, but its soul, and ultimately its sound, was very much its own – a grievously honed, dub-infused Rainy City techno.
More plaintive and measured than the pummelling fare found on his acclaimed ‘Warehouse Sessions’ 12″ series, Metanarrative found Stewart really letting his machines sing; in doing so he identified a bruised humanity lurking in the blues, blacks and greys of the industrial cityscape. Seriously: I challenge you to find a recent piece of music that’s as emotionally fraught as ‘Dependent’ or ‘Before My Eyes’, regardless of genre. Metanarrative is a work of shameless auteurism that’ll outlive 99% of electronic music farted out by Berlin this year. And you can dance to it n’all.
Kiran Sande
17. KELLEY POLAR
I NEED YOU TO HOLD ON WHILE THE SKY IS FALLING
(ENVIRON)
Kelley Polar’s second album is the sound of a voice being released. After the refined understatement of his debut, here the man who’s both a reclusive cattle farmer and Metro Area’s viola player stands centre-stage, and sings songs that soar up and out. Desperately passionate, thick with struck-by-wonder gasps and winningly camp, I Need You… is a little like listening to a glitzy musical, albeit a musical based around metaphysical puzzles, the beginnings of the universe, Greek mythology – and disco.
However, in place of the usual Environ/Metro Area lushness, here the disco elements are stripped back to a stark, often willfully tinny, sound, that recalls the more minimal end of Italo pioneered by the likes of Alexander Robotnick. All the better, perhaps, for Kelley Polar’s remarkable voice to hold your attention. The album has a fairytale atmosphere; wrapped up in starry eyed, child-like awe, but with a backdrop of dread and creepiness. Oh, and to give your body something to do while your head’s spinning, it’s very, very funky too.
Simon Hampson
16. THE BUG
LONDON ZOO
(NINJA TUNE)
At first, Kevin Martin’s second album as The Bug seemed more admirable than enjoyable – he’d intended it to reflect London in its current hardened state, so it was never gonna be an easy listen, but an entire album in Martin’s extreme, bass-heavy sound… Well, it seemed a bit too much at the time; especially after caning the three singles that had preceded it so hard. But coming back to it now, London Zoo is brilliant.
Those three 12″s, ‘Poison Dart’, ‘Skeng’ and ‘Jah War’, sound even better now the ‘Spongebob’-style cock-step that contextualized them in 07 is firmly out of favour. ‘Warning’ maybe out-does all three; Flowdan putting in his most monstrous vocal performance to date. Martin re-cast Kode9 and Spaceape’s ‘Fukkaz’ the way it always should have been, and Roger Robinson’s voice drifts through the empty streets of ‘Judgement’ like ‘Cool Out’ stranded in a sleeping Metropolis, ready to stir into life. The natural step on, and step up, from 2003′s Pressure, this was as inimitable and London-informed as Burial, but trading wistful samples for booming ragga spokesmen. How do you even follow something like this? Well, with King Midas Sound, naturally.
Tom Lea
15. VAMPIRE WEEKEND
VAMPIRE WEEKEND
(XL)
The past year saw the unthinkable happen; firstly, the resurgence of boat shoes as the fashionista’s footwear of choice, and, more startlingly, the USA became cool again. You can trace both these outcomes back to Vampire Weekend, four Ivy League graduates furnished with a kind of confidence that only a healthy trust fund can bestow.
Their self-titled debut specialised in tight, Afro-pop-inspired indie rock which saw critics falling over themselves to phone in the Paul Simon comparisons.Tracks like ‘Campus’ and ‘Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa’, with their starchy tales from within the quad set to sparky mbaqanga rhythms, revelled in a kind of fey intellectualism that appealed to an audience sick to death of the conceit that creativity should be borne out of garret hardship. Rather, charismatic front-man Ezra Koennig proved that you could be militantly erudite – ‘Oxford Comma’ presumably sent the text message generation into the arms of Lynne Truss – and unfeasibly cool. Literariness in chart-bothering indie? About as likely as America electing a black president.
Louise Brailey
14. 2562
AERIAL
(TECTONIC)
Aerial is indicative of the ways in which dubstep, once exclusively associated with South London, is now an international sound. 2562 is producer Dave Huisman’s postcode in the Hague; the name, like the music, implying a non-specific suburban anonymity, a global Croydon of interchangeable shopping malls, ring roads and apartment blocks.
Aerial is also significant as a moment in the convergence between minimal techno and dubstep. With its gaseous, crackly electronics, Aerial is clearly as indebted to the godfathers of minimal, Basic Channel, as it is to the bass weight of dubstep. Sometimes, the album can sound like a rather obvious outcome of Minimal + Dubstep. At its best though, it seductively explores the logic that two genres share. Gratifyingly skippy rhythms – and the presence of bongos, of all things – lift Aerial out of the sluggish torpor that can weigh down dubstep. The worry, though, is that Aerial presages a final phase of the ‘cleaning up’ of the hardcore continuum which dubstep had already begun: a graffiti-spattered street converted into a gentrified, minimalist flat.
K-Punk
13. PONYTAIL
ICE CREAM SPIRITUAL
(WE*ARE*FREE)
Baltimore’s body-rock/brain(less)-dance scene has been has been the discerning indie kid’s dance genre of choice for the past year or so. With IDM and glitch-core last heard disappearing up the rectum of a malfunctioning MacBook somewhere in the Bay Area, what the world craved was something kookier and up for audience participation. But while the likes of Dan Deacon and the Death Set have failed to sustain their, frankly, fucked-up momentum, Maryland’s Ponytail look set to ride out any claims of bandwagon jumping or scene fatigue with enviable ease. Why? Because their music is as good on your headphones as it is at the dance-party.
Erring to the manic, improvised nature of Lightning Bolt’s style – and minus the latter’s tedious, testosterone bombast – over Wham City power electronics, Ice Cream Spiritual is day-glo-joyous: an explosive, urgent statement of intent, all synapses frazzling synth bursts, drunken octopus drums and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder call and response vocals. Indeed, Ponytail’s Ice Cream Spiritualism is all about having your cake and eating it. Tuck the fuck in.
Rich Hanscomb
12. HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR
HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR
(EMI)
More and more, this album seems to be about ‘Blind’. It stuck out as a highlight and obvious first single on first listen, but now, after dozens, ‘Blind’ hits harder, gains in power, after every play. Truly, this is one of the most astonishing songs to be released in years; a cascading force of unstoppable nature. It already feels like a masterpiece, and Anthony Hegarty sounds like he was born to sing this song.
But to hear ‘Blind’ within this album is to hear it at its best; the teasing slinkiness of the opening tracks all full of promise and expectation, then the eruption of ‘Blind’ itself, then the immediate come-down of ‘Iris’ and ‘Easy’, where the band seem dazed and enraptured by what’s just happened. 2008 was the year that disco (re-)broke, but Hercules & Love Affair stand out distinctly as spectacular escapism. After countless plays, the album still seems like an event, a special occasion. If I could it be in only one band, it would be them. It sounds like a blast.
Simon Hampson
11. HIGH PLACES
HIGH PLACES
(THRILL JOCKEY)
After teasing us with a singles collection, High Places’ first album proper proved to be a masterclass in wonky charm, where a resolutely DIY aesthetic collides with anything-goes experimentalism. Despite being recorded at home in Brooklyn, High Places is steeped in a love of nature and particularly, the sublime.
Primitive sounding percussion and snippets of found sound are used as a hypnotic counterpoint to the otherworldly prettiness of Mary Pearson’s childlike vocals. It may sound hopelessly studied on paper, but beneath the rich textures and dense polyrhythms lies an exotic, breezy warmth, particularly evident in the humid ambience of ‘You In Forty Years’, or the slightly out of tune steel pans that appear frequently throughout the album. Hell, ‘Papaya Year’ even descends into jungle sound effects. But ultimately, this implementation of such a broad global palette is a natural extension of the duo’s enthusiastic embrace of sound in all its forms. Listening to this album, with its strangeness and almost accidental beauty, it’s impossible to be unmoved by that same enthusiasm.
Louise Brailey
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