My first album of 2011. So infectious, I’m giddy with the prospect of holding its vinyl in my hands on release day – still a month off. James Blake set the blog frontier ablaze last year with two progressive leaps beyond the dubstep fray – the CMYK and Klavierwork EPs – but never gripped my attention, making my ears perk up, my spine tingle, quite like this. This self titled debut is easily this year’s (first) benchmark.
My Best of 2010 was basically an attempt to carve my musical experience of the past year down to its most essential, most ingrained elements. An attempt to sum up the music I feel had the largest impact on my listening, on my life.
I left out a lot of great albums. Thankfully, they were drawn from a text file kept on my desktop throughout the year, chronicling each album I decide, at a given moment, is awesome. Yes, it’s that simple. As time passes I remove the fleeting infatuations, anything not holding up. So I’m left with a solid list I can refer to in search of everything I really, truly enjoyed this year. This is it, in order I heard them.
So there it is. Something to remember is that any one of these albums may end up defining the year as much as the ‘true’ list – and that something I haven’t even heard yet may best them all. It’s happened before. This is why Optimistic Underground will soon post its first Music From Before 2010 But Discovered This Year list. This will cover the much wider range of music I was into this year, since there is already much more music out there than is being released at any given time.
[This post is subject to change. Like I’ll probably add one or two more by January.]
Teebs is about to release the album of our sweetest dreams, and I mean that in the most literal sense. The also-visual-artist and freshest face in Flying Lotus‘ Brainfeeder collective has finally created a full length release, finally exceeding even his most beatific psychedelic paintings in service of rendering his uniquely utopian vision.
Yes, utopia. This is exactly what Teebs conjures on record; one listen leaves no doubt as to the veracity of a claim by Flying Lotus himself that this album sounds “the way Avatar looks.” I’d be hard pressed to utter a more succinct bon mot. This music reminds me of imaginary imagery more than any specific prior music; tropical visions of the future as seen in 60’s cinema, a psychedelic James Bond-ian secret island accessible only by submarine. Or space ship. The colors and tones may have forebears in John Barry and Martin Denny – and the optimistic sheen the future once sported – but the construction and the visionary feel is all his own.
Listen to Arthur’s Birds – a cut right from the center of Ardour.
[pick this one up October 18th via brainfeeder on amazon or *more coming soon*]
“Eleven Tigers just blew my fucking mind,” I thought.
And this is probably the tenth time I’ve listened to Clouds Are Mountains.
Releasing the closest moment he’s come to a conventional song as a first single, Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin) nevertheless takes the road less travelled with this offering. Pairing a piano+vocal recording with a radical reimagining and leaving the whole affair at that, the man turns over yet another stone on his search to define what, exactly, his music means.
“You’ve never left; you’ve been here the whole time.”
The above quote seems to sum up the artist’s entire raison d’être. In fact, the elucidated lyrics, as gorgeously sung by Antony Hegarty, directly put to words many of the feelings evoked by the man’s signature aural space. Accompanied by spare, treated piano and the faintest wisp of echo, the operatic vocalist takes direct aim and amplifies the gut-level impact of Lopatin’s composition while laying bare the melodic underpinning of his enigmatic recording.
As brilliant as it sounds standing alone, the track is swiftly one-upped by Fennesz on the second side. Alchemizing the original, Antony‘s version, and elemental touchstones from throughout the titular album itself, the Austrian glitch deity twists up an overwhelming cocktail distilling everything which makes Oneohtrix Point Never intriguing in under five minutes. Simultaneously near-infectious yet more esoteric than the original, the track casts the newly focused vocals into a realm somewhere between the original’s stellar echoes and Antony’s intimate transmission, while providing the synths with both a rhythmic backbone and an environment utterly devoid of gravity. As in, yes, this version soars more than the artist himself.
As in, I’m beyond elated merely considering the possibility of these two collaborating in the future. As in… just listen to the track and know, as I do, what it’s like to have one’s mind blown in this particular way. It’s a fun ride. Regardless of how you may feel about the changes, a new and wider and deeper understanding of Oneohtrix Point Never emerges.
Tracklist: A. Returnal [voice: Antony, piano: Daniel Lopatin][grab this 7″ from forced exposure because it’s worth it.]
Brock Van Wey took a headfirst leap off the end point of dub techno last year into the oceanic swells of ambient bliss on this first album under his given name. Instead of crashing into the waves and sinking, the man usually known as Bvdub simply took flight and never looked down. This is White Clouds Drift On And On.
Optimistic Underground 