Urlaubshits

So it’s that time of year. This isn’t the only end of year list -  the much more interesting one will arrive next week, a list that will take the form of my favourite 12″ releases along with a mix of my very favourites from the year gone by.

Bear in mind that this list should not be taken as the best – I haven’t listened to everything released this year, and these are simply my favourites from what I have heard. I am only including albums released this year, so Glass Candy’s Beatbox is not included, despite appearing on various other lists. Otherwise, this would be very high up.

10) Osborne – Osborne (Spectral Sound)

In the year that people asked “What Happened?” to techno, Osborne’s eponymous album for Ghostly’s sister imprint Spectral Sound reminds us of a time when techno was a state of mind rather than just another genre. An album that could so easily have been an exercise in pastiche, taking in almost all forms of house music in its hour plus running time absolutely oozes heart, and a genuine love for classic dance music. In an age where it seems a lot of young producers don’t really know the first thing about house’s origins, Osborne’s love letter to classic dance music is not just refreshing, it’s soul enriching.

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9) Hatchback – Colors Of The Sun (Lo Recordings)

From start to finish this album is pure radiophonic sun-drenched beauty; a pure haze of synthesised bliss. If you need some light in these dreary times, this album will provide. Colors Of The Sun is filled with compositions that twist and turn, with chord progressions and melodies that never feel obvious. The emotions that this album evokes are not ones that are easy to describe, primarily because the moods are ever changing throughout. A synaesthesic marvel.

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8) Gang Gang Dance -  Saint Dymphna (Warp)

A cavalcade of percussive jams and synthesised sound effects, this album manages to be the most effortlessly joyful listen of the year without succumbing to neon overload. I once saw Gang Gang Dance live on a somewhat lost night out, and was so utterly inspired by what I saw I was sure that they would one day make a new form of dance music, and this album could be the beginning.

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7) Metronomy – Nights Out (Because)

Metronomy kind of passed me by until I heard “Heartbreaker” this summer, but Nights Out is the kind of album I want to gorge myself on repeatedly. The musical equivalent of eating a whole bag of Haribo in one go, Nights Out is by turns sweet, sour, and utterly addictive.

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6) Kelley Polar – I Need You To Hold On While The Sky Is Falling (Environ)

This album may be too much for some people to handle, but is never any more cheesy than almost all of the lyrics on labelmate Morgan Geist’s solo album. An absolute triumph of OTT pop music which melds classical references in the lyrics with disco strings and the most theatrical vocal performance of the year.  And “Entropy Reigns” is one of the songs of the year, period.

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5) Syclops – I’ve Got My Eye On You (DFA)

Much better than the relatively disappointing (in my opinion) Hercules and Love Affair, Maurice Fulton’s man behind the curtain affair for DFA melds jazz and house, and transforms them into strange and wonderful new forms. Abrasive, squealing acid plays off against light, airy atmospherics, creating an album that is as engrossing to listen to on headphones as to dance to in a club.

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4) Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours (Modular)

In all honesty I was ready to be disappointed by this album – last year’s “Hearts On Fire” was so good that I didn’t see how the rest could live up to the high standard set by that track; but with the help of producer Tim Goldsworthy, Cut/Copy have created the “indie-dance” album. An album with all the euphoria that dance music is capable of mustering, together with a hazy psychedelic fuzz that envelops the listener into a warm bubble that you just don’t want to leave.

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3) Lindstrom – Where You Go I Go Too (Smalltown Supersound)

The first track of this three track album is almost 30 minutes long, and not one of those minutes ever feels wasted. The album on this list that uses the form of the album to its fullest potential, using the opening 30 minutes of hypnotic rhythms and textures to induce a deep state of listening, racing almost imperceptably through “Grand Ideas” to “The Long Way Home”, a closing track which takes it’s time before hitting you with the melody the album has been spending almost 50 minutes building up to.

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2) Quiet Village – Silent Movie (!K7)

I joked with my friends two years back that when the new rave fad had passed the inevitable trend to be given the “nu” treatment would probably be that of “chillout”, the late 90s blanket term given to any form of music meant to invoke a state of relaxation. Chillout is the kind of word that makes my skin crawl, so I am eternally grateful that Quiet Village’s Silent Movie has passed the NME by, otherwise we probably would have been forced to swallow a year’s worth of copycat shite. Of course Silent Movie is not a chillout album, nor balearic, nor disco – its the music between lost AM radio stations 30 years gone by – a music that exists in the transient space between nightmares and nostalgia, an album made even made more unbelievable by the fact that one half of Quiet Village is none other than Radioslave’s Matt Edwards.

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1) M83 – Saturdays = Youth (Mute)

This album is just stunning. If you haven’t heard it, then do; its ethereal beauty will seep into your every pore, nourishing your soul. Unlike M83’s previous Before The Dawn Heals Us, this album manages to be sweet without ever being cloying; it’s grandiosity much more contained than its predecessor. Like Quiet Village’s Silent Movie, Saturdays = Youth aims for a kind of abstract nostalgia, (in this case 80s film soundtracks) and hits unimaginable heights.

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