Albums of the Decade - 58. William Basinski - A Shadow In Time (2017)

58. WILLIAM BASINSKI - A SHADOW IN TIME (2017) 

Anxiety is never easy. It has always befounded and confounded me. It envelopes me and flows right through - and no coffee can put it out. Neither does a glass of wine in the long term - as it only makes it worse. Luckily the answer often comes in the form of musical therapy - and luckily here came one of the most beautifully meditative works in decades from the master of ambience.

Just 2 tracks covering 43 minutes, the first one - a tribute to Bowie - is sumptuous tape loop featuring a fractured saxophone - it really sorted me out when I was blue two years ago in Germany, in a hellhole of a flat organized by my former employer. The bed was uncomfortable - the sofa shocking - I wanted to get out but the city had a massive deficit of flats - I moved out eventually to another place where the water from the shower flooded the whole studio....

,...better to flood your life with dissonance maybe. This changes the game. Breathe it in.

Albums of the Decade - 68. Tim Hecker - Love Streams (2016)

68. TIM HECKER - LOVE STREAMS (2016) 

Love style poem, high-school style.

Total
Immersion of impluse
Manifesting itself into every audio corner

Hatred can back-off
Especially when love is like....
Crack cocaine and occasionally like...
Ketmaine, popping ito a hole, but impossible to..
Erase from memory, as it's
Recorded forever like all your data

This one's about to play a gig that I'm regretfully not gonna attend. Nevertheless, a pair of phones will dutifully do, as Love Streams gives a whole lotta love the closer it spuzzes into your ear.The glitch and pulse of the noise of the drone of the white noise of the dissonance. Nobody does it better. Nobody.

Albums of the decade - 98. Fennesz - Bécs

98. FENNESZ - BÉCS

Timing is everything and this nicely coincided with the release of the artists new LP Agora which came out last Friday. I write this in my kitchen now as noise and dissonance washes all over me. Black coffee is the fuel to pump in, after a brunch of shrimp and tomato sandwiches. The Dire Straits ran a lyric once that went "I run on heavy fuel" - that juxtaposed with Christian Fennesz's ambient washes - provide a sunny, non-jokey April 1st as Spring truly sets into life.

I first encountered Fennesz in 2004 at The Coronet in London, and he was on the same bill as Four Tet, Caribou, Animal Collective and Explosions In The Sky. Brilliantly - I've just clicked that event - and it transpires that it was on 30th April, so we must have been fresh as a whistle. The discordance of sound from Fennesz, in between post-rock, folktronica and electro-funk sets, brought the mood down to a suitable down. This man is the sound of poised.

His debut LP Endless Summer was a breath of fresh air and came in at #86 on my list of best albums of the 2000's. A few LP's in-between ,and this conceptual follow-up to that debut has never felt better timed. As the seasons blend into one, and a new page begins, the sound artist crafts another tapestry.
Static, submerged, complex, beautiful. Go get 'em kid.