moodmat

Hey, well it’s almost Chinese New Year… I’m a little behind, but the drill is the same, and my list for 2009 hasn’t changed. What you see and hear isn’t what I think are the best records to be released last year, but a straight dump of Last.fm data of my most listened-to songs, minus any duplicates from last year’s list. It’s data-driven, and it’s delicious. Dig in!

10. The Burbs – “Organic”
Drum & bass has become a bit more of a staple for me in the last three or four years, so I’m surprised more of it didn’t creep into the top ten. Given another couple months, this plaintive burst of emotion might be a lot higher in the list.

9. Osborne – “Downtown”
Yep a 2008 record. For some reason this didn’t hit me over the head until last year and then it came crashing down like the Hudson’s Building. I’m still playing the crap out of it.

8. MF DOOM – “Hoe Cakes [Ant Remix]”
What do you do between Madvillain records? You scare up some hoe cakes, 2004 style.

7. Osborne – “Ruling”
And here’s Mr. Osborn again, giving us a big warm hug of a house record. Something in this also makes me think Michael McDonald could be singing backup in another dimension.

6. Burial + Four Tet – “Moth”
You know when collaborations sound too good to be true? This isn’t one of those times.

5. Martyn – “Vancouver”
“Timmy, when two genres love each other very much, God sends them a blessing…”

4. Peverelist – “Junktion”
Speaking of sex, this is the most beautiful mindfuck I have ever heard. I have yet to hear this in a club but I get a little jolt thinking of all the minds lost when the bassline drops.

3. Martyn – “The Only Choice”
Maybe I’m still reaching for my Kling Klang Security Blanket™ and can’t get enough of the rhythmic sound of numbers pelted at me from vocoders and whatnot. Maybe I’m just glad Martyn is too.

2. Dert – Venus Morning
1. Dert – It’s Oh So Loud!

I love the concept of the “beat tape.” I love Björk. Nuff said.

Huge congrats to our friends in Metro Area and at Environ records for making the least shittiest dance tune of the last decade according to the experts at Resident Advisor. Environ was also responsible for the 2nd least shittiest dance mix of the past decade (2nd only to I-f, of course), but the experts failed to recognize this fact.

Good job, Environ. Good job.

I can’t go for just repeating the same old lines.

Let’s all wake up and feel good about today!

The lineup for the Big Ears 2010 festival is out.

It’s awful. Simply awful.

Especially when comparing it with last year’s line up , 2010 seems like an obvious grab at the Pitchfork crowd rather than keeping it challenging and wonderful. Fennesz, The Necks, Burning Star Core, Negativeland, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros and Matmos last year. This year we get Vampire Weekend, The Ex, The xx? Granted Terry Riley, DJ /rupture and the Calder Quartet are solid choices. But putting the two lineups side by side, you have to wonder exactly WHAT the curators of this year’s event were thinking. It’s not even close in terms of quality.

I went last year and enjoyed myself immensely. This year I think I’ll just stay home and save my money for Mutek or the DEMF.

Time to unwind this wild week.

His last two shows on RBMA have featured the first decade of ECM records and they’ve been outstanding. Most definitely essential listening if you’ve ever wanted to dive in to the otherwise intimidating ECM catalog. Anyays, over on his blag, Mr. Kirk gets up on his soapbox and delivers his State of The Union in fine form.

The southern offices of moodmat have reopened for business. Thankfully we brought back the snow from the north and northeast from vacation back home.

Just as a quick warm up post to get the old grey matter working. Digital music news has been doing some nice coverage of CMS.  Two of my favorite pull quotes:

The Recording Academy is also at CES, ahead of the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards on January 31st. The group is previewing its ‘Fan Visualizer’ iPhone app ahead of a January 12th launch. The ‘fan index’ promises to ‘measure, monitor and visualize the volume of online conversations’ surrounding an artist, and is getting previewed Friday evening at the Venetian.

I seriously can’t recall the last time I was so unexcited by a new technology, from the RIAA no less! The second little ditty:

Among the usual group of celebrities, superstars Lady Gaga, Dr. Dre, and Tommy Lee will be plugging themselves and their ‘favorite’ products over the course of the conference

Can anyone tell me the last time Tommy Lee was relevant?  However, the list of celebrities assembled for CES is pretty surreal. Where else could one see Lady Gaga, James Worthy, Prince Fielder and Garfield at the same place?

There’s an AC radio station here in Detroit that, sometime around Halloween it seems, switches over to an all-Christmas format. If you tune in to it even occasionally, you realized they pretty much just play a few songs over and over again. (and how is that unusual for commercial radio anywhere? but, I digress…)

In the interest of pointing to something a little outside the AC Christmas canon, here’s something a Moodmat audience might find a little more interesting. Sometime during the last century, Spoon Records posted a genuine rarity — an old 7″ recording of Can performing “Silent Night”. It’s a truly wonderful performance — it glows.

I’d downloaded it way back when, but at some point I lost track of my copy. For purely selfish reasons, I contacted Spoon Records and pleaded for them to repost it this year.

I’d like to publicly thank Sandra Podmore at Spoon Records for getting this posted over at the Mute site.

Enjoy!

The editorial desks of the southern bureau of Moodmat are closing for 2009. Our office party is happening this afternoon. In lieu of a top list for the year or decade, I’d instead like to take a minute to acknowledge the following people not named Michael Jackson whose passing made the music world significantly less awesome in 2009. May their contributions never become mere footnotes in the history of pop music.

(in no particular order)

Lux Interior
The lead singer of one of the best garage punk bands of all time, The Cramps. If you ever had an opportunity to see the Cramps live you’d know this isn’t just a standard hyperbole tag. By far one of the most energetic showmen I’ve ever seen on stage. Even in his late fifties he could still kick the collective asses of people two to three decades younger than him who dared to open for his band.

Les Paul
The man who not only redefined the electric guitar, but numerous popular recording techniques tape delay, multi-track recording and phasing. His guitar technique also set the standard for jazz guitar.

Koko Taylor
The voice of giants in a blues era dominated by some of the greatest blues musicians of all time. Just take a listen to her impassioned performance on “Wang Dang Doodle” and you’ll see why she earned her place amongst giants.

John Hughes
By no means a musician, Hughes did something better than anyone else in the 80s: he made music a star unto itself in all of his most important films. It’s hard not to hum Simple Minds “Don’t You Forget About Me” and not think of John Bender, or hear the Beatles “Twist And Shout” and not think of Ferris Bueller. He introduced bold and daring bands to a wider audience, and while he got credit for his masterful screenplays and films he never got enough due credit for his music curatorial skills.

Ellie Greenwich
One of the two prominent female songwriters in the era of the Brill Building and definitely one of the most important songwriters of the 60s, she wrote some of the most popular songs of the era including “Be My Baby” and “Leader Of The Pack”. My personal favorite is Tina Turner’s version of “River Deep Mountain High”.

Jerry Fuchs
The drummer for The Juan Maclean, Turing Machine and countless others was as good a drummer as this generation gets. The feel of a jazz drummer combined with the fury and thunder of a Bonham/Moon and the technicality of a prog rock drummer made him a multi faceted threat and weapon to any band choosing to retain his services. There wasn’t one band that wasn’t made exponentially better just by having him on the drum stool.

Rashied Ali
During his early career, Ali kept company with some of the giants of jazz: Coltranes John and Alice, Paul Bley, Pharoah Sanders and innumerable free jazz musicians during the 60s and 70s. However, some of his best work came later in life working with his own quintet and collaborations with Henry Grimes and Marilyn Crispell.

Maryanne Amacher
The queen bee in a hive of drones. Amacher’s sound installations rarely were documented in a recorded format, but anyone who had the privilege to experience one knows that they were in the presence of something extraordinary. Her Sound Characters album on Tzadik is one of my all time favorite avant-garde albums. She never really received due recognition while living. Here’s hoping she’ll receive the acclaim she so richly deserves posthumously.

Ron Asheton
The guitarist for The Stooges set the tone and temper for the band just as much as their epileptic nudist lead singer James Newell Osterberg, Jr., as well as setting the tone and influence for some of alt-rocks greatest guitar heroes. It’s hard to imagine any of the Stooges records without his presence.

Charlie Cooper
I saved this one for last. It’s the hardest for me to write. Like so many electronic music fans, I knew Charlie Cooper on a personal level. I became a fan of Charlie Cooper the person before I became a fan of Telefon Tel Aviv. In fact, I hated the band the first time I saw them right before their first album dropped. But Charlie and Josh were just so kind and hysterical, it was inevitable I would become a fan of their music. And sure enough, I most certainly did. Fahrenheit Fair Enough was an album that got me through some of the darkest times of my life. The demos to Map Of What Is Effortless became the soundtrack to my recovery. I owe Charlie and Josh more than my thanks for this. It seems awful I’ll never be able to repay the debt of what was so generously given to me by Charlie. And like so many of you, I was stunned into deep silence upon the news of Charlie’s passing. In an industry so full of self-absorption and vanity, he was selflessness, warmth and kindness. He was the exception and not the rule. It’s been almost a year now and the clenching of my stomach and lump in my throat still hasn’t gone away when talking about him. I miss him dearly.

One question and one question only:

What’s your favorite full length album of this decade, and why?