The USAISAMONSTER – Wohaw
If Lightning Bolt’s Hypermagic Mountain was evidence that they were the most entertaining one-trick ponies on the planet and Afrirampo’s Korega Mayaku Da dipped between inspired and meandering then it fell to Load’s USAISAMONSTER to be the near-telepathic two-piece stars of 2005. The backbone of their sound strikes some kind of halfway stage between Ruins and Fugazi, only a Ruins and Fugazi hybrid caught covering the operatic midsection from Bohemian Rhapsody. Their songs are about the plight of Native Americans. Somehow their drummer somehow manages to sing, play keyboards and drum at the same time. This album is their most diverse yet with forays away from their usual syncopated heroics into atmospheric folk, thumb pianos, spoken word narrative and strummed acoustics. Cheers boys.
MIA – Arular
A running theme this year is trying to say something new about albums that seem to have caught on to a degree at which there’s not a lot more to say. About the only thing that I can tell you that you might not already know is that I shamelessly ripped off the drums on Pull Up the People for I am Feudal Japan. There’s a pull in Hunting Lodge to head in a much more prog direction, but I want to sound like this.
Jackson and His Computer Band – Smash
You’d expect an album that took four years to make to sound overworked, bloated and heartless, not an instant classic to put alongside Mastered by the Guy at the Exchange and The Richard D James Album. Jackson Fourgeaud spent that time pouring his heart into obsessive detail, and at times this album sounds like the best of the last four decades of experimental dance-pop smashed up like so much broken mirror, reflecting all the best bits of your record collection back at you. Like everyone else these days his music glitches and contorts and stutters around, but he’s learned Aphex Twin’s best lesson and never once drops the beat. All that plus Mike Ladd.
Melt Banana – 13 Hedgehogs (MxBx Singles 1994-1999)
Enormous fun. Fifty-six tracks on a single CD from the best band in the universe. How is it possible for one single band to own the asses of so many lesser bands? Gold dust. They’re recording the new one this year. Excited, anyone?
Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto – Insen
Oooooh, this record feels so nice. There’s not much you can talk about here, it’s the execution that makes this album such a beauty. The piano is sparse, just the tone of the instrument, tiny clusters of notes here and there. The programming rarely takes centre stage, delicately breaking the edges, softly malfunctioning, slowly pushing the piano into the room with you as though the medium can’t contain it. Less an album, more a companion, and if you buy it get Vrioon too. You’ll be hopelessly addicted.
Sigur Ros – Takk
Explosions in the Sky – The Rescue
Old epic post-rock bands try new things, to dazzling effect. EitS go almost frivolous, adopting a fast-paced writing and recording methodology that stops them short of full-blown epics while keeping the tenderness of that guitar sound, the sound that somehow does that great trick of reminding you of all those bands you loved as a teenager while never really sounding like any of them.
It’s Sigur Ros who score the most points, however. Their last album () was contructed almost entirely from morose and repetitive slow dirges, which while being fantastic was never going to be more than a minority interest. What an about-face. The opener somehow manages to be bubbly yet yearning before suddenly cranking it up further than you’d ever expect and channels U2 for a stadium-sized crescendo. But it’s the second song that gives you most clues as to what is coming for the rest of the record. It dances across your speakers until it dawns into pure glorious pop music, as delicate as you’d expect from Sigur Ros but somehow as audacious as the Polyphonic Spree’s best. The album leaves you grinning from each to ear.
Taken together these records are proof that *experimental* is really too impoverished a tagline for this music. Wire journalists and may resent them for being the acceptable face of margin music ploughing the same old furrow as ever, but these days they seem to be going for bigger goals than mere innovation. Let’s hope they don’t bottle it when everyone starts liking them.
Ghostface Killah and Trife da God – Put it on the Line
I’m sorry, Trife. But really. This is a stop-gap for all us Ghostface fans dying for the next fix. I appreciate that it might seem as though you’ve got some kind of Cuban Linx/Ironman thing going on here. But we’re listening for one reason only.
I’ll be honest, I’ve been really disappointed with hip hop albums this year. I know it’s a singles market and all that, but still… I’m an albums man at heart. I don’t have a telly, don’t listen to the radio. I’m not clued in on that kind of thing. I’m not hugely into making myself compilations of all my favourite singles. So I listened to Edan and thought it was dull. Same with Dangerdoom (I don’t have much time for MF Doom’s flow). Snoozed through Quasimoto. Cage was much better but I just don’t really buy him as an MC, too much time wasted setting the scene with painfully obvious signifiers of DA URBAN DECAY. Kanye’s record was alright, there was some great stuff on there. But all in all I feel hip hop starved and need some good recommendations.
Until then, from what little I’ve heard so far, a Ghostface stop-gap (a cast off by any other artist) is still sufficiently wonderful to be an album of the year. Comes complete with a brilliant live DVD in which Theodore introduces his son to a sold out crowd: “This is my son. Nigger came out my fucking dick.” Gee, thanks Dad.
OV – Orthrelm
Kawabata Makoto – Inui III
When I first heard Oneida’s masterpiece Sheets of Easter I had to take it to excess and listen to it on repeat for hours. It still seems like all the Law and the Prophets, the entire meaning of life is contained in that song. And here’s more Reich’n’Roll from a band I know next to nothing about… yet. It’s forty-five minutes of bloody-minded guitar and drum repetition. Like the best ecstatic music it quickly becomes something else, something slippery and illusionary that snakes out from your speakers and wraps itself around your mind.
Meanwhile it’s business as usual for Kawabata Makoto. Here again he remakes the same record he’s always making. The AMT guitarist continues his sonic devotions, mining one single seam as though he’s ascending to the heavens or burrowing to the centre of the Earth, trying to make sense of exactly what happened to him in June 1999. I’m tempted to recommend that you not bother with this unless you can use it practically as a devotional aid… possibly the most useful record of the year.
I’m emailing the record labels to make sure future copies of these CDs have a label marked: Not For Flyboy.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
It seems like the entire western world is sitting up and taking notice of this band. I wish I was capable of writing the kind of recommendation that would puncture the hype and cut you to the heart, just enough so that you could trust me when I say that this is a really rather wonderful record. So I’ll just say that over the last five months or so everyone who’s been present when I’ve played it has needed to know who it’s by. Thanks Fluxblog for the early heads-up.
Roll Deep – In at the Deep End
Fair enough. There was one other great hip hop album. It seemed to split the fans a bit, but for my money the album just crackles with energy and sparkles with life. It’s unashamedly poppy and all the better for it, in places just so daftly infectious and lovable you wish they were all there with you so you could slap them on the back and buy them a pint. The round might be a bit expensive though.
Jamie Lidell – Multiply
Oh. Hell. Yeah. Maybe we should call this the year that everyone got bored of making experimental music and went supernova. Lidell ditches the sleek yet cold Supercollider sound and makes a fantasticly warm-hearted soul album. It’s totally heartfelt but never simplistic, the attention to detail is exquisite, the references to his own avant-garde past subtle and always underplayed. This is for Prince fans, for those who love Stevie Wonder, Otis, Marvin… and it’s no homage. It stands up to all those classics. Effortlessly. Along with Insen this is the most addictive album of the year, a career best, and a dazzlingly diverse showcase for what has become one of the most instantly lovable voices in all contemporary music. |
