My last post about Lil B (Age of Information video!) ended with promise of a mix. Well here it is. For you, your friends, even your mother: this is not only designed to get the uninitiated based in 45 minutes or less, but to properly rebuke those who think this man is all hype and no substance. Play it for them. Especially your mom.
Here’s another set of essential 2010 albums unfortunately left by the wayside. Witness their excellence.
Beauty. Just, pure fragile beauty. Floating like a spiderweb made of static, hung with fragments of shattered dreampop. Van Hoen, who started out in Seefeel and ferried the shoegaze & idm Locust through the next decade, knows a thing or two about prismatic blissouts. Being unfamiliar with his past solo work, I won’t remark on how this is a more personal statement or not; I will simply say that, as a *huge* fan of Seefeel, a longtime admirer of Locust (especially Truth Is Born of Arguments – an essential document), and an eternal seeker of alluring disintegration, this album hits the spot.
Being taken in by the line that their name is inspired by a certain Tarkovsky film and the fact that they employed old school synths in a more pop-friendly framework than Oneohtrix Point Never or Emeralds, I nevertheless held this one at arm’s length upon first listen. The tones grabbed me, the melodies held me, the sheer variety kept my attention from wandering, but I was stopping short of truly absorbing it. Second go-round, I realized it’s not made to dissect the individual tracks or feel around for a signature invention, something groundbreaking to hang its hat on. This album is one to sit back (or walk or ride or whatever) and take in all at once. Much like Teebs’ utopian fever dream Ardour, this 50 minute excursion is built carefully out of vignettes highlighting different facets of the sound until a wholly rounded picture is formed by the end. I can hear Blade Runner and The Neverending Story and even the Terminator at times, but I can also sense the instructive warmth of Boards of Canada, fellow Scots with a penchant for playfully distracted, unpretentious psych explorations. Where else would we find songs titled Head Supernova, Primary Colours at the Back of my Mind, and Neon Colony?
Well this one snuck up on me. I was never a fan of the debut LP, which swam in a torrent of praise in 2009. Some songs caught my ear but the band simply didn’t hit those pleasure centers I need to truly enjoy an album. Playing this lengthy EP on a blizzard bound morning while making pancakes turned out to be a shining revelation, and an arresting listen. Moving beyond their Velvet Underground, jangly garage sound into the realm of earnest, intelligent, well written pop infused with more than a little grit and gravitas, the band has officially released one of a literal handful of rock albums which I can admire, adore, and really sink my teeth into. Biggest highlights are the title track, a stoned lament for the fractured state of our world today, and Caroline – a tune which steps out of any boundaries the band previously ruled, into pure psychedelic wanderlust. It reveals itself slowly (at first echoing The Smashing Pumpkins‘ deep album cut Porcelina of the Vast Oceans), unwinding like a scarf caught on a fence, until it’s stretched to the point of abstraction and hanging in the air around you. A cloud of a hazy rock dream, tugging upward. A great way to end an album and point to an even brighter future for this duo.
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.]
Underworld drop their latest studio album, Barking, on September 14th and are teasing it with the hilarious (and hilariously badass) video for second single Always Loved A Film. Skateboarding, shoplifting, drinking, girls, joyrides and more… from a group of deliriously ecstatic senior citizens!
I’m guessing it’s a reflection of, or sly commentary on, the men behind Underworld‘s “grandfather” status in the electronic music realm. They’ve come back with their most straightfoward party starting album (at least since the blissed out live Everything, Everything album and DVD) at a time when most of their peers are curating soft jazz shows on NPR or laying low in the south of France or some such idyllic place. It may not be the most original slice of dance nirvana or within spitting distance of the band’s 1990’s apex (see Second Toughest In The Infants right here on Optimistic Underground for that) but it sure gets my blood pumping more than most of what 2010 has had to offer.
All I’ll say beyond that is to watch the entire video. To say things escalate beyond mere (displaced) adolescent destruction is an understatement: this ride gets wilder until the very last frame. Enjoy
[pick up Barking soon at amazon or basically anywhere on the 14th. as a longtime fan I can attest it’s a worthy purchase]
Scenes With Curved Objects has become (possibly) my 2nd favorite release by Oneohtrix Point Never.
Well, this brief cassette release is at least tied with the two LPs preceeding the possibly-album-of-the-year Returnal. Yes, like those psychotropic soundscapes, it is indescribably gorgeous. Pulsing with an alien life unique in Oneohtrix Point Never‘s oeuvre, these two live-sourced tracks foreshadow the drifting-cloud majesty of Returnal while rumbling with the some of the most concrete rhythms he (Daniel Lopatin) has yet recorded.
It begins with what sound like marimbas via a familiar-enough repeated melody, simply growing in intensity – never changing – throughout the 9 minutes of Melancholy Descriptions of Simple 3D Environments. The draw here is how Lopatin slowly cocoons this spine, draping layer upon layer of undulating synth washes, echoed laser effects, and eventually the swelling heart of warming drone takes everything right off the ground. Side B opens with what can only be described as The Caretaker (aka Leyland Kirby) riffing on something more triumphant than haunting: a hollowed out and dispatched-from-the-past orchestral section valiantly tries to break through the corrosion. Then we abruptly cut to a short murky collage which feels like bumping through a science lab in the dark before drifting directly into the triumphant heart of this piece: The Trouble With Being Born. An oscillating fuge of an (uncharacteristically) optimistic dystopian anthem, this largest cut of the side’s 9 minutes feels like the true contemplative center of the release, a space where all conscious thought lifts up and outward. In other words, it’s 5 minutes that will totally “expand your mind,” man. Then a proverbial sudden-record-scratch moment happens and we cut to an Ariel Pink damaged-AM-pop sound refracted in the same manner as the previous collage, fading toward silence.
It’s quite a ride. Short but intense. Listen.
Tracklisting: A Melancholy Descriptions of Simple 3D Environments B Adagio In G Minor Screw/Piano Craft Guild Edit/The Trouble With Being Born/Let It Go[get the mp3 edition at boomkat or try and pick up the tape via discogs..but good luck with a fair price.]
[see also on Optimistic Underground: Antony and Fennesz on Returnal 7″ and Oneohtrix Point Never and Days of Thunder]
Mount Kimbie released one of my very favorite little EPs in 2009 titled Maybes. Sketching an indelible glimpse of truly post-dubstep sounds – embodying not just the unceasing clatter of the streets but the tactile pulse of pensive moments at home in the morning kitchen, the bedroom or bath – no one else spun remotely into their orbit for a long time; not even their follow up effort. Then came the full length debut…
Crooks & Lovers. It sounds like nothing you’d expect. Instead of thriving in the miniature-ambient dubstep realm they created, duo Dominic Maker and Kai Campos sidestep the opportunity to bask in a certain glow. Gripping their sound ever more tightly, these 35 minutes stake out some truly virgin territory on the beat continent. All the domestic intimacy of their prior work is amplified while they throw open the windows and breathe in a wider spectrum of textures and feeling. Every tool in the kitchen has been employed in an assuredly minimal manner, each piece clicking into place with the draw of a magnet, a knife in its sheath. After several listens what seems to stand out most to me is how tactile the album is. There’s enough space and silence in here that the sharpness of contrast between the individual elements really snaps in an overtly physical way. There’s a sense of gravity and heft to these beats. Imagine the deaf hearing for the first time, the immense clarity of glass breaking or water droplets; how even a handshake cracks like thunder. Mount Kimbie renders each moment in a high definition embrace. Close listening is naturally rewarded with exponential returns.
At proper volume, an acute idea of synesthesia forms along with the standing hairs on my neck. Every millisecond of this thoroughly electronic sound hums like a rough brush on my thumbs, clicks like teeth on my lips, and claps with the force of a pair of hands over my ears. It’s an unending flow of warm and inviting colors filtering the entire band of visible light. It smells like home. This is what makes Crooks & Lovers truly stand apart.
If you’re remotely familiar with beat-centric music today, give Mount Kimbie a try. If you’re interested, simply buy this album now. Seriously.
Tracklist: 01. Tunnelvision 02. Would Know 03. Before I Move Off 04. Blind Night Errand 05. Adriatic 06. Carbonated 07. Ruby 08. Ode To Bear 09. Field 10. Mayor 11. Between Time[grab a copy at forced exposure, boomkat or amazon or somewhere else and be happy you did]
[ps buy Maybes too]
Janelle Monáe is an intriguing artist whom I’ve followed since an explosive debut EP dropped in 2008 and I happened to catch a blurb in Rolling Stone (of all places!) about it. Metropolis: The Chase Suite was a firecracker of sci-fi themes, futuristic funk, fresh production, elastic style and absolutely star-making vocals. I thought, this kid is absolutely going to blow up.
Then she disappeared.
But not exactly, as it turns out. Debut LP ArchAndroid came out this Tuesday and to promote it Miss Monáe appeared on David Letterman‘s show for her broadcast premier with first single Tightrope. Watching this clip convinced me of her raw live-wire talent and the inevitable nature of her rising star. Enjoy.
That footwork! That presence! Those pipes! That band! The audience appears highly impressed. Since I’m such a nice guy, watch the original music video as well. This shit grabs me like few videos have since the 1990’s heyday of the form. Loose fun yet tightly sculpted and conceptually stylized, it’s the kind of vision I was unable to shake back in that day. The sort of video which I didn’t realize apparently still exists.
You’re welcome.
[pick the album up on jmonae.com or amazon i guess. just, somewhere]
Optimistic Underground 