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OK, OK, I know I say this every year recently, but I really really wasn’t going to do an end of year list at all this year. My records have been packed up in boxes since early September due to a house move (we sold the country pile and are now in a cramped apartment in a lovely area of central Tokyo) and another temporary house move due to a wonky floor in the new place (I’m currently cooped up in a tiny weekly-rent apartment) and I haven’t listened properly even to the albums that I did manage to buy.
But then just for fun I thought I’d try a quick Top 5 just to try to remember what I had heard and liked and before I knew it I had a pretty decent Top Ten…so here we are! Hooray!
It’s been a strange year for music, for me. There were whole load of emerging bands like Fontaines D.C. and Hotel Lux who put out runs of amazing singles, but have yet to put out a full-length album. At the same time, my usual go-tos of recent times like Orange Milk records did put out some records that were OK, but I was a little bit underwhelmed by what I heard. On top of that, there were excellent records that I bought like “Feed the Rats” by Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs that I loved, but which came out in 2017. I also found myself kind of self-consciously pushing away other records because I was worried about getting stuck in a musical rut, which is kind of stupid, by hey, you can’t argue with the logic of a creeping, but inevitable midlife crisis!! And judging by the similarity of these year’s picks to the last couple of years, was largely unsuccessful! Anyway, here we go…
10 Kungens Män – Fuzz På Svenska
I’m a sucker for an album title that plays on another album title. Back in the 90s Swedish punks Refused named their record “The Shape of Punk to Come” and did actually succeed somewhat in redefining punk for the next decade or so. Now another Swedish rock band steal from a different jazz album title to try to claim Sweden’s rightful place in the psyche rock guitar drone underground. As far as I can ascertain, Kungens Män are a loose collective based in Stockholm that make improvised ‘fuzzy’ space rock with added sax and synths, which means that this is basically a free jazz record with heavy guitars, which is, not surprisingly, right up my street.
9 Nico Niquo – Timeless
The first LP from the young Melbourneite Nico Callaghan, “In a Silent Way” made my Top Ten last year with its mix of ambient synthscapes and subtle jazz nuances. This record steps up both the jazz and the ambientness. By roping in his childhood friend to play sax, the jazziness is at the forefront of the whole album, but at the same time he reigns in the rest of the music too, so we get a super-sparse record that is barely audible at times. To be honest, I wish it had even more of the jazziness and a bit less sparseness (I had to check it was still playing a couple of times the first time I heard it!), but this has still been a great late-night record for me for the last couple of months that shows an artist developing in new ways.
8 ЭМ Ритм-Каскад – Литьё
If your Cyrillic is a bit rusty, this is AEM Rhythm Cascade AKA Flaty, whose “New Suggestions” LP was my introduction to the new Russian electronic underground a couple of years ago. This is the latest from Gost Zvuk records and one of their best. This is another one I found myself playing late at night, usually as an accompaniment to some late night studying/reading/data analysis.
7 Shame – Songs of Praise
I don’t know why, but after reading about them I totally dismissed Shame without even listening. Then I heard “One Rizla” when I was in my favourite record shop and was totally hooked. The whole album is stuffed full of punky, poppy, shouty, indie-ey tunes that feel like classics the first time you hear them. All this and they are still only about 12 years old!
