PAGE 5 – More Hip Hop, IDM and the Amalgamation of music
1999 – Mos Def – Black on Both Sides
Best Song: Ms Fat Booty
Honourable Mention: Sigur Ros – Agaetis Byrjum
Black on Both Sides is an excellent collection of alternative, conscious hip-hop tracks, produced by DJ Premier. Samples similar in nature to Tribe Called Quest's jazz, but featuring content of a more socio-polital nature, Mos Def's album is an accessible, exceptionally good listen, and one of the last great mainstream hip-hop records.
2000 – Avalanches – Since I Left You
Best Song: Frontier Psychiatrist
Honourable Mention: Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele
What makes Since I Left You so remarkable is that it is entirely comprised of samples. The precursor to the "Mash-Up", (see Girl Talk – 2008) Since I left You is a Beautiful re-organization of a million other artists and voices’ works. The Avalanche’s approach to music takes a pointillist approach to music, only in this case, every individual brush stroke represents a snippet of outsourced sound. Brilliant.
2001 – Aphex Twin – Drukqs
Best Song: Avril 14 th
Honourable Mention: Fennesz – Endless Summer
Aphex Twin (pseudonym of electronic composer Richard D James) was the first electronic artist I ever really attached myself to. Most of Aphex's library is incredible - every composition contains some point of interest. His attention to detail and his mastery of nuance are unparalleled in anything I've ever heard. Every single note played, every percussive element, every harmony, every melody contains something different than the one that came before it.
Drukqs happens to be my favourite album, probably due to the awesome prepared piano pieces that provide interludes between jarring beats. "Avril 14th" may be the most meanderingly beautiful piano piece I know. There's very little not to like about this album, and evey listen provides a new experience. Some songs provide an entire evolution of a species within a matter of minutes.
2002 – Max Tundra – Mastered by Guy at the Exchange
Best Song: Lights
Honourable Mention: Cinematic Orchestra – Every Day
Max Tundra, to me, represents a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, Tom Waits of electronic music. In addition to the massive array of sounds, finely blended into music that spans several genres at a time, this album features, in my opinion, some of the best, honest poetry in modern music. “Lights” in my opinion, is the best example, painting a vivid picture using mostly completely factual personal information and anecdotes. The song -mostly about terrible day jobs - employs the chorus: “Only last week, I noticed that the colours of the lights in my studio, are the same as the ones you conjure in my mind” implies so much information beneath its surface. Juxtaposed with Amiga sound samples and jagged electronic beats…it’s a beautiful piece of work.
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2003 – Kid 606 – Kill Sound Before Sound Kills You
Best Song: The Illness
Kid 606’s hardcore, industrial IDM is reminiscent of Motorhead’s relationship to the standard Blues form. And at its heaviest dynamically, and fastest tempo-wise, it retains an intense level of nuance.
2004 – Madvillain – Madvillainy
Best Song: Raid
Madvillain is a hip hop duo combining two MC/producers - MF Doom and Madlib. And it represented, to me at least, one of the few genuine expressionist approaches to the form, as an amalgamation perhaps of Public Enemy, Dr. Octagon, and Ornette Coleman.
The recording features short songs, obscure lyrical references, almost no hooks, no choruses; It is a modern Beatnik album.
2005 – Jamie Lidell – Multiply
Best Song: New Me
Jamie Lidell is a British electronic musician, and soul singer. He layers tracks, using mostly his voice, as a one-man-band beatboxer.
And if you watch anything today, watch the video for "New Me." It's mind blowingly good.
2006 – Herbert – Scale
Best Song: Birds of a Feather
This is Matthew Herbert, (aka Doctor Rockit, aka Radio Boy, aka Mr Vertigo, aka Transfomer, aka Wishmountain)’s most accessible record to date. It is soul, it is dance-music, it is jazz, and it is all electronic. It is the sound of the 20 th century, synthesized into one album.
And I can assure you, when "Birds of a Feather" reaches its marching repeated-eighth-note climax, it will give you chills.
2007 – Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
Best Song: Peacebone
Strawberry Jam sounds like nothing I've heard before. I can certainly hear a lot references and influences in this album. And while I think most people will cite the Beach Boys that reference, for me, only tends to go so far as the melodic lines and harmonies. As for the rest, they number in the hundreds. I hear Suicide, I hear Love, I hear the Police (track 3, Chores is the same melody as Sting's Fields of Gold,) I hear the Beatles. Every time I listen I hear someone else.
2008 – Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
Best Song: What it's all About
Girl Talk is far more important to the future and past of music than I think a lot of people give him credit for. What Girl Talk represents are the characteristics of the modern music audience: short-attention-spanned, pop-reference-laden, mainstream-centric, culturally-ambiguous.
Girl Talk is a mash-up artist. He takes a classic rock song or mid-80s one-hit-wonder, and takes a modern hip-hop or dance song, and he plays them at the same time in the same key, for about 10 seconds, until he morphs it into something else.
On the surface it’s gimmicky, it’s humour-based, and it’s not worth more than a second of a thought. But it’s difficult to listen to Tiny Dancer and Juicy mixed together, and not wonder what it is that made these songs so good in the first place, and why is it that together they make something better? Is there something wrong with John and Taupin’s lyricism? Is there something wrong with Puffy Combs’ production on Juicy?
What Girl Talk does is raise questions, and provide entertainment at the same time, without providing any definitive message to the listener. Which I think is as terrific as hearing Wu-Tang's "C.R.E.A.M" and Argent's "Hold Your Head Up" as one.
