Best Tracks of 2008: 75-61

OK, so I was going to make this list much shorter by cutting off the last 50 or so entries, but I went through quite a long and often pissy hierarchical process to make the full list. And just so I don't feel like I've wasted my time, I'm presenting the full list- 75 in total- counting down what I consider the best songs of 2008 (not included are individual tracks from albums that work best as a full piece- Grouper, Caretaker). If that seems unfair, so be it. These are the new songs that kept me stimulated throughout the year.

75. Of Montreal- Jimmy




74. Rihanna- Disturbia



Disturbia - Rihanna



73. John Legend ft. Kanye West- It's Over

Its Over (Featuring Kanye West) - John Legend


72. Booka Shade- Charlotte





71. Young Jeezy ft Kanye West- Put On


Put On - Young Jeezy



70. Meat Beat Manifesto- Hellfire




69. Kid Cudi- Day N Nite (Crookers Mix)




68. Common ft Pharell- Universal Mind Control


Universal Mind Control Trailer - Common


67. Appleblim/ Peverelist- Circling





66. Bobby Caldwell- You Won't Do For Love (DZ Mix)




65. Heartbreak- We're Back

Listen Here


64. Voyager One- The Future's Obsolete




63. Prodigy- Invaders Must Die




62. The Bug ft. Tippa Irie- Angry




61. Santogold- Lights Out

The Best Albums of 2008

listed alphabetically...


Peaking
Advisory Circle- Other Channels
The Alps- III (review)
Belong- Colorloss EP (review)
Thomas Brinkmann- When Horses Die
The Bug- London Zoo (review)
The Caretaker- Persistent Repetition of Phrases
Cut Copy- In Ghost Colours (review)
Fennesz- Black Sea
Fleet Foxes- Fleet Foxes/ Sun Giant EP
Grouper- Dragging a Dead Deer (review)
High Places- High Places (review)
Lindstrom- Where You Go I Go Too
Luomo- Convival
Matthew Hebert Big Band- There's Me and There's You (review)
Raglani- Of Sirens Born (review)


Penultimate
2562- Aerial
Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno-Journey into the Cosmic Inferno
Alan Licht and Aki Onda- Everydays (review)
Appleblim- Dubstep Allstars vol 6 (review)
Burning Star Core- Challenger
Cloudland Canyon- Lie in Light (review)
Dusk and Blackdown- Margins Music
Friendly Fires- Friendly Fires
M83- Saturdays=Youth
Rod Modell- Incense and Blacklight (review)
Orion Rigel Domisse- What I Want From You is Sweet (review)
Populous With Short Stories- Drawn in Basic (review)
Portishead- Third
Quiet Village- Silent Movie
Roll Deep- Return of the Big Money Sound
Squincy Jones- Nintendub
The Stranger- Bleaklow
Tobacco- Fucked Up Friends (review)
The War on Drugs- Wagonwheel Blues (review)
Willits and Sakamoto- Ocean Fire (review)


Retro
Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Don Tchicai, Roswell Rudd, Gary Peacock, and Sonny Murray- New York Ear and Eye Control
Gas- Nah Und Fern
A Guy Called Gerald- Black Secret Technology
The Lines- Memory Span/Flood Bank (review)
Loop- Fade Out
Monolake- Hongkong Remastered (review)
Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark- Dazzle Ships
Pluxus- Solid State (review)
Pole- 1 2 3 (review)
Soft Cell- Nonstop Erotic Cabaret
Steinski- What Does it All Mean? (review)
Univers Zero- 1313 (review)
Susumu Yokota- The Skintone COllection (review)

Koushik- Out My Window

Canadian Stones Thrower Koushik's debut full length reviewed by me here.

Fragments of the Best

I've got a few mini-pieces up at PopMatters;

A short review of the new album by Mego founder and Pita/KTL member Peter Rehberg. And another short review about the Jamaican Roots band Culture and their 12" disco mixes.

The still-ongoing PopMatters best music of 2008 feature also has a few short pieces- another one on Cut Copy in the 60 Best Albums of the Year and one on Susumu Yokota in the Reissue list.

PopMatters's Best Electronic(a) Albums of 2008

In it's continuing series of the Best Music of 2008, PopMatters today has a list of The Best Electronic Albums of 2008. I contributed three blurbs to the Top 10 (Cut Copy, The Bug, The Advisory Circle), along with PM's Filmore Mescalito Holmes, Dan Raper, and David Abravanel.

You can check out the list here


On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have reviews of two completely non-electronic albums at EDGE- MV & EE and the Golden Road's Drone Trailer and Devendra side project Megapuss's Surfing.

Timh's Mixmas Xmas

a Wintry mix for the holidays for all y'all.
Downloadable here

Setlist:
Imagene Peise- Winter Wonderland
British PSA
Tom Waits and Peter Murphy- Xmas Sucks
Jerry Goldsmith- A Gremlin's Christmas
Jackie Mitoo- After Christmas
David Sedaris- Six to Eight Black Men
John Baker- Christmas Commercial
Sun Ra- It's Christmas Time
The Vandals- My First Christmas as a Woman
Dance Hall Crashers- I Did it For the Toys
Tomita- Ave Maria
Eazy E- Merry Muthafuckin Christmas
Chuck Berry- Run Rudolph
The Ronettes- Sleigh Ride
Corporal Blossom- White Christmas
Squirrel Nut Zippers- Santa Claus is Smoking Reefer
Mel Torme- The Christmas Song (Sonny J mix)
Windy and Carl- Christmas Song
Pizzicato Five- Snowflakes
Martin Denny- Exotic Night
Esquivel- Snowfall
The Heptones- Christmastime is Here
Cotton Bottom Mountain Sanctified Singers- Christ Was Born on Christmas Morning
CKY- Santa's Coming
Monster Magnet- Dead Christmas
Mark Mothersbaugh- Let There Be Snow
Forcefeel- Subvert the Snow Authority and Let it Die Before it Snows

PopMatters Best of 2008

Looks like PopMatters have started their Best Music of 2008 features, starting off with the Best Singles. I've got blurbies in there for Cut Copy and Britney. Check them out. It's an interesting list. Not one I can say I agree with much of, though their pick for number one single did match mine this year.

Check it Out Here

I will have a few more pieces for the rest of the week, so continue to check out the picks as the week goes on.

Computer Incantations for World Peace II

A Short take on the compilation Computer Incantations for World Peace II curated by Gerd Janson of Running Back records.

The White Album/ Alps

Fans of musicology will want to check out the 40th Anniversary celebration of The White Album that PopMatters's Zeth Lundy and Bill Gibron assembled. Not least of all because today (the last day of 5 days worth of writing) features a short essay on "Cry Baby Cry" by yours truly.

Nicholas Bromell, author of Tomorrow Never Knows, saw the album as the band's experimental attempt to mystify and codify (rather than commodify or consolidate) the decade's intensity into an impenetrable talismanic art object. "Referencing so much as the history of popular culture, The White Album ridicules efforts to assemble that history into a sequential story", Brommell said.

The Beatles seem increasingly hesitant, as the double album progresses, to settle on one solution, one genre, one vision, one truth, one reality. It's necessary then for them to present the possibility that it's all a game, a laugh at our expense. After all, there is no mysery. The walrus was Paul and everything recondite is actually exactly as it seems.

Central to the "clues" of The Beatles is "Cry Baby Cry", my selection:

here's the full feature

here's the specific page with my entry



Also, I have a short review up for the wonderful new album by The Alps (members of Tarentel, Tussle, Arp). This probably would have made my Top Ten year end album list for PM had my list been handed in later. Oh well, this blog will probably see a much different list by year's end.


Read the review here



As a third note, I have a follow-up bit of information with regard to my Sound Affects piece on the texturalists (see two posts down). It turns out that one of the primary reasons Edison became interested in phonography was to capture the voices of dead loved ones after they're gone. I thought this was an interesting point as it correlates to the theme of decaying sound and perhaps gives a little more credence to digital music for its ability to perfectly preserve the dead the way they were when they were alive. However, I retain my position that we will be losing something culturally and sonically if all sound becomes faultlessly mummified in such a fashion.

Read the aforementioned piece here

Showroom Dummies

I have a review on the new DVD called Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution, a more heady discussion on the development of electronic music- from concrete and krautrock to the early eighties period when Kraftwerk became obsolete.

I'm a little disappointed with it as a piece of writing, but nevertheless it's about some of my favorite music of all time so I must nevertheless recommend it to you. You can find it here:

Read my review at PM

The Texturalists vs. The End of Time

I have another new article, discussing a group of musicians who use time itself as an instrument in their work. Working off a Woebot article (linked in the piece), this analysis was published around the same time that FACT published a new article by Woebot himself on the persistence of cassette culture and its similar implications. Read that here.

More importantly though, read my article here.

The Signal and the Violence of American Identity Politics

I have a new article at PopMatters on the overlooked 2008 horror film The Signal. It's an article that was a long time in the making. When I started it back in July, the economy was doing just peachy keen (sort of) and the election still seemed like a distant dream. With any apocalyptic film, there's apt comparison to an economic downfall, but I think The Signal's vision of individualism is particularly pointed in the post-WaMu, post Lehman world, which maybe I'll have time to comment on later.

The article was trimmed down quite a bit. I think it all still makes sense, but I'll post a director's cut version on here sometime in the near future.



You can read part one here
(warning, there's a few spoilers within- probably best if you've seen the film)

Friends that are Fukt

Tobacco, of Black Moth Super Rainbow (whose Dandelion Gum was on my top 5 picks of 2007), has a new release full of just-as-gooey goodness. It's called Fucked Up Friends and here's my review

08AMA

[Paraphrased]

Bart: Wow, [Our country picked Obama]. I feel so full of...what's the
opposite of shame?
Marge: Pride?
Bart: No, not that far from shame.
Homer: [quavering] Less shame?
Bart: [happy] Yeah...

Dead Rockstars at the Fore

There's a fantastic new article up at PopMatters about the Obama/Palin rock star dichotomy (between arena rock grandeur and punk rock plebianiasm) that very intelligently examines the tag supplied by the media and weighs its potential meanings.