Welp.

OK so, 2020 went a bit weird. I think I saw two films in the cinema, and went to maybe two gigs that didn't involve us playing. I had tickets to a lot more though. Maybe Squid at the Bullingdon would have been gig of the year, or OMD at the Albert Hall, or Holy Fuck, or Warmduscher and Lynks Afrikka.....who can tell. Disappointment of the year therefore goes to....the pandemic.

Of the gigs I did see I am ruling out Sink Ya Teeth at the Norwich Arts Centre because I'm biased because we were the support act. Yes, the main development of 2020 is that we seem to have become friends with our favourite band, and supported their album launch gig just before a small matter of a pandemic put everyone's plans on hold. Swings and roundabouts eh. Also they got gig of the year for the last two years so it's time someone else had a go.

So of the unbiased gigs we have Otokobe Beaver at the Fleece in Bristol, Working Men's Club at the Bullingdon, and These New Puritans at the Barbican. And, well, that was it for 2020. I'm giving it to WMC because they are *really fucking good* live.

Art show of the year, we've been to maybe two? Bridget Riley and Among The Trees, both at the Hayward. Both were good but Bridget Riley wins it. You really have to see her stuff in real life to get a full idea of its hallucinatory quality but anyway let's give it a go. Here is an example with a suitably dazed Jeremy.

Films. We managed to see 1917 and Birds of Prey, loved them both for entirely different reasons. I'm going to give it to 1917. On a different day it could go the other way.


OK, so let's look at singles. Or tracks. Or whatever.
Honourable mention goes to Martha Hill's fantastic Grilled Cheese


But I think this from Soccer '96 sums it up. I was gonna fight fascism. I was just a bit tired.



And so to the main event. Albums of the year. This year I am expanding it to 25 because, you know what, there were a lot of good records out, almost as if loads of artists had long periods of time without much to do.

25) Supervision by La Roux. Nice to see you back, La Roux. Did this album really come out this year? Apple music says it did.


24) Howl by John Foxx and the Maths. One of the best things he's done in a long time, with Robin Simon out of Ultravox delivering some Adrian Belew style guitar vibes.


23) A Situation by Wrangler. More dark synth stuff. I will always like this kind of thing.


22) Reanimator by Everything Everything. Bit of a change of pace here. There are some gorgeous singles off this but in the end let's go for this one. Apparently the lead singer also does the animations.


21) Kompromat by ILikeTrains. Bands that I thought were really a bit indie but in the end this is great - iliketrains (or is it I Like Trains now? hard to tell) have decided to go all avant-krautrock on us. This is the result


20) Fantastic Man by Blacklisters. The return of BLKLSTRS with a lineup change. Still a horrible noise though. I mean that in a good way.


19) Speaking of horrible noises the still hugely divisive IDLES with Ultra Mono. All I will say is cleverness and irony seemed inadequate in the face of 2020 and IDLES' straightforward shouting was a blessed relief. Having said that, the best track on the album was the subtlest.


18) How I'm Feeling Now - Charli XCX. Those of us who liked PC music will also like this. The sound of weirdness going fully mainstream, and therefore also very 2020.


17) The Night Chancers by Baxter Dury. Tales of grimness, social commentary and low rent criminality. Keep coming back to this.


16) Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa. Late entry from a stocking filler electropop CD (this is a Christmas tradition in the Means of Production household). Gorgeous. This is the marginally better version of this song without the guest rap.


15) Let's have some more German synthwave/techno. You can if you like get a T Shirt from this label which says "Techno but not Techno" on it, which I of course have done. NEIN 2020.


14) It's Never Going To Happen And This Is Why by Spectres. Not sure if they're referring to the pandemic or their increasingly one sided feud with Sam Smith and Radio 6. Either way the band that have made career suicide a feature have come back with an album of experimental noise. It is, of course, brilliant and in a sane universe would be at number 1.


13) Deleter by Holy Fuck. We are now seriously moving onto the stuff which barely gets moved off the turntable. Or the current playlist, or whatever. I had tickets for this band. I was really looking forward to seeing them. Since they are in Canada I doubt this is going to happen now. :(


12) Every Bad by Porridge Radio. Or should I say Mercury Prize Nominated Porridge Radio. Managed to see them at Ritual Union in 2019 having been alerted to them by this single.


11) Smash Hits Vol1/Vol 1.5. Lynks/Lynks Afrikka changed his name halfway thorugh the year in order not to seem appropriative. So he's now Lynks but some of the stuff from the first half of the year originally came out as Lynks Afrikka. Including this piece of UTTER BRILLIANCE.


10) Working Men's Club by Working Men's Club. It is getting increasingly hard to rank these, but well, here we are. Most exciting new band of the year. Great name.


9) It wouldn't be an end of year roundup without something from Italians Do It Better and that something this year is the label sampler "After Dark 3". Vinyl is on order.


8) Pain Olympics - Crack Cloud. Crack Cloud are back with a "proper" album and it's great.


7) The Cool Greenhouse by The Cool Greenhouse. I wouldn't have heard of this band if we hadn't been played on BBC Introducing in Norfolk by Sink Ya Teeth and this band got played on the same show. Did I mention we supported Sink Ya Teeth? Maybe I did. Anyway I like this.


6) Shadow of Fear by Cabaret Voltaire. Is it really a Cabs record without Stephen Mallinder? When it's this good, yes.


5) Seeking Thrills by Georgia. More electropop, this is fantastic, can't get the tunes out of my head.


4) Barbarians by Young Knives. Again, another band I had written off as just too indie and again I saw them at Ritual Union which alerted me to the fact that they seem to have gone fully feral. I could have picked the deranged lead single Red Cherries but this has been growing on me.


3) Miss Anthropocene by Grimes. Ah, Grimes. The twitter feud with Azalea Banks. X Æ A-12. The art event held in a shipping container because nature is too stressful when you're a cyborg. The concept album about an evil goddess made of oil and ivory. In many important ways, both good and bad, 2020 belongs to you.


2) Two by Sink Ya Teeth. Pretty much impossible to pick the top three apart. I'm putting this at No 2 because they have had enough top albums and gigs on these lists already, and also it's called "Two" and I couldn't resist it. Did I mention we supported them at the launch for this album? I did? Anyway this is a proper banger and I wish I'd written it.


1) PL by Paranoid London. I hadn't ever heard of them but they've been around for a while so I have some back catalogue to catch up on.. Thanks to Electronic Sound Magazine for including this on their compilation. So, anyway, this album is all excellent acid techno (J called it "uneasy listening" which is dead on) but this. This is one of the best things I have ever heard.


Over and out.

Hello again. End of year list time. Astonishingly LiveJournal is still functioning.

Sadly this is more than can be said for eMusic. After several years of declining catalogue and rumours of unpaid royalties eMusic seemed finally to throw in the towel by redirecting users to 7Digital. Which the CEO of eMusic is also the CEO of and which will sell you MP3s at "normal" (i.e. 99p) prices as opposed to the about 20p I was paying.

This paragraph possibly of interest only to me, but it makes a big change in the way I listen to music - from my point of view, the economics of eMusic was worth it as long as I could find tracks - my £6.15 (cheaper than Spotify) got me 40 downloads (as many as I could reasonably assimilate) per month. The discovery of the entire Nein Records back catalogue held it open for a couple more months but there is a limit to the amount of minimal German synthwave/techno crossover that even I can absorb. And now there is pretty much nothing else there. So, goodbye eMusic and hello Apple Music, picked for the back integration of my existing iTunes collection. Let's see how Apple's famous legacy support works out then /sarcasm. At the same time I am moving from my much loved iPod Classic to my phone as main listening device because hey it's the 2020s now or something, and because I can't get streamed tracks on my iPod.

Films. Didn't go to a lot, mainly due to lots of music and other commitments, Endgame was OK, Ad Astra was wrecked by an intolerably silly ending, and Star Wars: Triumph of the Incels was marred by JJ Abram's decision to bow to the fanboys and ditch anything interesting set up by TLJ. Detective Picachu it is then.

Gig. I honestly thought it was going to Chromatics for sure, I have waited so long to see them and they were so good. But so were The Comet Is Coming at Ritual Union and most of all Light Asylum + Sinkyateeth in a sweatbox at Elephant and Castle. I've seen both bands before but not like this. Got to bed at 3, knackered next day at work, so worth it.

So to the Music.

Single of the year: Teeth by Working Men's Club. Almost missed them at Ritual Union. Fortunately they're coming back to Oxford in the new year.

EP: Town Centre by Squid. Yeah, we all like this.


The One That Got Away: Crack Cloud by Crack Cloud. According to the PR this is a bunch of drug workers and their charges' rehab project from Vancouver. Believe it or don't as you please but this is great.


Albums.

20: Tutti by Cosey Fanny Tutti. Abstract industrial.


19: Serf's Up by Fat White Family. I have been pretty much immune to the Fat Whites' shtick up till now but their messed up lounge thing is sounding good to me.


18: In Shadow by Fader. Who would have guessed I'd like a retro synth thing.


17: And including some of the same people, Um Dada by Stephen Mallinder


16: No Home Record by Kim Gordon. it seems a bit harsh to describe it as a break up record - lyrically that seems to be what it is but musically she has launched off into something wholly other drawing on the likes of Gazelle twin as much as her past.


15: Ladytron by Ladytron. Excellent return.


14: Useless Coordinates by Drahla. They seem to have decided that the post punk of the first couple of singles is not ambitious enough, acquired a sax player, and turned left into somewhere a bit strange. These are all positive developments as far as I am concerned.


13: Stunning Luxury by Snapped Ankles. Yes.


12: Inside The Rose by These New Puritans. The title track has the NSFW video but this is a better song so


11: Debridement by Spectres. Some of this collection of rarities and B sides was previously unobtainable so it gets in as this year's record. Includes the Greatest Chirstmas Song Of All Time


10: Slaves Of Fear by HEALTH. HEALTH adapt to the loss of Jupiter Keyes and come out with something reliably great.


9: Drift by Underworld. Not really an album, not really a series of EPs, let's just release a bunch of stuff under a common name. Quality is a bit variable or it would be much higher. The best tracks, such as this, are not always on the collections either for some reason, except some which are *only* on the collections. Whatever.


8: Right. As indicated above I have been listening to a lot of Nein Records stuff, all of which is great, and none of which came from 2019. So there is this, from the free EP which introduced me to them, to stand in for all that. Could be much higher it's all a bit tight now.


7: Animated Violence Mild by Blanck Mass. Just keeps getting better


6: Closer to Grey by Chromatics. Chromatics return! With a completely different album the the one they have been teasing for the last (checks watch) 8 years! Which is apparently still due "soon". Never mind, we forgive you, for the fantastic live shows and for this.


5: The Center Won't Hold by Sleater-Kinney. St Vincent production and the related loss of their drummer make this a divisive record. I know which side of the divide I am on, this is by far and away my favourite of their records.


4: International Teachers of Pop by International Teachers of Pop.  Moonlandingz and Eccentronic Research Council associates come good with this. New album and further spin offs on the way.


3: Dogrel by Fontaines DC. Yes, I was one of the two dozen people who saw them in the Cellar before they blew up huge. I will always have that and you won't.


2: Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery by The Comet Is Coming. Acording to an irate trumpet player at the Bullingdon who stormed out of their gig "this is not jazz!". Jazz's loss I reckon.


1: Fibs by Anna Meredith. Becuase the end there has to be a winner and this is it. Thankyou and goodnight.

Top 20 2018

Well, 2018. A medium horrific year in many ways but with a lot of good music.

Some of my friends and I had a theory in the late 90s and early 2000s that the worse the political and economic situation, the better the music culture, especially the various underground scenes. And however simplistic that is, 2018 tends to confirm that theory.

So.

Let’s start with films. And rather less competition this year – although I enjoyed the likes of Pacific Rim 2 and Annihilation (which doesn’t really qualify as it wasn’t a cinema release) and I’m told that the Queen/Freddie Mercury biopic is much better than expected (haven’t seen it, probably won’t) there was only really one movie in contention this year. Black Panther it is.

Gigs. Been a bit of a year, to be honest, largely thanks to local promoters Future Perfect bringing all the new bands to Oxford. So we’ve had Shame, Cabbage, Hookworms, Shopping, Drahla, Fontaines DC, Gwenno, Girli, Brix and the Extricated, and away from Oxford Heaven 17 and Metric. Then there are the gigs we played which meant we got to watch The Overload, Pink Diamond Revue, Tiger Mendoza, and Restructure for free. Not to mention the craziness of Ritual Union (highlights: Suuns, TVAM)

The three most outstanding were
3) Idles at the O2. First time I’d seen them. Super intense but the band went out of their way to maintain a friendly and inclusive vibe (“you four! You can have fun but respect the people around you!”)
2) Stockhausen’s Gruppen at the Tate Modern. Simon Rattle conducts one of the “monsters of modernism” involving three orchestras all of which have to be kept in time while playing different things while the audience wanders between them. Breathtaking.
1) Sink Ya Teeth at the library. My favourite new band of 2018 in a tiny space where we got to stand two feet away from them. Also, they are lovely.

Disappointment of the year was also a gig, I’m afraid. I had really been looking forward to GNOD at Ritual Union, but they only sent half the band and instead of the barrage of guitar noise elected to make a bunch of drones on an OP-1 while muttering about serial killers. Mate, I can do that at home for free. After 10 minutes we went to see Husky Loops instead because they have tunes.




Albums.
Stuff that is probably great but I haven't listened to it yet: Seriously there was too much good music this year, so I have not yet heard the albums from Let's Eat Grandma, John Hopkins, Goat Girl or Nicki Minaj. All of which are undoubtedly excellent. So I'm told.

Archive Release of the year
Mike Simonetti - Solipsism. After a messy split from Italians Do It Better co-founder Johnny Jewel it turns out that Mike Simonetti composed all the best stuff on Italians Do It Better, which is why Dear Tommy is late. According to Mike Simonetti. Actually this retrospetive makes a pretty good case for that. So much done with so little. They seem to have made up now, or at least stopped arguing in public. So.

One that got away
Victorian English Gentlemens Club – GYTS.
VEGC’s final album came out to no publicity whatsoever in 2016 and I completely missed it. This year I rectified that and bought the idiot vinyl collector’s version. I heart VEGC but one of them wrote the music for the Handmaid’s Tale adaptation and the other seems to be a successful graphic designer including having done the Gwenno sleeve so I won’t worry too much about them. Seems fitting to go out on this.

EP
Underworld and Iggy Pop – Teatime Dub Encounters. Iggy Pop’s confessional bio vocal reveals he is almost certainly a massive bellend. Dance crossover with Underworld revels everyone concerned is a musical genius.

Singles
Fontaines DC – Too Real. Just excellent.

Death In Vegas – Honey. I’d kind of written Death In Vegas off but if they are making stuff this good I need to reconsider that.

Honourable Mentions
1877 – Our Become Their Memories. Local band 1 have finally bought out an album. It’s great.
Warmduscher – Whale City. Fat Whites spinoff come good. Best track is “I got friends”.
Noise Lock – Exist/Extinct. Local band 2 with insane hip hop/death metal crossover
Girli  - has released enough tracks to make an album. Has not released an album, or would be in top 20.
Fever Ray – Plunge. Unsettling dance bobbins from Knife vocalist.
The Presets – Hi Viz. Would probably be top 20 if it weren’t for their baffling decision to take one of the most distinctive voices in dance music and cover it in autotune and guest vocalists. Somewhere there is likely to be a set of demos where Julian Hamilton just sings the tracks. It will be better.
Orbital – Monsters Exist. Tiny Foldable Cities was great but most of the album was overthought. Then there was the bonus disc which had all the looseness and joy missing from the actual official album. If the bonus disc had been the main album this would be top 10 for sure.
Creep Show – Mr Dynamite. Wrangler/John Grant crossover
Suuns – Felt. Synth driven post rock but sadly does not capture the intensity and pulse of the live show. If I hadn’t seen them live I would be quite happy with this but there is a bit of a sense of a missed opportunity.
Virginia Wing – Ecstatic Arrow. Seen supporting Hookworms. Has something of the Laurie Anderson and something of the St Vincent about it. Intriguing.


Top 20
20) Chai – Pink. Indie/punk/J-pop crossover.

19) Janelle Monae – Dirty Computer. Janelle Monae comes good with Prince influenced bangers.

18) Marie Davidson – Working Class Woman. Brutalist techno for the masses.

17) Gwenno – Le Kov. Sung in Cornish and includes a song about cheese which is great.

16) Death Grips – Year Of The Snitch. Surprisingly metal new direction.

15) SOPHIE – Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides. PC Music associate breaks out with avant pop masterpiece.

14) The Overload – Radio For The Blind. Local band 3. Devastating live in a way that a video taken from the sound desk will never capture.

13) Factory Floor – A Soundtrack For a Film. Factory Floor’s reimagining of the soundtrack to Metropolis gets better with every listen.

12) Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crecy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. A series of very short and melancholic songs (mostly under two and a half minutes) about shagging in Paris. Lovely.

11) Lone Taxidermist – Trifle. More avant pop including the fantastically titled “Hammered in Homebase”. And this.

10) Shopping – The Official Body. Excellent niggly post punk and shouting.

9) Metric – The Art Of Doubt. I’ve said everything I need to say about Metric over the years. Sometimes just writing great songs is enough.

8) Cabbage – Nihilistic Glamour Shots. Have taken some stick from the critics but actually this is great. Politically charged punk band 1.

7) Robyn – Honey. Robyn’s comeback album is everything we expect and more.

6) Shame – Songs Of Praise. Managed to see them twice this year (Once at the Bullingdon and once at Citadel) and this is fantastic. Politically charged punk band 2

5) IDLES – Joy As An Act Of Resistance. Politically Charged Punk Band 3. Half my friends love Idles and the other half hate them. Probably as it should be for a band of this type. In case of any doubt which side I come down on here’s “Colossus”.

4) Gabe Gurnsey – Physical. Half of Factory Floor comes out with another record about shagging. Superb.

3) TVAM – Psychic Data. How good is this.

We can also pause to admire his dedication to the 4:3 aspect ratio

2) Hookworms – Microshift. Hookworms keep getting better. Pearl Mystic was OK, The Hum was good and this is great.

1) Sink Ya Teeth – Sink Ya Teeth. Postpunk/synthpop duo from Norwich complete the double with best gig and best album. Something of the minimalism of the likes of Light Asylum, nods to Happy Mondays and Moroder, killer basslines and vocals. The single was great but my favourite track is this one which is apparently about Trump. Which brings us back to the premise at the start, I suppose.

So. Fucking. Good.

OK let's see how this works.

Best of 2017

So once again to the end of year stuff where I tell you what I liked in 2017 and nobody cares.

Starting a little differently this year with one that should have been in best of 2016  but I hadn’t heard of it at the time. Slightly embarrassingly it was in my end of year playlist so it’s a proper fuck up. So anyway here is The Comet Is Coming

Just don’t point out it’s Jazz

Moving on to films of the year. Quite a lot of good stuff and also some drivel that I liked anyway, standouts include Wonder Woman, Last Jedi, Baby Driver, Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk, Atomic Blonde, and Thor:Ragnarok
Winner however is The Death of Stalin. If you want to imagine “The Thick Of It” gone paranoid and lethal here you are. Is in no sense 100% historically accurate but somehow captures something important anyway.


Art thing of the year – new category. Strong sound art from +-Human at the Roundhouse, and Ray Lee’s excellent Ring Out installation at Oxford Christmas Lights. However in a year we went to Venice for no other reason than to see it, the win goes to the deranged and divisive Treasures From The Wreck Of The Unbelievable Damien Hirst. Back on form I’d say.
http://www.palazzograssi.it/en/exhibitions/past/damien-hirst-at-palazzo-grassi-and-punta-della-dogana-in-2017-1/


Gig of the year was a hard choice. Honourable mentions go to Audioscope, Bananarama and Kraftwerk. The prize could go to the crazy intense Moonlandingz at Village Underground, The astonishingly good Gorillaz at NIA Birmingham, or the outstanding LCD Soundsystem show at Ally Pally. Can’t decide so I’m going to give it to The Dinosuars of China exhibition in Nottingham including the type specimen of Microraptor Gui. These fossils have never been out of China before and maybe won’t ever again. A once in a lifetime opportunity. That’s a gig. Right?
http://www.dinosaursofchina.co.uk/


Music Time. Starting with EPs of the year – I’m going to do a top three here.

3 – GNOD - Just Say No to the Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine. Amazingly titled relentless barrage of noise # 1.

Most of these tracks are like 9 minutes long consider yourselves lucky.

2 – Thank – Sexghost Hellscape.
Amazingly titled relentless barrage of noise # 2.

Turn it the fuck up

1 – Jupiter-C – 001
Time for a change of pace then. Love this band.

No YouTube for you


Albums of the Year
Honourable mentions:
Spectres – Condition. Psych noise from Bristol.
Goldfrapp – Silver Eye. You don’t need me to tell you who Goldfrapp is. She seems to vary between rubbish and good every second album. This is one of the good ones.
Fufanu – Sports. Postpunk Indie. Was someone’s recommendation in the Truck store
Nathan Fake – Providence. Audioscope headliner decides to get melodic again. Has probably paid his mortgage from royalties from the Screen Wipe theme which he wrote but which is not on this album.

And so to the top 10, which again because of good music is in fact a top 20. Could be worse.
PS This is not a Spotify playlist because fuck Spotify.


20 - Fujiya and Miyagi - Fujiya and Miyagi.
Still sounding a lot like Neu but a bit more techno these days, have a recently discovered sense of self awareness showcased on this track.

Not that they’re bitter or anything

19 - Tiny Magnetic Pets – Deluxe/Debris.
Had never heard of them. Saw them supporting OMD in Guildford. Liked them. Bought the album. There you go.

This band remind me a lot of Chew Lips. Whatever happened to Chew Lips? They were lovely.

18 - Nadine Shah – Holiday Destination.
Came to this one a bit late. Realised sometime in December that I’d heard three or four tracks off it and liked them all, without ever actually seeking it out. Anyway.

As everyone knows, the answer to the question is “on top of a big pile of money surrounded by beautiful ladies”.

17 - Hurts – Desire.
Didn’t even know this had come out until I saw them on “Sounds Like Friday Night”. BTW if you would like to see a return of TOTP, SLFN is as close as you’re likely to get.

Someone has, of course, reversed this video and put it up on YouTube. Thankyou the internet.


16 - Gorillaz – Humanz
Wasn’t sure about this but it all made so much sense live. Tbh you’re probably better off with the straight up album than the deluxe version which dilutes the vibe a bit and has the execrable Rag’n’Bone man on the “Bonus” disc. This on the other hand is brilliant.

I’ll be honest here, I watched the lyrics video and I’m still none the wiser.


15 - Christian Fitness – Slap Bass Hunks.
Made the joke about the offshoot being better than the band last year. So much to choose from here. As usual no YouTube so here’s their Bandcamp.

Maybe being less under pressure helps creativity of something. Who knew eh?

14 - Johnny Jewel – The Hacker/The Key.
More synth based instrumental loveliness from Johnny Jewel while we’re still waiting for the Chromatics album. Couldn’t decide between these two but then he released them together as a single CD. That makes them one album as far as I am concerned

…. although if you insist “The Hacker” is slightly better.


13 - Taylor Swift – Reputation.
2017 was the year all the people who previously thought Taylor Swift was amazing decided that actually she was rubbish. So naturally this is my favourite of her albums. True, there is a song featuring Ed Sheeran, but I’ve listened to it and his contribution is basically inaudible.

Clearly she liked Ghost In The Shell even if no one else did.

12 - Everything Everything – A Fever Dream.
Bands I shouldn’t like. Noodly, over fussy, too many notes. Still somehow sound futuristic though which redeems them.

“Redeems them” hah. I have all their records and have seen them twice.

11 - Fader – First Light.
Collaboration between Benge (Wrangler, John Foxx and the Maths) and Neil Arthur from Blancmange. Minimal synthpop if you like.

Once again nothing on YouTube so give this a go.

10 - Joe Goddard – Electric Lines.
Saw him supporting LCD Soundsystem at Ally Pally, without which I probably wouldn’t have bothered with this (I’m kind of OK with Hot Chip, but not massively excited). I’d have missed out big time  - this is lovely.

What the actual FUCK is it with blocked videos on YouTube. I guess if you want to hear most of this album you’ll just have to go to spotify or whatever.

9 – Public Service Broadcasting – Every Valley.
PSB drift further from their kitsch roots with their serious third album. Luckily it works. They might have to change their stage names though.

Seems somehow apposite for the times.

8 - Sex Swing – Sex Swing.
Only six tracks but they’re all pretty long so this is album length. Made up of people from Part Chimp and Mugstar who were already VERY LOUD and makes it louder and if anything nastier. Far and away the standouts at Audioscope.

Once again YouTube etc etc.

7 - Autobahn – The Moral Crossing.
Brilliant second album from Leeds post punks. This is probably the most melodic and accessible track.

Literally saw them playing to six people on Oxford this year. I hope they get famous just so I can say that, but I’m not counting on it.

6 - OMD – The Punishment of Luxury.
If previous album “English Electric” was OMD rediscovering what made them so good in 1983, this is a look to what might make them that good again in 2017. Excellent.

“Here’s another upbeat song about terrible things. It’s what we do”.

5 –Blanck Mass – World Eater.
After the slightly misfiring “Dumb Flesh” this is great.

Seems to be more prolific than Fuck Buttons over the last couple of years so maybe this is now what is happening.

4 - Colin Stetson – All This I Do For Glory.
Heard this on 6 music. Thought it was some kind of avant-garde Raymond Scott style synth thing. Is in fact all clarinets and saxes. Will melt your fucking face off.

Not a synth. In fact a bearded man with a sax. It seems so obvious now.

3 - St Vincent – Masseduction.
This I guess is St Vincent’s pop album. And also her break up album. I hate to say maybe she should break up more often but…..

Again could have picked almost any track off this


2 - Moonlandingz – Interplanetary Class Classics.
Oh this was so close to being number 1. I’m still not 100% sure it shouldn’t be. Crazed collaboration between Lias Saoudi from Fat White Family, Eccentronic Research Council and Rebecca Taylor from Slow Club which is way better than all of its parts. Fucking love this record.

I’m in no sense a fan of Fat White Family but y’know maybe I should reconsider.

1 - LCD Soundsystem – American Dream.
But in the end after everything we have this. LCD left us a few years ago with a perfect string of albums and gigs, the band that had called it a day without fucking it up.
By coming back they risked ruining everything, but they didn’t.

I’m not even going to joke about this one

 Thankyou and goodnight




 

This is the first EP from my new project Golden Cities. Please spread the goodness if you like it.
At some stage there will be gigs



Crossposted from Dreamwidth

So where can I write my important feels about Ghost in the Shell then? There will be spoilerz so FB is not appropriate. So clearly LJ is the ideal place! But LJ is now fully compliant with Putin's anti-LGBT agenda Russian Law, so DreamWidth it is. Aparently LJ-cuts work on DW so let's see.

( spoilersCollapse )

Crossposted from Dreamwidth

I guess I will be posting from DW from now on. Will be looking at LJ from time to time as usual. I guess finding and friending everyone will be a slow process but anyways I am timscience on Dreamwidth as well so should be easy enough to find.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth

Copied from Facebook

Hello. I am posting to confirm what has probably become obvious, that Space Heroes of the People are on long term hiatus (at the very least). If you are a friend of Jo's you will know why this is, if you aren't then you probably don't need to know.
The Spaceheroes.net domain is going to be allowed to lapse (don't have the time or money to maintain it) but will be archived along with my old Science Never Sleeps site at scienceneversleeps.com. The Soundcloud and Bandcamp sites will remain active for now and you can still buy our music from Bandcamp (https://spaceheroes.bandcamp.com/) or in the case of our album from iTunes, Spotify etc.
Preferably Bandcamp as we make more money from that.
I remain extremely pleased with what we have done. There are a couple of tunes mostly written which are most definitely Space Heroes tunes so it is possible that there may be more material at some stage in the future. I certainly hope so. In the meantime I am working on a new project which is close to ready, so look out for that.

Top 10 2016

Well then 2016. Not the best year on record for musicians, but a cracking year for music, of which a bit more later. So without any more blether:

Film of the year:
Started with Hateful 8, some excellent scifi including the fantastic Arrival and Rogue One, on the arthouse side we had Neon Demon, High Rise and Tale of Tales. On the superhero side we had the excellent Deadpool and Dr Strange (the less said about the DCEU the better) and even the Harry Potter franchise came good with Fantastic Beasts. I think I’m going to have to give it to Hateful 8 as a gleeful piece of Grand Guignol western that may be Tarantino’s best film. But it’s close.

Gig of the year:
Savages at the Roundhouse. OMD at the Albert Hall. Grimes at the Birmingham O2. Underworld, Jean Michel Jarre and Lonelady at Blue Dot. Gary Numan at the Oxford O2 (brilliant gig although a terrifyingly bad venue). Holy Fuck at Village Underground. Tomaga at Audioscope. In the end though the standout was the insane Death Grips gig at the Roundhouse. An hour and a half non stop of full on intensity. I am still at a loss as to how the drummer didn’t die.
edit: Oh shit I forgot Grimes at the Birmingham O2 whihc was also amazing. Death Grips still win on sheer insanity value though. /edit

EP of the year:
So after thinking about this it’s going to go to Kone, for the “Sketches of a Kone” EP. Best band in Oxford right now. Here’s HYKO.


Disappointment of the year:
Leaving out the fact that the Chromatics album STILL has not appeared in spite of a string of teaser tracks, videos and cryptic pronouncements from the label….no, I can’t have that every year. FEWS then, whose “Means” LP was….OK. Just OK. Where is the brilliance of the singles? Can they seriously only have three good songs, but those songs to be that good? Which leads us neatly into

Single of the year:
Is, of course, one of those Chromatics teaser tracks: the title track in fact from the aforementioned as-yet-non-existent album. It’s amazing though.



Which brings us to the main event, and the elephant in the room that is Blackstar. It’s really quite difficult for me to assess this one. If “The Next Day” was a farewell to old Bowie, “Blackstar” at first seemed like a hello to a new chapter. Then everything changed. I’m still having trouble getting to grips with it to be honest.

However.

In some sense there is no point in putting in Blackstar. Everyone who’s likely to read this has heard it and will have an opinion on it.  So precisely because it is the elephant in the room, I’m not putting it in the list. It is going into the itunes playlist though. What follows is therefore the Best Records Of The Year that weren’t by David Bowie. But first this:


The ten that didn’t get in. Let’s face it in a lot of years these would have been top 10. That’s how good 2016 was. Which is why I've posted a top 20.

20. TOMAGA – The Shape Of The Dance. I had never heard of this band and let’s face it, percussion led improv does not sound promising, but they were the highlight of this year’s Audioscope. Here’s some film of them live, because amazing though it is the album doesn’t quite capture it.


19. Mendoza and Griffiths – The Shadow. Local band alert! Plus they are both friends. I may be a little biased. The electro/hip hop edge of Tiger Mendoza works beautifully with Dave’s vocal and guitar.


18. Christian Fitness – This Taco Is Not Correct. Future of the Left offshoot releases album that is better than the Future of the Left album. Almost made the top 10. No video so here’s a taster on Bandcamp:
https://christianfitness.bandcamp.com/track/reggie-has-asbestos-training

17. Right Hand Left Hand – Right Hand Left Hand. Another association with FOTL as we hadn’t heard of them before seeing them in support at the Electric Ballroom. We ended up buying the album. Amazing what two guys and a loop pedal can do.


16. Beyonce – Lemonade. Another that almost made top 10 but a couple of missteps for me (notably the weird pro-gun country number “Daddy Lessons”) keep it out. If everything had been as good as “Formation” it would have been top 5.


15. Cavern of Anti Matter – Void Beats/Invocation Trex. Do you like Stereolab? Do you like Krautrock? Of course you do. You will probably like this then, which features Tim Gaines out of Stereolab playing krautrock.


14. Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool. Radiohead now seem to be making a good album every second release. Hail to the Thief – a bit rubbish. In Rainbows – great. King of Limbs – a bit rubbish. Which makes this one of the good ones. You’ve heard this before but here you go anyway.


13. Eagulls – Ullages. A change of pace here, going for a sparser, more Cure-like sound. Would have been higher but for their to me slightly inexplicable decision to do half the songs in 3/4 time. Or sometimes 6/8 or 12/8. Anyways this is great.


12. Santigold – 99c. I love Santigold. Another one that would have been higher but for a couple of missteps, like the bloody awful single “Who Be Lovin Me”. This isn’t that. This is "Outside The War" which is brilliant:


11. Not Waving – Animals. Minimal experimentalism from the Diagonal label. See also Powell. Love this.


So to the top 10:

10. Underworld – Barbara, Barbara, We Face A Shining Future. The 90s band revival continues with this comeback album from Underworld. I find myself listening to this more and more, even the more relaxed numbers that I wasn’t sure about first time round. The bangers are fantastic, notably the towering “If Rah”. Luna Luna Luna.


9. Powell – Sport. More glitchy minimalism. Liking this more each time I hear it. I’m going to include the single “Insomniac/Should’ve been a Drummer” as an excuse to play the video featuring a hilarious email exchange with Steve Albini. Big up Steve.


8. PC Music Volume 2. More hipster bobbins. But I like it so I don’t care.


7. Pet Shop Boys – Super. Another band comeback. I think it’s as good as any of their imperial phase albums. Yes yes yes yes.


6. Savages – Adore Life. This has really grown on me over the year. On first hearing less sparse and more rocky than their first album it nonetheless seems to have found a permanent space on my playlists.


5. MSTRKRFT – Operator. Well now. After the slightly generic EDM “fist of God” they’ve gone off and had a long think. The result is this, mostly produced via analog modular gear and hardware step sequencers and sounding raw as fuck and fresh as you like. Highlight is the metalcore crossover “Go On Without Me” but that seems to have no decent quality videos so instead here’s other highlight “Party Line”.



4. Wrangler – White Glue. It’s getting harder to figure out which ones are better now but anyway here’s Wrangler’s new release, if it sounds a bit Cabaret Voltaire-ish it’s because the band contains actual Stephen Mallinder. So they’re allowed. Best of luck finding any videos though.


3. Holy Fuck – Congrats. Another comeback – they’ve been off, decided to go with vocals, come back, maybe it’s the five year absence but they’ve never sounded so vital.


2. Factory Floor – 2525. To quote a friend on Facebook completely out of context “Acid techno. Nice One!” but there’s more to it than that. Minimal synth pulses, ever shifting percussion rhythms, you can listen to an 8 minute track and never get bored. Music lesson for 2016 - never underestimate the power of doing one thing for a long time. Here’s “Dial Me In”:


1. Cliff Martinez and others – Neon Demon OST. In the end there can be only one and this gorgeous soundtrack to one of my favourite films of the year is it. Getting it on beautiful transparent blue and green vinyl didn’t harm its case either. Again, however, best of luck finding a legit video. Most of the soundtrack is up here and if you want a highlight I would pick the theme starting at 22.47 “Jesse Sneaks Into Her Room”.

If this video gets taken down I guess you’ll just have to go and buy it. Trust me it’s amazing.

The thing is, I've always been rather scornful of people mourning the deaths of public figures. Partly it's because I remember the craziness when Princess Diana died and we were all supposed to feel this vast outpouring of grief, but mainly I think it's been a feeling of intrusiveness. We didn't know those people. They weren't our friends or family. And it felt like, somehow, the legitimate private grief of those who did know those people, and who were their friends and family, was being appropriated and repurposed.

Bowie dying hit me fairly hard. The fact that it was just after such an excellent new record, a huge surge of "good grief, he's done it again". The Guardian guide's music critic reviewed the single and said "stop innovating, you maniac!". Then, two days later, he did. And in the car a couple of days ago I was playing old Bowie and "5 Years" came on and I burst into tears. Not because I knew him, but because the world is a less bright place, and we won't have any crazy innovative new music from him ever again.

So, anyway, late new year resolution, be kinder when people get upset and cry over the deaths of people they don't know. No, they didn't know them, but in turn I don't know what part of their lives those people, without even having met them, lit up and made special.