This one's coming straight from the heart. No gimmicks.
When I look back at my life immediately following college, I'll remember the trials, the paychecks that didn't come, the uninsurance, the sleeping on the office couch - but I'll be remiss to put a soundtrack to it all. Blame it on whatever's convenient: for a little more than a year, I lived well outside the influence of music. I listened to little and discovered less. I went through a computer reformat that lasted me nearly a year without ever installing my iPod transfer software. Fuck, I don't think I'd even charged the thing since graduation, and the only headphones I had were attached to a microphone and not particularly mobile.
And then, a few months ago, everything went wrong. It was Snow Crash, and I had just been cut free from The Raft somewhere far, far away from a society that I wasn't sure really wanted me back. This - the clichéd hour of need - is when music came back into focus for me; its role made clear, the reasons for chasing it suddenly lit up in neon. I can't believe I ever let it go.
I write for this blog because I believe in what it is trying to do - to keep the search alive, keep music simmering in your brainpan. If you ask me, we're lucky to have it.
That said, it's time to round up my favorites of 2006. They're not all from this year - I slept on the first nine months of it, and I'm just now getting up - but they're tracks that have come into my life since the last time the ball dropped. If even one of them is new to you, take it as an early something under the tree.
[In Reverse Chronological Order (Year)]
[01]
Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt
DJ Shadow
Endtroducing...
Fontana Island : 1996
[
I can't help but think that if I'd heard this when I was 13, I'd be somewhere else right now. For however long you've known it, this song has a singular power to inspire and change. It doesn't rust; it shines. Enough has been said about it that I could probably write a full review by taking only one, glowing word about the [1996-era] genius that is Josh Davis from everything that's out there, so I'll spare you the Amazon run-down.
Do you know that feeling you get - it's different for everyone - where you feel crushingly inspired and defeated in the face of something beautiful? That slow-burning sensation of What the Fuck Am I Doing if I'm Not Doing This? B.S.W.A.G.O.S. is a firefly in a jar, 6 minutes and 39 seconds bright.
[02]
Airplane '96
Pizzicato 5
Sister Freedom Tapes
Matador : 1996
[
A lot of Pizzicato 5's stuff sounds like: sunny day, convertible, Japanese countryside. Airplane '96 is the on-ramp to Tokyo. It is relentlessly kinetic, a well-contained electrical fire and exactly the kind of thing I needed to happen to me late this year.
[03]
Superheroes
Daft Punk
Discovery
Virgin Records : 2001
[
I'm not sure how I managed to avoid Daft Punk for so many years without really trying to - parallel lines never cross? - but I kind of want to blame Silent K, who despite a brilliant opportunity to proselytize (vis-a-vis Fatbaby) left me to turn this up on another company hard disk at the beginning of 2006. Cheers!
When I found this track, I left it on single-song repeat until it had written itself into my cellular make-up. And when they carbon date me somewhere down the line, they should find that five years late is better than never.
[04]
Situps Pullups
edIT
Crying Over Pros for No Reason
Planet Mu : 2004
[
Going forward may not be the answer - maybe I should go back.
When I decided to get music back into my life, I drew up a hit list: artists I remembered from before the coma - the type I knew I could look to as a life vest, a platform to stand on. Prefuse 73 was one of them. I sought outSurrounded By Silence and was pretty quickly sure that I shouldn't have.
edIT is doing now what Prefuse was doing a couple of years ago, and that's entirely okay with me. Crying Over Pros For No Reason is a minute-by-minute soundtrack to the routine you rediscover when everything comes apart. It's got a confident restlessness going for it, the sense that change is closing in - and that you're ready for it. Glitch-Hop that will steal your lunch money!
His new album (Certified Air Raid Material, I think) is out early next year.
[05]
Humming Song (Alone Together)
Yuka Honda
Eucademix
Tzadik : 2004
[
After so many sterile, shut-in months on an unchanging playlist, it was easy to forget that Cibo Matto had broken up at all. Realizing it again was like discovering an old love letter from that relationship you simply let drift apart, the sort that might not have been inevitable if only you'd have known.
I really, really miss Cibo Matto, and this is exactly what that feeling sounds like.
[06]
Talk To The Romans
Project Polaroid
Project Polaroid
Threshold : 2006
[
The same four or five albums' (Spankmaster, Spankmaster II, Spankmaster III, Not Dr. Octagynecologist IV) worth of Kool Keith in 128kbps won't hold you forever. If you haven't given up on the guy yet [I hadn't thought to], Project Polaroid should restore your good faith for another couple years.
Fresh as &!@%: space-raps, alligators, and beats from galaxies beyond anything Kutmasta Kurt's ever signed his name to. Like Coke Zero for the Octagon crowd.
[07]
Smash Your Head
Girl Talk
Night Ripper
Illegal Art : 2006
[
If you flew into a clonic seizure during the middle of any given VH1 countdown, you'd probably want to write Night Ripper when you came out of it - it's too good to let go. I have a special fondness for mash-ups, and this album caters to it like a wedding guest.
Maybe today is your first time on the Internet. Yeah? This album will surprise you. Here's what you can expect from the selected track:
"Smash Your Head" – 3:01
* – 0:00 X-Ray Spex - "Oh Bondage Up Yours"
* – 0:02 Fall Out Boy - "Sugar, We're Going Down"
* – 0:02 Trina - "Don’t Trip"
* – 0:07 SWV - "I'm So Into You"
* – 0:24 Public Enemy - "Rebel Without A Pause"
* - 0:24 James Brown - "Get Up Offa That Thing"
* – 0:27 Lil Wayne - "Fireman"
* – 0:27 Young Jeezy - "Over Here"
* – 0:33 Nirvana - "Scentless Apprentice"
* – 0:59 Young Jeezy - "Soul Survivor (song)"
* – 1:25 The Pharcyde - "Passing Me By"
* – 1:28 Elton John - "Tiny Dancer"
* – 1:39 The Notorious B.I.G. - "Juicy"
* – 2:29 Beyonce Knowles - "Check on It"
* – 2:42 Juelz Santana - "Clockwork"
[08]
A Lot To Say
Glue
Catch As Catch Can
Fatbeats : 2006
[
Glue makes me feel like my favorite band is still together and I'm on their street team and soaked with the sweat of a hundred other fans at their New Haven show. Contrast Catch As Catch Can with their last album and you can absolutely feel how hard they're trying to sell out.
You know what? It doesn't matter. That'd be like Yoda waking up one morning and thinking, "You know, instead of harmlessly levitating things today, I feel like throwing some lightning." The underground Force is so strong with Glue that they are in really little danger of giving in to corruption. A group to watch.
[09]
Things Go Better
Soul Position
Things Go Better with RJ and Al
Rhymesayers : 2006
[
If RJ had been piloting Luke's X-Wing, they'd have been too busy blowing out the system on Coruscant to break on Dagobah. Things Go Better is one of about four hundred RJD2 tracks I've ground up, injected and become happily dependent on in the past couple of months.
I'll worry about quitting once it's time for my New Year's Resolutions.
[10]
Vi Sitter I Ventrilo Och Spelar Dota
Basshunter
LOL <(^^,)>
Wea/Warner : 2006
[
DotA Allstars (and here) is a custom map/game type for Warcraft III that my friends and I once played and, upon discovering that its community support had thrust development forth some 20 or 30 versions since January 2005, started playing again late this year. We didn't come back because of this song, but we would have.
Basshunter is a Swedish dance artist and competitive-level gamer, and this is his tribute to the only lifestyle that could possibly go with both of them. His debut album, LOL <(^^,)>, takes home my international award for best title with a board full of five-point-ohs.
This video is pretty much all of the fun.
For JT, Silent K, Roy and every album I'm counting on them to deliver.
Here's to another year.
3 comments:
Hell of a quality post, man. A great way to christen the handle.
Very nice list, interesting to see many good songs that aren't necessarily from 2006.
I'll gargle Codec's musical mayonnaise any day of the week. Taste post, dude.
Post a Comment