Best music of 2010? December 30, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.trackback
I’m interested in what music people have liked over the past year. So if you have six or seven groups or tracks that have lodged in your ears over that period fire ahead…
For myself it’s been a mix between groups and songs. Brandt Brauer Frick’s take on house by way of classical and jazz will be coming to a This Weekend I’ll be Listening to… imminently, i.e. tomorrow. US outfit Quarkspace, surely the only spacerock/techno band ever to sample QPR supporters chants, are up there, The Field’s pinpoint perfect loops are another. I’ve mentioned Killing Joke’s Absolute Dissent, and I’m still listening to it. I sort of admire These New Puritans more than I like them, but each time I listen to them I find something more to admire. The same was true of The XX. Warpaint reminded me a lot of Fleetwood Mac, which is a good thing in my book, even if their videos were teeth-grindingly awful a lot of the time. And Teenage Fanclub’s Shadows was pretty good.
Anyhow, over to you…
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
In the clubs of Jimstown, the name DJ John Spart evokes memories of playful techno sets underpinned by a theoretical discourse and a determination to expose the means of production unseen since the salad days of The Manson Family. More avant-garde than the CLR leftovers of the Workers Party, the flamboyant DJ and ultra-left libertine presents his Top 10 of 2010 –
#10 – Automatic Tasty – ‘An Cnoc Rua’
#9 – Brian Eno – ‘Horse’
#8 – Traversable Wormhole – ‘When 2D Meets 3D'(Peter Van Hoesen Remix)
#7 – Matthew Dear – ‘Slowdance’
#6 – Model 500 – ‘Huesca’
#5 – Anodyne – ‘Close Your Eyes'(Corporation Street Remix by Autechre)
#4 – Marc Houle – ‘Drift’
#3 – Basti Grub & Komaton – ‘Sick’
#2 – Svreca – ‘Utero'(Regis Remix)
#1 – Kangding Ray – ‘Pruitt Igoe'(Alvo Noto Remodel)
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More avant-garde than the CLR leftovers? Surely that would be an easy task? 🙂
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Wouldn’t you expose the ruling class’s control of the means of production, or something similar, rather than just exposing the means of production as such? You could do that just by pointing to somebody working (albeit that’s not very likely in the world of rock ‘n’ roll).
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PS Huesca?
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In case you thought I didn’t take the contributions seriously… they’re all great, but the one’s I really like are…
10 – Very nice reworking of what otherwise would be some fairly hackneyed chord progressions.
7. I liked this a lot too. And it’s on Ghostly International who are pretty damn good, and if you haven’t checked out Syntaks you probably should.
6. Cracking video. Cracking track.
5. Excellent. Though predictably excellent given whose involved.
4. Nice piece.
3. Excellent as well. Nicely understated.
2. Lovely. Very reminiscent of the heyday of Warp… but in a good way (and maybe particularly of some Black Dog (after the Plaid contingent left).
Funnily enough listening to the first minute or so of 1, which is repeated later, I kept thinking of Disco Inferno later stuff.
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Albums of 2010 for me are Of Montreal, “False Priest” and Joanna Newsom, “Have One on Me”.
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I’d second Of Montreal – *great* album. The first half of Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ is great, the second half not so much. I enjoyed the somewhat progtastic ‘Congratulations’ by MGMT (pretty unlike their media-friendly singles of 2008/9) and loved Beach House’s ‘Teen Dream’ this year:
I await the New Year appearance of some Best-of-Beefheart type compilation…
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Six or Seven records from this year? I’m not sure if I can do this century…..
Here’s a few tunes I found this year however (though most seem to be from c. 1973)
The first one is from my favourite LP purchase of ’10 – it’s Krzysztof Klenczon from 1970, his first record after leaving Czerwone Gitary (Red Guitars) who were superstars in Poland – this is kind of equivalent (I’m guessing) to ‘Plastic Ono Band’ or something – ex- pop star gets out there. Anyway, it’s great psych-y pop
Next more Polish goodness, and this time from the jazz side of the bed…..there’s an awesome amount of great jazz records from Poland from the early ’60s onwards: I’m still barely scratching the surface. This is Wojciech Karolak from a album called ‘Easy’ –
Moving slowly westward, next up is Hildegard Knef, from her LP ‘Knef’ from 1970 – it represents a kind of genre that doesn’t really happen in English speaking countries so much – sort of avant-garde and middle of the road at the same time. The nearest thing would be Serge Gainsbourg’s records of about the same time, maybe – this is Im 80e Stockwerk (on the 80th floor)
And keeping on a psychedelic easy listening trip, here’s a tune from Spain: Los Pekinekes, a combo I try and fail to explain, even to myself – the Shadows play Soft machine? Cheese and drugs? this is Tren Transoceanico a Bucaramanga. Rocks, so it does.
Crossing that there ocean (see what I did?), and Brazil….don’t know too much about this to be honest; Brazilian soul music from Antonio Carlos e Jocafi. Harder and dancier than better known MPB stuff like Veloso/ Os Mutantes/ Gal Costa. It’s called Per Nossa Senhora, which I fear means ‘For Our Lady’
There were a few North American Spiritual jazz bits I wanted to chuck in, but few were on Youtube – here’s one I did find, Byron Morris and Unity, again, I think, from 73
Next, and some honest cheese: Mike Liddell e Gli Atomi and you’ll recognise the tune, even in Italian. Mike Liddell was a transplanted Brit who had quite a career on the Italian Beat group circuit.
And finally, a tribute to one of the too many great artists who died this year. One of my favourite singers ever, Gregory Isaacs:
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sorry, this should be the Gregory Isaacs link
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Not being totally up to speed with contemporary music, what I enjoyed this year were: Funeral Party, The XX and Phoenix. I’m not sure if all were 2010.
Going back to a previous post on Rush, and the degree to which they were/are, or were/are not, ‘right wing’. I see from the lyrics on my copy of ‘2112’ that the title track notes: ‘With acknowledgement of the genius of Ayn Rand’. Evidence for the prosecution…..
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David Rawlings Machine – hows about you
James Blake – cmyk
the unthanks – the testimony of patience kershaw
victoire – cathedral city
The Unthanks track is the on
The Unthanks track is the one I was trying to think of recently in the leftie-music thread.
Happy new year.
PS earworm: sing ‘The Cedar Lounge Revolution’ to yourself to the tune of ‘The Secret Life of Arabia’ by Bowie.
Annoying, isn’t it?
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Fantastic stuff and a lot of new names to me there.
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All in all a great year for music. For me it was Distant Relatives by Nas and Damian Marley, How I Got Over by The Roots, You Are Not Alone by Mavis Staples, El Che by Rhymefest, Revolutions Per Minute by Reflection Eternal, and Losing Sleep by Edwyn Collins. In albums with Wake Up in the title, John Legend and The Roots did a great collection of political soul classics in Wake Up!, and Paul Weller’s Wake Up The Nation was a mighty piece of work. I’m with the consensus on the greatness of Kanye West’s new album, and Janelle Monâe’s record was another obvious classic. Honourable mentions for Big Boi, Cee Lo Green, Erykah Badu, and also Elton John and Leon Russell. Others: The National, Arcade Fire, N.E.R.D., Drake, Bilal, and The Black Keys. The Brad Pitt Light Orchestra also did a top drawer album.
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I don’t know about groups or artists (the last new one that I took an interest in was Florence and the Machine), but the original music in the Scott Pilgrim movie (a staple here this Xmas) is great, and the various Canadian bands behind it will be the subject of further musical investigation…
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God, I hardly bought anything new in 2010. I did though go back to lps which were re-issued throughout the year and played Station to Station to death as well as Searching for the Young Soul Rebels. I was sort of tempted by The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall until I saw the price… Listening to stuff like that again does lead you into back catalogue territory, which was particularly good after I’d dusted off Bitches Brew which brought on a winter of late ’50s be-bop and other jazzy delights. Santy got me Keef’s book (which is a great read until about Some Girls and then becomes a load of unmitigated shite) and having spent the last week on my back with flu-related muscle spasms I was able to indulge in late ’60s-early ’70s Stones, which has put me in a different place musically as the new year begins. I see Wire have a new lp out next week which apparently echoes the first two. Now that I’ll have to buy… Here’s Reuters. Play loud.
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Manic Street Preacher’s New Album was criminally underrated. It wasn’t as good as Journal for Plague Lovers but it was a continuation of the return to form that started with Send Away the Tigers. It’s quintesential Manics but still different from anything they’ve done before. I really love the big, epic pop (described by Nicky Wire as ‘Heavy Metal Motown’) tracks in particular. Below is a good example:
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Still love the Manics, wasn’t so keen on the video for the single, but overall yep great stuff.
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[…] up, hat tip to Prometheus Records who posted the first comment on this thread back in December and introduced me to Matthew Dear […]
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