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I meant to put this up a couple of days ago (I’m not trying to build suspense, honestly!) but have been super busy moving back into my own house. We only got to put a Christmas tree up yesterday, and in Japan trees get taken down pretty quick-smart after Christmas to make way for the more important New Year celebrations.
Anyway, here are my Top Three – thanks all and a very Merry Christmas wherever you may be.
3 Fire-Toolz – Skinless X-1
This is this year’s weird-experimental-released-on-cassette-random-bleeps-and-fucked-up-noises entry in my Top Ten (see Foodman, Giant Claw etc in past year’s lists). Fire-Toolz is the non de plume of experimental artist Angel Marcloid (out on the excellent Hausu Mountain label) and actually is a very listenable, strangely beautiful record that somehow manages to blend experimental electronica, noise, jazz fusion, breakbeat, cats (Suki and Porcelina are credited with “meows” on two of the tracks!) and a thousand other sub-genres (oh, how I love sub-genres!) into a surprisingly accessible and very satisfying whole that really drew me into its world. It’s one of those albums that reveals something new with each listen, which means that it has been on pretty heavy rotation for the last few months and I’m still discovering new sounds and new ideas from it.
2 Christoph de Babalon – Exquisite Angst
OK, this is cheating a bit. Although this album was released this year, the tracks are all from the mid-90s and some of them have been included on other compilations too, but this is so good, I don’t care – it’s my list! Ah…Christoph de Babalon, what can I say to explain the genius of the man? You know how you come across an artist or an album at a particular time, in a particular context, that it doesn’t matter who they are or what they do or how bland and mediocre they sound to outside ears, for YOU they are the most important artist that ever lived? Well, CdB and his 1997 album “If You’re Into It, I’m Out Of It” on Digital Hardcore Records is just such an artist and record for me. At the time I was heavily into DHC’s hyper-aggressive breakbeats of unrelenting chaos and then they dropped that record, which took a step back, or should that be a step down, reigning in the chaos and keeping the aggression bubbling under the surface which made it all the more menacing and powerful – the idea of the threat of violence being scarier than the actual violence. It turned my world upside-down and lead to a lifetime love of dark and ambient soundscapes that is reflected in a lot of the other albums on this list (and pretty much every other end of year list I’ve ever put together since I first heard it). This compilation album doesn’t quite reach the heights of that milestone album (but hey, what album does?!), but it has all the scattering, clattering breakbeats that I love combined with the dark, dark downtempo ambient sounds that were so influential on me all those years ago. I don’t mind if no-one else likes it or “gets” it, he’s MY artist and this is MY album, so there!
1 IDLES – Joy as an Act of Resistance
There could be only one number one really. The “snowflake Oi” of IDLES has dominated my music listening for the whole of 2018. I picked up their debut album (2017’s “Brutalism”) at the very start of the year on a whim and was totally blown away by its mix of social and political commentary, personal vulnerability, humour and punk fury. I then got increasingly excited as they drip-fed us tracks one at a time in the build-up to “Joy…” with each new track reaching new heights of acerbic wit, self-righteous fury and yes…joy! I’m sure this will be on a lot of people’s end of year lists and if it doesn’t win next year’s Mercury Prize there is no justice in the world, but it deserves all the praise and hyperbole it gets*. Pro-immigration anthem “Danny Nedelko” is probably my favourite song of the decade so far and has about five times as many plays as the next most played song on my iTunes. “Samaritans’” attack on toxic masculinity (“Man up/Sit down/Chin up/Pipe down/Socks up/Don’t cry/Drink up/Just lie/Grow some balls”) is gloriously on the nose and “June”, a song which tracks singer Joe Talbot’s experience of his daughter’s stillbirth (“A stillborn was still born, I am a father”) is one of the most heart-wrenching things you’ll ever hear. All together now: “My blood brother is an immigrant, a beau-ti-ful im-mi-grant…”!
*I’ve got a theory that “Joy..” is the new “Nevermind”, I mean, I haven’t thought it through or anything, but just think about it…It’s not quite on the same level, but both are underground punk bands that broke out of their cultural backwater hometown (sorry Bristol, I don’t mean it, I’m just trying to prove my theory!) to crash into the charts (“Joy…” went in at Number 5) on their second album to sum up the mood of a disaffected youth. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” tapped into a generation of teenagers turned off by the selfish greed-is-good-fuck-everyone-else-I’m-allright-jack-alpha-male-frat-party that was the 1980s and that their parents embodied. “Danny Nedelko” and “Great” speak to this generation of youth let down by the small-minded, selfish idiocy of their Brexit-voting parents. “In Bloom” railed against meathead jocks, while “Never Fight A Man With a Perm” does the same thing for wideboy, laddish wankers out on the town. “Samaritans” and “Colossus” take on homophobia and toxic masculinity in the same way that “Polly” did for Nirvana. It’s not only the songs but also the impact. We are already beginning to see a slew of bands follow in IDLES’ wake, bands like Fontaines D.C. and Hotel Lux are beginning to get noticed and by going on Jools Holland and Soccer AM they are starting to make it normal for people to see what is essentially an underground punk band with pop hooks (hello! That is exactly what Nirvana were!) on the telly. Come on, amirite?……actually maybe it’s better not to answer…!
