The end-of-year favourite-albums list thing. I guess they're not annoying as hell if you're really just saying "I enjoyed these things" rather than trying to assess worthiness, pass judgement, set trends or otherwise act like a lifestyle journalist. After last year's attempt at the end-of-year roundup, I've decided the best way to show what I enjoyed, and why I enjoyed it, is just to link to a few youtube clips. Still gonna throw in some blab, but if you get bored you can always skip to the clip.
A bit more preamble: there will be absolutely no attempt to do a best-of-the-decade list. The idea that music trends come in decades is rubbish. And also, the things that everybody will associate with popular music in 2009 can be left at about one word each. For example: the Beatles remastered catalogue ("good"); or the overexposure of autotuners in the top 20 ("bad"). Or you can reverse those words. I don't see why you should care what I think about those things...
One thing 2009 will be remembered for is dead people. I'm not going to bother naming the biggest dead guy of the year (I still like Off The Wall and Thriller), but did you know that Allen Klein died ten days later? I thought I'd mention it. You can choose for yourselves whether or not to cheer. At first I also thought I'd say something nice about Klein - or at least I'd try to avoid demonising him. But there's nothing nice to say. At least you can say nice things about Howard Morrison. I just wish there were more obituaries that tried playing something other than 'How Great Thou Art'. Anyway, I'm sure there are more dead people to list (thankfully Chris Knox isn't among them), but rather than list them, I'll just use deadness as a launching point into the albums I was going to talk about.
J Dilla: Jay Stay Paid
It's been quite a year for Dilla, though it's three years since he died. BBE / Rapster have put out three - three - best-of compilations under the name Dillanthology, one every three months. There's some logic to doing it in threes (and not just a numerological obsession with the number): the first was the best-of-Dilla-working-for-other-people, the second was best-remixes, and the third, finally, was best-of-Dilla-solo.
But the best Dilla release of 2009 was Jay Stay Paid, a collection of all sorts of scraps, executive-produced by his mother and mixed together by his idol Pete Rock (that's a nice touch). It's mostly an instrumental beat album, though I think it shows off more of the crisp soul-coloured sound of Welcome 2 Detroit rather than the rougher-than-Ruff-Draft sound of the instrumental Donuts. At 28 tracks, of course, it's mostly still choppin' it out at Donuts' pace; only four tracks make it past the 3-minute mark. There are more than four tracks with vocals though, and the guest list is mostly who you'd expect on a Dilla album: Black Thought, DOOM or Raekwon for the world-famous type; Frank Nitty or kid brother Illa J for the, let's say, regionally-famous type.
A final note about the two producers of the album: there's a whole lot of backstory about Dilla's estate not going where he would've wanted it. I haven't really followed it (this article covers some of the murk) but I believe part of the aim for Jay Stay Paid is that it might see Jay's family stay paid too. Even if not, this is the most interesting proposition for Dilla releases in 2009.
The Clip: 'KJay And We Out' is the album closer. The title relates to the radio-broadcast theme that Pete Rock uses to keep the album flowing, and he gives a disc-jocky-style shout-out to cap things off...
Madlib: Beat Konducta vol.5-6: A Tribute To...
This one is closely related to the last album, since it's a tribute to Dilla (it ditches the dot-dot-dot and says "a tribute to Dilla" inside the cover). And it's also closely related since it's another instrumental set, clocking in 42 tracks in just over an hour. And it's related because Dilla and Madlib were major influences on each other, notably after their Jaylib collaboration. One example of that is simply that this is a part of Madlib's Beat Konducta series, which he didn't get going on until after Dilla's Donuts, even if he'd already been doing that beat-tape thing outside commercial release for years.
You might ask how you do a tribute without vocals, but that hardly matters: it's fairly easy to convey mood instrumentally, and that seems to be the essential. It helps that a lot of Dilla's musical tastes ran to the plaintive end of soul, so that Madlib can produce music that gets the right reflective tone for and also sounds Dilla-esque (pastiche being an obvious form of tribute). Likewise, the prominence of Donuts in Dilla's catalogue means that "instrumental" is taken as Dilla-esque even if most of he time he worked with singers or MCs, or rapped himself.
Of course, while A Tribute To... is nominally an instrumental album, there are fragments of vocals in the samples: the album opens with the line "since you been away so long" on a loop, and the effect is just as strong as if Madlib had written his own rhymes. On top of which, some of these fragments are snatches of Dilla himself. And there's also an occasional sample of someone screaming in frustration. Just to drive home the point.
The Clip: A Tribute To... really doesn't lend itself to a single selected clip. Individual tracks always sound like something's missing when they don't flow into the next track. It's a sum-total job, and works best for me playing volume 5 (the "Dil Cosby Suite", tracks 1-22) or volume 6 (the "Dil Withers Suite", 23-42) in one sitting. I'm not linking to all that though. But I thought I could link to two tracks instead of one. 'Dirty Hop (The Shuffle)' may sound a little aimless when it's not aimed at the track following it on the album, but it reminds me enough of Jaylib that it seems a perfect way to show off the tribute-by-reference side of the album. The other track, 'Rolled Peach Optimos (Call Day)', is no less Dilla-like but shows off the album's plaintive side. And both tracks have another recurring vocal sample: Indian vocal percussion (don't remember the name for the technique).
Oh No: Dr No's Ethiopium
Continuing from the last album, Oh No is the younger brother of Madlib. Continuing the dead people theme (this is getting specious) Oh No's real name is Michael Jackson. Ignoring that, his new album Dr No's Ethiopium is a sort of sequel to Dr No's Oxperiment of 2007. Both are "regionally based" instrumental albums. Beat albums (again). Oxperiment limited itself to Turkish, Lebanese, Greek and Italian psychedelic rock samples. Ethiopium limits itself to sampling from... well, you can work out where. The genres he touches on include funk, jazz, folk, soul and rock, from the 60s and 70s. Think of the Broken Flowers soundtrack. At this stage I'm not sure which of the Dr No albums I prefer, or rather, I keep switching which one I prefer. It might be a good thing that the next few projects he's got lined up are well removed from the Dr No idea, so he's keeping things fresh, but it's the Dr No stuff I like best.
(These aren't the only themed-sampling albums he's done: Exodus Into Unheard Rhythms was sampled entirely from the music of Galt McDermot, composer of Hair - actually, it doesn't say "sampled from", it says "made with". McDermot's name is as prominent as Oh No's on the inside cover, and McDermot made it to the photo shoot too.)
The Clip: I've grabbed a clip with two tracks, 'Concentrate' and 'The Funk'. They appear in reverse order on the album. It's Stone Throw's call to put them back to front here, not mine. But it doesn't matter anyway.
International Observer: Felt
Last year I mentioned the reissue campaign for the Thompson Twins. This year former Twin bandleader Tom Bailey released Felt, his fourth (ish) album as International Observer. International Observer is a dub project that he started while still living in Auckland. And though he's moved back to the UK, you can still see traces of the New Zealand connection. For example, he released an album (All Played Out) on local label Round Trip Mars, he decorated the cover of the roughly-equivalent UK album (Heard) with pictures of tui, and he got a single from the latest album remixed by Pitch Black (actually, that makes another kind of sense: Pitch Black and Paddy Free release their own stuff on the same UK-based label).
Dunno if there's anything particularly New Zealand-y on Felt though. If anything, this album has a more of an international (ping!) feel than ever. Be it through track titles like 'The Death of Karamov', 'Neelkanth' or 'Lampedusa'; or through the instrumentation - slide guitar, accordion (as distinct from the obligatory dub melodica), zither, tabla... some of the guitar work is more like country or western-folk music too.
(A quick note on the title Felt. The first Observer album was called Seen, and I've mentioned Heard. Nice theme. This time Bailey used the title "felt" in the sense of fabric as well as sensory perception (a track called 'House Made of Felt', a photo of felt on the disc). And there's definitely a tactile quality to the sound. But where to from here? "Tasted" could work, but "smelt" doesn't seem so catchy.)
The Clip: 'House of the Rising Dub' is the opening track on the album, although the version I've linked to has a two-minute country-like acoustic guitar intro that's not on the album version. It's a cover of what you think it is. But it might not be what you expect.
Electric Wire Hustle: Electric Wire Hustle
Back to the Dilla connections for this one. Not only is the sound of this Wellington soul band a little indebted to Dilla, but three of the four guest performers are Dilla alumni: Georgia Anne Muldrow, Dudley Perkins (AKA Declaime), and Stacy Epps. The first two are both signed to Stones Throw, same as Dilla. Stacy Epps is actually more of a Madlib alumnus, but there's still a Dilla connection. Anyway, that's by way of the three-degrees-of-separation game, but hopefully it's pointing to international opportunities too.
Anyway, the album is just damn nice. It's what the Wellington Sound might sound like if the Wellington Sound sounded like the Wellington Sound is supposed to sound like - at least if we're thinking of soul rather than dub / reggae (though without ruling it out). Case in point is Mara TK's voice: his Marvin Gaye-isms show him stretching out beyond the usual croon that passes for soul-singing. Maybe it's a subtle distinction, but you'll feel it when you listen to one or the other for the length of an album. Likewise, his lyrics try for something other than the sort of banal (and usually content-free) lectures that pass for profundity. "I lose myself daily... but I'll stay here with you/ please bear with me" seems righter and deeper than certain other soul lyrics I've heard this year.
Hmm, anyway, let that pass. (Name no names, even if it means you make no case...)
The Clip: A song called 'Perception'. They did a video for it. It isn't my favourite number, but they did a video for it. And even if it isn't my favourite number, it's still representative of E.W.H. doing their thing and doing it well...
Brötzmann/Kondo/Pupillo/Nilssen-Love: Hairy Bones
It's not really a favourite for the year, but it's kinda fun anyway, and a total change of pace from everything else I've covered. Hairy Bones is Peter Brötzmann and Toshinori Kondo, the horn section of the Die Like A Dog Quartet, with young'uns Massimo Pupillo on electric bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. The effect is a bit like a cross between Die Like A Dog and Brötzmann's old band No Exit. Well, maybe. Where No Exit was a sort of "free metal" outfit, this is more like "free acid jazz" (or "acid free jazz"?) especially in the interplay between Kondo and Pupillo. But it earns the right to the word "acid" more than any acid jazz I've heard. I guess that means it's nothing like acid jazz then after all. It's kinda funky, even though it's never On The One (if there's even a one for them to be on). As always, Kondo is the best electric trumpeter since Miles Davis in the '70s. And that's funky, in a scaring-the-animals way.
The Clip: Hairy Bones is a live document, so the stuff on youtube is live footage too, and it sounds like it was filmed on a cellphone. So instead of that I'm just gonna link to a clip of Peter Brötzmann on Polish TV in the 1970s, playing Brecht and Eisler's 'Song of the United Front', backed by Alex von Schlippenbach, Peter Kowald and Paul Lovens. There's a story that Brötzmann cracked a rib once with the force of his playing. You could believe it watching this, but if it's true then the real question is what did the music sound like?
(If you still want to hear Hairy Bones, this is the best-sounding clip I've found. You'll want a little patience: the quartet doesn't come together as a whole 'til five minutes in, things don't reach critical mass 'til over six minutes in, and then the clip cuts out mid-tune at nine minutes in)
Other Stuff, including Jet Jaguar and Malty Media
I should really mention the Jet Jaguar and Malty Media EPs that came out at the end of the year, as well as my own EP. But we all have no youtube clips! Well, not for these EPs anyway. Maybe that'll be an exciting new development for my roundup of 2010. Anyway, here are links for hearing/downloading Jet Jaguar's My Life In The Bush Out The Back Of My Place, and Malty Media's Buk Buk Buk.
Personal favourites from My Life... include the electrofunky 'Gomennasai' and the bewildering 'Barberpole Rhythm': it slows down and speeds up at the same time, all the time; and yet it might even be possible to dance to it (not that I've dared try). So yeah, My Life... is definitely trying out new moves, while it's still got the clippy blippy mellow warm'n'funky Jet-Jag thing happening. And it's out on Angry Rabbit! (yes, I guess that's a vested interest, though I don't make any money from it....)
Malty Media (my buddies Stuart / Aquaboogie and Michael / Jet Jaguar) put out Buk Buk Buk on the Monotonik netlabel (thus I am entirely impartial this time). Personal favourite (today) would be 'See To Her', which combines the kind of cinemascope psychedelic-ocean-pastoral-backwash groove they've been making together for years for private consumption, with extraordinarily fruity dialogue from Oedipus Rex (in English translation...)
So that's some of what I enjoyed this year. There were other things from other years that I've discovered or rediscovered, or just listened to more than in previous years. There were books about music, and films about music, and music in films, that all fired my enthusiasm. I could write about all those things, but maybe another time (or a number of other times). Wrap-up! I guess I could review (or just plug) my own Retrenching EP. But then again, if you're reading this, you're halfway to finding it anyway. So let's call it a day. Happy new year.