2008 Music Round-Up

This is roughly in the order I picked them up, excepting the first one. Can't be bothered writing a lot this year, so have gone overboard on links. Here was me thinking people loved reading volumes of text on computer screens... ;)

Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours (Modular)


Definitely my favourite album of the year, from the vibes, your honour, as well as from a quantative angle.

My previous write-up of the thing.
Free songs to stream and download
Free mixtape by Cut Copy members
Artist page at Modular
Virb page
Myspace page

Kelley Polar - I Need You To Hold On While The Sky Is Falling (Environ)



Second album cranks up the cheddar and is, well, fucking ridiculous in places. A friend dismissed bits as like Liberace in outer space. Bring it on.

My previous write-up of the thing.
Free song to stream and download
Artist site
Artist page at Environ
Myspace page

Kapital Band 1 - Playing by numbers (Mosz)



Much more accessible than their first album, while no less distinctive.

My previous write-up of the thing (at the bottom - obviously it's grown on me further)
Artist site
Amie Street - where I bought my copy
Artist page at Mosz
Myspace page

Koushik - Out My Window (Stone's Throw)



Quite a big shift from what I thought of as his first album, but which I guess was just collected tracks pre-this. Drums etc. are pared back and Koushik's washed out spacey vocals take this off into a majorly Spiritualised zone, with a bit more kinda ... I dunno... sunny California psychedelic vibes? More acid than heroin?

Free song to download
Amie Street - where I bought my copy
Artist page at Stone's Throw
Myspace page

Fennesz / Dafeldecker / Brandlmayr - Till the old world's blown up and a new one is created (Mosz)



If you know Fennesz but are unfamiliar with the others, this is the kind of computer-hacked guitar shimmer (with acoustic bits) Fennesz has been doing recently, with acoustic bass and drums (largely played with brushes). Brandlmayr is the drummer in Radian among many other acts. Was very pleased to see that Fennesz was working with him, and equally pleased to hear the results.

The label and/or artist are disappointingly stingy on downloadable or even streaming morsels... Mosz's link to an MP3 fragment of one of the tracks doesn't work. :| Stink.

Artist page at Mosz
Amie Street - where I bought my copy

Morgan Geist - Double Night Time (Environ)



I love Morgan Geist as a producer - closing on 12 years ago a man called Ben handed me a copy of his first album in a Wellington record shop and told me to listen - but this could be flippantly described as the Junior Boys album for 2008 given their vocalist, Jeremy Greenspan, appears on well over half the tracks here (and no other singers are present). It's a pretty and low-impact listen, which is a bit shit for a dance album, because a million people will shelve it. More's the pity.

Free songs to stream
Amie Street - where I bought my copy
Artist page at Environ
Myspace page

Fennesz - Black Sea (Touch)


He keeps impressing me. After the collaboration listed above and the massive influx of slushy, noisy ambient that has come in the intervening years since his last album, I took to this with low expectations. It's really, really good.

Artist site
Myspace page

Other comments

• Downbeat / wonky / whatever saturation point was reached sometime mid year. Acclaimed releases on that front by bods like Flying Lotus, Kelpe, Lukid, Lone, etc. etc. left me fairly cold. Did the dodgy download, didn't care for any of them, deleted them. Flying Lotus does definitely get the silliest, most filthy, not exactly filthy video of the year award.
  
• Close as I get to New Zealand faves this year is one of the tracks on Fennesz's album being a collaboration with Rosy Parlane... It is possibly the best track on there, though. Only album by a New Zealander I bought this year was Eru Dangerspiel's Great News for the Modern Man, but given I picked that up today, on the last day of the year, I would feel a bit wonky putting that on my end of year list.
  
• Definitely been a big year for downloads from Amie Street. Manage to score a lot of stuff while it's free, due to it being relatively unpopular stuff...
  
• ... the corrolary of this is I've pulled back on downloading so much free-to-download stuff. Partly that's reaching saturation point for clicky ambient-ish techno-ish stuff, I guess.
  
• Another of the big threads of the year for me was tracking down a whole lot more stuff related to Radian and specifically their drummer, Martin Brandlmayr. He gets two mentions in my end of year list, but I picked up lots of older releases by connected artists and could also put in Autistic Daughters' 2008 album but wasn't that thrilled (oh, that would be another Kiwi connection too - Dean Roberts is their singer / guitarist). Very impressed by Radian's second album, Juxtaposition.
  
• Listened to shed loads of disco and house stuff this year, but that tends not to lend itself to album-length good times. Should pull finger and do a best individual tracks of the year award, but given the top two would be free MP3s I've already linked to it's probably not worth doing.