The rather scant (I expect) Best Of 2009 thread

Singles: 

Deadmua5/Kaskade - I Remember (J Majik & Wickaman remix)

Brookes Bros - Last Night (BBK)

Albums:

Roo's October Mix - hands down, best deep house mix of the year for me.

Festivals:

Bristol's annual 3-day North Devon exodus to the dome filled with deep house, deep immersive visuals, deep empathy and fathoms of fun. Heavenly in its lushiousness.

Contributing to Glastonbury's Jazz/World backstage with old friends.

Shambala - simply the best festival by fookin' far at the moment.

Clubs:  Thekla, Cosies, Big Chill Bar - all in Briz.

I have posted up my radio show with Part I of my faves of the year. Check it out here: http://thesvelteone.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/the-svelte-selection-faves-of-2009-part-i/

Albums

As I posted on t'other thread:

Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship: bassy\drum heavy guitar\mallet strangeness
Bat for Lashes - Two Suns: mystical Kate Bush-esque folkiness that manages to avoid being naff and twee
School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms: poppy shoegazery close harmonies
The xx - xx: y'all must know this by now
Yo La Tengo - Popular Songs: excellent stuff from the old faves
Tune-Yards - Bird-Brains: a mix of folk, North African guitars, wonky melodies and intricate, bluesy vocal stylings. With a sequencer.
Jon Hopkins - Insides: new direction from the electronica wunderkind. Weirdy bass heavy goodness this time
Sonic Youth - The Eternal: loud, rude and brilliant
Volcano Choir - Unmap: quiet, weird and brilliant
Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport: beautiful noise with Weatherall on production duties.
Fever Ray - Fever Ray: dark scandi excellence
St Vincent - Actor: a young Laurie Anderson
The Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage: vaguely psychedelic rock strangeness with a Glasgow accent
Michachu - Jewellery: off the wall crazily angled mix of pop and rock and noise
Peaches - I Feel Cream: electro diva goes a little more pop, though still Tough As Fuck
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca: Just listen to it.

Singles

What are singles? ;)

Mixes & Radio Shows

King of the Delta Blues's regular session on Purple Radio is always a winner
Andrew Weatherall's FACT mag mix
Placid's electro workout

Experiences

Going to Japan
Fuck Buttons @ Heaven (http://thesvelteone.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/fuck-buttons-live-at-heaven/)
Tunng and Tinariwen @ De La War Pavilion
Tortoise @ The Garage
BL Cole + Brian Eno's 'Apollo' + film @ Science Museum IMAX
Starting university
ATP Nightmare Before Christmas


So much great music and so many wonderful gigs this year. I'm so lucky.

Kirsty

Ha - I actually stumbled across them, insanely wierd stuff and a bit screechy at times, but I can't quite bring myself to stop listening to them on youtube etc.  What's the whole album like?

Sounds sort of like Bjork in a head-on collision with the Beta Band to me, no survivors except some very odd and intriguing art...

cheers,

dave

Ok so here's a quick scratch together of my favourite bits of 2009.  It's been an odd and very busy year - unfortunately less music for me, but some interesting bits here and there.

Probably my favourite single of the year would have been very early on (in fact it was probably released before last Christmas) - "Mixed Metaphors" by Jason Brunton  on Iridite.  Just 3 amazing varied tracks of superior deep house and tough clubby techno - awesome stuff.  No real favourites on the album front, but I'm getting more and more tempted to get that Dirty Projectors "Bitte Orca" album and actually see what's going on there.  Almost a case of too-wierd-and-interesting not to investigate.

As for my own music, done very little, but the one shining light was the chance I got to do a remix of Mick Chillage's "Pure Blue" track - which went in a trippy downtempo sax-led mournful thing, and came out low-tempo thudding deep house, with tunes and chords all over the place.  For once everything just worked, and it's probably one of my favourite music things I've ever done.

On the event front, there's just no question - Chic @ Electric Picnic.  I've never seen a live band performance combined with a crowd atmosphere like it, I put it up there with the best Slam nights of old, which isn't something I do lightly.  Mindblowing, and unquestionably the best thing of any variety that happened in 2009.

Happy Christmas and New Year to everyone, have a great one!!

cheers,

dave

Stomping until 6am on Sunday night to drum n bass and breakcore in some tent at Glastonbury was my dance highlight this year.

Liverpool Photographer <(Address removed)> said:

Stomping until 6am on Sunday night to drum n bass and breakcore in some
tent at Glastonbury was my dance highlight this year.

my highlight of the year was a friends 40th in march dj played a blinding old skool set and the pharms just kicked in right, lost my self for a couple of hours Being hit by a mini tornado in derbyshire in may was quite an experience as well

2009 has been the most exciting year since 2005, loads of great stuff and the clubs have been FIRING, people have really gone for it. Every time I've played out the vibe has been fantastic, less so in London obviously but everywhere else has been cracking. People have wanted it. Bad.

I've loved the way that funky has turned so much around. Both in itself – Cooly G's Love Dub is my tune of the year, alongside her Dis Boy – but also in its ripples and echoes. Dubstep heads took the hint and created a spectrum of new sounds from Ramadanman / Pearson Sound, Brackles, Untold and many more. The best of the old garage heads saw funky for what it was – an attempt to deal with the unfinished business of UK Garage, and Zed Bias and MJ Cole made some fantastic tracks as a result. Mind you, most of them aren't out yet.

Dubstep itself was all about the dark rollage of people Kryptic Minds and SP:MC, the psychedelic grime of Joker, and the percussive deepness of Peverelist, Ramadanman and Untold. I've done quite a good mix of this stuff for Inverted Audio: http://www.inverted-audio.co.uk/$blog/2009/12/29/_i_a__mix_07_grievous_angel?_c=1

Musically it's been a big year for me. There's nothing like seeing a big room go off to your tunes and I've seen my funky and garage gear light up crowds – it's an enormous privilege, I'll treasure those memories forever. Kode in particular has been caning Move Down Low for months. Loads of DJs have been playing my stuff... Skream, Blackdown, Atki2, Tim Dub Boy, MJ Cole, Jamie Vex'd, Paul Hotflush, Mary Anne Hobbs... I've put out three singles (Loser, Soundclash, my funky refix of the grime classic Ice Rink ) that have done well. There are some more to come in 2010. I've done a DJ mix for Radio 1 and had loads of play on the pirates. I've done guest mixes for loads of websites. I've just put another album out, my remix / DJ mix / dub album of the entirety of Blackdown and Dusk's Margins Music. It's been one hell of a ride. And I moved into the house I built.

It's been a great year!

Agree with what Mr Meme is saying about tunage being more exciting than it has been for a long time. Alongside Paul's new mix I doubt I could find a better musical way to round off the year than recommending you listen to Gillesy P's recent 2 hr roundup, fanboy that I am: http://www.sendspace.com/file/s29wec

I challenge ye to provide the good citizens of UKD with a more solid and excitingly varied collection of interesting and mildly dancey music from 2009. Tracklist: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p8fnv

Happy New Year all!
DJ

I'm really chuffed for you Paul, you've worked your socks off and your mixes have kept me entertained this year at work. You need to do a big proper wobbler jump-up tune tho :D

iain

I personally think 2009 has been a belter for dance music.

Drum and Bass has been doing big things for me again, it's really ravey, but pushing sounds and ideas that haven't been explored before - reminds me a lot of the 92-94 Jungle Tekno period.

Dubstep too, not been as much into it this year as I was last, but I'm still going to Volume! each month if work doesn't get in the way (going tonight - tiny venue on till 5am, fiver to get in!) and our man Hostage has proven that the sound works in conjunction with electrohouse bangers with his Get Messy remix... for me the tune of the year.

Pop wise it took a while but I can definitely say I'm a Lady Gaga fan now. Fave pop single was Lily Allen's The Fear, fave moment was Katy Perry doing Hot n Cold when she brought the Cali sun to Fife for T in the Park.

Personally I'm shocked I have put in a full year doing the Sonicsring podcast. Twitter has kind of taken over my life a bit too. Oh and this year I finally "got" the Wii thanks to Madworld, Dead Space Extraction, No More Heroes, New Super Mario Bros and Mario Galaxy. Musically I got the Korg Nano set at the start of this month and it's made my process easier... was writing some dubstep last night. I promise I'll have something new out next year :D

iain

I'm listening to football on the radio, but I thought I'd post the list of my favourite albums of the decade.

First of all, ten albums that didn't make it into my top twenty;

Vincent Vincent and the Villains “Gospel Bombs”
Duffy “Rock Ferry”
Tracey Thorn “Out of the Woods”
Etran Finatawa “Introducing Etran Finatawa”
Matishayu “Youth”
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: “The Pains of Being Pure at Heart” Fever Ray: “Fever Ray”
Durutti Column “Return of the Sporadic Recordings”
The Go! Team “Thunder Lightening Strike”
Breag “An Pearca”

Lord Borthbury

Number 20: Lady Saw "Strip Tease". 



Pure filth from the Queen of Jamaican dancehall. Here's a censored version of the big single from this album.

Number 19: The Very Best "Warm Heart of Africa".



Here's my favourite track from this great album from 2009. Featuring the incomparable Ezra Koenig on vocals (whose band Vampire Weekend feature higher up in my chart!)

Number 18: Sinéad O’Connor “Throw Down Your Arms”

Sinéad's reggae album from 2005, with Sly & Robbie on rhythm duties. Faithful cover versions of a range of Jamaican roots classics. Here's the TV advert for the album.

Number 17: The Pipettes “We Are the Pipettes” 

Some people saw The Pipettes as little more than a faux ironic take on 50s/60s' pop, but I reckon that they genuinely loved the pre-rock pop mainstream. 



Here's the audio from their 2006 single "Pull Shapes" (the video is on Youtube, but embedding is disabled), which is a glorious piece of postmodern self-referentiality (it's a pop song about pop songs, heavy on the strings and handclaps).

Number 16: Al Green "I Can't Stop"



The return of this particular musical genius went largely unnoticed. Except by the reverential few. Here's the title track from what is one of the great comeback albums, on Blue Note. Revel in that unmistakable voice (embedding disabled).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xZyHUuHNio

Number 15: MIA "Arular"



Never before have we needed a Tamil pop star like we need one now. Maya Arulpragasam is a musical and political revolutionary!

Here's one of the big singles from 2005's "Arular"

Number 14: Camera Obscura “Underachievers Please Try Harder”



Scotland has always been the land of indie classicism, and this honourable tradition continued into the new millenium. Glasgow's Camera Obscura have released 4 albums in this decade, and I think that this one is the best.
Here's the single "Keep it Clean".

Number 13: Neil Diamond "12 Songs"




Neil Diamond was rarely a counter-cultural icon, and by the turn of the decade it appeared that his career had descended into irredeemable shmaltz. Enter Rick Rubin, and everything changes. Stripping back the musical excesses of earlier work, here we have a great American singer-songwriter doing what he does best, conveying raw emotion with acoustic guitars, a piano, subtle strings, and *that* voice.




Typically, there are no videos or other promotional fripperies with this album. So here's a sound-only Youtube clip.

Number 12: The Streets: "A Grand Don't Come For Free".



Most end-of-millenium polls cite Mike Skinner's debut "Original Pirate Material" as an 'album of the decade'. But for me, Skinner perfected his kitchen-sink realism on this, his second long player. It's a rock opera with a narrative arc that reaches from the opener "It Was Supposed To Be Easy", through the number one single "Dry Your Eyes", to the closing 8-minute epic "Empty Cans". 




Here's the outrageous video for track 4 "Blinded by the Lights”

Number 11: Ian Brown: "Music of the Spheres".



The more successful Ian Brown becomes, the more confused and befuddled the mainstream newspaper critics seem to become. I admire the likes of Paphides and Petridis, but they do seem to be completely disoriented by the slow yet relentless rise in popularity of Ian Brown through the decade. They seem to exhibit a wilful refusal to accept that by sheer force of willpower and determination, Ian Brown has carved out for himself a unique place in the British music scene.

Not the best singer in the world? Sure. Not the slickest of choreography on his relentless touring schedules? Certainly. The most charismatic and enigmatic figure of the British music scene? I'd say so.


Here's a poor quality recording of Ian's last TOTP performance, with the massive single "F.E.A.R."

2009 was the year i rediscovered the joys of home grown veg and this new year ive discovered the power of plant fertilisers oh yes

as always i baske in the reflected glory of the depth of talent this board has brought together great to here its going so well paul