57. SUN KIL MOON - BENJI (2014)
An epic album of sardonic and often tragic circumstances - capturing euthenasia, adolescence and people popping off this earth in the blink of an eye. His second cousin dying from taking out a can of aerosol that exploded and burned her to death, an ode to his Mother, an ode to his Dad, his Dad's friend Jim Wise - a convicted husband for helping his poorly wife die at her bed, a mentally handicapped friend named Micheline and his own regrets about bullying a kid at school - this isn't an easy listen - but it's beautiful and beguiling.
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.
The bend he puts on the guitar. The off-kilter vigour and experimentation - yet still falling on the right cylinder of accessibility - David Longstreth and his amazingly orchestrated backing singers put out their best album here - as it jets into twee territory and all the better for it.
When the highlight "Impregenable Question" was first heard by moi - the hopeless romantic I was back then - I wanted the song to be heard, received and shared - but the lady in question just batted it away and gave me a bottle of Heineken - and though nothing surfaced between us - the picnic that we had suffuses itself on that track and remains etched in my memory.
"Just From Chevron" has a punch-like imapact, whacking me in the gut with it's appetite for wit, and "About To Die" has a penchant for hedonism - which bangles along a great trajectory. Mega fan all around then - an understated career highlight from the dirties. <3 p="">
Top of the decade in Taipei - felt liberated - this was my soundtrack. Pitchfork described it as a landscape of a record - and they weren't wrong, especially with all the percussion on here - it's an urbanity of session musicians and synths. Their album before this, the magnificent In Ghost Colours came in at #15 on Spaghetti Blogonese - a great achievement for a stellar offering.
They sound a lot like New Order actually and I think they should sing this poem I wrote:
This was just an experiment in the kitchen going wrong I am not gonna go and buy a new oven glove I just got some pizza out the oven Not with my bare hands I took it with a towel And it was okay anyway I know that I can't sing now I know my rhythm's pretty good I thought I'd sing to you I'm shit at typing - you know I am - would?!? I don't know why my grammar's bad I'm a native English speaker Gonna just rhyme with you anyway Gonna try and rhyme something with speaker - "beaker" I got a beaker full of tea Gonna go and drink it now You're a fucking cousin That's the way i'm proud now - uh!
What a fucking day of up-in-the-air feeling as so much was achieved but not in an empowering way at all. Feel like I am shapeshifting, when all I want to do is be mellow and sink into one thing - not just pam pam pam all over for different people. If there was ever a soundtrack for pam pam pam'ing all over for different people, then this it. Oh, and it's actually a soundtrack for a real film too.
I haven't even seen Couple In A Hole, but I might as well give it a whirl; I like the concept of imaginary soundtracks anyway - for example David Holmes' Bow Down To The Exit Sign came in at #14 in my list last decade. Imagining a movie scene to the tracks themselves add a filmic layer that wouldn't be there otherwise, just gotta do a bit of make-belief aintcha. Ok then, this soundtrack: it's drone, it's motorik, it's seismic, it's subliminal - and it might just get me through my F___ working week.
62. LAND OBSERVATIONS - ROMAN ROADS IV: XI (2012)
Visual artist James Brooks crafted this gorgeous piece to accompany his visual art concerning mapping and cartography. Think boundaries and surface area infused with gently ruminative guitar licks over looped pedals. It is in keeping with the theme of one of my favourite novels of the decade,The Map and the Territory by Michel Houlebecq - in which an artist is doing amazingly successfully in depicting Michelin maps, is dating a Russian model - but the boiler in his house is broken and keeps fucking up - the text a paean to try and find some structure in ones own existential crisis.
Luckily with Roman Roads, no shit hits any fan, as the burnished film on these licks oscillate and oscillate. The album actually leaves the artists house on opeenr "Before the Kingsland Road" and takes some existent routes and others philosophical. I'll pander now:
When does one go? Where does I depart How come I didn't hang the clothes out to dry and instead you put them on the clothes horse? When will you send that fax? Map me out my future would you? Thanks.
Back when I DJ'd in 2013, I dropped a few of these cuts into my sets and wrote about how it was as if Axel Willner had sat down at the kitchen table, plotting away his fourth LP and thought to himself "you know what? I'm gonna sort everyone right out." For this underrated project, Cupid's Head does the best job in showcasing the breadth and depth of The Field's textures.
Starting with the gloriously sinister "They won't see me" at bang on nine mintes long, it then clacks into rhythmic shape with "Black Sea" which I always found perfect for jogging. The title track comes next, and is slightly annoying, but bearable if you sing "Cupid and Robin" - imagine them as sidekicks :) - but the real organic electricity comes in the unbelievably gorgeous "No...No."
That aforementioned track is preceded by the pulsating "A Guided Tour" which reminds me of a racehorse doing its rounds - and the album closer "20 Seconds of Affection," lacing on the fuzz and crystal mesh, culminating in decades of excess distilled into nigh on ten minutes of glorifcation. There - a full track by track analysis for a change, well you've got to mix it up a bit haven't you?
57. SUN KIL MOON - BENJI (2014) 
