Songs of the year so far

Halfway through month six of 2009 seems like a suitable time to drop some kind of landmark for the year. I will definitely be doing another top 100 tracks of the year come December/January. The kind of exhaustion it made me feel last year was masochistically enjoyable and it was a far more popular and well received exercise than I imagined it would be. But that's for later, just so you know its coming and to prepare yourselves, for now I just want to drop my current two favourite songs so far.

I don't think revealing my relationship with these two songs is going to give too much away at this stage, anything can happen in the next six months, song, album, demo releases and my own opinions, but halfway through the year these are the two songs that for me have, in one instance have distilled and defined the sound of the year so far, and in the other created a whole separate world just a sidestep from this one furnishing it with songcraft of genuine genius and arresting lyricism.

The first 3 months were totally owned by Mount Kimbie's Maybes from the Maybes EP on Hotflush. Ostensibly a soulful dubstep and bass label this branch out in sound totally spun the game around on its head and incorporated some kind of shoegaze element into the continually evolving beast that is dubstep. The track features a rippling echo of a guitar part for half its length before dropping a bassline bomb and shuddering stuttering female vocal hook along with the electronic ornamentation. Simply put; Icy cool.


The second of the two is Sunset Rubdown's Nightingale/December Song from Dragonslayer on Jagjaguwar. For the first few listens it was the first half of this album that I found especially compelling then suddenly I could get past this one song - or rather, I had to skip straight to it: "Let me hammer this point home" - and more than that, the structure of it is the pinnacle of everything the album tries to create (and does successfully across it's entire length), but here it all comes together in the buzzy electronic drum beat and voice of valour and heroism striding across it, the euphoric swell of the verse into the chorus, the sensual eroticism of "sacrificial virgins" and "fast explosions" and the organ breakdown/build up. After all that, I'm not sure whether the ending is a bit of a let down or not but by then it's too late to worry about a simple thing like that.


So far I have about 30 songs vying to get in my top ten of the year, but these two are my current obsessions. Let me know if they become yours.

MxBx

Home Shopping

Yesterday I received a lot of stuff in the post all on the same day and last week I got a whole stack of records I'd been waiting a while on receiving. I've got a lot of listening to do! A few of these are albums from my top 10 last year that I promised myself I'd buy and I only got round to it now, the rest are brand new exciting. The Wormsblood 12" is amazing - it's the blue/black splatterfest up there. The grey Heavy Winged is really nice too, real heavy. These things are objects of beauty. Adam also gave me all the albums he's been working on recently, so there's a journey of about 5 hours of deep claustrophobic psychologically challenging drone I am about to embark on.

Adam Lygo – Legend Of The Grey Woods (Hive Music)
Adam Lygo – The Mythology Of Mirrors (Hive Music)
Adam Lygo – The Mythology Of The Spiral (Hive Music)
Adam Lygo – Virus (Hive Music)
Amesoeurs – Amesoeurs (Profound Lore)
FNU Ronnies - 12" (Night People)
Harvestman - In A Dark Tongue (Neurot)
Heavy Winged - Waking Shaking 12” (Aurora Borealis)
Horna - Sanojesi Aarelle (Debemur Morti / Moribumd)
Invisible/Sarah Walpole – A Life In Whispers (Hive Music)
Our Love Will Destroy The World - Stillborn Plague Angels 12” (Dekorder)
Ride For Revenge - Wisdom Of The Few (Bestial Burst)
Sylvester Anfang II – Sylvester Anfang II (Aurora Borealis)
U.S. Christmas - Eat The Low Dogs (Neurot)
Wooden Shjips – Dos (Holy Mountain)
Wormsblood - In The Stars 12” (Aurora Borealis)