My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: tUnEyArDs – Bizness

My favourite track of 2011 bar none. I’m currently tossing up whether I should abandon the family and pay $45 to see her play the Brisbane Powerhouse next month. This track along is worth a chink of the entrance fee.

I’d never heard of her before this year. And if she hadn’t released this track of a legal free download, I probably would never have heard of her at all. I made a deliberate decision to feature legal free downloads on my radio program to allow listeners to be able to source great music for nothing, and as a cheep and hassle free way of making the show sound fresh every week. And to think I used to buy hundred of albums to power my radio program – the same albums I am currently ripping to hard drive and packing away as taking up too much space. But I digress.

The words should be about tUnEyArDs and this most wonderful of tracks. For a start her singing voice – to my ears – apes no one; things are simply layered on top of each other – nothing too complicated but everything complimentary; it’s the best sax I’ve heard in ages and nicest use of a strummed guitar. Simple things makes up an extraordinary track.

My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: Mark E – Deny This (Extended Version)

It’s just so damn… insistent. Almost 10 minutes of variations of a simple beat and a simple bass line. And it never sounds long to me.

Repetition and variation – whether in traditional, classical, progressive rock, electronica – is what given music narrative. The mind plays tricks – the beauty of, say, the Necks is that you go into a little dream state and when you focus part way through you swear the music hasn’t changed but in reality you’ve travelled far. Incremental changes and pure insistence in repetition is very effective.

Which is probably way too much over analyse for this track, but it’s one of my favourite long form tracks of the year, and my favourite piece of electronica/dance of 2011. At times the beat is added to, other times elements are subtracted, most of the time the bass plods along, before being ripped from underneath everything for just long enough to cause tension. Stare off into nothing in particular and enjoy.

My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: Colin Stetson – Fear of the Unknown and the Blazing Sun

I first heard Laurie Anderson in my teenaged years, and I think the first thing I heard was something spoken-word and then contemporary rather than something earlier and more famous like Sharkey’s Day or O Superman. So this track from trumpeter Colin Stetson ticks all the right boxes for me. Anderson plus an office machine beat. Listen.

My Somethingy 10 of 2011: Sea Oleena–Milk

In terms of pure singing style singers like Sea Oleena have been a dime a dozen in Australia in the last couple of years. I don’t know if there is a cause for such commonality of cadence, but what sets her apart  (despite the fact she is Canadian) is the homespun, ramshackle music she makes to go with her homespun vocals. Plus, while the music industry is still coming to terms with ever-changing music market, independent artists such as Sea Oleena are quietly doing their own thing.

(For that matter, is there money in music anymore, or has it returned to the realms of hobbyists. I don’t know.)

My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: Small Black–Photojournalist

Yeah, they sound they really wished they made music in 1982 but I’m a sucker for that sound. In reality there are so many bands playing various types of woozy, synthy electro-pop going around I could have picked just about any of them. And to think The Human League and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark are still releasing music.

My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: Holy Other – Touch

I’d never heard of TriAngle records before this year, but they delivered a few tracks for the program, not least of all from Holy Other. Yeah, mines the same atmospherics as Burial and so, but there is something pleasantly unsettling about the fact the track never settles for a consistent rhythm while the drones just drag along underneath.

My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: Take – Face The Firing Squad

A lot of people in Thailand make some music. Then a guy called frosty travels around that country and records some of this music and makes a music mix. And then this other guy called Take takes his favourite bits from that music mix and creates an entirely new track. And it’s good. Well done to all musicians involved. Find it for download at Dublab.

My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: Four Tet–Pinnacles

I’d lost track of Kieran Hebden’s career somewhere after the Rounds album. I’ve heard one of his albums with drummer Steve Reid but I’ve always thought Hebden’s best work was set against some form of locked groove, no matter how mutated or twee it was.

I’m glad to say I’ve re-connected thanks to this track which combines a driving groove with some jazz fire/finery. Eight minutes flies by as he adds those small variations to keep the groove fresh. The jazz doesn’t sound obviously sampled or stamped on – it’s part of the track’s DNA.

Best of all it’s a free download, available here via the 1upped.com.

My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: Ponytail – Easy Peasy

It’s a slow starter (and why are the opening chords so familiar?) but I’m a sucker for the guitars. My love of intricate little guitar patterns set to an insistent beat can be traced to my teenaged love of Mike Oldfield (in fact the guitars in the extended bridge here are SO Oldfield) and later Robert Fripp. This track is far more joyful than either can muster. I haven’t heard this much fun in ages.

 

My Somethingy 10 Tracks of 2011: Laurel Halo – Aquifer

Like the sounds of Mr Scruff, NY producer Laurel Halo reminds me of a certain sound of synth music I often heard in boating and other lifestyle TV shows as the 80s packed up and the 90s started their sound check. Less nostalgically, it’s aligned to those years of the early 90s when techno wore an ambient cloak as genres smashed together in the last great big bang of something quite new. Aquifer has been released in a time of retro-post-everything, but these days re-treading the past is to be celebrated if it is as deft as this.