2011 was another vintage year for new music – though it must be said a less-than-stellar year for this blog. Time to make a change.

Still, I just about managed to find time to curate my annual CD-sized selection of favourite tracks (not a definitive countdown, please note) from the past 12 months. I’m grateful for my own small mercies.

Click on the Mixcloud embed above to listen (or, if you’re a VIP, wait patiently for a physical copy to wing its way to you).

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0:00:00 / Swod: “Sans Peau”, from the album Drei
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

Swod is the acronymic name of German duo of Stephan Wöhrmann and Oliver Doerell. Together they crafted one of the most intelligent yet accessible instrumental albums (their third) of the year. “Sans Peau” illustrates its lightly-worn intricacies perfectly.

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0:04:52 / Mina Tindle: “To Carry Many Small Things”, from the EP Mina Tindle
[eMusic] [iTunes]

Nom de plume for Parisian singer-songwriter Pauline De Lassus, Mina Tindle captured critics’ and listeners’ (including this one’s) hearts with her warm, playful chamber pop.

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0:08:32 / Joan As Police Woman: “The Magic”, from the album The Deep Field
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

Another slice of grown-up, contemporary pop from the consistent, generous but sadly not prolific Joan Wasser. This cut, with shades of “Cry Me A River” (a good thing, by the way), adds a touch of soul to her indie sensibility.

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0:12:40 / Metronomy: “She Wants”, from the album The English Riviera
[eMusic] [iTunes]

“She Wants” out-New Waves the New Wave – it sounds so authentic it could have inspired Japan, The Cure and the others over thirty years ago. But it was released in 2011, and sounds fresh too. How do Metronomy do that? Maybe it’s something in the Devon water.

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0:17:33 / Blouse: “Into Black”, from the album Blouse
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

More New Wave reminiscence, this time from elegantly morose Portlanders Blouse. My early enthusiasm for their self-titled debut album has perhaps waned just a touch, but “Into Black” still pulls me into a gratifyingly melancholy dream state.

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0:20:58 / Emika: “Come Catch Me”, from the album Emika
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

Ema Jolly – Berlin-based, Czech-descended, England-born Emika – created possibly most accomplished electronic pop record of 2011. Her debut showcases her already coherent vision: meticulously-programmed techno and dubstep sounds wrapped in immaculate song structures. A real treat.

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0:25:02 / Astrid Williamson: “Pour (Raffertie Remix)”, original from the album Pulse
[eMusic] [iTunes]

I haven’t heard Ms. Williamson’s Brian Eno-inspired album Pulse, but this blend of her breathy, passionate vocals with Raffertie‘s techno theatrics hits the spot.

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0:30:01 / Hecq: “With Angels (Trifonic Remix)”, from the album Avenger
[eMusic]

Shamefully, the only other album from German sound designer Ben Lukas Boysen I’m familiar (intimate, more truthfully) with is 2008′s Night Falls – a cinematic, ambient, exquisitely dark symphony-of-sorts. Avenger, on the other hand, is a satisfying collection of mostly pummelling dubstep. Trifonic’s take on “With Angels” (click for an insight into the production process) is in fact one of its lighter moments.

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0:34:01 / Martyn: “Viper”, from the album Ghost People
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

This track from Dutch producer/DJ Martyn (Deykers) makes the cut simply as a result of its tip-of-the-hat to my 107th favourite track of the last four decades: Front 242′s “Headhunter“. That it’s also a pleasing little techno interlude is just gravy.

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0:36:39 / Rone: “So So So”, from the EP So So So
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

I can’t think of a single way in which this house/techno hybrid could be improved. “So So So” asks little of you but rewards you in spades – a selfless track that only knows how to give. The video is a hand-drawn treasure, and the other two tracks on the EP maintain the quality. Erwan Castex deserved all the plaudits he got in 2011.

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0:43:45 / Gui Boratto: “Soledad”, from the album III
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

Gui Boratto’s 2007 debut Chromophobia remains one of the best dance albums ever released in this blog’s humble opinion. While his third full-length – called, aptly enough, III – doesn’t quite match up, it does have more than a few moments when Boratto’s intuition shines. “Soledad” is one of them.

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0:48:50 / Apparat: “The Soft Voices Die”, from the album The Devil’s Walk
[Boomkat] [iTunes]

Sascha Ring (a.k.a. Apparat) toured with a live band for the first time (photo here, video here) to support The Devil’s Walk, his fourth album blending analogue and digital, club and home, headphones and heart. While he may not appreciate the comparison, Apparat brings to mind Radiohead at their very peak.

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0:53:12 / M83: “Midnight City”, from the album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

“Midnight City” was pretty inescapable in the second half of 2011, particularly if you came across E4′s Made In Chelsea or the BBC’s endless Olympic coverage trailers while channel-flipping. I didn’t rate the album as highly as everyone else, but once you hear “Midnight City” its hook remains in your head thereafter. The very definition of catchy.

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0:57:15 / Julia Holter: “Goddess Eyes”, from the album Tragedy
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

The most conventional song on Tragedy, a meditation on the Greek play Hippolytus, “Goddess Eyes” nevertheless belies Holter’s beguiling otherworldliness. The album is captivating, bewitching even – we are Phaedra to Holter’s Hippolytus.

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1:00:39 / Lana Del Rey: “Video Games”, from the album Born To Die
[iTunes]

Possibly the breakthrough act of 2011, “Video Games” single-handedly propelled Lizzy Grant – Lana Del Rey to her audience – from online backwaters to the global chat show circuit almost overnight. A torch song for meaning and happiness, it brings majesty to the mundane. “Hollywood sadcore”, as the woman herself puts it, is the perfect label.

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1:05:19 / I Break Horses: “No Way Outro”, from the album Hearts
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

Swedish neo-shoegaze band I Break Horses’ debut Hearts created a shimmering, beautiful soundworld, though perhaps it lacked just a little light and shade across its 40 minutes. That said, “No Way Outro” does evoke a kind of end-of-innocence feeling that takes a long time to fade after the song does.

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1:09:41 / Deaf Center: “Time Spent”, from the album Owl Splinters
[eMusic] [Boomkat] [iTunes]

Norwegian duo Deaf Center crafted a beautifully haunted album of cello, piano and field recordings in Owl Splinters. I’ve covered the solo work of one member, Erik Skodvin, before. “Time Spent”, however, foregrounds the touch and poise his co-conspirator, pianist Otto Totland.

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1:11:51 / ends

See also:

• good in 2010
• good in 2009

I’ve fallen badly out of the blogging habit over the last few months – and, more regrettably, the listening habit too if I’m honest. I could blame starting a new job, but in any case it’s time to get back on the wagon.

One thing I managed to do was go along to a Miles Of Smiles event at St. Pancras Parish Church last Friday that brought together a trio of ‘beautiful noise’ practitioners, established and new: Christian Fennesz, Philip Jeck and Old Apparatus. I’ve since lost the notes I scribbled during the performance, so this review will be a little more impressionistic than usual.

Fennesz’s set, which closed the evening by a civilised 10pm, saw him push his use of reverb as an active instrument to near total saturation – the originating sounds became almost entirely forgotten beneath layer upon layer of self-sustaining, infinite echo. Yet he maintained a harmonious quality throughout even the most intense, piercing sections of the set.

It was a shame, therefore, that the points of departure for this sonic drenching were Knopfler-esque melodic guitar phrases, albeit with the distortion cranked up a notch or six. They seemed unimaginative, twee even, in comparison to what they became as a result of Fennesz’s deft processing, undermining some of the music’s power as a result.

Fennesz (pictured below, right) announced a new solo EP earlier this week, his first major release since 2008′s Black Sea – Seven Stars (Touch), due for release in July. Based on this performance, I’m tempering my expectations.

The evening opened with a video-augmented laptop set from experimental dub-steppers Old Apparatus, who built a pulsing electronic accompaniment to their audiovisual projections of anatomically-themed scans, scopes and symbols (see main picture, top).

Old Apparatus’ music suits headphone listening better than ‘live’. It is in the detail – much of which was lost (to me) in the perfect atmospheric but imperfect acoustic environment of the church – rather than the vision that they excel.

Nonetheless Old Apparatus – whose identity, typically for the genre, is something of a mystery – provided an absorbing and aptly dark introduction to the evening.

In between Old Apparatus and new Fennesz came the unassuming figure that is Philip Jeck (pictured above, left), “multimedia composer, magician, choreographer and taxidermist” (Wikipedia).

Jeck’s simply wonderful An Ark For The Listener (Touch, 2010), his mediation on Gerald Manley Hopkins’ “The Wreck of the Deutchsland”, is but the latest addition to an outstanding oeuvre of sonic collage-sculptures. His performance here was perhaps slightly freer in its shifting timbres and dynamics but no less coherent than Ark.

One phrase I recall from my now-lost notes from the evening I wrote in relation to Jeck’s set: “meta-drone”. This now seems like pretentious frippery, of course, but at the time felt like useful shorthand for how Jeck (deliberately or otherwise) uses the drone form both within and across his works.

No matter how much variation in sound, tone, rhythm (as distinct from percussion) or atmosphere he injects – which is plenty, by the way – the spell is never broken. Stretched or mutated yes, but never broken.

Magnificent.

Erik K. Skodvin: Flare (Sonic Pieces, 2010)
£4.20 from [eMusic] (requires membership) – £6.99 from [Boomkat]

Norwegian musician, graphic designer and all-round creative force Erik K. Skodvin (one half of experimentalists Deaf Center) had until last year only released solo material under a pseudonym, Svarte Greiner.

In Flare, his latest work, Skodvin has pulled away from the rich, noise-tinged soundscapes of his previous output. In doing so, he has decided to give his own name to the stripped back, almost pastoral, filmic vignettes the album contains.

Across the ten pieces, Skodvin conjures – with a limited sound palette of piano, guitar and violin – a world of simple beauty suffused with tragedy, suspense.

Brooding second track “Matiné” exemplifies this, building its repeated refrain over five minutes before releasing it into silence. “Pitch Dark” and “Graves” add a plaintive female voice to atonal piano notes and sudden strikes against the acoustic guitar’s body. The effect is unsettling.

The album deftly treads the fine line between instrumental minimalism and a kind of dystopian folk, often recalling (such as on “Neither Dust”) the solo work of Scott Tuma and the experimental rural-rock of Montreal bands like Esmerine and Sackville.

The two closing pieces capture the album’s troubled beauty perhaps best. On “Vanished” a sustained piano note ebbs and flows beneath a tentative, half remembered melody that gradually vanishes before your ears.

“Caught In Flickering Lights” pairs a gently percussive brush of a guitar – like a moth repeatedly hitting a lantern – with a mournful violin and portentous rolling piano notes.

All of the album’s sorrow (and some of your own) is played out here so that when the album finishes, the silence seems quieter than usual. Listen for yourself, below.

close to 94 rating: ★★★★★★★

This review is part of close to 94‘s [emusic club], which reviews releases from the eMusic catalogue.

Gareth Davis & Machinefabriek: Grower (Sonic Pieces, 2011)
£0.84 from [eMusic] (requires membership) – £2.50 from [Boomkat]

Grower is not the first collaboration between Dutch sound artist Rutger Zuyderveldt – a.k.a. Machinefabriek – and British-born, Netherlands-based clarinettist Gareth Davis. The two created two 3-inch CD-R releases in 2009 – Soundlines and Ghost Lanes – before their first long-player release, last year’s Drape (Home Normal).

It is the Ghost Lanes sessions that have defined their partnership to date, as they also spawned the recordings for both Drape – which sounds like a scratchy, parched meditation on hunger and thirst – and the more cavernous atmosphere of Grower (released as a beautifully packaged CD by Sonic Pieces).

“Part 1” feels almost serpentine in character, with Davis’ bass clarinet motifs charming the reptile from its lair, the ebbs and flows of Zuyderveldt’s seductive drones suggesting its undulating motion as the creature slowly and ominously feels its way into and around your imagination. That it feels a little slight is in part a testament to the lightness of the musicians’ touch.

“Part 2”, meanwhile, ploughs a deeper furrow. Davis coaxes from his instrument a more dynamic range of timbres – rasps, breaths, clicks – across a more atonal palette of notes while Zuyderveldt gradually tightens the screws, intensifying the atmosphere by degress across its 17 minutes. It is simultaneously freer and more coiled than “Part 1” and is the stronger of the two pieces.

Like Drape before it, Grower showcases the balance of intelligence and intuition, of knowing and sensing, required for electronic/acoustic improvisation to work. It may not break new ground, but it adds a richness and a little mystery to territory you thought you already knew.

To continue to tread this rewarding path, I recommend exploring the copious solo work of Machinefabriek (start with 2008’s excellent Dauw), German kindred spirit Jan Jelinek (a.k.a. Farben) and much of the output of Rune Grammafon (Arve Henriksen, Supersilent).

Sonic Pieces has kindly put Grower onto Soundcloud, so you can explore for yourself:

close to 94 rating: ★★★★★★★

This review is part of close to 94‘s [emusic club], which reviews releases from the eMusic catalogue.

#102 “Ten-Day Interval” by Tortoise, available on TNT, 1998 [buy on CD from Boomkat] [buy from iTunes]

There was a time in the mid-to-late 1990s when the term post-rock was virtually synonymous with Chicagoan noodlers Tortoise, such was the influence of the band’s second album, Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996).

TNT, the follow-up, was probably the last major release before the post-rock axis’ centre of gravity shifted north towards Montreal, as Godspeed You! Black Emperor released their debut.

Dialling down both the density and intensity, TNT largely swapped out the Krautrock and dub heritage of its predecessor in favour of jazz and ambient influences. Let’s be clear, though: it is neither a jazz nor an ambient album.

Along with “I Set My Face To The Hillside” (a charmingly loungey latin folk number), “Ten-Day Interval” is the most accessible piece on the album. Its hypnotic, iterative, arpeggiated rhythms recall Steve Reich‘s Music For 18 Musicians, of course. But its suggestive quality also reminds me of the film scores of Japanese maestro Joe Hisaishi (Sonatine, Spirited Away and many, many more).

It’s this filmic feel that gives the piece its quiet impact. The portentous chimes and sustained bass draw you into a state of suspended anticipation, as if waiting for something inevitable but profound (whether for good or ill isn’t clear). That the stream of squeaks of burbles at the end outlast the musically straightforward resolution suggests it’s not a narrative with neat closure. Indeed, later on in TNT‘s tracklist, a companion piece, “Four-Day Interval”, reopens its themes in organic slow motion – night to “Ten-Day Interval”‘s day.

As such the two pieces provide the flâneur-hermit (it takes one to know one) with a conspiratorial spur to the imagination that hints at drama beneath the surface of the mundane - the perfect soundtrack to his solitary, headphoned experience of the city.

This review is part of close to 94‘s [midlife 150] series, which counts down favourite music 1970-2009.

Gareth Davis & Machinefabriek
Grower
(Sonic Pieces, 2011)
Click here for review
£0.84 (requires membership) [buy on eMusic]

Erik K. Skodvin
Flare
(Sonic Pieces, 2010)
Click here for review
£4.20 (requires membership) [buy on eMusic]

#103 “Love And Communication” by Cat Power, available on The Greatest, 2006 [buy from Amazon.co.uk] [buy from iTunes]

The closer on Cat Power’s 2006 opus, The Greatest, “Love And Communication” perhaps (in retrospect) documents singer-songwriter Chan Marshall on the edge of a precipice – shortly after its release she was briefly admitted into a psychiatric ward for mental exhaustion and alcohol abuse.

The album as a whole was her most popular to date, helped by setting Marshall’s purely wrought vocal over immaculate piano and string arrangements along with soulful accompaniment from Memphis session legends Teenie and Flick Hodges, who wrote and played with Al Green at his 1970s peak.

On “Love And Communication” the musicians largely eschew harmonious niceties and the song is all the better for it. Trapped in a perpetual gritty guitar A-E-F-D chord loop and (going by the increasingly strained string pulses) becoming more desperate with each circuit Marshall repeatedly reaches for “something better”. She never quite finds it, but nevertheless clings on to a comforting faith in love and communication.

The bluesy, heartfelt and (comparatively) raw performance creates an impression of carrying burdens too heavy, too formidable, to sustain for long. As the song staggers forward it starts to bend under its emotional weight, each step that bit harder than the last.

When it finally gives out you’re relieved, of course. But you can’t help feeling that if you’ve given up your struggle, what’s left?

This review is part of close to 94‘s [midlife 150] series, which counts down favourite music 1970-2009.

Thomas Köner: Permafrost (Barooni, 1993; re-released by Type, 2010)
£2.52 from [eMusic] (requires membership) – £5.94 from [Boomkat]

Originally released in 1993, Permafrost was the final work in sound artist Thomas Köner‘s seminal arctic ambient trilogy – the others being Nunatak Gongamur (1990) and Teimo (1992); both excellent.

The two earlier works (Köner’s first CD releases) sought to locate and reveal an underlying musicality in the frozen landscapes of the North Pole. Nunatak explored a sonic analogy between treated gong recordings and the crystalline, waterlogged drifts to sometimes disturbing effect, while Teimo divined meditative harmonies from the subsonic rumblings of centuries old glaciers.

Permafrost saw Köner going deeper into the ice to find its core, its essence. In it overt musical language is sublimated by an unrelenting sound climate that creates the eponymous permafrost: throbs, hisses, gusts and a strange kind of audible silence.

The effect, simultaneously unnerving and comforting, feels profound.

The music hasn’t been excised entirely. On “Firn”, for example, the crackling hum is joined by a distant, intangible choral harmony, and the final piece’s (“…”) drone resolves to a tantalisingly tonal state. But music is perhaps present only as a memory of what came before.

The album’s titular centrepiece captures its true form most persuasively – its overwhelming emptiness leads you to grab at any hint of musical sustenance as if your life depended on it. The sense it leaves behind, as it disappears like melting ice, is one of sublime hunger.

In Permafrost (and its companion albums) Köner manufactured the sound – the entire atmosphere – of a world perpetually frozen so utterly that it almost transcends experience of the real thing. (Though not quite; see my review of Chris Watson’s “Vatnajökull”.)

As a genuine work of art it requires silent, undisturbed contemplation and focus to fully appreciate it. Take the trouble to immerse yourself in its habitat and the rewards are substantial.

Long out of print, Köner’s trilogy was re-released on all formats last year by Type Records. Not only that, it is available to listen to for free via Type’s SoundCloud presence. Bitter, beautiful cold is but one click away.

close to 94 rating: ★★★★★★★

This review is part of close to 94‘s [emusic club], which reviews releases from the eMusic catalogue.

Jürgen Paape: Kompilation (Kompakt, 2010)
£5.46 from [eMusic] (requires membership) – £6.99 from [Boomkat]

As co-founder (with Wolfgang Voigt and Michael Mayer) of legendary Cologne house and techno label Kompakt, it’s perhaps surprising we haven’t seen more from Jürgen Paape over the last dozen years or so. While he’s released a sprinkling of EPs since the late 1990s he’s shunned publicity and live appearances, which is fair enough.

Now, though, he’s decided to step into the (relative) limelight alongside his label peers by releasing an album that collects tracks from across his career to date – a greatest hits of sorts: Kompilation.

As you’d expect it’s solid stuff, reflecting the minimal ethos of Kompakt but with a poppier edge. Indeed it’s the pop that provides some of the best moments on Kompilation: We Love (from 2007) features Aksel Schaufler (a.k.a. Superpitcher) on vocals in a track Kelley Polar would be proud of; So Weit Wie Noch Nie (“Further than ever before” from 2002) satisfyingly captures the special, unthinking state only the dancefloor can induce; Come Into My Life, a European club hit in 2008, creates an irresistable Cerrone-like disco groove.

Other highlights include Fruity Loops #2 – killer dancefloor tech-house – and, as a bit of light relief, Ofterschwang, an alpine oompa ditty combined with an seventies sitcom style melody – great fun. And new single So Wird Die Zeit Gemacht (“This is how time is made”) is a classy exercise in hypnotic trance-pop.

Although the tracks were recorded over a 12 year period there’s a remarkable coherence to them. They each share a solid but light sound palette (gliding rather than flying, as it were) and a restrained, precise emotional palette typical of German electronic music ever since Kraftwerk – the Kompakt signature. Recommended.

close to 94 rating: ★★★★★★★

This review is part of close to 94‘s [emusic club], which reviews releases from the eMusic catalogue.

#104 The Box by Orbital, available on In Sides, 1996 [buy from Amazon.co.uk] [buy from iTunes]

The Box is one of the relatively few 90s electronica tracks that, rather having dated since its release (15 years ago), still sounds not only fresh but inspired too.

Recorded by the brothers Hartnoll (Phil and Paul, a.k.a. Orbital) at the peak of their creative powers, its staying power in part lies with the retro feel it’s built around, harking back to 1970s thriller TV themes – John Barry’s The Persuaders in particular – but also its organic subtlety and coherence (bearing in mind the band’s rave culture roots).

It was initially presented as an EP in advance of fourth (and for many, best) album, In Sides, reaching number 11 in the UK singles chart, helped in large part by Luke Losey‘s (grandson of Joseph) iconic stop-motion video (here on YouTube) starring Tilda Swinton.

It was clearly conceived as more than a four-minute slice of radio, though: its four variations on the EP (including a vocal version sung by Alison Goldfrapp) were blended into a seamless 28-minute suite. But it’s the twelve minutes it occupies on In Sides that provide the optimal experience.

Opening tentatively with a hypnotic, chiming riff The Box builds, in increments, a quiet intensity, its music-box motif suggesting a kind of tainted naivety. The enigma is deepened by a melody improvised on that most enigmatic-sounding instrument, the cimbalom.

The pace quickens suddenly half-way in, evoking a frantic, deadly game of cat-and-mouse in a hidden urban underworld. The Box‘s acoustic drum & bass rhythms, clean synth lines and mysterious harmony and melody create the signature tune for the best spy drama never made – it was no doubt single-handedly responsible for Orbital being chosen to re-imagine the theme for the 1997 movie remake of The Saint, but is infinitely superior.

This review is part of close to 94‘s [midlife 150] series, which counts down favourite music 1970-2009.