Year-End Critics' Polls '07

Another 5 of The Wire's 2007 genre lists

Global

Tony Allen - Moyege (Mark Ernestus Mix) & Ole (Moritz Von Oswald Mix) (Honest Jons)
Bob Brozman - Lumiere (Riverboat)
Extra Golden - Hera Man Nono (Thrill Jockey)
Group Doueh - Guitar Music From The Western Sahara (Sublime Frequencies)
Group Ineane - Guitars From Agadez (Sublime Frequencies)
Abdel Hadi Halo & The El Gusto Orchestra Of Algiers - Abdel Hadi Halo & The El Gusto Orchestra Of Algiers (Honest Jons)
Getatchew Mekuria & The Ex & Guests - Moa Anbessa (Terp)
Mohammed Jimmy Mohammed - Hulgizey: Always, Forever (Terp)
Omar Souleyman - Highway To Hassake: Folk And Pop Sounds Of Syria (Sublime Frequencies)
Rachid Taha - Diwan 2 (Wrasse)

Hiphop

Black Milk - Popular Demand (Fat Beats)
Coughee Brothaz - Waitin' Our Turn (Coughee Brothaz Entertainment)
Devin The Dude Featuring Snoop & Andre 3000 - What A Job (Rap-A-Lot)
Flying Lotus - Reset EP (Warp)
Jay-Z - American Gangster (Roc-A-Fella)
Lil' Wayne - Da Drought 3 (Mixtape) (No Label)
7L & RaZor - Bladerunners (Five Day Weekend)
Shape Of Broad Minds - Craft Of The Lost Art (Lex)
Trim - Soulfood Vol 2 (No Label)
UGK Featuring OutKast - International Players Anthem (Ear 2 Da Street)

Jazz & Improv

Derek Bailey - Standards (Tzadik)
Anthony Braxton - 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 (Firehouse 12)
John Butcher - The Geometry Of Sentiment (Emanem)
Peter Evans Quartet - Peter Evans Quartet (Firehouse 12)
Susie Ibarra's Electric Kulintang - Dialects (PR)
The Necks - Townsville (RER)
William Parker & Hamid Drake - Piercing The Veil (AUM Fidelity)
Cato Salsa Experience/The Thing/Joe McPhee - Two Bands And A Legend (Smalltown Superjazzz)
Matthew Shipp - Piano Vortex (Thirsty Ear)
David S Ware Quartet - Renunciation (AUM Fidelity)

Modern Composition

Earle Brown - Tracer (Mode)
Philip Corner - Extreme Positions (New World)
Morton Feldman - String Quartet No 1 (Hat Art)
Morton Feldman - Three Voices (Col Legno)
Jonathan Harvey - Angels (Soupir Editions)
Jonathan Harvey - Choral Music (Soupir Editions)
Tim Hodgkinson - Sketch Of Now (Mode)
Mauricio Kagel - Quirinus' Liebeeskuss (Winter & Winter)
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung (Harmonia Mundi)
Charles Wuorinen - Cyclops 2000/A Reliquary For Igor Stravinsky (London Sinfonietta)

Outer Limits

Astral Social Club - Neon Pibroch (Important)
Axolotl - Memory Theatre (Important)
Eyes And Arms Of Smoke - A Religion Of Broken Bones (Cenotaph)
Henry Flynt - Nova'Billy (Locust)
Ben Frost - Theory Of Machines (Bedroom Community)
Moha! - Norwegianism (Rune Grammofon)
Charlotte Moorman - Cello Anthology (Alga Marghen)
Charlemagne Palestine - The Golden Mean (Shiin)
RST - Other Machines (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon)
Stephen Vitiello - Listening To Donald Judd (Sub Rosa)

That Derek Bailey album was pretty bitchin. I'm surprised no one has hyped Basya Schechter on any of the Global/World Beat lists. Haran was a great album.

That Rachid Taha disc was very good, but it was definitely an 06 release.

I think it came out in November though, or anyway, some time late in the year. I liked it initially, but I can't take his singing on the more challenging material. His lack of technique doesn't work for me on songs originally written for classicaly trained singers, but the more street things sound fine. Also, the orchestra/band backing him up is excellent. But you can't just croak out songs like "Gana el Hawa."

Jesu's "Conqueror" is on way fewer lists than I expected, especially given the midyear kudos it received. And the fact that it was probably grower of the year for me.

I can't take his (Taha's) singing on the more challenging material. His lack of technique doesn't work for me on songs originally written for classicaly trained singers

Rani is fire, though.

The hip-hip side, the hardcore side and the instrumental funk side.

http://www.nndb.com/people/185/000098888/rivers-cuomo-1-sized.jpg

Yeah, "Rani" is one of my favorite tracks on the album.

Man, I just grabbed Burial's album from a friend, and it's amazingly boring. It's totally reminiscent of the illbient stuff from the late '90s, and doesn't seem to have any variation in rhythm or anything. It's all slow, treated vocals and background washes of synth strings—what do so many people like about this? It just feels like safe wallpaper music, and not anything I can imagine putting on an end of year list. I thought that dubstep was supposed to at least have some relation to a dancehall or something that MOVED.

Arguments like that are Tricky to pull off.

what do so many people like about this?

i've given it some thought and i think what i like about it is the slow, treated vocals and the background washes of synth strings, and that it's reminiscent of the illbient stuff from the late '90s.

harharhar...

xp

where's the rebop?

good post about 'Untrue': http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2007/11/burial-untrue/

It's totally reminiscent of the illbient stuff from the late '90s

Ha, I was listening to Burial the other day, and it made me want to put on this:

http://www.trip-hop.net/images/jacquettes/big/703.jpg

"i've given it some thought and i think what i like about it is the slow, treated vocals and the background washes of synth strings, and that it's reminiscent of the illbient stuff from the late '90s."

Ugh. It makes me feel like I'm in a GAP. And the fucking rain sounds brought in? The whole thing reeks of pretension and bad sex.

Dude what is more rock and roll than pretension and bad sex?

(I haven't heard Burial, and I don't really care to.)

how often does it rain in a GAP anyway?

It's hard to keep up on everything. Are there any J-pop lists out there, or South African kwaito ones? I need more gatekeepers I admit, and need to find more streaming sources or something. The Wire 'Global' list does not go beyond the standard stuff I would expect from them, and my list similarly contains Malian and Senegalese stuff promoted in the US and Uk. Despite the internet, unless some 'global' releases from certain genres of music get US or UK releases and are marketed in those places, these genres get lost in these end of the year polls.

"how often does it rain in a GAP anyway?"

Not nearly as often as fake rain sounds are piped in. Burial is the most boring combination of New Age and dubstep imaginable.

i'm curious what you mean by "safe" in the above. where is it written that music is always supposed to be, like, "dangerous"? i thought obligatory rock'n'roll rebellion was jan wenner's territory?

"It's hard impossible to keep up on everything."

Can we all just agree on that and be done with it?

On that note, I've been meaning to ask -- are comments like these ones below meant to be jokes? Because if not, they reallly, really bug me. (I mean, there are hundreds of good albums that aren't on any lists above. Yes, your favorite record is not everybody else's favorite record.) But if they're meant to be funny, never mind.

There's starting to be a disturbing lack of Hissing Fauna appreciation

too many lists are ignoring apparat and mary timony

hey stever, one of the records that might still be on my list is one that is only available in ethiopia -- good thing i was there this summer to pick it up for 250 birr! but i think there's a better chance that my "token" african record will be vusi mahlasela, which i only learned about through global rhythms' cover story. great freakin' record, folk and boogie and classic rock.

without hearing tinawaren or youssou n'dour, I could easily make a pretty good african top ten.

"i'm curious what you mean by "safe" in the above. where is it written that music is always supposed to be, like, "dangerous"? i thought obligatory rock'n'roll rebellion was jan wenner's territory?"

I mean artistically safe, I mean "not taking chances," and "no real risks, no real rewards," safe. But hey, feel free to pretend that everyone who doesn't like something you do is one of those dangerous Rockists we've all heard so much about.

here are three more RA polls

<a href=http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=867>;Top 5 Remixes</a>
<a href=http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=869>;Top 10 labels</a>
<a href=http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=866>;Top 10 albums</a>

gah! here's the URLs

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=867
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=869
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature-read.aspx?id=866

lol

i finally manage to log in after 6 months of this nu-ILX business and it doesn't do HTML

On that note, I've been meaning to ask -- are comments like these ones below meant to be jokes? Because if not, they reallly, really bug me.

kornrulez69 did it for the lulz. These others, not so much.

http://singingfool.com/photos/695/029208_21.jpg

IF THEY ASK YOU WHY WE DID IT, HEY! WE DID IT FOR LULZ

haha

Here is Simon Reynolds, in his Idolator essay last year:

What's striking about all these genres is that they're not just unpop, they're anti-pop. Rejecting the pop principles of accessibility and instantness, they're hard to find and hard to get into. Noise, dubstep, and extreme metal are also hard sounding, mixing varying degrees of aggression and abstraction, physical impact and structural convolution. Ideologically, they are ultra-rockist, cherishing a trinity of interlocking values—difficulty, danger, darkness—and fervently upholding the ideal of underground versus mainstream.

(later):

there's been a return to a default-mode rockism that prizes substance, complexity, edge. If TV on the Radio and Joanna Newsom represent the beguiling, easy-on-the-ear version of those values, those looking for a harder hit are turning to metal, dubstep, noise. There's much to admire about those renegade genres: the seriousness, the earnest aspiration to innovate and overwhelm, the sheer strenuousness and commitment entailed in being a fan.

And Burial's shadowy photo was at the top of the piece. So it was a little weird to finally hear music by the guy, and to find out it was just pleasantly "dark" background mood schlock, not especially difficult or dangerous or substantive or complex or edgy or hard or innnovative in any way I could determine. If people had been telling me that all along (and if the mood music struck me as remotely distinctive, or beautiful), maybe I'd get it. (Maybe people were saying that, though, and I just didn't read them. It's not like I went out of my way to read Burial reviews, and Simon's opinions aren't always everybody else's -- and anyway, I guess he's actually talking about the whole dubstep genre, above, not Burial per se'. But for whatever reasons, I was still expecting, and hoping for, way more than I wound up getting with the music.)

(Er, actually, that was a Pazz & Jop essay, not an Idolator essay.)

<I>I mean artistically safe, I mean "not taking chances," and "no real risks, no real rewards," safe.</i>

But these phrases are all so cliched, and I think you could easily apply them to ANY music you felt wasn't taking the chances YOU wanted it to. By your suggestion that Burial is "wallpaper" music I suspect you want it to be more aggressive, perhaps. But I don't think that making melancholic, even "pretty" music necessarily has to be safe.

I don't think Burial's music is perfect, in the slightest, so I don't mean for my reply to be taken as a blanket defense of him. Perhaps more than anything else I appreciate it on a technical level ("how'd he get those hi-hats to do that?") but I am also moved emotionally by it. Anyway, forgive the snarkiness of the Jan Wenner comment; I just would like to see the terms like "safe" unpacked a bit more, because they're thrown around so casually as to be all but meaningless. Your use of it says more to me about your mindset than it does the music in question.

Sadly, most dubstep hasn't held up to the rhetoric of danger that was used to prop it up.

(Which I suppose makes sense, following in a long tradition of UK breakbeat genres that were supposed to be really scaaaaary -- hello, tech-step -- but quickly calcified into a pretty conventional set of tropes.)

I think a far more genuine take on dubstep's "darkness" is supplied by Skull Disco, who appropriate a Pushead-style cartoon gore aesthetic; you can't quite take the gloom seriously. (For my money, they're also just about the most interesting dubstep out there, and getting moreso, though they're also moving away from the genre.)

appleblim - vansam for the win!

Chuck what phil is implying is correct: don't bother with persevering with dubstep for frights.

The tying in of dubstep with hardness, darkness etc. is very much a latterday thing - dubstep itself was pretty much bass-heavy mood music for a long time. It's only since parts of it have gotten very shrill and cliche-dystopian in the last two years or so that these ideas have started floating around, more as some sort of ideological compensation for the sonic paucity. At least techstep actually was dark and scary and good all at once for about 18 months or so.

The link that Burial has to Simon's overall argument has more, I think, to do with the overacted seriousness of its pleasure - it's the staged refusal of any moments of lightheartedness or even any bouncy intensity that can give Burial that "schlocky" feel. This is why he reminds me so much of the DJ Shadow's The Private Press, an album that I very much like because of its schlockiness, so I'm not trying to criticise Burial in saying this. Perhaps for me Burial only works insofar as it is a schlocky exercise, and I think there's a sense to which his own commentary on his music implies this. This is why there can be such a disconnect between Burial's music and Burial-crit, most of which tries to tie his overt melodrama into some overarching aesthetic of authentic emotions... Burial as the streets' own traumatised memory bank etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Private Press is pretty playful (at times)!

Yeah hence the "much of" - ignore the uptempo tracks and focus on "You Can Never Go Home Again" etc. and the comparison survives.

Just to clarify, Tim, you're saying that the 'streets' trope is a critical one vs. whatever it is Burial thinks about his own music, etc.? At least that's how I'm seeing it.

No Burial himself uses this kind of language as well, but I think he's a bit more self-aware and erm proportionate in how he explains what he's doing vis a vis the music he draws on.

I made a compilation for a friend about a year ago "explaining" Burial - I put on some 2-step and "We Need A Resolution" and then stuff which i thought kind of captured what he then does to this source material - the key stuff being Shadow, Tricky's "Broken Homes" (he even has a track called "Broken Home") and Donnacha Costello's "Dry Retch", which is the closest thing i've found to his cumulus cloud synth work. Oh and the Vladislav Delay remix of Rhythm & Sound.

I always wonder about the use of 'the streets' in these contexts, but to me it's interesting because dubstep in general specifically always suggests a wet-from-rain London street corner waiting-for-the-late-bus feeling. Melancholic but not threatening, and definitely not a sign of its being real as such except by implication, ie, "Damn, it's cold and I'd rather be home."

Hmm that take is quite similar to Tom's piece linked above (which is excellent - check it out if you haven't already) - at least as applied to Burial.

Dubstep doesn't really have much to do with "the streets" as far as I can tell (though as I'm over here in Australia I probably shouldn't presume to judge) - a lot of the crit around it is somewhat caught up in that methodology though. I think this will probably change though as the dubstep audience progressively morphs into a pollywog-style post-breakbeat audience who really don't give two shits about grime (whence all the street-talk came). It's a kind of a bemusing process for me to watch though, if only because my position is even more antiquarian (basically that OG 2-step was not only some kind of aesthetic pinnacle, but also a kind of standard against which critics should hurl their clunky crit concepts as a kind of testing ground).

We can't have you be old, Tim, it's just not on. And yes, been meaning to check out that FT piece...