50: NO AGE
‘AIM AT THE AIRPORT’
(from LOSING FEELING EP, SUB POP)

No Age’s Losing Feeling EP found the Californian noise-rock duo discover a new-found restraint – ‘Aim at the Airport’ following up on the band’s promise of becoming more sample and loop-driven, its fragile static reminiscent of the rolling ambience of Tim Hecker. You can practically hear the blog band prejudice melt away with every dissipating loop; every crackle of found sound.

49: COOLY G
‘LOVE DUB’
(HYPERDUB)

Not to be all ‘we told you so’ (really, we’re not), but we did say Cooly would be the producer to watch this year back in December of ’08. Since then she’s become part of Kode 9′s Hyperdub roster, been profiled on every One to Watch or Future 50 going, played DJ sets all over the world and had various tracks touted as single of the year. This slot could have gone to several tracks – not least the adamantium house of ‘Dubplated’, which is so overlooked it’s obscene – but we ended up going with ‘Love Dub’, the hushed B-side to her Hyperdub debut.

48: THE MAYFAIR SET
‘DESERT FUN’
(CAPTURED TRACKS)

Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls, two of the year’s finest purveyors of fuzz-soaked indie rock, teamed up for this 7″ on Dogs’ Captured Tracks label, further pushing their girl/boy vocal dynamic to something conjuring up images of a Bonnie & Clyde road movie dynamic.

47: WALTER JONES
‘LIVING WITHOUT YOUR LOVE’
(DFA)

Mysterious New Orleans producer Walter Jones furnished DFA with one of their strongest 12″ releases of 2009. The attention-grabber for most was the Art of Noise-meets-Dam-Funk boogie jam ‘I’ll Keep On Loving You’, but we fell harder for the B-side. Faster and more straightforward, it teamed a sonorous, diffident female vocal refrain with boogie-down bass, ringing guitar licks and high-tog synth pads for the ultimate tear-jerking disco groove. Totally immediate, and totally irresistible – even your mum would like it.

46: RUSTIE
‘BAD SCIENCE’
(WIREBLOCK)

We had to wait almost a year for Rustie to deliver the “proper” follow-up to his magisterial debut Jagz The Smack, but the months of thumb-twiddling and nose-picking were worth it. Bad Science was, as Glaswegian parlance would have it, absolutely beast – Rustie’s trademark squirming, squelching crunk beats boosted by an insane arpeggiated synth riff that became 2009′s most recognisable and devastating dancefloor hook.

45: RUNAWAY
‘CAPRICE DRIVE’
(MULE MUSIQ)

New York’s Jacques Renault delivers arguably a career best, sanding down the lush DFA/Rong-style disco-house sound he’s known for into something rougher and more direct – more techno.

44: ONI AYHUN
OAR 003 – SIDE B
(OAR)

A strange techno curio, nothing ground-breaking per se but hypnotic and totally addictive all the same. It’s hard to account for its familiarity; it’s certainly not dissimilar to Four Tet’s excellent Ringer EP from last year but a little less precious and a lot more danceable, its up-peeling arpeggios underscored by heavy, jabbing bass.

43: PEARSON SOUND
‘WAD’
(HESSLE AUDIO)

Call it UK funky’s influence, but 2009 saw dubstep’s more forward-thinking quarters rely more than ever on their percussion – as opposed to heavy sub-bass or cutting mid-range – to move crowds. Ramadanman, here using his Pearson Sound alias, was arguably the most effective practitioner of this movement; ‘Wad’ a minimal masterpiece that utilised little more than sweeping drum patterns and chopped up vocals.

42: MIKE BONES
‘WHAT I HAVE LEFT’
(SOCIAL REGISTRY)

New Jersey singer/songwriter Mike Bones’ album A Fool For Everyone was no Funeral, but its first single ‘What I Have Left’ was arguably the closest thing this year had to an Arcade Fire single, with weeping strings flying high above a driving bassline and jangling keys.

41: PANGAEA
‘MEMORIES’
(MEMORIES)

Pangaea might not be as prolific as his peers Ramadanman and Untold, but when he releases a single he always seems to deliver. Last year’s ‘Router’ featured high on our 2008 list, and this year’s ‘Memories’ was on a similar tip: combining a dramatic soul vocal with wraithlike garage.

But best of all ‘Memories’ has that one note, the one that appears every four bars, sticks in your head and guarantees you’ll spend the rest of the track counting down to every occurrence of it. You’ll know what I mean if you’ve heard it. Note of the year? How fucking micro is that?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.