10 Blue Ocean – “Ode”
Oakland is certainly a cinematic place these days, in its own right — for all its economic disaster and mass sports-team-exodus, there seems to be a rash of individuals there taking music very seriously, down to the sophisticated details. Blue Ocean is twee pop with a drum machine and a tender, translucent guitar sound flanking the innocuous vocals being sung by, you guessed it, somebody who sounds like they’re really shy. 1980s England is hearkened.
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9 seablite – “Blink Each Day”
Christmas came early this year for me, you might say, as two excellent twee pop albums emerged in one month (time to break out the horn-rimmed glasses and Cardigan… just kidding…), with the latter earning a couple extra points for actually having a live drummer, and similarly spinning out naïve, ephemeral and flawless bits of pop, under obscured vocals and a vibe of beach-borne lost innocence. In another coincidence, seablite hails from San Francisco, a quick hop over the bay from Blue Ocean.
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8 The National – “Deep End (Paul’s in Pieces)”
It’s good to see The National back at it and sounding fully like themselves, in the process. Actually, that was part of my problem with this album as a whole — it’s kind of a selfsame bath in familiar band waters. Taken as individual songs, though, lots of these numbers represent a key step forward for the band, as “Deep End (Paul’s in Pieces)”; which effectively combines the band’s former aching brand of emotional melancholy with a brisker pace and a sturdier sense of rhythm.
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7 WateRR & Machacha – “Cheaper to Keep Her”
“Cheaper to Keep Her” must be a reference to the tune of the same name from Blues Brothers 2000 (a brilliant song and film, as it were, for what it’s worth), especially tickling since wateRR is a Chicago emcee and aptly pert, rhythmic and snarky, an ode to female nurses with an attitude and swagger to soundtrack the Windy City.
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6 Last Nubian & Sweet Fruity Brunch – “mango in da parish”
London’s Last Nubian pairs with the Genevese Sweet Fruity Brunch on this project for spirited house with fringes of jungle and a light enough vibe to play in the club or the grocery store. On “mango in da parish”; a busy synth run grants the song a jazzy vibe, a marker of a key genre-shift that keeps this LP fresh.
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5 Stro Elliot – “HHOT”
I chose “HHOT’ (I got sucked in by the marketing campaign, I think) but really any of these joints could have more than fit the bill — cool, chill grooves that sort of called to mind fellow Los Angelean DJ Nobody and can soundtrack any workday or barbecue in professional fashion. One tickling thing about “HHOT” is how exotic and stoned of a vibe Elliot can incur with just beats, guitar and piano. It’s like you like his blood and get high, as has been ascertained to be the case with Travis Scott.
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4 Shake Stew – “Lila”
Austrian octet Shake Stew lather up an approachable brand of jazz that’s laid-back and suitably melodically rich, with trumpet and saxophone working in tandem on the title track toward a score that’s full but easy to swallow, too. We also get some of the clearest, most serene upright-bass sound you’re likely to find laying around, courtesy of Lukas Kranzelbinder.
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3 Actress – “Its me ( g 8 )”
Actress should be a household name for anybody who’s been following the artistic, cerebral side of IDM for the last 10 years. The British producer conspicuously makes a religion out of smoking weed and sitting at his computer and his recent work, true to form here, has been marked by haunting pauses and gaps, areas of space in the mix that mimic the uncertainty so prevalent in life. This is authentic music for thinking and acting to, conjunctively, or respectively, taken in snippets.
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2 Elephant Stone – “The Spark”
It’s a bummer but I almost missed this Elephant Stone album this year — this is a band, named after an excellent Stone Roses song (of which you have to hear the version on The Complete Stone Roses, not the one on the self-titled reissue with the awful ham-handed and endless snare drum fiasco) that hails from Canada, and, like their fellow Canadians Broken Social Scene, seems to take pride in approaching indie rock from a defiantly original strategy and perspective. Things pare down to a very digestible whole, here, anyway, with an expedited chorus and some killer buffer-zone Moog sound.
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1 Jlin – “Obscure”
Gary, Indiana DJ Jlin is back this year and I couldn’t be more excited. True to form, her new EP Perspective walks an edgy, dangerous line of jungle-infused IDM that’s brimming with urban grit and rhythmic intensity and urgency. Jlin takes sound and poisons it with a stylistic Tide Pod, imbuing us with ample otherworldly vibes and feelings, like the phenomenon of taking the absurd and making it familiar to us, a malady fairly prevalent in modern culture already.
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