2009 Top Long-Players
I don’t listen to many albums these days. In an odd and somewhat dispiriting twist, today’s newfangled technology continues to revert my listening experience into a passive jukebox/radio format: queue up a few hundred songs, press the ‘random’ button, and carry on. Although my ears are now tuned to the single rather than the album, there were nonetheless a handful of long-players that demanded my full attention.
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Maayan Nidam – Nightlong PowerShovel Audio | buy Veering between skeletal minimal, plush house, and unabashedly chintzy lounge, Maayam Nidam’s reprocessing of contemporary Cuban music yields a seamless blend of loop-based music that combines DJ Shadow + Jan Jelenik + Ricardo Villalobos. Nidam raises the ante on the art of sampling and delivers one most interesting records of the year. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. |
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Dinky – Anemik Wagon Repair | buy A late entry into my soundsystem, Dinky’s fourth LP draws a squiggly line between emotion, restraint, and experimentation. Heavyweight tracks like ‘Childish’ and ‘Epilepsia’ sparkle across velvet beds while moody vocal pieces such as ‘Fadik’ and ‘Westoid’ refine some of the avant-pop ideas that she introduced on Black Cabaret. Bold, fascinating, and a little uneven, Anemik is a rare thing: a techno record with a ton of heart. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. |
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Intrusion – Seduction of Silence Echospace | buy Lunar. Atmospheric. Tranquil. Steven Hitchell marries the stock adjectives for the Chain Reaction and DeepChord catalogues with a warm Kingston-inflected touch that conjures oceans rather than glaciers. We need as much of this quiet late-night workhorse music as we can get. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. |
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Audion’s 2009 output Ghostly International/Spectral | buy Ok, this isn’t an album — but this summer Matthew Dear delivered 60+ minutes of mindfuck Audion techno across five or six records that felt very much like a singular piece. A perfect union between the eye-melting op-artwork and the stage, Audio raised the bar on live techno with the Hetacomb tour while Ghostly continued to lead the way with its flexible distribution model. More importantly, the music kicks and roars. Beginning with the sinister crawl of ‘I Am the Car’ and climaxing with ‘It’s Full of Blinding Light’, Audion creates gutsy techno with a personal touch that I haven’t felt since the acid days of Plastikman. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. |
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Shogun Kunitoki – Vinonaamakasio Fonal | buy Blazing psychedelic electrics drenched in incense and overheated Super 8 footage. Hailing from Helsinki, the Finnish quartet kicks out unhinged carnival music built from organs, tambourines, and the occasional sitar. Play it loud enough and the room begins to spin, throwing you into a wood-paneled rec room circa 1973. On their second album, Shogun Kunitoki nail down a trademark sound as distinctive as M83, The Field, and Ratatat. Their declared mission is to help electronic music “regress back to a more human state, the time of the tube organ and the ring modulator, the spring reverb and the test oscillator” — and their music is very human. It’s also the beautiful time-bending stuff of deep dreams and occasional nightmares. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. |
The Lordsburg Killings 
Meeting Elvis 
Babushka Lady 
This was a really cool article you posted on your blog. I hope you write more till ill be back next. Then i collect something about my favorite electronic music artists to share with you. I wrote a story over this really great artist Schiller aka von Deylen and his new album called Atemlos. If possible you like to check my articles.