Forty-two


Jason Forrest – Shamelessly Exciting (Sonig)

Forrest (formerly ‘Donna Summer’, until some legal dealings intervened)’s reputation as the ‘nice Kid606’ has been somewhat usurped by the Kid going ‘nice’ himself in 2005. Such encroachment is little matter, as Jason always had quality in spades. While the Kid got slightly boring this year, Forrest… well, the title says it all.

What the two electronic musicians have in common is a ton of ideas – and a seemingly short attention span. However, while Kid606 was known for peppering his tunes with blasts of glitchy noise (and rarely peppered his glitchy noise with tunes), Forrest just has really genuinely varied songs.

It’s a fine line he treads with some tracks though. ‘My 36 Favorite Punk Songs’ is really enjoyable, but one wonders where the point is that a song crosses over into gimmick (as with the Avalanches and their ‘look at me!’ approach to making music. I suppose the main thing is that it is good.

It does seem a bit random and cobbled-together when compared to someone similar like Jackson & His Computer Band, on Warp. I prefer Forrest’s own Lady Fantasy EP to this actually, but it is definitely good stuff, with some nice blasts of drum ‘n’ bass to see us through.

Forty-three

13 And God – Men Of Station E.P. (Alien Transistor)

Kicking off with what would turn out to be the strongest song on their later debut album, this teaser from the team of Themselves and The Notwist is really a rather pleasant diversion.

The title track inhabits that increasingly populated space between Hip Hop, indie and the electronic. And that’s the way I like it. The melodic introduction, with elegiac combination of piano and violin, is propelled along well by the HipHop beat.

There is also an excellent remix of the title track (retitled ‘L’atlas Flexible / Von Gradleute’) by Hrvatski, which alternates between frantic drum ’n’ bass breaks and slower solid beats. These dynamically give way to the former, as they both fall lower in the mix for the piano to come ringing in a triumphant return. The best moment is that point when they synergise and the breaks punctuate the melodies. There’re harps and everything!

Forty-four


Serena Maneesh – Serena Maneesh (Playlouder)

A debut album from a very potentially exciting new indie band, this is both defined and hamstrung by a love of My Bloody Valentine. Granted, loving MBV is never really a problem, but this band’s thrall of the Creation wonders is never really developed into an identity for themselves.

There is a more ‘modern’ production, which makes things louder – but this serves to undermine what made Loveless so great. That album was all about the subtlety of the production; the tender flowers struggling through the dense sonic soil. The sounds that you are never sure are actually there or, if they are, whether they were intentional. And the glory of the sounds of the ghosts in the machine washing over your being.

Regardless of how inferior this album is to one of the all-time classics of the genre, this plucky debut gets a relatively high placing because it is good on its own terms. There are some solid melodies, and the beat on a track like ‘Candlelighted’ is a great canvas on which the guitars can ring out and jam (and it is a decent approximation of Radiohead’s ‘A National Anthem’).

Compared to alternatives like Hard-Fi and Kasabian, this is like Sonic Youth covering Dylan songs or something. There is absolutely no contest, and for that they should be congratulated. If a little glad the excellent new Mogwai album is a 2006 release.

Forty-five


Burning Star Core – The Very Heart Of The World (Thin Wrist)

I’m not really sure what to make of this, which has to be something of a rarity for this writer. Burning Star Core is one man, one C. Spencer Yeh, who is apparently classically trained (aren’t all these noise experimentalists) and has decided to eschew the ‘classics’ in favour of making noise for a living.

Good for him, as this particular brand of noise is very impressive. A quartet of songs, this album has three five-minuters, before closing with the seemingly obligatory 15+ minute drone session.

Yeh peppers his sounds with great layers of sound and instruments, with the occasional vocal sample thrown in. Unlike a lot of his peers (such as Birchville Cat Motel or Double Leopards), there is a very definite attack and aggression to this music, and it never seems like it is ‘just noise’. There is a method to the madness, as the epic ‘Come Back Through Me’ attains a sense of drone even when drums and piano are regularly recurrent in the mix. I have a feeling I will need to do a lot of listening to this apparently exciting genre, because most of it leaves me cold. Even Hototogisu, who I am supposed to love. What can you do.

POSTSCRIPT: As of January 2006, I have listened to Birchville Cat Motel on headhones and I’m warming to this scene. I hope to see them when they tour soon, actually. Maybe a look at their album will turn up on the blog when this list is done.