top 11 of '07

its one of my favourite musical times of the year when i get to browse the blogs and see what gems are out there that i've missed (menomena apparently), and how other people's perspective disagreed with mine. for me it's too difficult to rank albums and too difficult to track whether an album was released in 2007, so i present to you my top 11 for '07 that i listened to the most...
clipse-hell hath no fury

this was the album that restored my faith in hiphop. tight off-kilter beats, great rhymes and showing a little vulnerability too. it also gave me a whole new vocabulary when talking about crack selling.


beach house- beach house

dreamy pop with girls vocals. unfortunately we only made the last song of their gig when we tried to catch them. i am a sucker for groups with girls singing, and she has a big voice.


of montreal- hissing fauna are you the destroyer

they moved away from the twee sound of their last couple of albums and pumped up the disco side of things. kevin barnes was apparently having marriage issues and that translates into the music if not the tunes. we're going to see them on tuesday, exciting.


liars-liars

i am a huge fan of the liars, and "drum's not dead" although avant garde would have been in my top 10 of last year. this album was more accessible, but still todally rocked, especially "tiny plaster casts of everything"- when it kicks in at the end- rifftastic.

black lips- good, bad, not evil

this is classic rock n'roll. it was tough to decide to go with this album or the live album as the token black lips album (they nearly both made it). scuzzy, guitar driven rawk (or flower punk i think the genre is called), venturing into 50's style storytelling.

lcd soundsystem- sound of silver

any interview you read with james murphy he comes acroos as the smartest guy in popular music. this album was even better than the debut album, and songs like "someone great" put a lot of wistfulness behind a driving beat. he's improved his live act considerably too.

fela kuti- expensive shit



fela kuti has been my gateway into african music, and i keep turning to this album. "water he no get enemy" must be one of the funkiest songs about, it's long and wild and it packs a message.

klaxons- myths of the near future

this album apparently created "new rave", but i'm not sure how rave it is (except for the sirens at the beginning of "atlantis to interzone"). i like pretty much all the singles off this album (even the inspired cover), and i'm intrigued to see where they take it from here.

ghostface-supreme clientele

i don't know which stone i was sleeping under when this came out, but after listening to last year's fishscale i went through the back catalogue. this is an impeccable album, usual ghostface storytelling and languid rhymes, the first couple of listens of his new album haven't convinced me that he's reached this level again.

various- trojan calypso box set

this is in the car, and i never get tired of it. some saucy, some emancipatory (not sure if that is a word), all with a great propulsive beat that makes me think of sunshine.



electrelane- no shouts, no calls


i bought this on a bit of a whim, and it ticks a lot of boxes; girl singers, krautrock, melodies. i can't believe they've gone on hiatus, so this is the last album of theirs to be treasured.



panda bear- person pitch

beach boys meets animal collective. this album is skewed pop at it's finest. probly my favourite album of '07, it has great melodies, harmonies and just enough wierdness to keep things interesting


there were a lot of other great albums that it was tough not to put in this list; deerhoof-friend opportunity, animal collective- strawberry jam, yo la tengo- i am not afraid of you and i will kick your ass, mathhew dear- asa breed, super furry animals- hey venus and black moth super rainbow- dandelion gum to name a couple. what are your favourites, plug them in the comments...

i know it's wierd

but i want to buy these

but seriously

how good are sleater-kinney.

kwik-e-mart

i was in seattle and next to the space needle they had set up a kwik-e-mart to celebrate the simpsons movie. it ruled, look at the picture of the tubby cop with wiggum...

donut soup

molecular gastronomy is a very intriguing topic for me. mixing up textures and flavours and the food stauts quo; snail icecream, melon spheres etc. i read all i can about the fat duck and el bulli and the crazy shit they get up to. i think it's beyond me, however it's interesting to read from a wtf perspective. however one of my regular food blog reads had a pretty easy one; donut soup . pretty easy, fry up some high quality doughnuts steep them in some milk and water, add some more donuts and then blend the hell out of them (that's the abridged version). so on one of my london work trips i went to krispy kreme (i said high quality) and made it. it's sweet, it's thick, it's donutty and delicious...

seekraal

i was at the fish stand the other day and they had this funny green seaweed/spikey stuff that looked interesting. i bought it as seekraal but found out it was called samphire, sea bean/asparagus and a host of other names. it grows near the sea hence it's salty nature. it's crunchy and great, and i've bought it a couple of times since

turkse pizza

We live near a pretty Turkish street (although there is a horse butchery on the road), and they have a delight called turkse pizza. It is a pizza style base topped with tomatoey paste with a little mince, rolled up with lettuce and chilli and garlic sauce. Pretty great and a steal for eur1.50. I think we may have found the holy grail of turkse pizza, a new shop on our road churns out these beauties which made me change my perspective on the genre; crispy base, tomato & cucumber (a vast improvement on simply lettuce), awesome

backlog

I need a burst of inspiration, had the usual busy summertime time. Lots of visitors, rose and her sister, dietmar and annie, I was in seattle for week (more on that to follow, lots of tattoos and coffee, no heroin and a disappointing lack of grunge). Anyway, here we go kids, this was a burst of fun cooking we had in june, about a week or so, most of them will get their own post so I can look like a prolific blogger.
I made some thai curry paste. It was pretty easy, you can see all the ingredients, just a little tough to chop them all before blending. You need an inordinate amount of chillis too (20 dried and 20 birds eye). I liked it, but it wasn’t all time, even though I did concentrate on making it as legit as possible (except I did blend it as opposed to pestle and mortar, which is supposed to allow more of the oils to be naturally released). Fuck that I say, life’s too short for pestle and mortar. I made some mussels with it tonight, nice but not as fresh tasting as normal mussels

jarvis

My best of 2006 post is way out of date (this is what comes of being a less than prolific blogger). However there was an album that I wanted to shine some light on, because I have continued to listen to, and it may still be my gig of 2007 so far. Jarvis’ album appealed to me for 2 main reasons;
1) it rocked
2) it was so jaundiced

rocking is pretty easy and I can name a lot of bands that do it more than adequately. But having a jaded, modern life is rubbish slant is something special, especially when it is so eloquent. It’s always about the lyrics, but simply the title “from aushwitz to ipswitch” or the video to “don’t waste your time” capture a unique slant on life. “ cunts are still running the world” requires no nuance, it’s telling like he sees it. After these gret tracks I still wasn’t expecting too much from a 40 something brit pop washup in concert. However, he rocked; great between song banter and purple haze??!? as an encore.

So this ties nicely into my eternal quandary, how does one age gracefully (or disgracefully, depending on how you want to go). I was on facebook the other day and I saw all these people that I saw in my early 20’s, and they remain douche bags. Then I would have been lairy and told them they were cunts, I have mellowed somewhat in my old age, however the temptation is very strong let me tell you….

atp vs the fans

hey kids

we were at atp vs the fans on the weekend. it ruled, no camping, hot showers, a fridge and all the mod cons. also great bands and good friends, top!

my highlights; cornelius, the books, yo la tengo, sparklehorse, les savy fav.

great!

madrid

i went to madrid this weekend to see manuel and kay-z. it was great, only a couple of days, i ate my bodyweight in jamon serrano (manuel bought a leg which we ploughed through). we played wii (the first console i have been interested in owning), drank rum?!?, and ate a lot of tapas. very nice...

photos

looking at the hyacinth fields, dim sum, roast dinners and a cat-in-a-box

Vinyl

My new found vinyl craze has gone through an obscene burst. This week I have bought/received; lps;
css, prefuse 73- extinguished outtakes, fugazi-the argument, spiritualized-amazing grace, Jarvis
7/12 inches;
Panda bear- bros, cat power- the greatest, and about 5 others
And I won on ebays;
Pixies, trompe le monde, king tubby-double album, stereolab- , broadcast-work and non-work
Luckily I got a raise, maybe now I need to get a secret credit card that dagmar can’t track…

The lovers gift-sterilisation

That’s what I got mittens for valentine’s day. Some might say it’s cruel, but others (like these guys) advocate it…

two gigs

it's not a post about data (see what i did there, switch & replace)
we went to see two pretty great gigs last week.
on monday we went to see jarvis. i really like the new album, it's got an interesting old man sleaze to it. and the titles are jaundiced enough to be coming from someone half his age; "cunts are still running the world"", "from auschwitz to ipswitch" etc




and then on friday it was lo-fi-fnk, one of the faces of new rave(tm). they were great, pumping beats, nice sportswear, fun!

i've missed you

Had a great christmas. It was cool not to travel for a holiday. I sat on my erse, boozed and slept late (and cooked a very delicious goose for Christmas). Billy ruptured her appendix on Christmas which sucked (how selfish can you get?). it was very sucky, she was in a lot of pain, and missed her slot to go back to oz, but luckily alls well that ends well and she’s sunning her bum over there now
Then benjy and phil came to visit. We repeated the same trick but looked at some windmills and went to Rotterdam (and finally went for a peek in one of the cube houses)
New years was surprisingly good,.a little raving (so to speak) and some good tunes

Last week was spent in morzine in the alps for a little snowboarding. We had lessons every day and I loved it as I thought I might. I could carve and make it down the hill in one piece. We had a hot tub to rest our aching bones and a chef cooking us great meals. Very great.

Mouldy is here this week with Clemence, so it’s all good…