PondaBlog

right, nearly there….slightly detoured by olympic mania…

in the meantime here’s another awesome rundown of the top 10 albums of the last 10 years, courtesy of steve. 

My albums of the year:

 Kid A

Radiohead

In Rainbows

Radiohead

OK Computer (reissue)

Radiohead

The Bends (reissue)

Radiohead

Pablo Honey (reissue)

Radiohead

Radiohead’s Greatest Hits

Radiohead

Just Kidding. I will make my list a Radiohead-free zone even though “Everything In Its Right Place” is such an incredible song it could make the list on its own, even if released as a four-minute album. Out of respect to the mighty ‘head, I am going to make that my song of the decade.

This is a ridiculous task so I’ve decided to make my list very personal. I fully accept that these aren’t the most important albums but they’re the ones that were either most played, most moved me or had pretty pictures on the cover. In making this a personal list so I can write about my experiences. So it’s really all about me. It’s 10 things about me that I’m going to make you read.

I’m not putting LCD Soundsystem in. Deal with it. I thought his first album had better tunes but somehow wasn’t considered a proper album and hence is largely disregarded. And there’s something about Murphy that annoys me. LCD are too knowing, too pretentious, too mannered, too hipster, too…oh I don’t know what it is.

I’m not going to put my albums in any order because it’s just ridiculous to attempt it. I’d put them in a different order next week and it was hard enough finding ten anyway. Stick that in your “Things to Deal With” file.

 

Blue Horse (2000)

The Be Good Tanyas

This album has all the ingredients for me. I learned one of the songs from this album which I play to Violet (Steve’s very young child – Ed.). This is always on my iPod and one of the reasons it appeals so much is because Jolie Holland’s incredible voice is never far away. These women harmonise beautifully but Holland is always the one I want to hear. When she does she steals songs but this album would be great even without her. I can’t remember when I first started to listen to it but it’s never far away. “The Littlest Birds” was played at our wedding and due to a volume malfunction loudly proclaimed, “Well I feel like an old hobo!” as Sarah took a moment to compose herself. The registrar looked bemused.

 

Time (The Revelator) (2001)

Gillian Welch

I had to have a Gillian Welch album in there because she’s a giant of an artist and songwriter and the Noughties was when I found her. Her guitarist and co-writer David Rawlings is an inspirational musician she wouldn’t sound the same without him. I play a couple of her songs and found her fascinating in the decade when I really fell for female singer songwriters. She has a cameo in O Brother Where Art Thou, you know. One of the things I find really interesting about Welch is that her self-penned songs can sound modern and relevant even though they’re frequently bluegrass chord progressions played on 1930s instruments. How do you get so much mileage out of G, C and D with the odd minor chord thrown in? How can two instruments sound so compelling? It’s testament to the quality of the writing and performing that they make it sound so simple.

 

The Blackened Air (2002)

Nina Nastasia

This was the album of my break-up with Branka around 2003/ 04. For some reason I found great comfort in listening to morose women like Nina Nastasia, Jolie Holland and Gillian Welch. This record is otherworldly. I don’t know if it’s the production (Steve Albini), the ambiguity of the songs or the way it seems to envelop me in darkness but I can lose myself in this album. It’s inseperable from that time in my life but I love it and found solace in its gloomy corners. Perhaps this is my album of the decade.

 

Milk Eyed Mender (2004)

Joanna Newsom

I realise she’s not everyone’s cup of tea and she does sound like Lisa Simpson but what a breath of fresh air. When I saw her on stage at Somerset House I thought “What a superstar.” She’s beautiful, talented and lyrically fascinating. In contrast to The Blackened Air, this album found me at an incredibly happy time. It was Christmas 2006, I’d moved in with Sarah in Battersea and we were preparing to entertain the whole family. I understand how she’s divisive but I can’t wait for her next album. She’s too beautiful to be a bearded lady. Ponda hates her because he hates beauty.

 

Destroy Rock n Roll (2004)

Mylo

This album had to go on the list. Ponda bought this in London in Fopp, a now-deceased record shop on the Tottenham Court Road. He bought it on a whim as it had decent reviews stuck to its cover. It soundtracked his visit but the record was a slow burner and didn’t really take off until the following year and of course it then provided the backdrop to a memorable year with Marc, an Ashes-winning summer and my first nights with Sarah who also owned it. “Drop the Pressure” is definitely one of my tracks of the decade.

 

Ruby Blue (2005)

Roisin Murphy

I had to put something by Matthew Herbert in and opted for this in the end. It’s his most accessible record and sounds bewitching, especially when remixed and played at Fabric for one of my most memorable dancefloor moments. The Noughties saw my retirement from the rave scene. I trust it will live on without me. Is it still going?

 

Illinois (2005)

Sufjan Stevens

Classic, innit.

 

Springtime Can Kill You (2006)

Jolie Holland

I liked Sarah’s description of Jolie’s voice: “a beautiful woman with a big nose.” She sounds like no one else. The way she slurs from note to note is unmistakable. It’s as if she’s drunk or stoned but it’s damned sexy and I’m pleased I got to see her live, even if Sarah did go off in a huff because I’d criticised a sketch she’d drawn of the crowd when we were waiting for Jolie to come on. This album reminds me of the heat of that summer, of my flat with Sarah in Battersea and it’s another record I can lose myself in. I managed to get the title track into the top spot of the Guardian music supplement’s Readers Recommend section. The subject that week: Spring.

 

Begin to Hope (2006)

Regina Spektor

Like Newsom, Spektor isn’t to everyone’s taste and I can sympathise with that. I get annoyed when she sings “So sweet and juicy!” in a mannered and affected way. Sometimes you get albums that are strong almost solely because they’re catchy and this is one of those. Although she’s the queen of the anti-folk scene this is pop really. It’s great though. I can’t stop playing it.

 

Rumpelzirkus (2007)

Kalabrese

This is an incredible-sounding record, full of tension and uses horns better than anything since the great ‘70s funk and soul acts. Reassuringly Teutonic, slightly sinister and immensely funky. This record uses its tricks sparingly and to great effect. This might be my most played dance album of the Noughties.

 

Honourable mentions to:

Dark Was the Night (2009)

Best comp

The Name of This Band is Talking Heads (2004)

Best reissue

Violet Byrne Randell

Best baby

=

i always like lists at the end of the year. so why stop there? you can find resident advisor’s top 100 tracks of the decade here and top 100 albums of the decade here.

and yes, you can even find the top 50 mixes of the last 10 years here. phew!

speaking of mixes, i’m listening to the recent RA mix by dj stingray at this very moment and well, it’s pretty fantastic. stealthy detroit techno with one particularly lethal segue that filters robot funk with a dancehalldubstep vibe. i love his pic too – the hooded visage reminds me of underground resistance. and after i read that he played with drexciya, well i just had to check this out, didn’t i? 

okay, i know it’s brutally late, but my thoughts on the decade are nearly complete. well, as complete as they can be.

in the meantime, i have musings on the decade’s music from two pals on offer. first up is marc. enjoy.

MARC’S TOP 10 OF THE DECADE (THE ONE THAT JUST ENDED, THAT IS…)

….Without further delay, 10 records that defined my decade:

1) LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver (2007)

It’ll be easy to attack this pick. For all I know it will be at the top of the dreaded Pitchfork list. What can I say? I’m losing my edge. Couldn’t help it. Anyway, I couldn’t forgive myself if I moved it down to placate Randell and his “it’s all been done before” nonsense. This is the album that defined the latter half of the decade for me: a soundtrack to winter in New York that manages to provoke all kinds of bullshit nostalgia from my too-easily-tricked brain. Cara and I were at the Bowery Ballroom the night he kicked off this tour, we danced to his gay disco tracks at PS 1 in Queens, and this was the album playing on backgammon nights, party nights, week nights, recovery days, and Sundays in my apartment in 2008. An album’s place in one’s record collection relies significantly on factors that have little or nothing to do with the music itself, and so it may be accidental this found its way to the top of my list, accidental it happened to feel so perfect that year. Still, the music’s not bad. “Someone Great” and “All My Friends” remain as spine-tingling as they were the first time I heard them. Anthems, even. “Get Innocuous” may be the finest track Murphy has written to date. “New York I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down” still makes me smile without making me squirm. And the whole thing somehow fits together – unlike his debut – as a singular work. An album in an age of singles. An album for North American Scum like myself.

2) Burial – Untrue (2007)

A bit of hyperbole (but isn’t that the point?): Burial’s two albums have made more of an impact on me than any two electronic albums ever produced. True, by and large my consumption of house, techno, dubstep, et al, is in the mix/12” format. In compiling this list I thought about two things: 1) what albums made over the course of the last 10 years do I still listen to regularly? 2) which of those albums significantly influenced my music purchasing habits after its release? It would be hard to deny this album would find its way near the top of both lists. And as I’m writing this very entry, listening to Fred P and DJ Qu’s Bunker mix, I hear the opening vocal of “Near Dark” and am immediately transported to a bus ride, post-party (post-everything) in grey, rainy, gritty London.

3) Theo Parrish – Parallel Dimensions (2000)

I bought this record when Ubiquity re-released it a couple years after it originally came out and it’s fair to say it introduced a world of House music I had no idea existed – the music I listen to more frequently now and enjoy hearing out most (as Cara said at a Jus-Ed party in New York once “this is the only kind of music I want to hear out from now on.”). On first listen I had no idea what I had bought – Parrish’s spare off kilter drums, the lo-fi grit, the other worldliness of it had me completely unsure of my purchase. But by the second listen I was hooked. Not only is this a great record, and one of the few full lengths by my all time favorite House producer, but it was the window to many, many new names, people like Rick Wilhite, Moodyman, Omar S. It remains the album I am most likely to turn to when unsure what to play. And just last night Cara intuitively responded to my request for “something funky” with this one. It’s hard to pick a standout track here, but “Summertime is Here” gets me every time.

4) Ricardo Villalobos – Fabric (2007)

I suppose there are a plenty of productions that vie for the title of Villalobos’s masterpiece, but I’ve listened to none more than his Fabric mix, a “mix” consisting solely of the producer’s own previously unreleased productions and as trippy and experimental as dance music got this decade. With the implosion of mnml complete, it’s easy to dismiss 99% of it as garbage. Villalobos may go down as one of the great producers ever to work within the boundaries of dance music, though the fact anyone was dancing to this stuff is evidence of an open mindedness (or ketamine supply) that exists within the scene that makes me happy. It wasn’t easy work, this one. All that “hard work”, though, is washed away when the Latin drums of “Won’t You Tell Me” begin to tease their way into your ear and when that’s followed by the magic of “Primer Encuentro Latino-Americano” I had already decided to listen again.

 5) Herbert – Scale (2006)

I’m not sure this record has ever been topped in the “quirky house producers go pop” category I’ve just made up in my head. Dani Siciliano’s voice makes me want to get naked. You’re welcome for that image. A bit of a pattern here in that memorable shows tend to make the album more memorable, and Cara and I were fortunate to see the whole band on tour for this one, all clad in bathrobes no less. The first three tracks here – “Something Isn’t Right”, “The Movers and the Shakers” and “Moving Like A Train” are stone cold classics. I’m not sure Herbert will ever top this, given his propensity for skewing towards the weird and difficult, but one can hope.

 6) The Knife – Silent Shout (2006)

In this, strictly adult rated version of my list, I can admit both of the things that come to mind when the opening notes of this album play: backgammon and [insert vice of choice here – Ed.]. Whatever the implications here, I don’t think the association with drugs is entirely tied to my own actions, nor am I convinced I’m the only one making at least one of those associations. Karin’s steely vocals, the dark, quasi-anonymous vibe….it all lends a nice little druggy vibe to the whole operation. And they scare me a little too. Scandos eh?

 7) Radiohead – Kid A (2000)

I may nominate this as the most boring choice on my list, but I can’t bring myself to ignore it either. I also contemplated having “In Rainbows” as my choice here, as I have listened to that one more in the last year, but I stuck with Kid A largely because it’s a record I’ve come back again and again for nearly the entire decade. Can’t ignore that now can you? Anyway, I’m not going to say anything that hasn’t been said already on this one, so I’ll stop now.

Daft Punk – Discovery (2001)

It’s funny that in 2009 Daft Punk are given us much credit for their influence on pop music in this country as say, Jay-Z (see our earlier debate over the Sasha Frere Jones piece). For my part, I just love the record, no matter how fashionable it’s become. “One More Time” is one of the tracks of the decade.  Another memorable concert to go with this one, at Coney Island in 2007.

9) Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings – Naturally (2005)

When I discovered this record (in the aisles of Amoeba like more than a few on this list) I had no idea who Sharon Jones was. Initially I really did think the record was an old soul reissue. On its first play back at the house everyone immediately asked what it was. The hooks made you move, the band was tight as hell, and the voice was the kind of voice I hope to find on, well, on just about any record out there. In the ‘what records do I still consistently listen to’ category this would be right at the top.

10) Hercules and Love Affair – Hercules and Love Affair (2008)

For my money the best long player DFA put out not by LCD Soundsystem. It’s a fitting final entry here as it seems to me a lot of things about this record sum up the decade musically – dance music regaining acceptance in the indie world, disco’s revival, DFA’s domination, a constant obsession with Arthur Russell. This record really just brings me joy though. The camp disco beats (courtesy of Tim Goldsworthy, an underappreciated name in the DFA lineup says me) are offset by Antony Hegarty’s sentimental voice, it’s not so much dance music as folk for disco kids.

 

caught anthony braxton and his 60-member entourage yesterday as they embarked on an eight-hour odyssey of free jazz, improv and sonic adventurism (see previous post for a bit of background). anyways, here are a few snapshots of an awesomely inspiring project.