74. WILD NOTHING - NOCTURNE Light a candle. Burn the wax. Play this record Bedroom pop Do it yourself. DIY. All those sleepless nights I've ever had - This one holds up to them Right now, I am on precious little Sleep also, and I'm staying up Fighting and braving elements To get a normal sleep routine Tonight I made a cream of mushroom and chicken soup I even threw some shrimp in I can't even think straight
Sputter. Whiz. Gargle. This LP came at the mid-region of the decade in about the summer of 14. Aphex Twin has had such amazing breadth of balls-busting electronica aplomb. If Selected Ambient Works or Drukqs is heralded as his finest output, then I'd slight at that and proffer Syro to be in with the broth too.
I wanted to type "sprawling 12 tracks at 1 hour and 4 minutes" - but it's hands-down the most elasticky Aphe material out there. I am grimacing, as I just left my Bluetooth speaker, basically my go-to soundsystem at my Mum's house in the UK, so as I was cooking a bolognese - added tobasco, honey and cayenne pepper to this one - and the experiement paid off - so I have only one supermarket speaker working and it doesn't do the material justice.
Sometimes you don't get everything you want in life, sometimes you don't get what you think you want. I had no idea this record is what I'd add on here today, but it feels good. Experimental electronica, experimental cooking. Exceptional circumstances.
Back to back with Kode9 on this list for a straight-up double dose of irresistable dub and jungle. Sometimes I wish shit lke this would get a better playout in public, be it a bar or a mall, a carwash or a salon. Essentially a sketchbook of barbed melodies, arpeggiated and off-kilter - it just kicks up a skank and then mellows out, before kicking up a skank again and then mellowing out once more.
Zomby typifies the mess of London in a non-unabridged way. There is a childlike zig-zag to the thematics of this album. It's all over the shop stylewise, but the synths permeate through. When it's 16 songs with smatterings of bass @ just over 35 minutes - you might feel a bit pertubed on paper and I wouldn't blame ya. I was too, until I hit the big green play button; you won't regret it.
This took the cake for my album of 2011, before the tragic passing of the poet and MC Spaceape in 2014. Think exceptional dub, truncated arpeggios, coupled with grizzly ragga rhymes. The syncopation of "Love Is The Drug" for example provides a cut that outwardly pumps its chest forth while burying the looped vocals under the belt of the mix. If Burial, also on the Hyperdub label is sheltery and mysterious, then this album provides the best of both worlds, a secluded bolt-hole but primed in the brilliance of day.
Kode 9, a.k.a. Steve Goodman is the flagbearer for the Hyperdub record label, and I urge you to check out its roster of artists. No, I'm not pitching the shit to the man, merely endorsing a carriage-load of London. This album may have zoomed higher up the charts, had it been a bit more recent - there is other poetry to tuneage on this shitstorm of a blog. I need to promote the hashcakes / hashtags a bit better to get my own content ranked further up the brilliance of Google.
Sometimes there's a time and place for an LP. This was the summer of 2015. I had a trip to a surfers beach in Taiwan and drank a lot, a lot of whiskey and played this in the boiling, boiling heat, before trying to fight my friend in the station on the way back.
Oh Jump that 43 Are you wild like me Raised by wolves and other beasts I tell you all the time I'm not mad You tell me all the time I got plans
Upon first listen, I felt like this was a precocious debut, but it's like a well sugared meal; a pinch of castor brings out all the other ingredients a treat. It's like twelve different bands have been put on a mixtape - much messier, but more fun than their refined follow-up, which actually took more plaudits.
The crowning moment has to be on "Silk" which provided the apex to Trainspotting 2, the excellent follow-up to the first Glaswegian saga. The track suits Mark Renton more than anything else in musical history, as he battles to protect himself constantly.
Just looking for a protector God never reached out in time There's love, there is a savior But that ain't no love of mine
My Love it kills me slowly Slowly I could die And when she sleeps she hears the blues Sees shades of black and white
79. MOON DUO - MAZES
Tonight is Moon Duo night, continuing the cosmos theme after my last Bowie post. Moon Duo are one of the most underrated bands of the last decade - producing psychedelic space-rock in the same vein as Spacemen 3 or My Bloody Valentine. Prolificacy is the key, as they have put out seven albums in eight years.
I have picked their debut album from 2011 as their go-to though, as it sets the tone for their irresistable pulse. Scuzzy as a fuzz. Less fussy than your cuz. Dress-uppy and plus plus plus. Scrappy and the band. Bandwidth and truck temptation. Drive and speed-up a degree. Go up the gears and feel like you just turned twenty-three. <3 p="">
80. DAVID BOWIE - BLACK STAR
The cultural significance of this one propaply deserves to place this one higher up the listathon. I was sitting in Lee's Sandwiches in Taipei talking about his new LP on the day it came out and the fact that he was in bad condition, and then hey two days later he gone :(
It has to be one of the biggest exits in art history, never mind things like Nevermind, the sheer proximity of hello new record and goodbye world made me twitch and talk. I'll leave this one at that. No more to say. He's a black star.
