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top ten albums of 2005
1. Ming, Hands Red With the Blood of Her Enemies
Campbell Kneale has been bringing stellar reams of noise-damage back from the mountain pretty reliably lately, and in his Birchville Cat Motel incarnation he provided another one of the year's great releases (Chi Vampires). But this two-disc release is really the one that hits my sweet spot, taking menacing drones, cryptic bits of found sound, decontextualized ritual music and random clatter and making them into totemic pileups, radiating a burnt, blackening magic. On Celebrate Psi Phenomena.
2. M.I.A., Arular
M.I.A. is the artist this year who came closest to being all things to all people. Some were won over by her hard-edged activist-militaristic pose, others won over by her doe-eyed softness. Her persona is so striking (and polarizing) that the album itself was treated by many as almost an afterthought. More's the shame, because the album is as fine a piece of dance-pop wonder as any available, blazing with the energy and fire of a small star. On XL.
3. LCD Soundsystem, LCD Soundsystem
The second great dance-pop album of the year. A great counterbalance, too, for James Murphy is perhaps the anti-M.I.A., completely eschewing the Big Global Issues that Arular takes on, instead offering silly trifles on record-collector cultural cachet and Daft Punk. But, really, who cares? This album brought the beats and the grooves to make me dance, and when I'm dancing, I don't really need any lyrics that go beyond the ones found on "Yeah": "Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah." On DFA.
4. White Rock, Tar Pit
This collaboration between psychedelic agents Double Leopards and Mouthus may be better than anything either group has done individually. A slow trawl through a subterranean wonder-world, covered in luminescent fungal slime. I wrote a longer review of this back in May, which you can read here. On Troubleman.
5. Fursaxa, Lepidoptera
For years now, Fursaxa's Tara Burke has been producing albums of hypnotic, hazy chant and slightly icy song that are available either in obscure formats (the vinyl-only Mandrake) or in small, poorly-distributed CD-R runs (Amulet, The Cult at Moon Mountain). It's nice, therefore, to see the All Tomorrow's Parties label release a CD that might bring Fursaxa's work to a larger audience, especially nice given that Lepidoptera is her strongest work to date, providing the dream-addled listener with twelve tracks of opiated goodness. On All Tomorrow's Parties.
6. Various Artists, Invisible Pyramid : Elegy Box
A lot of nice experimental comps came out this year, from PseudoArcana's very fine 2-disc The Tone of the Universe = (The Tone of the Earth) to Foxy Digitalis' 3-disc overview of the psychedelic folk sub-underground, Gold Leaf Branches. But the real prize goes to Invisible Pyramid, a mammoth six-disc set described by Jewelled Antler's Glenn Donaldson as "the SUV of drone-psych compilations." This set showcases some of the most interesting musicians from all across the globe, from Italy's My Cat is an Alien to New Zealand's Birchville Cat Motel, and although not every track is great (this disc determines once and for all that just because something was recorded in Finland doesn't automatically make it gold) the hit-rate is incredibly high, making this the most indispensible "scene report" since 2001's Improvised Music From Japan. On Last Visible Dog.
7. Jazzfinger, The Well of Used Dreams
Even after spending a week in a van with the guys from Jazzfinger this summer, seeing them on stage a half-dozen times, and performing with them once, I still don't really know how they're making the sounds on this record. The slamming door and typewriter clacks are obvious enough, and there's some piano, and something that sounds like a violin, but then there are also these grainy sounds that are maybe tape-noise, and some scary electronic textures that sound like a disemboweled children's toy... This album continues to strike me as hermetic, oblique, and intriguing, a musty curio-cabinet of a release. On Classic English Womb.
8. Architecture in Helsinki, In Case We Die
The only indie-pop album to crack my top ten this year, In Case We Die sounds like the cool kids in high school with the ska records got together with the weirdest of the marching band geeks to form a house band for Rushmore's Max Fischer Players. Reeking of youthful charm, charisma, and heartfelt longing, Architecture in Helsinki write small-scale pop gems that strive to be big-scale, and end up sounding like the Polyphonic Spree, only without the bloated, syrupy quality. On Bar/None.
9. Brian McBride, When the Detail Lost Its Freedom
If In Case We Die was my go-to record for summertime fun music, this record, by Stars of the Lid alum Brian McBride, has been the one that's been playing again and again as the Chicago winter locks everything into bleak, icy gloom. This is a solemn collection of quasi-symphonic chamber minimalism, full of somber melodies containing just enough receding warmth to make your your heart break. Everyone I've played this album for has come away from it moved. On Kranky (which had a good year, releasing other fine records by Ben Vida's Bird Show and Rob Lowe's Lichens project...)
10. Of, The Buried Stream
With this album, Loren Chasse, of the Jewelled Antler collective, continues his investigations into sonic pantheism, stronger here than ever before. Back in January I said this collection of organic hum, instrumental sketches, and field recordings sounds "like the work of a man trying to bear witness to a vision of personal holiness": you can read the full review here. Self-released on Jewelled Antler. Labels: music_commentary |
Thursday, January 05, 2006
3:52 PM
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