I listened to these records in the year 2008
Following Nate Davis’s example from last year, here’s my year ending list of favorite records. These aren’t all necessarily fresh releases, just records I heard for the first time this year and then jammed a ton. Links for these downloads are all from Google; missing ones I just didn’t bother looking for.
#1: It was the Year of The Skaters
The Skaters - Dark Rye Bread
The Skaters - Physicalities of the Sensibilities of Ingrediential Stairways
Pacific Rat Temple Band - Tan Kim (Boa Paradise)
90210 - s/t
James Ferraro - Marble Surf
Vodka Soap - Un Chand Pyramidelier
Nirvana - Body of Consciousness/Uguiya to Jeep by Iguana Greenwave
Teotihuacan - Live Smokeshows from Inside the Ciguri Cave Hazed Diamonds with Windswept Hair
After three or four years of ambivalence toward the Skaters family, something severe ticked over in my mind sometime in February and I fell for them bigtime. The eight releases listed above constituted a basement work/neighborhood walk/long drive/crushing dawn routine that I probably ran almost a hundred times last year. The Pacific Rat Temple Band (vivid slow-marching torchlit underground worship sessions) and the 90210 (E.L.P. hanging out and playing toy instruments over an episode of Night Rider on the other side of the wall and KILLING IT) discs both easily saw three times more play than anything else during this horrendous year, a year in my many basements that very definitively belonged to James Ferraro.
This came to me by way of Susy by way of Ben. In January I wrote this about it =
“This is the confusing and brilliant 70s VHS disco document from Rundgren’s band Utopia, that as the story goes, Rundgren found too embarrassing to release at the time. It’s filled with way, way over-saturated bulging-crotch leotard guitars and iron-pumping thumbs-up synths on top of ridiculously busy, crazily synched background racket. The compositions, mostly all driving and super bright (there’re covers of the national anthem and the Trek theme), are simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic - a confusing combination in the first place, but listening to them thirty years after the record’s recording in the actual future makes the effect downright weird. The particular 70s nostalgia documented here is no longer even vaguely relatable, and the 70s future vision put forth never came to pass. They wanted space travel in golden ships and they got Youtube. Who wins?”
#3: Kurt Vile - Constant Hitmaker
Killer Philadelphia space music. Favorite “songs” record of the year.
#4: Kites - Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship
I listened to this almost every day from August through October. Perfect vision and portrait of working alone in the dark. I will someday write 15,000 words about Kites and post it on a blog that is only readable deep, deep underground.
#5: Horacio Vaggione - La Maquina de Cantar
(No A-side on the upload above but whatever.) Allen came through town and played me this in January; it saw regular play in my second room at Random House through maybe March. When I heard it I posted it elsewhere online and blurbed it with this:
“The A-side and title track is a jerky electronics frowner that never hits it, but the B-side, “Ending,” is a solid night out. Too dense and endless to call prog and with way too much movement to call drone, I rock hard and completely sink into it whenever it comes on. The first eleven minutes play out a wall of endless toppling synthesizers warping urgently in on themselves. As they approach the event horizon and nearly invert completely, the fever suddenly lifts, and in the goofiest change in tone I’ve heard since Arthur Brown “Fire,” they begin to play 1970s public television fundraiser bumper music. Then that, in turn, begins to warp, decay, and zoom endlessly in on itself, like a newspaper cartoon pressed into Silly Putty and stretched into oblivion. Simultaneously heavy, cheesy, meditative and disorienting.”
#6: Michael Hurley - Live 7/17/76
I listened to this for the first time on the drive up to VSC in September and then played it pretty regularly through Thanksgiving. Lonely road folk. “Break up music.”
#7: Bone Awl - Meaningless Leaning Mess
Relentless evil on smudgy disintegrating film.
#8: Fantastic Magic - Witch Choir
Loved this especially around when we went on band tour. Lysergic and dizzying/swooping island neon folk that’s somehow still precious/tacky and weirdly grounded - like The Tower Recordings’ lost Cancun record.
#9: Blues Control - Snowday b/w Paul’s Winter Solstice
The best band of 2006 and still the best band in New York’s Christmas record. I listened to this thirteen times in a row when I got it.
I painted a lot listening to this on repeat in March, and then listened to it at Work Group in September.
Honorable mentions =
ANGELDUST / M Ax Noi Mach / Big Ocean live in Philly
ANGELDUST when Kites played at PIFAS, M Ax Noi Mach at Bobo’s and Big Ocean at INC Philly = live horrors that loudly exclaimed what it is to live in that city. AHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHH!
Ashtray Navigations - In Liquido Bravo
Ashtray Navigations - Srpls Provncl Hrbs
Generally I wasn’t too stoked on most of the stuff that came from UK drone teams this year, but these two Ashtray Nav releases hit it. In Liquido Bravo’s first track is an excellent spaghetti western slow jam and Srpls Provncl Hrbs finishes with Croak Song, which is like a tuned up version of the phase/flutter of How Can I Hand You a Diamond from Monument to British Rock, which I liked so much last year that I made a video for it.
Animal Collective/Black Dice - Wastered 12″
Man do I wish AC would go back to making slow, long metal bowl loop music with fried vocals instead of making songs.
Arthur Russell - Calling Out of Context
Played dominoes in New York with Julio and Leah listening to this. Haunting and shit-sweat karaoke vocals over sometimes groovy sometimes confusing beats.
Fennesz - Black Sea
Excellent record from my #1 of the year 2002. I haven’t spent a lot of time with it yet and don’t “love” it, but I did write this ridiculous/ecstatic thing to my brother when I first heard it: “It is like staring sunblind into a cold landscape through an elaborately frosted window, while a fire is burning behind you, someone is washing dishes in the other room, and you slowly fall asleep after eating an awesome dinner, and your mind moves through the frosted glass and explores the secret white worlds way down beneath distant frozen lakes.”
Ghostface Killah - Ironman
Ludacris - Red Light District
Most played rap records of the year.
Birchville Cat Motel - Seventh Ruined Hex
Natural Snow Buildings - Song for Laurie Bird
Pocahaunted and Robedoor - Mouth of Prayer
Honorable mention to these three high-flying repetitive guitar droners, all of which I listened to numerous times as I drove back and forth between Philly and Boston last January through March or April.
Portishead - Third
Things might have been different if this came out five years ago. Even so, I listened to it many, many times, notably with Davey and Mike on the way to Tallahassee on tour in April or May or whenever.