Top Ten of Twenty Eleven
So what kind of year has 2011 been? One of highs, lows, triumphs, disasters…? A year to remember brilliant pop music, great film, and stupendous oratory?
Well, if you’re really honest with yourself, 2011’s probably been a year of seismic and hypocrisy-shattering revolutions. Dictatorships have come crashing down through the Middle-East, setting Western leaders scrabbling to cover decades (or months, in Britain’s case to Libya) of arms sales, covert support, and risible foreign policy. The liberating – and liberated – peoples will spend much of next year building democracies, hoping to create some kind of system similar to that in OECD countries as they are encouraged by frothily salivating capitalists from the sidelines.
Such intricate political processes, however, will hopefully form something different to recent Western leadership. Something that actually merits the term ‘progressive’. More than any year in any recent years has 2011 illustrated the greed, insensitivity and vanity of power. As governments cut more from the poor to pay for the failings of the rich and Europe collapses under a multi-trillion ton clump of dying single currency, flaying fraying relationships across the floors of Brussels, the rhetoric of self-interest, national interest, safeguarding interests, thunders from lecterns framed by the irritatingly conservative blues of bank sponsorship. Politicians are out of touch, out of sympathy, and frequently out of line.
Can’t you see: It’s all about our interest, over your interest, mate.
But there is another way. A ‘Fourth Way’, perhaps. If we concentrated on sharing more of our interests, like, I dunno, reducing child poverty, tackling worldwide food insecurity, giving old people enough security to buy food, challenging Israeli aggression, not attacking Iran, and maybe, just maybe, ensuring that everyone pays the taxes and dues they should…then we might actually create a freer, better, more balanced world for us to live in.
Yet that probably won’t happen. And it’s probably for a different blog. SO TO THE MUSIC OF 2011! Well, for me, it was less of a stride away from guitars and live drums, and more of a hop from the linen of Pitchfork into the bed of RA. I have barely heard any albums, concentrating my time and money on singles and EPs. I started the year rejoicing in the tones of Dutch house, spent the summer listening to the heaviest techno, and now leave the tube into the dark afternoon night listening to Drake and UK bass made in Canada. An odd, restless, and altogether peaceful journey.
The last twelve months has seen post-whatever genres really melding together, and we have amongst our papers and books records which are distinctly indistinctive and damn difficult to box. Speeds dropped from mid-30s to low-30s. Vocoders became even more fashionable, lending themselves to a popular concept of ‘space’ where slow clicks and eerie atmospheres engendered jarring pauses and electric tensions. Dubstep entered the realms of post-postmodernism. UK garage made a massive comeback, heavily borrowing features of American rnb (like Brandy, below). A lot of house music dragged its ass back to the end of the 1980s in a glorious pique of campness, layering emotional vocals over sumptuous keys and ugly synths, and generally strutting, happily, in coke-fuelled haze. Finally, by the end of the year, there was a new trend: glittering guitar loops and high, calibrated female vocals, set to mid-speed taps. This was the year’s ultimate reflection, luxuriating in better times.
A year of unsettling diversity then, but also one of excitement and ambition. There are, perhaps, not so many year-defining tracks as perhaps expected. See how Pitchfork – I know, I thought I’d totally left it behind – names a pretty unremarkable M83 track as its #1. My selection has likewise little coherence. On the one hand, I have chosen some likely tunes, and it’s a far more authentically melodic selection than I expected to create. But on the other, there are album tracks, tracks hidden away in late winter 2010-2011, tracks foreseeing later recognition, shamelessly corny tracks, and, ultimately at number one, a track which was given away free on xlr8r.
From the 73 which made the initial list but not the top ten cut, there are a few honourable mentions. Axel Boman’s remix of Agaric’s ‘No Way I Know I Feel’, vivifying bicycles in the sunshine, was simply amazing: wistful summer loops, lazily wistful and idealistic tones, soul samples and one, direct, statement: “I can’t get you off of my mind”. Nottingham’s Deep Space Orchestra started the year off with a few really strong releases, but none was better than the dark, rhythmic thriller of ‘Riding In My Imaginary Jeep’.
Deep Space Orchestra - B1 - Riding In My Imaginary Jeep - Foto by Deep Space Orchestra
Bon Iver’s ‘Perth’ (link to beautiful live version) started in the same ball-park of quality as ‘Blood Bank’ ended. Hudson Mohawke made Janet Jackson cool. Kevin McPhee’s Blue Organ was one cogent EP of narrative brilliance. Omar-S killed it with synths in ‘Here’s Your Trance Now Dance!’. And Floating Points returned with two cracking records, led by the dreamy ‘Sais’ and the inimitably dynamic-defying ‘Danger’.
Floating Points - Sais by cooldang
In the next week or so, the triumphantly top ten will be revealed. Stay tuned…
