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.

And all the Styrofoam
Began to melt away
We tried to find some words
To aid in the decay

But none of them were home
Inside their catacomb

A million ancient bees
Began to sting our knees

Artist - Song

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

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?