Sobota 30 Gru 2006, 23:21

My charts have been a bit quiet as of late, so here's my annual list of music I was caught listening to.

The usual disclaimer: this is not necessarily a list of what was actually best - or any good, for that matter - but it's what I enjoyed (or failed to). My sense of taste ought not to be trusted as being authorative, but bugger it, I enjoyed this stuff. Likewise, me inadvertantly slagging off or disregarding another artist in this all-too-long post should not be seen as an out and out condemnation. My opinion is, once again, not to be trusted.

Before we start: I know the formatting sucks. Someone needs to get their arse into gear fixing all the pseudo-BBcode bugs.

Albums of (my) year

Germlin - Youth Pixxel
My God. I've never heard video game music treated so badly and so brilliantly.

DJ Sharpnel & V/A - Brain Violation
Nominated for the reworking of Blue Noah and that Negima song. It's the fiiiinal countdowwwwn *doofdoofdoof*

In Distance
Shoegaze? Ambient? Don't care. Makes you feel lost, alone, very small and wonderful.

Gay Against You
I'd also probably add their full album, Muscle Milk, if I'd heard it all. Has Germlin as one of the 2 members, so it's utterly noots. UNICORN, UNICOOORN

Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms
A pain in the arse to type, but a joy to listen to. I named my Macbook after Pwntendo as an indication of how awesome that song is. Fastest NES in the West.

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Straight Outta Lynwood
Yes, he's brilliant again! Not just for White And Nerdy et al, but even his originals have a truly manic spark to them this time around. And I can't stop singing them. They see me mowin'…
An aside. I have no idea what the hell last.fm's BBcode system has against quotes in artist names for album tags. I swear, it just does not work for me. Dear last.fm admins, please give me a job so I can fix this surely accidental shitty-code-related fucking pain-in-the-arse flies-crawling-on-your-helpless-face travesty. Love, me.

Night Ripper
Terribly out of touch with pop music like me? Need a quick primer? This album effortlessly mashes up about fifteen or so tunes into the space of three minutes. Eminently catchy.

Artificial Soldier
The more the merrier. Bill, Rhys, Chris and Jeremy the new guy make dystopia seem that much more liveable. Thanks also for the 242 & Covenant cameos lads!

Skyshaper
My girlfriend sung along to Ritual Noise all year long. Really captured my imagination as well; wonderful travelling music.

Albums of some other year
2 Bullet - Democratic Violence
Why there isn't more industrial coming out of Japan escapes me. Though it's not on here, the remix of Democracy is especially blistering, but this is all good stuff, jam-packed with synths, snarly guitars and lyrics that I still don't understand, but don't care.

The Mouse And The Mask
The halcyon days of Saturday morning cartoons filtered through the halcyon days of boom-bap hiphop with the requisite wordplay to suit. The cheese that goes ker-runch!

Famicom Connection
With lads that work old technology this well, it's no wonder I got into chiptunes so much. Free to download if you look in the right place.

KFC Core
Proof that a 30-day KFC binge just might not kill you, but inspire fits of brilliance such as this. Never before has the Super Mario theme sounded so 'ardkore. Mates with Shitmat, so you know he's ace.

Trace
Out of print and a bastard to find, I eventually found a promo copy on the internet. It was worth the search. About as close to being holy as electronic music goes…

The Sound Of Faith
…which leads nicely into this. A truly great and diverse dark ambient album, required listening for all seeking their respective sacred spaces.
The man responsible is also a top bloke too, I would thoroughly recommend his work if you like the genre (or even if you don't and wish to explore).

Born
Discovered late due to a concert late in the year. I'm rather glad I did, as I had no idea that Sydney did synthpop this well.

Withering To Death
Yes, again; I managed to order in a copy from the States. Still as heavy as it was this time last year, and still as great.

OSC-DIS
Sorry, Atari Teenage Riot - you're not as much fun as these folks. You may be as hard, but no revolutionary posturing can beat songs about going to the beach.

No Sleep Demon V2.0
No bugs needed ironing out with this version, but I'm so very glad they added the vocal version of Avalost. The original was great; the additions make it nearly perfect.

Discovery of the year
Olivier Messiaen
On the recommendation of my girlfriend's stepdad as being too hard for most, I sought him out, and was rewarded with some often complicated, sometimes impenetrable and truly beautiful songs of devotion.

Recommended listening
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (Quartet for the End of Time)
Messiaen's meditation on the end of the Book of Revelation, written and performed for the first time in a concentration camp. If this doesn't make you a bit teary-eyed and a bit confused, you must be the most rational person on Earth. How sad.

Apparition de l'eglise eternelle (Apparition of the Eternal Church)
An organ piece best heard on the biggest subwoofer you can find. Written to express his vision of the entire church and the people in it in their collective glory. Makes me feel weak at the knees. I need to hear this live before I die.

L'Ascension
Equally brilliant whether heard on organ or by orchestra. Very Catholic in focus, possibly adding more drama to the Ascension of Christ than most people probably consider, but Messiaen does tend to get involved in the details of narrative a lot.

Gigs seen this year
Jamie Lidell (Sydney Festival, Australia Day)
Three part harmonies with himself, mad beatboxing, circuit bending and good old-fasioned soul singing. He's in Sydney again for New Years']go and see him, I can't emphasise this enough.

Eels, Smoosh (Metro, July 21st)
The entire band rocking enough facial hair to make ZZ Top worried, and rocking hard enough to make them feel queasy. Organ solos, karate kicking and a pair of pint-size American schoolgirls who are keyboard/drum aces were the icing on the cake.

Fear Factory, Devildriver, Dry Kill Logic (Luna Park, September 16th)
Nice to see them come back again, even if I'm not into them as much as I could be. Still, they played well and had plenty of their old songs in there. However, the crowd reminded me why I was up the back the first time. To the guy who elbowed Marty in the eye, BE MORE CAREFUL DAMMIT!

DJ Scotch Egg, Defektro, UnAustralians, DJ Rainbow Ejaculation, Toecutter (Palace Hotel, October 5th)
Man am I glad I had those earplugs. The racket from this mob did a bit more than shake the floorboards. And on those grounds alone, the gig was completely satisfying. Rather diverse for a noise show, which was especially helped by the Scotch Egg himself. He fiddled with Nanoloop on his Game Boys, screamed into a mic, danced with a girl in a chicken suit and signed my girlfriend's KFC box hat. AWESOME

Apoptygma Berzerk, Neuropa, The Graphics (Factory Theatre, December 16th)
Barely any of my friends showed up to this. Pikers, the lot of them. Great show, despite the Factory's photography policies. Even the openers were quality stuff, even if The Graphics were a bit MCR-cum-The-Cure to take truly seriously, but they still have potential. Neuropa didn't move around much but their songs were ace. But on the subject of moving around, APB certainly did and managed to convince a number of the jaded goth horde to do so too. Angel in particular was great fun to watch, waving his guitar around, shouting along with Stephan and generally acting the ex-black-metallist goat. They played really well, and played some songs I'd never heard before which grabbed me very first time (OMG Burnin' Heretic). Again, I can't believe you all missed this. Even my brother, who avoids concerts on principle said that it was awesome.