2011 was an interesting year for me. It was my first year in full-time employment working as a journalist at a newspaper. It had its ups, and it had its downs. And although I spent a hell of a lot less time listening to music (used to be able to do it while working, but can’t anymore now I spend half my life on the phone), a few great things happened. Right at the tail end of 2010 I went to Stereosonic and saw one of my idols, Ricardo Villalobos. But that was overshadowed by Optimo giving friends and I a bottle of vodka poured into a water bottle because we were the ONLY PEOPLE watching the gig. Once they knew I knew who they were, it was awesome. Amanda Palmer, of the Dresdon Dolls, performed at the Fringe and I spent a week pleading for a Radiohead song on Twitter. She complied at the free Ninja gig she did afterwards, but i missed the beginning when she was asking if the guy who had been harassing her was there. I was outside smoking… So I learnt my lesson and quit smoking. Seeing the Flaming Lips at the end of the year was also a brilliant experience, and them playing two Pink Floyd songs made it even more memorable.

Anyhow, onto the recordings I loved during 2011. In no real order, mind you, but the last one really does stand apart from the others, so I guess I’ll call it my number one.

Sandwell District – Feed-Forward.

Pure, deep, dark techno of the purest sense. The guys behind this have developed an anonymous, collective aesthetic to their releases that was capped by the vinyl version of Feed-Forward and the slightly different CD version, that pulled together different mixes of the same tracks.

What is known as techno in Australia is far removed from the actuality that is played in clubs around the world. This gave me a taste of what it is like. As a result? I’m planning to go to Berlin, somehow, and experience this for real.

BNJMN – Plastic Word

If Sandwell District is deep, dark techno, BNJMN produces light, airy techno. Its like an entire range of sound frequencies have been unused for years, and BNJMN nails it in the opening seconds of the opening track. How different does this sound to stereotypical techno? There’s a midrange there that is just irresistible. And the whole album continues in the same vein.

Andy Stott – Passed Me By / We Stay Together

And this couldn’t be more different to the sound pushed by BNJMN. Until this pair of EPs, Andy Stott was a very good dub techno artist. But this blew it all out of the water. It’s techno, but after years of the degrading to a point that everything is covered in static, and the record player is only able to play it at 33rpm rather than 45rpm. And it’s playing in the room next to you, so you can’t QUITE hear what is going on, but you know it’s good. It’s slow, dark, and captivating.

Zomby – Dedication

Think you know what dubstep is? If you do, you’ve heard of Zomby, and this brilliant album doesn’t need an introduction. One of the best releasing one of the greatest albums the scene has produced. If you haven’t heard of Zomby, you know nothing, and you Skrillex and that other shit you call “dubstep” need to listen to this and just STOP RELEASING THAT CRAP /rant over.

Zomby, from what on first appears to be short fragments of ideas, has constructed an emotional, web of sounds that pull you in further until any memory of a ridiculous bass drop is all but forgotten.

The Field – Looping State of Mind

As long as there’s a new The Field album, it will appear in my best-of list. Apparently. Axel Willner’s first, From Here We Go Sublime is one of my favorite albums of all time. The second, Yesterday and Today, was in my Top 10 of 2009. And this is better than the last one, so it has to be here. Short loops of unknown songs are taken and instruments added on top to create the most beautiful, hypnotic music you have ever heard.

Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact

Not as “tracky” as the last, Saint Dymphna, which remains one of my favourite recordings ever released. Eye Contact is a little different, and could be seen as a step backwards to their earlier jammy records, but have kept the clean recordings. Which makes it possibly better if you have an interest in longer jams rather than a 3-minutes pop song. Is this BETTER than Dymphna? No, simply because it’s different. Eye Contact is just as good as it though.

Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

“Noise” music has been around for quite a while. Some friends have told me the music I listen to is”just noise”, which is a crap, misinformed opinion, like saying a Picasso “is just paint on a canvas”. This recording, by prolific noise artist Tim Hecker, may appear to be at times nothing but a wall of static…until you actually LISTEN, and it becomes sublime, emotional, cathartic, and simply stunning.

The Weeknd – House of Balloons

An indie hip-hop mix tape, released for free by a complete unknown…that exploded into one of the most known and most important releases of the year. Two free followups have been released since, creating a brilliant trilogy that defined much of the music of 2011. At times dark and bleak, other times filthy, showing the seedy underbelly of sexuality, and at other times beautiful. It’s amazing to think this was put together by someone in their bedroom on a laptop. Who also happens to have one of the best voices you have ever heard. Get it free here.

Jay-Z and Kanye West – Watch the Throne

Yes, I have included a rap album. This will surprise some people. I wasn’t going to include this originally, but then decided that I should include the album that’s provided so much fun throughout last year. Otis and No Church in the Wild are just brilliant. There are some tracks that I don’t really remember, or didn’t seem that interesting. Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy turned me around to actually realise there is rap I like, and this is even better. I’ve spent more times dancing around like an idiot to Otis than anything else…ever. So I have to include it.

Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness

Initially it was a toss-up between this and Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost, coz they are both fantastic. But this soundtracked a very important week for me personally this year, so for my own selfish nostalgic sake, it gets the nod. On the surface, Los Campesinos! write happy, big-band indie similar to Architecture in Helsinki, Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire. But there is a slight darkness to it that (especially lyrically), for me at least, that gives it more of an emotional resonance. And although it’s called Hello Sadness, it is still a happy record made by a group of people quite clearly enjoying themselves.

Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

This is my album of the year. But it puts me in a difficult position, because it is very hard to write about how it sounds. It is made from loops taken from DVDs of old commercials from the 1980s that the artist (Daniel Lopatin) bought online. But you would never be able to tell what it was from if you didn’t know. He has somehow melded it all together into an ambient soundscape that at times turns into walls of static and other times resembles synth-drones of his earlier work. But like the Tim Hecker record I mentioned earlier, it is emotional and overwhelming, at times funny, and at times sad. It is much more than the sum of its parts. I know I haven’t sold it well, but I don’t really need to other than to say this: If you have any interest in music as an art form, listen to this. You won’t be disappointed. I promise.

Apocalypse Now Redux

It’s extremely long. There’re bits that don’t make sense. Marlon Brando is fat. Laurence Fishburne is very young. Martin Sheen was drunk. Dennis Hopper was awesome. Robert Duval says one of the most famous lines in cinema history. Harrison Ford plays a bit part. It was all made with no help with CGI. The helicopters were on loan and occasionally had to go back to a war. The music is amazing. They do nothing most of the film but cruise up a river. It almost didn’t get made. It’s based on a Joseph Conrad short story. And somehow: it is not only the greatest war movie ever made, I would nominate it as the greatest movie ever made.

Into the Wild

I watched this film for the first time with my mother. We were both amazingly engrossed in every second. The cinematography is stunning, the music is stunning, I feel in love with the 10 minutes Kirsten Stewart was on screen (then out of love thanks to every other film she’s done) and the ending is incredible. I loved everything about this film. It finished and I turned to mum, and she said “I can’t understand why anyone would do something like that”. I said “I can completely understand doing something like that”. Yet we both loved the film. It shows how people take their own experiences and relate themselves into movies. Her, as a mother, was watching the story of how a young person decides to completely uproot themselves, and disappear. She was imagining how she would feel as a mother if her son did that. I, being 20 at the time, could completely understand the appeal of disappearing. I can watch Into the WIld over and over again, and had a completely different experience with it (but that’s another story) some years later. Either way, it is stunning.

Clerks

I agonised over this film. I ALMOST included Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels instead. But the films of Kevin Smith defined a large part of my life. Are any of them brilliant? No. They are all flawed. Clerks is not perfect. But I wouldn’t change a single frame. The first time I watched it, I wasn’t 100% on it. I didn’t understand the words that were intercut throughout it. But this is one of the formative films for me that gave me a huge interest in the more experimental, low-budget, indie cinema that I can’t get enough of. After the events of this no-budget little film, the characters of the Quick Stop fracture into the strange Smith-ian world, with only Jay and Silent Bob keeping it together. But then it all comes gloriously back to Clerks 2. It’s very flawed. It has bad moments. But it’s worth it for the ending. I grew up with these characters, and I was very sad to see them go.

Fight Club

Someone once said to me Fight Club is like a bad haircut. Awesome at the time, but when you look back on it, you cringe. I disagree. For reasons similar, I didn’t put Donnie Darko and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on my list, despite many expecting me to. But watch Fight Club again, and it remains as one of the best (if not THE best) film of the 1990s). Norton (one of the best actors of his generation) is brilliant, Pitt is brilliant (and inspiring while at the gym…), but the film goes to Fincher. Everything he touched since Se7en has been stunning. And this is his high watermark.

Taxi Driver

This is one of those films that I can’t say exactly why I like it so much. It’s slow, not much happens until the end. But it is the high-water mark of the Robert De Niro/ Martin Scorsese collaborations. De Niro puts in the (arguably) performance of his career, and a 12 year old Jodie Foster almost matches him. The tension in this film is amazing, you can just sense how crazy he is slowly becoming. I love it, and I think everyone else who has seen it loves it as well. Haven’t watched it? Do yourself a favour.

Almost Famous

Yes, I know I’m not the first to put it on my list. I fell in love with Kate Hudson completely. I’m not sure, but I’d like to think my deep love for this film rubbed off on to Dave and Sarah.

Across the Universe

Again, a repeat. Hey, we’re all friends, right? Surely that means we have things in common. This was very much a “had-to-have-been-there” experience. I had always known the Beatles, wasn’t a huge fan. This film changed me.

Requiem for a Dream

More-so than almost anything about my friendship with my compatriot Drew, strangely, our love for Darren Aronofsky is the thing we have in common. No arguments, we both absolutely 100% love his films. Drew picked The Fountain, and I think we are perhaps two of the only people that are mesmorised by it. But it’s not my favorite. I could easily have put The Wrestler or Black Swan on here. I adore Pi as well, but anyone who has seen it…would never put it in a Top 10. Requiem for a Dream was chosen by me because it truly devastates me. Ever time. I know what happens, but I can’t look away. Jarred Leto and Jennifer Connolly are truly brilliant. If the was just their story, it would be stunning. But throw in the mother (the brilliant Ellen Burstyn, deserving of her Oscar nomination), and the movie goes to another level. Simple as that.

Singin’ in the Rain

This is a curve ball that I don’t think anyone was expecting. But those that know me know that I have a love above film, and that’s music. And not only is this the first musical I remember, it’s the first film, period. We had an old VHS recording that my mother loved to put on all the time. I remember all the songs and half the lines off the top of my head. I still have a soft spot for musicals (the second one I remember is the Sound of Music). I even saw the live production of Singin’ in the Rain when it was at the Adelaide Festival Centre when I was about 12. It was brilliant, as is the movie. The song Make ‘Em Laugh is still one of my favourite scenes ever.

Lost in Translation

I hired Lost in Translation expecting a Bill Murray comedy. It has Bill Murray in it, and it’s funny in parts, but it’s not a normal film, not by a long shot. This is the one film I could put on, no matter how I was feeling, and it would take me to another place. I don’t know why. It’s fitting that I began and ended with a Coppola film (Francis Ford and his daughter Sofia for those playing at home). I think I would always argue Apocalypse Now is the greatest film ever made. This is my favourite.

What’s the target here? The aim, was the United States, and transparency. Sure, we all agree that there are certain elements to the way governments operate that need to be secret. But but not everything. At it seems that the answer is to burn the person who allowed the publication of the leaks. That’s right, chop the head off the guy who invented the guillotine. It will not stop its future use.

The myth of the Hydra is known to almost everyone; chop off the head and two will replace it. WikiLeaks is not a big organisation at the moment. It doesn’t need to be. All it needs is a couple of servers in a number of countries and a handful of people with access to them. But soon, it will grow. It will become one of the leading websites to go to if you are after real, hard information. Imprisoning Julian Assange is the same as chopping off the head of the Hydra. While there may not be someone as charismatic and identifiable as Assange to take his place, there will be a line of thousands of people ready to help take up the cause.

The charges that have been levelled at him may be true. That’s for a fair court to decide. But there’s no way way a fair trial will happen. The charges were dismissed earlier this year. How are they going to hold up a second time? He is (rightly) fearful of being extradited to the USA. Who knows what may happen to the case once he gets there.

The website, WikiLeaks, is being criticised by a great deal of people for endangering lives. But as many have said…what bullshit. Nothing was revealed from the cables that wasn’t already known. What was said may have been phrased a little more colloquially than normal, but it was all well known. There isn’t a diplomat from a country other than the States this week who read a newspaper and thought “thank god they didn’t publish what I said”. There’s no secret here. Everyone does not trust anyone.

And who would blame them? Focussing on Assange is pointless in the end. You cannot convict a martyr. Wikileaks provide a service that the entire “democratised” world has always said we have had: freedom of speech. And the ability for any individual to say: “I’ve had enough. This is what’s REALLY going on” is finally available. Where is the point of stopping the guy who founded a website? This will not go away, similar to how the world’s governments had to learn to deal with television differently after the Vietnam War.

The Internet changes everything. No longer do protest movements need a base. Yet the Internet gave them one, in the cyber cloud.

This new column appears thanks to one of our writer’s drunkenly seeing Frost/Nixon and deciding that commenting on political goings-on are important. A Gen Y opinion is just as important as anyone’s, if not more-so due to us being future “important people”. We will endeavor to comment every week but apologies in advance if it disintegrates.

Here we go, the inaugural edition of The X Edition, in which one of our writers looks at the political developments of the preceding week. We would like to give a slight forward to these opinions; they are half drunken and not necessarily a fully formed argument. Instead, they are a couple of sentences written in the heat of the moment, that hopefully show a little bit more of the truth behind what people think, but don’t normally articulate. This is not definitive, just ideas. It will be Australian-based,but all important issues will be considered.

And for this first edition, the proceeding week is not a constriction; all is fair game.

David Campbell: what has been done to him is unforgivable. In the sense that: who the fuck cares? All the revelations do not infringe on his abilities/priorities as a politician. What he does in his personal life has no standing on his ability as a minister. It was only thanks to a stupid journalist who thought it would be a good idea to reveal this information. The fact that he was using a ministerial car is irrelevant (guess what, government employees ACTUALLY PAY for their cars). Yes, he may have been lying to his wife and family. Yes, it’s a big story now that it’s out.

But.

It has no standing or impact on the NSW Labor Government. And it’s only through the media that it HAS become an issue. (The article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the legal problems faced by the Seven journalist that broadcasted these discoveries is just as morally questionable, by the way).

Tony Abbott: what a week. No matter what people say about Abbott trying to come clean about the way in which politicians operate, his gaff on the 7:30 Report is HUGELY significant. They’ve tried to play it down (and have arguably been successful), but the impact on the Liberal Party will be felt for a number of weeks. The way it develops from here will be interesting (at this point, polls are hugely significant).

Mining Super Tax: The Liberal Party could not have asked for such a platter served to them… The term “tax” is a gift, and any closer readings into the proposal by Rudd and co. reveals that it is NOT a tax. As soon as they mining revenue drops to a certain level, the government will be PAYING the mining companies. In the end, it encourages risky ventures. People need to read into things more, the media will make it seem like the end of the world for the general public if possible because it sells newspapers.

Oil spill: issue, then disappears. The impact of this spill can NOT be underestimated. What is it now, the second biggest spill in history? Yet it’s no longer an “issue”? Pay attention people.

Accountability: at what point are world leaders accountable for their failures? Yes, it seems like a purely theoretical question. But it’s not. The Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009 showed exactly that world leaders are not able to do what they are elected to do. They are meant to change the world. They are meant to make the world a better place to live in. They are meant to represent public opinion. Regardless of whether or not you think climate change is real (ed: if you don’t, fuck off. Seriously. We don’t want you reading),  you can NOT deny that we should be doing things better.

World leaders can be held accountable for crimes against humanity. At what point point is this a realistic possibility? After the world is ruined beyond all possible repair? What about now?

WHY CAN’T WORLD LEADERS BE CHARGED WITH CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY NOW?

Expect The Second Edition this time next week. And please, as always, let us know what you think.

Admittedly, my favorite albums of the year would number well over 20. So instead, I whittled it down, excluded weird fucked up shit that only I like (or have listened to) amongst our small fraternity and decided on a condensed list that I know at least 2 other people here really liked as well.

Looking over the top five, I can’t help but hate the fact that the majority of them were big albums released on major labels, that received widespread acclaim. Some of the music I’ve loved this year was released only on cassettes, which I acquired through…alternative means, because seriously, a limited release of 100 cassettes that sell out in three days? How am I meant to get a hold of that???? A handful of them were stunning, and deserve to be on this list. But if no one can get hold of them, what’s the point?

But still, the top five are big, popular releases. It goes to show that occasionally the stars align and popular opinion agrees on things that are actually good. God help us all when Avatar wins Best Picture next month.

Anyhow, here it is.

5. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic

Is it like the Lips releases from the past 15 years? No, it’s nothing like The Soft Bulletin or Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. It’s a big, overwhelming, underproduced mess. And it’s stunning. Best Lips release of the last 15 years? No.

It’s their best ever.

4. The Field – Yesterday and Today

Taking the short loops of popular records he perfected on his debut (2007′s From Here We Go Sublime), complimenting them with live instrumentation, and extending the fuck out of the song lengths (resulting in just 6 songs over the course of an hour). O, and throwing in a cover of an 80′s pop track by The Korgis? Resulted in 2009′s most amazing bliss-out techno imaginable. And dare I say it, eclipsing the debut.

3. Moritz Von Oswald Trio – Vertical Ascent

Improvised techno? Electronic jazz? What can this music possibly be called? Three giants of the electronic music crowd, Moritz Von Oswald, Max Loderbauer, and Sasu Ripatti (aka Vladislav Delay), create something truly original in the now innovation-less techno world. There’s nothing like it.

2. Fever Ray – Fever Ray

Side project from the elusive The Knife vocalist Karin Dreijer Andersson. Slightly more mainstream than The Knife, but also darker. And it’s all the better for it. Treated, spine-tingling vocals, over the top of (frankly) brilliant minimal electronica. If our number one is the perfect summer album, this album is for those freezing cold, middle of winter nights when the air is full of fog, yet the full moon illuminates everything. Any other year this would be number one.

1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Well, I was right. I said it from the beginning. Without a doubt, the number one album of 2009 is Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion. Most of my fellow bloggers would agree.

What could be better than a swirling kaleidoscopes of synthesisers, sublime vocal rounds, a-child-stuck-in-a-man’s-body lyrics, and, well, My Girls?

Quite simply the best summer album ever. Yes ever. Fuck the Beach Boy’s Pet Sounds. This is where it’s at. Psychedelic music for the internet generation. Album of the year, no question.

If anyone reading haven’t heard Merriweather Post Pavilion or Fever Ray, do it, right now. You won’t regret it.

Comments? What were your albums of the year?

It is interesting how a thought, an idea, or a comment can fundamentally change everything you think about something or someone.

It can be the smallest thing, or a huge career-changing statement. But one day you can think one thing about someone, something, or an issue, and it all suddenly changes.

If you could cast your mind back to a couple of months when Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. This was a huge thing for the Nobel committee to do, considering the relative amount of time Obama has spent in the Oval Office. It caused a huge controversy. People seemed to forget that the nomination process for the Nobel Prize closed only days after his inauguration, and that it is a long and complicated process to go from a “mere nomination” to holding the medal in your hands. It’s not a trivial thing to be won. I can only imagine the huge deliberation and conjecture it would have caused amongst the judges.

But I digress. I was fully of the opinion that Obama won it for the work he had done before he became President. The Nobel judges defended themselves, and said they gave him the award for the work he has done, and the work he will do.

But then…from one little comment in an article from the New York Review of Books Blog changed my understanding, and made a whole heap of sense. It said this:

“They may have tied his hands—making it harder for the President, as a Peace Prize laureate, to take military action against Iran or escalate in Afghanistan.” (full article)

This notion intrigued me from the get-go, but unfortunately no other articles I have read have picked up on it.

It is entirely possible that the decided to give him the Nobel Prize in an attempt to force Obama to think long and hard about entering or starting any “unnecessary” armed conflicts while in office.

This idea I find huge. And brilliant. Of course, a Nobel Prize cannot be revoked. Once it is awarded, that’s it.

That doesn’t matter, however. He might not be critically hamstrung by the prize, but it will always be in his mind that “I won the Nobel Peace Prize. What should I do?”

I truly love this idea, and it changed my opinion of the matter. I agree with the prize committee’s actions even more.

There have been other utterly game-changing ideas. Recently, artist Damien Hirst, the richest living artist in the world, recently came out and virtually said that his entire oeuvre has been a joke.

All his ridiculous ideas, putting a shark in a formaldehyde tank for instance, was an inside joke poking fun at the art world and art critics (to be fair, most respected art critics have always been against Hirst).

This revelation does not make me a fan of his work. But I now respect him. It seems that he may have completely killed off the huge prices his work have been attracting recently. Which, I admit, wouldn’t really matter to him as his net worth was estimated in 2008 to be just shy of US$400 million. I just find it great to see the man who has been labelled as responsible for the downfall of contemporary art admitting the jokes been on us (not that I believe him. His is just trying to extract some form of credibility). But admitting it is an genuinely intriguing thought.

I now present Exhibit C in how a thought, statement, opinion can change everything. When their first album came out, I was a fan of Wolfmother. I happily admit that.

They had been spoken about in the press as sounding like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. I don’t agree with that, but whatever, I still knew that I liked their sound. I then read an interview with Andrew Stockdale that stated that Wolfmother sound like some of these 70′s bands, to which he replied that he didn’t understand all the comparisons, because he had never listened to a Pink Floyd album in his life.

Great, I thought. That doesn’t bother me. I’m not someone that would judge someone for not having listened to a specific band (of course, many people who know me may be surprised by this).

But then…everything changed. A week later, Andrew Stockdale appeared on Rove, wearing…a Pink Floyd tshirt. At which point I thought “well, that’s it. Goodbye. You have now achieved hatred from me, Wolfmother”.

I feel vindicated by the fact that the new album is called Cosmic Egg for god sakes…and it is rubbish. But that’s an opinion for another time.

What thoughts, ideas, opinions, whatever, have completely changed what you think about something? Let me know in the comments!

When given limited resources, it’s amazing what artists can produce. With a graphite pencil and a blank sheet of white paper, an entire world can be created. These tools can be used for everything from a simple sketch to the blueprints for a billion dollar, 100 storey building. While many artists would use a pencil and a piece of paper to design the original idea and then flesh it out with color and texture, a true artist could be content with these simple tools.

The same could be said of music, and that’s exactly what .snd, a project by a Mark Fell and Matt Steel, have done with Atavism. Even their names reflect the minimal sound palette they employ. Focusing almost entirely on rhythm, the “clicks and clacks” are almost at the limit of electronic minimalism. Yet when a snare or synth enters, .snd show exactly what can be done with so little.

Atavism is the duo’s first album for German experimental electronic label Raster-Noton, a label that is synonymous with the limits of minimalism. The fact that it’s .snd’s first album in seven years seems to count for nought, as Atavism picks up exactly where their third album, Tender Love, left off.

Although IDM is the genre .snd would most often be labelled with, their music is worlds apart from that of musicians such as Aphex Twin. Refusing to fall into typical glitch sounds and rhythms, here Fell and Steel craft 16 untitled tracks, some almost being stand alone tracks, while others act as bridges between ideas.

The first handful of tracks (and it would be wrong to distinguish tracks as the album needs to be heard as a whole) seem surprisingly warm. The middle third of the album almost collapses into nothing but clicks. But right at the point where many listeners may get bored/annoyed with the repetition and lack of development, the exact synth tone from track 2 suddenly reappears, making the listener aware exactly how warm the record can be. The last third of the album could almost be considered “typical” IDM, with even a couple of tracks (track 12 for example) you could almost imagine being played in a forward-thinking club.

Though I would recommend Kanding Ray’s Automne Fold as a beginning point for people new to the Raster-Noton label, for those familiar to this strain of minimalism, Atavism approaches the pinnacle of the sound pushed by the label, perhaps even eclipsing that of co-label head Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto.

It’s a shame that minimalistic electronic music tends to be labelled as “cold” and “clinical”, even by the style’s biggest fans, as .snd has proved here how warm and full of personality it can be. While it’s true the middle third of the record lapses into the clinical precision so feared by many producers, .snd manages to pull it off. The fact that it’s bookended by such brilliant warmth makes the record all the better for it. It’s amazing what can be done with a graphite pencil and white paper.

4.5/5

Note: An edited version of this review first appeared on JunkMedia.org

I know what I like. Most people that know me are aware of my strong opinions.

I’ve had countless arguments with fellow Ok, To Begin With… writers over all types of media, be it music, film, tv shows, art, whatever. But we don’t really consider it arguments, but discussions. To a third party it can look like an argument, but in general it’s all in good faith.

One ongoing discussion involves the pillar of Australian dance music that is The Presets. Me? I think they’re dreadful. I don’t see the appeal in a band who so shamelessly copies electro groups such as Daft Punk that were at their creative peak more than ten years ago. As I see it, they were a product of their time. Why would a band want to make average facsimiles of this music now?

Lots of my friends like The Presets. And that’s fair enough. I don’t, yet so many people seem to get offended when I make my opinion known. And it’s not like I don’t back up my opinion, I have my reasons.

A couple of weeks ago, my uncle’s step-mother came round for dinner. During the various conversations that arose over dinner, she asked me what I thought of Shaun Micallef’s current show Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation. Unaware that my uncle was good friends with him at university and his stepmother had taught him, I let my opinion known.

I think the show has a predictable concept, is utterly dreadful, pointless, and unfunny, and made worse by the host. I have never found Micallef slightly funny. Instead of listening to me and saying “fair enough, everyone’s entitled to their opinion”, both my uncle and his stepmother launched into a huge defence of Micallef and his show. But of course, they failed to address the reasons why I don’t like him and his show.

A similar thing happens when I get asked about movies. A common topic at the moment due to Inglorious Basterds, is Quentin Tarantino. When I’ve been asked what I think of his films, I can’t help myself. I could just say “yeah, he’s quite good, I liked Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction”. But instead I give my full opinion: he’s a hugely overrated director who has done absolutely nothing of note since 1994. Reservoir Dogs is stunning, Pulp Fiction is good but I think is idealised by so many due to its structure. Natural Born Killers was potentially a great film if Tarantino directed it himself, but Oliver Stone mangled Tarantino’s script. Everything else he’s done, I think is dreadful (*note: I am yet to see Inglorious Basterds).

Do you like Tarantino films? Great. I’m not going to stop you from watching them or try to change your opinion. All I’m doing is giving MY opinion. What’s so wrong with that?

I’m sorry, I have my opinion. Just please don’t get offended if you ask for it and don’t like it.

Image from Flickr user jontintinjordan

I love artistic concepts. Sometimes they are really simple, other times incredible in their intricacies.

Take the abstract artist Mark Rothko, who from a simple concept developed a huge body of work. After modernism took off in the visual arts world, many artists were attempting to remove one of the dimensions, depth, from their artwork. Rothko realised that no matter how much they tried, the paint itself forms a dimension on the canvas. So he decided to use watercolours to dye the canvas itself.

As a concept? Brilliant. In practise? I’ll let a piece of his work tell the story:

Before I go on, I just need to say that I really like Rothko’s artwork. His work can be amazingly beautiful in the simplicity and the limited colour palette used. However, if you were asked to describe the above image, how would you?

You’d say it looks like a couple of bands of colour.

Herein lays a problem: what’s more important, the concept or the art? Certainly, the concept can exist prior to the artwork, but can the resulting work ever be separated from the concept, once the concept is known?

Despite Rothko’s huge fame and popularity, a huge portion of people do not like his artwork. That may have something to do with the concept behind it not being as widely known as the art itself.

Once the concept behind these “bands of colours” is known, I bet everyone finds the artwork more interesting than they found it before.

But can a piece of art be less interesting than its concept? This seems to be a very fundamental question, that turns out to be very difficult to answer. To see a work of art without knowing the concept behind it could result in the viewer simply not liking it, or feeling indifferent. Seeing a work of art and knowing the concept behind it instantly makes the artwork more interesting, but not necessarily better for it.

From an amazingly interesting concept, a dull and boring piece of artwork could result. But, of course, anyone who knows the concept could no longer be objective about it, and in most cases would argue the merits of the work, explaining the concept, and thus proving that a piece of art is at least as interesting as its concept.

Only those who don’t know the concept can be objective about the quality of the artwork. But doesn’t a piece of conceptual art need the concept told in order for its merits to be judged?

I see a pattern developing here.

There was an interesting article on the BBC News website to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Sony Walkman, in which they gave a walkman to a 13-year-old boy who was tasked with comparing it to portable music systems of today. The 13yo, Scott Campbell, said “Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is ‘shuffle’”. I found this point perhaps the most resounding of the article, and which was looked at a bit deeper by Lifehacker in their comments section. Lifehacker said that the ability to shuffle music is “…one of the main benefits of the digital music age”.

My first thought to that was “bullshit”. Sure, all mp3 players have the function. Apple even called their smallest iPod the “Shuffle”. But I, for one, do not use the ability at all. I know my personal mp3 player, a Song Walkman NWZ-E436F for anyone interested, would have a shuffle function. But not only have I never used it, I don’t even know where it is to turn it on. I have always, and will continue, to listen to music in album format, how the artist intended their music to be listened to.

Albums should be seen in their correct light, a way I fear is disappearing due to the growing digital distribution networks where people can pick and choose the tracks they want. An album needs to be seen like a visual artist’s exhibition in a gallery. They have chosen certain pieces and placed them next to each other to make a statement, and to give a certain flow to preceedings, as well as add a layer of context to each individual piece in comparison to those around it.

The use of CD albums as an artistic work has been around for more than twenty years, giving the musician eighty minutes of recording space to work with. Some fill it up completely, others leave it half empty. Before the time of CDs, musicians had a slight restriction to work with, that being the need to split tracks across two (and sometimes more) sides of vinyl. The artists aren’t simply recording songs and leaving it at that. They actively arrange the tracks in a specific way, for a multitude of various reasons.

The shuffle function completely and utterly destroys this. Not only does it create an incoherent listening experience, it totally ignores how the artist intended their music to be heard. Sure, some recordings have what seem at first glance to be “filler”, ambient tracks. But they are there for a reason, normally to create a huge impact when the artist’s normal sound returns.

By shuffling music all the time, to some extent the artists are being ignored, and the listening experience is deprived. I always listen to music as an entire album, and as a result I can become obsessed with a collection of songs. I’d argue that someone who doesn’t listen to entire albums can never develop a true appreciation for music, as they will listen to songs they know, and skip the songs the haven’t listened to or don’t like as much as others. Who loses out in the end?

But then I realised something. I don’t randomise my music, but I do listen to a lot of compilation albums, DJ mixes, and podcasts. On the surface of things, this doesn’t seem much different to shuffling a music collection. Each mix is a collection of music seemingly unrelated, except perhaps by their genre. I would argue fervently that this is completely different to shuffling music.

Perhaps the best way to explain mixes is to use Lego as a metaphor. An album is the Lego set of a fire station, a castle, or a submarine. A mix is created by someone using some of the blocks from the sets, and constructing a new vista, of which can sometimes be more interesting and engaging than the original construction. A mix is an artistic statement, plain and simple.

Compilations can be seen in a similar light. Someone has curated a number of tracks, removed them from their original context, and then given them a new context by putting them next to certain songs. Many compilations have a theme, for instance the record label Honest Jon’s recent The World is Shaking: Cubanismo From the Congo, 1954-55 compilation. Very specific, but the label have managed to provide a brilliant overview of the style of music by placing the tracks into the context of a certain time.

Podcasts are a totally different story, when they are not a “mix”. The best comparison for podcasts are radio shows. The presenter does select the songs they play, but they don’t so much as curate the tracks, as play new releases that highlight the focus of their podcast. The music shown is taken away from the artists’ intended context. But there is still an overriding theme, which the use of a shuffle function completely loses.

However, a lot of bands and artists record songs that are intended to be singles. They are designed to be a stand alone 4 minute artistic statement. In the context of an album of similar sounding music, they might not resonate as strongly than if they are played between “artistic statements” by other musicians. Sometimes, the running order of an album is not always perfect. A track can be placed in a bad position, and may end up getting overlooked.

In a review of Radiohead’s In Rainbows I read (and am unable to locate again), the writer said that their favourite track is “Videotape”, which closes the album. He also stated that it’s such a strong song, it should have been placed higher up in the tracklisting. I understand the point perfectly, but also disagree in this particular case. In Rainbows had been anticipated to almost a fever pitch by more than just Radiohead fans, due to the novel (or revolutionary, depending on how you look at it) distribution method involved. The last line of lyrics in “Videotape” is Thom Yorke singing “today has been the most perfect day”. I ask, for anyone that had been waiting for that album, is there a better last impression to take from it? If the song had been placed somewhere else in the tracklisting, or played separately from the remainder of the album, wouldn’t the sentiment have been completely lost?

So now, I’m going to leave it open. Do you use the shuffle function? Why? Why not? Has the album format been killed due to digital distribution and the existence of a shuffle function? Are mixes and compilations an artistic statement?