I also decided to write some of my reasons for my choices to make this list a bit more interesting. Then I discovered that trying to write down why you like a piece of music is ridiculously difficult. So forgive my inane ramblings and let's get down to it.
10 Favourite Albums of 2012
Animal Collective - Centipede Hz
Rarely do I get the impression with contemporary rock/indie/pop music that any kind of forward movement is being strived for. Centipede Hz however feels like what 21st century pop music should be and it's amazing. The whole album is awash with a myriad of strange, kaleidoscopic burbles and noises. Dense, hypnotic textures form a hyper-modern maximalist aesthetic. Which is a nice change to the more prevalent trends of nostalgia and minimalism. Personally, I never found this style overwhelming although many have had their issues with it. Surely that just shows that we really are dealing with something unknown and thrilling! The songs themselves are brilliant, who knew lyrics about childhood road trips, growing old and child birth could be so beautiful. But that doesn't mean there can't be a kick-ass sing-along chorus here and there. I've chosen to sort this list into a bland A-Z order but if I had to pick just one then it would be hard to pass up Centipede Hz.
Daphne Oram/Andrea Parker/Daz Quayle - Private Dreams & Public Nightmares
The work of pioneering British electronic/radiophonic composer Daphne Oram is reinterpreted by a pair of musicians from in electronic music scene she and her contemporaries helped establish. While I'm not an expect on Daphne Oram's music what's really remarkable about this album is how fresh it all sounds. Rather than becoming a history lesson or wallowing in nostalgia (as has become de rigueur), Andrea Parker illuminates the timeless quality of the source material, altering and repurposing it along with her own sounds. A mystery and haunting strangeness pervades the music with snippets of dialogue taken from radio broadcasts adding even more layers of intrigue. Not knowing their true source just makes it more incredible...
"Have you called your Mother today?"
...(garbled response)...
"You'll have to leave it til next week then. You'll be away at the football match!"
Contained within the album's run time are haunting interludes, moving semi-biography and an excerpt from a live performance placing Oram's work into a larger historical narrative of electronic music including ambient and minimal techno.
Hanne Hukkelberg - Featherbrain
While a Grammy winner in her native Norway, it baffles me that Hanne Hukkelberg hasn't made a bigger impact on our shores. Her voice is in turns delicate and powerful. She sings over tea kettles, thumb pianos and creaky instruments, bringing a much welcome touch of experimental creativity to a genre swamped in the familiar and predictable. But these aren't just novelty noises, they give these songs a truly magical quality.
Laurel Halo - Quarantine
Laurel Halo's full length debut is no less than stunning. Laurel's voice is pushed to the forefront throughout but its hard to think of these tracks as songs, they're so much more than that. The soundscapes she conjures are strange and dangerous, yet inviting. Humming with strange electrical power and hinting at some dark digital forest. I won't shame myself or this album any further by trying to describe it. Just listen.
Liars - WIXIW
Of all my picks this is the one that really seems to grow on me the more I listen to it. I didn't know what to make of it on first listen but I find myself more engrossed with every new hearing. Part of this is that every Liars album is quite stylistically different so adjusting to each new release takes some time. This year they've transitioned from the finely crafted rock of Sisterworld into realms electronical. However there is no real familiar reference point in Liar's use of synths and electronic soundworlds. Yet again theirs is a unique and thrilling vision. There's a nice range of pace too with the electro-punk swagger of Brats sitting against the hypnotically dreamy Octagon and the constantly yearning WIXIW.
Mouse On Mars - Parastrophics
You know, I don't always have to enjoy weird, experimental or envelope-pushing music. Sometimes, believe it or not, I just like music that's joyous and fun, and that sums up Parastrophics perfectly. It has all the elements of a lot of electronic dance music (unintelligible vocal samples, driving dancefloor-ready rhythms) but it's all put together extremely well with huge helpings of playful creativity. You can tell they love what they do and so do I.
Oren Ambarchi - Audience Of One
Its been a good year for the antipodean guitarist who released a lot of really great music this year. However, Audience of One manages to act as a kind of mini-retrospective encapsulating a number of Oren's styles and influences. Delicately teased tones, inspired collaborations and even a beautiful cover of a glam rock footnote (Ace Frehly's Fractured Mirror). The album is all centred around the half hour long masterpiece of psychedelic freakout, Knots. Who said guitar music was dead?
Raime - Quarter Turns A Living Century
It's the sound of empty dancefloors. 3am drives through industrial estates. It's bleak, miserable and was released on a label named Blackest Ever Black. Perfect!
Scott Walker - Bish Bosch
2006's The Drift easily ranks among my favourite albums of all time and while not quite reaching the same unnerving heights, Bish Bosch is another masterpiece. Or at least, I think it is, I probably need to listen to it another 30-50 times before I can even scratch the surface of what's going on! But that's all part of the fun of late Scott. There seems to be a more stream-of-conciousness style to the music than before which gives the impression of some grand musical drama. No more is this so than what is perhaps the epitome of Scott's career, the awkwardly titled SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter). A 20 minute epic containing multiple characters, stand-up comedy, freezing planets and obscure historical references that form an unknowable but devastating narrative. Its amazing. Scott's voice too has never been better. Oh and we didn't even get to the musical farting...
Swans - The Seer
Recent trends in popular language have pretty much ripped the word 'epic' of all its weight. However, there really is no better word to describe this album. A juggernaut of raw primal hypnotic energy. Who knows the true meaning behind their dark, mythic Americana but when Michael Gira intones 'I see it all' you know you're in the presence of some ancient omniscient god.
Special Commendation:
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Icarus - Fake Fish Distribution (version 73)
I've already talked about how much I loved the concept of this album, both technically and in terms of digital distribution in the post-Napster world. If more musicians can come up with such unique and engaging ways to distribute their music then let the major record labels burn! I would have loved to name Fake Fish Distribution among my top 10 albums but since technically I have the only copy of the album and only 1000 unique versions exist it seems somewhat unfair. See here for a full and proper review.
Best Short Album/E.P
This is a bit of a cheeky category but come on, 20 minutes is not an album. Saying that though I basically created this category just so I can praise a particularly stunning 20 minutes of music.
Emptyset - Medium
If ever there was a record to make you buy a mutli-thousand pound set of speakers, this is it. I don't think I've heard a recording where every single frequency felt precious. Bristolians Emptyset set-up shop inside Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire and by scattering micro-phones, pre-amps and speakers throughout the building the Gothic house becomes an instrument in its own right, colouring the sound with reverberation you could drown in. Emptyset's music was strongly architectural to begin with, monumental walls of disintegrating noise over foundations of rumbling low frequencies, but they took a step in a very literal direction here. This is the 21st century Gothic.
Best tracks of 2012
As well as keeping track of albums I've also maintained a playlist (get it here) of some of the best songs I've heard this year. Rather than waffle on as I have done in the past, here are just a few of my impressions:
- I could listen to the synth from that Grimes song forever.
- Ditto for the synth in WIXIW.
- Is that Azerbaijani? What a funky language!
- Golden Diskรณ Ship, best obscure find of the year...?
- Burial can do nothing wrong.
- Prince Rama are brilliant at channelling a post-apocalyptic alternate dimension pseudo-Abba.
- Black Dice can out-squelch anyone!
- Death Grips are better when phalluses aren't involved.
- Scott Walker does jazz!...albeit briefly
- And the best individual track of the year is over 30 minutes long and completely renews my faith in the power of the electric guitar.
