Welcome to Postmodern Accident. Not the kind of accident where you end up listlessly waiting for the emergency squad to saw through the car door while the warm blood flows down your chest from the sizable piece of glass protruding from the top of your head… I’m strictly referring to the other kind.
My friend David has always referred to my taste in music as “foot in the grave,” and he’s persisted to call it that for years even after I renounced most things goth. It’s pretty funny, actually, because through the 2000s there have been a number of bands—Death Cab for Cutie, the Dismemberment Plan, And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, the Rapture, the Killers, the Knife, etc.—that nominally seem to lend credence to his theory, even though there’s nothing technically goth about any of them.
In fact, when Brainwashed started to champion A Place to Bury Strangers over the course of the year, I successfully disregarded what they had to say. Though the site has really grown in recent years to accommodate many other kinds of alternative music, I still equate them first and foremost with 4AD and Soleilmoon and World Serpent. Subsequently, I imagined that the band must be three guys from New York barely out of high school with Robert Smith hair, playing pop songs about Helena, Lucretia, and Charlotte to girls with yarn dreads.
Yet eventually APTBS became inescapable. The painful slabs of feedback on “Missing You” and the familiar churn-and-hurl guitar dynamics that separate the verses of “Don’t Think Lover” are pure Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, respectively. But whereas every other band that summons these influences ends up sounding like a knock-off trying to cater to a built-in audience, APTBS is actually building on their accomplishments. Where the Reid Brothers would have smothered their songs with noise, APTBS use the noise strategically to heighten the dramatic impact of their brilliantly palatable songwriting. Where Kevin Shields would have twiddled a knob to obscure a song’s clarity, Strangers’ mainman Oliver Ackermann actually customizes effects pedals for a living. In other words, for many of these songs, the sounds came first.
A Place to Bury Strangers is the only record in my collection that requires me to turn down the volume on my iPod in order to listen to it.
The album chugs along from strength to strength, all the while stewed in a sumptuous darkness. Is it goth? Not exactly. But the guitar drone that dominates my favorite track, “The Falling Sun,” will sound familiar to anyone who’s ever gone to a darkwave club night. Let’s just call it “foot in the grave.”
For your undead pleasure: “I Know I’ll See You.” Get a load of the bassline in all its Gallup-ish glory.
Welcome to Postmodern Accident. I have skipped numbers 8 and 9 because I wanted to wax eloquent about #7.
A couple of years ago, I was an active member and contributor to a tight-knit community of online music fans, from which I basically divorced myself once I began working two jobs. I met a lot of very cool people through the boards, both in the States and the UK. Some became friends in real life, especially if I was able to meet them in person. But some—especially those in the UK—sadly remain relegated to that particular time and place in my life.
One such friend—let’s call him BOB—had a successful career in the television industry and a happy family life in London with his beautiful wife, a renowned music journalist and published author in the UK, and their two young children. He was considerably older than I, possibly mid-40s, and yet spectacularly seemed to go clubbing all the time. In fact, he seemed to thrive on it, and indulged in the sort of drug use that a 19-yr-old guy might happily endure. This didn’t seem to slow him down at all; in fact, BOB was sharp, and he had the sort of clearness of vision that qualified him for guru status. (He also seemed to understand boys in clubs, and his gay-friendliness certainly allowed for a better friendship between us.)
One common argument I found online throughout that time, especially amongst British fans of the Fall, was that no “produced” music could possibly be any good. They all favored rootsy, lo-fi rawk, blues, and rockabilly, and were particular enamored by anything American. And as I was rekindling a lot of my interest in electronic music at the time after several years indulging primarily in indie rock, I found myself constantly on the outside of the general consensus. My musical kinship with these folks was limited… except for that with BOB. (And with Jake, who also liked the Hafler Trio, but that is a different story.) BOB was constantly encouraging my exploration into electronic music, and his pedigree as an elite London clubber was certainly helpful. So naturally, with the onslaught of such “pop” artists as Dizzee Rascal, M.I.A., and Lady Sovereign, I had to ask about grime.
But BOB knew I wasn’t invested in hip-hop, and steered me in a different direction. “Grime is okay, but what you really want to check out is dubstep.” I ended up buying all sorts of recommended stuff, from Rephlex’s first Grime compilation featuring MarkOne, Plasticman, and Slaughter Mob (all of which is actually dubstep) to a peculiarly dark and relentless album of slow-motion breakbeats by Vex’d. Good stuff, but a bit esoteric for my tastes at a time when I wasn’t looking for even more interests to set me apart from the rest of the Chicago populace at large.
Fast forward to 2007. London’s Burial releases his second album, Untrue, and quickly becomes the poster child for dubstep. How ironic, considering his baffling anonymity! Yet, once you hear this release, it is completely understandable. Untrue is haunting and soothing and almost unbearably soulful, but before I can explain this, I have to establish that it sounds like house music that has been melted in a microwave. Except for the crisp rhythms produced by the drum tracks, the sounds all smear together, like warm musical chocolate morsels in a giant crispy cookie. I mean, I want to buy the vinyl and set it in the sun for an hour and then play it again and see if it sounds even better.
Ewww… That may be the worst string of sentences I have ever written. Blog writing is certainly liberating, compared to the self-editing one must constantly undergo when writing for someone else’s publication, but it also leads to the production of some really craptastic metaphors.
So back to the soulfulness… like house music, this has innumerable vocal snippets and repeated melodic catchphrases that heighten the emotional impact of the songs, but they are skillfully pitch-shifted so that they warble everything mournfully. Little half-sentiments like “Love you” and “It’s all because you lied” end up sounding like monumental truths or devastating accusations that cut right to the core, not a trait commonly found in dance music.
But the vocals aren’t what make Untrue so great, at least not exclusively. As a concentrated collage of moody sounds and feelings, it perfectly qualifies as a masterpiece of electronic urban soundscape, one that belongs beside the Future Sound of London’s Dead Cities and Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. More importantly, it feels undeniably authentic; though it sounds like nothing that came before it, its ancestry from soul to reggae to drum-and-bass is evident in every note.
All the haters out there will tell you that the hype garnered by this release marks the end of dubstep as an underground phenomenon and that Untrue can’t possibly be an adequate representative of the genre. I certainly won’t argue, because it’s not. But I can only attest to this because Burial’s success has single-handedly caused me to go back and revisit Skream, Kode 9, Distance, MRK1, and other contributors to the sound; isn’t that what any worthwhile genre spearhead is supposed to do? BOB would be so proud.
Welcome to Postmodern Accident. No more stalling. I now have 112 power stars in Super Mario Galaxy. Time to get cracking on the Top 10 of 2007.
Much has been said about the Field this year, and yet I’m not sure I have anything to add, though I’m definitely keen to reiterate. I have been following electronic music fairly closely for more than a decade and had never purchased anything on the Kompakt label before (Note to self: Why???), but upon reading that one track on this remarkable album (“Over the Ice”) was composed almost entirely of digital edits of a great song from Kate Bush (“Under Ice”), I had to check it out.
Thankfully, the Field is nothing like that. Despite an emphasis on thumping beats and pulsing repetition, it has much more in common with Fennesz and Ulrich Schnauss: beautiful waves of electronic ambience that simply wash over its audience. Is there such a thing as organic bedroom trance? Actually, the way it depends on rhythm owes a little bit to Everything Is Wrong-era Moby, a source of influence that more musicians should allow for themselves. I am guessing that the track “Mobilia” is, quite appropriately, named after him.
For the most part, I can’t recommend this album enough, and I keep going back to it. While many tracks are built upon bits and samples from recognizable pop tunes, most of them are vaguely familiar without actually being recognizable, giving the whole mix a warmth and an immediacy not usually common in the realm of minimal techno. But when the samples are identifiable, such as the ghostly use of the Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes for You” deep in the center of the album’s title track, I am inclined to believe that I am listening to the music of the future, when the 20th century is barely a memory and faint traces of it resurface only in dreams.
This fan-made video is fantastic. Stay with it at least until about 1:45 to hear the Field's sense of development.
[And to my friend Dario who has a super mega car... actually, I mean my friend Ned who has been bugging me to get Okie Dokie It's the Orb on Kompakt for some time now... I swear it's going to happen.]
I know you're all waiting with baited breath for my top 10, but I've been busy!! Sorry. Blame Michael and Mary and Dexter and Devon, dinner with Stacey and Leslie and Kevin, Marathon mewing, and most of all, Mario woohooing.
Here's a glimpse at what's coming up:
an electronic act with hypnotic, repetitive tunes made from digital edits of pop songs
a brash and infectious power trio who do for the Jesus and Mary Chain what the Jesus and Mary Chain did for the Velvet Underground
a psychedelic album recorded in two parts
and a special follow-up on what's going on with the band who had my favorite album of 2004.
Welcome to P-O-S-T 1-2-3-4-Fight! Then to the M-O-D-E Get ready for the site R-N-A-C-C-I-D Spelling songs are trite Just easy as E-N-T I'm posting out of spite
Fuck Justice.
To be fair, Justice Digitalism are excellent producers/remixers from France Germany who took didn’t take the indie world by storm this year because some Pitchdork or other decided to exalt trash them, and it’s not hard to see why. I was a big fan of “Waters of Nazareth” “Zdarlight” last year, as I’d finally crossed the final frontier into buying straight-up dance music and was buying all the digital 12” singles that I read about. The track had an unusual two-part structure to it, with a lo-fi straightforward tech-house intro overcome by a big chord progression of gothic church organs buzzing electronic pianos in the second half. And based on remixes of songs from Soulwax, Franz Ferdinand, and Death From Above 1979 Cut Copy, the Presets, and Test Icicles, the band seemed to know exactly how to fill the floor with a signature sound. But Though the full-length album released this past summer spent spends too much a lot of time simply aping paying tribute to DiscoveryHuman After All-era Daft Punk, albeit with a dose of synthetic disco strings and Jackson-like rhymes to somehow make da funk feel da funkier it actually betters their #1 influence's approach to robot rock, unveiling other creative ancestors in the process, such as the Cure and New Order.
With Despite a fashionista video (of creatively animated T-shirts spinning girls in bodysuits) for their sugary pop song post-punk hit “D.A.N.C.E.” “Pogo” as well as a featured spot in Cadillac commercials on video game soundtracks, both hipster girls in leg warmers tube tops and hipster boys with Motley Crüe-inspired mullets barely pubescent-looking ‘staches were entirely hardly impressed. Justice Digitalism ended up on everybody’s nobody's year-end top 10 lists while other relevant electro auteurs were subsequently overshadowed, not even my own, where it places at #11... but only because it was an incredible year for music.
Part of the reason why this list is moving forward so slowly is because I haven’t finalized it. Essentially I’m locking in certain choices as I go, swaying my own decisions according to whatever criteria I'm using at the time. As a result of my strangely organic method, my ranking is gradually taking on extra dimension, a second vector that curves back and forth while the numbers descend.
Arctic Monkeys and Maxïmo Park are both sophomores who got up and running in 2005. Both have released deeper, more complicated follow-ups to stellar debuts, yet both are just conventional enough that I really couldn’t consider either album for my top 10 this year. Still, I couldn’t stop listening to them, and both bands have quickly become favorites.
Arctic Monkeys briefly held the record for the fast-selling debut album in UK history, all the more impressive when considering they had considerable stateside success as well. Initially seen as everyman kids saved by guitars from the dole queue, they’ve unleashed one massive single after the next and quickly become a national institution, something akin to the 2000s version of Oasis. This year's Favourite Worst Nightmare builds upon their success while significantly widening their sound to include more minimal and rhythmic arrangements.
Maxïmo Park were late entries in the post-punk revivalist game, unveiled upon the public after the high profile influx of peers and competitors such as Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, the Futureheads, and Bloc Party. By that time, the public was tired, but critics gave the band well-deserved credit anyway. More unapologetically middle-class and pop-oriented than the Arctic Monkeys, their popularity has remained modest. They are the sort of indie college band with a huge student following that never suffers from overexposure or media hype. Their album Our Earthly Pleasures tries to tone down the hyper urgency on which they originally made their name, but it ends up a bit like caging a tiger.
Both bands are fronted by literate writers and play music that feels simultaneous retro and fresh—sculpted sounds dominated by razor sharp angular guitars. And yet the end result is entirely different. Alex Turner of the Monkeys has already ascended to deity status in the book of British songwriters, a working-class social commentator on par with Paul Weller and Damon Albarn in front of a brash and beloved band. If Arctic Monkeys are descendents from Oasis, derivative but fully-formed right out of the gate, then Maxïmo Park are early Radiohead—undeveloped but undeniable, with a white-hot future. Paul Smith is a somewhat demure guy who sings of Russian literature, unpacking books from boxes, and girls who play guitars (after all, anyone can play guitar), yet he’s a frantic, aggressive monster on stage, exhibiting passion and near-crazed intensity that make him impossible not to watch. Simply put, Maxïmo Park was possibly the best live act I saw last year, and anyone who attended a different show with me knows there was some extremely tough competition in the category.
So which album do I pick for #13? Whichever one I happen to be listening to at the moment. Which would you choose? For your deliberation, I give you the classic Clown-vs-Non-Clown video for the unstoppable “Fluorescent Adolescent” by Arctic Monkeys, up against a bootleg video of Maxïmo Park performing my favorite song from Our Earthly Pleasures, “The Unshockable.”
Welcome back to Postmodern Accident's Best of 2007 countdown. First, an explanation.
WHY 15?
Essentially when I went to assemble my list, I realized that I was using two sets of criteria to determine my favorite releases of the year. On the most fundamental level, I wanted my top 10 to be the works that impressed me the most. However, the reality is that the selections I picked weren't necessarily the albums I listened to (i.e. continuously appreciated) the most. Thus I offer this expanded list. I didn't want to simply list selections 11 to 15 as "honorable mentions," because they're certainly more substantial to me than that.
Despite its status as winner of the 2007 Mercury Music Prize, the debut record from Klaxons might be the closest thing to an "honorable mention" here. Obviously, I've always loved electronic punk music, which this record enhances with science fiction, mythology, apocalypse, Aleister Crowley, Thomas Pynchon, the occasional dance beat, a rave whistle, and a massive dose of pop thrill. It is a heady and breathless mix, produced by James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco. Pair this with the fact that these photogenic young guys come close in artistic spirit to the studious experimentalism of the Cure at their most aesthetic (pre-1983), and this should be my record of the year.
Yet after "Golden Skans" stopped popping up everywhere and the rush of "Atlantis to Interzone" died down, "new rave" never really took off as either a media catchphrase or a new subgenre of music, leaving behind a record of somewhat dirgey art rock that manages to blend a lot of disparate influences together irresistibly but stops just short of developing any single idea into the monster it's begging to become. As if to underline this, Klaxons' live show is trim and straightforward, a powerful set of hooky rock songs that unfortunately lacks the vitality and versatility occasionally on display here.
More than any other artist, Klaxons rank highly for me this year based on what they'll undoubtedly become, rather than what they're already doing. They have now gained an all-important confidence that will push them to develop all of these wonderful ideas even further, and with a band as creative as this one, there is no such thing as "too far." Expect a kaleidoscopic masterpiece in the Near Future... later in 2008. Until then, here's the wild video for "Magick":
...and Happy New Year. We interrupt our regularly-scheduled programming (namely the long-overdue account of my trip to Mexico, ::blush::) in order to bring you 15 musical reflexxions on the year that just passed.
Let’s face it: the last three Fall records were boring. I never liked the sorry excuse for a replacement band that Mark E. Smith assembled around him back in 2001—failed pub rockers and football hooligans who seemed to be in it for the wrong reasons and who complained about being in it the whole time they were doing it. Jim Watts struck me as whiny, Ed Blaney as dishonest, and Ben Pritchard as untalented. Thankfully, last minute addition Steve Trafford pulled out his best Steve Hanley impression and gave the band a fantastic, elastic bass-driven car commercial called “Blindness,” the closest thing to a legendary Fall track all decade by a band who used to turn out ten such masterpieces each year.
It’s no wonder that MES jumped at the chance to collaborate with German techno rebels Mouse on Mars. Though they’ve been releasing records nearly every other year since the early ‘90s, they’ve never really followed fashion, which is unique amongst electronic artists whose sounds depend on state-of-the-art production and equipment. More importantly, MoM have never quite sounded like they give a rats ass about rock, which makes their collaboration with the king of devolved, lo-fi rockabilly racket quite surprising.
The strength of Von Sudenfed’s album is that it sounds like neither of its parent bands, despite the fact that the Fall have tried a record in nearly every alternative style imaginable and Mouse on Mars have used vocalists before. Tromatic Reflexxions melds arrhythmic, bleepy music to MES’s space alien storytelling in such a way that the pairings seem almost arbitrary and incompatible, like two opposing musical forces crashing together in chaos and cacophony. Its success lies in the fact that neither element overcomes the other. The Fall have failed in the new millennium because MES hasn’t been able to find bandmates who are truly his peers; Von Sudenfed marks his first real artistic collaboration in a decade.
Thus, in honor of this album placing at #15 on my best of 2007 list, I am pleased to present the video for “Fledermaus Can’t Get It.” Admittedly, I have never been enthusiastic over drag queen routines and likely never will be, though here it is obvious that these men, whoever they might be, are in way over their heads. The beardy one with Sarah Michelle Gellar hair is fabulous, though he fares quite poorly (and hilariously) as the white-haired mop attempting to keep up with MES’s vocals. G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g. Enjoy.
