Nosaj Thing – Home

Los Angeles producer Jason Chung aka Nosaj Thing returns this year with Home, the long-awaited follow up to his critically acclaimed debut Drift. A lot has happened since Drift came out in 2009 – Chung has toured extensively, playing in every major city in North America and abroad numerous times, he’s developed an excellent visual component to his live shows, he’s done remixes for the xx, Philip Glass, Portishead, Fly Lo, Kendrick Lamar and more – and now he’s finally had some much deserved downtime returning ‘home’ to record his latest record. And while it may not soar to the sonic heights of his debut, Home is a quiet yet immediately absorbing album reminiscent of early Morr Music artists like Arovane, Christian Kleine, and Lali Puna. This gives it a timeless feel, because even though it feels very much a part of the now, it also feels like it could have come out a decade ago. We’ve reached the moment in electronic music where sounds and styles are really coming full circle, and this is evident throughout Chung’s new record.

Fans may feel a bit let down upon first listen, as it is more introspective than his debut, but once they give it a spin on headphones they’ll realize it is a superbly immersive affair that flows into a smooth cohesive whole. Chung has also brought along a couple friends this time to add some vocals – Toro y Moi guests on the slowly sizzling “Try” and Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino captivates on the excellent “Eclipse/Blue”. I think the title of the album is fitting, as Chung has said it was a much more personal endeavour for him, and this is evident from the first few moments of the opening track. The beats are more subdued, the bass doesn’t wobble as much, the synths more subtle, but the overall effect is impressive in its clarity of vision.

Home is one for quiet nights, solitary walks and morning commutes, best enjoyed on headphones. It’s a slow burner of an album that has moments of real beauty and emotion, and it won this listener over real quick. Check it.

INAUDIBLE’S BEST OF 2012

INAUDIBLE is thrilled to present his 4th annual end of year listy list!

Holy shit, here we are again! As the year quickly comes to a close, I gaze out my window and watch the first winter storm of the season hit Montreal. Wistfully, I shuffle through the year in my mind, flashing back to a busy but amazing spring and the golden days of summer – of bike rides and park hangs, tennis matches and hot knives, cold beers on rooftops and falling in love. So nice. And with these memories comes snippets of sound, the summer jams I played way too loud and way too late and pissed off the neighbours. The songs that soundtracked my days and nights. With autumn came the return of the grind, the job that gets in the way of the work I really want to do, but keeps me young in the process. But there was also those crisp evening jogs, with music always pushing me, propelling me to run farther and faster. So good. And now l’hiver returns, encouraging ambient and electronic swirls and quiet guitars to join me on my weekly slog to work.

Life changes, music remains. All that to say, without further ado, let us go then, you and I…

TOP 15 ALBUMS OF 2012

15. Beach House – Bloom (Sub Pop Records)

Baltimore duo, Beach House make me feel like an adult. And for the six people who read this blog, you may have noticed over the last four years that this whole “adult thing” is something I’ve slowly been stepping into … lento, lentement, I’ve been testing the waters, and shedding away the ideals of youth I’d been stubbornly latching onto and have instead begun to embrace life as a real-live adult, and no other band plays a better soundtrack to this than Beach House.

Having a dinner party with friends who have children and own homes and drink wine instead of can beer? Play ‘em some Beach House! Parents stopping by to meet your new boyfriend or girlfriend? Pop on some Bloom! I actually gave a copy of this album to my dentist to put on while he’s drilling holes deep into some unfortunate’s maw, and guess what? The good doctor loves this shit. “Nice stuff that Beach House. It really grew on me,” he said with a grin, right before he jammed the cold needle into my jaw.

This is no way to discredit the music found on Bloom, because it showcases the duo’s finest songwriting to date. The leaps and bounds they made from Devotion to Teen Dream are now solid strides. They make being a grown-up look easy. The whole record flows smooth from appetizer to dessert, but it’s also an album that can accompany you just as nicely during a nightcap with a loved one and the snuggling that happens after…

Top Tracks: “Lazuli” and “Other People”

14. Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan (Domino Records)

I first saw Dirty Projectors play in 2009 when they opened for TV on the Radio. At the time, Bitte Orca had just been released and the indie world was a-buzz with grandiose statements about how incredible they were. The show was in Toronto’s worst venue (The Sound Academy) and I was only able to enjoy their set in a cursory way, because I was waiting for friends to show up and could not venture close to the stage. And somehow along the way after that, they ended up getting lumped in with a long list of bands that everyone says are awesome and I just haven’t listened to them: Animal Collective, Vampire Weekend, The Shins et al. Bands that seem too academic or cerebral, in the sense that they play with their minds first instead of their guts. I don’t doubt these bands aren’t great, they just didn’t appeal to my musical sensibilities at the time…

Anyway, fast forward to this summer, and my friend Mateusz is blasting “About to Die” in my kitchen on a sunny morning during Osheaga weekend and it clicked. I was swept into Dave Longstreth’s eccentric compositions, with their subtle evocation of White Album-era production. Swing Lo Magellan is all sorts of things: quirky, technical, gentle, sparse, and oddly moving. Critics have said that this is arguably the band’s most “listenable” record to date, and if so, I hope they continue in this vein rather than attempt to further complicate their sound, and as I said, play with their gut.

Top tracks: “Gun Has No Trigger” and “Dance For You”

13. Lotus Plaza – Spooky Action at a Distance (Kranky Records)

The other guitarist in Deerhunter, ya know, the shy guy who gets engulfed by the larger than life Bradford Cox? The one who just stands there and quietly rocks out? Well, his name’s Lockett Pundt, and he modestly stepped into the spotlight this year, releasing the excellent Spooky Action at a Distance under his Lotus Plaza moniker. It’s a shoegazey affair full of reverb and distortion, recalling 90’s indie bands like Superchunk, Treble Charger, and Dinosaur Jr.

It takes a few listens for the album to grow on you but once it does it reveals itself as a record that plays out beautifully from start to finish. It’s interesting to note that Spooky Action works in the same way an ambient album does, you can put it on and not hear it at all or listen carefully and get swept into every lick and hook. But I think it’s a record that needs to be listened to in its entirety, I don’t feel the songs pack the same emotional punch when listened to one at a time or out of sequence. That said, the album can feel a bit samey at times, but thankfully, that’s why we have Deerhunter.

Top tracks: “Strangers” and “Jet Out Of The Tundra”

12. Azealia Banks – Fantasea (self-released)

Blame this one on summer time – a guilty pleasure without question, but hell if it ain’t got some amazing production courtesy of Diplo, Hudson Mohawke, Araabmuzik, Ikonika, Machinedrum, and more. Around this time last year, Azealia Banks appeared out of the blogosphere with her now ubiquitous song “212”. It was an absolute earworm that showed off her talents as a singer and rapper. This year’s been a busy one for the young artist, she’s put out her 1991 EP, as well as Fantasea, and shows no sign of slowing down, as her full-length debut is set to drop in February.

As with all the new young ‘hip’ artists that explode overnight, I took Banks’ for what I thought she was, a young musician in a long line of young musicians lucky enough to have her 1,500,000 views of fame before fizzling out. But her damn name just kept popping up everywhere, and so when even my cousin Chris (a man of discerning tastes) was spouting her praises, I started putting Fantasea on while jogging, and within a few listens I was pumping my fist in the air and singing along with her. Fantasea is scattered, varied, and uneven, but there’s a lot of hands in the soup at this point, and Banks is still trying different things and figuring out her style…and while she’s figuring things out she’s having a hell of a fun time doing it. Tracks like “Luxury”, “Nathan” and “Fierce”, show her moving from deep house to disco to crunk as if it ain’t no thang. And as I mentioned earlier, she’s been fortunate to work with some of the most innovative producers out there, and so at this point the question that remains is if she is the by-product of amazing producers or the real star? Only time will tell and I’ll be listening along the way.

11. Purity Ring – Shrines (4AD)

The first of three Canadian entries on my list this year is the fast-rising duo from Edmonton, Purity Ring and their debut album, Shrines. Mixing the sensibilities of the Knife, Holy Other, Bjork, Burial, and labelmate Grimes, the young band have created a dark and moody collection of songs, with the help of processed vocals, synths, gloomy bass, and gritty yet expansive production. The lyrics throughout the record focus on the body and its organic nature, reminding us of our mortality while making us simultaneously contemplate our next move. Shrines came out in the summer but is better suited to the grey days of winter, and you can be sure it will be one I’ll be returning to during the wintry months ahead…

Top Tracks: “Lofticries” and “Crawlersout”

10. Wild Nothing – Nocturne (Captured Tracks)

Jack Tatum returned this year as Wild Nothing with his sophomore release Nocturne and makes good on his promise to amp up all that was endearing about his excellent debut Gemini. But to be honest, I was worried. After seeing his band play a dismal live show in Toronto in 2010, I was ready to cast them aside and get my 80’s/90’s fix elsewhere (Twin Shadow, Beach Fossils, Diiv, Wild Beasts). But, because I loved Gemini and the Golden Haze EP so much, I decided I had to give Nocturne a try. After my first listen I was underwhelmed, I felt the direction he had moved in was flat and the songwriting wasn’t as dynamic, but after a few more spins I realized my first impression was wrong, the songs were better written, gorgeously recorded, he’d upgraded to a live drummer, and incorporated some great strings. In short, Nocturne is a more complete album than Gemini, the songs have more meat on their bones, and don’t have to rely solely on reverb to get their point across.

Opening song “Shadow” revels in Tatum’s upgrade, with lustrous strings in between verses and a nod your head beat that makes me smile every time I hear it. “Only Heather”, “Paradise” and “The Blue Dress” all show Tatum as not just an excellent guitarist but a damn fine bass player as well. Perhaps Wild Nothing works best as a studio project and that’s fine with me, because in the end, Nocturne has proven to be one of the most consistently satisfying albums of the year for me.

9. CFCF – Exercises (Paper Bag Records)

Montreal producer Michael Silver aka CFCF returned this year with the stunning Exercises EP on Paper Bag Records. Silver has been on a bit of a run lately dropping the fantastic Night Bus mixes in 2011, in which he reinterpreted Aaliyah, Biggie, Fever Ray, Autechre and more for the wee hours of the night. But with Exercises, we see the steady maturation of Silver’s talent as a producer. The album is made up of eight keyboard based tracks that are subtle and subdued, working on loops and licks of sound that consistently surprise. Silver is able to eke out emotion, knowing that he only has to hit the right note once in a song to make his listeners feel the meditative vibe.

Silver has an ear for simple melody, letting tones and swirls of synth gently build on top of each other, and this is one reason why this album is so successful. The other is its shining star, the amazing middle point track “September”. It’s a cover of the David Sylvian track of the same name and the only song with vocals on the album. Silver’s voice sounds strong and assured, the synths mesh together perfectly, and the song packs quite an emotional punch. The first time I heard it I was on the bus in the morning and it was chilly but the sun was shining and Silver’s voice surprised me at first, reminding me a bit of Arthur Russell, and the subtle build of the production was just perfect with the hand clap beats, farting bass line, and synth stabs sounding so nice…that you can guess what happened: I got that pang, my eyes went a little watery, I had to turn my face to the window for a moment and take a breath. I had to let that tingly feeling wash over me, let it quietly remind me of all that’s good and true and possible in my life. C’est la définition of good music, my friends. I’ve since listened to it many times and can say it’s one of my favourite songs of the year, and being followed by the equally gorgeous piano based song “December” doesn’t hurt either. Every track is a winner.

Exercises is CFCF’s finest work to date and shows he is definitely an artist worth getting excited about.

8. Holy Other – Held (Tri Angle Records)

Tri Angle recording artist Holy Other released his full-length debut Held this year, and it sees him further expanding on the moody gloom of his earlier With U EP. This is a dark, dark record, one that can throw listeners for a loop upon first playthrough. On the surface it is so bleak and forlorn it seems the perfect soundtrack for the end of days we’ve been waiting for oh so eagerly…

I have a student in one of my classes who is obsessed with the apocalypse and death. 13 years old and he might as well have “memento mori” tattooed on his forearm. During a History lesson, he will shout out, “Why are we learning this? We’re all going to die soon anyways!” Or during my spiel on pollution and green living in Geography class, he’ll pipe in, “We might as well all just kill ourselves now!” I’ve had to kick him out of class a few times, mainly because it annoys me that his dark thoughts influence the other kids too. One quasi-suicidal teen in each class is more than enough thank you very much. He’s just so blasé about it all too, as if he knows his life is nothing but a short joke and he’s sitting around waiting for the punchline. Fuck he pisses me off. So, I have been trying to open his eyes to the bigger picture, trying to get him to jump over to the optimistic side of the fence, and at least see things from another perspective.

Same thing could be said for Holy Other’s Held – once I started looking at it as uplifting rather than somber, I heard it in a whole new way. Once my ears latched on to this perspective, “Love Some1” turned into perhaps the most effective love/break-up song of the year, with its haunting climactic chant “Love someone/me me me”. Title track “Held” is also a powerful and intimate cry for what we all want most, to be held, to be loved, and the subterranean vocal plea: “Hold me, ahh, love me” may sound twee within the context of this write-up, but is extremely compelling within the track. It has a way-slowed down R&B feel at the end, as if he’s drifting off to sleep happily wrapped in his loved one’s arms…

Holy Other taps into that sad, lonely, existential part of you, much in the same way that Burial does. And sometimes it’s nice to walk in the rain, to wallow a little, and with Holy Other as the soundtrack feeling moody never felt so good.

7. Luke Abbott – Modern Driveway EP (Notown Records)

Norfolk based electronic musician, Luke Abbott, released two EP’s this year, Modern Driveway in the spring, and Object is a Navigator at the beginning of December. While both reveal his refined ear for analogue craftmanship, it’s with Modern Driveway where Abbott has truly tapped into something sweet. The title track opens the album with a slow build of insistent chord stabs and a subtle 808 line that softly swells underneath the arpeggio synths like something out of halcyon mid-90′s Detroit. Abbott ekes so much emotion out of this track, it’s hard to believe he’s able to outdo himself a few tracks later, yet that’s exactly what he does with penultimate track “Carrage”. It’s a beautiful and bubbly stomper with the requisite ‘pull the beat out of the mix and drop it back in mid-point’, and although I’ve heard this technique more than countless times, Abbott does it so well here, you’ll want to play the song again and again. Interspersed between the stunners are two subdued pieces, more align with the material on his earlier record, Holkham Drones. Overall, this is one of the finest electronic releases of the year, one that begs for repeat listens, and a sure-fire sign that Luke Abbott is about to blow up big time.

6. Tame Impala – Lonerism (Modular Records)

Tame Impala returned with sophomore album Lonerism, twelve more tracks of that great psychedelic rock I fell in love with on Innerspeaker. Grabbing the listener by the neck right from the start, “Be Above It” transforms into a terrific Pink Floyd-esque mechanical drone, and with its mix of the retro and the experimental, Tame Impala are making some of the most authentic sounding “new classic rock” I’ve ever heard. This unique throwback sound is one of the things the band does so well, and I think it’s safe to say that few other bands today sound like them at all. A little further on in the album, songs like “Apocalypse Dreams” and “Why Won’t They Talk To Me” really allow frontman Kevin Parker’s songwriting abilities to shine through.

I saw Tame Impala play this summer at Osheaga and they put on a great show, trying out “Apocalypse Dreams” and the awesome “Elephant” to the delight of the crowd. Wafts of weed floated in the air for the duration of the show, and I completely zoned out in the vibe. Still, I think they’re a band better suited to an indoor venue, and so I’m looking forward to seeing them again on their tour this spring. Lonerism contains hit after hit, but in listening to only a few of the songs on the album you’d be missing out – this is one case where the whole is clearly greater than the sum of its parts. The album flows together seamlessly, with each song picking up on, and adding to, subtle parts of previous tracks. Tame Impala take Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, Sabbath, and The Beatles, mash ‘em all together and create an amazingly authentic 60’s/70’s sound that I could listen to all day. Great stuff.

5. Grimes – Visions (4AD/Arbutus)

Claire Boucher aka Grimes is 2012’s “it-girl”. Visions came out early in the year and helped catapult Boucher from local weirdo/hero to international star. Visions is a hypnotic album that expertly meshes pop sensibilities with electronica in entrancing ways. Her two big hits “Oblivion” and “Genesis” are still just as fun and immersive to listen to as they were when they first hit the interwebs a year ago. Grimes’ production brings to mind early Aphex Twin and other old Warp artists, and her voice floats in her strange falsetto above the mix, often unintelligible but no less bewitching.

Seeing her live show at The Cabaret du Mile End in Montreal was very impressive as I saw a young artist emerging before my eyes. Grimes was particularly cute and awkward on stage, seeming a bit nervous, continually asking the sound guy to “turn down the lights” and “turn up the music”. And once the lights went down and the sound went up she seemed much more in her element, letting her inhibitions go and her voice soar. And for the most part, she totally had the vocal chops live, although I did notice some voice loops assisting her once in awhile, most notably during the high parts of “Be a Body”. Production wise I was very impressed as the songs took on a grittier, darker vibe than they have on the album. The bass thumped hard, the snare pops rattled, and the synths coalesced into an analogue swirl of sound.

Later tracks on the album like “Nightmusic” and “Symphonia IX” although unassuming are arguably the strongest and most hypnotic with their subtle 4/4 beats and warm analogue production. Grimes seems to be at the forefront of a whole new wave of young electronic musicians pushing the boundaries of genre and technology. I expect big things from her in the future and think her sound will only get stronger, louder, and more particular the longer she keeps making it. Awesome album.

4. Cloud Nothings – Attack on Memory (Carpark Records)

It was on a cold day in early January when I first listened to Cloud Nothing’s debut record Attack on Memory. Before opening track “No Future/No Past” was even a minute in I was already hooked. It was like I was sixteen again, I could feel the angst and tension in Dylan Baldi’s voice, and the aggression hidden just below the surface of the band’s tight rhythm section. It made me excited to be alive, in the same way bands like Eric’s Trip or Tool or June of 44 did back in the day. That exemplary teen angst powerfully comes to a head in the refrain of the 8-minute blast of “Wasted Days”, when he screams “I thought I would be more than this!” over and over until his voice is ragged. Afterwards, they lighten the mood for the next two songs, before returning with the Drive Like Jehu-esque “Separation” and “No Sentiment”, reminding me of amazing bands like A Minor Forest, Paul Newman, and North of America with their chugging bass lines, angular guitar licks, and kick ass drums. Cloud Nothings bring to mind so many bands from the past, yet they never sound too much like one or the other, which has resulted in them paving out an indie-rock sound all their own. They are a young band quickly coming into their own and one to watch out for in the next few years.

Here’s something I’ve been pissed off about for six months now: I had tickets for their show at Casa del Popolo but missed it. It was a Friday night and me and my friend Mike were drinking a beer at his place, watching the Raptors lose on the telly, thinking if we get there by 10 we’ll be totally fine. So we get there at 10 and it was already over, they were packing up their gear, and drinking a well-deserved beer. Son of a whore, I am still pissed about this! And of course their set was awesome, loud, super-tight, there was a mosh pit the entire show, and apparently due to technical difficulties during the last song, rhythm guitarist Joe Boyer put down his guitar and dove in the mosh pit. Come back to Montreal soon guys, I’m waiting…

3. Grizzly Bear – Shields (Warp Records)

Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest was the crown jewel of INAUDIBLE’s very first BEST OF LIST in 2009. That album was so thrilling to me with regards to its production and each song’s dynamic and diverse composition. I had not listened to their earlier albums, so Veckatimest was my point of departure and it left me convinced they were one of, if not the best, young band making “indie-rock” in our present day. The reason for this was because I really enjoyed how within their music they seemed to be constantly looking back yet ever looking forwards; not afraid to sound a bit like their influences, while at the same time, ambitiously driven to lock down their own style. With Shields Grizzly Bear have done just that – they have sonically carved out their niche, gained a whole new legion of fans, and released my favourite “rock” record of the year.

Seeing their live show this year solidified my belief in their talent, as they effortlessly played their challenging compositions, switching instruments mid-song when needed, and delivering strong and near pitch-perfect vocal performances throughout. The band emitted an air of subtle class on stage, void of rock star pretension, letting the music speak for them, which I found very refreshing.

Unlike Veckatimest’s instantly infectious “Two Weeks”, Shields has no clear-cut single – the album calls for careful listening, and takes some time for it to reveal itself completely, but once it does it will reward your ears and mind again and again. Tracks like “Yet Again”, “Speak in Rounds”, “What’s Wrong” and “Gun-Shy” are all different stylistically, but each song showcases the band’s varied writing strengths. The album closes with “Sun in Your Eyes”, an eight-minute opus that has hints of theatre and prog and is arguably the band’s best example to date of their overall sound. Shields is a challenging album but one that showcases everything that is great about modern rock and roll. So good. More gentleman, more.

2. Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d. city (Interscope Records)

Oh yeah, we gettin’ down to the wire now! Coming in at a strong second for the year is Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city. Ever since my Mom confiscated my Straight Outta Compton cassette tape when I was 12, hip hop has held a coveted place in my musical makeup. It was a view into a whole other culture for me, and the first time I paid close attention to the lyrics in music.

My Mom realized how angry I was with her for taking my rap music away from me, so she replaced my N.W.A. and 2 Live Crew tapes with the PG rated “He’s The DJ, I’m the Rapper” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, while my Dad was trying to get me into Zeppelin and The Beatles. But still I would go to my friend Justin Smith’s house, because his Mom let us listen to all the gangsta rap he wanted, plus let us watch R-rated horror movies and eat an endless pile of junk food. Eventually, once I started playing guitar, those classic rock discs my Dad kept pushing on me would take over my musical tastes, which would then lead to metal and indie and post-rock. But then, in first year of university I heard Aquemini by Outkast and it was one of the most amazing albums I’d ever heard of any genre. This was the start of my rap renaissance, as I got into Def Jux artists like Aesop Rock and El-P, old skoool heros like Tribe and Nas, new skoool stars like MF Doom, and even Kanye West. Since then I’ve never stopped listening to rap, but it’s definitely been a minute since a hip-hop record has excited me as much as good kid, m.A.A.d city. And what a record it is! It deserves all the attention it’s been getting, because it’s a truly original, compelling rap record, unafraid to risk taking a moral stand, with the confidence to successfully execute Lamar’s ambitions.

The narrative thread is familiar: black kid growing up in the projects has dreams of making it as a rapper, yet is pulled in directions he doesn’t want – crime, drugs, gangs, etc. – and after his friend is killed in a shoot out he decides to no longer get caught up in the game, and effectively pave his own way in the world. Yet even if the story is familiar, the delivery is not. Interspersed with amazing voicemails from his Mom and conversations with his homeboys, we see Kendrick as son, as well as, as a young kid growing up out there in the “m.A.A.d city”. Musically, the album is obviously indebted to Outkast (see “The Art of Peer Pressure”), but has such a strong sense of place that it deftly sidesteps the derivative. Kendrick uses many influences but he deploys them strategically, unexpectedly, which helps the record already feel like the classic it surely will become.

2013 will be an enormous year for Kendrick Lamar. Let’s hope he can hang on to the vibe he’s got going right now, because good kid, m.A.A.d city is the year’s most powerful record both lyrically and musically. Ya bish, ya bish!

Top tracks: “Money Trees” and “Swimming Pools (Drank)”

1. Four Tet – Pink (Text Records)

In a way this can be considered more of a lifetime achievement award, as Kieran Hebden’s has been an innovator in the world of electronic music for over a decade now. That said, Pink is still the most exciting electronic album of the year for me. Under his Four Tet stage name, Hebden has released groundbreaking albums that span electronica’s sub-genres from leftfield to post-rock to IDM, yet over the last few years Hebden has had his ears set not to the sky but to the ground, namely the dance floor, after he started DJing at the Plastic People Club in 2009. The next year he released the superlative There Is Love in You, which saw him writing more dance-oriented tracks like the excellent “Love Cry”. His Fabric mix followed in 2011, and now with Pink, a collection of 12-inch singles, we find him writing some of the best techno music of the year.

Hebden has eschewed the quirk and abstract he is known for and applied a more clinical approach to get booties shaking and fists pumping and the results are spectacular. This is not to say that he’s lost any of his playfulness, these songs still maintain an inherent organic quality even though they follow the techno formula, mainly because Hebden always throws in a little something extra – chimes, synths, vibes, bass wobbles, piano, skittering vocals, and more. Compositionally, he seems to have been inspired by artists like Omar S, Burial, and Pantha du Prince, easily pushing songs into the 8-minute mark. Stand out track “Pyramid” uses a great bass line and repetitive vocal lick: “I remember when you walked away” to amazing effect, this track is a late-night banger, one that urges you to get up and dance. But, it’s dark too and has a great Steve Reich breakdown in the middle before the house beat and funky bass return to keep you shakin’. Opening track “Locked” starts off the album with nothing but minimal, interlocking drum loops for well over a minute, before a characteristically beatific melody emerges, and spirals around those shuffling drums, phasing in and out of focus accented with occasional deep bass wobbles. Elsewhere, “Ocoras” and “Jupiters” reveal Hebden’s knack for rhythm and groove, and the sprawling “Peace For Earth” momentarily eases away from the dancefloor with a komische-y, near beatless ten minutes, before throwing us back on the floor again for awesome closer “Pinnacles”.

Critics have sort of harped on Hebden saying he’s made great strides into club territory but still hasn’t quite fleshed out his style as a dancefloor artist. And while Pink technically shouldn’t be considered a proper follow-up to There Is Love in You, I think even as a singles compilation it suggests that Four Tet is still capable of going deeper and expanding higher than almost anyone else out there. Great stuff!

Yes! I made it to the fucking end!

 
HONORABLE AUDIBLES (click album to sample a track)

Andrés – New For U

Bersarin Quartett- II

Crystal Castles – III

Floating Points – Shadows

Green Kingdom – Egress

Loscil – Sketches From New Brighton

Luke Hess – Keep On

Smallpeople – Salty Days

Strië – Õhtul

Sufjan Stevens – Silver & Gold

Tanlines – Mixed Emotions

The Sea and Cake – Runner

Twin Shadow – Confess

the xx – Coexist

 

R.I.P. Jason Noble (1971 – 2012)

INAUDIBLE’S BEST OF 2011
INAUDIBLE’S BEST OF 2010
INAUDIBLE’S BEST OF 2009

Best wishes for 2013 and onward! Cheers to good muzik, friends, many laughs, and brief moments of (un)clarity.

love,

ml

5-10-15-20

Welcome to INAUDIBLE’s third installment of 5-10-15-20 in which we blatantly lift a feature from Pitchfork and use it to ask fantastic people about their torrid and varied musical love affairs at five year intervals of their lives thus far. This third edition features Montreal based music pundit Michael Ellis having visceral auditory flashbacks of the albums and artists that helped shape him into the man he is today.

AGE 5

Some of my first memories of being on this big gay earth are connected with family vacations to Rice Lake. I looked it up recently and I can’t figure out why my parents would drive all the way there with four sons fighting and shouting the entire time. We hauled balls down the ‘Highway to Forever’ in our Chrysler K-car and I always had to sit in the front between Mom and Dad. Being too small to peer over the dash, all I ever saw was the digital clock and tape deck. Before my parents fell for Billy Ray’s “Achy Breaky Heart”, they listened to cooler shit. Mostly Motown. They also listened to American Fool by John Cougar. So the summer my oldest brother chucked my snowtrooper G.I. Joe figure into the lake, promising it would come back with the tide (it didn’t), was also the summer I really listened to music for the first time. I guess you could say it hurt so good.

AGE 10

How can this exist?

This song smells like raked and rotting leaves. I found a German guy on Discogs selling an unopened LP and considered buying it.

AGE 15

My friend Glenn used to live a latch-key existence. His mom would gather the wash, claiming she was going to the laundromat, and then disappear for weeks at a time. While this lady was undeniably a piece of shit, her absence gave my friends free reign of the house. It was our club house. Glenn had a little brother he basically had to take responsibility for, making sure he was watered and fed. Being 16 or 17, and understandably not very mature, he let all kinds of shit go down in that place so long as he got something out of the deal. Stolen wares stored in his basement? Sure, but you had to buy him some Little Caesars. Having someone come over to grab a lil bag of weed? Fine, but he always got some of the money.

One day I was glazed and watching some kids play Twisted Metal 2 on a stolen Playstation, when between the couch cushions, I found a flyer for an upcoming show in Detroit – The Wu Tang Clan. We mostly listened to Eazy-E and N.W.A. like so many dumb kids, but the image on the promo was just so different than all that. The sheer insanity of nine members, all drawn in cartoon on blue photocopied paper, with these fang-grills. FANG-GRILLS! I didn’t even need to hear them rapping about Spiderman and kung-fu and goddamned Richard Dawson, I already knew I loved it.

I’m pretty white.

AGE 20

Fuck you Richie Hawtin. We peaked at the same time. It’s just that I was on acid listening to Consumed and knew I would eventually come down. But you seem like you never got over it. Concept 1, Decks, EFX, & 909, Consumed. What a run.

AGE 25

I was leaving home and ending a long lasting relationship and “Shine a Light,” “I’ll Believe in Anything,” and all the rest resounded with me. After moving to Montreal, I saw them with my tallest friend at Metropolis and fuck if it wasn’t devastating. I’m still not entirely sure what Spencer Krug is singing about in “I’ll Believe In Anything”, but at the time I felt that same desperation.

AGE 30

Grados and hash.

Ed: Thanks Mike!

If you’d like, read the first and second installments too. Cheers.

Major Lazer – Get Free (ft. Amber)

For quite awhile now I’ve considered Diplo to be one of the most stand up dudes in the electronic scene – a versatile and prolific producer, always at the very forefront of new trends in electronic and bass music. With latest single “Get Free”, his work with Switch and company as Major Lazer, he’s switched gears a bit from the infectious in-your-face bounce and bass heavy tracks to a more soothing mellow vibe.

Amber Coffman of the Dirty Projectors elevates the song with longing vocals making this one of the most stunning tracks of 2012. I doubt the rest of the new Major Lazer album will sound like this, but as a one-off single it just doesn’t get any better. Best song of the year. Hands down. Video is amazing too. Check ‘em.

Mayer Hawthorne at Corona Theatre

26 May 2012

Mayer Hawthorne and The County played to a full house at The Corona Theatre in Montreal last night and did not disappoint, bringing their Motown swagger and good times great oldies vibe. Hawthorne was decked out in a red tux (in solidarity with la CLASSE?) and Air Jordans and showcased songs from his latest album How Do You Do? and his breakout record A Strange Arrangement.

The Hawth does such an amazing job of getting the crowd involved with singalongs, call-and-response exchanges, and choreographed hand motions, that it’s impossible not to get caught up in the music. Critics call him a “throwback” artist, which some say is a schtick or comes off as phony, but I find it genuine and authentic – rather than simply copying singers of old, Hawthorne’s music can be seen as an homage, using Motown and soul as inspiration for reviving the craft of live performance. Perhaps the fact that he grew up in the Detroit area adds credence to his music, but the bottom line is that Hawthorne wants to put on a “show” and truly entertain, and entertain us he did. He had a J-Dilla interlude and a Hall & Oates breakdown for Christ’s sake! He let us take photos of him holding a bouquet of flowers and took a picture of us for his Twitter account, and then politely asked everyone to put our cameras away and “pretend” we were at a show enjoying it in “real time”. We danced non stop, I spilt beer on some girl and her chum wanted to beat me up for a split second before remembering he was in a happy place. The vibes were too good for anyone to stay mad for long.

Mayer Hawthorne is a gentleman and the ladies clearly love him. His set was tight, he hit all of his notes with ease and his backing band was perfect. My only critique is the same one I made when I first saw him in Toronto in 2009 – he needs horns and two large black ladies doing back up vocals! Other than that, a helluva live show and a great weekend. Peace.

*photo by Jacquelyn Taylor*

5-10-15-20

Hello. I’ve decided to blatantly copy a feature from Pitchfork that I enjoy called 5-10-15-20, in which they ask artists to talk about the music they loved at five year intervals in their lives. So without further ado, off I go into my musical past…

AGE 5

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is golden. I remember having a synchronized zombie stomp dance with my sister and we would always end up skipping the record player because we jumped around too much. I remember thinking “Billie” was a strange name for a girl, and I spent hours reading the lyrics and staring at the drawing of Paul McCartney and Michael fighting over the girl. I remember being terrified of the “Thriller” video and my Dad would laugh like Vincent Price and scare me more. In short, I was swept up in Michael mania — and it was like it was Halloween all the time, with this album and Ray Parker Jr’s “Ghostbusters” on heavy rotation on the radio as well.

Fave song: “Baby Be Mine“

AGE 10

Oh man, the days of Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, C & C Music Factory, Tone-Loc, Young MC, Kid N Play, “It Takes Two” by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, and of course the budding superstar of young Will Smith. I still own “He’s The DJ, I’m The Rapper” on cassette and consider it a classic in golden age hip hop. The Fresh Prince’s career as a rapper was quickly dwarfed by his hit TV show, but who can argue that “Summertime” still ain’t one hell of a jam? Word.

AGE 15

Wow, a lot sure changed in between the ages of 10 and 15. In those five years I went through an N.W.A. phase, that my parents nipped in the bud by taking away all my rap tapes and buying me a brand new CD player and a bunch of Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull CD’s. I abandoned rap for classic rock and moved from Zeppelin to Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins during the “grunge explosion”. Yet, by the time I was 15 I was starting to search for more “underground” bands. I found Clutch and Monster Magnet and fell in love with their angst and grooves. I would also discover Pavement and Eric’s Trip as well and begin a long love affair with “lo-fi indie rock” too. But, if I have to pick one, it’s got to be “Superjudge” by Monster Magnet. Stoner rock at its finest, Monster Magnet were with me the first time I smoked weed and my head expanded to sounds I never knew existed.

AGE 20

Again, so much music was consumed in this five year span. I was heavily into the post-rock scene via Slint, June of 44, Polvo, Seam, Versus, Trans Am, Gastr Del Sol, The Sea and Cake, and Tortoise. I also started getting into jazz and for some reason had an unhealthy obsession with Jamiroquai for a good two years. What can I say? I love to dance. But “TNT” by Tortoise is the perfect choice for this time period, as it sums up everything that was awesome about post-rock while teetering on the verge of electronica…which is where my musical progression would go in the next 5 years.

AGE 25

It took me a long time to get into electronic music, but when I did it became my entire world. I pretty much stopped listening to anything with guitars. This was an age of discovery for me — from Warp Records “leftfield IDM” stuff to Ninja Tune style breaks ‘n beats to minimal techno to smooth house. It was incredible, how a 4/4 beat could take me anywhere if I just closed my eyes and started dancing. Drugs may have helped the cause and helped my ears hear things in a different way, but once I did it felt odd that I wasn’t able to before. This is a hard one to choose, as I was deeply in love with Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Plastikman, Theorem, Theo Parrish, and Vladislav Delay to name just a few. I also got heavily into dub reggae and fell back into hip hop during these years. Outkast! But I think the album that sums it all up at the age of 25 has gotta be “One Word Extinguisher” by Prefuse 73. Guillermo Scott Herren was like a god to me back then — he seemed so fresh, so versatile, so prolific — he was hip hop, electronica, techno, and pop all at once! And all of his various guises: Savath and Savalas, Delarosa and Asora, and Ahmad Szabo, let alone Prefuse! Yep, that shit was tops. Too bad he was never able to recreate that energy again…

AGE 30

Oh yes, a return to basics. At the time I was still listening to a lot of electronic music, but also a lot of ambient stuff like Marsen Jules, Gas, Loscil, and Donato Wharton. I was also falling in love with some mysterious dude named Burial, and a young kid named Peter Broderick. But it was my man Morrissey and The Smiths who brought it all full circle. A return to rock and roll. And nowadays, I listen to everything, there’s no genre exclusivity. I’m a goddamn sponge. Here’s looking forward to the next five years. That was fun. Peace.

But seriously, how could I not mention TOOL?

INAUDIBLE’S BEST OF 2011

Better late than never, INAUDIBLE is happy to present his 3rd annual end of year listy list!

2011 was a strange year for me musically — for the first year in probably fifteen I found myself listening to less music than normal. I felt I didn’t need to ceaselessly search out new music or always need to hear the next shit. This is not to say that music didn’t accompany me just about everywhere, it’s just that it felt different in a way it’s never felt before. Before I left for India this spring I loaded up my iPod with as much new music as possible, but while I was there I found myself listening to pretty much only one song in the morning and that was it (track to be disclosed below). I had fun listening to the Hindi equivalent of Rihanna and Tiesto while I was there, and when I returned it took a while for music (and everything else for that matter) to sound and seem fresh again. All this is to say, that this year I’ve decided to cut my list down substantially from years past, and simply index those albums that made me really, truly FEEL goddammit. And so without further ado, here they are.

TOP 14 ALBUMS OF 2011

14. Miracle Fortress – Was I the Wave? (Secret City)

Montrealer Graham Van Pelt has been making waves with his solo project Miracle Fortress since his 2007 debut album Five Roses earned him a Polaris Prize nomination, and found him channelling the pop sensibility of Brian Wilson. Four years later, and Van Pelt returned with Was I The Wave?, which earned him a second nod from the Polaris judges, and showcases a refined ear for production and his love for 80′s inspired electro pop. Van Pelt plays all the instruments on the record and shows himself adept at crafting catchy hooks and infectious melodies that beg you to play again and again. I can’t tell you how many times I listened to this album in the summer, racing my bike down the busy Toronto streets. It makes me feel young and carefree, and reminds me of Cut Copy circa In Ghost Colours. So enjoyable.

Fave track: “Tracers”

13. Peaking Lights – 936 (Not Not Fun)

Hailing from Madison, Wisconsin, husband and wife duo, Peaking Lights, make sun-speckled dub pop psychedelia. The premise is simple: deep repetitive bass, catchy drum loops, extended grooves, and ethereal vocals that also work on repetition and cavernous echo. The result, 936: a perfectly blissed-out album for the warmer months, one that lingered in my head long after the album was played out. While not too far away compositionally from many dub techno artists like Rhythm and Sound or Deadbeat, Peaking Lights style diverges, because instead of going inward they go out — it’s still heady music, but as their name implies, they take the listener up up up, floating in a headspace above the clouds and the mountain peaks, a place where just enough light and warmth peeks through to make you smile. With 936, Peaking Lights have created groovy yet subtly romantic music that allows the listener to cheerfully zone out, and the result is surprisingly radiant.

12. Holy Other – With U (Tri Angle)

Manchester’s Holy Other released the subterranean and slow-clip With U EP this year and I was immediately entranced by the mysterious producer’s dubby and slow motion house music. Earlier reviews likened Holy Other to Burial most likely because of the pitch-shifted vocal samples in each track, but perhaps also because this brief record, like Untrue, is the perfect soundtrack to be played on repeat in the chill-out room of some dark club. With U has that feeling of being heard from the other room, and although on the surface it sounds as if it fits snugly in the slower end of the dubstep scene, I call it more of a slowed down house, sure that if we cranked up the bpms, there’d be some serious bangers here. But instead, we get 20 minutes of bleak, moody gloom, and to my ears it’s never sounded sweeter.

Fave track: “Touch”

11. Sepalcure – Sepalcure (Hotflush)

After a busy year of critically lauded solo releases, NYC producers Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) and Praveen Sharma (Braille) merged talents to form Sepalcure, a duo that creates dub techno inspired music that sits nicely on the Hotflush roster, but also veers away from the sounds of Mount Kimbie, Scuba, Joy Orbison, or Burial, to produce a style that is all their own. The pair seem much more content to sound creative and fresh rather than fit comfortably in some sub-sub-genre. Vocals play a major role throughout, as they do on the best tracks of Stewart’s album Room(s), and are stretched out, reverbed, pitched, slowed down, and repetitive, which effectively creates track after track of catchy vocal hooks you’ll find yourself humming after the record’s played out. Sepalcure’s debut is an album that has grown on me over the course of the last months of 2011 and tracks like “The One”, “Eternally Yrs” and “See Me Feel Me”, make me feel a bit nostalgic, a bit futuristic, and a lot like shaking my ass in a sweaty club. So nice.

10. A Winged Victory for the Sullen (Kranky Records)

Adam Wiltzie, one half of ambient darlings Stars of the Lid, teamed up with composer Dustin O’Halloran, and together they crafted my favourite modern classical album of the year. The last time Wiltzie branched out without Brian McBride (his usual musical counterpart), was in 2004 when he released the stunning The Dead Texan album, and this new project is no different. A Winged Victory For The Sullen create richly emotive chamber music with an amazing grasp of space and atmosphere — and with the help of wunderkind Peter Broderick and cellist Hildur Gudnadottir (who’s worked with Múm, Pan Sonic, and Animal Collective), Wiltzie and O’Halloran have captured the essence of both minimal drone and melodic ambience while still working with piano and strings. “Steep Hills For Vicodin Tears” is probably the best example of their moody yet buoyant sound. A Winged Victory’s debut is one for quiet mornings and chilly nights.

9. Mayer Hawthorne – How Do You Do? (Universal)

Michigan native and neo-soul hero, Mayer Hawthorne released his sophomore album How Do You Do? on a big major label. And when I recently went home for Christmas, I heard lead single “The Walk” on a radio station that claims to play the best soft rock hits of yesterday and today. Yet, even though The Hawth has eschewed indie cred by leaving Stone’s Throw for Universal, his album still features more of that good time Motown music he did so well on his debut A Strange Arrangement. And to be fair, I think it is a stronger collection of songs overall. Hawthorne and his band shine brightest when they veer furthest away from emulating the Motown giants and instead use the influence of lesser knowns like The Delfonics or Bobby Womack. Moreover, Hawthorne seems to have also found inspiration in classic rock bands like Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers as well, and it all works within the context of the album. “Can’t Stop”, Hawthorne’s vocal collab with Snoop Dogg is a hilariously earnest and sexy seduction track with a West Coast beat and big synth hook that is wildly infectious and funky and Snoop sounds just dope. Closing track “No Strings” is a fantastic ode to the one night stand, while “You Called Me” is the exact opposite, a song about a strong and loving relationship.

But doesn’t it sound kind of strange to hear Hawthorne croon: “…but your shitty fucking attitude has got me changing my mind” on “The Walk”? It’s a reverse anachronism, in which modern cuss words just don’t sound right in the “great times, good oldies” context Hawthorne does so well. But other than that, How Do You Do? is another strong collection of songs about love and lust from Hawthorne and The County. His music makes me feel like I’m in the backseat of my parents car listening to the oldies station, and is great for early night kitchen dance parties and late night make out sessions. Wooh.

8. SBTRKT – SBTRKT (Young Turks)

UK masked beat-maker SBTRKT’s eponymous long player was an absolute grower, and one I found myself listening to on repeat during the warm summer months. The album features emotional vocals courtesy of collaborators Sampha, Roses Gabor, Jessie Ware, and Little Dragon, and even after first listen it’s obvious SBTRKT (real name Aaron Jones) spent a lot of time working with his talented vocalists, as the production is meticulous. This ain’t no postal service style collab he’s got going on with his vocalists; instead he had them in the studio, layering track upon track and making sure not a note was missed. It’s a soulful affair, working with elements of dubstep, drum and bass, garage, and bass music. For anyone who’s been to a club even once last year, you’ve probably heard hit single “Wildfire” blasting out of the speakers during the heart of the party, but for me “Hold On” is the track I had rocking on repeat more times than I’d like to admit. The whole album flows smooove and chill, and reveals a producer truly coming into his own.

7. Oliveray – Wonders (Erased Tapes)

Oliveray is the beautiful and understated collaboration of Nils (Oliver) Frahm and Peter (Ray) Broderick. Intermingling strings, pianos, acoustic guitar, and Broderick’s voice, this brief album is a candid and earnest collection of emotional songs by two very gifted songwriters. In my opinion, this is Broderick’s most moving work since his brilliant 2009 record Home. Based on improvisations and quiet late-night jam sessions, these songs reveal two young musicians working harmoniously in tandem, and their songs bring to mind everyone from Labradford to Mark Kozelek. “You Don’t Love” is faintly reminiscent of “Have You Forgotten” by Red House Painters in the way Broderick sings “How can you love me if you don’t love yourself?”, and closing track “Dreamer” is heartbreaking in its simple execution of guitar and sparse piano and Broderick’s lyrical emotion. So yeah, in short, this album makes me feel a whole lot. In the morns on the way to work, in the eves while reading and chilling out, this album rewards repeat listens, and truly deserves to be loved by more people. Check it.

6. Real Estate – Days (Domino Records)

New Jersey native Martin Courtney and his bandmates returned in 2011 with their sophomore album Days, a much tighter and fulfilling record than their 2009 self-titled debut. It’s an album that displays what a difference a few years on tour can do when it comes to becoming a tighter and more dynamic band. Still, the songs on Days are sparse and minimal, all dragging their heels at the same introspective clip, yet at the album’s best moments, this creates a sort of tranquil, hypnotic effect one can use to let thoughts drift about the halcyon days of youth. It’s “Range Life” by Pavement for the Dot-com generation, and for me that’s perfectly fine. This album holds a special place in my heart, mainly because it was the record I listened to most upon leaving Toronto and moving back to Montreal. It was a perfect fall album, one that I had on repeat for all of October as I rode my bike, exploring the city, watching the leaves turn and slowly fall from the trees. The strongest tracks on the album “Out of Tune”, “Green Aisles”, and “Younger Than Yesterday” reveal the band’s ability to craft catchy songs with just a brief guitar lick and showcase Matthew Mondanile’s excellent work on lead guitar.

I recently saw the band play in Montreal at La Sala Rossa and they did a solid job of jamming out their new album, but I find their music is more enjoyable at home or in transit, as the samey-ness of their songs did drag on a bit at the show. Nevertheless, Real Estate are excellent songwriters adept at crafting great slow rock tunes that remind me of Pavement, Bedhead, and Yo La Tengo, and make me feel relaxed while comfortably yearning for autumns come and gone.

5. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo (Matador Records)

Philadelphia singer/songwriter, Kurt Vile released the excellent Smoke Ring For My Halo in the spring of last year, and it’s been on constant rotation in my living room ever since. Smoke Ring is definitely an immersive experience, offering up the best of Americana, reminiscent of Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and the finest folk and lo-fi rock and roll. The beauty is in the subtlety and strength of his songwriting. Vile’s lyrics are dark and lonesome, delivered in a laconic style that’s all his own. He tends to drag out words or syllables providing the perfect counterpart to his skilled finger-plucking or guitar strums.

Vile also seems to be working with the idea of restraint here, as many of the songs could easily blow up into full out jams, yet he and his backing band The Violators rarely let this happen. There is however a great fuzzy climax to “On Tour”, but even here the distortion never gets carried away — the listener is able to feel the closing kick, yet still be privy to the swirling combination of keyboard, harp, slide guitar, and mellotron orbiting Vile’s guitar. It’s truly great stuff. Tracks like “Runner Up”, “Peeping Tomboy”, “Baby’s Arms”, and “Ghost Town” are slow, sparse, and poignant, and reveal Vile’s adeptness at being one of the best songwriters out there. He creates more than just mood here, he’s created a listening experience in the classic sense, one in which you put the album on and languidly float off for 45 minutes in Vile’s sonic yet relaxed musical realm.

4. Bon Iver – Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)

OK, now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty. For those of you who failed to read my discloser at the beginning of this post, please let me remind you…I have decided to choose only those albums that truly made me feel, sigh, pang, pine, shiver, and smile. And Justin Vernon’s sophomore full-length under the Bon Iver moniker does all the above for me. It’s a brilliant and courageous album, with confident songwriting and sophisticated production. For those fans who for some reason were hoping for another sad-dude-with-guitar-writes-album-in-woods deal, they were disappointed, as Vernon ventured far away from the aching melancholy of For Emma, Forever Ago. One reviewer stubbornly believes Vernon totally overdid it in a desperate attempt to distance himself from his debut, and even goes so far as to compare his production skills to that of Enya! C’mon, really?

But for this listener, I find it unfair to expect musicians to feel obliged to maintain a certain style or sound over a series of records simply because that’s what the fans want. And to be sure, many musicians make their careers on the same three chords, but here Vernon has pushed further out into the textures of sonic space, and shows how much his musical palette has diversified in the four years since For Emma. Hell, he was already experimenting with Autotune on Blood Bank before he even hooked up with Kanye, so for me I see it as a natural progression of a true musician.

Sure, one could argue that Vernon is almost too ambitious with this album, but in the end (even with closing track “Beth/Rest”) I think he succeeds. I remember the first time I played this album out in full, it was a somewhat bleak Sunday afternoon and I was putzing around my apartment and “Beth/Rest” started and I literally began laughing out loud. “What the fuck is this? Phil Collins? Kenny Loggins?” I laughed. I called my friend Jeff and he too made a similar comparison and quipped that Vernon was getting all saxy! It’s true, the track seemed way way out of place, but a month or so later, somewhere on the road between Kingston and Montreal, while riding the Megabus, the song hit me the way Vernon intended it to, and now I like it. Yes, it’s cheesy, yes it’s off putting, but as Vernon has said, he just really likes singing it, and apparently makes sure to play it at all live shows with all its Bruce Hornsby-esque embellishments intact, just to annoy the haters. Nice.

It seems he’s also trying to fill the void left in the wake of Sufjan Stevens getting too “weird” on last year’s The Age of Adz, as opening track “Perth” could have easily been lifted from Stevens’ earlier discography. With this album, Bon Iver sounds so much more a band than a solo project, tracks like “Minnesota, WI” and “Towers” are full and groove well . . . and his voice! From lower spectrum to high, no one sounds like Vernon, and if anything his voice has gotten only stronger since For Emma. But for me, the best tracks are the most spare, for example “Michicant” is stunning in its simplicity with all its subtle flourish, and “Wash.” uses piano, strings, and slide guitar to brilliant effect. Sincerely, this album deserves to be as critically heralded as it was throughout 2011. It’s a haunting and mature collection of songs that makes you feel like getting momentarily lost, while still knowing exactly where you want to go.

3. Burial – Street Halo EP (Hyperdub)

Burial returned with his first new material since 2007′s Untrue, and made it in my top five with just a three song EP. Like Boards of Canada, Burial is clever in that he knows how to keep his fans waiting. He doesn’t flood the market with new tunes or remixes, and (again like BoC) his absence spawned dozens of imitators, but no one sounds like him. And so, Burial returned with three long-awaited songs, treading the same dark territory of his earlier work, yet perhaps with just a hint of influence from house and techno. Perhaps Four Tet’s style rubbed off on him a bit, as seen in the shuffling 4/4 and deep bass of “Street Halo“. This song is positively subterranean. It seems designed for shaking your ass and grinding your teeth on a pitch black dance floor. There’s even a few moments where he flirts with trancey strings, pulling them subtly up in the mix, just enough for you to acknowledge them, before they get sucked back into the crushing bassline. It’s beautifully dark stuff.

All the tracks feature his trademark use of vocals, and “NYC”s repetitive hook “this is love…when I’m around”, creates some serious emotion, as the track clods around at a much slower and pensive beat than the album’s two other tracks. “NYC” is moody, and mournful. Rainy day stuff, in which you forgot your umbrella, and have to walk five blocks home from work, but you don’t mind the rain hitting you in the face, you don’t mind feeling cold and damp.

Closing track, “Stolen Dog” is my hitter. It is my favourite song of the year, folks. And I’ll tell you why. Way up there at the beginning of this post, I mentioned that while I was in India last summer I barely listened to any music, even though my iPod was jam packed. But there was one song that I found myself listening to every morning while I was in Kolkata, and it was “Stolen Dog”. The track is just unbelievably emotional. My first morning in Kolkata, I awoke at 4:30 a.m. to the sound of someone singing the morning prayers, which in turn woke up all the birds, which in turn marked the beginning of the cacophony of sounds that is urban India.

I was staying at a hostel that had a nice courtyard that was fenced in and tucked away from the road, creating a haven from the hectic streets. So I would sit on a bench and watch all sorts of strange and exotic birds fly around in the green of the courtyard, hear the blaring of traffic from the street, and listen to “Stolen Dog”. That first morning, jet-lagged and anxious, the song hit me so hard, it was all I could do to not burst into tears. The vocal hook practically punched me in the chest. And so, it became my morning soundtrack while I was in Kolkata, and I will never be able to listen to it without remembering that trip. And so, that is why this album features so highly on the list, because Burial just knows how to do it right. He still knows how to breathe new life into his bag of familiar samples and tricks and I look forward to more material from him in 2012!

2. Tape – Revelationes (Hapna Records)

Swedish trio Tape have been making music since 2000, but it took them a decade to hit my radar with the release of their fifth long player, Revelationes. And indeed the album is a revelation — taking cues from post-rock, modern classical, electronica, folk, jazz and minimalism. The group is made up of brothers Andreas and Johan Berthling with Tomas Hallonsten, and although their music plays out as vaguely familiar, they have carved out a sound that is all their own.

There’s an emotional element to this album that grows in strength with each successive listen, and I find I get wistfully lost in each track. For example, I’ll be listening to “Companions” and enjoying the soft guitars and swirling synth, and think the next track cannot possibly be as enchanting . . . and then “Hotels” starts, and I’m quickly swept into that beautiful little sketch of sound, and think again that this must be the album’s perfect moment, but then “The Wild Palms” begins, and the whole process starts again.

Earlier reviews mention Tortoise and even Slint as markers of style, and what’s funny is, while those are two of my favourite and arguably most-listened to bands of the past fifteen years, while listening to Revelationes, those two groups don’t spring to mind. And while I won’t deny the reference points, Tape sound so much more part of the now — more akin to contemporaries like Helios, Emanuele Errante, Benoit Pioulard, and the quieter moments of Animal Hospital.

Revelationes is very song-based, each track can stand on its own, yet they all play out beautifully as a whole. The album is very economical, running at just over a half an hour, and it is still offering up new sounds and emotions the more I put it on. This is definitely one to check out, and Tape is a band that deserves a much larger fan base. Delightful.

1. Araabmuzik – Electronic Dream (Duke Production)

So…getting back to that old disclaimer at the beginning about feelings and shit. Yeah, this is a weird one. And it took me awhile to actually admit that it is in fact my favourite album of the 2011. Probably because I have no idea how to describe it…dirty trance electro hip-pop? All I can tell you is, Araabmuzik‘s Electronic Dream excited me like no other album this year. I don’t think I have ever rode my back faster than when listening to “AT2″, it made me feel practically invincible. A fist pumping, spine-tingling collection of hard-hitting, yet aesthetically pleasing bangers.

Does it border on cheesy at times? Hell yes, but that’s part of its charm, and the machine gun snare pops, dirty hip-hop drum programming, nods to AFX, and uber-crisp production completely make up for any weird trance-pop transgressions. For me, it’s one of the few albums that have really hit hard and kept its appeal after many listens. “Streetz Tonight” is a perfect example of what the young producer is trying to do with this album: craft a catchy as all hell song with a banging beat. He has this knack for always grounding the track firmly in the rhythm…just as soon as the song seems to be veering off into all out trance, he drops the beat back in like an anchor. It’s a technique he uses again and again on Electronic Dream and I have yet to grow tired of it. Also, I love his token “You’re now listening to Araabmuzik” digital watermark. I don’t find it pompous at all, I think it’s hilarious, and just another way to effectively ground the chaos of each song.

2011 was a year of change for me. A year where I left my home in Toronto of 4 years to begin anew, in an attempt to really, truly become that adult I’ve been saying I kinda think I am for the last few years now. And when I arrived in Montreal to stay, I was taking the Metro to my friends Mike and Jacquelyn’s place, and I put opening track “Electronic Dream” on my iPod, and the weight of everything came crashing down. I felt like I had abandoned my life…and for what? I thought of all my amazing friends and family in Toronto, I thought of the lovely and sketchy neighbourhood of Parkdale that I had just shrugged off like an annoying beggar…four years of my life flitted by from one metro station to the next, and I became overwhelmed, and had to get off two stops early in order to keep myself in check. I felt the pang, the sigh, the yearn, the pull…and it was Araabmuzik that was the soundtrack to that powerful and significant moment of the year 2011, and fuck if it wasn’t a memorable one. More please.

HONORABLE AUDIBLES

Bibio – Mind Bokeh
Deaf Center – Owl Splinters
Frank Ocean – Nostalgia,ULTRA
Jay Z & Kanye – Watch The Throne
James Blake – James Blake
Machinedrum – Room(s)
Motion Sickness of Time Travel – Luminaries & Synastry
Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica
The Caretaker – An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
The Weeknd – House of Balloons
Toro Y Moi – Underneath The Pine
TV On The Radio – Nine Types of Light
Wild Beasts – Smother

Best Album of 2010 That I Didn’t Get Into Until 2011

Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest (4AD)

I sure slept on this one. But once I finally gave it a listen I was hooked. Absolutely amazing songwriting. Best description I can give it: Rock and fucking Roll. But that’s the best thing about music, it doesn’t matter when you get into it, just that you do. I look forward to their next album.

RIP Gerard Smith (1974-2011)

INAUDIBLE’S BEST OF 2010
INAUDIBLE’S BEST OF 2009

May the end of times greet you fondly! Happy 2012 to all!

Mayer Hawthorne – A Long Time

I’ve been absolutely loving this new track from Mayer Hawthorne for a while now, and the recently released video is just brilliant. I was raised on Detroit TV, so this video immediately found a special place in my heart. Amazing nostalgia courtesy of The New Dance Show, and quite possibly Mayer’s strongest track yet. It’s a song with a vital message about Detroit’s past and future and respect to Mayer for his continual rep of the D.

I cannot wait for his sophomore album, “How Do You Do?” dropping on October 11. Check it!

Honorable Audibles as of late

SBTRKT – SBTRKT (Young Turks)

I slept on this one for a few months, but am glad I finally checked it out because masked beat-maker SBTRKT’s eponymous long player is an absolute grower, and features emotional vocals courtesy of collaborators Sampha, Roses Gabor, Jessie Ware, and Little Dragon. Even after first listen it’s obvious SBTRKT (real name Aaron Jones) spent a lot of time working with his talented vocalists, as the production is meticulous. It’s a soulful affair, working with elements of dubstep, drum and bass, garage, and bass music. Definitely one to check out before the summer’s through.

 
Araabmuzik – Electronic Dream (Duke Records)

I don’t even know how to classify this shit. Dirty trance electro hip-pop? All I can tell you is, Araabmuzik’s Electronic Dream offers up some of the most exciting tracks of the year. Does it border on cheesy at times? Hell yes, but that’s part of its charm, and the snare pops, dirty hip-hop drum programming, nods to AFX, and uber-crisp production completely make up for any weird trance-pop transgressions. For this listener, it’s one of the few albums that have really hit hard and kept its appeal after many listens. Worth checking out, no doubt!

 
For those of you in TORONTO, these two producers are playing a show together in November at The Hoxton. Check out the details of this not to be missed show right HERE! Cheers.

INAUDIBLE’S BEST OF 2010

INAUDIBLE is overjoyed to unveil his 2nd annual end of year listy list!

 
TOP 25 ALBUMS OF 2010

25. Luke Abbott – Holkham Drones (Border Community)

Norfolk England producer Luke Abbott offers up a strong selection of electronic tracks that are modest yet immediately rewarding. Similar in a way to Boards of Canada, it’s rare that music primarily composed on a computer can also move a listener emotionally, striking between the invitation to dance or the opportunity to deliberate without diluting either approach’s effect. Abbott’s songs build in linear fashion, exploring psychedelic melody and synth-fuelled beats. I guess you could call it IDM, if people are still tossing that moniker around. Either way, it’s a smooth listen that works whether you’re both bobbing your head at a party or sunk comfortably into the couch.

Fave track: “Brazil”

 

24. Pausal – Lapses (Barge Recordings)

Pausal are a duo from Hampshire UK, and they create warm and impressionistic ambient soundscapes. Like Stars of the Lid, Mountains, and Marsen Jules, Pausal’s music has a sense of weightlessness and calm that washes over the listener, and the result is immersive and reflective. Lapses has sailed me off to soft slumber on many a night, and greeted many a morning with me as well. Warm and welcome layers of drone that pulse subtly and beautifully.

 

23. Pantha du Prince – Black Noise (Rough Trade)

Hendrik Weber made a strong return this year with the follow-up to his much acclaimed This Bliss avec Black Noise and it does not disappoint. With chimes and marimba acting as aural touchstones throughout, Black Noise shows the further evolutions of Weber’s melodic-robotic dichotomy and his penchant for deep and infectious bass. And speaking of infectious, “Stick To My Side”, Weber’s collaboration with Animal Collective’s Noah Lennox will leech itself into your memory banks and have you humming and singing it for days. Weber does a great job of melding 4/4 hitters alongside of more sedate and moody tracks, and the effect is captivating.

 

22. Toro Y Moi – Causers of This (Carpark Records)

2010 truly was a breakout year for chillwave and glo-fi musicians. I still find these names for sub-genres absolutely ridiculous, but Chad Bundick’s debut as Toro Y Moi is a slowburn of an album that just kept growing on me until I was completely smitten. I love his use of tape-hiss loops, cheap homemade beats, familiar samples, deep bass, and voice (not for the actual lyrics but for they way he uses his voice as added layers of sound). And although there are many other artists in the genre doing relatively the same sort of thing, Causers of This was the album I returned to most throughout the year. Fun, sunny, haphazard, and guaranteed to put a smile on any a hipster’s mug.

 

21. Bonobo – Black Sands (Ninja Tune)

Simon Green aka Bonobo released his fourth full length album and managed to somehow breathe new life into the weary genre of “chill out” and/or “downtempo”. Black Sands is no radical departure from his earlier musical palette, but Smith incorporates his love of world sounds, great string arrangements, a little dubstep, and amazing vocals from Andreya Triana, and fills the void left in the absence of new material from The Cinematic Orchestra. Black Sands is a groove-laden album that is sexy and introspective. Perfect for romantic dinner dates at home, where after the second bottle of wine, you’re up and shaking booty in the kitchen, making room for dessert. Check it.

Fave tracks: “Stay The Same”, “Kong”, and “Animals”

 

20. Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma (Warp Records)

Let’s be honest here, Fly Lo’s space odyssey is pretty damn dope and sprawling and ambitious, but it just never got the heavy rotation on my stereo that Los Angeles did. I know he felt he needed to rise above the countless producers who’d been biting on his style since 1983 and Los Angeles came out, and also wanted to create an aural homage to his musical family tree, and overall I think he was successful in those two realms, but in the end his late 2010 EP Pattern+Grid World had me more excited than Cosmogramma. That said, I still think he does a helluva job meshing drum-n-bass, hip-hop, jazz, psychedelia, and house to smashing effect, but at the end of the year, it just didn’t blow my head up the way I had originally anticipated. And to be honest, I think a lot of it just sounds like Squarepusher. There I said it. I’ve somehow managed to diss one of the most creative electronic artists alive today. But let me give him props by saying I look forward to all his future evolutions, be they missteps or the right steps.

 

19. Beach House – Teen Dream (Sub Pop)

Baltimore’s Beach House followed up the lovely Devotion with Teen Dream and revealed the perfect evolution of their sound, adding steady drums to the mix and offering up a mature collection of groovy and sexy tunes. Victoria Legrand’s voice has never sounded stronger or more emotionally assertive. The interplay between Alex Scally’s guitar and Legrand’s keyboards is smooth, gloomy, and warrants repeat listens. “Norway”, “Take Care”, and “Lover of Mine” are my favourite tracks, and what’s perhaps most telling is that the album is a generational crossover smash, inspiring teens and seasoned adults alike. Dream pop at its finest.

 

18. Onra – Long Distance (All City)

Onra changes things up with Long Distance, casting aside the old world samples that became his trademark in Chinoiseries, and 1.0.8, and adopts a smooth 80′s vibe instead. I imagine it being the sound of the 1980′s New York underground, and Onra lays it on thick and chilled. Dirty funk bass, hand clap beats, soul breaks, old skoool scratching, Lionel Ritchie guitars, moments reminiscent of J.J. Fad and bad 90′s muzak, plus some great guests makes this definitely one to check out. His live show in Toronto with Buddy Sativa was a bass-heavy throwdown and a live highlight of the year for me. I love everything this man has put out and look forward to his next shit.

 

17. Mount Kimbie – Crooks and Lovers (Hotflush)

While not quite as absorbing and heart stopping as their earlier EP’s Maybes and Sketch on Glass, Mount Kimbie‘s full-length debut still found itself on heavy rotation in my living room this year. I just kept putting it on again and again. It’s one of those albums that you can choose to either get completely absorbed in or just have on in the background as you do your thang, and its slowed down dubstep inflect is just right. As dubstep continued to grow, Mount Kimbie were a breath of fresh air in an oversaturated genre, because the young duo have their own definitive style which makes them stand out. Seeing them play live also revealed their strengths as they chose to play without laptops and did a fantastic job of recreating their bass-laden style in front of a crowd. Dig it!

 

16. Beach Fossils – Beach Fossils (Captured Tracks)

Beach Fossils emerged out of the hipster muck of Brooklyn and crafted a beautiful self-titled debut album, that effortlessly played out as the soundtrack of the summer. Comparing them to the xx seems a bit of a stretch, but just as the xx’s debut was the soundtrack to the grey days of last summer, Beach Fossils’ debut plays out as a pristine pop album for your pool party on a sunny day. There’s a bit of a surf rock feel, a bit of indie rock, Halifax pop, and a touch of Joy Division, making it an incredibly easy and fun record to listen to. That said, it breaks no new ground or boundary, but it’s a definitive grower of an album and comes highly recommended for a day at the beach or with a few drinks in the backyard.

Fave tracks: “Wide Awake” and “Daydream”

 

15. Scuba – Triangulation (Hotflush)

Hotflush head honcho Paul Rose aka Scuba continued his label’s thrilling run with a proper full-length of fluid, melodic dubstep that sounds beautiful and aggressive in equal measure. The album flows brilliantly building on dark mood, melodicism, and grimy beats. “Three Sided Shape” works alongside the territory Burial carved out, using cavernous bass drops and haunting vocals, while “You Got Me” leads in with propulsive bass that is perfect for crowded and dark dancefloors. “Lights Out” could find itself on any Echochord release or even as an old Theorem B-side and is the perfect closing track. Scuba’s had a great year, also putting out his Sub:stance mix in the early months of 2010, which is a fantastic set and a perfect primer into the world of dubstep, bass heavy music, and Hotflush records.

 

14. Darkstar – North (Hyperdub)

James Young and Aiden Whalley take a bold leap forward and backward with their debut album North, and help their label Hyperdub diversify in the process. The two-step beats and funky grime you’ve come to expect from Darkstar, have been replaced with cold synth lines and dark pop vocals courtesy of James Buttery. Essentially what we have here is a synth-pop album in the style of Junior Boys, yet where Junior Boys have worn their formula ragged, hackneyed, and thin, Darkstar add new life in the genre. Early standout track “Deadness” illuminates this quite well, with smooth synth, gently processed vocals, and an amazing darkwave guitar-line coda that evokes plenty of emotion and rainy day pathos. North is an emotional album full of slick production and great vocals.

 

13. Foals – Total Life Forever (Sub Pop)

UK scenesters, Foals, returned with Total Life Forever, the follow-up to their 2008 debut Antidotes and offered up a softened version of their sound with a fairly mature collection of songs. The first four tracks start the album off at a great pace, mixing moments reminiscent of Talking Heads with the earlier Foals sound to great effect. “Black Gold” is my fave track on the album and reveals the band’s new found maturity when it comes to composition. “Spanish Sahara” is their breakout hit, a slow-downed, mournful seven-minuter, that blasts into a cathartic emo kick in the end. Although, it was not where I expected their sound to go, I have returned to it many times during the year, and find it packs an emotional punch, while still retaining the inherent groove of a good rock album.

 

12. Crystal Castles – II (Fiction)

I don’t care about any of the hype or the bad press or the douchebaggery or the hoopla, I just care about the songs. Crystal Castles’ sophomore album is punk rock electro clash awesomeness. 8-bit beats and dirty and gorgeous analogue. Their sound is slightly less abrasive and a bit more poppy here than on their debut, but I find it a solid evolution of their Aphex-inspired DIY punk rock aesthetic. Alice Glass’ vox sounds great meshed in with Ethan Kath’s haphazard yet infectious production. The album was recorded at various locations, including a church in Iceland, a cabin in northern Ontario, and an abandoned convenience store in Detroit. This adds to the DIY pulse I dig so much. They can keep pissing off whoever they like, and I’ll just keep on listening.

Fave tracks: “Suffocation” and “Violent Dreams”

 

11. Pawel – Pawel (Dial Records)

Pawel’s self-titled long player was years in the making, but well worth the wait, because it’s a surprisingly tight and refreshing collection of smooove tech-house beats reminiscent of Audion, Theorem, and his Dial buddies Sten and Pantha du Prince. Tracks like “Coke” and “Dawn” get things cooking with that classic Kompaktesque four on the four vibe that’ll have you up and dancing, until he slows it all down with “Mate”, a beautifully atmospheric and subdued composition marking the album’s middle. He then turns it right back up with “Muscles” and “Crillon”, the disc’s heaviest hitters, and closes shop with two excellent tracks: the emotive and pulsing “Kramnik” and the fantastic, vocally-charged, “Wasting My Time”, which may actually be the album’s highlight. Dial Records has been incredibly relevant this year and Pawel started it off just right. More please.

 

10. The Fun Years – God Was Like, No (Barge Recordings)

Ben Recht and Isaac Sparks, the duo that make up The Fun Years, returned this year with the follow-up to the much revered Baby It’s Cold Inside with the excellently titled God Was Like, No. From the opening minutes of this album, when the minor chord guitar begins you immediately get pulled into their world — and it’s a bleak place, full of moody drones and post-rock guitar. This is a dark album, one that sucks you in and holds you there, yet never by force, because once it starts you want to hear it through to the end.

The album is broken up into eight tracks, but the whole thing flows as one 40 minute movement into the darkest post-rock and sensorial abduction. One could argue The Fun Years sound like a slowed down, pitch dropped Mogwai circa their Come on Die Young days. However I guess more genre specific references would be Ben Frost or Fennesz — still the post-rock vibe flows throughout, and may be one reason why I love it so much. Like their debut Baby it’s Cold Inside, God Was Like, No is unsettling music, but all I can say is, as the weather’s grown colder this album’s been on steady rotation. Here’s to a frozen and bleak next couple of months…

 

9. The Green Kingdom – Prismatic (Home Assembly)

Michael Cottone has been quietly making music under The Green Kingdom moniker since 2006, and with each release he further refines his brand of introspective ambient bliss. Cottone skillfully uses digitally enhanced acoustic guitar, strings, bells, and a myriad of samples and field recordings to create his compositions. Within his arrangements, melody and space work in tandem in an attempt to manifest what Cottone has called an “optimistic nostalgia” for the listener — an aural experience that can provide a momentary reprieve from the frenetic, fast-paced world that surrounds us. And indeed his music is perfect for contemplative mornings and quiet evenings, where the vibe is to “slow down” and to “reflect”. Prismatic is one of the finest ambient albums of 2010, and a prime example of electronic and organic sounds working together so effortlessly. Fans of Helios, Nest, The Boats, Kiln, and Susumu Yokota should check out The Green Kingdom immediately.

Fave tracks: “Wetlands” and “Radiance Reflected”

 

8. Local Natives – Gorilla Manor (Frenchkiss)

Local Natives appeared on the scene early in 2010, and at year’s end feel as if they’ve been around for years. Upon first listen, their influences seemed a little too apparent. They sounded a bit like Fleet Foxes, a bit like Grizzly Bear, with a touch of Pinback and Band of Horses — but after a few more spins, one quickly realizes Gorilla Manor possesses a dark, spiraling beauty. The band is perfectly capable of delivering big anthems strong on memorable hooks — the likes of “Shape Shifter” and brilliant opener “Wide Eyes” are sure to swim around the listener’s head for days. The rhythm section is tight, the guitars interweave wonderfully, yet the young band’s best asset are their strong and varied vocal talents. Quieter tracks like “Cards and Quarters”, “Cubism Dream”, and “Who Knows Who Cares” reveal their voices best, remind me of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and offer up some lovely and emotional hooks.

Seeing them live made me appreciate their debut even more, as they presented their songs without a hint of pretension or rock-star attitude. They were just five young dudes having a fucking blast on their first headlining tour, and they played an amazingly tight set. In the end, Gorilla Manor is no classic — it’s still too indebted to its makers’ influences for that. But it is a strong, striking debut that exceeds expectations and should open enough doors for the band to ensure that their second album be one of the most anticipated records of the year. Lovely.

 

7. Nest – Retold (Serein)

Otto Totland, one half of neo-classicist duo Deaf Center, teamed up with Serein label head Huw Roberts and released Retold, a subtle masterpiece in piano-based ambience. Even on first listen, this record excels on every level as a piece of cinematic, modern classical composition. Each song is slow and deliberate evoking mood and solitary wonder. Using piano as the cornerstone for each song, samples, and strings are gently meshed to startling result. “Trans Siberian” features the distant blare of a locomotive, wintry drones, fractured strings, and what sounds like drops of rain hitting a piece of paper and the crackle of a fire, as it swirls moodily along. Retold is truly a special album and one that you must discover for yourself, as it grows with each successive listen and yet always sounds fresh. I’ve returned to this album time and time again, and consider it the finest in the genre of modern-classical released this year.

 

6. Wild Nothing – Gemini (Captured Tracks)

I’ve really loved the indie pop 80′s revival that has been becoming more and more prominent in the last year or so, and no one does it better than Virginia native, Jack Tatum, the man behind Wild Nothing. So often in these cases, where bands are attempting to sound like the heroes of their youth, I end up saying to myself, well shit, I’d really just rather listen to The Smiths or New Order, than some dudes who are trying to sound like them. But with Wild Nothing, even though his influences are startlingly apparent, there’s still something riveting about it. Because after I recognize the outside influence on a track (The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, New Order, Belle and Sebastian, et al.), I forget about it and it becomes all Wild Nothing.

Gemini and the recently released Golden Haze EP are pure pop genius. Tatum possesses a keen ear for melody and composition and plays the bass just as well as the guitar. Chugging and veering basslines in “Confirmation”, “The Witching Hour”, and “Your Rabbit Feet” from Golden Haze carry the tracks from really good to fucking awesome. His guitar work is also worth mentioning as he tends to use two weaving guitar lines accentuated by synth and he uses distortion and reverb to great effect.

The fact that Tatum plays all the instruments on the album, allows him to always stick to his musical vision, and also reveals his uncanny ability to write songs that stick in your head but never get stale. I’ve listened to Gemini so many goddamn times this year it’s embarassing, and yet I keep going back again and again. “Pessimist”, “Chinatown” and “The Witching Hour” are fantastic pop songs that everyone should have stuck in their heads. I look forward to new material in the coming year, as well as, his first live show in Toronto in February. Shoegazers unite!

 

5. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Def Jam)

I have a lot of guilty pleasures when it comes to mainstream music. Rihanna: Love her. Aaliyah: Would’ve died for her. Katy Perry: Secret shame. Usher? Craig David? Justin Timberlake? Jay-Z? They’ve been known to set me off as I get ready to go out for the night. I can’t help it. I grew up listening to cheesy pop music and bad R&B, so how can I turn it off now? I cannot and I will not.

Now, I’ve always had a soft spot for Kanye West. Ever since College Dropout came out you could occasionally find me blasting his tunes, learning his weak rhymes, and dancing to his ever slick production. And even though with each release he was becoming more and more a caricature of himself in the media, his music kept getting stronger and stronger. The man is a sponge, sucking up influences from all over and he’s got the money to make it happen. When I moved from Montreal to New Brunswick, Late Registration was my soundtrack, and when I left NB to move to Toronto, it was Graduation that I was playing as my outro from the Maritimes.

Flash forward to 2010. Kanye’s media attack has really been nothing short of brilliant. From his impromptu a-capella rap at Facebook HQ, to his “Power” it’s not a video it’s a painting, to his incessant Tweets, to his 30 minute beautifully shot, terribly acted, yet no less captivating short film, “Runaway”. And with each one of these media plugs he slowly gave us tastes and snippets of his new opus, and in the process he effectively sucked me in.

The excitable folks over at Pitchfork decided to give Fantasy a perfect 10, and while it’s a far cry from a perfect album, it is still one of the most exciting listens of the year. “All of the Lights” is an absolute banger, that is so undeniably thrilling I truly cannot believe it. The second half of “Runaway” reveals some of the most innovative work written with Auto-tune thus far. “So Appalled” is fucking ridiculous but I still love it. Opener “Dark Fantasy” features a perfect hip-hop beat and helps us all find bravery in our bravado. “Lost in the World” with Bon Iver is an amazing crossover hit and a fitting closer. And overall, the album plays out smooove from start to finish. Truly, the “Runaway” short film helped make this album what it is — its viewers craved the best moments of the album before it was released, and it revealed Yeezy is more than just a musician, he really is an “artist”, even if he has an entire team of people helping him become one.

At the end of the day, I don’t care, yo. I still love this album.

To paraphrase CyHi Da Prynce from the album: “If God had an iPod, Ye’d be on his playlist.”

 

4. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs (Merge Records)

The Suburbs is an album that blossoms a bit more with each successive listen, and one that is full of dynamic and proper indie rock songs that subtly recall your favourite musicians from the last 30 years. A small list: The Boss, The Beatles, The Byrds, The Who, The Doors, Heart, Cyndi Lauper, U2, Yo La Tengo, Broken Social Scene, Bon Iver, David Byrne, oh yeah, and Arcade Fire. It is an amazingly calculated and mature collection of songs that immediately churns up a strong sense of nostalgia and emotion. But for this listener, the reason The Suburbs is such a genuine winner, and the reason it rests near the top of my list for 2010, is the lyrics. They really resonate with me.

I am unsure if a twenty-year old listener would feel the same way, but I wonder: what contemporary album has had lyrics that actually, truly speak to my generation? “A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido?” I think not. The Suburbs is the Nevermind of twenty years later, where we no longer want to oh well, whatever, nevermind — now what we want to do is remember the past, and take hold of all the stupid mistakes and amazing strides we made to get to exactly where we happen to be now. To reflect on the past and laugh and shake it all off and keep on keeping on whatever good paths we’ve set for our futures…

“Month of May”, “Ready to Start” and “We Used to Wait” are solid and tight rockers that you can blast in your living room and get swept away in. “Modern Man” and “Rococo” are also great songs with strong lyrics, and “The Suburbs”, “Deep Blue”, “Suburban War”, “Sprawl I / II” pack the emotional wallops with tight changes and great orchestral accompaniment to boot. And then the lyrics of the end reprise sums it all up beautifully:

If I could have it back
All the time that we wasted
I’d only waste it again
If I could have it back
You know I’d love to waste it again
Waste it again and again and again

 

3. Ben Swire – From Here to There (Preservation Records)

San Francisco based musician Ben Swire came out of nowhere this year and released the gorgeous From Here to There — a sweeping album of enveloping ambience and thoughtfully processed acoustic instrumentation. Swire skillfully weaves electronic elements, field recordings, and conventional instruments (guitar, bass, percussion) into fluid, meticulously arranged set-pieces that retain an experimental edge without losing sight of musicality and melodicism.

There’s a jazz motif and a minimal techno pulse that runs throughout the album as well, making it by far the smoothest album of the year for me. From Here to There has been my soundtrack to writing essays for school, studying, reading, waking, sleeping, long walks, trudging streetcar rides, and more. It’s an album that defies defintion, being moody, dark, light, airy, and carrying a strong pulse and steady rhythm throughout. Not surprisingly, it is my most listened to album of the year according to my computer’s playlist, and one that will continue to be played wholeheartedly in 2011. L’amour it!

 

2. Autechre – Oversteps / Move of Ten (Warp Records)

In honour of the fact that Autechre have been making robots dance for two decades, Rob Brown and Sean Booth released twenty new tracks in 2010 split onto two separate albums, both just as equally captivating and haunting. Oversteps and Move of Ten are melodic and strangely emotive records that emit far different sonic vibrations than the duo’s last three full-lengths.

There’s no conscious way one can fully understand the compositional mind of Autechre, you just put them on and know that patience will reward. But with their new work, the duo’s vibe will immediately pull you in and have you convinced machines must feel love before Oversteps opener “r ess” is done. Their signature klings, klangs, and syncopated rhythms are in full effect here, and with repeated listens they become infectious, full of darkened corners strobed with light. Autechre is one of the reasons I fell in love with electronic music in the first place. Tri Repetae, along with Music Has the Right from Boards and Aphex’s Richard D. James album (the Warp trifecta), effectively helped foster my love of electronic music, and helped me push the boundaries of my own musical pallette. Music need not be linear or have build-ups and crescendoes, it just needed to eke out emotion, and somehow Autechre’s always been able to do that for me, even though their methods have been completely methodical and computer-based.

Years ago, Jake Mandell put out an album entitled Love Songs for Machines, and with Oversteps and Move of Ten, Autechre have truly done exactly that. Two decades of pushing the boundaries of composition and leaving hundreds of copycat artists in their wake, none even remotely close to them in style and execution and fear and emotion.

Both Oversteps and Move of Ten are not beat heavy albums at all, in fact the tempo is more subdued and textured throughout, which reveals a definite maturation of the duo’s sound and synthesis. As usual, both albums are not the easiest of listens, yet will reward the patient listener and become much more than just the sum of their parts, in fact they become Autechre’s strongest output in half a decade. Furthermore, in many ways Autechre have put out homages to the other heroes of the Warp trifecta — “nth Dafuseder.b” sounds very much like a BoC track, while “M62″ could have been mined from Aphex’s archives. Still, their strongest tracks are ones that are abstract and build on the strange digital emotion they are able to pull out of the wireless air. Tracks like “O=0″, “see on see”, and “iris was a pupil”, reveal this the best.

I hope to see Autechre on my top list again in another decade, and wonder if their music will have morphed into an inaudible sensation that one experiences remotely from space. Thank you Ae and Warp for twenty years of groovy mindfuck. More please. New Boards in 2012 is my friend Mat’s call. Let’s hope we make it there.

 

1. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz (Asthmatic Kitty)

I was really quite surprised not to see this album on many top lists this year. I wonder if Sufjan had instead released a sprawling opus to Massachusetts or Wisconsin or Texas and stuck to his earlier indie-rock sensibility and sensitivity if this album wouldn’t be resting high on the top of the big lists this year. But alas, it is not, and I can only believe it is because listeners didn’t give it enough of a chance. And to be sure, I remember feeling overwhelmed and spent after my first complete listen of The Age of Adz. Like the title of the album’s second track, it really felt like “too much” — but I knew it was full of magic and amazing production and uncompromising emotion on a grand scale. And so I kept listening.

The new material from Adz is above and beyond anything Sufjan has produced thus far, mixing folk, electronica, pop, cinematic orchestra and indie rock, and filtering it all through the sensibilities of a Broadway musical. Its production value is what makes it a challenge, as it’ll take a few listens for you to take it all in, but what makes it brilliant is that by the second listen, you’ll already find the melodies glued to your brain. You’ll wake up humming the chorus to “I Walked” and end up singing the coda of “Vesuvius” in the shower. The repetitive nature of the lyrics and the simple melodies hidden under the surface makes Adz a highly accessible album, yet some may still find it too “electronic” or “layered” for their tastes, but for me I couldn’t have asked for a better amalgamation of my ear’s favourite things — electronic production smashed together with perfect pop melodies.

The album is book-ended brilliantly, beginning with “Futile Devices”, Sufjan alone with his guitar, pulling at your heartstrings immediately, before the album veers off into more abstract territory. At the end of the 25-minute “Impossible Soul”, the old Sufjan resurfaces out of the esoteric splendour, and closes the album alone again with just his voice and guitar. In five minutes out of seventy, he effortlessly reveals he is still one of the finest singer-songwriter’s out there, with the uncanny ability to make you want to cry, yet cheer for the future. But he has bigger aspirations, and no longer needs to write an album full of emotive ballads anymore.

Highlights for me are “Get Real Get Right”, “Vesuvius”, Too Much” and “Impossible Soul”. “Impossible Soul” is my favourite song of the year, as it embraces and exploits practically every genre of the last fifty years — from 60′s rock to Disney-esque orchestra to hip-hop to techno to simple folk. What other song features a raunchy guitar solo, an inspirational sing-a-long, and some kick ass Autotune? And more importantly, what other song smashes all these genres together and does it so effectively? I’ve yet to find any other.

My attempt to describe this album falls way short of articulating the true grandeur of what occurs throughout the span of the record. His live show was the best concert of the year for me, just as The Age of Adz is my favourite album. It’s not an album I can put on at any time of the day or night, but it’s one that will be played time and again for the rest of my life. Give it a real listen and discover its beauty.

Yes! I made it to the fucking end!

 
HONORABLE AUDIBLES

Loscil – Endless Falls (Kranky)
Marc Houle – Drift (Minus Records)
Pop Ambient 2010 (Kompakt Records)
Donato Dozzy – K (Further Records)
Erik K Skodvin – Flare (Sonic Pieces)
The Besnard Lakes are The Roaring Night (Jagjaguwar)
Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal (Editions Mego)
Ikonika – Contact, Love, Want, Have (Hyperdub)
Shed – The Traveller (Ostgut Ton)
The Chap – Well Done Europe (Lo Recordings)
The Sight Below – It All Falls Apart (Ghostly International)

 
R.I.P. Jay Reatard (1980-2010)

 
Thanks for reading everyone!
Best wishes for 2011!

Love,

ml