2009…in no particular order
Burial & Four Tet Moth
So scarce as a 12” single it’s only really available illegally. You’ll not hear a more gorgeous slice of dark electronica like this for a long, long time. Beg, borrow, steal, download, score crack and sell it on to get a copy. Then, only listen to it on headphones, at night, whilst walking city streets in rain or taking a night bus. Don’t ask me I don’t make the rules.
John Foxx My Lost City
I’m a sucker for found sounds, analogue tape, hiss, noise and stories of east London. Here’s an album of found sounds, analogue tape, hiss, noise and stories of east London. If I was a mental patient or Charles Manson, I’d probably believe Foxx was talking directly to me through this album…and The Beatles…or summat.
Living in east London, I regularly find myself wandering the same streets and places that are submerged in the text of My Lost City – Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Fournier Street, Holywell Lane, Commercial Road, The Barbican, Brick Lane, Christ Church, Brushfield Street, Brune Street etc…the ghost town that Foxx recognised straight away; ‘Post industrial, empty . . . blackened buildings patterned on versions of architecture from ancient Rome’ are still almost there despite future Olympic and Square Mile utopias trying to erase its existence.
My Lost City is the hiss and spit of tape noise, the voice of Foxx splintered through long delays, tape loops and echoes into urban (imperfect) hymns to a city of disappearances …London.
Album of the year and time for my meds…this album has spoke to me so much, I’m off to start a large, incongruous family in the middle of Calif…Hackney.
David Sylvian Manafon
Dave hires the Wire magazine Fantasy Football Improv Dream Team and strikes gold. Wry and darkly humourous observations are told over the sound of electronics, guitar, double bass, no-input mixer (?), piano, saxophone and turntables among other things.
Small Metal Gods is quietly and discreetly, his very own Anarchy In The UKmanifesto. He’s burning bridges (again) and building new ones too;
Small metal gods
Cheap souvenirs
You’ve abandoned me for sure
I’m dumping you, my childish things
I’m evening up the score
Like the preparations for a journey that started with Brilliant Trees, Manafon feels like the start of something new;
It’s the farthest place I’ve ever been
It’s a new frontier for me
Us too Dave, us too. The adventure continues.
Atomic Orchestra of Radioactive Europe – Nuclear Chocolate
It opens with a menacing hum and the worries of a 1950s suburban American housewife on the effect of nuclear power-plants on her home. She’s reassured, possibly by hubby that nuclear power-plants are as harmless “as a chocolate factory”. Yeah, right – that sounds familiar. It sounds so retro, so 1950s and so – now. Whilst all this placating of housewife is going on, an unnerving sound of analogue insect noise or foreign radio chatter is sneaking up behind the menacing hum….and then it all goes a bit Dark Star.
Terra In Fission – hard to say – imagine a Tim Burton stop/start animation film of a 1950s toy robot, menacingly (there’s a lot of menace on this album), clockworking and clanking its way deeper and deeper through sub-basement after sub-basement of a nuclear plant whilst all the corridors are filled with the red flashing lights of sirens….that’s what it sounds like. No, really. On the other hand, Atomic Flowerwould accompany one of those 1950s (despite the 70s analogue feel – this album is real 1950s Cold War atomic feel, and the beautiful artwork enforces this) USSR films, that probably had titles like “NUCLEAR POWER TO THE PEOPLE!” or something like that – we see happy comrades doing ‘synchronised plutonium’ moves with nothing more than a test-tube and a happy smile for the camera – ah! The good old days!
The Burn has no such naivety about it – it’s the sound of a ticking bomb in a 20 Jazz Funk Greats scored by Giorgio Moroder kinda way. If I was in a field in the late 80s off the M25 again, chances are I’d probably dance to it. But that’s just me. Toxic Clock is more ticking menace – think of furnaces and dangerous chemicals (there’s so many love songs, perhaps a hymn to furnaces and dangerous chemicals is a bit more honest in these enlightened times of devolution) . Can’t say it helps – but it worked for me.
The finale is Mushroom Air, and with a title like that, it can only mean ‘THE END’. It’s the soundtrack to restored footage of Christmas Island tests – it’s the build-up and the cutting to the aftermath of ash falling into the sea, views through goggles from a Navy battle cruiser that doesn’t have the education to be far enough away from the fallout, a little too close to the main event. That’s what Nuclear Chocolate tastes like – try some today!
Robin Guthrie & John Foxx Mirrorball
Apparently this album has caused much heated debate, the like of which has not been seen since Princip decided between Sachertorte or Cheese and Onion at Schiller's café. Why? Yes it sounds a bit like the Cocteau Twins – experts are currently gathering in Geneva to fathom this out, but, between you and me – I think it might have summat to do with the fact that Robin Guthrie’s on it – shhh! Keep Mum! Remember – “Loose Lips Sink Ships” and all that.
Asking Robin Guthrie to not sound like Robin Guthrie is a bit like asking Clint Eastwoood to become a character actor – it can’t be done. You get Clint Eastwood in because he’s Clint Eastwood. Everyone knew exactly what this album was going to sound like before it was even recorded – and that’s no bad thing is it? It’s art for arts sake – don’t listen too deeply, just listen – it’s gorgeous.
School of Seven Bells Alpinisims
Technically 2008, but it wasn’t released in the UK until 2009. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. It’s prog/ it’s not, it’s folk / no it isn’t, it’s pop / no it’s experimental – it’s…blimey – I’ve no idea. It’s the sound of summer, that’s what it is. Half Asleep should have been a number 1 single.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs It’s Blitz!
Former NY indie darlings swap geetars for synths and the results are astounding. Pure electro pop with a really nice hard, warm edge to it. Hard to believe that its praises haven’t been sung round here – give it a listen if you can.
Múm Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know
The loss of their lead singer a few albums ago and a shift away from the heavily electronic and darker territory on albums such as Summer Make Good, Yesterday Was Dramatic–Today Is OK and Finally We Are No One – has meant that this newer, brighter, and dare I say it – ‘poppier’ Múm has been critically ignored.
Which is sad really, as this is a real gem of an album – it’s much warmer, ‘quiet camp fire on a summer evening with a few friends and lots of alcohol’ warmer – the lyrics are even more insane than usual which just adds to the whole event and the music has shifted 90 degrees towards a fusion of organic electronic somewhere between Unhalfbricking and Cobra and Phases… – you almost get a sense of where they’re taking you through the last album Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy , and this one, but you know that there’s still more surprises in store. And if they’re like this – more please!
Pete Doherty Grace/Wastelands
Pete Doherty's debut; Grace/Wastelands - superb. Bound to bring new followers, very upbeat and much more adventurous than the last Babyshambles recordingShotters Nation. Some strong songs throughout but he’s still very much a slave to his influences. Last of the English Roses starts off like Straight to Hell-era Clash with slow dub drums and melodica, but then the chorus comes in and its Village Green...-era Kinks - but it all holds together so well.
