SAVING 2007 MUSIC TOP TEN

(It has been a few years since current music has been very important to me, so my list is not music that has been released this year, but music that I have discovered and treasured in this year. Remember, there is always older music to unearth, so if ever frustrated with contemporary music, look back!) (Also, "LINK" points to full album download, while the others are just single songs..)

1    Sensation's Fix - Boxes Paradise (Italy, 1977)

     
    LINK
    
    Sensation's Fix was the most treasured out of innumerable new bands that I discovered this year. Based in Florence under the direction of Franco Falsini, Sensation's Fix blended an Italian prog sensibility with a psychedelic synth and guitar sound more commonly associated with French or German bands. All of their albums (especially Fragments of Light, and Sensation's Fix) deserve a spot on this list, but for some reason Boxes Paradise, their second-to-last effort, has proven to be the most consistently powerful listen for me. The production is much more smooth, though never plastic, and the space atmosphere of the earlier recordings has been tightly condensed into a bizarre mixture of symphonic prog, southern blues, and arena rock. The sound is much less recognizable as experimental, or even psychedelic. I find it really difficult to come up with a good comparison to describe the sound. The similarities are so ghostly, so spectral; pushing through the thick kraut-space-prog fog there are tiny traces of bands like the Dead, Allmann Brothers, Thin Lizzy, or even Dire Straits, but the sound resembles none of them directly. It's such a faint resemblance, hidden behind undulating synths and flanging guitars. For instance, the beginning of "Mother's Day" starts off with a mysterious bubbling synth intro and suddenly explodes into a glorious power-rock guitar riff worthy of any guitar hero, before dissolving into more modest, proggier canter. Falsini's vocals take on a gruffer character here, and his broken English lyrics continue to mystify (although without ever coming across as comic-- somehow they retain a respectable charm, even as he pronounces, "Voices" as  "voi-seez"). Also Falsini's compositions continually surprise and inspire-- like the moment in "Luna Slain" when, after a minute of some serious slow and hard-rocking space metal, a piano is introduced, an astounding key change and some sugary lyrics, and then off into an optimistic space jam for a few minutes, before returning to dark claustrophobic sci-fi territory. Boxes Paradise, to put it simply, offers a rare treat: a complex symphonic-progressive album so inundated with soul, earnest psychedelia, and ingenious songwriting, as to be 'believably epic.' Really it comes down to well-written songs, technical modesty, soulful guitar shredding, effective electronics, and rich/layered production-- plus, I don't know, something special and magical from Franco Falsini, my true guitar hero. Best album of the year for me.

SENSATION'S FIX - THE FLU
SENSATION'S FIX - FAUX BATARD
SENSATION'S FIX - LUNA SLAIN

2    Woo - Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong (UK, 1981)   

   
    LINK

    This one is a simpler affair. Woo are two English brothers who released this home-recorded gem in 1981, followed with another 9 years later, and now make new age music for pregnancy and giving birth. This album is a simple joy-- "uncanny and weirdly affecting," as stated on Mutant Sounds, where I originally found it. Druggy but childish, poppy but experimental, lo-fi but lush. A real simple, domestic beauty. Many moments of the past year have been enhanced by the songs on this record-- drinking a beer while watching the sun set in McCarren Park, driving on a warm day with a friend, or simply looking out my bedroom window. A real domestic workhorse, this album. Do you use music as a chef uses spices, that is to add or enhance a certain flavor, not of a dish but of a day? It's a dumb metaphor, but it works, and Woo works that way as well. This track, the only one with lyrics, pops out of the album with an unexpected urgency:

WOO - THE ATTIC

3    Yoro Diallo (Mali, 19??)   

   
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      Souley Kante (Mali, 19??)

      
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      Kante Manfila (Mali, 19??)

   
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    Awesome Tapes From Africa provided a great awakening, not to African music, which I had actively listened to before, but to a certain experience with African music, a more direct one, not through any anthropological filter. Even Sublime Frequencies-- though they lay no claims to any kind of academic anthropology, they still leave their dirty fingerprints on music that really needs no introduction. ATFA, by offering the original tapes, plucked from the streets, straight into your room, free of charge, with no editing, no meddling, provide a much more powerful cultural experience than Sublime Frequencies or any other world music label. Something comes across so strongly in these tapes. I remember the blog owner writing something about "music to live by," and so many time as I have been jamming these tapes I have thought the same thing.
    In fact, I would say most of the music on this list inspired this same thought for me: "Music to live by." But what does this really mean? It is a strange thing, especially when the lyrics are in a foreign tongue, indecipherable, or simply unimportant. One can live by a philosophy or a political code, but how can one live by something as abstract as music? I am not quite sure what kind of drive or desire lies behind this feeling, but for me it is one of the strongest and most earnest cultural experiences one can have.
    These three albums seem to be the most iconoclastic of the ones I have heard (barring Ata Kak , who achieves an even more extreme iconoclasm, but to more comedic effect)- compositionally, in their searching, modern melodies and patterns, and 'production-ally', in their embracing of new electronic sounds and studio techniques (although I also just realized all three are Malian; perhaps I just like the Malian vibe best?). One of the best things about ATFA is the curator's refusal to curate. There is only the most basic written introduction, and then the tape cover and the entire tape. To me the gap between this method, and that of SF and most other World Music labels, is enormous and monstrous. Can you see what an aesthetic heavy-handed move resulting in enormous cultural loss it is to make a compilation with one track from each of these amazing artists? That simply does not go in my book, sirs. I would like to hear what the artist really wanted to sing to me, and I don't need your help beyond the simple act of passing it on. Cheers, ATFA.

4    Lamborghini Crystal 1992 - Cool Runnings Holiday (USA, 2007)

   
    LINK

    Someone like John Maus, I think, takes the Ariel Pink style and makes it sexier, more smooth and accessible. James Ferraro's Lamborghini Crystal project instead adopt only Ariel Pink's method, but pushes the music into more obscure, alien realms. He described it to me as "critter music"-- like in Gremlins, when the creatures are simply copying human actions, putting food in their mouth and chewing, but not really eating: the food just falls out of their mouths.  James' music is similar to this but he critterizes a certain nostalgic, eighties, VHS, pop vibe. He sings mostly in a falsetto moan as a Gremlin would, copying the cadences and emotive stylings of a crooner, but not voicing a single intelligible word. It makes the music only more sublime.
    Oh lord how I jammed this song in my car this past summer:

LAMBORGHINI CRYSTAL - GRIPPERS

5    Lo Borges - Nuvem Cigana (Brazil, 1981)

  
    (No link for this one, but HERE 's a greatest hits collection that might be good)
    
    One of the best finds from my travels in Brazil this spring was this sleeper from 1981. I almost passed on it because of the late year, but it's cover was enough to convince me to part with the few reais that it cost. Lô's first, self-titled album and Clube Da Esquina always pleased, but he never stood out next to Milton Nascimento. This album shows how much Clube relied on his talents as well. The sound is smooth, so smooth, but there is such a thick emotion that it comes across as more human than the most jubilant 60's tropicalia. In a way the slick production fortifies its nostalgic force- makes it much more melancholic. Somehow I don't really think music can be genuinely melancholic without a certain discomfort present in the production-- or what is it? The sad songs of early tropicalia seem more like lullabies than laments.

LÔ BORGES - TODO PRAZER

6    Caetano Veloso - Outras Palavras (Brazil, 1981)

   
    This was the other unexpected Brazilian 80s gem that moved me this year. Also very smooth, but much more minimal, more distant. There is a certain calculating, mechanical funkiness infecting the music, but at the same time a blissful, nostalgic warmth-- and bucketloads of personality, as always with Caetano. A very strange atmosphere here, unlike any other Brazilian records I have heard, including those by Caetano himself. Shades of 80s cheese production, the odd bass slap, Miami Vice guitar, electric piano, etc., create a somehow indulgent tonal texture. Perhaps if you listen you may understand. There is some sort of removal of Caetano from the proceedings, isn't there? Like the album was conjured in the distant haze of an extended beach dream.

CAETANO VELOSO - OUTRAS PALAVRAS
CAETANO VELOSO - VERA GATA

7    Luis Alberto Spinetta - s/t aka Spinettalandia (Argentina, 1971)

   
    LINK

    So much good music from Argentina as well, but this record found its way to the forefront. Initially I was a bit disappointed with it; I listened to the first side, but due to some distraction wrote it off as 'too bluesy,' and lacking in the complexity and shredding of Spinetta's work on the Pescado Rabioso records. Honestly I don't know what I was thinking. The album is very intimate, very experimental, and contains some serious shredders as well. Why is one sometimes so misled by a haphazard initial listen? or even by a very careful listen? Music is a deeply mysterious thing to behold, and our reaction can be shaped by the slightest bump or trace.

LUIS ALBERTO SPINETTA - VAMOS AL BOSQUE

8    Bunny Hop, ZZ Pot, Big Moe, Pimp C

   

    It was a bit of a slow year with rap music for me; at least, slower than last year. Played some DJ Drama mixtapes a fair amount, felt some summer jams from Freeway, T-Pain, and 8 Ball, but somehow I didn't react so strongly to any tracks until coming to Europe in mid-October. I heard this bounce song, "Bunny Hop" by Da Entourage, on a mixtape that Rob Francisco carried with him during the Angeldust tour. At the right moments this song sounded so good. We would try to play a song after it, but often nothing else could follow it, except maybe the Isley Brothers. The version I'm posting here (and I like to call it this way, the way I originally knew it, before I googled the lyrics, as an Unknown Bounce Artist, and a song called 'Josephine'):

UNKNOWN BOUNCE - JOSEPHINE

was recorded directly from Rob's tape, retaining the tape fuzz and unbalanced stereo sound. I think this is essential to the song's appeal, at least to myself. This song is the 2007 equivalent to last year's "Sex Me" remix from the ZZ Pot mixtape that Rob brought to Europe for our tour last summer.

ZZ POT - SEX ME REMIX REMIX

This was also recorded directly from the tape onto the laptop. Both songs provoke a similar reaction, and the similarities between their pathways to me are notable.

   

After returning to Berlin this year I mediated a bit of homesickness by becoming unexpectedly, deeply moved by the deaths of Big Moe and Pimp C. In the ensuing weeks (up until today) I have been listening heavily to the memorial radio shows for both Houston heavyweights, posted on HoustonSoReal.

DAMAGE CONTROL BIG MOE TRIBUTE SHOW
DAMAGE CONTROL PIMP C TRIBUTE SHOW

The Pimp C show is classic, but for some reason I keep coming back to the Big Moe one. There is a section in the first part, from 8 minutes on to the first voiceover, that I consider to be pure musical gold. I have played those 20 minutes or so repeatedly in the past weeks. Something about Berlin makes me appreciate this Southern style much more. Parties are all disco and techno here (whereas in New York parties were all rap, and I craved techno)- the contrast between this and the Germanic mindset somehow makes the music more precious to me.

9    Embrujo/Congreso

   
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    Numerous times in the past year, these two Chilean bands have helped to render my cloudy mind solid once more. Like holding on to the edge of a swimming pool, or finding sandy ground once more when swimming back to shore, these albums calm and fortify. They share a certain (perhaps, Chilean) hospitable pulse that one may ingest like vitamins.

EMBRUJO - CANTO SIN NOMBRE

CONGRESO - HAS VISTO CAER UNA LÁGRIMA


10    Dionne-Bregent - "Transit-Express" (Canada, 1977)

   

    I guess I have to round out the list-- can't very well have a top 9, can I? I love this track and I bet most people won't be able to get into it. I mean that not as a prog-snob, but as a prog-lover who realized that most people find this shit poisonous. But really you should try this gem. Frenetic, skipping-stone, keyboard-driven Quebecois prog workout-- pure gold in my book, this track. When I played in the Hague this Halloween I played this track through my setup before starting my set. So I could say I was Dionne or Bregent for halloween, although I was dressed as d'Artagnan, as you can see):

   
    (the author, right, pictured alongisde Jelle Crama whose hilarious 'Hammer' costume is sadly mostly out of the frame)

...But I sure hope Dionne and Bregent looked like this when they originally made this track:

DIONNE-BREGENT - TRANS-EXPRESS