Lists lists lists

Hey guys.

Back in December and in January and maybe even into February just about every music publication and message board dude was putting together "best of the decade" lists.

I tried back then but I decided not to. I've been thinking about doing it for awhile and I've actually got a bunch of albums selected, but I'm going to do it different.

I figured that making a list 1-100 would be even more arbitrary than my usual year-end top 50. Therefore, what I have done is made a NEW top 10 for every year between 2000 and 2009. I started making my top 50 or 40 back in 2003 (what a funny list that was) and I've published it on a website or this blog every year since (except 2005, in which I just made a top 20 and posted it on a couple message boards).

So anyway, I've made a new top 10 for every year and most of them are drastically different - because well, we change. The general criteria for making the list is whether or not I listened to the given album a lot after its release or if I forgot about it as the year changed. There are at least two #1's entirely missing from these lists, so there's that.

I'll post these with reviews or whatever in the near future with no promise of when they will come out or whatever and no one really cares anyway - its more for me than you. I've been rediscovering some past loves this past week and a half and it's been really great for me.

After I post all these, I might just make an overall top 20 or 15 or 10 or something for the sake of doing it myself and seeing if I value any of the years more than any other.

Anyway - stay tuned if you want. I'll probably post some A-Z's here and there too.

A To Z - New Wave Hot Dogs

I waited way too long to lose myself in Yo La Tengo.

Losing yourself seems an appropriate and essential stage of life when it comes to listening to Yo La Tengo. Often hailed as the quintessential "critic's" band, I had heard their name tossed around for years. I bought "Prisoners Of Love" when it came out - essentially figuring a 2-disc retrospective would be the best introduction to this storied band.

I never listened to it.

Then this past summer I decided to truly explore the band. It started with an obsession with the guitar-based tracks they lent to movies. Particular the forelorn echo in "Old Joy" that made me want to figure this band out. I started at the beginning, I worked my way up.

I loved everything.

Yo La Tengo is a band to obsess over. I can't call them my favorite band, I still don't know their music well enough and the summer obsession didn't last but a month. But when I decided I wanted to write about "New Wave Hot Dogs", I suddenly rekindled this obsession. I mean, this album is often considered one fo their weakest in their catalogue. It might be, I don't know. I'm not comparing. It's not a masterpiece, but chronilogically, this is the first full album to feature Ira as the lead guitarist and jesus fuck do I love his guitar playing. Sloppy as all hell, yet somehow it reaches places that many other guitarists can't. I dropped my dreams of wanting to play electric guitar when I was 16. Listening to Yo La Tengo rekindled that. The vocals are average, the melodies are great. The Velvet Underground comparison is very apt on this release, but man none of that matters. For some reason the guitar on this record, even more than some of their more notable releases, really gets to me. Whether its the gentle instrumental "Lost in Bessemer" or the feedback-drenched "Let's Compromise" - somehow Ira Kaplan is able to make the guitar relevant to me. I listen to many of these songs and say "yeah, that's exactly how I'd do it."

I waited way too long to lose myself in Yo La Tengo.

I'm glad I finally did though.

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A To Z: Music For Listening To - B.E.F.

In 1978, Brian Eno changed our perceptions of what the purpose of popular music can be when he released "Ambient 1: Music For Airports." I use the term "popular music" arbitrarily, because while Brian Eno was indeed until then known primarily as a pop music pioneer, this new direction was something different. He released music that was almost like "program music" that would have been used throughout the classical lexicon, but he stripped it of almost all elements. With "Music for Airports" Brian Eno had made a statement that music is as much an internal part of us as an external experience, he captured our breath and our thoughts by creating pieces of music that didn't go anywhere, that served merely as a peaceful repose from our daily grind.

In 1981, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh shattered this concept, took Eno's basic aesthetics and instruments as their own and created "Music For Listening To" as what appears to be a direct response.

Fresh off their departure from burgeoning superstars The Human League and while already supporting "Penthouse and Pavement" as Heaven 17, the duo took a detour towards experimental electronic music as the British Electronic Foundation (or B.E.F.) and showed the world just exactly what the synthesizer was capable of.

I'll say right now that this collection of songs really set the blueprint for much of electronic dance music that followed during the next 20 years. It's not as spaced out as the music Kraftwerk was making at the time, but kick drums and synth lines apparent throughout this release helped catalyze where synth-pop was heading in the immediate 80s and can be looked upon as the most direct starting point for what would become industrial music (and thus spin out many early house releases and even some of the early Warp stuff).

"Groove Thang" which was already known with additional vocals from "Penthouse and Pavement" is a classic right off the bat. With it's rapid-fire percussion, there are additional guitar and bass parts added by John Wilson that really set this track apart. It sounds like LTJ Bukem 15 years prior to his prime as the DnB master. The bass is all over the place, expertly played and providing a solid groove. Almost 30 years after it's initial release, the track doesn't sound dated like many early electronica and can still rock a party.

"Uptown Apocalypse" is dark. Synth sprinkled throughout and very deep sounding steel drum percussion. The title is the perfect fit. This sounds like the soundtrack to a pending fight scene in and 80s action film. Walking down the deserted streets, chains wrapped around your arms and looking to destroy anyone who gets in your way.

"B.E.F. Indent" is an interesting, albeit quick, take on classical music. Equally beautiful and futuristic. This is the music that Vangelis' best productions are in line with. Simple synth-based organ sounds, with an ending that comes to quick. "You wanted a break? Too bad."

The rest of the album touches on many sounds within the electronic music canon for years to come, allowing the listener to make connections as they listen. "The Old at Rest" is a direct connection the music Eno and Tangerine Dream were already making. Beautiful, ambient soundscapes that on its own can serve as aural wallpaper, but taken in the context of the rest of the album, really keep the listener engaged. You are seeking the changes in modulation, you are counting the keys as they echo through your speakers. Enlightening sure, but not boring.

The closing track, "Decline of the West" is just altogether special. Another fitting title for the music contained, the track brings images of decimation, loneliness, despair. Or maybe its just something you are going to put up with.

"Music For Listening To" is exactly that. This isn't background music, much of it is too fast-paced for that, much of it contains little shifts within the tracks that you don't catch unless you listen closely. It's almost entirely synth-based and some of it will sound dated. But it's an important release if you are at all interested in the history of electronic music. It may not have grandfathered every genre or been the only release of it's kind, but its a classic nonetheless and can surely hold your attention.

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A To Z: Lemon of Pink - The Books

2003 was a bit of a revelatory year in music for me. It was the year in which I discovered indie music blogs, review sites, and discussion forums. I tracked Pitchfork reviews tirelessly, even going through their archives at the time. I followed Fluxblog updates everyday, downloading whatever new song that was uploaded. Like many teenagers of the time, I grew into adulthood at a time when information availability was expanding and knowledge of new and relevant music seemed entirely too vast to ever attempt to conquer.

Sometime during that year, I read a review about "The Lemon Of Pink" by The Books. Earlier, I had already lost much time during an obsession over the divisive "Ether Teeth" by Fog, a record that I found mentioned through Anticon message boards. A description of The Books sound seemed that it would fall in line with the abstract samples and acoustic instrumentation found on "Ether Teeth"...but you know, this record was actually critically acclaimed and deemed "good" by just about everyone. Therefore it should have been my favorite record ever.

"The Lemon of Pink" isn't my favorite ever, but it is very good. As the spring months have been approaching and the spring weather seems here to stay, I can think of few experimental records from this decade that fit the time so perfectly. The acoustic strings present throughout, the ethereal original vocals that float above the shimmering tones, the random vocal samples that seem to appear out of nowhere, sneaking up on your like a person yelling from across the street. This is a folk album that breaks all folk tradition.

There are few albums that that float by as quickly as "The Lemon Of Pink." From the first female voice stating the title of the record out through "That Right Ain't Shit" and even "PS", this album comes together best as a whole piece. It is rare indeed that one would put a song from this record on a mixtape, other than with the intention of breaking apart whatever the general theme of your mix was. As individual songs, this music is pretty - but doesn't make a whole lot of sense. As a 37-minute album, everything comes together, bleeding into one another, creating memories of past picnics, spring sports, setting suns over the beach.

Perhaps I romanticize this record too much. I don't adore or obsess over this record and rarely listen to it 7 years after it's initial release. However, when I do take the time to listen to it, to remember why I enjoyed it so much all those years ago and the positive impact it had on broadening my listening tastes in the years that came after, I am overjoyed with what The Books have accomplished with this album. It's not a perfect recording and in 2010 there are records that are similar that might do part of this sound better, but it is one of those records that can be conditionally perfect. Sometimes you just have to wait to find that condition.

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A To Z: King Biscuit Flower Hour (Live 1976) - The Band

If THE BAND were any other band, their name would be audacious, obnoxious and forgettable. As it turned out, The Band aka The Hawks deserve the title of THE quintessential group of musicians and calling themselves THE BAND is as fitting a title as any.

I've loved The Band since high school. I'd seen The Last Waltz, more for the other musicians involved than The Band themselves. I found an old copy of their self-titled second album at a garage sale among the first week or two that I started collecting records. I knew "Up on Cripple Creek" and "The Weight" and a couple of other songs before I knew who sang them. I didn't know their story and I was hardly even into Bob Dylan at the time, but The Band was something special to me in those formative years.

Or rather, I claimed them to be.

After my initial exposure to The Band, I loved a handful of songs and appreciated what they were doing but I didn't really get it. I knew liking them was cooler than liking CSNY or CCR or other similarly styled bands that blurred the lines of rock, country, blues and folk. These scraggly dudes were accomplished musicians, that is what the internet told me. Robbie Robertson was one of the best songwriters of his generation, or so I heard. It took me years to finally succumb and agree.

This radio broadcast recorded live in 1976 isn't the best live document in The Band's catalogue, but for my money nothing they ever performed live was bad. It's good for a bootleg, but not the best audio quality ever. There is some major riffs and solos, but few instances that show what these musicians are actually capable of. The organ on this recording seems louder than actual studio albums which gives the songs a bit of a unique sound. They perform the songs you know, maybe some you don't. Good overview but no Last Waltz.

If you are a fan of The Band though, you should probably have this.



This is from The Last Waltz, but it still gives me chills, so I included it.

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A To Z: Journey In Satchidananda - Alice Coltrane

When you listen to a lot of different avant-garde jazz releases, you have to mentally prepare yourself. You don't listen to Cecil Taylor or Albert Ayler as background music. You don't put "Interstellar Space" on and just go ahead and do the dishes. Free jazz, spiritual jazz, vanguard jazz, this is is music literally created to combat the passive and often dismissive nature of people wanting to "listen" to jazz. With a notion of jazz being for the beatniks and the coffee shops, the idea was struck down quickly by these very masters - finding new ground in the same way that many psychedelic rock bands were allowing hippies to reach higher astral planes.

Alice Coltrane fits in with these masters perfectly. She created difficult music with her husband before his untimely death, and made a career of perpetuating different experiments that crossed various genre lines. However, with "Journey In Satchidanda", you don't have to mentally prepare yourself for the listening experience. It's not grating, it's beautiful. And regardless of where you are, it will pull you in. It works as both background music and as one of the most engaging listens in your library. It's a crossover record in the most personal way. And it gets better every time. Of all the spiritual jazz pioneers, perhaps none were quite as spiritual as Alice.

Oh and she plays the harp.

Alice also employs the piano in her repetoire, and on this album is joined by two of my favorite musicians: Pharoah Sanders on soprano sax and Charlie Haden on bass. These three create a dynamic nucleus that is engulfed by the constant drone provided by middle-eastern instruments the oud and tamboura. There have been many attempts at bridging traditional middle-eastern or indian instruments with western jazz music and I will say right here: "Journey In Satchidanda" is likely the best.

This is the rare album that expands the loose definition of jazz yet remains an accessible album. For those who like traditional jazz numbers or the lighter side, they are unlikely to feel too alienated with this release. For those who only like jazz that transports them places, that takes a while to understand - they will feel right at home here too.

The beauty this record can stop you in your tracks. It can cause obsession. It truly is a "journey".





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Planetary

Planetary by Warren Ellis is quite possible the best comic book series I've had the pleasure of reading. The series weave through many different tales, creating an overarching story that still has room to breathe. It's not a point A to point B narrative, but rather one told through various flashbacks, outside characters and constantly revealing (and solving) new mysteries in the strange world we live in. By uncovering the absurd as fact, employing characters that are equal part pulp and hard sci-fi and making references to many different more famous comic book heroes throughout, the team of Elijah Snow, Jakita Wagner and The Drummer become a team that you want to root for. You won't make a solid connection with any one character in the story, but at the pace that the story moves and the tales it unfolds, it won't matter. A thoroughly engaging read and just one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with comics. And don't forget it's drawn by John Cassady, who won an Eisner Award one year for his art in this book. There's a reason for that, the art is fantastic.

The zip collects all 27 issues of the main series as well as the 3 crossover comics (that I don't particularly care for).

Enjoy.

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