So here are my top 40 albums this year in order of how much I’ve personally enjoyed them. Links to reviews I’ve written, and maybe I’ll do an update on some others.

1 When Saints Go Machine – Konkylie
2 Jon Hopkins & King Creosote - Diamond Mine
3 Panda Bear – Tomboy
4 Console – Herself
5 Perc – Wicker And Steel
6 Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean
7 Death Grips – Exmilitary
8 Various Artists – Bangs & Works Vol.II
9 Art Department – The Drawing Board
10 Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise
11 Rustie – Glass Swords
12 PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
13 John Maus – We Must Become The Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
14 Josh T Pearson – Last Of The Country Gentlemen
15 Sully – Carrier
16 Katy B – On A Mission
17 Africa Hitech – 93 Million Miles
18 Ford & Lopatin – Channel Pressure
19 Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact
20 Yuck – Yuck
21 Balam Acab – Wander/Wonder
22 Author – Author
23 Tom Waits – Bad As Me
24 Bass Clef – Inner Space Break Free
25 Zomby – Dedication
26 Fucked Up – David Comes To Life
27 Tyler, The Creator – Goblin
28 St Vincent – Strange Mercy
29 Toddla T – Watch Me Dance
30 Plaid – Scintilli
31 E-40 – Revenue Retrievin’ Overtime
32 EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints
33 Kuedo – Severant
34 Moon Duo – Mazes
35 Frank Ocean – Nostalgia, Ultra
36 Chrissy Murderbot – Women’s Studies
37 Austra – Feel It Break
38 Wild Beasts – Smother
39 The Caretaker – An Endless Bliss Beyond This World
40 Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

Originally appearing on TheQuietus.com

If footwork ever goes on to prove as influential as dubstep, the first Bangs & Works will be recognised as its Run The Road, its Dubstep Allstars – the definitive compilation that brought the genre out of its own hyper-localised scene and under the wider global radar. Mike Paradinas’ original haul has made minor stars of hitherto unknown DJ/producers such as Roc, Spinn and Rashad, all of whom have released solo efforts on Paradinas’ UK electronica label Planet-μ. Twelve months since its release, and we’ve already seen the likes of Africa Hitech, Machinedrum and Sully paying tribute to Bangs & Works‘ 160bpm sample-splitting madness, to great effect in most cases.

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A flourish of gaily coloured audio tapes adorns the mantelpiece of an upstairs kitchen in Hackney. I pick out the only spine written in English. And there, in impeccable Letraset, reads the rather fitting title: SPATIAL DISCO MUSIC.

“Sadly not as good as it looks,” Ralph Cumbers assures me, as he lifts a steel kettle off the stove and pours tea, “It’s a great name though. I might use it. These were bought in Israel – mostly Arabic, from Lebanon and Libya I reckon. Just a little kitchen-listening selection. You should see the massive stack of the bastards in the other room. Here’s one with a highly unimpressed grandfather on it”.

For Cumbers, the artist most commonly known as Bass Clef (though who also releases under the aliases Some Truths and Coseph Jonrad), the audio cassette is a crucial tool. From mixing all his work on a simple four-track recorder to the myriad cassette releases available through his label Magic + Dreams, this supposedly dead format has come to epitomise a lifetime’s obsession with analogue sound and technology.

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taken from theQuietus.com

“I’m the last leaf on the tree,” Tom Waits croons on new song ‘Last Leaf’, “The autumn took the rest but it won’t take me”. Whether this is a boast or a lament, I’m not sure, but it certainly rings true of Waits. Even our most beloved senior rock & rollers experience years of artistic fallow and famine from which many never recover. David Bowie, Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, The Stones continue to release records of varying quality each year. But while these acts sell shows out on a regular basis it’s really only the dedicated few who are out buying their latest studio offerings. Hard to imagine now, but even Johnny Cash’s career suffered a prolonged period of obscurity before he bounced back towards the end of his life. Everyone goes to oldies hell, but not Waits. It’s remarkable to think that in all this time, he’s never released a sub-par album nor swayed away from his unique furrow.

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taken from TheQuietus.com

SO THERE you’ll be, discussing electronic music with likeminded nerds as you do, when some unsuspecting soul dawdles straight into the semantic minefield called ‘the IDM argument’.

This is the Godwin’s Law of electronica: Once invoked, meaningful commentary ceases, dissolving into outcry, malaise and general pedantry all round. It’s true, “Intelligent Dance Music” is one of the worst genre terms to exist in a world where “pronk” and “rape gaze” are actual things. It’s clumsy for a start – “IDM” sounding every bit like the acronym for a faceless tech-corp run by jowly people with big blue heads. Secondly – and I speak from experience here – you can’t really dance to much of it without looking like a demented ostrich doing the Step Master challenge. More prominent in the IDM argument though, is that this tag assumes a condescending stance towards other styles, implying other dance music is stupid and therefore less worthy. It allows tech-geeks to lord it over

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Living as I do, in a commuter-belt limbo boasting a citizenship of peculiarly large forehead size, it’s not every day I get the chance to drop a name. But as I puzzled over Carrier, a chance Google search revealed to me that I used to hang out with this guy once upon a time. The Jack Stevens I knew was a reticent metalhead playing dextrous sheet-glass guitar for local Darkthrone-a-likes, Niroth. Metal fans are an obstinate bunch by reputation – perhaps the most tribal of cliques. Those who dare dabble in other arenas are often treated by their peers with marked suspicion. Being true to True Metal requires a complicated hopscotch: step on the wrong square and you risk sullying (pun intended) your metal name. That said, there’s almost always an exception to prove the rule. I’ve known many a hardcore metaller harbouring a secret love for the likes of ABBA, the Commodores, ELO – even cheesed-out happy hardcore and Euro-trance. This very website is testament to the diverse tastes of even the most dedicated metal fans. Still, I couldn’t help feeling perplexed, upon our last encounter, to find Jack Stevens shorn of head and affecting a rude Jafaican drawl – the kind of behaviour that’d get you turfed out the True Metal Fan Club faster than you can growl “The Splendour Of A Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath The Blazon Of A Hyperborean Empire (Part III)”.

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Night starts to fall as the God-King of minimal house and head ambassador for the German dance scene takes to the stage in Bugged Out’s packed tent. Once upon a time such an event would have been met with great reverence. This is, after all, the guy behind the innovative Kompakt label and creator of Immer, the mix responsible for many a spiritual experience circa 2002. But dance music is as fickle as fashion and tonight’s crowd is itchy and frantic. Mayer’s style has been appropriated by so many successors since Kompakt’s heyday that tonight’s set of mid-tempo tech-house just doesn’t have the impact it might once have had. This isn’t helped by a surprising lack of oomph coming from the soundsystem, perhaps no fault of his own.

Nevertheless, it takes a good while for Mayer to win his crowd over – an otherwise confused pinball of bodies unwillingly trampling and elbowing each other in a bid to have a great time. ‘C’mon, get into the vibe!’ a raver goads-on his mates, only half sarcastically. But his fellow dancers remain unfocused, more concerned about not tripping over each other’s feet to be encouraged into dancing as a single unit. This is an inherent problem with dance tents at festivals. While the indoor environment helps recreate the clubbing atmosphere, the immense crush to get in can result in extreme difficulty in expressing oneself. The freeform joy of dancing becomes a confused and uncomfortable scrum – quite the opposite of what a dance experience should be. Whatever happened to raving outdoors? It would be great if festivals could take the lid off of dance tents and let the music (and crowds) breathe a little easier.

I’m turning in.

I know I’ve had a bit of a rant today – as most of you know, I tend to keep my opinions to music and not politics – so to those who are not interested in them, I apologise. I’ve never felt so incensed about current affairs in all my time. There’ve been some interesting discussions today and many many different viewpoints and things to consider. I was going to write a lengthy screed all about them but frankly it’s too late and things are too sensitive right now.

All I ask is that people do not forget that we are all human beings. This violence is horrendous, upsetting and utterly inexcusable. There is no way I can condone such behaviour – but it’s important that we try to understand why it exists. Such atrocities don’t occur without reason and while it might seem like the work of a bunch of mindless animals, I urge everyone to at least try to address and learn from these reasons instead of adding to the hostility of the situation.

Treat people like animals and they will behave as animals. Train an animal well and it will never bite. Leave an animal to starve in the cold and it will turn on its owner, who will no doubt shoot it, believing it to be rabid. I don’t want to make assumptions about my readership, but please remember that neither you, nor I, have ever been perfect in life, particularly in our youths. We’ve all lashed out, become self destructive, greedy, angry, cowardly, mindless, when better tacks could have been used. I remember my school days – strange times indeed, full of little hotheads who saw their teachers as symbols of authority to be jeered at and pranked upon. We fought in the playground, vandalised school equipment and behaved in mindless ways towards each other every single day. I don’t know why we did or felt like this – we just hated stuff and we hated school and we hated being told what to do. We didn’t have a mission statement, despite idolising angry agit-prop bands like Rage Against The Machine. The Machine in this case was the school librarian, the art teacher, the science desks, the thick kid in the assembly queue – and we had great fun taking out our hormonal frustrations on these things even though we were being provided with an education by a system that actually cared about our futures. Completely stupid and completely unjustified. We were morons. Young, white, educated, middle class morons with everything to live for.

The majority of us are lucky to have been brought up in a caring and nurturing environment with relatively good schooling, safe streets, a reliable support network, career opportunities, friends and neighbours whom we can trust, a culture free from crime and drug abuse, a comfortable and cleanly family home with access to the outside world through the internet and television and all these incredible things society has provided for us. We weren’t stopped and searched every day on the way home from school, nor were we afraid to leave the house on a daily basis for fear of being mugged. We were not raised in the violent, dangerous and unforgiving circumstances that plague those a lot less fortunate than us. And yet there are thousands of people in Britain today who live just like this, and have done for generations. They cannot express themselves in the way we can because they have never been given the opportunity to even grasp the tools to be able to do so. Society has failed them for generations, stripped them of their playgrounds, school books, activity schemes, public amenities and social care. For these reasons we call them chavs, scumbags, untouchables – the lowest of the low. We spit on them for their shortcomings – for not having the decency to function like we do. We ignore their plight and tell them they should be thankful for what they have. We fear them and that fear translates into hatred. And as if this isn’t enough, as soon as a deficit comes along it is our most disenfranchised citizens who suffer first and foremost while those at the top continue to reap the benefits of bankers’ bonuses, extended holidays and expense accounts while an inadequate and frightened police force is sent out on impotent PR missions such as Operation Trident, designed to make petty examples of specific subsects of society, leading to incidents such as that of Mark Duggan’s shooting last Thursday.

The current violence is no longer about Duggan – that was the tipping point into a brutal state of chaos that could have been averted had we wised-up to the fact that if you take everything away from people, they will turn nasty – even to go so far as to turn on themselves. Because really, if society has never done anything for you, why should you care at all for society? If you have nothing left to live for other than a new pair of Nikes from Footlocker (whose brand panders towards you as a symbol of affluence at inflated prices), what’s stopping you just going in and helping yourself?

And how does society react? We tut and wag our fingers. We insist on stronger measures because we’re terrified that this violence will spread. David Cameron and Boris Johnson have both appeared on television, sternly addressing the camera and warning that any rioters or looters will be crushed under the strong arm of the law. Sadly, they flounder when asked exactly how they’re going to achieve this when already the police force is outnumbered and cannot withhold such a large amount of people. They walk away, refusing to answer questions over their accountability for this outrage. They act as though this is like some sort of zombie outbreak, where all the impoverished inner city youths have suddenly gone berserk for no reason at all other than the fact they’re a bunch of lazy, scheming miscreants. And we lap it up. And we ask for more policemen – this time replete with rubber bullets, water cannons, alsatians and horses. Some of us even join in – bravely roaming the streets looking for rioters’ skulls to crack. And when all this does is agitate matters, we ask for the army. We ask that they shoot these sub-mammals on sight. Because that’s what we want – a government that is tough on crime. Tough on drugs. Tough on ethnic minorities and scroungers. We don’t care who they are or why this is happening – we just want rid of ‘em. This is the society we want to live in – one with riot police, vigilante groups and soldiers on the street. One that destroys and annexes its own citizens for the greater good. We’ve gone to war with other countries for similar reasons, yet somehow we’re quick to adopt such draconian measures the moment there’s a sign of trouble in our own. Imagine if your son or daughter, brother or sister had been shot with rubber bullets while protesting the student fees. Don’t laugh, it could happen…

It’s very late now, so I’ll wrap this up. While we all have a responsibility towards our friends, neighbours and communities, honest citizens aka Joe Public shouldn’t have to be picking up the bill here. With a little foresight we could have avoided this mess altogether. Our government has failed. It has failed workers, it has failed families, it has failed students, it has failed with the media and now it has failed the poor – of whom there are many. By threatening further violence and refusing to listen to and answer questions, nothing will be achieved but further resentment and more violence. Sure you can blast a water cannon down the street. Disperse people with tear gas. Shoot at them. They’ll come back. Maybe not tomorrow, or next week, but maybe in years to come. This is doomed to repeat again and again until authority figures set an example and start at least acting like they care about the central issues that have been affecting whole swathes of people for decades, and maybe then people will finally have some respect for society.

Goodnight, and take care of each other

“Konkylie” means ‘conch shell’ in Danish, but When Saints Go Machine don’t remind me of the sea. Instead, it’s the band’s own moniker that most aptly describes this album’s vision of hymnal chant and motorik monasteries. As any GCSE Lit student will tell you, the conch was used as a symbol of order and democracy in William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies. Only the holder of the conch shell was allowed to speak at meetings, ensuring the undivided attention of all those present.

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