Urlaubshits

So here is the big list, my top 10 single releases of 2008, in 12″ format – in this I’ve taken into account B-sides and remixes as well, so you should not see it as just the top 10 tracks of the year. The 12″, whether on vinyl or as a download package is still the most important focus for a dance music producer – and even if we aren’t all buying them on vinyl, their format still informs the creative processes of many.

Although these tracks are numbered, choosing the order was tough, but it should be noted that everything I have written about on this blog in the past year is a winner.

And if you want to listen to these releases, then look no further than the Urlaubshits Quintessential Mix of 2008.

10) DJ Mujava – Township Funk (Warp)

Probably the track on this list most guaranteed to make anyone dance, “Township Funk” had the most virulently catchy melody. But the strength of the melody was just as much down to the sonic quality of the melody itself, its springy vibrato adding to its dancability, especially contrasted against the absolutely devastating sub-bass.

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9) Aeroplane (feat. Kathy Diamond) – Whispers (Eskimo Recordings)

There’s a reason I’m not doing a list of the best remixes of 2008 – and its because if I did, I genuinely don’t think I’d be able to guarantee that Aeroplane wouldn’t completely dominate it. Well, maybe that’s not strictly true, but it feels like it is. They’ve done so many remixes this year, I’ve lost count of them, and it’s easy to forget that they actually released a single of their own back in February. It seems consistently incredible that Aeroplane have the gall to do what they do and get away with it, and “Whispers” is one of those tracks, which, despite being almost unbelievably overblown, succeeds because, like their Belgian countrymen Soulwax, they know how to tap into that musical pleasure centre that everyone has somewhere in their brain. The lyrics to “Whispers” are bitter, but this song is sweet as the sticky treacle textures that Aeroplane create around Kathy Diamond’s vocals, and is as sublime a track as their incredible reworks of Friendly Fires and Grace Jones.

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8) Tensnake – Keep Believin’ (Endless Flight)

Tensnake really is one of those producers that just doesn’t get enough love as far as I’m concerned. He’ll probably be more known for his remixes of Junior Boys and Sally Shapiro, but this EP was the highlight of his original material. The title track and “Congolal” are sublime 6am balearic workouts, but the clean Italo funk of “Tavira” is the real killer, a mournful piece of dubby cosmic disco which borrows elements of modern deep house without ever straying into the dangerously boring territory that the genre can fall into.

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7) Runaway – Brooklyn Club Jam (DFA/Rekids)

What makes this track work is undoubtedly its simplicity. The drums have a cavernous quality to them, which, in combination with the echoing piano riff, had a purity which created the year’s most cleansing dance track. Runaway give the same kind of sparseness and delicate timbre to house music as Metro Area give to disco, and it’s hard not to to say “Brooklyn Club Jam” will have the same kind of clout as “Miura” five years from now. I think “Brooklyn Club Jam” may well be one of those timeless tracks that will have hands in the air for many years to come.

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6) Detachments – Fear No Fear (Thisisnotanexit)

It’s always nice to hear a band that don’t actually sound like everyone else. In the year when disco pastiche was often the order of the day, Detachments‘ combination of punk funk and industrial music was a refreshingly dark alternative. They’ve already got Trevor Jackson and Andrew Weatherall producing their upcoming album. And Thisisnotanexit didn’t diasppoint with their choice of remixers – I was initially attracted by the Naum Gabo remix, which makes the vocals a lot louder and augments them with thick disco synths, but it was the epic 13 minute Moscow remix which really impressed, a psychedelic acid house beast which more than made up for Gavin Russom’s Black Meteoric Star 12″ failing to materialise.

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5) Hercules and Love Affair – Blind (DFA)

There isn’t really anything to say about this track that hasn’t been said. It’s on a lot of year end lists for a reason – its possibly the defining song for the latest epochal shift in dance music. I couln’t really get into the album like a lot of people obviously did (down to the fact that I much preferred the acid influenced Classique #2 and Roar released in 2007), but this song is incredible. Getting Frankie Knuckles to remix the track was inspired, but I feel that the Serge Santiago remix doesn’t get enough attention. His rework strips everything away apart from Antony’s vocal and rebuilds it as a 10 minute long tech house banger. It shouldn’t work, but it really does, mainly because Antony’s vocals on Blind are the vocal performance of the year.

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4) Discodeine – Joystick (Dark & Lovely)

Managing to be both pop music and atonal all at once, Joystick starts off with an 80’s electro melody which gradually collapses as it gives way to the sonic beating it is given. Its curious shape is weighted heavily towards the beginning, and tapers off from half way through until the end, but without ever losing energy. This track is a joy to mix, making any track that follows it practically explode. Discodeine’s unique combination of disco, house and techno will not be to everyone’s taste, but Joystick is hard not to love. They have a new EP coming out in January, entitled Tom Select, it’s already on my must buy list for the new year.

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3) The Juan Maclean – Happy House (DFA)

I doubt there was a more euphoric moment in dance music this year than the moment the piano riff in this track drops. And the riff may be taken from Dubtribe Sound System’s “Do It Now”, but this track has The Juan Maclean written all over it. Managing to pack in disco, house and acid house into its 12 plus minutes, Happy House is blistering dance music. And it’s always going to be unenviable remixing a song this good, but it has to be said, that on this 12″, Prince Language and Lee Douglas do an amazing job. If The Juan Maclean doesn’t own 2009 with The Future Will Come, then I see that as conclusive proof that there is no God.

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2) Babytalk – Chance (Stickydisc Recordings)

Surprisingly, in a year when DFA has brought us more stellar releases than ever before, the best release from the DFA stable wasn’t actually released on DFA, but Stickydisc Recordings, label of Eric Broucek, a man who, as sound engineer for the DFA studios and a former member of The Juan Maclean’s touring band, has had his name on many DFA 12″ singles over the last few years. As Babytalk, he has made the most sublime piece of disco house of 2008. Chance is a dubbed out mid-tempo number with a plethora of abstract vintage synth sounds that compliment its wobbly melody perfectly, but it’s the disembodied vocals that really make it special, adding a spectral element that are more reminiscent of Black Devil Disco Club’s modern Italo than anything previously released on DFA. But where Black Devil Disco Club is obviously Italo inspired, Babytalk’s material is a lot more difficult to pin down. It’s not simply an American take on Italo disco like Chromatics or Glass Candy – Chance is something much more abstract. When I first heard this on Beats In Space I was convinced it was something much older, but the fact that it is not made me first of all amazed, and second, very happy, because it means that there will be more.

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1) Bostro Pesopeo – Falls EP (Permanent Vacation)

It’s rare that music this experimental is ever actually so completely visceral. There seems no way that sampling Gregorian chanting, a tuba, some honky tonk piano and a man sneezing, should cause anything except unbridled laughter or utter confusion. Everytime I hear “Falls” however, right at the halfway point where the track is stripped down to nothing, and the drop comes in the form of a sneeze, followed by the sound of breaking glass, I get shivers right down the back of my spine. It was the B-side, “Communiquis” that I heard first, in Aeroplane’s Resident Advisor mix back in the summer – it was the kind of track that took a while to filter through, but once it had, I was sure that the rest would be special. Nothing, however, prepared me for “Falls” – nothing released this year sounds anything like it, and this is my record of the year by a very, very long way.

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