Bobojojo Sidebar: I don't like doing top songs/albums. Here's why: When it comes to me having a favorite album/song at any point in life, its usually because I have a personal connection that can give me a bias towards certain albums. Case n' point: Kanye West's first 3 albums came out right when I was in college myself. It hit so close to home to where I even graduated the same time "Graduation" came out. So for me to say "Graduation" was better [...]
No, I can't believe it either folks. We've made it, Ma. Top of the world. It is Christmas eve 2010 and I have finished this godforsaken list after about a year and three months that felt like a decade in themselves, so eventful was my concurrent private life. It was a harsh mistress at times, this list. Teasing and goading me every time I logged into blogger (particularly around the time of my multiple abortive Of Montreal attempts - you should just see some of the embarrassing 4am poetry I bashed [...]
#2 Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, are you the Destroyer? Vicissitudes boxed Kevin Barnes' head, back in the day. He recorded that shit, too. Fuck me, it took a long time to get to this point and I still don't really know what to write about this delirious, unleashed, fucking hot-mess of an album. I swear to God, [...]
A lo ng time ago, in a post about Animal Collective, I said I wasn't a big man for lyrics. What I really should have said was that I am a slow learner. Lyrics come slowly to me, they have to percolate through my life experience first. Albums three and album two in my list are cases in point. I can't imagine any version of me younger than 22 or 23 years old appreciating them properly. Not that people under the age of 23 can't critically evaluate stuff . It's just that I was at least that [...]
#4 Stars of the Lid - The tired sounds of Stars of the Lid (2001) Bonus points duly awarded for sublimely beautiful album art. And so, once again, the compost heap is faced with that question that has oft perplex'd many a music journalist - how the fuck do you write about ambient music without sounding like a big purple knob (that is, if big purple knobs could write)? I have tried and failed [...]
I think it must be nearly a year since this list began. Hardcore. Shit's percolated and settled since then, like sedimentary rock yo. Worthy albums which were included in the prototype list have since popped into my head. I think I mentioned this problem in an earlier post and said I would retroactively insert them into the list in the spirit of no brother gets left behind. So here goes, I will write a little bit about each album and suggest a suitable position for it on the list. By the [...]
#4 Stars of the Lid - The tired sounds of Stars of the Lid (2001) Bonus points duly awarded for heartbreakingly beautiful album art. And so, once again, the compost heap is faced with that question that has oft perplex'd many a music journalist - how the fuck do you write about ambient music without sounding like a big purple knob (that is, if big purple knobs could speak)? I have tried and failed [...]
First, The 'Heap is back on Hype Machine . "Good Times!" as that annoying beardy channel 4 bloke, obsessed with 80s pop cultural flotsam, might say in a blend of chummy Cornish patter conducive to smashed faces. Because they've welcomed me back, I'll have to keep a few MP3s ticking over freshly now, because it seems that the Hype Machine bot can automatically de-list a blog if it is inactive for a few weeks. And God forbid, I'd hate to lose any of that locust-like onslaught of North Americans who rattle through these pages on a daily basis, to [...]
First, The 'Heap is back on Hype Machine . "Good Times!" as that annoying beardy channel 4 bloke, obsessed with 80s pop cultural flotsam, might say in a blend of chummy Cornish patter conducive to smashed faces. Because they've welcomed me back, I'll have to keep a few MP3s ticking over freshly now, because it seems that the Hype Machine bot can automatically de-list a blog if it is inactive for a few weeks. And God forbid, I'd hate to lose any of that locust-like onslaught of North Americans who rattle through these pages on a daily basis, to [...]
#6 The Field - From Here we go Sublime (2007) repetitive emo techno for the win I was the only person awake/alive during the quiet hours of one of those skuzzy bank holiday house parties (you know, the ones that end only when the remaining nugget of ill-looking but chirpy NCAD students, viewed sideways across a destroyed green city of Tuborg cans and smelly carpet, announce that they are decamping to the [...]
Here we are again gang. Two and a half months later and 7 albums to go. I'm surprisingly glad I shelved this list for a while, and waited until now - not that I did it on purpose or anything. The interlude, and the distended nature of the whole affair, gave me pause for thought. My actual top ten is not going to look remotely like the top ten I might have written around December when all those other lists were being written. The illusionary importance of a lot of artists/groups held sway over me back then as I was [...]
Woohoo only eight albums to go right? Not quite. Accumulated notes now tell me that more than eight albums remain to be slotted into this c*nt of a thing, which is turning into the most indeterminable c*nt of a thing since Jarndyce became legally involved with Jarndyce or the Wayans brothers started making films with the word Movie in the title. I've weighed up my options and I've decided to do justice to the overlooked albums by retrospectively jimmying them back into the list at the appropriate points and using decimals to indicate their positions (e.g. number 14.5). What's that [...]
#10 Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion (2009) Abstract In spite of much 'blog chat' about the psychotropic effects of listening to the music of Animal Collective, there is a paucity of scientific evidence in the literature to support these claims. The present study aimed to assess whether there is a link between controlled exposure to Animal Collective's 'Merriweather Post Pavillion' album and subjects' performance on a variety of standardised measures of mind-expansion - which included popular children's toy etch-a-sketch, [...]
Gnnnnggggg.....what's this? This strange whistling...is it my brain or the kitchen appliances? Energy wavering....clocks running backwards...vomitous globes of ectoplasmic energy slowly cannibalising and regurgitating themselves outside my bedroom window...what the fuck? It can't be...can it? It is. Gnwwwiiip...I'm inside a rip in the space time continuum. OK Good. I was hoping for this. Now that the rules of time and space are getting diddled silly, I can fuck a few Animal Collective related albums into one position without explaining myself. [...]
This albums of the decade list is a killer, a world of pain. I'm a fucking husk. But, ya know what fans? I can still beat this fucker. I'm holding on. And I gotta say, I wouldn't be here without my livestrong rubber bracelet and your continued support. Really. I mean that. Ever since my powerhouse lists THAT FUCKIN OWNED THE YEARS IN MUSIC 2007 AND 2008 you guys have consistently come out expecting a big effort from me, needing me to FUCKIN DELIVER. C'MAWWWN!!!! That's it. I can feel it. YAAAHHH!!! It's that hunger , that electricity, that [...]
#12 The Microphones - Glow, Pt.2 (2001) I never really thought about the weird juxtaposition of flora and fauna on the cover of this album until tonight. Like okay, it's an African elephant putting out a fire. Yet, going on the looks of things, and songwriter Phil Elvrum's origins, it's chilling in a pine forest in America's Pacific Northwest. Let's discuss the significance of this. Surely wot we have here is a privileged North American songwriter approximating an African animal for his album art? Fucking culturally [...]
Oh lord. Oh lordy lord. January 31st, and less than halfway through this baleful undertaking. Cripes. A change of tack might be necessary at this juncture. I'm going to return to my usual dribblings about this, that, and whatnot, during the coming weeks and only return to this list (which has a life of its own and thinks it owns my blog now) when it calls out to me. In the meantime, here's a quickie - unlucky number 13. #13 Aphex Twin - Drukqs (2001) [...]
Times New Viking - Rip it Off (2008) "What the fuck IS this shite?" "Is the car radio broken?" "Why can't you go on itunes and download albums at 320bps you scabby bollocks?" When 'Rip it off' came out a couple of years ago (and when I was somehow a better writer, it seems) I decided that Teen Drama was my third favourite song of the year. I also decided that 'Rip it off' [...]
#15 Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump This choice is a bit Proustian. I first heard 'The Sophtware Slump' when I was 19 and living in Canada. Nowadays, its bashed up, pretty (and sometimes ridiculous) songs are so tangled up with personal memories of wheatfields, nodding donkeys, mega-gulp slurpies, bongs and mosquitos that when I listen to the album I find it impossible to separate my achey memories of that time and place from my emotional response to it - an emulsified state [...]
#16 Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (2008) I am always fascinated by the way in which music is disseminated by critics and by how powerful an influence their words can have over a certain type of music consumer. Lately, in turn, I've wondered just what intelligent bands like Vampire Weekend make of the eddying eruptions of pseudo-profound critical shitspeak which cling to their reputations like trails of sour gas? I mean it must be tough to record an [...]
Smart And Angry
Asleep on the compost heap
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