40Daylight’s For The Birds, Trouble Everywhere [This Generation Tapes]

Debut album from what is essentially the second coming of On!Air!Library!, Daylight’s thankfully recaptures the essence of OAL which made them so enjoyable. The dreamlike quality of the music juxtaposed with the rigid instrumental precision remains, and splitting tome between two female singers (Amanda Garret stepped into the band when Claudia Deheza left to focus on her A Cloud Mireya project), the album still manages to retain the type of flow that made the OAL debut so captivating, and also the variety. By the time the record winds down and you’re hit with “Everybody In the Pool”, Daylight’s has managed to inflict quite a few musical bruises, which will stay in your head and on your body for quite some time.

Download: To No One

39Professor Murder, Professor Murder Rides The Subway [Kanine]

Now, this is a crazy EP. Tons of fun in my world normally refers to an extremely large man, but in this case it’s a perfect way to describe this blend of indie rock aesthetic, punk rock edginess, and electro style melody and beats. At times recalling LCD Soundsystem without the dance punk stigma, you won’t need this band to namedrop Daft Punk in their songs to bootyshake or toetap. For all intensive purposes, this is what the dance punk movement should have sounded like.

Download: The Mountain

38

Beak, The Legend of the Box Goblin [Project 168]

For those who don’t know Beak, he’s an acoustronic artist from WATMM.com, occasionally releasing net releases when MS painting over images of former baseball player Fred McGriff becomes tiresome. This is his third netlabel release, and the second for Project 168, a project designed to get laptop artists of their asses to make decent music, with a weeklong deadline. This is the resulting three-track EP from Beak. Track one is a crunchy, horror theme explaining the title of the EP. The story of the box goblin, while ridiculous, is what actually makes the song work. It has exactly the type of humor found in the MS Paintings of Fred McGriff on WATMM. Tracks two and three flesh out the horror film theme in instrumental form, and make for a delightful slice of music worthy of much more than an internet contest. He’s to hoping another Project 168 gets Beak off his ass to make more.

Download: Buggy Ride To Balkenwood

37

Reminder, Continuum [Eastern Developments]

Josh Abram’s debut album after touring with the likes of Prefuse 73, Tortoise, and Battles. This is an instrumental hip-hop album no doubt, but it wears the influence of those artists, and at many times, the experimentalism. Josh’s arrangements never quite remain safe like, say, a Blockhead album, and sometimes that works in his favor such as on album highlight “Leave What You Came With,” a collaboration with MC Thaione Davis that succeeds because of a conscious decision by beatsmith and MC to remain off-kilter. This approach detracts from the experience though on “Of Light”, his collab with Battles’ Tyondai Braxton, which suggests and a great track hidden underneath that is obscured by seemingly pointless noodling that never lets the true nature of the track shine through. With most albums taking an experimental approach to a relatively safe style of music, the result is a mixed bag, but there are not only great sounds, but great ideas here, and if you can get past the fact that this album could have been better, there’s a lot to enjoy.

Download: Leave What You Came With

36

Boards of Canada, Trans Canada Highway [Warp]

So is Boards of Canada washed up? This EP tries its best to postpone the answer to that question by re-producing one of the strongest tracks off their last album twice (once remixed by Odd Nosdam, a good core remix with a bit too much field music tacked onto both ends) and two short tracks hovering around a minute in length. Now normally, short tracks from the Boards are not a problem as they can be as beautiful as any nine minute epic. But with these, they are certainly more forgettable than memorable. What is memorable is the beautiful “Left Side Drive”, a subtle track that hints that maybe the Boards have a little more gas in the tank. Less convincing is “Skyliner”, a track that’s good enough, but sounds like a retread maybe more than anything else in their catalogue. Following The Campfire Headphase, a good album that couldn’t stand up to their previous work, the brothers still have a lot to prove with regards to their longevity, and this EP neither signaled a slide into oblivion nor a return to greatness. Will we ever see something as incredible as Geogaddi from them again? Probably not, but we can appreciate the little nuggets like “Left Side Drive” when they appear. Hopefully, this isn’t the last time they do.

Download: Left Side Drive

35

Kode9 & The Spaceape, Memories of the Future [Hyperdub]

I was a little weary about picking up this album. Hearing The Spaceape do his Jamaican accented spoken word on Burial’s debut (also for Hyperdub), I didn’t know if I could listen to a whole album of it (and he is on every track but one, so those with a predisposition against Jamaican accents, consider this your caveat emptor). I was pleasantly surprised when I did finally pick it up though. Kode9 seems to have a distinct understanding of how to avoid The Spaceape’s delivery becoming tiresome. There is some sort of magic displayed between Kode9’s beats that harnesses the vocals in the exact way they must be harnessed for the album to be a success, and Kode9 succeeds almost effortlessly. The beats on this record seem to emphasize the Jamaican roots of dubstep more than contemporaries like Skream, and because of that, they ignore the traps of similarity found in many of dubstep’s biggest club bangers. The creation of a dubstep album requires understanding that the sounds will be heard in other places besides megawatt club sound systems, and Kode9 has crafted a record that will succeed as well on headphones as on subwoofers.

Download: Victims

34

Xela, The Dead Sea [Type]

You can always paint a musical timeline with Xela. He is such a chameleon, perhaps wearing his influences on his sleeve more than The Cure cover bands. In his early days with Merck, he made effective clip-hop (check his Machine Drum remix if you haven’t heard it). For his debut on Neo Ouija, he crafted a delightful album of downtempo glitch. Then, in 2003, in the midst of the folk/acoustronica movement, he delivered a lovely collection of guitar-plucked electronic songs on City Centre Offices. Here, he returns with his forth change in musical style, and correspondingly, fourth label, Type Records, which he co-owns. Here Xela is equally influenced by the psychedelic folk of the Fonal label (which he has highlighted in his radio shows) and the classical ambient of fellow Type artists Deaf Center. This mix perhaps results in Xela’s most unique sound to date, a claustrophobic, sea-driven journey through the dark corners of ambient and folk.

Download: Wet Bones

33

Hassle Hound, Limelight Cordial [Staubgold]

What a pleasant surprise this album was. Seeing how this was a random chat room recommendation, I had no idea what to expect. What I did get was the Books on speed, as if a copy of The Avalanches’ Since I Left You fell on top of a copy of The Books’ The Lemon of Pink on a hot day and started to melt together. Almost entirely built of samples, this is the type of organic sampletronica other artists previously mentioned have hinted at, but instead of emphasizing the groove of The Avalanches or the quirkiness of The Books, it emphasizes the hilarity of sample-based music in general to create a fun and intriguing listen well worth filing in any genre between comedy, hip-hop, or polka.

Download: Anvil Stamping Stallion

32

Juana Molina, Son [Domino]

Juana was yet another 2006 discovery for me. Her brand of Argentinian folk with subtle electronic touches just struck such a chord with me upon hearing 2004’s Tres Cosas that I was very excited to hear about Son’s release. Son is a progression of her sound, where she experiments with songcraft, and quite obviously length. Juana seems to key in on certain parts of her songs and develop them more than in the past. To some, this might be an aggravation, but it is part of Son’s subtle charm, which Juana already had in spades. Don’t let the foreign language frighten you. Molina will draw you in with her music and voice more than the words could anyway, and not paying attention to the actual lyrical content allows you to absorb the beauty of Molina’s sparse, but hauntingly beautiful arrangements.

Download: No Seas Antipatica

31

Kaki King, …Until We Felt Red [Velour] 

Being not altogether familiar with Kaki King’s earlier work, I may be unqualified to talk about this record, as every review of it seems to spend most of the time talking about her previous albums. Ignoring that, this record is an assured achievement from what sounds like an extremely talented, maturing artist. Kaki, on this record, blends a myriad of style, instruments, and influence. Going form lounge to indie rock, from complicated instrumental guitar work to simple pop chord progression, this is a varied record you shouldn’t expect from one girl and a guitar. And it benefits from that variety. A full CD  of “Yellowcake” or “You Don’t Have To Be Afraid” might grow tiresome, but hearing them in succession just works and shows Kaki to be a true artist worthy of paying attention to, even if you didn’t before hearing this record.

Download: Jessica