So like any self respecting blog I'll post my end of year tracks. Actually this is sort of the best time of year for blogs - If you surf around a bit, you'll find all the good tidbits of the year. Not sure if it's been one of the better years, but a lot of good stuff has surfaced. Considering this has been a year of the clash I'm amazed at the relatively few classics that have been born of that genre.
Without further delay the top 15 for 2008:
15 - Wale - W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E. In a year dominated by Justice this was clearly the best version of twee-house classic D.A.N.C.E. Wale effortlessly rides the beat in way normally reserved for Michael Laudrup dribbling down the center of Nou Camp - It's so natural you wonder why they don't do all music this way. The tracks is from the excellent Nick Catchdubs mixtape by the way - Find that if you haven't already.
14 - Rex The Dog - Circulate (JBAG Edit) It wasn't the year everyone was hoping for - Rex didn't conquer the world with easy digestible eighties electrobeats. The natural crown prince of Mylo didn't have a huge output and ended up being forgotten. This track is fire though - Great buildups and hopelessly lost in 1984!
13 - Junior Boys - Like a Child (Carl Craig) A remix that only the Craig could provide - One of the best structures of a song for years, the little freak out at the end pure genious.
12 - Copyfokking - Knippelsuppe Knippelsuppe is Danish for a police beating with night sticks which is the perfect description of this song. Slow and powerful, it's gonna beat you into submission. Like an evil mute twin of the Knife's Heartbeats, it comes sneaking up upon you and whammo! Down you go.
11 - Rufus Wainwright - Tiergarten (Supermayer Remix) The Supermayer was not as good as I'd hoped, but this track makes up for that. It's delicate and done with the utmost sensitivety. The sneaking beat, Rufus' voice, the point where the bass drum kicks in, the sound of rain, the highlights are numerous, if this song had been released earlier this year, it would have been my number one.
10 - Kleerup feat. Robyn - With Every Heartbeat Seems like we have to have one good song about a beating heart every year from one of the Nordic countries. I'm not complaining, if they can keep up this standard then it's a good tradition.
9 - Superpitcher - Lick The Pipe This was the perfect start to the year (or maybe end of last year). Superpitcher remains vital, interesting and of tune. It's understated as hell, while still maintaining a powerful beat. It's not peak-hours, but I'd love to listen to it anytime.
8 - Junior Senior - Headphone Song The grocely unnoticed Junior Senior EP Say Hello, Wave Goodbye had what I rate as some of JS's best material. Finally they deliver their B52's promise of protein positive dance rock. This song is one long chorus which you wish would never end.
7 - R-Kelly - Real Talk do I know your friend who? at a club? who was there? Girl I wouldn't... wait a minute, calm down. I was at the club with who? Get tha fuck...man, u know what. Girl I'm not about to sit up here and argue with you about who's to blame. I call no names, real talk. See girl, only thing I'm trying to establish with you is not who's right or who's wrong, but what's right and what's wrong, real talk!
6 - M.I.A. - Paper Planes M.I.A.'s was anticipated by quite a few blogs, communication managers, fashion designers, music magazines and other people peddling hot air and trends. Thankfully these balloons of hot weren't as hollow as one could fear, and Kala was actually almost better than the first album. Paper Planes with it's Straight to Hell sample and cash registers and gunshots the stand out track.
5 - Burial - Etched Headplate Burials new record was tremendous. This is the best sound of the big city I've heard in years. Etched Headplate is the prime example of the soulful twist of the new album, and it's the sound of England anno 2008.
4 - LCD Soundsystem - All of My Friends Great album which should have lodged them in popular mainstream, more funky than Le Chic and more electronic than Kraftwerk. All of My Friends the happy killer song on a killer dance album - in the future all music will sound this way! Honorable mentions go to Get Innocuous of this album as well.
3 - Hot Chip - Ready for the Floor Do it, do it, do it now, say it, say it, say it now. I'm totally excited by the prospect of a new Hot Chip album - on iTunes my most played song this year is still Over and Over which is pretty telling. This is the preview of the album released in January I think.
2 - The Field - A Paw In My Face Everyone loves this song. It's easy to digress into some intellectual discussion on the Lionel Ritchie ending, but in all fairness this just a perfect piece of pop-music. It's like racing down and uncoiling a ball of yarn, finally you succeed, and you're left hanging there in mid-space. Best ending of a song this year.
1 - Arcade Fire - Keep The Car Running One my top highlights of this year was this song at an otherwise pis wet Roskilde Festival. Exuberant, joyful, catchy like hell.
Now if I could just get rid of the feeling of having forgotten something... Oh yeah and for the zombie lovers among you: sorry, couldn't find a link between Mike Ness and Distortion Disco.
And for those of you who missed it - Bruce delivered Magic this year!
Every know and then a small gem just slips you by. Afterwards you kick yourself in the teeth for not taking note. It's something so good that it was too obvious for you to notice, standing there right in front of you. You tried to look behind it and over it's shoulder, but never directly at it. Then by accident you looked directly at it - You saw the truth. So clear and obvious that it was almost scary. If you could just stick with that small gem everything would be o.k.
The 12" is sadly sold out, but let me know if you find anywhere to get it.
Seriously, run this song through the checklist:
Gay - check! Superpitcher - check! Michael Mayer - check! Rain effects - check! Thunder ala Wurz + Blosse - Check! A bassline like LRD - check! +10 minuttes without being annoying - check! aahhhh voices - check! not annoyingly in our face - check!
Heck I would walk Wainwright trough the tiergarten after that.
It looks like Zoot Woman are finally getting their behinds around to releasing a new album. If you're not familiar with this great electro rock band you might be familiar with Stuart Price aka Les Rythmes Digitales aka Thin White Duke aka Jacques Lu Cont and band founders Price and Adams Blake also do remixes under the Paper Faces moniker. Zoot Woman more or less did electroclash (do you remember that genre, that's what nu-rave was called in the old days) before anyone else therefore it's naturally quite exciting when a band of this stature releases something new. Thus with no further delay from the excellent RCRD LBL-blog (A blog run by a group of massively cool labels) the first track in ages:
Zoot Woman - We won't break (Removed, get it at RCRD LBL)
for the ignorants among you, enjoy these classics:
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