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90: BJØRN TORSKE
FEIL KNAPP
(SMALLTOWN SUPERSOUND, 2007)
In a decade where the “cosmic disco” sound of Lindstrom and Prins Thomas was endlessly exalted, many overlooked the related and arguably more impressive work of their friend and fellow Norwegian, Bjorn Torske. His Feil Knapp LP – despite bearing one of the least promising front covers in the history of recorded music – astounds with its simple compositional brilliance, its sense of fun and of free-roaming adventure. Dub is as much of a component as disco: the bass is fat and foregrounded in every tune, and ‘Kapteinens Skegg’ and ‘Spelunker’ are fully-fledged (if rather camp) journeys into the dancehall. Throw in shades of Morricone, pastoral folk, krautrock and Detroit techno, and you have yourself a rangy and captivating listen. Special mention, though, is reserved for ‘Hatten Passer’, which effortlessly outstrips ‘Young Folks’ as whistling track of the decade. [Kiran Sande]
89: ZOMBY
WHERE WERE U IN 92?
(WERK DISCS, 2008)
Zomby – one of the second half of the decade’s most reliably intriguing and inspiring producers – has only released one full album, a modern take on early ’90s hardcore built on an AKAI S2000 sampler and an old version of Cubase running on an Atari ST. Blade Runner, Street Fighter, Gucci Mane, ‘The Bouncer’ and more were sampled on this air horn-heavy exercise in rave-digging. [Tom Lea]
88: MICHAEL MAYER
IMMER
(KOMPAKT, 2002)
Mayer’s seminal mix CD gathered up the obscure sounds of disparate producers within the nascent German microhouse scene and thrillingly laid them end-to-end. In so doing he laid a pathway that led to Berghain, Villalobos and the dominance of minimal in techno clubs from Lille to Ljubljana. [Justin Toland]
87: NO AGE
NOUNS
(SUB POP, 2008)
Still the best record to come from this whole new LA thing, No Age’s first album proper saw Dean Spunt and Randy Randall channel Big Black, Weezer and everything in between into a sonic swamp of sludge-heavy riffs, broken channels, fuzzy ambience and some of the catchiest rock songs of the decade: ‘Brain Burner’ and ‘Here Should Be My Home’ particular highlights. [Tom Lea]
86: COCOROSIE
LA MAISON DE MON REVE
(TOUCH & GO, 2004)
Sierra and Bianca Cassady have spoken about being at their most creative in “pure isolation”, and that never came through more than on their first album together. Recorded in a bathtub and originally distributed amongst close friends only, La Maison de mon Reve tried to make sense of love, sexuality, religion and more and failed, emerging from its conception sleepy-eyed and even more confused. Dream-pop, but not as we knew it. [Tam Gunn]
85: REKID
MADE IN MENORCA
(SOUL JAZZ, 2006)
Matt Edwards has made a lot of fine music as Radio Slave and as one half of Quiet Village, but Rekid – his more self-consciously experimental project – has yielded some of the most interesting work. At the time of its release, journalists and record stores were quick to attach the tag of “smack-house” to Made In Menorca; sure, there’s a certain opiated haze about it, and the BPMs are wonderfully sluggish, but the debut full-length from Rekid is too alive and dynamic to deserve such an epithet. Better to describe it simpkly as a dark Balearic dance record – one that takes in abstract dub (‘Diamond Black’), rolling hip-hop (‘Tranzit’), trippy, malevolent synth-disco (’85 Space’) and, in ‘Retroactive’, one of the most sublime, blissed-out house tracks of this or any other decade. [Ben Baglin]
84: ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS
I AM A BIRD NOW
(SECRETLY CANADIAN, 2005)
There are few tools better shaped to explore the extremes of human experience than the voice of Antony Hegarty. The NYC-based singer would have stood out in any era, but in a decade where AutoTune pretty much owned pop music his excruciated wail – one minute soaring sonorously above the clouds, the next trembling fearfully beneath the duvet – seemed especially human and powerful. From the cover art on in (Peter Hujar’s portrait of Candy Darling on her deathbed) I Am A Bird Now – the second album by Hegarty and his band – is a morbid affair, but that voice consistently finds notes of hope in the key of despair. This, then, is an album of sumptuous, celebratory sadness – and those, as we all know, don’t come around very often. [Marie Kelly]
83: GHOSTFACE KILLAH
SUPREME CLIENTELE
(RAZOR SHARP, 2000)
“Scientific, my hand kissed it / Robotic let’s think optimistic / You prolly missed it watch me dolly dick it.” God knows how many ex-skaters spent the fist half of this decade making slightly embarrassing ‘abstract’ hip-hop, but on Supreme Clientele the Wu Tang’s MVP gets weirder than all of them, and still sounds ghetto. “Apollo kids live to spit the real” indeed. [Chris Campbell]
82: BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE
YOU FORGOT IT IN PEOPLE
(ARTS & CRAFTS, 2003)
On the surface, You Forgot It In People was off-putting: members of Stars, Silver Mt Zion, Metric and the rest of the Montreal indie brigade getting together to make a ‘pop album’, as if their past credits meant it’d be better than other pop albums simply on merit. Problem was, it was: blending post-rock rollercoasters (’KC Accidental’) with trance-pop lullabies (’Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl’), tribal dream-noise (’Shampoo Suicide’) and some cracking four minute rock songs to boot. [Jay Shockley]
81: NEIL LANDSTRUMM
SHE TOOK A BULLET MEANT FOR ME
(TRESOR, 2001)
In which UK techno’s foremost historian conjures up a demented scrapheap of trashy breakbeat, gun-metal electro and some of the hardest industrial techno, synth-pop, funk and hip-hop known to man. She Took A Bullet Meant For Me is brilliantly cheap: its tribal percussion sounding like cranes hammering sheet metal, its synths rusted and oxidized, dripping in oil. Dystopian dance music that still bangs. [Kevin Smart]
