2007 that was (by Tim)

One:

This year a sizeable majority of the music I’ve really enjoyed I’ve been grouping under the rubric of “Balearic” – sunny, rhythmic, sometimes pretentious, sometimes whimsical. It hasn’t really been that kind of year for me though (except for “sometimes pretentious” perhaps) so it must be some sort of escapism thing.

This is the first entry in what may become a loose commentary on the year in music – each entry will include a little gift for y’all. Not everything will be 'Balearic', although it might be in spirit.

The Tough Alliance – Silly Crimes: http://www.zshare.net/audio/538941503b16fe/

The Tough Alliance – Something Special: http://www.zshare.net/audio/539038250e23bc/

I don’t know much about The Tough Alliance but it’s easy to imagine what they might be like: their songs come across like Junior Senior trying to be Saint Etienne circa ‘So Tough’, only parts of it also remind me of The KLF at times, and other parts of that whole lineage of inventive chartdancepop from Betty Boo to Xenomania. Plus maybe some of Future Bible Heroes' winsomeness about them. And they love now-housey, now-reggaefied piano vamps, which speaks highly of them. And technically “Silly Crimes” is, um, dancehall I guess. It goes down well with Sean Kingston’s excellent new single “Me Love”. Anyway, The Tough Alliance: I imagine this duo of young, slightly goofy guys who have spent the last five years hosting small but enthusiastic house parties (for, like, about five people) soundtracked by cash-in compilations with names like ‘Sorted!’. So they sing like they were in some also-ran Manchester band, but their tunes are good enough to be Rosalla or Corona, and the production is gobsmackingly perfect early 90s illusion-of-depth dubbed-out dance-pop homage that I can’t praise highly enough.

Two:

Italo-disco doesn’t need to do much in order to sound like the best music in the world, which is one of the reasons it’s been revived to death these past five years or so. The Italians Do It Better label have somewhat belatedly raised the bar for such efforts, just when it seemed like the last vestiges of electroclash were dying a slow death. On the label’s ‘After Dark’ compilation what stands out is the awesome solemnity with which the artists approach their particular strain of revivalism: check the Mirage remix of Indeep’s “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life”, wherein spectrally shimmering synthesisers cast a deathly pallor over the celebration of the original – as if the singer’s life wasn’t saved after all, and she now exists in a compulsive disco afterlife administered to by DJ Death.

Indeep – Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (Mirage Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/55100299d173c7/

My favourite track is Farah’s “Law of Life”, which takes this solemnity to astonishing new heights (or, perhaps more properly, depths). As I understand it, Farah is a young Persian, er, beat poet from Texas, and she recites her state-of-the-world soliloquy in a voice that moves through paranoia, insight, resignation and hallucination, while behind her impossibly statuesque synth arpeggios quietly announce the end of the world. On the equally brilliant “Dancing Girls” she slips in and out of Persian, and sleepily murmurs tantalising phrases like “Oriental dress/the one you love is a mess… dancing from the opium.” Oddly, the one interview with Farah I’ve read has her obsessing over Justin Timberlake and George Michael. Girl knows what she’s talking about.

Farah – Law of Life
http://www.zshare.net/audio/55103110604fb8/

Much of the responsibility for the glittering synth arpeggios that the label tends to bring to mind can be attributed to Johnny Jewel, who performs as Mirage and also produces Farah’s records, as well as being part of flagship acts Chromatics and Glass Candy. The older Chromatics stuff I’ve heard is skeletal, atmospheric post-punk reminiscent of early albums from The Cure. On their new album Night Drive this residual element is filtered through Jewel’s synthesisers for maximum elegiac effect. My favourite track is the short but overblown instrumental melodrama of “Let’s Make This A Moment To Remember”, whose torpid slow-mo pulse and minor key synth patterns are so voluptuously morose it verges on becoming comic. They also have a wonderfully numb new female vocalist – keep an eye out for their ghostly, reverent cover of “Running Up That Hill”.

Chromatics – Let’s Make This A Moment To Remember
http://www.zshare.net/audio/55330408e83bbb/

I made the mistake of buying Glass Candy’s 2002 album a few years ago, and it was pretty unremarkable post-Yeah Yeah Yeahs shouty rock stuff. They’ve improved immensely though, first with a wonderful eight-minute punk-funk track that was floating around a few years ago called “Sugar and Whitebread”, and then their rudimentary version of “Iko Iko” ran over a loop from the Geto Boys. Now everything they do seems to expand their range – on ‘After Dark’ they cover Kraftwerk and old disco records to great effect. More theatrical, sensual and restless than the other Italians Do It Better artists, they remind me variously of Gina X Performer, Lene Lovich and Blondie; singer Ida No has a great way with campy excessive enunciation. I’ve included a demo of “Candy Castle” from their new album ‘Beatbox’, which is a great example of their dark cabaret swirl – check out those doomy synth-horns!

Glass Candy – Candy Castle (Demo)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/55364723dfe505/

Invisible Conga People are a new act on the label who technically haven’t released anything yet, but I stumbled across “Weird Pains” about six months ago and have been obsessed with it ever since. This is coming from a totally different place to the other label acts (I believe Invisible Conga People are in fact a duo from Japan): “Weird Pains” sets spaced out minimal bleeping against close-mic muttering and ticking beats, before giving way to hypnotic tribal percussion that’s seemingly wandered in from a Luciano or Ricardo Villalobos record. The overall effect falls somewhere between Kompakt’s Matias Aguayo and Can. It’s not really a song as such, but as mood-music it’s weirdly compelling (the track title works perfectly, by the way).The track “Cable Dazed” on their myspace page is just as good, a fantastically spaced out synth pattern exploration with eerie close-harmony vocals that should appeal to fans of Delia & Gavin – I’m hoping this makes for a two sides of a vinyl release some time soon (update: it will soon, coupled with the possibly-even-better "Cable Dazed").

Invisible Conga People – Weird Pains
http://www.zshare.net/audio/55338805f71ffd/

Three:

In September, in preparation for visiting London, I thought it was time to start paying more attention to what the various post-UK Garage scenes were doing – a task that is usually somewhat thankless from the vantage point of Oz. Ultimately I bought quite a bit of grime but and not much else while I was over there, but I’m glad I started to investigate bassline more as it increasingly dominated my time as the year drew to a close.

Bassline, a scene concentrated in the north of England and other regional centres rather than London (esp. Sheffield apparently) is kind of like the return of speed garage – the bumpy sped-up four-to-the-floor version of garage which immediately preceded 2-step. The big difference is that Bassline is harder and nastier, with all the remaining New York garage-style organic sensuousness purged in favour of a cold, metallic sound that can often seem surprisingly close to electro-house: stiff house percussion, razor-sharp synth riffs and enormous, glinting basslines. Otherwise, the raw ingredients that made speed garage such potent dance and pop music remain present: gratuitously catchy vocals, including lots of fabulous post-Todd Edwards cut-up monstrosities, a restless magpie approach to sonic source material, and a great line in awesomely profane pop songs. Here are some of my favourites.

T2 ft Jodie – Heartbroken
http://www.zshare.net/audio/5532477109bcaa/
Bassline’s big hit… I’ve even seen the video clip on Video Hits here in Australia, and it’s easy to see why: “Heartbroken” really leaps out of the stereo with the kind of buffed candy-pop largesse that also defined Shanks & Bigfoot’s “Sweet Like Chocolate” (which occupied a similar role vis a vis 2-step as “Heartbroken” does to bassline). The tune perfectly captures the split personality vibe that characterises the best diva bassline tracks, the evil multiple basslines doing battle with achingly pretty pizzicato strings plucks and morose synth string sweeps, while Jodie’s minnie mouse vocals flit between affecting simplicity and cut-up madness seamlessly, as if (in between calmly explaining her bereft emotional state) without warning lapsing into speaking in tongues.

Jamie Duggan – No Cocaine
http://www.zshare.net/audio/5523325b0579c9/
Great conceit: sampling the vocal from “Under Mi Sensi” on a bassline track works on so many levels. Firstly, the warmth of reggae vocals (even paranoid buggin’ out vocals) nicely balances out what can be a certain sonic severity to bassline grooves. But contrarily, the actual vocal “in my brain, no cocaine, I don’t wanna I don’t wanna I don’t wanna go insane” perfectly captures bassline’s coked-up (polydrugged up, really) vibe. Also, Duggan comes up with the most marvellous funked-up bassline to accompany it. In recognition of the big debt to Carribbean, the track even lurches into syncopated soca beats at regular intervals – let’s see more of this in 2008!

DJ Q ft. MC Bones & Laffy – Get Mad
http://www.zshare.net/audio/553201206715d4/
Often my favourite bassline tracks are the ones with rapping, partly because they remind me of the brief emergence of 4X4 garage rap circa 2002 (remember the blazing Elephant Man version of Blazin’ Squad’s “Standard Flow”? "No", you shake your head and sigh, "only you remember that sort of thing, Tim"), and partly because there’s few things that sound better than manic rapping over manic house beats. Bassline’s rappers tend to be more in the old hype MC than grime MCs are – Bones and Laffy remind me a bit of Heartless Crew, exciting the crowd with tense, slightly terse exhortations (“Get mad! Get mad!”) that blur the line between entertainer and gunman. “Get Mad” is also notable for dabbling with a staggering schaffel-style groove – a trick that increasingly dominated tracks emerging in the second half of the year, and a tactic that bodes well for the scene’s sonic and rhythmic invention.

TS7 – Hazy
http://www.zshare.net/audio/55323017b20b57/
TS7 is my favourite producer in the scene: what’s most notable about tracks like “Hazy” is how thoroughly he has absorbed so many different lessons. Chief amongst them being excellent cut-up, woozy female vocals that draw equally from ‘ardkore, 2-step garage and that brief golden age of diva-pop takes on grime (“r&g”); plinky-plonky harpsichord, organ and pizzicato string melodies and flicker-riffs that startle with their prettiness; and multiple and multivalent basslines that climb right up in the treble registers with vertiginous queasiness before plunging into radioactive depths – not to mention schaffel interludes, which he uses more than anyone. Also check out the awesome “Stone Island”, which includes eerie choral vocals and a bizarre synthetic flute solo.

Dizzee Rascal – Flex (DJ Q Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/5522937704cc53/
The original “Flex” was already a four-to-the-floor dancefloor monster, so it didn’t take much for DJ Q to freshen it up for bassline crowds: his version is faster, nervier, harsher, reticular snare snaps duelling with soupy bubbles of bass and turgid synth riffs – if anything, the sonics here remind me of Dizzee’s own “I Luv U”, which gives you a sense of the strangeness of bassline’s take on “house music”. But anyway, how fucking great is Dizzee? It’s not like “Flex” is particularly deep or anything, but maybe that’s the point: I was perversely pleased that ‘Maths + English’ wasn’t too heavy on the introspection, as Dizzee’s usually best when he’s just talking shit. And this paean to the female figure is even more shit-talking than usual, but I just love every single “golly gosh” and “my oh my”. “Life’s too short to be cautious – innit!?!” he asks rhetorically, one presumes while he’s already got his hand halfway up your thigh.

Tinchy Strider – Dance 4 Now
http://www.zshare.net/audio/558505538d535e/
Not remixed by a bassline producer, but Tinchy’s own take on four-to-the-floor grime actually captures the bassline vibe perfectly, its relentless pumping groove managing to sound ruthlessly functional and totally widescreen pop at the same time. Hard to believe that five years ago Tinchy was this little codger who couldn’t string a decent rhyme together – his ‘Star in the Hood’ album is probably the best non-Dizzee grime album ever, the kind of polished collection of knock-out hits the scene has always cried out for. Curiously, grime-friendly critics largely ignored it. Their loss: the rhyming is ace and the music is endlessly exciting.

The T2 and Jamie Duggan links are broken unfortunately - I will fix this soon.

Good to have you back Tim, look forward to checking these out.

Four:

R&B, bitches.

Cassie
Is It You
http://www.zshare.net/audio/63066461518ce1/
Largely shorn of its futurist pretensions, non-megastar R&B has dropped off most corny critics’ radars (“Umbrella” and maybe T-Pain aside), but 2007 was a banner year for those who know. “Is It You” pretty much perfects R&B’s penchant for innocent romanticism, ideal for stolen glances down endless US teen-drama school locker corridors. Cassie’s sweet, limited vocal serenades the listener over a cascade of bass riffs, emotive guitar and triumphant strings, each component perfectly content to escape notice if it can successfully point you towards the secret crush you’ve been entertaining. You possibly won’t remember it, or Cassie later, perhaps especially in a pop environment so fixated on personalities. Cassie (as with several R&B divas) is arguably the anti-Amy Winehouse. One never gets the sense of an interesting backstory with her songs, but this in itself is perhaps the primary source of their charm: blank canvases upon which you can paint your own high school hopes and fears. And don’t think I’m damning with faint praise: this capacity to humbly and secretly colour your life is one of pop music’s greatest joys.

Ne-Yo ft. Kanye West
Because of You
http://www.zshare.net/audio/63073612130a9d/
The best thing Kanye West was involved with in 2007, but is that a surprise when Ne-Yo is one of the pre-eminent songwriters of our generation? For those who found “So Sick” pretty but too prone for repeat plays, the insistent four-by-four thump of “Because of You (Remix)” may offer a bewitchingly versatile attraction – heartbreak on the dancefloor time. Amazingly, Kanye’s loverman rap works pretty well on this (is it because he consciously decides it’s time to “hit ‘em with the Mase flow”?), but the star is Ne-Yo and the flying, searching chorus, his aching falsetto moving from solitary conviction to multi-tracked resignation – “You have become my addiction,” he wails accusingly, “…and I’m so strung out on you, but I like it…” The Chorus (in the Greek Tragedy sense) of Ne-Yos feel strangely detached from their own dilemma, like they’re observing and pondering their own quandary, musing on the vagaries of a fate that has so thoroughly disempowered them.

Ciara
Get Up (Polow Da Don Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6306942c09e33f/
This probably came out in 2006, but I listened to it so much this year. Ciara is the quintessential mid-00s R&B diva: her unshowy, whispery vocals are ripe for too-quick dismissal as so very post-Janet. She is, I’d argue, better and more deliberate than Janet – Janet doesn’t belt it out because she can’t, whereas with Ciara one gets the sense that she chooses not to. “Get Up” actually has a great tension between its whispery verses, choruses and middle-eight and the quietly soaring bridge, a brief lapse in which Ciara’s throbbing desire busts its cage and takes flight (forgive the purple prose). This internal friction only becomes fully apparent on Polow Da Don’s remix, which follows his excellent work on Ciara’s “Promise” in ‘06: Polow was my R&B producer of the year, absorbing an entire arsenal of other producers’ sonic weapons and combining them in rococo, oddly emotive constructions. His version of “Get Up” circles around thudding timpani drums and orchestral flourishes and ghostly synth tinkles and whines whose tenuousness imbue this dancefloor anthem with an unusually mystical vibe (see also: Kelly Rowland’s marvellous “Like This”).

Fantasia ft. Polow Da Don & Young Jeezy
When I See U (Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6307668eb4480c/
Another Polow Da Don remix! This one introduces some of his approach to hip hop production: all big rave synth chords and heavy metal bass and loud clunky percussion. But he still brings the emotion with superlative ease: indeed, so exquisitely, excessively emotive is Fantasia’s every guttural sigh (not to mention howl, groan or throaty grunt) that the best – perhaps only – available strategy is to frame it in the sternest musical frame possible, offering a certain life-or-death gravity to Fantasia’s tale of love and lust she’d rather suppress. As with her still-unsurpassed American Idol final performance, Fantasia’s hypnotic gift is to always threaten to go over the edge, her sudden wails and warbles somehow reintroducing the danger to soul that most attempts at trad hollerin’ lost long ago. It makes even mediocre songs exciting, but “When I See U” is very good indeed – how are these opening lyrics for scene-setting: “I put your picture on my mirror/Start to blush when somebody says your name/In my stomach there's a pain/See you walk in my direction I go the other way.” I find this kind of internal conflict in pop songs totally irresistible.

Bobby Valentino ft. Ludacris
Rearview (Ridin’)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/63082605ba449a/
In 2007 there was an avalanche of histrionic ballad R&B by emasculated nu-Tevin Campbells with sumptuously swoony post-Timbaland electronic production, and although I loved this sound about two years ago, last year it started to wear a bit thin through sheer repetition and a paucity of new ideas (or, frequently, memorable tunes). Bobby pioneered this sound on his first album, but little from his second album caught my attention, except this astonishing song, which takes the whole form to uncomfortable new heights. Sickly, warped strings and effervescent synth bubbles combine to form a melody that’s at once jaunty and faintly upsetting, like when Charlie floats too close to the exhaust fan in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Meanwhile Bobby gives his most melodramatic performance, driving dangerously down the highway and daring his lover to speed even faster to catch up to him and stop him from skipping town. “I’m pushing 80 mph, I’m popping No-Doze!” he threatens, but then relents, “I see your face in the mirror and I miss you dearrrrrr…”, his pronunciation a grandiose conceit in a song that more than merits it.
Lloyd
Get It Shawty
http://www.zshare.net/audio/63086971c8711e/
Hard to believe that Lloyd could best the spine-tingling, Spandau Ballet-quoting “You” – probably the best piece of narcoleptic floaty R&B in 2007 aside from “Rearview (Ridin’)”, plus it has the ace line (sung with deadly sincerity) “I’m a playa, yeah it’s true/but I changed the game for you.” But Lloyd’s follow-up, the gorgeous “Get It Shawty”, was even better. “Get It Shawty” is perkier and sprightlier, its sudden fizzy synth bursts and sparkly harp chords driven by a purposeful beat and Lloyd’s high-pitched performance, filled with sudden and startling shifts in tempo as Lloyd speeds up and slows down flawlessly. Lovely stuff.

again (following on from what was said about it last year), i think what's remarkable about 'when i see u rmx' isn't fantasia's performance – which remains wonderful, for all the reasons you give, but is served equally well by the original's fantastic production imo (all careful butterflies, yet still with that life-or-death importance slowly dawning throughout the song) – but polow's reframing of it. cos there is something of a riddle about this remix, something disquieting; almost as if the looming, simmering certainty of the beat (angry nearly) doesn't quite belong to fantasia. “how are these opening lyrics for scene-setting” you say, well yeah damn right because the actual opening lyrics – polow's, over that original romantic beat, as the lover spurned – are incredibly good, and incredibly unexpected: “guess all you really wanted was a man”, spat out with disdain, knowing now that that's all he is to her too. so what are we to make of what we hear after that? and what of jeezy's inadequate, preening cameo, taking if not yet fantasia's then another girl's song for granted? perhaps - perhaps! - the real remix here is that it's fantasia who's the u being seen, that it's jeezy that's “a man”, and that we're watching this whole story through polow's stalking eyes, widening with squalling synthhorror as he and fantasia finally realise that “something now is taking over meeeee”. the rear window to bobby val's rearview riding, no less.

(and THAT, my wincing friends, is how fanfic gets DONE)

otherwise good stuff tho yeah

Great to see all this here. Rah the Tim! (Feeling better, I take it?)

Great read, Tim, and we are as one about "Because of You." Wonderful track.

Ha ha rItIc I delieberately avoided discussing Polow's rap on the grounds of it being your territory!

And yeah, Ned, apart from a slightly sore head I'm now off meds, no longer woozy and feeling remarkably good. Almost guilty about the fact that i've got several weeks off work - but it's only that which will make this possible.

All good. :-)

Here are fixed links for the T2 and Jamie Duggan Tracks:

T2 - Heartbroken
http://www.zshare.net/audio/632495578bff44/

Jamie Duggan - No Cocaine
http://www.zshare.net/audio/63246962a5d3ea/

thanks tim!

good thread

holy shit. what a wealth. thank you so much.

great stuff as always man

Lovely reviews — as always — and the songs are great.

Cassie (as with several R&B divas) is arguably the anti-Amy Winehouse. One never gets the sense of an interesting backstory with her songs, but this in itself is perhaps the primary source of their charm: blank canvases upon which you can paint your own high school hopes and fears. And don’t think I’m damning with faint praise: this capacity to humbly and secretly colour your life is one of pop music’s greatest joys.

Oftentimes, I see Cassie described as 'soulless' or 'robotic.' I never really agreed with that description...I think people tend to mistake her limited vocal capabilities with an inability to deliver emotion. She comes across as 'robotic' on "Me & U" for a reason; she's playing a character on the prowl. She sounds nervous because she's trying to express (and act on) her lust, and that fear translates into this tense, 'robotic' vocal performance.

Maybe I'm giving her too much credit, but in my mind, both "Is It You?" and "Sometimes" reinforce that idea, that Cassie really knows how to deliver an emotional performance. She sounds so sincere on both those tracks; yeah, she has a tendency to understate her emotions (probably because of her limited vocal capabilities), but really, i think that only adds to her performances. She's a nice break between the in-your-face emotional meltdowns of Mary J. Blige and the less showy yet completely disconnected vocals of Paula DeAnda. Here's to more airplay in 2007...

Or 2008, y'know...

Thankzx Tim, and good on your recovery.

i was just wondering if tim was ever going to start up his blog again, and now this comes along. thanks tim!

hey tim i put this on the ATTN TIM F thread, but i'll put it here, too:

have you heard this?: Trusme - Working Nights 2LP

you might like it.

I thought the best thing about When I See You is the 'normally I wouldn't do this but... here goes nothin' bit, which is like the least convincing display of sheepishness ever.

good lord the beat to that fantasia/jeezy song

The TS7 track is fantastic - I think I'm slowly coming round to bassline.

there's a bassline remix of 'bed' that i'm in love with, but i'm kind of a sucker for the orig song, ymm, as they say, v

when i see u is amazing. love it.

Yeah the TS7 track is outstanding. i have to admit this is the first time i've ever heard anyone do a "schaffel interlude" in music like this but Tim you say it like it's a "thing"?

My other favorite of this bunch is Farah – "Law of Life". Chilling! This is what LCD Soundsystem should sound like!

that jamie duggan is teh wickedness. havent heard anything like that before in my bassline ramblings actually - i'd almost hesitate about bigging it up (exposing as it does so blatantly a (our) early 00s bias), it seems unfair to other more regular bassline! at the same time though i guess it does helpfully triple underline the strong and indiscriminate nostalgic undertow of the genre.

the ts7 reminds me a bit of something off tropical - dance banger absentmindedly drifting off into noodling halfway thru. perhaps that is just a canard i have cornfed to albatross proportions though.

a canard i have cornfed to albatross proportions

!!

i know right

rtc making it rain on you hoes

i have to admit this is the first time i've ever heard anyone do a "schaffel interlude" in music like this

it's a trick that's already been used a lot in trance/hard-house/italo-dance/etc (for instance, this 2001 hit by DJ Scot Project)... i've even heard some gabber with schaffel interludes!

great thread, thx so much

been wanting to hear that conga people track for a while now

apparently the tough alliance are a couple of baseball bat wielding hoolies! or maybe theyre just posers. tunes are great though!

Five - Minimal aka Euro House & Techno:

The sheer volume of uploaded stuff this time around shouldn’t automatically suggest that I enjoyed Euro house and techno more than anything else this year; but it would be true to say I enjoyed more Euro house and techno than any other genre. The attraction of this area of music is largely that there’s just so much good stuff that if you choose the right gatekeepers you can get away with almost never hearing a duff track (that said you’ll probably hate some of these… you know where to send your outraged e-mails).

The big news in 2007 was deep house revivalism, which was a bit distorted by both fans and detractors. Deep house proper remained largely as per, while European house/techno – dominated by “minimal” over the last few years – didn’t so much slide headlong into it as simply adopt some of its sonic signifiers. In fact it might be more accurate to say that the more ostentatious/predictable markers of “minimal” fell somewhat out of favour this year, but while that meant less scratchy, insecticle, unnecessary fussy rhythm tracks, most of the best European material remained as complex, as restless and as inscrutable as in previous years – just with heavier sounding drums, thicker textures and slightly more pronounced hooks. The simplest way to express it would be to say that while stereotypical minimal leaned towards a very “dry” sound, this year a lot of the big tracks felt very “moist” – with all the blurry and foggy (i.e. druggy) connotations this implies.

Despite my “see also” inclusions, there were a lot of tracks I loved this year that I’ve either knowingly or unwittingly failed to mention below just because I had to draw the line somewhere or it just didn’t fit in. The one absence that I must mention is Ame: the duo not only put on my favourite DJ show for 2007 (at Cookies in Berlin) but may have been my producers of the year, what with their own tracks “Balandine”, “Enoi” and “Fiori” and excellent remixes for Underworld, DJ Gregory and Etienne Jaumet. For some reason every time I tried to upload one of their tracks it would all go horribly wrong. Perhaps I’ll correct this later.

Anyway:

Matt John – Soulkaramba
http://www.zshare.net/audio/655482941b0795/
As per my intro rant above: this year the best house and the best minimal were indistinguishable from one another: the vibe was for a moist, hypnotic, drugged-out deepness that allowed everyone to take from the groove what they wanted. “Soulkaramba” was the best (because most rigorous) example: based around a remorseless three-note piano figure and deceptively simple clattering house percussion, its relentlessly mutating repetition seemed to glance back to every famed proponent of house hypnotism (from Mr Fingers to DJ Pierre to Paperclip People to Villalobos), and then gaze forward to an endless horizon of Jon Hassell trumpet and strangely meaningless exchanges passed along the way (“may I introduce you to…” a stranger begins, but then this track makes a virtue of never finishing what I starts). Unlike the more freeform minimal, on “Soulkaramba” the panoramic vistas are glimpsed from within engine-like house groove, its propulsive intensity making the detail all the more engrossing (see also… too many to list in this general vein: Petre Inspirescu’s “Sakadat” and “Le Crème Bonjour”, Kabale Und Liebe & Daniel Sanchez’s “Mumbling Yeah”, Radio Slave’s “Bell Clap Dance”, Andomat 3000 & Jan’s “Postpartum Psychosis” EP)

Dennis Ferrer – Son Of Raw (Loco Dice Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6556354f8ad428/
Equal to “Soulkaramba” in my affections was this remix of Dennis Ferrer’s “Son of Raw”, a track even more telling in its attempt to fuse US and European sensibilities. Which makes sense: “Son of Raw” was the big crossover US house track for minimal DJs in 2006, its sharp bounce, jazzy keyboard noodling and mysterious falsetto diva vamp (“You don’t know!”) at once mirroring and standing aloof from all the murky pointillist minimal. For their remix, Loco Dice and co-producer Martin Buttrich drag “Son of Raw” back towards pointillism, but in several other directions as well: in particular, the groove’s deep, close-mouthed moans, disintegrating burbles, portentous faux-timpani percussion and serene, metallic synth sweeps remind me as much of Carl Craig’s recent expansive space techno… It’s “house” not in the sense of reminding you where you’ve come from, but rather in offering a place of rest at the crossroads for a dozen destinations. (see also: Minilogue’s hypnotic “Birdsong” and Dennis Ferrer’s irresistible “Transitions” and “A Drumstick and a Light Fixture”)

Tiger Stripes – Hooked
http://www.zshare.net/audio/68817720ea2c88/
Ed Davenport – Eyespeak
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6980766afd2f76/
If you wanted the most concise and cogent explanation of 2007’s minimal/house fusion, it was hard to go past “Hooked”, with its urgent, pulsing deep house groove and dancing, deliquescing synth arpeggios conveying an airiness and lightness of touch that must have been the envy of every other producer going for this vibe (“if only we’d realised it could be so simple!” you can almost hear them thinking to themselves). The Liebe*Detail label made this kind of sound it’s staple this year, and you can hear the same kind of light-fingered deep house urgency on “Eyespeak”, with its glowing one-note bass driving the syncopated snare groove ahead of it like unruly cattle. It’s those restless snares and hi-hats, practically bubbling over like a jazz drummer waiting for his turn to solo, that make the track so addictive. That and the warped vocal samples, which seem to combine to request an answer to a prayer before being sucked into a wind machine. (see also, Jerome Sydenham’s excellent remixes of Argy and Motorcitysoul)

Jacopo Carreras – Olanto (Lee Jones Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/68857970a12c1f/
This track didn’t get all the attention of the above two (wrong record label perhaps) but it’s their equal, if not the best of the three. Almost kaleidoscopic in detail, Jones’ “Olanto” remix is an excellent example of how 2007 saw a good deal of “minimal” distance itself slightly from its more tiresome sonic signifiers (“plip plop”) but retain its trademark restlessness. Every four bars or so Jones introduces some new effect, from feverishly ticking house hi-hats to sea-sick sounding metallic waves to suddenly disconcerting dub whooshes to winsome ambient synth patterns – and yet it never sounds anything but good-natured and almost muscular in its devotion to basic house physicality. (see also: remixes by Jones’ group My My of Motorcitysoul and Simon Baker)

Tracey Thorn – It’s All True (Martin Buttrich Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6557129933c006/
An anthem that was curiously underrated for all its popularity: I imagine many listeners found Buttrich’s remix of “It’s All True” too obvious somehow, too easily summed up as a hyper-competent minimal producer’s homage to Round Two’s “New Day”. What’s wrong with being obvious, though, when it results in Basic Channel’s (only occasionally explored) bleep-house aesthetic being pushed so far into gorgeous pop territory? Thorn still has one of the best voices for techno-pop ever, her clarity and depth always conveying a sense of tranquillity and resilience that she herself seems unaware of. It’s this vibe which Buttrich mirrors perfectly, his aching, repetitive synth motifs emerging as if from a grotto at the bottom of an enormous lake. Instead of getting larger, more apocalyptic, the track gets deeper and more lustrous, with melodic patterns first played in succession and then laid on top of one another with the languid grace of nature’s own ego-free accommodations. (see also: Ada’s similarly awed-sounding remix of Tracey’s “Grand Canyon”)

Stereotyp – Keepin’ Me (Fauna Flash Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/68518543a1ec23/
Another “New Day” homage perhaps, but this time a little more strident: broken beat producers Fauna Flash making a belated virtue of house’s strictures with forbiddingly frigid synth pulses and stern hi-hats, while above them a succession of divas (or one diva with a very accommodating and ambiguous vocal style) make increasingly overwrought accusations – “Keeping me in your world… that turned me… into a… desperate refugee!” This track makes no apologies about its emotional largesse; if anything, it really hits home when you belatedly realise that no-one involved is joking. As the succession of synths build up and spills over into a Carl Craig-like overblown breakdown (resembling some stage of Craig’s career being 2007 house and techno’s most persistent meme), the unashamed melodrama also marks this out as the halfway-respectable cousin of The Freemasons’ life-or-death pop-house explosions (see also for big emotions: Outlines’ “Listen to the Dreams” and Booka Shade’s “Numbers”; see also for big emotions + divas: Jazzzanova’s very pretty remix of Paul Randolph’s “Believer” and Wahoo’s remix of Ben Westbeech’s “Hang Around”)

Jacek Sienkiewickz – Good Luck
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6632805a76efb0/
The only reason I don’t have a Villalobos track here is that I don’t have a standalone MP3 of his excellent remix of Beck’s “Cell Phone’s Dead”, but this stands in for the guy quite handily. Sienkiewickz is perhaps more rococo: fitful, waterlogged rhythms and unpredictable bleepy synth patterns trace ever more complex patterns across eachother’s surfaces before finally being swallowed up in wistful, gratuitously teary-eyed early Warp Records melodicism, the swirling tinkerbell twinkles only partially concealing the remaining riot of detail that continues unabated beneath. Of all of the tracks I’ve uploaded this is the most self-consciously and self-righteously epic – serious music for serious dancers. I’m usually not that serious but this still sounds lovely in any mood. (see also: Ricardo Villalobos remixes of Beck, Shackleton and Shinedoe; Tolga Fidan’s “Venice”; Onur Ozer’s Kasmir album; Daniel Stefanik’s remix of Johnny Wagner’s “Intercity”)

Jichael Mackson – The Grass Is Always Greener
http://www.zshare.net/audio/6883590e5a5e5f/
Nearly as abstract and as all-encompassing as “Good Luck”, “The Grass Is Always Greener” might feel epic if for a moment it gave the impression of having paid a second thought to structure. Mackson quite openly splits the difference between two of the year’s biggest trends, running a gorgeously warm deep house groove through massive Basic Channel dub-techno filters. The result is a track that takes “deepness” to near-unsustainable levels: half the fun is in trying to pick up the detail of what sounds like a monstrously funky bassline being played in an underground bomb shelter five miles away, while the echo-drenched house percussion threatens to constantly decompose into mere whispers. The track’s sudden swerve into the morose slide guitar of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” would be the pay-off of the year if the rest of the track had felt remotely like hard work. (more slightly perverse tunes: Sebbo’s “Beirut Boogie”, Das Krause Duo’s “Good Man Invasion” and DJ Koze’s marvellous remixes of James Figurine’s “55566688833” and Sid Le Rock’s “Naked”).

IT – Women In Toilet (Stefan Goldmann Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/688418818d3627/
I was a bit frustrated by how little people cared about this one, but by the end of the year everyone was over-compensating by throwing hosannas in the direction of Goldmann’s excellent (but slightly inferior) “Lunatic Fringe”. The “Women In Toilet” remix is less look-at-moi but more loveable, a flawless demonstration of Goldmann’s trademark pinging synth tones. I use “demonstration” quite deliberately: the main hook on this remix is a one-note bobbing synth riff that bobs across the spectrum from clipped to bleary in the most remarkable manner. I reckon I could draw it quite easily, but Goldmann’s sound is hard to describe in words, at once immediately identifiable but not obviously distinct – it sort of sounds a bit like Kraftwerk going mad with EQ filters, I guess. Curiously, the track doesn’t sound too thought-out at all: must be that lovely, bouncy and warm bassline, or those lonely-sounding synth whines that make this one of the year’s most widescreen sounding tunes. (see also: Goldmann’s fabulously queasy remix of Marc Romboy’s “Helen Cornell”; “Lunatic Fringe”)

Mari Boine – Vuoi Vuoi Me (Henrik Schwarz Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/68875807fadd81/
Really you should just grab Schwarz’s live album from this year, but if you insist on sampling just one production, go with this one. Of all the producers discussed here, Schwarz is the one who feels most out on his own, forging connections that no one else would dare. While the “Vuoi Vuoi Me” remix fits amongst all these records as yet another accommodation between rococo complexity and rootsy house lushness, its methods are totally distinct – delicate house percussion, blunt but muted bass riffs and gorgeous surround-sound synth chords that bleed imperceptibly into a chorus of beautiful but distressed sounding woodwinds that could have come from a late-era Talk Talk album. Not to mention the loving recontextualisation of Boine’s eerie, frail-sounding vocals, those finally wordless wails helping to make this almost too overwhelming for any dancefloor. (see also: Schwarz’s marvellous remixes of Kraak & Smaak’s “No Sun in the Sky” and Boundzound’s “Louder”, plus his own “Walk Music”)

Zander VT – Then & Before (Redshape Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/69145811966207/
2007 wasn’t just about deep house revivalism, and there was a sub-trend of melodramatic, synthesiser-heavy tech-house tracks whose ridiculous sci-fi melodrama had me group them together under the banner “space battle techno”. Ink & Needle did several tracks in this vein, but my favourite remained Redshape’s remix of “Then & Before”, perhaps because of the way it draws out the exponential curve of its climaxing groove – spacey percussion and squirming riffs and apocalyptic strings that make me think of spaceships shifting into warp speed and stars stretching from pinpoints into lines. Except that the track just keeps spiralling towards ever higher and higher climaxes, so it’s like you’re speeding past stars whose line-of-light just keeps stretching further and further. One for everyone a bit “over” subtlety. (see also: Ink & Needle’s “Seven”, various Audion tracks and remixes)

Faze Action – In The Trees (Carl Craig Remix)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/697269001fbf07/
Whatever the trend was, Carl usually got there first. If his remix of Delia & Gavin’s “Revelee” helped (re?)initiate the space battle techno sound I described above, this unlikely remix of Faze Action’s old disco-revival classic was an unexpected pinnacle. Given the familiarity of the original, it remains such a shock (almost an illicit thrill) to be confronted by little more than a heavy throb of evil synthesisers, like a swarm of wasps marshalled to attack at random in time with a house beat. When those unmistakable disco strings finally come in, the menacing groove that surrounds them imbues their aristocratic refinement and dandyesque flair strange new sensations and implications – like the fine poetry that sends young people to war, they are at once a document of culture and of barbarism. (see also: Craig remixes of Siobhan Donaghy and Junior Boys)

OMG @ 'space battle techno'!

I was there, in 2007 bobbins thread when Tim said "space battle techno".

This post was probably wasted on you ronan (as in, told you nothing you did not know). I'm glad you got a joke out of it.

We're all glad!

No I enjoyed it thoroughly!

could the lack of love for 'women in toilet' be down to people being reticent to rep for a track called 'women in toilet'? it sounds a bit pervy!

those schaffelly bassline tracks at the top of the thread are doing my head in, in a great way. cheers for all this Tim!

x-post haha otm, the word 'toilet' has no place in respectable dance music.

Thanks dude!

I hadn't heard that Loco Dice remix before (despite you and others repping for it for ages), lovely stuff. Warm bubblebath minimal is always the best kind.

Six - Balearic (Part One of Three)

Poor Kylie. In fairness, her time off from pop should afford her some special consideration, but it remains difficult to hear the post-Goldfrapp glamstomp revivalism of “2 Hearts” as anything other than a strategic error, belatedly latching onto a sound that was already tiresome two years ago. Still, she got one thing right, handing the original over to Swedish band Studio to demolish and reconstruct into a glittering jewel that effortlessly outclasses its source material. It’s a move reminiscent of her drafting in Fisherspooner on remix duties back in 2002: both groups are simultaneously rock bands, production teams, and, at a certain point in time, bywords for the zeitgeist of the era. But if Fisherspooner’s frigid synth riffs were the very definition of electroclash, Studio are synonymous with 2007’s most enjoyable big trend: the return of Balearic.

Studio’s remix of “2 Hearts” is this tenuous movement’s aesthetic highpoint to date, draping Kylie’s coy vocals with glittering spiderwebs of Spanish guitar, supremely supine pulsing disco beats and endless layers of dub echo. In this new and impressively otherworldly context, Kylie’s vocals are genuinely moving: “I can’t even see up here,” she gasps, her previously sly performance suddenly sounding overwhelmed by the enormity of the emotions surrounding it. All the glam ambiguity of the original is sensitively excised from this version: the song’s deadpan sarcasm had no place amongst Studio’s endless horizons of lovestruck earnestness.

Kylie Minogue – 2 Hearts (Studio Version)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/70425497aec619/

One of the key differences between the disco-punk revival (and post-punk revivalism generally) and Balearic is the fact that, unless you pay any regard outright disco-sceptics, disco-punk never needed to be critically rehabilitated – bands like Gang of Four, ESG and P.I.L. have always benefited from a critical consensus regarding their greatness. By comparison, Balearic happily intermingles good and bad taste reference points, ranging from prog to soft-rock to the fag end of late 80s studio-based pop. Studio may fashionably reference krautrock, Arthur Russell and the Happy Mondays, but their high-buff sheen is equally reminiscent of Peter Gabriel and Sting. Most of all, their more songful moments sound like a loved-up version of The Cure, which makes sense: The Cure have always hovered on the good taste/bad taste fault line, like the witty, sharp-tongued friend who is always in danger of going too far and offending everyone with their next indelicate observation (I can sympathise with this).

I’ve included the original and much longer version of their track “Self Service”, only available on the now out-of-print Scandanavian 2006 first print of their album West Coast. I hope it doesn’t sound too snooty to say that not only do I greatly prefer this to the more widely available truncated version of the song, but in fact suspect it’s their finest moment to date. The way that the baggy groove, cheesy electronic effects, morose vocals and sharply glinting guitar build up to a narcotic plateau of tribal intensity captured my heart as much as anything could this year.

Studio – Self Service
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7020158bb7e2eb/

Studio’s British cohorts A Mountain of One offer an even more conflicted take on similar territory: if the first band’s polyrhythms and moping add a certain sharpness to their allure, at its best A Mountain of One’s self-conscious grandeur aspires to match the brooding atmospherics of Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight”; at its least successful, their work drifts closer to a vision of Mike & the Mechanics meditating in Goa. A Mountain of One leave me behind when they seem to gesture towards some mystical destination beyond the music itself: at its most torpidly overworked, their lush, meditative MOR-rock evokes the baffling earnestness of the pagan convert, the scent of incense and patchouli oil disconcerting not in itself, but because it cannot support the amassed weight of meaning and significance invested in it.

I find their recent and self-consciously epic instrumental single “Brown Piano” a bit of chore to listen to – I can’t help but feel that the band are placing themselves in the lineage of Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis (two bands I love, mind) when they should be kneeling at the alter of The Blue Nile instead. What a relief it was to find that Studio could so effortlessly resurrect the tune by adding a disco beat and turning the whole thing into a hypnotic weave of ever-shifting patterns. If A Mountain of One spread themselves across a spectrum from focused to diffuse with all the quality stacked up at one end, Studio somehow short-circuit the two poles, implausibly conflating their impulses towards pop and towards smacked-out expansiveness.

A Mountain of One – Brown Piano (Studio Version)
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7044950111a0c9/

Unlike Studio’s glorious earnestness, A Mountain of One’s music work best when it seems uncertain of itself: see for example the wonderful and utterly inscrutable “People Without Love”, a bizarre carcrash collision between Fleetwood Mac’s “Caroline” and a streetcorner sermon on the perils of superficiality. Or this: a gorgeous italo-disco homage featuring a marvelously frail duet between AMO1’s singer and Martina Topley-Bird, over a disco arrangement that stars off wry and whimsical but becomes progressively overshadowed by a chorus of moaning guitars.

A Mountain of One – Can’t Be Serious
http://www.zshare.net/audio/7016464c12f766/

To be continued...

My iPod now has a Tim Finney best of 2007 folder to go with my Resident Advisor best of etc....

The parts on the Studio Kylie remix seem to disconnected to me.... there's not much motivation to them, the various parts dropping in and out seems kinda random. It's probably my least favourite thing by them that I've heard.

To continue kvetching, “People Without Love” is my least fave AMoO tune though that may be down to the time I saw them live where the guy who does the vox was a DICK. AMoO threw a great party in Brighton where they played and Studio DJed (along w/Beyond the Wizards Sleeve).

"Can't Be Serious" is a cover of this right?

I love the Kylie remix, in fact it's my favourite thing they've done, I think. I like the way the flurries of guitar pause for breath, (rather than drop out) and the heartbeat rhythm.

Part of the fun with this stuff is walking the bad-taste tightrope. The ongoing Dire Straits fascination scares me, though - I didn't mind that Otterman Empire edit, but Lindstrom put the whole of Private Investigations on a recent mix - aghr. (Disclosure: I was a huge fan of Dire Straits as a child, and I really don't need to hear it recontextualised or whathaveyou.)

This whole thing is ace, though, Tim. Cheers. Look forward to parts two and three.

Scarface- High Powered

http://www.sendspace.com/file/knabw7

Am I growing more aggressive as I get old? Maybe it’s just that hip hop generally has been a bit harder of late: my favourite rap album of the year is Young Jeezy’s vergin’-on-apocalyptic ‘The Recession’, and perhaps my favourite rap track is Scarface’s gritty “High Powered”. Or, not really. “High Powered” is gritty in the same sense that pirates are scary. Scarface has that awesome, won’t-take-your-shit thick flow that’s unimpressed by just about everything, which is lucky because his fixation with fake-ass drug dealers (specifically snitches, roaches, anyone who passes themselves off as bigger entrepreneurs than they are; on his excellent new album ‘Emeritus’ – awesome title btw – he also spends a lot of time talking about being sued) needs that kind of blunt laconic swagger-not-swagger (not-swagger because, well, Scarface doesn’t need to impress anyone) – Scarface is so good at this that “High Powered” positively drips gravitas.

Musically “High Powered” is only gritty in the sense that “This Is Why I’m Hot” or “Grindin” or The Game’s “One Blood” are – parading its screechy screwfaced minimalism (ooh those sudden floods of bottomless bass) front and centre, but ultimately too tuneful and too widescreen and too, um, Jamaican not to end up sounding a bit pop. The way the rhythm breaks into a dancehall beat at the end of each verse is one of those simple but devastating effects that makes me mourn all over again the crappiness of local urban clubs (they never seem to play stuff like this) – it's total bust an ominous move on the dancefloor business.

Plus that awesome reggae chorus vocal “Beep beep goes the sound of my celluleeuuurr” – so dank and lugrubrious! (the title track to this album is another highlight, but the whole thing is great – check it!)

Animal Collective - My Girls

http://www.sendspace.com/file/g2f3jr

Seeing Animal Collective live in Berlin last year was something of a minor revelation, like witnessing a band/artist/etc. stumble onto a wonderful new twist in their aesthetic in real time. I really liked the group’s 2007 album ‘Strawberry Jam’ (and even more so bandmember Panda Bear’s solo release ‘Person Pitch’, one of my top two albums from last year), but as much for what it hinted at as what it was: gleaming through the crevices of those slightly angsty, ridiculously over-stuffed technicolour indie rock songs was a more utopian vision of blissed-out dance-rock, somewhere between the ethnodelic indie that Gang Gang Dance have since made their own, the swooning neo-Balearic of Studio, and the dreamlike sampladelic ambient-techno-pop of Primal Scream’s Orb-produced “Higher Than The Sun”. ‘Person Pitch’ was already inching into this territory, but was so blissed-out as to be positively supine: cross-referencing that sound with the dense and energetic approach of ‘Strawberry Jam’ seemed like the way to go.

This is what Animal Collective did when I saw them, especially during their encore: the combination of starsailing widescreen techno-pop and the trippy light show made it the best fusion of live rock with the feel (as opposed to merely sound) of dance music that I can remember. “My Girls”, the first song to leak from the band’s next album ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’, excellently captures the sound and the feel of the best bits of that live show. Organ arpeggios, atmospheric keyboard swirls, Panda Bear’s very familiar multitracked Beach Boys-aping declamatory vocal style… None of these things in and of themselves suggest a massive stylistic shift; what’s changed is how these things all come together in a manner that is unabashedly pretty, and unabashedly pop. The slightly reverent intro soon gives way to a brisk (albeit unpredictable) quasi-tribal percussive groove, all woodblocks and what sounds like rolling timpanis, as Panda Bear’s chanting slowly coalesces into an implausible hook: “I don’t mean to seem like I care material things like my social stats/I just want four walls and a door besides, for my girls!” (punctuated at times by an excellent falsetto “woah!!!!”). The actual lyrics are typical of Panda Bear, triangulating the space between earnestness, mundanity and weed-derived epiphany, and I’m not sure how or why it works so well.

In the final minute of this gorgeous song, the steady quasi-disco pulse (not to mention the marvellous handclaps, awesome backwards-filtered strings, those organ arpeggios suddenly resembling italo-house keyboards) leads the song into a too-brief climax that, like Air France’s “No Excuses”, somehow evokes euphoric rave-pop. And then (rather like Booka Shade’s trancey electro-house anthem “In White Rooms”, my favourite track of 2006), it ends abruptly, as if to remind you gently and sympathetically that no one can ever actually feel this good for more than about a minute at a time.

Chris Brown - Dreamer

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1q6e44

The realisation that Chris was maybe the pop star of the year dawned on me quite slowly. Partly that’s because he’s risen to this position by default – no other pop star really had a sustained run of greatness throughout the year that might challenge him (Mariah’s a possible exception, but even then she felt less epochal this year than a couple of years back). Partly it’s that he led off his new album with its worst single, the only-kinda-good club track “Kiss Kiss” which (like most songs featuring T-Pain) really felt like a T-Pain song. And partly it’s that I was slow to warm to his other big singles. “No Air”, his duet with Jordin, is of course one of the greatest songs of the year, but that could be chalked up to Jordin’s efforts. And like most people I talked to, I found the glutinous acoustic ballad “With You” a bit too sugary and limp to begin with, while the neo-trance fireworks of “Forever” seemed pretty but insubstantial. The former won me over through sustained radio exposure, the latter via its particularly inspired recontextualisation in a dance routine on So You Think You Can Dance US. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to recognise just how much I love this guy, such that the maudlin “Superman" (his new duet with Keri Hilson) immediately tugs at my heartstrings whereas before I probably would have dismissed it as overwrought.

Undiluted regard is the necessary mindset with which to approach “Dreamer”, the track Chris cut in tribute to the Olympics. In a manner remarkably similar to Beyonce’s subsequent “Halo”, it combines massive end-of-the-world churning synthesisers with inspirational piano vamps straight from mid-eighties stadium rock (think “Don’t Stop Believing”) and typical 2008 R&B Sturm und Drang percussion. But in a lesser singer’s hands all this would be for naught, especially given the song’s slightly nauseous aspirational optimism. What pushes this over the top is Chris singing with that sort of effortless inhuman clarity that marks him out amidst all the other much more obviously embodied male R&B singers (like, even Ne-Yo can’t aspire to this sort of universalism, though he brings other stuff to the table). This is why Chris works so well with ever-so-slight autotuning on his vocals: it gives him a preternatural quality, like some sympathetic higher being sent to observe and then redeem the human race. In the chorus he divides into a scary multitude of auto-harmonising existential cheer squads, and this manoeuvre is executed with a ridiculous seriousness that probably spelt doom for any hopes of this becoming a popular song. Predictably, I love it.

Lyrically this is some high-stakes (if incomprehensible) stuff: “High speed/like I’m racing/it’s like lightning/sky is blazing/but you’ve lost your way/you’ve been led astray/are there better days/for my Fallen Dreamer?” Narrative is jettisoned in favour of a hearty engagement with the Big Themes (made explicit in the spoken word intro: “Live… or die… I just gotta believe”), which is as it should be – pop usually can’t capture big themes coherently without reducing them to triteness. A poetic incoherence is pretty much always the preferred route, and Chris’ almost religious invocation of emblems of the struggle for survival gives “Dreamer” a kind of accommodating flexibility: even if it was written for Michael Phelps it very easily becomes my personal prop for making it out of bed in the morning.

There's several more yet to be written. Many of the above were written several months ago, if they now seem a bit odd. There's also been a lot of cross-plundering with comments made here, reviews wtc.

haha oh shit i completely forgot that fbook group existed - sorry tim!! i did mean to contribute to it but fbook never lets you know when groups are updated. i pretty much wholeheartedly agree/disagree in all the predictable places. 2008 has been so good, my top 10 tracks currently numbers 88.

should have linked animal collective to a rickroll, but otherwise great stuff as always -- one of the most interesting things to me tho is when u mention listening to fela kuti bcuz on ILM i generally pretty much just associate your posts with new music (a good thing mostly as it keeps me glass-is-half-full about a lot of stuff id otherwise avoid) and ive always found it kind of interesting to get what your context is w/ a lot of older stuff (haha totally crazy that i remember this but i THINK i remember you dropping Disco Inferno in a write-up of a petey pablo song once)

fyi just for future reference it seems like zshare links get dropped pretty quickly now even if it says its still available to download it wont let you get the song on a few of these

i'm pretty sure that's a specific problem with newer zshare links (hence the switch to sendspace on newer posts) - the above links should predate it but if there's any broken links people let me know and I will fix.

The reference to Fela Kuti is a bit of a lie if only because (in typical ILM fashion) I've also fallen hard for Steely Dan this year, after having Aja for years and barely listening to it. Listened to a lot of Rickie Lee Jones, too, but i already liked her a lot. I don't like the slight air of defensiveness that saying "i've been listening to Fela" gives off actually... The impetus for noting it was more that Fela (and Steely) and Taylor Swift (though more her first album than "Love Story") were the music that hit receptors I don't think I'd used much if at all previously. In a lot of ways afrobeat and country-pop are asking for critical articulations of enjoyment that are almost diametrically opposed.

Yeah I think the Petey Pablo thing was "Get On Dis Motorcycle", the sample on which sounds a fair amount like a Disco Inferno track which does a similar trick. I used to make those kinds of "Destiny's Child = Mouse on Mars!" comparisons a lot more. I try to avoid it if i can these days because it usually implies that it's the comparison that validates the worth of whatever yr reviewing.

Whereas the truth (in this case) is that in retrospect the Disco Inferno track sounds like it's trying to work out how to be the Petey Pablo track (sans rapping obv)... An example of the influence flowing backwards effect that mark s used to talk about, if it didn't seem so lolworthy to talk about DI and PP in those terms.

As a general rule I think it's a good idea to be very cautious when trying to write about old and well-known music you're just getting into. Me on Fela or Steely Dan would be tedious and wrong for the most part.

Some writers use that naivete to be better/fresher/more clearsighted than well-versed critics, but I think that's a rare skill. In fact I'm having trouble thinking of anyone offhand.

ha yeah i didnt mean you needed to defend it, sorry --i found it more interesting just for providing a context for what you listened to and i think at the time i was just sorta seeing your writing in some kind of pop-centered universe so it just gave me a clue as to what dimensions you were working in musically --

whats most interesting about actual-serious-ilm music posts to me is its as much about knowing the writer as knowing the music -- an example is guys like dan perry who has a musical background and just knowing that fact helps me 'get' where hes coming from sometimes -- occasionally in ways i think are just wrong, i.e. "this person cannot sing" and im like "thats not the point" (sorry Dan for using u as a rhetorical example here) but other times in ways that help me better articulate what it is that makes music 'work' (or not work) for me.

Anyway point about that paragraph is that i think understanding the context a writer is coming from a lot of times is interesting and informs so much of how people on here write about music and what they bring to the discussion

n-e wayz im drunk and its like 630AM here sunday morning so im out ____

um also sorry for not googleproofing dan's name --

yeah that was my self-criticism kicking into gear there not me responding to you so much. i do find all of that stuff interesting w/r/t other posters here, like when I see you or vahid talking about jazz...

I use Dan in the same rhetorical manner. Sorry dan!

so rad. thanks tim.

argh totally stymied by zshare - 1) i click download, then 2) click download again, then 3) it tells me to wait for 20 seconds which i do, then 4) a "download" link appears, which i click, taking me back to (2) with no downloading ever actually happening

tried in safari and firefox both

same here, with safari and firefox too. It would be great to re-up these, Tim; last year your picks were among the best things I heard this year.

yeah those zshare links are expired/broken

ya not working!!

still, awesome job again...

yeah the zshare links dont work

zshare doesn't allow you to use it if you have ad-blocking on

are some of you not getting directed to the page which tells you this? just a thought

speaking of which, I can be bothered so rarely to download individual mp3s anymore

that muxtape thing mostly passed me by but having got the general gist, wouldn't that be ideal for something like this?

a streaming playlist of all this would be so rad.

Great stuff Tim, as always. But just wondering, I understand AC's My Girls lyrics to be like this:
"I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status / I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls"

status being stats

Tim you rule.

zshare is broken, btw. pretty sure those links aren't dead. it's just the adblocking/popup detection (which is lame in the first place), doesn't work consistently. i have turned off both and I still get stuck in the same loop as Tracer. would be great if someone who can get at the zshare files could upload them all to mediafire or sendspace.

same here, all plugins turned off, don't work

yeah, zshare usually works for me but isn't there.

was wanting to listen to "I wake up early in the morning, to play my con-con-congo" :(

most of those can be found on, like, itunes or similar

i recommend googling the song's name + rapidshare

xpost. they can also be found on soulseek or whatever, but when i was reading tim's bits i was hoping to have the thing down in 30 seconds and listen to it. I is lazy.

the zshare thing should be able to be worked around by right-click/"save target as"

I will upload these to sendspace over the next few days.

Great reading, Tim. What is the name of the Facebook group these are appearing on?

thanks tim!

This thread is so good I almost feel like it should be funded by private donations! Thanks for going out of your way, a lot of this stuff slipped under my radar, I kindof love end-of-years for catchup.

thanks Tim, looking forward to hearing these and re-reading - loved it last year too.

Pnau (who provide it’s, um, instrumentalist I suppose

The other half of Pnau was involved too, he just doesn't have his face airbrushed on the front cover.

nah the zshare links dont work

Jesus dudes, none of these tracks are particularly hard to get hold of if you want to hear them.

(NB - we aren't really meant to allow linking to full MP3s of commercially available music. I've been turning a blind eye here because Tim is Tim and doing sterling work promoting this stuff, but any future links responding to "anyone got that Aeroplane track?" or similar will be deleted).

Tim surely you don't prefer the original 'Fascination' to the Bimbo Jones and Linus Loves remixes

i notice there's a Van She Tech remix of 'Walking On A Dream', as if they read my mind...

the underwhelming “What’s It Gonna Be” by Platinum & H20.

also surprising! maybe it helps if you see the video

"I've been turning a blind eye here because Tim is Tim"

Appreciated! However if you'd prefer I'm happy to just syndicate the write-ups and let people e-mail me or join the facebook group for the download links - let me know if so.

The Facebook Group (which will continue into 2009, perhaps with a name change) is called "Strictly The Best: The 2008 Glamourous Pop Club". I made it quasi-private so I'm not sure if it comes up in searches. Feel free to send me a message on facebook asking for an invite.

hahaha Tim of course you've been getting into Steely Dan and Rickie Lee Jones--you like the Ne-Yo album! it's a '70s singer-songwriter album!

should have been a TIM @ KFC . EDU thread

his zshare links wda worked

(great stuff as usual tim, I'm only messing)

Motorcitysoul – Change You
http://www.sendspace.com/file/v9je9e

I’ve written several times of late about the resurgence of “deep house” as a determining stylistic principle in (the classy end of) dance music. This was a big thing last year too, and was responsible for lots of my favourite music of 2007 (stuff from Henrick Schwarz, Matt Johns, Dennis Ferrer), but this year it began to feel like THE THING in dance music. My interest has fallen off quite a bit, and I’ve provided several different theories as to why this is the case. But the key issue is probably that 2008 was classy dance music’s least ‘pop’ year in ages: lots of minimal (though no longer “minimal”), barely inflected “quality” productions so full of “soul” that there was no room left for a tune, so “deep” that all topographical dynamism gets smothered, all made by “cats” so jive that a positive reaction from plebian suburban, adolescent, gay, drug-using and/or female audiences would be rejected with distaste even if it was possible. I really don’t like the notion of “quality” anything in dance music: it suggests a reliability that is born of an aversion to making mistakes. Pop versions of dance music meanwhile tend to flirt with disaster, as they jump from the safe ground of niche stylistic affectation, across the yawning chasm of middlebrow crossover and towards widespread acceptance and adulation amongst people who don’t even know what rhodes keys are, let alone how to make them sound good in a house track. (NB. I'm not trying to suggest a "quality"/"pop" either/or here)

“Change You” is a nice exception to this trend, although for all of that a fairly middlebrow one; perhaps Motorcitysoul are as “quality” as my dance music listening tends to get these days. What marks this out is that it’s faux-US House in the broadest sense rather than the narrowest, less about getting a certain bass sound and more about the aching melodrama of its smooth male diva performance. It starts out fairly unobtrusively, its slowly morphing one-note synth bass pulse and nonchalant tenor vocal suggesting a tune happy to lounge in light-coloured calico pants in the afternoon sun. How it changes is obscured by one of those curious tricks of repetition that is hard to catch even when you’re listening for it. At about four minutes in, the groove is stripped back to a (relatively) intense staccato pulse while the diva sighs in a new melody: “Love has always been like this/a whispered prayer beneath a kiss…” In a pop tune this would be the middle-eight, and in a dance remix of a pop tune it would be the ostentatious breakdown which coincides with that middle-eight, when you realise that the song you’ve happily been dancing and singing along to is actually skating across a paper-thin surface covering a void of existential uncertainty.

House can capture this bigness of emotion with restrained gestures through an adjusted economy of scale, with even relatively mild expansions in the terrain of the groove suddenly evoking a sense of destabilisation or loss of identity. In “Change You” the shift in register moves from relaxed confidence (I imagine a game of unhurried, subtle flirtation) to a kind of barely concealed, urgent desperation, the groove’s imperceptible immersion into cavernous bass and tense bleeps resembling beads of sweat on a nonchalant pokerface. By itself this would be just about enough; what makes “Change You” magical is the way this is wrapped around the smooth diva’s performance, as he unwittingly sinks from his master’s perch and finds himself the slave of his own game of desire. Like Sade’s “No Ordinary Love”, this is mood music on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

New link for Aeroplane's "Whispers":

http://www.sendspace.com/file/nxnckk

Geeneus ft. Katy B – As I
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4hx06s

Possibly my biggest regret (among several) with regard to the year end lists contributed to Pitchfork, In Press etc. was my failure to adequately rate this absolute gem of a poppy UK funky house tune – certainly one of my absolute favourites of last year. One interesting thing about UK funky is how, perhaps due to the absence of a clearly identifiable sonic marker that would form the equivalent of the 2-step beat for UK garage, it’s gradually developed a much more distinct, treasurable homegrown song-style (in retrospect, UK Garage never really did this – perhaps because it never had to). So many of the great UK funky female vocal anthems – “Do You Mind”, “Mr. Seduction”, “Make Your Move”, “Tell Me” etc. – fall within strictly circumscribed parameters: very young, girly sounding singers, performances pitched exactly midway between R&B reserve and house diva histrionics, all driven by a sex-frenzied hunger that is entirely its own. Oh, and lyrics that surprise with their scrupulous formalist perfection.

On “As I”, the rhyming is almost decadently perfect: “I tried to put my finger on the time/when I started to see you in a different light/did it creep into my mind?/Or did you give me a sign?/I ain’t sure…/When your hand brushes past mine like that/did you mean to or was it an accident?/I wish that you’d do it again/so that I could feel your skin/once more…” There’s a… tightness to funky’s songwriting which marks it out from most vocal house, which usually draws a sharp line between the tension-building verses and the all-bases-go release of the choruses. In funky, the jump from the verses to the choruses is actually quite subtle, a very slight ramping up of the air of tension that is always already hovering close to fever pitch.

The music, of course, is delectable and irresistible, the usual perky funky beat moulding itself to ravey yet feminine soft-centered synth chords, like T99’s “Anaesthesia” or Nasty Habits’ “Dark Angel” remade as an unabashed singalong pop anthem. Plus the icing of the cake: that strange cantering beat that sprints across the end of every eighth’s bar (I like to pretend this is Geeneus’ sly response to Simon Reynolds’ complaint that too many funky rhythms have the awkward gait of a horse). In terms of context, “As I” wins for being a superlative demonstration of funky’s openness to whatever idea works. But context would be nothing without the seductive, sumptuous swing of its galloping groove, or the swooning desperation of Katy’s desire.

hey tim, do you think you could re-up that veronicas song

I am so good 2 U:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/vzw9qz

thx u