Tim's TOP 10 SONGS OF 2011

1. How To Dress Well - Suicide Dream 2 (Elite Gymnastics Baptism)

How To Dress Well's 'Orchestral Versions' EP Just Once produced at least a few gorgeous remixes, but none of them stuck with me as much as Elite Gymnastics' – themselves responsible for two of my favourite records of the year, Neu '92 & RUIN. The genius of EG's rework lies in the link it draws between HTDW's sparse, emotive take on r&b, and the similarly night bus atmospherics of UK dance music, particularly Jungle and UK Garage, transforming the original into an unlikely banger complete with piano-house stabs and breakbeats.

2. CSLSX - Keep On Shining

Even if chillwave was effectively pronounced dead sometime midway through last year – or if, in my opinion anyway, it was always just a misguided way of lumping together a few of the earliest visible proponents of a recent tendency in underground music towards retro-maniacal electronic pop re-appropriations – CSLSX are a pretty good example of how the micro-genre might conceivably mature. Maximalist in just about every respect, this mysterious Philadelphia group hit it out of the park with this impossibly breezy luxury-disco gem.

3. Magic Touch - Clubhouse
from I Can Feel The Heat 12" (100% Silk) 

For me 2011, as it seems like it was for much of the internet-underground, was the year I sorta discovered house music. 100% Silk put out such an indefatigable stream of game-changing releases that I had to make a conscious effort not to include too many of their tracks on this list in the interests of diversity. 'Clubhouse' is classicist house heavy on the analogue 4-4, outrageous synth stabs, and high-camp clipped vocal samples. Boomkat notes: “It's like being back in '93... Recommended!”

4. Greatest Hits - L Train Girl
from Girl Crazy EP (Maman Records)

Another great band that were disappointingly unproductive this year, Greatest Hits' 'L-Train Girl' channels the spirit of Scritti Politti and is an utterly gleeful, sugar-rushed piece of neo-new-pop.

5. Blawan - Getting Me Down
from Getting Me Down 12" (self-released)

Music this year seemed more impossible than ever to keep up with; no matter what corner of the internet you were living in, there were always a thousand other interesting things going on you couldn't keep tabs on. If this edit of a Brandy track is anything to go by it was also a really great year in UK bass music, which I unfortunately only heard in drips and drabs this year.

6. Real Estate - Out Of Tune
from Days (Domino)

Days is up there in my favourite albums of this year and 'Out Of Tune' really highlights what is so great about it: that lackadaisical guitar jangle, and just the right combination of effortless and evocative. Heavy summer-vibes indeed.

7. Octo Octa - I'm Trying
from Let Me See You 12" (100% Silk)

Another 100% Silk highlight from this year, 'I'm Trying' mines darker rave zones and is less overtly retro than much of the rest of the catalogue. Oh and it's based around a vocal sample from Amerie's 'One Thing'.

8. John Maus - Keep Pushing On
from We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (Ribbon Music)


We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves was one of the most distinctive and one of the best albums of the year. It's difficult to overstate how much I think a figure this uncompromising is needed in music right now, I mean, this is a guy who quotes Adorno when describing his own music: “authentic works are those that surrender themselves to the historical substance of their age without reservation and without the presumption of being superior to it”.

9. Teams - Mile High

Just another bleached-out, post-internet jammer from Sean Bowie in a year full of them. This one charts a path from hyperreal glam-funk to disco-bliss and back again.

10. Drake - Over My Dead Body
from Take Care (Young Money)

Such a clear highlight from Drake's actually pretty solid (despite its nearly 80 minute run-time) album Take Care, the strength of 'Over My Dead Body' lies in its unapologetic prettiness, that is before Drake comes in and ruins it (I mean, makes it even better?).

Max's TOP 10 SONGS OF 2011

1. Royal Headache - Never Again
from Royal Headache (R.I.P. Society/Goner)

Some records are great without making you want to be a part of them, and that's fine. It doesn't make them less great. But some are so exuberant and rich and alive-sounding that they make you want to sing along to every song at every show and be involved and there's something so special about records like that and what I'm saying is that Royal Headache's debut album is like that. There are so many great cuts from the album, but this opening track - Never Again - is extra frenetic and just a perfect introduction to my record of the year.

2. Total Control - One More Tonight
from Henge Beat (Iron Lung)


A couple of reviews of Total Control's Henge Beat have talked about the album's take on retrofuturism, and that approach is certainly one of the most interesting things about the album. Luckily, as well as being interesting, it's also full of great songs that reference enduring classics like Eno, Talking Heads and Joy Division. There's something so intriguing and also unsettling about this song's repeated refrain of "A burst of laughter / introduces your friends"; it's kind of genius.

3. John Maus - Believer
from We Must Become The Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (Ribbon/Upset The Rhythm)

There was nothing else this year (or any other year, really) that sounded like John Maus's cavernous space-synths & death metal vocals, and this closing track from his record is such an anthem.

4. Ford & Lopatin - Emergency Room
from Channel Pressure (Mexican Summer) 

It's such a pleasure to hear a band employ artificial textures so gleefully; everything about Channel Pressure sounds synthesised & mechanical. But even though Ford & Lopatin clearly have so much fun assembling their plastic beats, they never forget to write hooks and beats that stick in your brain, and that's just what Emergency Room does.

5. Kurt Vile - On Tour
from Smoke Ring For My Halo (Matador)

Smoke Ring For My Halo is the sweetest & gentlest release by Kurt Vile so far. Even so, he fits in some terrifically macabre imagery on songs like On Tour, my favourite from the record: "On tour. Lord of the Flies."

6. Ghost Wave - Hippy
from Ghost Wave EP (Arch Hill)

I will never not love New Zealand bands who play Flying Nun-inspired garage punk. All of Ghost Wave's debut EP was great, actually, but Hippy's minimalist guitars and brilliantly unexpected bridge refrain is basically as good as it gets.

7. Panda Bear - Last Night At The Jetty
from Tomboy (Paw Tracks)

Tomboy might not have captured the zeitgeist the way Panda Bear's debut did, but if you're asking me (and I guess you could say that you are, in a way) Last Night At The Jetty is as good a song as he's ever written: sweet, wistful and sad.

8. Twerps - Dreamin'
from Twerps (Chapter/Underwater Peoples)

80s jangle-pop might be the last aesthetic that can possibly be mined from that exhaustively revised decade, but it's kinda surprising that it's taken this long to happen: it's such a listenable sound. On their debut album, Twerps ditched the scrappy milkbar punk that they'd been messing with to write some extra grown-up songs with strings and everything; super impressive stuff.

9. Real Estate - It's Real
from Days (Domino)

It's just so easy to love Days, the second album from Real Estate. It's catchy and melodic and totally sincere, and this song from it features expertly deployed whoa-ohs; everything's there, really.

10. Guerre - Millennium Blues
from Darker My Love (Yes Please)

You could say that 2011 was "the year of new R&B", or whatever, but as with so many microgenres, it only really happened at all because a handful of talented practitioners. Guerre is one of the best.

NUCLEAR CITY

Check out the hilarious video for Estate's new jam, Nuclear City - the Minneapolis bros' dreamy electro soundtracks amusingly outdated retro-futurism (newspaper headline: "COMPUTER MURDER SUSPECT ESCAPES!") in this video from Pat Vamos, who draws on clips from "Paper Man, The Failing of Raymond, Incident at Channel Z, Brain Waves, U.F.O., Bionic Showdown, C.O.N.D.O.R., some Japanese documentary on body pulses & more". I say that like I've ever heard of any of those! Anyway, it's a fantastic video. Great job Pat Vamos!

RICHARD'S TOP 20 SONGS OF 2009

Gotta say I've found it kind of hard to remember/figure out which "songs" are my absolute favs this year because a) THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY GOOD BANDS COMING OUT WITH ONLY JUST A HANDFUL OF EUPHORIC AND INVENTIVE SOUNDS and b) most of them are submerged inside 15 minute long tapes or LPs and thus harder to post on a blog. But whatever, I've had to go with those anyway to "stay true to myself". I think I've lost track of heaps of stuff this year from working craploads and putting on shows in a small English city; I either couldn't remember if these ones were from this year or couldn't fit them on to the list:

Miami Horror - Don't Be With Her
Smith Westerns - Tonight
Black Joker - Watch Out! Part One
Dum Dum Girls - Catholicked
Toro Y Moi - Blessa
Truman Peyote - Sara Delta
Cow's Lips - A Complete Diagram

BUT YEAH, totally loved these next twenty in particular:



1. James Ferraro - Chrome Wave Arena
from Edward Flex Presents: Do You Believe In Hawaii?

I was enjoying all this Skatersy stuff earlier in the year but it wasn't until seeing James Ferraro and Spencer Clark each play solo in Newcastle's ridiculously mystical Mordern Tower that it really clicked. California Games dreams and VHS transcendence glow out of the Zangiefy roars and carbon gnarls, peyote grandeur and a vision that for me is more coherent and instantly relatable to both my own childhood (brings back 6am Saturday morning cartoon sessions, joystick obsessions, KFC towering over teen streets like a "dark tower" indeed) and current aesthetic interests.

[Last.FM / buy]

2. Najavo Bixby - Moonlighting
unreleased

Kind of impossibly ecstatic and I'm not sure how Judd Hower has put this one together, alls I know is every time me and my pals have had two to three beverages and are about to "head out" I'm always reaching for this one. And the second half party drop; sheesh.

[MySpace]

3. Taterbug - Chemical Vacation
from The Savage Young Taterbug CS

Tucked in the greasy folds of these super weird and trebely textures are some of the strongest feelings I can remember from this year and it's great how they're only half disguised under DIY gunk, "boys can be sirens too" for sure, and the hypnotic love on the scrawny wrists is creepy and sincere.

[MySpace / Buy]

4. Real Estate - Atlantic City
from Real Estate / Atlantic City Expressway

There are a handful of versions of it and I'm almost tempted to post the Parasails version (the first version?) but this lush indie pop jam is so homely and warm and at once pastoral and beachy. Totally addictive and subtly inventive in an enormous canon of pop greatness.

[MySpace / buy]

5. Matrix Metals - Flamingo Breeze
from Flamingo Breeze

It's just so weird, the neo-primitive retro futuristic FUN that oozes out of these claps and plastic beats. Taps into the 80s technology commercial feel and past ideas of the future that we're in right now with ridiculous glee and my absolute favourite sort of aesthetics. Just sounds real good.

[Last.FM / buy]

6. Speculator - We Don't Give A Shit
unreleased

THOSE BLOWN OUT DRUMS! And Jesus & Mary chain rips all converted into Hal Hartley-style emotion real sweet and broken.

[MySpace]

7. Ducktails - Landrunner
from Landscapes

It doesn't get any more 90s than this; those drums are pretty daggy (SO GOOD) and the somewhat uncharacteristic washy fuzz on this one makes it stand out from the other tropical greatness. Bodacious linear repetitions.

[MySpace / buy]

8. Dunebuggy - French Playground
from Dunebuggy CS

Trust Ryan Garbes and Charles "Taterbug" Free to blow their mutant pop/punk in chunks like these. Can't stop obsessing over the defunct Americana and genius John Candy/family film/summer camp feelings. Somehow it drips w/ "free highs" rather than unease, interesting amongst all the wide-eyed fuzz.

[MySpace / buy]

9. Eat Skull - Heaven's Stranger
from Wild & Inside

Way different from anything on the ultra wasted, scuzzy and wild eyed masterpiece Sick To Death but I guess this is what happens in winter when guys like these sit down for a bit and get a bit escapist. Just real beautiful and moving ending-y/driving into the sunset-y but still gritty as.

[MySpace / buy]

10. Fluffy Lumbers - Harry Dolland's
unreleased

Perfect bittersweet teen fuzz pop w/ excitingly familar chord progressions and melody fueled distortion.

[MySpace]

11. Weed Diamond - Walk Away
from Demo

Pretty straight forward lo-fi jam but somehow amazingly catchy too me; it's got those upbeat tropical guitars at a pretty chill level with something mega apt about the name Weed Diamond and the prismic colours and light that comes out of this.

[MySpace

12. Black Dice - Bob
from Chocolate Cherry

In some ways a minor blip on their larger radar but it's just total chillage running down in their typical sludge, stretched out melodies, palm tree imagery all melted and stuff, just really into that feeling eh.

[MySpace / buy]

13. Peaking Lights - Silver Tongues, Soft Whispers
from Imaginary Falcons CS

So circular and peaced out, helped by the mythos of where these guys live (in some Jodorowsky-style valley/forest) somewhere but still straight up analog beauty.

[MySpace / buy]

14. Holy Shit - Rough & Tumble
unreleased

Is this from this year? A total banger either way; schhomp! Drugged out and happy go lucky, tapping into some mean Weekend At Bernies feelings.

[MySpace]

15. Times New Viking - No Time, No Hope
from Born Again Revisited

We all know these guys but they're seriously getting better and better and way more New Zealandy as well; dig on their cover of "Anything Could Happen" and the way the bung organs chime on this one in that summer winds refrain at the very start, pulling off relevant "world views" in a shitstorm of irony that is semi-eschewed by amazing song ability.

[MySpace / buy]

16. Wet Hair - Cult Electric Annihilation
from Psychic Chasms

There's been a few classics from these guys this year especially Ryan Garbe's solo Born Under The Sun tape but this gem is super positive and apocalyptic at once, death party styles, super jammy and loose but somehow pushed forward in that way they do, neo-prog or something right? Totally boss.

[MySpace / buy]

17. Kurt Vile - Freeway
from Constant Hitmaker

I wouldn't hesitate in saying that Kurt Vile is the best "songwriter" to come to the foreground of 2009 and it's amazing to know he's getting better at putting lyrics/chords/feelin's together increasingly cohesively. Nice and conventional folk/pop/indie rock but drenched in spring air and reverb with long hair flailin'.

[MySpace / buy]

18. The Mantles - Don't Lie
from The Mantles

Crazily intricate jangles that grow and grow but burgeon nonstop and look back at our New Zealand favourites. Crazy good pop song, just enough fuzz, slightly obvious chord progression which is EXACTLY what you wanna hear and they just roll with it.

[MySpace / buy]

19. Lotus Plaza - Red Oak Way
from The Floodlight Collective

This real lucid and delay-heavy style is a favourite of mine and I think this is partially because of how amazingly synesthestetic the cover art goes with the general sound is (love the light leakage in a big way cf. my Flickr). So dreamy and with massive colour blur all over.

[Last FM / buy]

20. Blues Control - On Through The Night
from Local Flavor

People say they're somewhat sporadic in their recorded output but these krauted out rhythms matched with both New Agey/Equinochial textures are just totally delicious, submerge more than ever until ten minutes in where the liquid drums come out. Such a beguiling mix of "things" in this one, like their wider oeuvre.

[MySpace / buy]

1982 SUMMER SEASON

The Parasails - Skylife 3

The Parasails - Skylife 2 [via RCRD LBL]

So Matthew Mondanile continues to release even more amazing music this year under this new pseudonym The Parasails. Like his work in Ducktails, Real Estate, Predator Vision and Dreams in Mirror Field, the Skylife LP is super chill, full of the best vibes and retains his uncanny ability in creating the most intensely visual and vivid evocations with sound. Somehow Mondanile's warbly guitar and hypnotic synth loops look and sound like gently curling wind swirls, memories where you felt genuinely happy, and scenery like this:

- Shea Bermingham
[The Parasails/Ducktails Myspace]
[Buy Skylife from El Tule]

FAKE BLUES

Real Estate - Atlantic City
Wowwwww, Matt Mondanile's other band transfers Ducktails' homeliness with a slight and distant surf jangle, full of smiley reverb and road trip echos (of course). It's easy to tell this Real Estate track is written by Mondanile, and joined by the lushly imagined terrains of Martin Courtney, Alex Bleeker and Etienne Duguay, there's this different liquidy twee feel in all these guitars and summer instant gratifications and a sort of muted ecstasy, all swimming trunks and lemonade and all that. They've got a nice paradox going on in their name being Real Estate (with all their Magic Eye record covers and sonic dreaminess) because even if these pop songs are cast in a certainly solid type of nostalgia, it feels lifted straight from the imagination; those 'real imaginary places' that Mr Mondanile talks about are in full force.



[Real Estate MySpace]

[Buy Atlantic City Expressway from Underwater Peoples]