Box Springs Audio Workshop is a new addition to the Haunted Ink Records family.  Their first release is called The Signature Project Volume One.  It will be released in Spring 2012, but a preview of the album, the track “Signature 17,” is available now at Bandcamp.

The third volume of the wonderful, analog synth festival that is Pye Corner Audio’s Black Mill Tapes series is now available for download at Bandcamp.  I downloaded it immediately after I saw the notice on PCA’s web site that it was available.  I’ve listened to it numerous times now, and I’m happy to say that this is the best of the Black Mill Tapes series to date.  It expands the palate of Pye Corner Audio by adding in some really interesting distortion (like the warped synthesizer fun of the final track, “Theme Number Eight”) and bubbling, backfiring grooves that take the ideas of the previous albums and expands them in all sorts of fun and interesting directions.

Did the best album of 2012 come out in the middle of January?  I’m not sure, but it’s a pretty great start to a new year.

Not bad for $5.99.

More on Pye Corner Audio.  Buy the new album now.

So many of the best works from the past year complemented one another that I felt it fitting to link those compatible works together.  Tim Hecker’s two albums are a no-brainer, as are the pairing of Pye Corner Audio’s second full-length with his Study Series collaboration with The Advisory Circle (actually, I could have made that a triple pairing with The Advisory Circle’s full-length, too, but I decided to pair that one with a thematic complement of its own).  The rest of the pair-ups are described below.  In all, you get 20 album recommendations from me this year, and since I think the only real benefit to lists like this is the chance for me to recommend good music to others, that’s an extra 10 albums (or, if you are being picky, 9 albums and one single) for your consideration.  As always, I’ve provided links to guide you on your shopping.  Happy listening!

Top 10 Albums

1. Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972 and Dropped Pianos: I’ve been a fan of Tim Hecker’s music since Radio Amor back in 2003.  His mix of guitar, field recording, and drone/dissonance has developed and morphed into an art form all his own, and this year we got to witness not only one of his finest works in Ravedeath, 1972 but also a bit of a “making-of” in the form of Dropped Pianos, a “rough sketch” album of recordings Hecker made at a church in Iceland before they were processed into Ravedeath.  Oddly enough, the music on Dropped Pianos is every bit as fascinating and haunting as the more “finished product,” which is a testament to Hecker’s skills as a musician–no matter what he does, it’s fascinating.  The piano and organ compositions on Dropped Pianos are both beautiful and unsettling, but they are only part of the story here.  There’s a use of reverb and delay throughout that stretches the notes out so they overlap with one another, creating an unnatural sense of space, as if Hecker were stuck in a canyon, a million miles from the nearest person, his only friend the echoes of his music bouncing from wall to wall.  And then he went a dozen steps further on Ravedeath, 1972, refining and enhancing the sound, transforming simple echoes into overpowering symphonies like “Hatred of Music I” that couple that basic piano and organ with a wall of sound that bends and sways from noise into churning, unbelievably lovely melodies and then back again into noise.  The music here is so powerful, so deep, so rich, and so beautiful that it took me the length of the year to process and appreciate (meaning that I didn’t really like it at first, but now I can’t stop listening).  This is essential music from a wonderful artist.  And I would be remiss not to mention the cover art for the albums, featuring guys pushing a piano off a building.  2011 will be remembered as a year of protest and uprising–first in the “Arab Spring,” later in the capitalist west.  Hecker released his album in the early part of 2011, long before most of this had taken place.  The cover image is more provocative than its MIT origin, but it is an image that has stayed in my mind all year long as I watched the transformation of so much of our world from passivity into action and beyond.
2. Pye Corner Audio, Black Mill Tapes Vol. 2 and Study Series 07: Autumnal Activities (w/ The Advisory Circle): It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of both Pye Corner Audio and Ghost Box, so I was thrilled when these two works came out.  Volume 2 of Black Mill Tapes picked up where Vol 1 left off: unbelievably good analog synth explorations that exist as alternate universe leftovers of 1980s action film soundtracks (assuming that the 1980s of that alternate universe was far, far cooler than the ones I remember).  So Vol 2 came out earlier in the year, and I’ve been waiting for Vol 3 (which is forthcoming, I’ve been promised), so it was nice to get a little PCA sliver in the form of the latest Ghost Box “Study Series” release.  I was fully prepared to love the PCA song on this single, but I was very surprised by the wonderful Advisory Circle song, which was even better than that The Advisory Circle’s full-length (and that was pretty fantastic to start with).  All in all, banner year for people who love squelchy analog synth music from the UK.
3. Leyland Kirby, Eager to tear apart the stars and The Caretaker, An empty bliss beyond this World: Leyland Kirby is 2011′s MVP for his output alone.  Not only did he release these two wonderful creations but he issued three Intrigue & Stuff EPs, each as different as the last, and he tops 2011 off with the soundtrack to the film Patience (After Sebold), which might end up on next year’s best-of list.  Oh, and he redid his website and created a subscription service for his fans so they get all of his music as soon as it’s available.  Amazing energy, to be sure, but what matters is the music, and the music here is wonderful.  I don’t think Eager to tear apart the stars is the equal to 2009′s Sadly, the future is no longer what it was, but that’s like saying the fifth season of The Wire wasn’t quite as good as the other four seasons–it’s technically true, but who cares since it’s still better than almost everything else.  Both of these albums are wonderful, and while they share a similar tone (and shape), they are quite different in execution.  Caretaker albums center around the manipulation of samples (generally old songs from the 20s or something) as a way of exploring the experience of memories as they fade.  An empty bliss is very similar to the Caretaker works that preceded it, though there’s a sharpness and vivacity to this work that is an interesting contrast to some of the more difficult Caretaker albums like Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia.  For example, a track like “Moments of sufficient lucidity” introduces a lilting piano melody that plays, stops, and repeats again and again amidst the crackles of an old LP until the melody abruptly stops.  The effect is a combination of melodious peace and uncanny apprehension.  It’s fantastic.  By contrast, Eager to tear apart the stars is a symphony of piano, distortion, synths, and despair.  There’s the same repetition of phrases as in the Caretaker work, but here there’s no hope, only an endless, slow, plodding, repetition until a final surrender.  It’s not a depressing album, but neither is it the kind of thing I usually listen to first thing in the morning.  Together, these are overpowering statements from one of the great artists working today.  What’s more, he’s also one of the most prolific artists, too, which means there is much more to come.
4. The Advisory Circle, As the Crow Flies and Adrian Corker, Way of the Morris (Soundtrack)–It was, to be sure, a very good year for pagan-fused English music.  Of course, The Advisory Circle’s idea of paganism is to combine traditional English concepts of seasonal change and ritual with the omnipresence of totalitarian government–a combination that I find particularly fascinating, actually, since it lets me imagine a world where Christianity and all its baggage didn’t exist but the world was still just as screwed up and confused as it is now (that, by the way, is my personal vision of an alternate universe, in which the Roman Emperor Julian [the Apostate] didn’t die in the Persian desert and managed to squash Christianity as he had intended).  Really, though, As the Crow Flies is a wonderful collection of classic Ghost Box tinkering, and this is probably The Advisory Circle’s finest hour so far (though, as I said above, the Advisory Circle song “Cloud Control” on the Study Series single outdoes even this wonderful work).  Adrian Corker’s soundtrack to a movie about Morris dancing, on the other hand, is just plain pagan dreams, complete with old English creation myths about foxes dancing the world into being and music that makes me think that jumping up and down with handkerchiefs in my two hands is something I would like to try someday.  I haven’t seen the movie (though I intend to as soon as I can), but the music here is just weirdly wonderful and intricately varied.  At one minute, it is reminiscent of Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; at another, it becomes a Richard Thompson soundtrack; at yet another, it’s a remix of Chris Watson recording bird sounds.  Through it all, though, there is an eeriness that unsettles, confuses, and fascinates in the grand tradition of hauntological goodies like Ghost Box and Broadcast.
5. Zomby, Dedication and Nothing–I don’t dance, so I prefer the kind of electronic music that doesn’t require dancing.  But I can appreciate and enjoy dance music on its own.  Luckily, Zomby straddles that line between dance music and sitting on my ass music and he does it quite well.  Dedication is a wonderful work that I’ve been listening to since it came out.  It’s a feast for the ears, going in all sorts of directions, from the shotgun sample opening (reminding me of Portishead’s “Machine Gun”) to the dub-fused “Alothea” to the Emeralds-if-they-didn’t-use-guitars “Black Orchid” to the retro-Martin Dennis-funk fusion of “Salamander” to all sorts of other weird destinations.  And to just prove that he can do straight out dance music, he came out with Nothing at the end of the year, filled with unapologetic (but interesting and enticing) dance music that even makes me want to dance.  Great year for Zomby (and Zombies, too, thanks to The Walking Dead).
6. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake and Tom Waits, Bad as Me–I am fully aware that these are the only two artists that most people would have heard of prior to reading this list.  PJ Harvey and Tom Waits are kindred spirits, though, wouldn’t you say?  Both just took a left turn at the rock musician door and wandered into their own spaces where they explore whatever the hell they feel like exploring.  PJ Harvey’s album is probably the finest work of her very impressive career, and it’s got more awesome pop songs than anything else released this year (my favorite, “This Glorious Land,” is featured on my top singles list).  Tom Waits album is another Tom Waits album, which is to say a wonderful thing (though I wouldn’t call it revolutionary).
7. Jon Brooks, Music for Dieter Rams and Music for Thomas Carnacki–This is the year of the Advisory Circle, to be sure.  Jon Brooks is part of #2 and #4 above as his alter-ego, but under his own name he released two incredibly interesting albums on his side-label Cafe Kaput.  These are theme-based album of the highest order.  Music for Thomas Carnacki is Brooks’s “soundtrack” to an imaginary film of the enterprising “ghost hunter” Thomas Carnacki, the hero of William Hope Hodgson’s books.  Think of it as a kind of Hammer Horror tribute to the author and his creation.  Each song is an eerie fragment of electronic noodling, capturing the spirit and soul of a moment in Hodgson’s stories.  It’s a spooky album to be sure–great for Halloween.  By contrast, Music for Dieter Rams is an album-length homage to the famous industrial designer.  All sounds from the work were sampled from one of Dieter Rams’s creations, a small alarm clock.  Despite the limited sound palate, it’s amazing what Brooks is able to create here.  The songs are as rich and as varied as those on Thomas Carnacki (or any Advisory Circle release, in fact), from the slow synth moan of “Feldstarke” to the bubbling, bouncing joy of “Wanduhr Weltzeit.”  There’s very little that Jon Brooks can’t do, it seems.
8. Byetone, SyMeta and Mika Vainio, Life (…It Eats You Up)–There are two sides to Pan Sonic’s music: short, sharp shocks and long, loud roars.  Byetone is an artist who seems to have latched on to both of these, and his creation here is like Pan Sonic’s music filtered through Raster-Noton’s trademark “glitch” beats.  ”Helix” is a perfect example: the thumping kicks, fuzzy noises, stabbing roars could come straight from any Pan Sonic album (like Kesto, for example), but in Byetone’s hands the rhythm and propulsion dominates in the same way that the dissonance and discord dominate in Pan Sonic’s hands.  As a huge Pan Sonic fan who was very sad to see the duo end their run, I’m happy that at least one artist is keeping their ideas alive.  Of course, someone else who is keeping their music alive is…the members of Pan Sonic themselves, like Mika Vainio who has released the incredible Life (It Eats You Up), where he focuses on the long, loud roars that Vainio’s solo work is so often partial to.  Even here, the dual layers of rhythm and noise come together and diverge in new ways.  There’s a sense of John Zorn-esque jazz floating around the edges of the noise and the grime in these tracks (thanks to the heavy use of guitars throughout), with beats existing not for rhythm but for accentuation (as in “And Give Us Our Daily Humiliation”).  There’s an incredible variety and ingenuity to these songs, proof (if any was needed) that Mika Vainio isn’t going away anytime soon.
9. Thundercat, The Golden Age of Apocalypse and Kode9 & The Spaceape, Black Sun–Dubstep has spread everywhere, to the point that the term really doesn’t mean anything at all anymore.  So forget the term.  Thundercat is an LA artist (part of the Brainfeeder group that includes Flying Lotus) and this is his first full-length, and boy is it good, featuring as it does the best song of the year in “Daylight” and a host of other groovy, time-warped tunes, as if he’s remixing Earth, Wind, and Fire with Ableton Live.  This is the happiest, most entertaining album I listened to this year.  Kode9 & The Spaceape’s Black Sun, by contrast, was one of the darkest (as the title suggests).  This is the second collaboration between Kode9 and The Spaceape.  While their first album felt like a stripped-down update of Linton Kwesi Johnson’s Dread Beat ‘an Blood, this album is quite different.  The music here is much more varied, grooves and melodies ranging from the head-on power beats of “Am I” to the more atmospheric, Burial-esque “Neon Red Sign” to “Otherman,” which builds from a Tim Hecker stream of noise into a crispy, static filled groove that rolls and blurs while Spaceape raps through a telephone (or so it sounds).  Amazing work.
10. The Kramford Look, 1970 and Rangers, Pan Am Stories–Okay, I grew up in the 70s and 80s.  I remember the haircuts and the clothes; I lived them.  Trust me–the memory of that time is WAY better than the real thing.  I’m guessing that neither the Kramford Look nor the Rangers were around then, and that’s a good thing.  If they had, they would have never been so fascinated with the music of that time to the point that they would take the core elements of that music and reimagine it and reinvent it anew.  1970 could easily be the soundtrack to a Blacksploitation film or one of those Steve McQueen films about killing bad guys in San Francisco or a Spaghetti Western or an old Doctor Who episode.  Ah, but the trick is…it’s all of these things and more, a mix of funk and opera and bawdy and schmaltzy, all intertwined around one another.  Take “Shoebox at Sea,” which begins with a sound from Doctor Who and then builds into a smooth jazz beat from a cop drama that merges, somewhere along the line, into a funk line from some strange Harlem drug film.  I know nothing about the Kramford Look, but my guess is that they are too young to be burdened by the 70s.   This feels like music from people who grew up watching and thinking and dreaming about a time long past and seek to revive that past through music that knows no racial barriers, no political leanings, none of the baggage brought about by actually living through that tumultuous time (a time, most people forget, of deep musical segregation).  Rangers, on the other hand, have a different objective: to take all the crappy rock music from the 70s and 80s and distill it into swirling, lo-fi mini-epics.  This album is very reminiscent of last year’s Suburban Tours, but Pan Am Stories features more vocals and (dare I say) coherent songs than that former work, and it’s prettier, with intricate guitar work and some nice rhythm stuff.  Of course, it’s all presented in a lo-fi fog, as if it was recorded 25 years ago and left in the back of someone’s closet to be unearthed in 2011, but that quality is exactly what makes the music so interesting and so memorable: Rangers are, if anything, the 70s and 80s rock version of The Caretaker, examining the memory of rock before it fades into oblivion.

Creating music on computers is an exercise in parsing.  There are limitless ways to combine sounds and instruments, mixing and matching and guessing and fussing and tweaking.  Main software programs like ProTools, Live, and Logic all come with their own instruments and sounds and effects.  Companies like Native Instruments and Waves and Camel Audio sell more instruments and sounds and effects.  There are analog and digital external devices to add even more flexibility.  Plus, recording new sounds has never been easier–a fantastic digital recorder is only a few hundred dollars, thus putting every sound within the grasp of even the most pedestrian musical adventurer.

All of this is, of course, duh.  And equally duh is the fact that those choices end up being more of a curse than a blessing, since unlimited choice means unlimited uncertainty that YOUR choice is the right one.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve spent hour upon hour fiddling with the settings on an instrument, continually second-guessing my choices, convinced that THIS or THAT tweak will result in the perfect sound, only to rethink that change in favor of yet another change, and on and on until, again, duh.

And so I know that the #1 job for an electronic musician is to forcibly reduce those choices.  Don’t use every instrument or sound or effect.  Focus on a few.  That’ll not only save time but will save sweat and blood, as well.

And so I did that: I limited myself to certain tools and tried not to go outside those tools.  The trouble was, I started to create a song, and suddenly there was a sound I wanted that my limited tools could not provide.  So I went back and tweaked, tweaked, tweaked, or I broke my rules and used new instruments or effects and tweaked, tweaked, tweaked.

In other words, I was addicted to the post-scarcity musical universe.

However, I found a solution to my addiction, and it came in an interesting way.  I created an album, Riverrun.  It’s available now.  I really enjoy the songs on that album, and I hope you do too.  But one thing struck me recently while listening to those tracks for the 47th time: there was too much variety.  The drums sounds were different on every track.  The bass and lead and pads all changed from one song to another.  The is a consistent mood and feeling to the album, but within the songs, there was too much variety for my taste.  I didn’t think the album really fit together as well as it could have, and I think this was caused by my unlimited choices.  Since each song could use different sounding drums or whatnot, each song did use different sounding drums or whatnot.

I compared Riverrun to recent albums by some of my favorite artists–Jon Brooks’ Music for Dieter Rams, Pye Corner Audio’s Black Mills Tapes, The Caretaker’s An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, Leyland Kirby’s Sadly, the Future… These are all different in a number of ways, but the thing they have in common is each works from a singular sonic map.  The songs on each album feel connected to one another, and that sense of connectivity is due largely to the fact that the songs are using only a handful of instruments, and those instruments can be heard and felt all the way through.

And, yes, you’re thinking, duh.  What did you expect?  When Bruce Springsteen records an album, he uses the same instruments he always does–drum, bass, guitar, keyboard, some sax, a few other things thrown in.  Each album uses those elements, yet each of his albums is unique.  Most artists do this–heck, almost all.  But it’s easy to forget that fact when surrounded by choice after choice after choice in a computer-based environment.

So the lesson I learned was simple: treat electronic music the way that all other music is treated.  Use a few instruments, and use them well.

Another side-duh I discovered recently came courtesy of a Dubspot video I was watching about some electronic artist (I don’t even remember his name now).  But the video spoke about this guy’s virtuosity with a particular Roland synth.  The guy is a self-taught musician, and all the music he creates comes from this synth.  He’s learned how to use that instrument so well that he doesn’t need anything else.  The video also mentioned how the electronic artist Squarepusher only used this one type of sampler and his bass guitar to create all his weird, wild stuff.  Then I remembered that Moon Wiring Club only uses samples and some Playstation music game to create his stuff, Monolake uses only Ableton Live’s Operator synth to create a lot of his music, Pan Sonic use only analog synths they create themselves (along with a sampler), Augustus Pablo used a melodica to create most of his music, and I could go on and on.  Artist after great artist pick an instrument, learn it, and use it.

Abundance was getting in the way of mastery.  I had too many choices.  I tried to learn too many different things instead of focusing on really learning a few.

So my plan was set: find some instruments, master them, and then use them.

The first step was finding the right instruments.  And here I have decided to do a full about-face with computers and use actual hardware with real knobs and everything.  I’ve found that using hardware instead of software not only limits the choices down for sound selection, but it also allows for better and more interesting improvisation.  I can use automation in Ableton Live to create a semblance of improvisation, but every time I do improvise something using a softsynth, I end up editing it to death before I create a mix, and that effectively kills the spontaneity of it all.

So, what instruments?  Well, first I wanted a drum machine to help me create popping noise like Pan Sonic.  I wanted a real drum machine, an analog one.  I found it in the Vermona DRM1 mkIII.  It’s an awesome beast, and you can read all about it if you want to know more.  The second had to be a synth, and here I had my choice.  I ultimately went with a Meeblip, a monophonic device that creates crackly, crunchy sounds that can go anywhere from harsh noise to soft bass lines.  I picked it for two reasons: it was cheap and it was simple to use.  It was only an added bonus that it produces awesome sounds.

So those are my instruments.  Now, bear in mind that I am still learning these instruments; I’m nowhere near mastery.  And part of that process is discovering what I can and cannot do with these instruments.  I have been a little concerned that the Meeblip won’t be able to generate as many of the softer, richer tones that I’d prefer to include in my music, so I have considered adding a third instrument to my collection in the form of a polyphonic hardware synth (perhaps the OP-1 by Teenage Engineering).  But I’m holding back for now because I really don’t know what the limits are for the Meeblip.  I know I can’t create chord progressions too well, but it can create a lot of complex sounds.  How many sounds?  Do they work for the music I want to create? I’m not sure yet.  That’s what the learning stage is all about.  The same goes for the DRM1.  It only has 10 sounds total, but there are so many knobs that create so many different variations that 10 sounds might as well be 10,000,000, and while I’ve tweaked the knobs on that instrument over and over, I still find myself amazed by the variety of sounds I can produce.

I’ve started creating some music with these instruments, and I’ll be showing it off soon enough.  I like where I’m headed, at least, though it has been a bit difficult to stick to my rules.  I’ve actually sampled sounds from the Meeblip, put those sounds into Ableton’s Simpler or Camel Audio’s Alchemy and modified the sounds to into softer, more sustained tones.  And I like the results of those songs.  However, when I listen to those songs against others that used only the DRM1 and the Meeblip, I find that they don’t quite mesh the way I’d prefer, the way Pye Corner Audio’s music all meshes together so nicely.  So I won’t be using those other programs any more, and I think my music will be better for it.

• An awesome new Joker single, “The Vision,” coupled with the news that his first album is on its way (but how soon?).
• Jon Brooks’s Music for Dieter Rams, which is a wonderful collection of songs crafted from samples of Brooks’s alarm clock.  I didn’t expect an album created using a gimmick like that to be so rich and beautiful, but it’s both.
• Leyland Kirby has revamped his website, released Vol. 1 of his 12″ series Intrigue & Stuff (Vols. 2-4 coming later this year), released a brand new Caretaker album (An empty bliss beyond this World) and another Caretaker release to come later this year), and announced a new Leyland Kirby full-length release, as well.  He has also developed a “digital subscription plan” for those who want all of his releases this year.
• The Book of Mormon original cast recording was released, so I can find out what everyone has been talking about.

Good month, indeed–at least on the music front.

My new album Riverrun is now available at iTunes and Amazon, in addition to Bandcamp.  Get it while it’s hot!

Yes, that is correct: Riverrun is available now at Bandcamp and will be available soon at iTunes, Amazon, Emusic, and other online music stores.  If you go to Bandcamp, you can listen to every song for free and buy whatever you’d like–and two tracks are available for free (including the title track).  A bonus song, “Spell Dignity,” is also available there.

Additionally, my new website, MichaelHeumann.com, is now up and running.  You’ll see a link at the top of this page.  It takes the place of the Haunted Ink Records website and contains all sorts of information about my music.

Finally, while you’re visiting Bandcamp to buy my new album, make sure to stop by Pye Corner Audio’s Bandcamp page to purchase their wonderful new album Black Mill Tapes Vol. 2 (and, by “new,” I mean hours old).  Vol. 1 was one of the best releases of 2010, and Vol. 2 is more of the same wonderful analog wonderfulness.  It’s £4.99, which is about $8 USD.  Riverrun is $5.  That means you can get two albums for a fraction of the cost of a season of Glee on DVD, and you can guarantee that all proceeds will go to the artists themselves (unlike, say, Glee).  So go Bandcamp, and thank you for reading my blog and listening to my music!

Michael Heumann (aka The Inkbottle)

Top 10

1. New Tim Hecker album!!!!
2. Parks & Recreation is back
3. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
4. Egypt
5. The Omega Factor
6. M-Audio Fast Track Ultra
7. Mixcloud
8. Pitchers & Catchers reporting…
9. Grape Vines
10. Cats

Bottom 3

1. Trish Keening’s passing.  RIP
2. Republicans
3. Budgets

I love end-of-year lists not for the competition of seeing who is on top; rather, these lists always give me ideas for music to buy, since there’s no way to hear everything in a given year (unless you are paid to do this, which I’m not).  So hopefully this list will have one or two suggestions for you as you go shopping for new music in the new year.  I’ve provided links to each work to help facilitate that end. Happy holidays, and have a great 2011.

1. Emeralds, Does It Look Like I’m Here — Unbelievably beautiful, captivating synth music from a band I’d not even heard of when the year began.  If the 80s had sounded like THIS, perhaps we wouldn’t have needed so much hair gel.
2. Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me — I waited a long time for this album to come out, but it did not disappoint.  It’s very long, and it is hard to get through it all in one sitting (I don’t bother), but there’s enough here to study and dissect for a lifetime, and Joanna is just getting started!
3. Pye Corner Audio Transcription Services, Black Mill Tapes Vol. 1: Avant Shards — This is just wonderfully muddy, trippy, eerie music that captivated me from the moment I first heard it.  Wire magazine called it “evil,” which made no sense unless “evil” is British for “awesome.”
4. North, Darkside — This has been a fixture in my car for a few months now.  It’s the best thing Hyperdub has released since the last Burial CD, and that’s saying something.  Wonderful, weird, twisted synthpop.
5. Rangers, Suburban Tours — Each song on this guitar-swirl album sounds like the engineer pushed “record” halfway through.  If there is such a thing as “hypnagogic,” then you’ll find it here–AOR radio from the 80s squished into knots and reimagined by punks.  Awesome.
6. Pan Sonic, Gravitoni — Pan Sonic’s last, great work was too much like their earlier music to place any higher on my list, but this is a band who redefined electronic music and whose output will be respected and revered long after the concept of “electronic music” has been shelved.  A final, great summary of a truly great band.
7. Ghost Box Study Series (Vol 1-4) — This was the Ghost Box filler year, when they released a bunch of singles that, together, make one of the best albums of the year.  The Broadcast & the Focus Group single is of particular note–a continuation of their 2009 collaboration that is every bit as wonderful.  I can’t wait for 2011 and a new Broadcast album (perhaps?  perhaps?).
8. Philip Jeck, An Ark for the Listener — As always, Touch records stands at the top of the mountain in electronic and experimental music.  This was a wonderful, inspiring work from one of the label’s stalwarts–an artist who manages to create symphonies using only turntables.
9. Frank Bretschneider, EXP — I’ve always loved Bretschneider’s music for its grooviness, but this year’s effort was wonderful because it pared down the grooves into their component elements and turned dance music into an abstraction (which is what it always has been anyways).  Yes, clicks & cuts live!
10. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs — I know that this is the only album on this list that anyone has actually heard of, but don’t let that fact diminish the quality and inventiveness of this Canadian group’s third effort.  If the world is lucky, they are the band of the future, and this was only the beginning.

The world sucks.  Republicans are trying their best to lie their way back into power again.  Oil is killing entire ecosystems in the Gulf. Global warming is starting to really come into its own.  Some sub-human idiots from New Jersey are celebrated by everyone.  It’s one day before the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima.  It’s August and I live in a place where we’re excited if the temperature is only 102°, where no one has a job, where the economy is stagnating, and where earthquake recovery continues without any help from the outside world.  Oh, and apparently the Mayans are coming.  Really, is there anything good out there?  Can someone give us even a peek at hope–even for a second?

Enter Arcade Fire.  During their Madison Square Garden concert tonight (broadcast live online), my life didn’t suck–and I’m guessing that’s true of all the other people who attended or watched from a distance.  And it wasn’t just the concert, either–though that was quite an amazing, spellbinding, celebratory event (watch it yourself if you want proof–it’s well worth your time).  It was the unreal realization that a band like this isn’t supposed to succeed in America–yet they have, and this concert is proof.

While I was watching, I told my wife (who wasn’t watching–since they’re not Depeche Mode or Weird Al), “They’re all kind of ugly looking–so you know they’re good.”  She concurred.  I was exaggerating, of course–they’re not ugly at all (some are quite fetching, in fact).  But they’re not Katy Perry or Usher, either.  And here they are with a #1 album, selling out MSG, and blasting a concert online that shuts down Twitter.  This is a band of Americans and Canadians and Hatians, men and women, multi-instrumentalists all, singing and playing complex, convex music that has caught the attention of teenagers and older dudes like me in a way that very few artists are capable.  In a musical world filled with banality and self-delusion, Arcade Fire are more than just a breath of fresh air–they’re a hurricane that demonstrates why everyone else sucks (see: Radiohead at the 2009 Grammys).

I should add that I’m not even a particularly devout fan of Arcade Fire.  I really like Funeral, and I’m beginning to discover their other music (including their new album, The Suburbs, which I’m listening to now).  It’s beautiful, fascinating music, but I haven’t studied it or LISTENED to it to any serious extent to really have a lot to say about it (though Funeral is right up there with In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and that’s the highest praise I can give an album).  But I know quality when I hear it, and they’re quality–and their very existence as a popular band, a band celebrated and listened to by all shapes and sizes and ages, gives me hope that the world won’t suck forever.