Alone Music

Ahoy there! I’ve been meaning to do this all month, and started, then lost it, then couldn’t be bothered as the year hadn’t actually changed. Now it has. Now we are in 2012! It will be, at the very least, another year. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Things will indeed happen.

Me? I’m sure things will happen to me too. Anyway. I wanted to do the music blog thing and babble about albums I’ve enjoyed this year, because, well.. I like music and what better time to reflect on a year of fun noises than the turn of the year.

So, lets a-go:

Atari Teenage Riot – Is This Hyperreal?

Yay for loud, aggressive, frustrated music. While the actual politics came out more in Alec Empires interviews and twitter feed than on the actual album, it still hits hard, fast and demands to be listened to.

Balam Acab – Wander / Wonder

This album is full of deep bass, bubbly textures and samples and soundtracked many a walk in the dark to town and back. Moody electronica with elements of Mum’s Summer Make Good, Burial’s chipmunk echoes and a touch of The Field’s looping passages.

Conquering Animal Sound – Kammerspiel

Loops, bells, glitches and vocals over vocals over vocals. Its pretty lush electronic music. A touch of Nedry but without the dubstep and that Mum reference comes back too as I’m not thinking that creatively right now.

Deaf Club – Lull EP

Haunting, reverbed vocals over cavernous drums and shoegaze guitars yet restrained enough to know when a song should remain a song and not a wall of noise. Fantastic.

DJ Shadow – Less You Know The Better

A patchy one this. At times its the man on top form, other times he slips back to the grab bag of The Outsider. So its not brilliant, but when it hits the highs, like ‘Redeemed’ ‘Enemy Lines’ and ‘Run For Your Life’, it makes it worth it. Maybe the next album will hit that classic status again.

Exit_International – Black Junk

In a year that sadly did not grace us with a new Future of the Left album, I had to look elsewhere. Didn’t have to look far to find E_I. Dirty rock/punk anthems on two distorted, angry bass guitars.

Explosions in The Sky – Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

From tiny rock anthems to post-rock soundscapes. While Take Care offers nothing really new, it is still a fantastic genre piece with the odd surprise  buried inside. In this case its the brilliant, concise ‘Trembling Hands’. Who needs post-rock to be over 4 minutes long anyway.

Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will

Continuing the concise theme in post-rock, this year graced us with a new Mogwai album. Unlike the slow burn that was ‘Hawk is Howling’, ‘Hardcore’ was a varied and almost a pop album for the group. ‘Rano Pano’ goes down as my song of the year for sure, its addictive repetition doubled with whatever the hell happens to the riff in the final section just floors me every time.

Jewellers – Sleep Education

One of my favorite things about this year was discovering 1) that Twitter is not just ramble, but kinda useful and 2) you can find awesome music using it. Top of my list of music I done heard of using the interwebs was Jewellers understated album Sleep Education. A heady mix of Boards of Canada loops, early Blockhead-esque beats and that glorious ability to know when a loop can just go on and on, revealing more each time before breaking down in to something new.

Kid Koala – Space Cadet

Okay, so this is a soundtrack to a book. But only Kid Koala manages to pull it off with such charm and character that flicking through the pages it made a complete journey when coupled with the whining, warped echoes of the music he produces. It is something that takes time out of the day to sit, read along and listen, and is all the better for it.

Polinski – Labyrinths

65daysofstatic man takes time out to make an album, that, on the face of it, sounds a lot like 65daysofstatics last album. However, the electronic beats and reliance of synths over guitars mark Polinski apart as a sci-fi journey though every Phillip K Dick book ever in a ship that resembles The Last Starfighter that plays like X-Wing Verses Tie Fighter.

Rival Schools – Pedals

I would say this soundtracked my summer, but it came out in March. The long awaited second album from Rival Schools never matched the first, but left its own impression of fun, well written, solid rock/pop anthems.

Starscream – Future, Towards the Edge of Forever

Probably the best set of Blip Festival where the multi-legged post-rock-chipmusic journeymen Starscream. I even did the ‘omg! run to the merch table to buy their album nows!’ thing. Lo-fi aparts, glistening noise channels and massive drum sounds. Win.

Trouble Books and Mark McGuire

A short collection of collaborative tracks that tell tales of cats in space over warm bubbles and layers of acoustic loops. a perfect winter soundtrack if the weather had actually bothered to change into winter.

I hear that Alone chap released something too..