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best albums of 2013
Quick list this year... Ambient / drone (alpha by album) Aquarelle, August Undone Mountains, Centralia RAUM (Liz Harris, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma), Event Of Your Leaving Olan Mill, Hiraeth Stephan Mathieu, Un Cœur simple Andrew Weathers Ensemble, What Happens When We Stop Seaworthy / Taylor Deupree, Wood, Winter, Hollow
The Andrew Weathers Ensemble album—my album of the year this year—is a really interesting blend of drone and folk: it slows down traditional American music until gloriously deep trance-spaces open up in its interstices. Check it out!
Other (alpha by album) Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City Lorde, Pure Heroine Kanye West, Yeezus Labels: lists, music_commentary
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
the year in music: 2011
Whoops, hey, it's getting a little bit on the late side to be posting my "best albums of 2011," but what the heck. I found it tough to rank these, as each of them covers very different sonic ground, and so I'm opting for a straight alpha-by-artist list. But honestly I thought it a very fine year for music. Julianna Barwick, The Magic Place. I tweeted something mid-year about how when I open my secular megachurch I will invite Julianna Barwick to sing there every week. Her looped constructions are impossibly lovely, some of the most consoling and comforting sounds I've yet heard humans make. I loved her 2009 album Florine but had my doubts about whether she'd be able to expand her sound meaningfully on a new, longer album: never have I been so pleased to be proven wrong. James Blake, James Blake. One of two albums this year that aggressively disassembled and reassembled the popular song. (Blake's is the one that is wintry, quiet, introspective, narcissistic, and quintessentially British.) Required listening if you want to affirm that there's still life in the Song. The Field, Looping State of Mind. Bliss-out repetitive dance music. The weird wordless vocals, new to this album, add an important level of emotional resonance that I'm not sure the Field has ever reached before. And thus Axel Willner gets ever closer to producing music that's as crucial to the heart as, say, this. Not quite there yet, but it's within reach. Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972. For around ten years now, abstract electronic musician Tim Hecker has been making music that skirted close to being excellent but never quite broke into that upper tier. But then this album came along, and I'm not alone in calling it Hecker's masterpiece. I'm not sure if it was the unusual circumstances of the recording (the base tracks for the album were captured from a pipe organ in an Icelandic church) or the help from producer Ben Frost (a quality abstract electronic musician in his own right). But it doesn't matter. This is the one. Bon Iver, Bon Iver. It took me a while to figure out what this album was doing, and I'm still not sure I endorse all its choices. But the key, for me, was to stop trying to figure out what Bon Iver was saying, or what he was singing about, and appreciate his voice as a textural element, in the same way that, say, one appreciates Liz Fraser's voice on those 1980s Cocteau Twins albums. This makes all the care and detail lavished on the album's other textural elements suddenly leap into focus, and you begin to think that maybe he's developing these little soundworlds as an attempt to establish himself as the true heir to 4AD-style art rock, instead of as a contemporary folk-inflected songwriter like, say, Sam Beam from Iron and Wine. Jacaszek, Glimmer. I once wrote that Treny, Jacaszek's 2008 album, sounded like "what house music would sound like if house music emerged from a pre-industrial Eastern European castle instead of from the dance floors of post-industrial Detroit." Needless to say, I was a big fan, and I worried that this follow-up wouldn't scratch the same itch. But it totally does. A fantastically crepuscular record. It uses a harpsichord. Plus it has the best cover art of the year. Minamo, Documental. Minamo albums have made my best-of-year roundups as long ago as 2002 and as recently as 2010; once I said that they made music that was in"maximum accordance with a very fine-grained model of my aesthetic tastes." With each new album they continue to modify their sound, and by now they've emerged as some of the most mature and confident practitioners of the gentle (and occasionally incredibly harsh) electroacoustic improvisational music I've loved for a decade now. (Honorable mention: Fourcolor's As Pleat, the 2010 solo release by Minamo's Keiichi Sugimoto, which has many of the same strengths.) Oneohtrix Point Never, Replica. Garbled constructions made from nostalgia-inducing shards; a great, stuttering, broken vision of the future. Difficult to take in large doses, but undeniably the work of either a visionary talent or a defective robotic anthropologist. tUnE-yArDs, W H O K I L L. One of two albums this year that aggressively disassembled and reassembled the popular song. (Garbus' is the one that is summery, loud, other-directed, political, and quintessentially American.) Required listening if you want to affirm that there's still life in the Song. Tuusanuuskat, Nääksää Nää Mun Kyyneleet. I don't know what's in the water over there, but for the last decade or so Finland's experimental music scene, loosely grouped around the influential Fonal label, has been producing some of the most uncharacterizable inventions, a kind of demented blend of noise, tribal rock, children's percussion, sing-along song, and whatever else they can jam into the mix. This album represents a collaboration between two of the key figures from that scene, Fonal label head Sami Sänpäkkilä (who records under the name Es) and Jan Anderzen, one of the art-damaged Kemialliset Ystävät crew. Difficult listening, yet every second is a clear manifestation of genius. Or maybe madness. Criminally overlooked. Labels: lists, music_commentary
Monday, January 09, 2012
last year: best music of 2010
One nice by-product of maintaining this blog is it provides a space for year-end reflection. At the end of last year, however, this blog was on hiatus, so I didn't get the opportunity to go through my normal process. I did post my ten favorite albums of the year on Twitter, so if you're following me over there you may have seen them flit by. But I'd like to put my picks someplace less ephemeral, so in the name of "better late than never," I'll be firing out a few posts over the next few... weeks [?], which will discuss some of my favorite albums of 2010, in no particular order. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Social Network Two soundtracks. Exhibit A is the score for one of the most critically-acclaimed films of the year. Exhibit B is for a tiny documentary that hasn't yet enjoyed wide release. Nor are the albums especially similar in terms of their instrumental palettes: McBride's album is focused on strings (and string-like drones), whereas Reznor's is more synthesizer-oriented—although the brief piano lines that cross through some of the album's central tracks could wander over to the Social Network soundtrack without anybody raising any eyebrows. For instance: brian mcbride 'supposed essay on the piano b major piano adagietto' by kranky And yet, despite their differences, the two albums make a fine pair in terms of their emotional kinship: they are both grand in a subtle, melancholy way that has almost no kinship to the crudely manipulative gestures of most contemporary film soundtrack work. Neither one has especially large ambitions, which I find part of their appeal: it's a pleasant surprise to find Trent Reznor making interesting, sad little miniatures like these... Soft Trees Break the Fall by nullcorp ...instead of big noisy bombastic anthems that try to burn down the world (although he did that this year too). Labels: music_commentary
Sunday, February 13, 2011
roadtrip music
Have been spending time this week digging through my current iTunes library (~12,000 songs) looking for the tracks that sound the best when on the road. Have come up with an "On The Road" playlist of around 2,400 songs. Now I just need a six-day roadtrip to test it all out. [Note: I don't actually prefer giant playlists like that; they're too unshapely. So the On The Road playlist will actually form the raw material from which iTunes will auto-generate a "Smart Road Playlist," which will be a more-manageable 25 songs in total. So it can really be tested out perfectly fine on a shorter roadtrip of about two hours.] Anyone want to recommend a favorite album to listen to while driving? Labels: music_commentary, personal, projects
Sunday, April 04, 2010
10 albums from 2009
10. Jason Crumer, Walk With Me 9. Fuck Buttons, Tarot Sport 8. Mountains, Choral 7. Sunn O))), Dimensions and Monoliths 6. The Antlers, Hospice 5. Freelance Whales, Weathervanes 4. Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 3. Gregg Kowalsky, Tape Chants 2. Dan Deacon, Bromst 1. Jónsi and Alex, Riceboy Sleeps Happy New Year to all. Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Sunday, January 03, 2010
aught music: 2009: "drunk as fuck: by tittsworth
Way back when the Aught Music blog was covering 2000, I wrote about the Queens of the Stone Age's track "Feel Good Hit of the Summer," noting that it describes "a lifestyle so hedonistic that it would kill the majority of its listeners very quickly were they to adopt it." I also wrote that the track "evokes a special type of vicarious pleasure in the listener's head," and that this process was "is one of the reasons popular music even exists in the first place." Hip-hop, of course, excels at the creation of very dense constellations of incantations and images that trigger the vicarious-pleasure parts of listener's brains: this, in fact, forms a key part of its appeal. A great example might be Tittsworth's "Drunk As Fuck," which celebrates just about every taboo one can think of: from the reeling intoxication identified in the track's title to, uh, genital torture. Anti-social? Sure. Take it seriously and it's actually disturbing. But take it as an opportunity to temporarily put on the costume of someone irresponsible and dangerous—to become "the king of all sleazy things" without any risk to one's self—and it yields a very concentrated form of ridiculous delight. Listen: Tittsworth >> "Drunk As Fuck [Top Billin Remix]" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Saturday, December 26, 2009
aught music: 2009: "lisztomania" by phoenix
I spent a lot of time this year listening to this song and trying to make some sense out of its lyrics. The opening couplet reveals some sense of the futility of this task: So sentimental If the underlying rhythm and melody weren't so joyous and energetic, one could mistake this tiny packet of self-canceling non-referentiality for a very compact Samuel Beckett play. The refrain doesn't exactly clarify matters: Lisztomania Um, OK? There's at least a noun here, relatively close to the pronoun... so... is this a song about the composer? Or about this film? Or... is "Lisztomania" a stand-in for popular manias of all sorts? That helps the "riot" lines to make sense, and maybe the thing about the "masses," but it doesn't really help with the stuff about being not hard to offend, or reveal anything akin to a point of view… And so it went. The opacity of the song (the entire album, actually) bugged me, and then all it once it didn't anymore. When I was able to accept the lyrical content as rather inspired word salad, it freed me up to enjoy the album's bittersweet, nostalgic elation, which is actually communicated to the listener with absolute clarity. Listen: Phoenix >> "Lisztomania" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Thursday, December 24, 2009
aught music: 2009: "luscious voluptuous pregnant" by jason crumer
Jason Crumer's Walk With Me is my favorite noise album of the year: it's an almost perfect hybrid of scouring intensity and measured restraint. (The first five or so minutes of this track—an irregularly looping set of piano motifs—sounds like it could have been an early Terry Riley piece or something from an academic conservatory.) Fineness notwithstanding, it still feels wrong to publicly admire a track with a title like "Luscious Voluptuous Pregnant," sort of like discussing one's own fetish(es) in mixed company. But, uh, I actually think it's a great title—sexy in a sort of upside-down way—and a good sign that noise music (even measured, restrained noise music) hasn't lost its sense of the taboo. Listen: Jason Crumer >> "Luscious Voluptuous Pregnant" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Monday, December 21, 2009
aught music : 2008 : "the healer" by erykah badu
I wasn't actually a huge fan of Erykah Badu's 2008 album New Amerykah—but this track, "The Healer," was, to my mind, the single most invigorating piece of music the year had to offer. Badu's decision to marry the concepts of healing and pop music isn't in and of itself very interesting: any number of lesser talents could take those two ideas and emerge with a garden-variety homily about the enduring power of music. The greatness of this track comes from Badu's decision to use this framework as a structure into which to jam all sorts of left-field weirdness, ending up with a salvo that's a deeply compelling mish-mash of metaphysics, resistance politics, science fiction, and what may or may not be pure nonsense: The lyrical content is a great fit with Madlib's stoned-sounding production, last appreciated on this blog here. Listen: Erykah Badu >> "The Healer" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
aught music : 2008 : "red light' by rod modell
If Jacaszek's "Lament," which I wrote about not long ago, is like what house music would sound like if it emerged from a Transylvanian castle, then Rod Modell's blurred, smeary track "red light" is what house music would sound like if someone were playing it to you in an attempt to bring you out of a very deep drug-induced coma. Listen: Rod Modell >> "red light" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Saturday, December 05, 2009
aught music : 2008 : "lament" by jacaszek
Treny, the 2008 album by Jacaszek, can perhaps best be described by saying that it's what house music would sound like if house music emerged from a pre-industrial Eastern European castle instead of from the dance floors of post-industrial Detroit. (Or you can say it's like that band Enigma, only good.) Gloomy, crepuscular, capital-R Romantic, and pretentious: this is the kind of music that puts me in touch with my sexiest inner Goth. Envision blood and candlelight. Listen: Jacaszek >> "Lament" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Monday, November 30, 2009
aught music: 2008: "bedroom costume" by natalie portman's shaved head
For as much as pop music ostensibly concerns itself with physicality and sexuality, it's surprisingly rare to find songs that really evoke the particulars of erotic exchange with any degree of specificity. So when I find one, I end up appreciating it with special zeal. Remember 2001, when I posted "Love With The Three of Us," to my knowledge the world's only great song about menage-a-trois? Anyway, now we're in 2008, and here's "Bedroom Costume," which is likely the world's only great song about the mutually beneficial relationship between a voyeur and an exhibitionist. Note especially the moment when the exhibitionist finally delivers her version of events, around 1:30—it's a moment that's equal parts heartbreaking sweetness and unbearable erotic ferment. Listen: Natalie Portman's Shaved Head >> "Bedroom Costume" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Sunday, November 29, 2009
aught music: 2008: "time to pretend" by mgmt
Let's make some music Earlier this fall, I sent the following to Twitter: OK, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the song isn't really about marrying models--the title alone gives that away. But it should still be possible to write a song about pretending to be a huge success that would be a sort of free-wheeling celebration of lavish fantasy, and that isn't really what this song does either. In fact, on one level the song actually functions as a critique of the imagination, presenting it ultimately as a withdraw from the pleasures, sensations and interpersonal connections provided by existence: I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms And yet the song's crowning touch is its assertion that, even despite these many sacrifices, total withdraw into insular fantasy ultimately remains preferable to bearing the disappointments of reality: The song takes a familiar rock-star fantasy, and by looking at it from a slightly different angle, reveals the suicidal ideation at its heart. This is genius at its bleakest, a glossy, upbeat anthem that seems intended for blasting on infinite repeat as you prepare your overdose. Listen: MGMT: "Time To Pretend" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
aught music: 2007: "paper planes" by m.i.a.
Back when the Aught Music blog was covering 2005, I wrote that M.I.A. might be the Artist of the Decade, in part because she was the living embodiment of a number of important trends that defined music in the Aughts more broadly. To see that logic continue to play out, one need merely examine the rise of "Paper Planes." It was released on M.I.A.'s second album, Kala, in 2007, but wasn't the lead single. (That was the likably weird "Boyz.") This track lay dormant until used as the backing track for the Pineapple Express trailer in early 2008, whereupon it blew up in a big way, permeating the culture until even the people who are arguably the biggest musical superstars in the world had to pay tribute. It's easy to see why: the second "Paper Planes" starts playing (about a minute in) is the exact moment this trailer starts to become cool: Once upon a time it may have been possible to keep your categories separate: movie trailers over here, viral YouTube clips over here, music videos over here, commercials over there. But the Pineapple Express trailer neatly collapses all of these categories: I'd say that it single-handedly sold more copies of "Paper Planes" than any commercial could have, except that it actually is a commercial, for both the movie and the song. Except that it isn't. Except that it is. One might see this as dispiriting: straight-up evidence that capitalism continues to mutate and evolve, spawning ever more pervasive forms. (The fact that the explicit topic of "Paper Planes" is the circulation of capital can be read as a crowning irony.) Or one might see it as a symbol of the unpredictability and ultimate richness of cultural cross-transmission. Probably it's a little of both, but the fact that a simple dance track can invoke these kinds of questions pretty much exemplifies the enjoyment that I derived from M.I.A. this decade. Listen: M.I.A., "Paper Planes" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Monday, November 16, 2009
aught music: 2007 : "sexfaldur" by amiina
If M.I.A.'s Arular was the first album I ever bought on the strength of tracks downloaded from MP3 blogs, then Amiina's Kurr was the first album I ever bought on the strength of hearing tracks through a streaming music service, specifically Last.fm, one of those websites that builds up a profile of what you've listened to in the past and then puts algorithms to work all in the name of figuring out what else you might want to hear. You liked Band X? You might like Band Y. That sort of thing. The fact that these services exist still strikes me as quite amazing. Some virtual bot somewhere is hard at work identifying patterns in some vast torrent of data, just waiting for me to query it as to what it thinks I'll like? Even if the outputted results were crap, this would still qualify as a sign that we're living in a piece of science fiction. The fact that the outputted results are good— that a band like Amiina was among the first results the service ever gave me —is even more stirring: it fills me not just with wonder but also hope. We're in the future, and it isn't totally broken! Amiina is a group comprised of four women, best known for their occasional service as Sigur Ros' backing band. Their music has all the elements that I admire in Sigur Ros— mystery, grandeur, icy beauty —with very little of the (masculine?) showboating that I sometimes detect in Sigur Ros' work: consequently, they're pretty much a perfect band to serve my way. There will be some people who lament a culture in which people get our music recommendations not from other people but from robots. That may, in fact, be why you're here, reading this. So this is me, a fellow human, telling you that I think you should buy this record. Listen: Amiina >> "Sexfaldur" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Monday, November 09, 2009
aught music: 2007 : "superheroes" by the toxic avenger
In the last years of the decade, I went back to listening to a lot of electronic dance music. Dormant since the late 1990s, this love was re-awakened by my discovery of terrific European techno acts like Daft Punk and Justice. Try as I might, I just can't resist this kind of music: my response to it, in fact, borders on the Pavlovian. Give me some fat synth lines and some dance-floor-destroying beats and my brain automatically responds by flooding my mesolimbic reward pathway with massive amounts of dopamine. Shameful, really. Perhaps my reaction can be best illustrated with an audio-visual aid. Here's a video of myself dancing (in disguise no less!) to "Superheroes 2007," a track by The Toxic Avenger, an act who's less well-known than some of the other French techno practicioners, but every bit as fantastic. (Special thanks to K. for introducing me to him.) (part of the Top Secret Dance Off) I believe that my rubbery, blurry flailings say everything there is to say that's good about this music. Listen: The Toxic Avenger >> "Superheroes 2007" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Friday, November 06, 2009
aught music: 2007 : "friday night at the drive-in bingo" by jens lekman
Euro heart-throb Jens Lekman has an outsized personality, and that personality seems sometimes to be an equal mix of arrogance and self-deprecation. This is a combination that understandably makes him hard for some people to take, but to dismiss him too fast would be an error: he has unquestionable gifts as a song-writer, and his best tracks are characterized by sharp wit and a precision of observation which remains all too rare in the indie-pop scene. Night Falls Over Kortedala, the 2007 follow-up to his well-regarded 2005 album Oh You're So Silent, Jens, misses as often as it hits, but it ends on the great "Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo," a track which trenchantly sketches the way urban hipster youngsters like himself think about small-town life. Lekman points out the way that he/we cheerfully fetishize half-imagined "quaint" qualities of "the country," while simultaneously imagining ways that we can transform it into something more hipster-friendly, a process that would annihilate whatever sense of difference drew us there in the first place. Clever, insightful, and spry: it's songs like this that draw me to Lekman and keep me coming back. Listen: Jens Lekman >> "Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
aught music: 2006: "once again" by girl talk
I hesitate to say that 2006 was the year that mash-ups "grew up," because a youthful insouciance—even a brattiness—is really central to a good mash-up. It's not a form that can really be said to "mature." But 2006 was the year, it seems to me, that a few people began to realize that if they wanted to stand out they were going to need to do more than just line up a vocal track with a backing track that kinda fit with it in some kinda funny way. They were going to need to do much more. They were going to need to take it to a whole new level. Of the people who tried to complexify the form, the most impressive, for my money, was DJ Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, whose average track combines not two but dozens of culture's most memorable hooks, utterances and incantations. I wouldn't ever have thought that I'd buy an entire album of mash-ups, but Gillis' Night Ripper (2006) provides a pleasure-yield so concentrated that it easily qualifies as one of my favorites of the decade. Listen: Girl Talk >> "Once Again" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Monday, October 19, 2009
aught music: 2006: "georgia... bush" by lil wayne
I still have a difficult time writing or even thinking coherently about Hurricane Katrina and its impact. I remember spending hours online in 2005, reading the news reports, my sensation of horror growing wider and deeper as the disaster unfolded. I strained to get a mental handle on the full scope of it, but never quite managed, certainly not enough to develop anything meaningful to say. Fortunately, other people persevered where I quailed, and we now have our share of relevant statements on Katrina. If I were going to pick one song that "says something" lasting about the disaster, I'd choose Lil Wayne's "Georgia...Bush," a track that serves as quality evidence of Chuck D's famous assertion that hip-hop is the "CNN of Black America." In just under four minutes, Wayne discusses governmental incompetence at both the national and local levels, logistical difficulties for returning residents, conspiracy theories about the levees, and 1965’s Hurricane Benson. Wayne's political invective is satisfyingly inflammatory, but ultimately his verses provide no catharsis: he lingers on images of misery and death, leaving a lasting sensation only of irreperable harm, a thing that his anger—and ours—can't erase. Listen: DJ Drama and Lil Wayne >> "Georgia...Bush" Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Friday, October 16, 2009
aught music: 2006: "morning tones" by m. rosner
It's easier than ever to be a completist. The Internet makes it easy to track down a band's complete discography, and digital distribution hubs like the iTunes Music Store make it easy to cherry-pick far-flung tracks from B-sides, undesirable soundtracks, or weird compilations. But the completist bug never really bit me. There are lots of artists that I like, but no artist that I like with such intensity that I've felt compelled to track down everything they ever released. I did, however, feel glimmers of that completist feeling in my relationship to a record label in the mid-Aughts, specifically Apestaartje, a Brooklyn-based electroacoustic label with an unweildy name (I'm still not sure how it's pronounced). Apestaartje's release history began in 1998, and by 2006 they were essentially my favorite label: I owned most (but not all) of their back catalog, and I would unquestioningly purchase any new record that they released. M. Rösner's Morning Tones appears to be the label's final release (it came out in 2006 and nothing new has appeared since). Inasmuch as there can be a fitting way to close up shop, this album is it: it encapsulates everything that the label does well. Specifically: it arranges sounds that are clearly made by computers (sustained drones and busy chattering) next to sounds made by what I consider the most lovely of the acoustic instruments (acoustic guitar, piano, violin, and what may be an accordion). Specifically: it is minimalist, delicate, vaguely pastoral, a little bit sad. Even the title works as something of a small manifesto for the label, in the way that it uses the humble everyday beauty suggested by the adjective morning to humanize the slightly cerebral and abstract noun tones. I’m sad to see the label disappear, and sad to feel my nascent completist impulse come to an end, but every morning I wake to a playlist that contains most of the Apestaartje records, and I can confirm that they make a very satisfying set of morning tones indeed. Listen: M. Rösner >> "Morning Tones" PS: As I wrote this post, I used time-lapse screen capturing software to record my writing process. It may entertain some of you to see the thing claw its way into sense: Labels: audio_commentary, mp3s, music_commentary
Monday, October 12, 2009
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