two things stuck out for me this year, and one of those was the continued ascendance of bass music in its myriad guises. no doubt, there’s been some fantastic listening that’s come out as a result – just check out some of my picks below. but as bass has infiltrated more nooks and crannies, and populated seemingly every other mix and podcast on the Interweb, there’s also been a flattening effect – to the point that “bass music” has entered the realm of the generic.

on a more personal level, 2011 was the year of the drift for pondablog. for whatever reason, i found myself increasingly seduced by the drawn out, the meditative, the soundscapes that lingered and looped and didn’t rush to endpoints. much of this tendency is reflected in my picks below – which appear, by the way, in no particular order.

James Blake – self-titled
Wasn’t quite sure what to expect from mr. blake’s debut. The earlier singles sounded fantastic, but i’d also come across rumours that the alb was going to be a bit of a soulboy thing – think style council with sub-bass. Thank the lords, that disturbing premonition was not to be; something much more spectral showers the listener. Blake undresses dubstep, takes the exolskeleton and concocts a weird, enthralling world. “I never learnt to share” was one of 2011’s most divisive songs, and one of the most astonishing.  Start with the lyric: “my brother and my sister don’t speak to me – but i don’t blame them…” it sounds ridiculously trite, it is ridiculously trite, a teenage confessorial bathed in martyr syndrome. but the song builds…and builds…and builds…all the while imbued by blake’s emptied falsetto and glowing baroque keyboards and, when it hits, a soul-shredding bassline that transforms the triteness into brilliant, black psychodrama. it’s followed by the sublime “lindisfarne I” and “lindisfarne II,” a  ghostly, playful, poignant duet that floats like John Martyn on ether. and beats. What makes this all the more impressive is the fact that blake is barely into adulthood. He turned 23 the night i saw him this past fall in Vancouver (a fab show, by the way). May he plumb depths and scale heights for many more moons to come, haters be damned.

Tim hecker – ravedeath, 1972

In which Vancouver-born tim hecker takes music written in montreal and Banff, hops on a plane, lands in Iceland and records a minimal-maximal masterpiece in a Reykjavik church. On a pipe organ. And the result is, well, magnificent. Hecker’s soundworld moves from ambient power drones to hypnotic, haunted motifs that float and dissipate like smoke in the air. 

Liturgy – aesthetica

At the very least, you’ve gotta tip your charred fedora to Liturgy – any band that can make intellectually challenged metalheads wet their beds in impotent rage is a more-than-welcome development. There was a whole lotta talking/moaning/whinging/finger-pointing that accompanied the release of Aesthetica – so much so that the music was often overshadowed by occasionally amusing and typically banal bombast.

That said, liturgy presents some pretty interesting talking points. They’re a quartet of young ‘uns from Brooklyn who look more scruffy indie urchins rather than corpse-painted scandos from the bowels of beelzebub. Aesthetica was also a coup for thrill jockey, a label that’s more associated with outre rock and electronica than it is with black metal histrionics.

On guitar is Bernard Gann, son of Kyle Gann, the erstwhile new music crit for the Village Voice. Then there’s the sadly departed Greg Fox, a titan on drums. And of course, there’s Hunter Hunt-Hendrix (yep, his real name), a theory-ridden metal aesthete who cites Xenaxis as an influence and wrote a magnum opus entitled transcendental black metal: a vision of apocalyptic humanism.

and yeah, the music’s pretty fantastic too – an ecstatic, roiling mass of momentum that melds extreme moves with a sense of metallic minimalism that brings to mind guitar eggheads such as glenn branca. hell, you know an album that credits current 93′s “great black time” ain’t gonna be some cookie cutter carnage. the stunner that really won me over is “generation,” an instrumental that sets the controls straight for the heart of the blackened sun, powered by Steve Reichian repitition and sheer force.

Destroyer – Kaputt

This one was a grower. At first, its moves seemed a bit too rich – cloying. But the more i listened, the more the silky grooves sank in, accompanied by a whole host of memories. Eno, Roxy, Bowie, Steely Dan. But more than all of those – and thanks to my better half’s astute ear – Al Stewart. The latter’s year of the cat has a special resonance for me, an album that sank into my consciousness due to my older brother playing out its grooves in a basement bedroom. Kaputt’s bruised yet beautiful offerings aren’t mere homage though – the prolific Dan Bejar inserts his own unique brand of ambience, melody and elegant weirdness, all infused with an anglo-pop yearning. As Bejar croons, “sounds, smash hits, melody maker, NME, all sound like a dream to me.” sounds like a dream, indeed.

Four Tet – Fabriclive 59

i’ve said it before, i’ll say it again: kieran hebden is, well, kind of a genius. he’s made enthralling electronica for years, including last year’s sublime there is love in you, which made my best o’ the year list. he’s put out albums with left-field jazzbos such as steve reid and mats gustaffson. and he’s responsible for fabriclive 59, a stormer of a mix dedicated to the halcyon sounds of prime UK garage/2 step that’s interspersed with live snippets from the crowd at legendary london club fabric.

the offerings are gloriously varied, merging current tracks with long-unearthed gems, and bringing unusual suspects such as caribou and ricardo villalobos into the mix. for me, the pinnacle takes shape about halfway through, when the spectral ambient tones of stl’s “dark energy” morph into the brutalized bass of “percussions one,” the messed-up machine brilliance of c++’s “angie’s fucked” and burial’s epic “street halo.”  fabriclive 59 floats like a butterfly and stings like a sizzle, and it feels and sounds ecstatic the whole time. so thank  you, kieran, once again. and kudos to fabric for continuing to put out fantastic documents of UK bass culture (see my next top 10 below).

Girls – father, son, holy ghost

the bruised pop of girls’ debut album (called, er, album) hooked me, and frontman christopher owens’s story deepened my interest. a former child member of the children of god cult, owens is a fucked-up peter pan character who comes across as brutally honest in songcraft and in print. as he told pitchfork earlier this year, “I struggle with an addiction to serious, very heavy opiates. Getting rid of this shit is literally the worst hell you can imagine. I don’t know why I always go back to it, but I do.” yet there’s also a weirdly obsessive upside, if you can call it that, to this struggle: “It fuels the music in a very serious way. It allows you to focus on one thing - I can pinpoint an idea or an emotion while very heavily medicated, which is how I write most of my songs. This is a reoccurring theme.”

not the healthiest approach, perhaps – but it’s certainly one that has reaped some sublime moments, especially on father, son, holy ghost. the album begins with “honey bunny,” a beach-boysesque paean to rejection of the female persuasion: “they don’t like my bony body/they don’t like my dirty hair,” etc. so far, so girls. but then “Alex” comes along – a melancholy, resigned beauty of a tune with a honeyed lick that channels fleetwood mac circa rumours (yep, it’s that good). elsewhere, the band rawk out on the happily titled “die” and “vomit,” whilst “my ma,” “just a song” and the epic “love like a river” breach the depths in a way that signals, dare i say it, a maturing voice. father, son, holy ghost is the sound of girls becoming (damaged) men.

Timber timbre – creep on creepin’ on

Are they from Vancouver?  Toronto? Montreal? I dunno. Apparently all three. But i do know that this canuckian outfit turned out a gem of an album this year, a subdued soliloquy bathed in gothic blues that goes down like narco-laden cough syrup. Their live show was ace as well – the players seated in a hushed atmosphere, drenched in blood-red lighting, lulling an entranced audience. 

Earth – Angels of darkness, demons of light

earth used to be the heaviest band on, er, earth. that’s not the case anymore, but it hasn’t stopped dylan carlson and co. (this time including perennial washington muso karl blau on bass) from composing spaghetti-western quasi-metal that marinates your brain like mushroom molasses. it’s a luxurious development, and one that first found its footing on 2008′s the bees made honey in the lion’s skull.

Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer - Re: ECM

nothing else that came out this year made me listen as intently and deeply as Re: ECM. A concept alb of sorts, the two-disc offering features left-field electronic auteurs ricardo villalobos and max loderbauer dipping into the revered ECM catalogue and re-interpreting the vast spatial sounds that have characterized the label’s free-floating and gorgeous output over the decades (you can read more about the project in an earlier pondablog post).

another aspect that’s intriguing is the duo’s choice of working material. many of the artists whose tracks they interact with hail from ECM”S more esoteric realms (Benny Maupin, Miroslav Vitous, the Christian Wallumrod Ensemble). the aim, if i may paraphrase, is to merge two sound worlds: the acoustic and the electronic. and Re: ECM does this beautifully. this is music that unfurls, the sound of exquisite particle physics, a tactile and emotional experience that resulted in some of the most seductive and truly haunting sounds to surface in 2011 (“Resvete” and “Retikhiy” (Alexander Knaifel), ”Rekondaktion” (Arvo Part)). i’ll leave the final words to villalobos and loderbauer, as quoted in the liner notes: “the most important thing is to harmonize these two worlds, without them aspiring to mutually deactivate each other, to keep both – the organic and the electronic – in balance. That is what it will be about in the future.”

Oneida – Absolute II

Absolute II appeared this year as the final album in a triptych from this Brooklyn outfit that includes 2008′s Preteen Weaponry and 2009′s Rated O. I haven’t heard the former, but the latter’s sprawling dubbed-out psychedelia, spread over three(!) albums, blew my mind (and made pondablog’s very first post to boot).

that said, if there is a connection between the second and third albs, i’d be danged to figure out what it is – other than a love of sound in its many guises and a spirit of addictive experimentalism. Absolute II is an electronic suite of four mesmerizing tracks, with nary a vocal – other than some heavily processed voicings that surface on the monumental “horizon,” only to be overcome by an airplane-engine drone and a pulsing motorik rhythm. if that sounds friggin’ awesome, well, it is. the rest of the album follows a similar electro-damaged template, with “grey area” evoking the abstract abysses of sunn o)))  or demdike stare. file this one under weirdly, wonderfully perplexing.  

10 more for 2011

Six organs of admittance – asleep on the floodplain

Wolves in the throne room – celestial lineage

SubRosa – no help for the mighty ones

The field – looping state of mind

Thurston moore – demolished thoughts

pearson sound/ramadan man - fabriclive 56

master musicians of bukkake – totem one

washed out – within and without

Zomby – Dedication

Panda Bear – tom boy

Mixes

Haxan cloak – fact mix

Maya jane coles – resident advisor mix

kryptic minds – fact mix

traversable wormhole – Resident Advisor mix

Justin broadrick – fact mix

2 bad mice – fact mix

Ben ufo – never been to blue note mix

Keith worthy – mnml ssgs mix

T Williams – xlr8r mix

Planningtorock – Resident Advisor mix

ikonika – summer mix

Finds

His name is alive – sweet earth flower: a tribute to Marion Brown

Riddim Box: excursions in the UK funky underground

Oren ambarchi – persona

windy + carl – drawing of sound

Swans – children of god

throbbing gristle – 20 jazz funk greats

miles davis – on the corner

main – Hz

can – monster movie

Six organs of admittance – self-titled

KTL – self-titled

Spectral Sound Vol. 1

Tog (inca ore and grouper) – self-titled

find o’ the year – a young person’s guide to Phill Niblock. two CDs, one dollar, rescued from a bargain bin buried in the jewel of vancouver (aka kingsgate mall).

Gigs

Kode9

Ikonika

Silkie/Addison Groove

Veryan Weston and Trevor Watts

Swans

Thurston Moore

Bumbershoot – the whole freakin’ thing

Gang gang dance

Tune-yards

Oren Ambarchi

Theo Parrish

The field

most disturbing trend of 2011

the “new americana”

*

most disturbing trend of 2012

the horrific reanimation of guided by voices

*

that’s it, 2011. peace oot.

dedicated to my little buddy Simon.

He seduced, infuriated, confounded and entertained, wrote with a rare possession and debated as a righteous demon. it feels emptier without him.

image source: guardian.co.uk

Ikonika. (image source: www.last.fm)

interesting think piece from the fab quietus about misogyny and dance music (thanks for sharing Marcus!). it’s a lengthy, sprawling affair that touches on an array of gender-fuelled topics – all sparked by author Angus Finlayson’s discovery of a few tweets from a music journo and Scuba, the hotflush label honcho and a London basshead now based in berlin, i believe.

i’m a bit hesitant about reading too much into tweets. after all, let’s face it – twitter doesn’t exactly set the standard for intellectual rigour. still, the ensuing discussion delves into all sorts of directions, and asks some tough questions of a genre that has given me immense amounts of aural/physical/mental pleasure over the years. as Finlayson notes, “I’ve got a lot invested in this culture…”

and i do. but what comes next is more problematic. “…and i like to think that it lends to its participants a shared, if loose, ideological framework.” i get what finlayson is saying – i’d also like to think that electronic/dance music represents one of the more enlightened genres (even though “enlightened” makes me cringe a bit. but still). that said, the halcyon days of rave euphoria are long gone (and personally, i’ve always much preferred rave’s subsequent descent into the darkness, but that’s a whole ‘nother debate). dance music, aided by technology in the form of ever-advancing gear and the sprawling online world, has splintered into a million different genres, sub genres, sub-sub genres and further kin. and in the process, notions of a shared spirit have also splintered.

it’s always difficult to posit that scenes – musical or otherwise – share an ideological framework. mebbe at first, yeah – but inevitably the spirit morphs, and even more so in this everything age. now, more than ever, just because folks like the same beats doesn’t mean they’ll like the same beliefs. music, as Simon Reynolds has noted (check out an earlier post), has become spatialized, loosened from its contextual moorings. or put another way, it’s become horizontal – in place of depth there is endless surface. an immanent plane.

this has effects. Finalyson quotes ben ufo, who comments that today, music is “so much less tied down to place, which fits comfortably with the prevailing attitude that music is ‘just music’ and that that’s its sole value – that the way it’s presented is of no importance if the musical content is the same.”

that said, Finlayson brings up a lot of cogent points – perhaps the most depressing one being that the recent DJ Mag top 100 list didn’t feature…A. SINGLE. FEMALE. it’s ridiculous. no, actually, it’s absurd, considering the crazy talent on offer: ikonika, steffi, cassy, chloe, cio d’or, margaret dygas, maya jane coles, etc. and who cracked the dj mag top five? tiesto. and deadmau5. ’nuff said.

there’s also the observation that Finlayson makes about it being “fairly common these days to see images of conventionally attractive women being used to promote music from a scene which is supposedly mistrustful of ‘image’…” and yeah, it’s pretty hard to argue with that – yet i’d add that this has been a ploy for, well, ages. not that that makes the situation any less problematic – it’s just that it’s hardly a recent phenomenon. what about those shedloads of ministry of sound and ibiza comps in the ’90s that featured an array of overly tanned nympho-ravers? and speaking of ibiza - my pal Marc made the point that the “whole clubbing world turning into a tourism industry in Europe, with discount airlines and the Ibiza ‘season’ and clubcations to Berlin, encouraged the addition of sex into marketing. Sex sells.” couldn’t have put it better. which is why i quoted it.

sexuality, though, is a crucial part of dance music – and not just in ways that ape cardboard cliches. in this regard, Finlayson raises other points that deserve debate. Fr’example, he poses the question – “…is it fair to say that the ‘dress to impress’ ethos of UK garage circa 2000 is inherently sexist?’” to which i’d answer: absolutely not, at least musically speaking. to me, the onset of UK garage/2 step ushered in a desperately needed injection of glamour, femininity, fun and, yes, sexiness into a drum ‘n’ bass scene that had largely disappeared up its rigid techstep arse. it’s odd…there’s often a hesitance to embrace sexuality on the dancefloor among the intelligensia, despite the fact that the dancefloor is so much about sexuality in its various guises – not just in terms of the body, but in terms of the beats and the bass. and when the vibe is on, it’ seductive in a way that precious few other musics can match.

one final thought (for now). in so many ways, dance music depends on advancements in equipment, technology - gear. and for whatever reason (again, a whole ‘nother debate), boys are stereotypical gearheads. they tend to immerse themselves in the hardware/software that’s on offer, and salivate over what’s to come, whether it’s a mixer or a mobile. is this a generalization? of course. but it still plays a role in dance music dialectics – and one that could potentially alienate women trying to contribute to a culture that often has a ‘boys club’ feel.

in my “best of” list for 2010 (and don’t get me started about why list-making seems to be another peculiar male trait), ikonika’s contact, love, want, have was my fave album of the year. in my comments, i noted that “what makes this all the more intriguing is that Ikonika is 20-something Sara Abdel-Hamid, a Londoner and a female in a field that’s almost entirely dominated by men. I’m not going to riff on gender dialectics here, but just let me say – well done.” well done, too, to all the other women who have blown up minds and dancefloors, past and present. keep it coming. and let’s keep asking tough questions.

if you’ve gotten to this point, well, i’d just like to note that this is pondablog’s 100th post! thanks to everyone who’s read my musings up to this point. and a special thanks to mr. foxbridge, whose technical talent has wrenched me from the depths of wordpress despair on many occasions. here’s to the next 100!

Masset, by Raymond Boisjoly (image source: www.colormagazine.ca)

I recently caught Raymond Boisjoly’s installation at Vancouver’s Republic Gallery. Actually, I just caught it, as I wandered into the Richards Street space on the final afternoon of the exhibition’s final day. Cutting it close? Yep – but better late than a no-show.

Boisjoly, a Vancouver-based Aboriginal artist, didn’t disappoint. His exhibition, entitled The Writing Lesson, featured prints of Indigenous names of B.C. towns – Nanaimo, Spuzzum, Masset, Yakima and more – drenched in the ornate, clasutrophobic stylings of Black Metal lettering.

this wasn’t a coincidence. an artist statement notes that much black metal “seeks to recuperate pre-Christian spritual elements in the face of the forceful encroachment of monotheistic faiths.” meld that riffage with issues of naming and colonialism, and you’ve got recuperation re-doubled. not too surprising then that the writing lesson takes its name from a memoir by claude levi-strauss, everyone’s fave cultural anthropologist.

none of this would have meant much had the show fizzled – which it emphatically did not. boisjoly’s prints, bathed in grey and near-black, exuded a quiet, menacing power. without knowing the background info, one likely would never have guessed what the near-indecipherable symbols actually spelled. but in a way, it didn’t matter – while the theory behind the exhibit enhances its understanding, the elemental nature of the prints resonated with an eerie aesthetic all their own.

It’s an aesthetic that’s been adopted by a variety of today’s auteurs. Steven Shearer, another Vancouver-based artist, has long tapped the typically teen themes of alienation, isolation – and metal. his painterly oeuvre has attracted an ever-increasing amount of attention, and he’s shown in spaces ranging from the local Contemporary Art Gallery to London’s Tate Modern. He was also Canada’s rep at this year’s Venice Biennale, where his Poem for Venice – a massive façade at the entrance to the Canada Pavilion – mixed and mashed crude neologisms inspired by the verbal effluvia that characterizes much of extreme metal’s wordplay.

poem for venice, steven shearer (image source: www.tate.org.uk)

artwork by Steven Shearer (image source: http://2bp.blogspot.com)

And then there’s Peter Beste, an American photographer who has often used his considerable skills to document extreme underground music scenes – including rap in Houston, grime in London and, yes, black metal in Norway. In 2008, Vice Books released True Norwegian Black Metal, a tome that features Beste’s phantastic photos of, er, true norwegian black metal.   

photo by Peter Beste, from true norwegian black metal (image source: www.stevenkasher.com)

photo by Peter Beste, from true norwegian black metal (image source: www.creativereview.co.uk)

lastly, show no mercy, the fab metal column written by brandon stosuy, recently returned to pitchfork after a hiatus. and it’s got a spanky new logo to boot, yet another example of blackened art. just in time for all hallow’s eve!

(image source: www.pitchfork.com)

     – Aaron Weaver, wolves in the throne room, quietus interview

yes, it’s true. after three centuries – oops, decades – the indie godfathers from athens, georgia have called it quits. hats off to REM for their longevity and influence. and for a handful of great albums that helped define a sound and a time that now seem so far away. but i do find stipe’s comment about “knowing when to leave a party” rather odd, given that they probably should have left said party about 15 years earlier. it’s not that REM made bad albums after that point - more so that they made inconsequential ones that blurred together in a vaguely folk-rock artsy AOR kinda way. perhaps that’s inevitable when an outfit gets so big that it morphs into more of a brand than a band. this situation is hardly unique to REM – the same sense of ennui has slowly but surely wrapped its tendrils around radiohead following the one-two punch of ok computer and kid A.

but it’s not just a one-way street. the music i listen to now, and how i listen to it, has definitely changed since REM’s murmur came out in 1983. i’ve changed, in all sorts of ways – and really, i’d find it a bit concerning if that wasn’t the case. so maybe it’s too much to ask a band to remain at the top of its game according to my experiences, biases, likes and not-likes, memories. it’s impossible, actually. so fair play to REM, and to radiohead. and let’s keep listening.

since then, albini has gone on to become a producer of note in the alt-scene (although he’d probably filet me alive for putting it that way), working on albums ranging from nirvana’s in utero to slint’s spiderland to pj harvey’s dry to surfer rosa from the pixies.

all the while, he’s had a rep as, shall we say, a darkly amusing misanthrope. i always had a vision of him as glowering and hunched over, in a corner, firing off insults at the world and generally hating life. whilst producing some awesome albums.

so i’m experiencing some cognitive dissonance with the food blog scenario. it’s not that misanthropes can’t have food blogs, it’s just that, well, it doesn’t really seem like their calling. but life can surprise one.

anyways, said blog also features recipes for meals that he serves to his wife, Heather. the fact that albini has a wife surprises me as well, given the fact that following big black, he fronted a band called rapeman. which put out an album called two nuns and a pack mule. i just don’t get a nuptial vibe out of that, y’know? but hey – congrats!

but i digress. let me just say that the muso-food blogger trend seems to be growing. fr’exmaple, check out what blur’s bassist – aka “the dairy world’s answer to the stooges” – has recently turned his talents to. and while we’re on the tasting tip, you can also sample some spaghetti pomodoro and other vegan treats, courtesy of the post punk kitchen.

i’d like to end this, however, on the dark side. things usually taste better there anyways. bon appetit. and hail seitan!