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Best of 2007

Sabato 22 Dic 2007, 11:31

Best Of 2007

1. Stars Of The Lid - And Their Refinement Of The Decline
http://assets.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/28842.andtheirrefinement.gif

Number one could only be this really. Stars Of The Lid are the sound of music breathing, and I don't think a week has gone by this year when I haven't listened to this, or the equally gorgeous Tired Sounds Of… release. Tim Hecker is the only other artist whose albums are so consistently rewarding, intriguing, relaxing and fascinating. If you stare at a desert for long enough, the sands start to shift, forming all kinds of pretty pictures.

http://www.exclaim.ca/images/up-1stars_of_the_lid_1_kim_ambr_lg.jpg

2. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
http://www.reaxmusic.com/img/content/albums/248.jpg

At first I missed the woozy abstraction of old favourite tracks like Bees, but pretty soon I realised this album is pop gold, with nine alternate-universe number ones in a row. The hypnotic, melodic bedlam of For Reverend Green might be the best thing Animal Collective have ever done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6KPDWNAPBU

3. Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric 36
http://www.fabriclondon.com/press/beta/uploads/artwork/fabric36_Ricardo_villalobos_packshot.thumb.jpg

For me, the intricate interwoven tapestry of beats, clicks, pads and pops that make up the best microhouse is complete head music, the perfect headphone candy. The recent Etudes Electroniques double 12" from Luciano is the only other release this year that reaches the same heights as Villalobos' fantastic self-mix album. But you'll never catch me dancing to it.

4. David Thomas Broughton - David Thomas Broughton vs. 7 Hertz
http://www.supernovapop.com/noticias/images/davidthomasbroughton_7herz140.jpg

Easily his best album yet, here Leeds' finest, the loveably odd David Thomas Broughton stretches 4 long tracks over nearly an hour, spinning and repeating minimal yet affecting lyrics this way and that until they burrow into your brain. Like a lot of my favourite albums, this one needs a bit of perseverance at first, until you suddenly find that you know your way around the maze.

5. Colleen - Les Ondes Silencieuses
http://www.normanrecords.com/images/covers/d-thumbs/90268_thumb.jpg

I love the way she reinvents herself with each album, and this has turned out to be my favourite of the three. I suppose each track is a kind of study in a different instrument, and I'm not musically knowledgable enough to say what they are, but there's some very nice woodwindy sounding things in there. Kind of heartbreaking at times too.

6. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
http://assets.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/28120.personpitch.jpg

Thrillingly original and perfectly realised. It draws in so many odd musical ingredients, from choral singing to looping repetition, sampling culture to sunny east coast melodies, and melds them all together into one man's distinctive and personal celebration of fatherhood. The fact that he also found time this year to have a hand in the joyous Strawberry Jam is amazing really.

7. Pantha Du Prince - This Bliss
http://assets4.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/31296.thisbliss.jpg

There's a pleasantly unsettling quality to Pantha Du Prince's cleverly wobbly house music. Bendy, rubbery basslines and mid-paced, crystal-clear, synapse-popping beats combine to make this album a strangely hypnotic hall of mirrors. It seems strange now, considering This Bliss's subtly but distinctly darker mood, but when I first listened to it at the same time as discovering kindred spirit Gui Boratto's Chromophobia, for a long time I had trouble distinguishing between the two.

8. Menomena - Friend And Foe
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This album is a bristling, bad-tempered little ball of creative ideas that somehow comes together as a really cohesive and memorable album, and the amount of invention and attention to detail in it marks it out from other 'indie' albums for me too. The quirky tunes, love-them-or-hate-them vocals and multiple hooks and choruses in songs like Wet & Rusting, Evil Bee and Rotten Hell have the same kind of appeal as The Unicorns Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone album. An unexpected surprise from a band who'd gone very quiet for so long. Also, two of the best videos I've seen for a while:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLH26ZihZpE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXr_4g0o9M

9. Black Dice - Load Blown
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This didn't have quite the same impact on me that hearing Broken Ear Record and Creature Comforts for the first time did, but they're still one of my favourite groups of the last few years. Load Blown seems to distill Black Dice's signature robotic psychedelia into a more accessible, almost catchy compilation of mostly singles and B-sides.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9WSNMKf_Vw

10. Machinefabriek - Weleer
http://www.vancooten.com/blog/images/weleer.jpg

Since I first noticed Rutger Zuyderveldt , through his startling album Marijn, he seems to have released new music almost every month, as well as collaborating with Leo Fabriek, soccer Committee and lots of others. Although Weleer, which collects assorted tracks from those many releases, isn't the controlled, cohesive artistic statement that Marijn was, it does, the interesting, non-chronological sequencing makes it a perfect overview of Zuyderveldt's surprisingly varied back catalogue.

11. Burial - Untrue
http://assets3.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/40734.untrue.jpg

Rightfully hyped to the gills the length and breadth of the internet, this album takes the sinister beauty of the debut's atmospherics and puts them to the service of some of the most addictive hooks of the year. I don't know what kind of pitchshifting, autotuning, technical stuff is going on with those vocals, but the results are fantastic.

12. Thee, Stranded Horse - Churning Strides
http://www.normanrecords.com/images/covers/d-thumbs/90347_thumb.jpg

This came out of nowhere for me and from talking to a number of imaginary friends of mine on various message boards and forums, it seems to be one of those albums that everyone who heard it liked. Stick with the video for Swaying Eel to the end. It's appropriately mesmerising.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dcULbJWF4Q

13. The North Sea - In The Time Of Sugar Pines
http://www.musicfellowship.com/images/MF34.jpg

Having only heard his long, ambient collaboration with Rameses III, Night Of The Ankou before, 2007 was the year Brad Rose's The North Sea project really came to my attention, with no fewer than 3 excellent albums! Exquisite Idols, released on Type was the one most people talked about, but near the end of the year, he trumped it with this great album of woodsy folk, clanky bouzoukis and banjos, and odd east-meets-west atmospherics.

14. Alva Noto - Xeroxx Vol 1
http://images.juno.co.uk/150/CS262182-01A.jpg

With no Tim Hecker album to provide me with my fix of gorgeous, textured buzzing and crackling laptop magic this year, this album did the job very nicely. I also discovered that it worked strangely well whilst lying beside a Spanish swimming pool.

15. The Fiery Furnaces - Widow City
http://assets4.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/38662.widowcity.jpg

Another richly imaginitive, sprawling album from my favourite pop band, The Fiery Furnaces. My 4 yeear-old daughter is a big fan and I love the bizarre narratives running through the lyrics, the wonderful drumming, and the general cartoonishness of it all.

16. Meg Baird - Dear Companion
http://assets4.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/31032.dearcompanion.jpg

Stepping out of the shadow of Espers, Baird's simple, understated collection of folk songs was perfectly pitched and the album I played whenever I just wanted a beautiful voice and a bittersweet tune.

17. Library Tapes - Hostluft
http://www.normanrecords.com/images/covers/d-thumbs/91161_thumb.jpg

Another addictive set of sombre piano figures and sinister field recordings from the supremely consistent Library Tapes.

18. Gui Boratto - Chromophobia
http://assets.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/26874.chromophobia.gif

A gorgeous, zig-zagging techno album that was less minimal than my usual favourites ( Claro Intelecto, Ricardo Villalobos, Pantha Du Prince etc.), but full of wildly imaginative sounds and superclean drums.

19. Rafael Anton Irisarri - Daydreaming
http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s626474.jpg

I would be quite angry at Erik Skodvin for the complete lack of new Deaf Center material since the hugely influential (give it another couple of years and I'll be calling it seminal) Pale Ravine album, if it were not for the fact that his Miasmah label has put out a string of the year's most intriguing releases (Gultskra Artikler, Elegi), and my favourite of all of them is still the thick, warm piano-led experimentalism of Daydreaming.

20. Battles - Mirrored
http://assets.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/30537.mirrored.jpg

I was quite surprised, when I eventually got around to hearing them just how much fun Battles were. I have to be in the right mood, but this album has enough originality and surprises that I've found myself coming back to it again and again throughout the year. Nice blokes too.

21.The North Sea - Exquisite Idols
http://www.almostcool.org/mr/art/2021

22. Islaja - Ulual Yyy
http://www.normanrecords.com/images/covers/d-thumbs/89867_thumb.jpg

23. Eric Copeland - Hermaphrodite
http://www.cargo-records.com/cover/cover_150_31737.jpg

24. Christian Fennesz & Ryuichi Sakamoto - Cendre
http://assets.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/30684.cendre.jpg

25. Akron/Family - Love Is Simple
http://assets4.pitchforkmedia.com/images/image/37043.akronfamily_loveissimple_cover.jpg

26. Luciano - No Model No Tool
http://images.juno.co.uk/150/CS256465-01A.jpg

27. Oren Ambarchi - In The Pendulum's Embrace
http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s970200.jpg

28. Lichens - Omns
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29. Marsen Jules - Golden
http://www.normanrecords.com/images/covers/d-thumbs/92112_thumb.jpg

30. William Basinski - El Camino Real
http://www.tokafi.com/static/thumbs/2007/07/cd-feature-william-basinski-el-camino-real-2007-07-12.3934110103_170x170.jpg

31. Gultskra Artikler - Kasha Iz Topora
http://www.normanrecords.com/images/covers/94002.jpg

32. Julianna Barwick - Sanguine
http://www.soundsoftheuniverse.com/img/releases/10318/t1/.jpg