Decade is Now!!

The last decade has been hugely eventful musically, dominated at the beginning by the might of Ulver, Laibach, Kraftwerk and Arcturus to be later joined by the irrepressible Current 93 amongst others. However, to my surprise, I am beginning to think my album of the decade is Robert Wyatt’s Comicopera. Any way, here is a list of some important albums:

Ulver – Blood Inside (2005)
Ulver – Perdition City (2001)
Arcturus – Sham Mirrors (2002)
Laibach – WAT (2003)
Current 93 – Black ships ate the Sky
Robert Wyatt – Comic Opera
Scott Walker – The Drift
Burial – Burial
Bohren & der Club of Gore – Black Earth
Solefald – In Harmonia Universali
Antony and the Johnsons – Antony and the Johnsons (2000)
cLouddead – cLouddead (2001)
The Meads of Asphodel – The excommunication of Christ (2001)
Manes – Vilosophe (2003)
DJ Signify – Sleep no more (2004)
Enslaved – Isa (2004)
Sage Francis – A Healthy Distrust (2005)
Bobby Conn – King for a day (2007)
Deathspell Omega - Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum (2007)
Thee Maladoror Kollective – Pilot (2007)
Virus – Carheart
Bar Kokhba – Lucifur: Book of Angels Vol.10 (2008)
Current 93 – Aleph…
Ephel Duath – The painters Palette
Om – Conferrence of the Birds

Things to note:

This is more than 20
This is by no means a definitive top 25
I’ve included WAt where as Tim excluded it yet found space for Volk and Kunst; very interesting.
The more I look at the list the less happy I am with it.
I hope there is something here new to you which you pursue and learn to love.

A Decade in Sound

OK, so with the close of the decade and a chance to reflect I have been through my music collection and tried to pull out albums of the decade. This is a very hard job and surprisingly frustrating. I really thought I had a large music collection, but it turns out that my regular demotion of music to long term storage has resulted in the last 10 years only holding perhaps 100 albums to consider. This is disappointing because I thought I had my finger on the musical pulse, but it appears that on some level it’s the older sounds that get me ticking over.

Maybe this is due to the fact that music that is older than 10 years has had time for reflection and relative analysis. This has allowed critics and amateur reviewers the chance to lose the fads and the crazes and only keep reminding us of real gems. So one can have more faith in an albums quality when people are still biggin’ it up 15 years on, where as your hot two step and punchy dub of 2 years ago may have had the headlines in it’s day, but will we really want to get people filling their brains with Ket for a night of classic Burial in a decade? I don’t know, and this is why my modern music collection is somewhat lacking.

I say this, but I still had a load of excellent music to sift through and I have tried to provide a top 20. They may not be in actual order, but as close as I could think of as I became slightly bored with this job.

I haven’t given any notes to the albums cause quite frankly I have other things to do in life. This has been rewarding however and I hope you will follow suit soon.

1. Arve Henriksen Chiaroscuro
2. Max Richter Blue Notebooks
3. Miasma & the Carousel of Headless Horses Perils
4. Lawrence The Night will last forever
5. Andy Votel Vertigo Mixed
6. The Knife Silent Shout
7. Laibach Volk
8. Tom Waits Alice
9. Radiohead Amnesiac/Kid A
10. Nick Cave No More Shall WE Part
11. Ulver Perdition City
12. John Tejada The Toiling of Idle Hands
13. Thomas Brinkmann Where Horses Die
14. Robert Wyatt Comicopera
15. Dopplereffekt Calabi Yau Space
16. Bar Kokhba Sextet Lucifer: Book of Angels, Vol 10
17. Murcof Mantes
18. Booka Shade Movements
19. Nik Bartsch’s Ronin Holon
20. Laibach Kunst der Fuge

On another note, I have been busy setting up a new life and writing details of my adventure on another blog. I am slightly saddened that this blog is being somewhat ignored and it's time the pair of you got busy writing.

Happy days everyone