Chanel Beads – Your Time Will Come
Until Kim Deal came along, this was definitely my favourite album of the year. I don’t know much about Chanel Beads. I think they’re a bunch of cool kids from Brooklyn, who sound a bit like Sonic Youth crossed with the Go Team. But like, with strings. Throw in a bit of Massive Attack and a distinctly lo-fi state of mind. Perfectly formed. But too short. If they ever make anything as good as this again and extend it it will be a helluva a record. But it strikes me somewhat as perfect synergy unlikely to be repeated. But hey, maybe not. Prove me wrong, Chanel Beads.
Double Celled Organism – Strum and Drone
Andrew Waslyk & Tommy Perman – Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On
Vegyn – The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions
I’m not quite sure how much I liked this. Alan from the Glasgow Alfos crew hipped me to the last album that Vegyn made with a poet called Earache, which was a delightfully bittersweet collection of Choose Life-esque mid-life poetry. This is a more pop affair – it feels very modern, very now. Like Chanel Beads, it’s quite slight — a bit like a mixtape of ideas. But there’s proper pop songs here with a variety of singers I’ve never heard of. I kept returning to it – still not quite sure what to make of it.
Charlotte & Reinhart – Sins & Virtues
For Mankind & East Coast Love Affair – Musica para Todos
The Cure – Songs of a Lost World
For reasons of middle-age and harking back to my youth, I’ve been listening to a lot of The Cure in recent years – mainly Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Disintegration and a Reimagined Wish. But I did not expect to like a new Cure LP. I haven’t listened to a Cure album since Bloodflowers — and that didn’t last long. Songs of a Lost World is Uber-Cure. It’s a massive sound that almost sounds like a Disintegration parody, except it’s not – it’s quite beautiful, elegant and perfectly Cure-like.
Kim Deal – Nobody Loves You More
While I was surprised to be excited about a new Cure album, the thought of a solo Kim Deal album was instantly exciting. The teaser single immediately revealed an album going beyond the proto-grunge tropes that defined the Pixies and Breeders. Kim Deal has always been the coolest girl in rock, so her solo album just had to be cool as fuck. And so it was. But who could have guessed it would be so much fun — so pop! — as Kim brings Sinatra-esque swagger, strings and brass to her indie pop ditties.
Various – Club Moss
GS Shray – Whispered Something Good
Quantum Web – Discovery Zone
Cantoma – See in the Sun
Reissues etc
This dominated huge swathes of my listening time. It’s eight-hour playing time
Just stupidly lovely. You can keep all your edgy dark ambient, this just soars. Like Sigur Ros at their most enchanting, Kaito verges on cheesy but transcends the rest of the Chill Out schlop. This is pop ambient in excelsis.
Jim – Love Makes Magic (The remixes)
Balearic album of the year. Rounded off with Chris Coco’s glorious 11-minute dub version of The Ballad of San Marino, which vied with Om Unit’s Can You Dub It and Alex Kassian x Mad Professor’s E2-E4 for remix of the year. Although maybe the latter two were cover versions or edits or something. So Chris wins!
Some late entries
Bibio – Phantom Brickworks II
A brilliant tipoff from Mike Bradbury of Balearic Ultras and Higher Love Recordings fame in list for the Chill Out Tent’s Music of the Year. This is a real ‘calling all ravers’ album. It’s the best album that Leftfield never made. It’s got that 1994 feel, when anything seemed possible. It was a time that genres collided into one another with little notion of the splintering into different tribes that was to come. Instead you have jungle, acid house, techno, tribal house, dub, and electronica exploding in technicolour glory – a triumph.
Seefeel – Squared Roots
The Unthanks – In Winter
Dean & Britta and Sonic Boom – A Peace of Us
my festival life 