Records of the Year

Ambrose Akinmusire – On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment (Blue Note Records)

André Henriques – Cajarana ( Sony Music Entertainment)

Australian Art Orchestra | Peter Knight | Tilman Robinson | Andrea Keller – Sometimes Home Can Grow Stranger Than Space  (Australian Music Centre) 

Bernardo Devlin – Proxima B (Peekaboo Records)

Bloodshot Bill – Get Loose Or Get Lost (Goner Records)

Built to Spill – Plays The Songs of Daniel Johnston (Ernest Jenning Record Co.)

Catherine Anne Davies & Bernard Butler –  In Memory of My Feelings (Needle Mythology) 

David Bruno – Raiashopping (Brandit music)

Einstürzende Neubauten – Alles in Allem (Potomak)

Gabríel Ólafs – Piano Works (One Little Independent Records)

James C. – Sodden (KCK Records)

JG Thrilwell & Simon Steensland – Oscilospira (Ipecac Recordings)

Jeff Parker – Suite For Max Brown (International Anthem)

John Bence – Love (Thrill Jockey Records)

Jorge Coelho – Lay Claim to the World as a Sphere of Your Own Agency (Lovers & Lollypops)

Jorge Queijo – Abstract Thoughts II (Self Release)

Jozef van Wissem – Ex Mortis (Consouling Sounds)

King Buzzo with Trevor Dunn – Sacrifice ( Ipecac Recordings)

Krypto – Eye 8 (Lovers & Lollypops) 

Luke Haines & Peter Buck – Beat Poetry For Survivalists (Cherry Red)

Mark Kozelek with Ben Boye & Jim White – 2 (Caldo Verde Records)

Mick Harvey – Waves of Anzak/The Journey (Mute Records)

Mondo Generator – Shooters Bible (Heavy Psych Sounds)

Pop Dell’Arte – Transgressio Global (Sony Music)

Radio Bukoswki – Radio Bukowski (Tradisom)

Roger Eno & Brian Eno – Mixing Colours (Deutsche Grammophon)

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Sideways to New Italy (Sub Pop Records)

Rowland S Howard – Pop Crimes (Bloodlines Music/Mute Records/Southern Records)

Six Organs of Addmitance – Companion Rises (Drag City Records)

SQÜRL – Some Music For Robby Muller (Sacred Bones)

Stephen Malkmus – Traditional Techniques (Matador Records)

The Friends of David McComb – Truckloads of Sky – The Lost Songs of David McCombs Vol 1 (Lost Records and Tapes)

The Sorcerers – In Search Of The Lost City Of The Monkey (ATA Records)

The William Loveday Intention – Will There Ever Be A Day That You’re Hung Like A Thief  (Damaged Goods Records)

V/A – Color de Trópico – Venezuelan grooves from the 60s and 70s (El Palmas Music)

Full text here: https://mondobizarremagazine.wordpress.com/2021/02/23/records-of-the-year/

Art inspired by Waves of Anzac part of Mick Harvey's new album.

The Wasteland I (barley, red wine and watercolour on paper).

The Wasteland II (barley, red wine and watercolour on paper).

The Wasteland III (barley, red wine, crayon and watercolour on paper)

The Wasteland IV (barley and red wine on paper)

The interview with Mick Harvey about Waves of ANZAC/The Journey can be read here: 

https://mondobizarremagazine.wordpress.com/2020/05/27/mick-harvey-waves-of-anzac-the-journey/

Amazing Sounds of 2012

Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls
António Zambujo - Quinto
Bowerbirds - The Clearing
Father John Misty - Fear Fun
Lambchop - Mr. M
Mark Eitzel - Don't Be a Stranger
Mark Lanegan - Blues Funeral
Minta & The Brook Tourt - Olympia
Nick Waterhouse - Time's All Gone
Patti Smith - Banga
Point Reyes - Warszawa
Sharon Van Etten - Tramp
Spiritualized - Sweet Heart, Sweet Light
Sun Kil Moon - Among the Leaves
Tame Impala - Lonerism

Hammond Grooves Bio

This is a small bio I wrote for my friend Hammond Grooves, a Zürich based DJ.

Hammond Grooves is a music lover whose devotion to sound and grooves started back in the late 80’s in College Radio shows. Having owed a record label, taken part in putting up gigs, playing in bands and record reviewing, DJing come as a natural path. For nearly 15 years Hammond Grooves put together his love of 70’s Soundtracks, Tex Avery cartoons, Library Music, The Beat Generation, Sitar Beat, Swingin' London, Charlie Parker, Funk & Soul and delivered us Rare Grooves & Beyond.
Hammond Grooves Rare Grooves & Beyond is a very cool and stylish set. One wonderful journey through some of the best Exotica, Jazzy, Funk, Soul and Bossa Nova grooves from the past as well as the present. Rare Grooves & Beyond is a set truly worthy listening to, an unforgettable delight of sound with a cinematic touch and a danceable feeling.
Hammond Grooves is based in Zürich and available to put music in Events, your private Party or Lounge Bar.

You can listen to Hammond Grooves set here: http://www.mixcloud.com/sitarbeat/

 

Fifteen Delights from 2011

After years without a "best records of ..." list in 2011 there was inspiration and time for music to have a place in my heart.



Bill Callahan – Apocalypse
Black Keys – El Camino
Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears, Scandalous
Black Lips – Arabian Mountain
Eleanor Friedberger – Last Summer
Erica Buettner - True Love and Water
Gruff Rhys – Hotel Shampoo
P.J. Harvey – Let England Shake
Ryan Adams – Ashes and Fire
Laura Marling – A Creature I Don't Know
Mike Patton – The Solitude of Prime Numbers
Old Jerusalem – Old Jerusalem
Reigning Sound - Abdication For Your Love
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Mirror Trafic
Tom Waits – Bad as Me

Top 10 Albuns of 2007

LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver

Bill Callahan - Woke On A Whale Heart

Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, are You The Destroyer

David Vandaveer - Grace & Speed

Battles - Mirrored

Blackstrobe - Burn Your Own Church

Go-Team - Proof Of Youth

Kevin Ayers - The Unfairground

Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future

Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala

BRETT ANDERSON - Brett Anderson (Drowned in Sound)

It is ironic that Brett Anderson first solo album comes out in spring. This is, without a doubt, a fall record. To be more accurate it is the winter of our discontentment. We have been the bravado and defiance of the early twenties, playing and heavy petting in rooms filed with feather boas and glitter, oblivious of anything but ourselves. Passed through glowing nights, filled with stimulation, flittering, swinging, among the most lavishly in-crowd, in a swirl of craze and fun. We believed in love, we challenged the world, our brightness so amazing, and our sweetness so candid. Mightier than a knight in a shining armour, we were there, battling everything and everyone, so together no one could tell us apart. Like Brett we would have aged, graciously and in fabulous style. But life caught us without warning, crawling in slowly but lethally. We were looking the other side, absorbed by this and that, the bits and the bobs, the dos and don’ts. In the morning the phone rings and love is dead. It is dead, gone, swept away and thorn. The resentment that has grow so high, the too many demands – baby needs the curtains, the carpet, the cars, the money to burn and be flashy -, intimacy turned into disgust, sex one more chore, even if fun. And there was nothing more for us there, the failure of a great love a disaster of gigantic proportions. Brett voice is in the back guiding us in the cold, allowing for the melancholy to set in. Here we are, still waiting for spring with autumn leaves in our hearts.

OF MONTREAL Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (Polyvinyl)

When reviewer and writer dwell in similar personal problems, it gets to close to home and heart. It is like watching what went wrong with our life under de magnifying lens of a microscope. The outcome of the writer’s tormented affairs, however, provide a strange, but much needed sense of quietness and of “it will work out just fine”. Kevin Barnes lyrics for “Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?“, Of Montreal new album, come from the singer nearly completely breakdown in Norway - a subject he very openly approaches in “A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger” – and the separation from his wife, right after the birth of their first child. If not for the music, uplifting, dance oriented, pop, punctuated with an array of peculiar sounds an almost over the top hysteria, this would be a record to send us straight to the abysm and the realms of utter depression. The centrepiece of “Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?“, the amazing spiralling and tormented “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal”, a nine plus minutes long song about love’s excessive weirdness, nearly gets us there, on the edge. We are quickly rescued by “Bunny Ain’t No Kind Of Rider” a popish and ironic song that makes us want to laugh and the madness of “Faberge Falls For Shuggie”. By the end of the record we have been taken through misery and pain with a disco beat and a grin in our faces.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM - Sound Of Silver (DFA)

At first it was hate. I detested LCD Soundsystem, apparently for no particular reason. I just didn’t stand them. So much that I even went to see James Murphy & CO only to hate them more. But like so many other love stories, irritation and dislike turned into a crushing passion, so overwhelming that for the past weeks “Sound Of Silver”, LCD Soundsystem latest album has been often playing on repeat for hours on end. Looking back it is hard to say what I did abhor the most: if the cowbell, Murphy’s voice and appearance, the many 80’s references or just the all package. But the cowbell, Murphy’s voice and appearance, the many 80’s references along with the lyrics and the powerful musical mish-mash are exactly what turns LCD into a unique band. True, there are a million bands out there with cowbells and drowned in the 80’s and the post-punk, still, in the end, it all comes down to how one lays the foundations, the bricks and the paint. And LCD Soundsystem do it with sharp uniqueness. “Sound Of Silver” begins with “Get Innocuous” growing devilish groove and ends in a down-tempo schizophrenic lament for New York – “New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down”. Between there are seven songs of pure joy, sorrow, departure, love, party and disdain. All in all life full spectre in a singular danceable pop album. Sometimes, if for brief instants, there is more to existence than books, and this is one of those (long and lasting) moments.

Of Montreal & Scissor Sisters

ou de como hissing fauna, are you the destroyer? e ta dah! são dois miúdos separados à nascença em que um se perde nos mundos do indie rock (ou lá o que é) e o outro se arrasta pelos clubes de disco sound nova-iorquinos. depois encontram-se, por acaso, num bar mal afamado e descobrem que tem tantas muitas coisas em comum, acabando por perceber, que, na verdade, são irmãos. o miúdo de montreal, educado nos melhores colégios britânicos e dado à poesia e às belas-artes, por vezes pende para uma melancolia e uma introspecção quase doentia, que o levam a olhar para o passado e a constatar que entre este e um animal grotesco a diferença é pouco. ambos são ridículos, abafantes, doentios. já o mano de nova-iorque, crescido e educado por entre apartamentos camarários e empregos de uma semana, não liga a coisas profundas, preferindo o puro prazer dos sentidos ao pensar. mas isso são pormenores de somenos importância. juntos, o garoto canadiano e o fedelho americano são o terror das festas dos amigos, chegando mesmo a acabar inúmeras noites numa desconfortável cela de uma qualquer esquadra.

* written early this year for forum sons.