Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 18:24:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: Barry Bruner
To: Emily Bruner
Subject: whirlpools of sound

Hi Emily,

It's been a while so I wanted to write to see how things were going.
...
A very exciting time for me musically, because I'm polishing up my list of the top 30 CD's of the decade. I've been working on this for 7 months! Not continuously, of course, but I had a shortlist that I would examine and tinker with from time to time and now it's just about ready. I set myself a deadline of October 31, which I plan to meet. Around the same time, I want to post the list on my web site. Now, my web site is as rudimetary as you can get, but I've spent some time lately in trying to learn HTML and I've been planning to constuct a music section of the site that will have an archive of top 10 lists from past years, and likely some selected music writings from my ever-growing music journal. Maybe I'll post concert reviews when I go to gigs ...


Date: Sat, 30 Oct 1999 15:46:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: emily b.
To: Barry Bruner
Subject: whirlpools of coincidence

Barry,
...
That's an interesting idea you've had about the top 30 CDs. I'd like to see your website...heh, don't worry about HTML, i'm sure you have enough interesting text to fill it out. One of my all-time favourite cure sites has almost no fancy graphics, and is just pure interesting infomation...it's tres cool: [link to now-defunct geocities site, which actually might have turned into Chain of Flowers, my memory fails me, but perhaps Emily remembers]
...

That was how it started. More than five years later, finally, a continuation.

Listening and watching a mere hour of Much More Music Retro (as part of MMM's programming schedule) made me glad that I don't receive that station, lest I turn into a couch potato doing nothing other than reliving the 80's through video. Somehow, I have yet to figure out whether the target audience for 80's revivalism are recovering leg warmer-wearers who want to relive their youth or a different (not necessarily younger) group who enjoy 80's music with ironic detachment. Consider Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't It Be Good". A great song with an extremely dated video because of the special effects. Watching it in 2004, do I enjoy the video because, or in spite of the kitschy FX? And perhaps I'm not the best test subject here -- I remember this video very well when it first came out, and even though nobody was under any illusions that it was a technical marvel, the expectations were lower. It wasn't mandatory or expected that you had to drop six figures on your video, unlike now.

I know this -- "Wouldn't It Be Good" would be 1000X cooler if that exact video were redone today, using modern computer special effects. The creepy lighting, the alien abduction paranoia, what's not to like? Thomas Dolby's "Hyperactive" is another one that I'd like to see redone (even though the original was pretty out-there as it is, but the body-stretching is pedestrian compared to what could be done today). This certainly isn't true for all 80's videos. Duran Duran's videos never relied on such FX and still look fantastic today (for that reason among many).

With the weight of end-of-year listmaking behind me, I'm back to listening to some older stuff ... such as a CD-R I put together from earlier in the year containing a bunch of artist that I loosely looped together under the spectre of "minimalism". There's hip-hop (Sensational), techno (Motor), psych-drone (Charalambides), and a bunch of S3/Spectrum stuff. That new Charalambides record, "Joy Shapes", somehow ended up here instead of with the rest of my 2004 stuff. That album has been in the back of my mind all year, but I just didn't get around to listening to it that much. It certainly fits in well with the tone (drone?) of most of my top 20. Revisiting it now, I'm reminded that I love it in small doses (20-30 minutes worth) but over an hour and a quarter, the point has been made for me and I start becoming restless. The Tom Carter and Bardo Pond collab has a similar effect on me -- interesting sounds and moods, but the succession of fifteen minute tracks feels too samey after a while.

Not so for the Spectrum material. This stuff hasn't aged a bit, in fact, and the psych-moaning of "Mechanical Man" beat Animal Collective (and their ilk) to the punch ten years early. "Lord Don't Know My Name" and "True Love Will Find You in the End" continue the fine example of "Playing With Fire" by keeping the chord change and note counts low, and "Waves Wash Over Me" is a fine four-word summation of those five particular minutes. And it got better -- Sonic soaked his music in soul a couple of years later and made one of the 90's best albums.

The date that is synonymous with fun, anticipation, and heart-pounding excitement all rolled into one. So let us cut to the chase and discuss

THE TOP 10 20 ALBUMS OF 2004.

For much of this year, I felt as though I wasn't hearing much new music and would barely be able to scrape together a top ten. My purchasing tastes went the way of "more for less", as I bought cheap hard-to-find used disc after cheap hard-to-find used disc, siphoned what would have been money for new CD's into an internet connection, d/l'ed anything which struck my fancy -- and of those -- bought only a few of my favourites (or even better, went to their gigs). It was an economically sound strategy, if I do say so myself. Namely, (unless it was too cheap to pass up) buy only the music that couldn't be easily downloaded (if at all), and download the rest.

Yet somehow, despite not feeling as though I'd done a good job of keeping up with new releases, at the end of the year I found nearly fifty new albums from 2004 in my collection, which is far more than I amass in a typical year. Plenty for choosing a top ten, or even a top twenty, which is in fact what I will be doing since I'm submitting a top twenty ballot for an ILM end-of-year poll.

Despite having such an embarrassment of riches to choose from, there must be a good reason why I feel as though I haven't connected strongly with many 2004 releases this year. I've got this huge pile of new stuff, but why does it feel like I haven't been *listening* to it? Oh yeah, I know -- because I haven't. Clearly, there's the problem of sheer volume ... the problem of giving the new Dizzee Rascal and Bark Psychosis albums a fair shake (both are records that were critically lauded but I feel as I though I never really "got" them. The BP album drifts by beautifully, it's a piece of art that I appreciate but cannot admire, much like the more understated/vastly more boring album by fellow post-shoegaze alumnus Rachel Goswell. Kudos to Rachel for "Coastline", one of the finest tracks I've heard all year on an otherwise umemorable record. And Dizzee's record certainly walks tall and carries a big stick, but doesn't kick my teeth in like the last one did. When he strips his tracks waaay down to little more than lo-fi, spasmodic beats and basic bass loops -- "Everywhere" is particularly outstanding -- then he's helping to realize my personal ideal hip-hop sound) when they're competing for headspace with Donnacha Costello and Saint Etienne albums that I'm scolding myself for not buying years ago. I remember more moments with years-old music by Galaxie 500 or Magnetic Fields than with most of these albums from 2004. In that sense, my 2004 recalls my 1998, when I spent far more time obsessing over past albums by the Velvets and Drugstore than anything released in 1998 (and surely this contributes to my feeling that 1998 was a poor year for music). Not to mention the long shadow cast by last year's outstanding crop, including a Plastikman album that obliterates anything released by anybody this year. Sure, it's not fair to hold up 2004 to the standards of ghosts from the past, but it's hard not to when I'm more often in the pleasant company of the ghosts than the unfamiliar company of the living.

Having said all that, there were several excellent albums released this year -- honestly! More so than any other year, this list is a "listening" list, which made for easy ranking. Essentially, these are the albums that I listened to the most. I keep coming back to some them because they keep blowing my mind. Some of them are significantly flawed, or even disappointing to me, but I keep coming back to them to capture specific moods, because they make me feel nostalgic, or because they're just too damned fun to play loud (in fact, there's my thirty word summary of the Fennesz album). Rest assured, I look at this list, and I see the same old me. Noisedroneambient! Canadians! My Token 80's Throwback is here! And reassuringly, just like all the other years, there were two or three albums that rose to the top and decisively separated themselves from the pack.

Again:

THE TOP 20 ALBUMS OF 2004.

20. THE ORB -- BICYCLES AND TRICYCLES. In this, the Winamp and iPod Age, we typically cue up albums by a bunch of artists and pump their songs through a random play format. Thus, sometimes it's a bit difficult to remember who you're listening to at any given time. A pumping tech-house track would come on, and I'd assume I was listening to a song from a Kompakt compilation. But no -- it would be from "Bicycles and Tricycles". Later, a droning ambient piece -- the Mutek comp, yes? Nope, "Bicycles and Tricycles" again. The occasional weird and goofy samples remain intact from their ambient house beginnings, along with the playful melodies (albeit in a completely different style of dance music) that give a nod, of sorts, to the tongue-in-cheek humour in abundance on so much of their best work. For me, this was one of the year's biggest surprises -- an album that was a million times better than I thought it would be.

19. DEERHOOF -- MILKMAN. If Deerhoof didn't exist, then an International Coalition of Indie Record Store Workers would have to invent them. They would come into creation via a document that would read "Be it resolved that, we, the ICIRSW, hereby create Deerhoof, a band which exists solely for the purpose of being played in Indie Record Stores, by members of we the ICIRSW, the undersigned. ICIRSW members are forbidden from playing Deerhoof at home, because once the music begins to infiltrate the bedrooms of the real world then it will detract from the indie-ness of our workplaces. The aforementioned Deerhoof will write songs about meaningless and silly subjects, such as dogs on sidewalks, and the milkman. The vocals must be flat, because that is the way of indie. The songs will sound bonkers, with no verses, hummable melodies, or choruses discernable within three listens, and not recallable by memory within six listens. After those six listens however, the indie minions will be inexplicably drawn to the music, meaning they will be drawn to our stores since that is the only way that the music can be heard. Those who have not the patience to make it through three or six listens will find the music to be formless and tuneless, therefore, they will feel uncomforable in its presence, which will effectively weed them out of our store without having to subject them to our asshole chic when they inquire about the Fantasia Barrino album. We are indie, and this Deerhoof entity is ours and ours alone".

18. BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE -- BEEHIVES. "Backyards" makes this album indispensible, in which BSS crush every indietronica act at their own game. That track is a slice of heaven that goes from gentle balladry to swirling shoegaze to twee ambient as if that combination has been the natural order of things since the peak of the Brill Building era. The rest of the album is an anodyne affair that die-hard indieheads will be sure to ignore, but screw those haters -- "Beehives" may be the best chill-out album of the year.

17. DDAMAGE -- RADIO APE. Bonkers. Jittery beats and throbbing melodies punctuate nearly every second of this release. It's a style much like that of Datach'i, except with Datach'i I'm able to recall at least a little bit of what I've heard once it's over. I've heard this record countless times and every time I play it, I hear a completely different record. It brainwashes you and steamrolls the brain squeaky clean, leaving a totally blank slate in time for the next listen.

16. MAGNETIC FIELDS -- i. There's a four year gap between "69 Love Songs" and it's successor, but when the smoke has cleared, "i" will likely be considered little more than an appendix to its gargantuan predecessor. The fanatical genre-hopping is arguably becoming gimmicky (a side-effect of being love songs #70-#83),and being a Verve Release won't help matters, either. Hopefully the strengths of the disco-fied "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend", the fragile opener "I Die", and the perfect, bittersweet closer "It's Only Time" won't soon be forgotten.

15. THE CURE -- THE CURE. They can't get more nu-metal than this, can they? Oh right, forgot about "Never Enough". And the entire "Pornography" album, man, that was a real downer and a half. So why was I surprised that they could sound so good with Ross Robinson at the helm? For those still not convinced, the bonus tracks on the Japanese import are a time machine back to keyboard-laden "Disintegration"-era Cure. Nevertheless, they somehow managed to squeeze out their best pop song in well over a decade, "(I Don't Know What's Going) On". Still going strong.

14. THE DELGADOS -- UNIVERSAL AUDIO. Where did all the sound go? The lack of strings (=HUGEness) was a disappointment at first, the songs seemed bare and empty, but that's just a normal reaction to having the sonic rug pulled out from under you without any warning. Less morbidity, more fragility, and every bit as tuneful as they've ever been.

13. FENNESZ -- VENICE. "Endless Summer" did a great job of uniting people with otherwise disparate tastes. It was noisy enough to keep the noise fans happy. It's melodic, chinstroking moments drew in the folktronica fans (and the Beach Boys references didn't hurt in that regard either). There was even enough mayhem for the Tigerbeat 6 fans to appreciate. But the release of the "Field Recordings 1995-2002" stopgap album (AKA Fennesz's strongest record) ended up foreshadowing the new one -- a return to dense, drifting, hazy music. Unlike "Endless Summer", this is not picnic music for dewey-eyed lovers, although the crescendoes of guitar, raining down on tracks like "Circassian" and "The Stone of Impermanence", are every bit as wonderous as the finest of nature scenes.

12. TAYLOR DEUPREE -- JANUARY. It's full of icy voices, all strung-out and whimpering for attention. They flicker, slowly morphing in intensity, but I'm standing outside a bus stop in the dead of winter, jangling my keys in my pocket, and in my head I can hear the metallic jangling fed through a sampler and stretched in time until the metallic clanks become echoey croaks. This is a chilly album. Or maybe it's just the title.

11. BRIAN WILSON -- SMiLE. It feels like a trip back in time. The physical recording sounds like a Spectorian relic -- as if it was literally recorded in the sixties. There are seventeen tracks here, but at least three times as many distinguishable song ideas. Every song changes its direction multiple times, and every new melody and harmony which emerges sounds more delicious than the last. It turns out that "Good Vibrations" was a preview for Brian Wilson's very own Teenage Symphonies to G-d. No matter how much I read about the mythical "SMiLE", I just couldn't fathom that Brian could really duplicate "Good Vibrations" another sixteen times. Now, I have no idea how to rank this among all the other album, again, it's like it has parachuted in from another era, I'd just as soon attempt to rank "Pet Sounds" among this year's best releases. Ask me about it in another forty years.

10. MÄRZ -- WIR SIND HIER. It's a bizarre mix of psych-folk and glitch, with a German singer blessed with a voice oddly reminiscent of Peter Gabriel. The actual sounds are almost entirely electronic (acoustic guitar is prominent as well) but there's nothing on "Wir Sind Hier" that wouldn't sound great around a campfire. At its heart, this album is aural comfort food -- folk pop with a few electronic embellishments.

9. TIM HECKER -- MIRAGES. Darker and more brooding than previous work, but losing none of the lonely majesty that impels you to stare blankly out a window for hours. Give this man a permanent exhibit at a planetarium. Please.

8. JAKE FAIRLEY -- TOUCH NOT THE CAT. It's an album stuffed with ballbreaking, yet rumpshaking rhythms. Schaffel enough for the club kids who dance among bright lights, hard techno enough for the people who dance in underground dungeons with low ceilings and a thick fog of smoke.

7. ORBITAL -- BLUE ALBUM. Orbital bowed out this year with their best album since the unassailable "In Sides". In 45 minutes, you too can relive all the ups and downs of Orbital's career, from the moronic humour of "The Altogether" ("Acid Pants"), to the introspection of "In Sides" ("You Lot") to the 4/4 banging techno of the Brown album ("One Perfect Sunrise").

6. DEATH IN VEGAS -- SATAN'S CIRCUS. Talent borrows, genius steals. Pardon the cliche, but a spin through "Satan's Circus" provides more "spot the reference" fun and games than the first Elastica album. Except that the DIV album doesn't suck! The opener (and first single) "Ein Für Die Damen" recalls the more sprighty indie rock of their previous album, "Scorpio Rising". But after that, it's sayonara to the chick music and hello to the pitch dark motorik of "Black Lead", the "I Can't Believe It's Not NEU!" mid-tempo motorik of "Sons of Rother", and the chiming popdrone relaxed motorik of "Anita Barber". Not a tribute to NEU! and Kraftwerk as much as it is reincarnation of them.

5. THE ARCADE FIRE -- FUNERAL. The first layer is the vocals -- perhaps my skin has been thickened from listening to the wailing on all those A Silver Mt. Zion albums. The tunes lay under the next layer -- one mini-epic after another, shifting from pleading power ballad to dronerock disco as if it's the most natural thing in the world. The final layer is the lyrics -- recurring motifs of snow and ice blanketing ye olde neighbourhood, and sneaking around behind parents' backs in the name of love and lust. Like Pulp's "His N Hers" and "West Side Story", it magnifies the toil of young love to a point near myth.

4. OREN AMBARCHI -- GRAPES FROM THE ESTATES. At times it moves glacially slow, thanks to clear sine tones that stretch themselves out like a slow pull on a slice of caramel. And just when you find yourself thinking that's a drone album and nothing more, delicate guitar lines appear and the exact same drones take on a pastoral quality. Certainly the most soothing album of the year.

3. BEEF TERMINAL -- THE ISOLATIONIST. The title might have fit better with Beef Terminal's debut album "20GOTO10", which was a more maudlin affair thanks to many long, ambient, pieces. Even the dancier tracks, such as the standout "Sick Love Under Toronto", wasn't much of a party, unless you like to dance to records that evoke the seedy underbellies of a seemingly decaying city. "The Isolationist" is more the work of a man reclining on his front porch, singing his heart out via his guitar. It's a lazy record (again, lazy as in reclined, not perfunctory), thanks to simple hip-hop rhythms that relax the pace, but the looped guitar licks suggest nostalgia and fond memories to me, rather than sadness. Even though it's well-known his mother died during the time that the album was recorded, I still choose to listen for the nostalgia and not the sadness, and I'm sure that the strong presence of the fomer qualities is no accident. The style might seem a bit same-y over the course of an entire album, but the rich (yet wonderfully lo-fi!) tones display a great attention to detail in sound creation, and it's these fascinating timbres which turned me into a devoted regular listener.

(technically released at the tail end of 2003, but wasn't really reviewed or promoted until 2004. I feel safe deeming this a 2004 release).

2. FELIX DA HOUSECAT -- DEVIN DAZZLE AND THE NEON FEVER. One fun thing about the 80's is that I used to sing along to lyrics as dumb and simple as the ones on Van Halen's "1984" and didn't think twice about it. Never stopped to analyze them and dismiss their peurility. As time passed on, things came full circle and I started to appreciate how hard it could be to write a (apparently) simple song. Which brings us to the sassiness of the putdowns and handclaps in "Short Skirts". Or the way "Everyone Is Someone In LA" makes me long to spend the rest of my days as a stand-in driver for one of those helicopter panorama shots of the city that opened the first sixty seconds of seemingly every episode of "Knight Rider". "Ready To Wear" is the most joyous and fun three minutes of the year, and its parent album is all about black eyeliner, striking a pose at your leisure at any time day or night, and shirking the responsibilty of real life for the more pressing responsibility of looking fabulous.

1. XIU XIU -- FABULOUS MUSCLES. There are plenty of frightening noises on this album. Such as the ghastly scrapes that populate "Support Our Troups" and "Mike". Or the queasy videogame death disco of "Crank Heart". Even more startling is the vocal work of Jamie Stewart, who possesses a voice every bit as curdling as the caustic, lo-fi sounds he coaxes from his equipment. All this, and a title track that is one of the most disturbing yet touching love songs I've ever heard. If Trent Reznor, as a follow-up to "The Downward Spiral", hadn't corrupted himself with the perils of starfucking and Marilyn Manson, and had instead locked himself in a remote wood cabin for ten years with unrelenting thoughts of starfucking *with* Marilyn Manson, then he might have taken visceral self-deprecating music to this kind of a new level. "Fabulous Muscles" can (un)comfortably take its place amongst the most unsettling albums ever made.

A few notable Verve releases from 2004

Magnetic Fields - i. Had "69 Love Songs" never come to pass, many people would consider this to be a very fine album. But thankfully, "69LS" does exist and opinions on this album must suffer as a result. More accurately, the album has a few weak points and has only ten or so songs to pick up the slack, whereas "69LS" has fifty songs to pick up the slack from its weaker moments. "i" sometimes crumbles under the weight of its own genre-hopping ambitions, but the finest moments, such as the fragile "I Die", and the beautiful closer "It's Only Time", are impeccable.

Delgados -- Universal Audio. Recall that I originally thought that "Hate" was a Verve release too. Right now, I'm digging the tunefulness of the new album while missing the bombast of their last (fortunately, that bombast was provided in spades during their live show).

Orbital -- Blue Album. For their final album, Orbital revisited every phase of their career. Their career, viewed as a whole, is a big, giant, Verve release.

Various (Kompakt) artists -- Kompakt 100. Strictly, this isn't a Verve release since only about half of it can be considered to be up to the loftiest of standards. However, that fantastic half has made me smile as much as anything has this year, particularly the daft and wonderful "Weiche Zäune".

OK, what's going on, how come nobody is saying anything about the new Death in Vegas album, "Satan's Circus"? Maybe it's the daft name, heck, that was a turnoff for me too. But I certainly hope it's not being dismissed for being a 70's throwback. And I hope the people who have praised and re-praised the myriad of recent 80's throwbacks aren't throwing mud at "Satan's Circus" and claiming it's "embarassingly retro", or some crap like that.

DIV are at their best when they're an electronic band that tries to sound like a rock band. Their last album, "Scorpio's Rising", sounded like a rock band, straight up. Now, they're right back to being an electronic band sounding like a rock band which. But now they're playing motorik music, which means they are trying to sound like rock bands that tried to sound like electronic bands. Got all that? In particular, "Sons of Rother" could, aptly enough, turn up as a bonus track on a future reissue of NEU!'s debut and nobody would even blink. Elsewhere, most of Kraftwerk's career is faithfully pilfered (most notably, the lead synth from "TEE" on "Zugaga", and a dead cert for the melody from "Kometenmelodie" on "Kontroll"). The attention to detail (which could also be termed "theft") is startling, and makes this album more of a reunion record by its German heroes than a tribute -- they're not paying homage to NEU! and Kraftwerk, they have become NEU! and Kraftwerk. And honestly, what's better than early-to-mid 70's NEU! and Kraftwerk?

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After all the hype, what an embarrassment that "60 Minutes" interview with Bob Dylan turned out to be. And unlike what we might have expected going in, it wasn't because of Dylan's rambling (which was quite coherent, at least for him). Rather, for a guy who professed that he'd always wanted to interview Bob Dylan, Ed Bradley asked completely inane questions with obvious answers. And dumbing it down for the average "60 Minutes" viewer can't explain it, either. "Let's talk about the press trying to pigeonhole you as a folkie/protest singer/prophet/whatever, you didn't like it when they did that, did you, of course not and to make the point let's roll a clip from "Don't Look Back" just to hammer home the point, so my question for you is this: what do you think of people saying you're one of the greatest songwriters ever, because Rolling Stone recently said that your song was the greatest thing there ever was, so how do you feel about people idolizing you, because you're a deity to them, you know? Come on, you're a prophet, you're an icon, I'm telling you now, just admit it already!!".

After spending the last couple of weeks hedging on it, I decided to see Isis last night. Other than a volume deficiency (for a band with three guitarists, anyhow), I can't say I was disappointed. I caught the last couple of songs by These Arms Are Snakes (Tool, prog-metal, yep), Isis came on for what began as a formulaic performance. Big, riff-heavy start gives way to smouldering restrained section, gives way to slow buildup and big, riff-heavy ending. Fine stuff, but not something I'd want to hear eight or nine times in a night. The way out of that rut was to do everything the same, but MORE. Long middle portions gave way to supremely long middle portions with precise drumming, shimmering effects and guitars, making me wait even longer for the finale. This fell precisely in line with thoughts I'd had earlier in the week, namely, my desire to hear an Isis record with four fifteen-minute tracks rather than eight eight-minute ones.

I'm starting to convince myself that the new Low album is as good as it is because they've never sounded so much like Drugstore. Songs that might have been 100% quiet and hazy on past Low albums are suddenly breaking loose midway through with squalls of feedback. Low records are highly controlled affairs, you always got the feeling that no notes were wasted and every last particle of sound was carefully mapped out in advance. Sure, the reverb would thicken (and perhaps randomize) the band's sound, but these embellishments never threatened to deviate the proceedings from the script at hand. But on tracks such as "When I Go Deaf", the guitars come screaming in halfway through, the sound is raw, unrestrained, and I keep expecting to hear Alan Sparhawk completely break down and start yelling his face off. Drugstore have always been so good at that -- bringing their songs up to the brink of losing control of them, and then abruptly returning them back to a safer haven (and the lyrical subject matter often mirrors the music, "Nectarine" and "The Party Is Over" being the first examples to come to mind).

From the Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs" NYC performance in 2000, they play a version of "Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" that kills the version on the record. Goodbye bouncy beat -- hello piano driven show-tune, accompanied by guitar and cello. It's a version I can imagine Drugstore doing. It must be the cello. Maybe the semi-joyous, semi-emasculating lyrics too. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any news about the 'Store in months -- who knows if they actually got around to starting a new album last year like they were supposed to.

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Jake Fairley's wonderful new album, "Touch Not the Cat", reminds me of Peaches. Sure, both are Toronto ex-pats now living in Berlin, but it's more than that. It's mainly the beats -- dirty, sloppy, and grungy -- all compliments, of course. But in Peaches' case, the beats are there to adorn her voice. They're a backdrop to her sexual fantasies/demands, they're something to clog up the speakers while she (loudly) speaks her piece -- similar to house records by Screamin' Rachel in the 80's. Fairley has pulled off something very different, he's made a minimal techno (read: NOT microhouse, there's not nearly enough empty space for this to be microhouse, this is not Matthew Dear's "Leave Luck to Heaven" revisited) record with vocals. I'm not even certain the album needs the vocals, because the music is strong enough to hold up on its own. But they're there, adding another instrument on top of the rest of the pounding.

I caught a snippet of MM's "On Set", featuring Ashlee Simpson. Hearing her talk, she definitely not braindead, which wouldn't ordinarily be something you'd say in praise, but considering that family ... anyhow, she talked about the clothes she wears and how she dresses in her videos, and explained how she likes wearing loose comfortable clothes. She mentioned JoJo (14-year old girl discovers tight tops) and Lindsay Lohan (18-year old working-hard-to-be-a-baaad-girl with her tops perpetually flayed open) as examples of other "music stars" who like to dress sexy and reveal a bit of their bodies.

Nevertheless, the video Ashlee was shooting involved her writhing about on a couch, arms sprawl out around her, midriff easily visible, with her pants riding low nearly down to her ass crack. So I guess we've reached the point where "dressing sexy" = "getting your tits out" and as long as you're not doing the latter then it's fairly conservative. Just to let you know.

Gold Chains and Sue Cie brought an energetic and gritty performance to an active ElMo crowd last night. This was my first time downstairs at the ElMo since they renovated it. They've transformed it from a cramped, dingy space into a more open space with decent sightlines from anywhere in the room and a spacious dancefloor upfront (which experienced heavy use during the show, from both the audience and the performers). Skipping liberally through genres, from semi-industrial bumper beats a la Peaches, to guitar-laden screamalongs, GC worked his birthday butt off, with SC not far behind. The only worrying thing was the small crowd -- 40 people at most -- giving me the fear that it won't be worth it for them to tour here again. It reminded me of Bardo Pond's summer 2002 gig in front of a very active (er, for Bardo Pond fans anyhow) crowd ... of just 70 people. And they haven't been back since :(((

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For the first few years of their career, Saint Etienne were widely considered to be a lousy live band. In the studio they produced one of the finest runs of singles by any artist in the 1990's, but live, they were out of sync, out of tune, and out of the sparkle that made their records so noteworthy.

Then they took a few years off and quietly returned with "Good Humour". Not sure what to expect, but glad to have them back, I went to see them when they came to town ... and was blown away! They brought a full band, the live drumming gave a welcome jolt to both the older techno-folk songs and the (then) newer, bouncy, sundrenched tunes. Sarah Cracknell's voice, usually a focal point of StEt live criticisms, was in perfect form. It was like StEt filtered through a Stax-Volt revue with Sarah playing the perfect party host. Every song ended with rapid-fire thoughts bursting through my head ... "I can't believe how GOOD this is" ... "I've never even heard these songs, but they sound fantastic and so, so, so addictive" ... and by the time they closed the show with "He's On the Phone", the song I would have jumped off the balcony to hear, the concert has provided me with all the entertainment I could have hoped for, with plenty of room to spare.

Recently, I bought their most recent album, "Finisterre", probably their finest album since "Tiger Bay". I decided to track down some live recordings to hear what they'd been up to in concert. I found a 1998 gig from Chicago (likely only a few days difference from the show I saw in Toronto) and it was as wonderful as I remembered. I had to hear "He's On the Phone" multiple times in a row to get my fix, soaking up the multi-part harmonies while prancing around the apartment waving a beer.

Fast forward to 2002 ... what happened? They were back to singing out of tune over the flat thump of their drum machines. The live arrangements seemed so empty, as if several melody lines had gone missing between the studio and the stage. A check of 2000 (touring "Sound of Water") revealed the same full sound and glistening harmonies they'd had in 1998, which shone through despite the more downtempo, hazy ambient feel of the "Sound of Water" suites. So what will the next album (early 2005) and tour bring? Flip a coin, perhaps?

I recovered from the devastating back-to-back cancellations of Black Dice and Fennesz and headed out to a little Morr Music showcase last night. The Go Find offered guitar pop with simple dance beats. They even busted out a couple of guitar solos, which instantly brought back flashbacks of Ratatat last month, albeit with the rawk histrionics turned way down. Their follow-up perfomance was considerably better, for indeed, Styrofoam and the Go Find (the touring versions anyhow) are exactly the same people. This time, the beats were glitched up, and the guitars smeared out into shoegaze paste. But Lali Puna managed to outdo them. Thanks in large part to a live drummer and bassist, theirs was a set of motorik funk, blasting out the sort of stomach-quaking grooves that Stereolab have largely forgotten how to do. In fact, the squalls of effects added on do recall the Lab/Mouse on Mars collab, except Lali Puna were more like Lab '94 + MoM '04, rather than the Lab/MoM '98.

Crazy Coincidence!!! No really! I just finished reading "I Wanna Be Sedated" by local writerfolk heroes Phil Dellio and Scott Woods (funny, I even got about 70 % of the jokes. I think. It's hard to know you've missed a joke if you can't even recognize the jokes). This left me with a hankering for George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby", which I haven't heard in so many years. Downloading happened, song was heard, and what a great song it is ... then I queued up the new (as yet unreleased Low album, which I have been loving for the past couple of weeks, btw) and guess what? The song "Broadway (So Many People)" sounds just like "Rock Your Body"! Honestly! You can hum George's melody on top of Alan and Mimi's! Try it for yourself!!

The Low album just may be their best ... easily their best set of mantras a la "Lullaby" from ten long years ago, as in two chord snarling monsters, distorted and amped up with blinding intensity. And some lovely soft tunes too.

Disappointment ... I was supposed to see Black Dice and Animal Collective tonight, but when I got to the venue I learned that Black Dice cancelled. I went with the second leg of a lose/lose situation and chose to go home. Despite reading a few articles about them over the last couple of months, I had purposely avoided hearing Animal Collective's music. Sometimes I enjoy going into a show "cold", and this was one of those times. So, it was either throw money at a different show from the one I paid to see in order to see a band that I'd never heard, or go home and save the money for something else. I had been hugely looking forward to seeing Black Dice, and that's what mattered in the end. That, and the fact that I am poor and could use that money for other things (like the Gold Chains show next week!). Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go download some Animal Collective and progress toward my inevitable regret about passing up seeing a lauded band whose live shows have an excellent reputation.

Gig week concluded with an intruiging triple-bill. First up were the oft-hyped Junior Boys, who sounded exactly the same as the time I saw them in May. They still sound like 1983 New Order, although they did play a new one which ressembled a decidedly less creeped-out version of one of the instrumentals off of Ministry's "The Land of Rape and Honey".

Next up was Ratatat. In all seriousness, the best part of their show was the first minute and the last minute. Those parts contained sludgy one-note riffs that wouldn't have sounded out of place as the intro on a Spacemen 3 record. I had visions of an S3/Kevin Drumm dronefest with electronic beats pounding overtop. But it wasn't to be. Instead, it was 70's rock god guitar solo wankery with electronic beats pounding overtop. Note to aspiring bands -- please make my other vision a reality.

But the night clearly belonged to Mouse on Mars. With a live drummer/vocalist, plus live bass, plus live squiggly sounds and churning bass gurgles played on banks of electronic equipment, this stuff hit 500 times harder live than on record. The album is a pleasantly funky head-nodding experience, but the live show reaches deep into your chest, pulls the funk out of your body through your nasal passages and screams "DANCE, MOFO!! RIGHT NOW!!".

Gig week continued in fine (and cheap! Only eight bucks!) form Tuesday night. Do Make Say Think were their usual wonderful selves. I didn't catch the name of the opening band which is just as well because I don't feel the need to ever see or hear them again. Random squawks, long stretches of near-nothingness, and not a melody to be found anywhere made me glad to be "watching" their set from a couch on the balcony, as far from the stage as physically possible in that venue. DMST were loose and loud, stretching out the noise and drone sections to dizzying effect.

I've been at a loss for words about the sudden death of John Peel ... I only ever heard bits and pieces of his show over the years (thanks to Peel Sessions boots and internet streaming) and yet, I can recall his voice in my head without much thought. I suppose his voice is one of those you just subconsciously are forced to remember -- even though many North Americans couldn't hear his show every night, Peel's reputation still loomed large over a lot of the music they liked. So when we did get a chance to hear his voice, it slotted effortlessly into permanent memory.

Many North Americans first learned about him through the Peel Sessions. The most well known (The Smiths, The Fall, and so on) of them were readily available here. My introduction was the second Joy Division PS, which was not only my first PS but also my first JD recording, and was thus the touchstone for my subsequent adoration of that band. I'd sometimes open up the sleeve and just stare at the (incomplete) list of bands that had recorded Peel Sessions. The liner notes didn't lie -- it really did seem like anyone and everyone important had recorded a session for his show. "Peel Session" became a Grade A stamp of quality ... if you saw a Peel Session recording in Sam's or HMV, then you made a note to give that band a first or second chance.

Even in the age of internet, I didn't make a point to hear his show more often because it just seemed as though there was no hurry. He'd always be around. Funny how people always make those sorts of silly assumptions and then feel bad about them once a person isn't around anymore. I never heard the legendary Festive 50 (only read the charts). The last time I heard his voice was during Orbital's final performance -- which was on his show in the Maida Vale studios -- which for me (Orbital being one of my favourite bands ever), is a fitting way to close my books with him.

It's well known that "Teenage Kicks" by The Undertones was Peel's favourite song. BBC Radio 1, fittingly, played it as a tribute to him when they announced his death (I've listened to it twice today too). I learned it was his favourite from Melody Maker's "Rebellious Jukebox" column, in which music personalities were asked to list and comment on their favourite records. Peel said he got choked up every time he heard the song, and was physically incapable of speaking every time he played it on the air -- he always had to play a song immediately afterward. Besides the "choke up" principle being a fine way to identify one's favourite songs, it's notable that Peel was 39 when "Teenage Kicks" was released. People tend to have their strongest feelings toward the music of their youth. And yet, it's amazing to think that I might still be several years away from hearing my favourite song. And that's the way I (and many others, I'm sure) will remember John Peel -- as a favourite uncle who grew older and balder but never stopped being cool.

Gig week kicked off in outstanding form last night. Opening act Crooked Fingers (performing solo tonight as a Dylan-esque troubadour playing songs about screwed-up relationships -- romantic and platonic) sounded great, most notably with his second song which sounded so comfortable and second nature to me, and then I realized it was because the chord pattern was identical to Stereolab's "Tempter" (one of my fave songs by them), which put me more at ease with my deja vu.

The Delgados sounded far better than their last show here (April 2003), and I think it was due to the lack of a string section this time (which I wouldn't have thought possible, considering how much I missed the strings on their newest, "Universal Audio"). Simply put, they rocked harder and sounded tighter in doing so, and having another album of pristine pop to draw from obviously didn't hurt either.

So many recent acquisitions ... first, a shout out to the enriching power of black vinyl. Now, I can finally spin Starfish Pool's "Offday" at my leisure (and hear "Dead Acid Society" as it was meant to be heard ... oh my holy G-d is this a revelation, I can finally hear the echo and ringing in the background, it's a two dimensional recording suddenly inflating into three. This is exactly how I felt when I bought Philippe Cam's "Karine" on vinyl) and dance around the apartment to the synthtastic tones of M83's "Run Into Flowers".

The Low tribute album, "We Could Live In Hope", is absolutely brilliant in spots, whereas other parts leave me scratching my head. It is the year's foremost Verve Release, perhaps excepting The Magnetic Fields' "i". First and foremost is Mark Kozelek's jaw-dropping rendition of "Lazy", which completely overhauls the song into a laid-back alt-country footstomper, resulting in the most impressive cover version hijack job I've heard since Johnny Cash's "One". Except he did something even Johnny didn't do -- he took a song I didn't even like much to start with, and transformed it into something sublime. Daniel G. Harmann succeeds in a very different manner -- he stays very faithful to the original "Words", but that song is so gorgeous that it couldn't be ruined even if one belched the lyrics. A Northern Chorus (whose 2003 album "Spirit Flags" is now mine, long live Lake Ontario Shoegaze) pull off the amazing trick of slowing down "Slide" to sub-Low levels. Beautifully done. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Kid Dakota, who somehow forgot that the best parts of "Lullaby" are the ones without lyrics. Overall, Low fans will want to check this out, although it is certainly worthwhile to wonder why they chose only the songs on their ten-year old debut album. Non-Low fans (particularly ones who fancy themselves allergic to reverb overloads such as those on said debut) should find lots to chew on as well.

I'M A DUMBASS, PART 583: I remember browsing through Donnacha Costello's "Together is the New Alone" when it first came out, and I was unimpressed. Glitch, pop, meander around, etc. Well, I got this last week from my crack dealer (Sonic Boom, duh), and ... what was I thinking back then? It's a beautiful album, and as heartwarming sentimental glitchy albums go, it's surpasses Neina's "Formed Verse" as the best of it's kind that I've heard.

This week, I've been completely smitten with Matt Elliott's "The Mess We Made". It was his late-2003 "comeback" album following the retirement of Third Eye Foundation a couple of years earlier. I mention this because TMWM picks up more or less where the second half of "Little Lost Soul", the final TEF album, left off (I am also impelled to express my relief that Elliott's retirement wasn't permanent, even if TEF's is). The skittering breakbeats of that album's first few tracks gave way to the sublime and stunning track "Lost", capturing a feeling of being confused and disoriented in a dimly lit environment yet unable to stop oneself from spinning in circles in the attempt to take in the surroundings with a sense of childlike wonder. These moods cover all fifty minutes of TMWM, yet compared to LLS, it is a quieter and more folky affair. It's full of simple, tinkly melodies, often stripped bare with just piano or guitar together with brooding ambience. It's the brooding qualities that keep the album folky but never twee -- the Morr Music clan only wish they pull off something like this.

The instrumentation sometimes recalls Yann Tiersen -- whose "La Dispute" was brilliantly remixed by Elliott -- which oddly enough, makes this Elliott's most romantic release to date (find me a woman who won't melt while listening to "Forty Days", and you'll have found a cold-hearted woman). The sad and swooning "The Sinking Ship Song" (with vocals attributed to "additional drunkards") carries a vaguely Yiddish melody -- a nice surprise! All told, "The Mess We Made" is another fascinating chapter in the Matt Elliott canon. No more retirement scares, please.

This month is stacked with great gigs, and for me, the fun began tonight. Adem (a band led by one of the members of Fridge) were mellow, pleasant, and anodyne, playing country-fied love songs amid odd and engaging instrumentation (various glockenspiels, a drum that sounded like a table top, sticks -- along with conventional organ and guitar). It was enjoyable, but wasn't the sort of thing I can ever imagine listening to at home. I own just one Mojave 3 album, and I haven't been clamouring for more.

Given Aden's modest volume, the eardum shock between them and the absolutely sensational Explosions in the Sky were even more apparent. They've taken the best bits of Godspeed and Mogwai (obvious influences), trimming the fat from the expansive intros (read: boring parts according to their critics) while attacking their instuments with the aggressiveness and sound levels of the latter. And like Mogwai, their records give little warning as to how much they'll crush you when played live.

I found the bill for all these cassettes. My memory was poor -- they were three for two dollars, not two for a dollar. Not such a great deal after all.

Okay, enough sarcasm, back to the music:

THE POSIES -- AMAZING DISGRACE. I might miss the post-grunge years had all the music contained such sunny harmonies. This album is basically what you would expect from the people who wrote "Dream All Day". It's a worthy successor to "Bandwagonesque" -- if Teenage Fanclub had chosen to stick with rawk and record such a sequel.

T99 -- CHILDREN OF CHAOS. Amazingly, this isn't "Anasthasia" plus support! Some parts are shockingly modern -- "The Skydreamer"'s lushness wouldn't be out of place on Ulrich Schauss' last album. Of course, the sirens and vocals have aged, but as far as early 90's rave albums go, this absolutely kills the Church of Extacy record.

When Sam the Record Man went into receivership, the flagship store hend some amazing sales. I believe I wrote about going back again and again to pick up the last remnants of their electronic music section, searching diligently for the (unfortunately rather) rare gems they happened to have in stock. Around that time, they held a clearance sale on literally hundreds of old casettes, and I picked up about a dozen of them, something like two for a dollar (x 6).

Which brings us to today ... I still haven't listened to most of those tapes! At the time, I did plan to put out a stream of Revisitation Reviews (into a notebook) but only one of them was ever written (The Levellers -- Levelling the Land, which turned to a series of jokes at the expensive of folk singers everywhere. I haven't listened to that album since). Inner City's "Fire" was reviewed prior to the Levellers one; it was an album which had fallen through the cracks for me. Somehow I'd never heard it despite being a big Inner City fan. The overall experience was considerably more positive than that with the Levellers. The Replacements final album, "All Shook Down", sat on my dresser for weeks until I finally heard it, but at that point I had lost the motivation to write about it. My spirits were partly ruined by some of the reviews I read, all of which slammed it as Westerberg solo album put out to fill contractual obligations. After I heard the album (neutral feelings about it), I read more reviews and all of them praised it to heaven. Hmm. It remains the only Replacements album I have ever heard.

But I have more -- eight albums worth! I don't know more than two songs on any of them! I don't want to handle a full, real-time review for all of them, particularly since I would like to be able to hear them while working on other things. So I will resurrect another old trick. I'll write exactly fifty words about each. If I feel the itch to comment further, it'll be in a separate article.

BELLY -- STAR. I didn't expect Slashing Guitars -- I could have sworn this was Lush at times. Generic Indie Rock stuck out more in the context of the Grunge era, no? This album is best at its softest, such as the gentle, echo-swamped "Altogether" (I am a sucker for acoustic strums).

FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY -- GASHED SENSES & CROSSFIRE. Crash. ARRGGGH. We are Front Line Assembly Front 242. Grrr. Pow!!! We are Front 242. Grrr. We want to be Front 242 so very badly. Grrr. Dooooom. So very badly. Where is my copy of "Front By Front"? Nice to hear that "Digital Tension Dementia" still sounds like "Smothered Hope".

B-MOVIE -- FOREVER RUNNING. I expected little from generic 80.s rock and there are no surprises to be found here. Well, "Blind Allegiance" has a Duran Duran-ish sax solo, albeit only five seconds worth. And "Nowhere Girl", the hit single, isn't the 12" remix that I remember and love from the old days. Boo.

KRISTIN HERSH -- HIPS AND MAKERS. I am in love, because I'm a big sucker for aggressive, repetitive, acoustic guitars strumming two chord mantras of doom. Kristin's gorgeous voice cuts jaggedly through the din and her claustrophobic lyrics make for harrowing, yet oddly soothing listening. Too many highlights-- this album is heading straight into heavy rotation.

INNER CITY -- BIG FUN. Along with L'il Louis' album from the same year, I'm probably incapable of properly judging "Big Fun" (plus, I've already heard the album, although it wasn.t until the late 90's). Their singles are near to my heart, these are my age 15 songs. This is Inner City. Just listen, dammit.

STEVE "SILK" HURLEY -- WORK IT OUT COMPILATION. This mainly precedes my adolescence, so I take more of an arms-length view. I've never understood claims that mid-80's house was badly produced -- simply produced, sure, it's basically vocals over four-bar loops (always over the same drum sounds, but rock drums all sounded the same in the 80's too).

More to follow later ...

I have a notebook filled with music writing, it served as the precursor to this online endeavour, gradually petering out over the course of a few years as my internet content increased. One of my favourite semi-regular installments was reviewing either a notable album that I'd never heard before or (more rarely) something that I was familiar with but hadn't heard in many years. These reviews were usually written in real time as was listening. I haven't done one of these in over two years (Sleeper -- "Smart", which I had never heard except for the singles, and haven.t listened to since!), but as fortune would have it, I've stumbled across a bunch of albums that fit the "criteria", and have decided to resurrect the art of these "Second Opinion"/"Reviewed Massively Late After the Fact" pieces (I never could come up with a decent title for them).

The world wasn't exactly holding its breath waiting for a revisitation of this one. Many people in the same age group as me will remember this one, albeit begrudgingly so. Hold your groans, please:

MINIPOPS -- MINIPOPS Sure, let's get a bunch of preteen kids to sing popular hits! We can even dress them up like the artists they're covering -- yeah, it might be a bit weird to make eight-year olds dress like the Village People and sing gay anthems, but the kids who listen to the album won't understand that aspect of it, so don't worry about it! Ditto "Turning Japanese", reputedly about masturbation! And Madness fans won't mind that we're calling that band a "novelty" act, because actual Madness fans will never hear the record, so what they don't know can't hurt them!
[Hmm ... after writing this introduction, I found this link which provides some background and perspective. However, the tone is a bit too PTC for me, so take it for what you will.]

Joking aside, reviewing this record is a brave task on my part because I'm risking tarnishing some childhood memories if this album sucks. We had the record when growing up (when searching for this at my parents' home, I was surprised to find TWO copies, why we'd have two, I have no idea) but my strongest memory of it is hearing it constantly when on a road trip with my grandparents. It was one of the cassettes my grandfather had checked out of the library for the trip. My hunch is that we were in Florida at the time, which would put that trip in 1988 or 1989. Not only does that seem a bit late in the 80's for anyone to be listening to the Minipops, but I would have been at least fourteen at the time, making my enjoyment of the album preposterously uncool at that age. In any case, it's been at least fifteen years since I've heard this.

When it first came out in 1982, I recall knowing maybe half the songs beforehand. Blondie's (cover of) "Denis" was unknown to me at the time, and it remains one of my very favourite Blondie songs, mainly because of the introduction I received from this Minipops album.

Because there are so many medleys on this album, I can't possibly attempt a track-by-track breakdown in real time, so here is the tracklisting .

"Video Killed the Radio Star". By the time the 80's were over, I likely heard this version ten times more than the Buggles version. And the backing track is astonishingly similar to the original (big demerits, however, for the absence of the classical melody immediately following the line "they took the credit for your second symphony") until we hit the far too rockish-sounding drums in the chorus. OK, this is no match for the original but it KILLS the version by the Presidents of the USA.

Medley 1. "Japanese Boy" . I'm four minutes into this album, and I'm already getting emotional. This is such a wonderful, sad melody. Finally, we hit the cheesy-sounding portions of the record, the parts that make it abundantly clear that this is a novelty record sung by little kids. I don't want to hear anybody other than Mary Wells singing "My Guy". The inclusion of ska tunes on this album is also an unfortunate choice But all is forgiven once the medley ends as it began -- with the "Japanese Boy" reprise! I think I want a Japanese boy. Or girl.

ABBA Medley. In 1982, this was probably fair game (i.e. cover at will, go right ahead!), since ABBA were considered a fantastic pop group and nothing more. Nowadays, the band has been (rightfully) elevated to deity status, and the idea of a kiddie version of their hits cannot be considered anything other than hokey. Look at how embarrassing the A*Teens were. Anyhow, this medley passes by pleasantly until we reach "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen". The latter is in the upper echelon of the Pop Pantheon, and should not be touched, covered, tampered with, remixes, remastered or rerecorded from now until the end of time. Let's pretend this isn't part of the medley. Fortunately, it gets the least amount of time allotted to it. "Waterloo", on the other hand, just sounds disjointed, as if they couldn't get the group of them to sing on cue.

Disco Medley. "YMCA" sounds screechy, with the boys singing in a crazily high register. That's fine though, because I never want to hear the original ever again. I'll settle for anything different. I've been listening to the Pet Shop Boys' "Pop Art" recently, and am smitten once again with their masterful cover of "Go West". How did they manage to convert the Village People's hedonism into a PSB funny/sad hybrid special? Anyhow, the production during this portion is pitifully poor and tinny late 70's/early 80's drum/synth fodder, which I suppose is the point considering what they are recording.

So there are about twenty songs on side one alone ... do kids really have such short attention spans. "Don't bore us, get to the chorus"? Did I have such a short attention span then? I doubt it, but I was a special child because my parents were so into disco back then and I was used to enduring ten-minute 12" versions of "Knock on Wood" and "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real". That must be why I like ambient and drone music so much today. Ten minute songs in childhood set me up for twenty minute-plus songs in adulthood, whereas those unfortunate kids who were accustomed only to fourty-five second snippets in medleys like these are only able to tolerate two minutes of Sum 41 until they become bored. Yes, I know I'm babbling here, but I have no choice because I'm avoiding comment on this Made For Karaoke at Pee-Wee's Playhouse version of "The Birdie Song".

Stupid Cupid. I thought the girl on the album cover credited with singing this song was mega-cute. What if those kids were just models and the kids who sang on the record were deformed, impish beings? That would really ruin my childhood memories. I mean, these were pre-Milli Vanilli days, right? There must be a video to provide evidence of this, doesn't the link I provided above allude to this?

Novelty Medley. The boy singing "The Green Door" turns in a gritty, determined performance, probably the best of the album thus far. Although it's overtaken almost immediately with the kids singing "Baggy Trousers" -- complete with dead-on accents! OK, it's not as impressive if they were British kids, but still. This is easily the best medley on this album thus far. I guess that's not such a surprise considering the album itself is a novelty.

Rock and Roll Medley. We have our first and only Phil Spector song ... I may have heard this song here first, also. Now what's wrong with this medley ... is it the stereo production? Am I that accustomed to hearing early rock and roll in lo-fi mono? I wonder how much money Lieber and Stoller saw from these twenty seconds of "Hound Dog"? Feh, this medley got tiresome fast after "When".

Blondie Medley. Yet another entry in the creepy sweepstakes, as a crew of young girls sing a song from a movie about a male prostitute! I can't complain about any of this, though, because I love these songs (awesome track selection, getting the then-recently massive "Call Me", along with the swooning "Sunday Girl", along with personal and UK fave "Denis" -- complete with the French verse! I don't remember that at all! Yes!!

I'm Gonna Knock on Your Door. Oh no, I have a feeling this tune will be stuck in my head for the rest of the night . ARRGGHH why did I just write that, it'll only prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thanks to a gruff singing style (as gruff as the kid can possibly sound, anyway), this song has plenty of leather jacket cred and is a worthy choice for one of the three proper non-medley tracks. I say "proper" because I'm ignoring junk like "Can Can", of which I couldn.t see the point when I was eight years old, so I'll certainly not attempt to look for it now.

And that's all folks ... it's a short album (35 minutes), the song selection is still great after all these years (thank the ABBA and 70's revivals, in part), I could still get a rush from several tracks, there were no prolonged sucky periods and most importantly -- MY CHILDHOOD WASN'T RUINED! There might be money in a reality show-based Minipops revival, although there was something like it not long ago with that American Idol Jr. show, which flopped. I can't see myself wanting to revisit this album except for a bit of a laugh or a touch of nostalgia. Perhaps the biggest litmus test is this: I'm not even sure I'd feel the need to play it for my future kids. Unlike, say, the still brilliant and beyond awesome "Free To Be You and Me", which my kids will be forced to listen to ad nauseum, "Clockwork Orange"-style if I can help it. Kids or not, I continue to listen to that album from time to time and am always smitten with its timeless messages and the gorgeous singing from top to bottom (particularly from Diana Ross and of course, ex-football player Rosey Grier).

I was shocked by how deeply involved I became while watching a VH1 Legends special on Queen (I'm sure MMM has aired this a thousand times, but I'd never seen it). Also, it's not like I'm new to the story of Queen and I've heard the "Classic Queen" comps a countless number of times. Suddenly, I was a neophyte, it was like I'd never heard the band before and I was completely sucked in by the flash and sizzle. I marvelled at Freddie Mercury's incredible stage prescence and powerful operatic voice. I was intruiged and enthralled by the incredible diversity of a band whose name had been dropped in every writeup on the Darkness, which had caused me to forget that they were no one-trick glam-rock ponies. Live Aid made sense more than it ever had before -- yes, I could see why Queen's triumphant performance was so revered. And I was saddened by the pictures and video footage of the final years of an increasingly sickly-looking Freddie Mercury. Why was I affected in this way? Ten years ago, I had done my best to avoid the Queen revival and megahype. Even after Freddie's death, they were everywhere and I soon found myself trying to avoid their ubiquitous songs, all except for "Under Pressure", which is by far their finest moment and a song I cannot imagine ever tiring of. And now, many years after the furour had died down, I found myself remembering Freddie's memorial concert as though it was yesterday -- and wishing I could watch it again. I must be a softie when procrastinating at one AM.

And hey, if HENRY ROLLINS is man enough to narrate a Queen special, then we all should just shut our mouths and like it.

BEST OF THE 90'S REDUX -- SORT OF.

Pollmania started running wild on ILM after the runaway success of the Best of the 00's poll, so a 90's poll was instigated not long after. Given the immense emotional investment that I tend to put into my listmaking, this meant I was in for night after night of pained decision making. If I had children, I would be forcing myself to favour one child over another, like giving one child the fanciest toys while others were forced to play outside with mud and twigs. It took eight months to put together this list the first time -- AND I NEVER COMPOSED A SINGLES LIST! That means twice as much work is required for this poll! The agony!

Fortunately, it doesn't have to be that way. As with the previous poll, the lists aren't my personal favourites, they're my favourites out of the group of nominees, all of which (besides two albums and two tracks) were nominated by others.

POLL STRATEGY.
1. Do not nominate right away. By waiting, music that you feel inclined to nominate may get nominated for you, absolving you of the responsibility of nominating the likes of "In Sides" or "Loveless".
2. The effect of split votes must be taken into account. "Mars Audiac Quintet" may be my fave Stereolab album, but if four albums by the 'Lab are nominated then it's in danger of getting lost in the shuffle if nominated. Particularly if the band.s music is divisive, i.e. fans cannot decide what their best album is, then the risk of vote-splitting, leading to drastically lower placings (and/or fewer placings) across their entire canon is probable. Now, if every nominator adhered to this rule, then they would think twice about nominating that fourth Stereolab album, and those who made the first 'Lab nominations could feel secure about nominating them, since they wouldn.t fear that others would partially ruin their nomination later on. But of course, if this were true, then Stereolab may have never been nominated in the first place, since anyone adhering to Rule 2 would also adhere to Rule 1. Ha, PARADOX.
3. Strike a balance between strategic voting and picks from the heart. The necessary balance between the two is whatever makes you sleep soundly at night -- no more, no less. The main considerations with strategic voting are a) vote inflation toward items that you want to see on the final poll, and b) support for non-favourite items by favourite acts (AKA Artist Support Transfer). The complimentary considerations in the nominations field are the two forms of Artist Nomination Transfer, which are, c) nominations for non-favourite items by favourite acts, and d) nominations for items (which may or may not be favourites) by non-favourite acts. Both Rule 3c and 3d are followed in the interest of achieving the aims of Rule 3a).

Let us now consider explanations and examples of the (somewhat complicated) Rule 3 and its constituent parts.

The Spiritualized Conundrum provides a suitable model system for addressing this rule. At one point several days into the nomination process, their only nominated album was "Lazer Guided Melodies". My favourite album is "Pure Phase", but I was uncertain about nominating it since it typically is not cited as the fave of serious or casual SPZ fans -- that honour surely belongs to "Ladies and Gentlemen ...". I was quite surprised that the latter had not been nominated at this point, given the prevalence of SPZ fans on the board. So, my options were

A) Do nothing, invoke rule 3b and engage in AST toward LGM in my ballot.
B) Essentially the opposite of A). That is, if I felt that I could not give strong support to LGM in place of a superior (IMHO) SPZ album. Therefore: do nothing, essentially vacating spots that would have been occupied by SPZ on my own personal chart, and take advantage of the opening by invoking Rule 3a on other worthy albums.
C) Invoke Rule 3c by Nom. LAG (note that this could constitute a disobeying of Rule 1). In this case, it would necessitate a subsequent choice of whether or not to invoke 3b by engaging in AST toward LAG (that is, AST from PP to LAG). Obviously, this is a necessity if and only if PP was not subsequently nominated (which I suspected would be the case).
D) Nom. PP. Since this is a fave album by a fave act, no strategic voting is necessary. Nonetheless, this risks a violation of Rule 2 in the (not unlikely) event that LAG is subsequently nominated. Not to mention that the paucity of votes it would receive compared to those albums could result in a de facto violation of Rule 1, since that nomination could have been more effectively used toward music that would have a better change of making the final chart. This is the tradeoff that comes with shunning all strategic voting, i.e. nom/voting strictly with the heart and not with the head.

In this case, I decided against A, since I felt LGM was not strong enough to merit AST from either follow-up record. I deemed D to be unsuitable since it would not draw enough votes to make the nomination worthwhile. Fortunately, LAG was nominated a couple of days later, saving me the agony of deciding between B and C. At the time, I was leaning toward B, since there were many other things I wanted to nominate. Had I gone with C, Rule 3b would not have been invoked, since LAG, once nominated, would likely do fine on its own without a strong ranking on my ballot.

Rule 3a was applied to significant effect. It is too soon to know if "69 Love Songs" is truly one of my favourite albums ever, but for right now, little would please me more than a top ten placing in the final standings. [My latest "69 Love Songs" learned moment of clarity: The ending of "Meaningless", with its repeated refrains of "Effervescently meaningless, YES YES YES it was beautifully meaningless, YES YES YES, it was profoundly meaningless ... etc." is one of the saddest things I have ever heard in song. The weighty feeling of utter defeat and humiliation in his voice as those lines are uttered is what gets me every time. Furthermore, the entire lyric can be construed as the braggadocio of an uncaring dumper of the painful lament of a distraught dumpee. Of course, the previous sentence already revealed which interpretation I prefer].

Other invocations of 3a include: the top five ranking for "Woob 1194" (entirely necessary since I nominated it), the inclusion of "Lapsed" (my other album nomination -- it's not yet a slam-dunk inclusion on my personal 90's Album Redux list -- but its placing was fueled by the temptation to stoke the flames of the small but devoted ILM Bardo Pond contingent, i.e. a situation for the usage of Rule 3d if there ever was one), the high ranking for "Ex:El", the inclusion of "Spice", and the inclusion and high rankings for a significant amount of ambient, house, and techno.

Rule 3b was rarely invoked, in large part because many of my actual favourites were nominated on both the albums and singles charts. Most notable is the case of "Basic Channel", in which large quantities of AST from Vainqueur's "Elevations" are required to explain its high ranking. More accurately, "Elevations" might have been nominated but was not due to Rule 2, and the high ranking resulted from application of Rules 3b and to a lesser extent, 3a as well. Autechre's "Amber" is ranked comparable to "Chiastic Slide" in my original list, and the application of Rule 3b is the dominant cause for this.

So there you have it, an updated, semi-accurate list of the best of the last decade of the last century of the last millennium. The first one required eight agonizing months of thought, whereas these two lists came together in only three sittings. It never could have come together so quickly had it been my own personal list. It's far easier to toss a chart together without having to micromanage the decisions that go into choosing each and every spot. Since the list isn't my personal one, I don't have the same burden of having to maximize the list's "correctness". And many decisions can be explained away by claiming strategic voting, which in itself is something of an antithesis to listmaking accuracy.

On the other hand, seventeen of my former top thirty were on the nominations list. These seventeen, as you'd expect, formed the backbone of the new list (all of them are in the top 21), with the extra spots filled in by several albums which scraped the outskirts of the list in 1999, and have continued to do so ever since. And the singles list contains nearly all of my legitimate favourites from the decade. With that sort of selection, perhaps these musings on strategic voting are nothing but a veil for my lack of acceptance of the fact that this list had the potential to be more accurate than I would care to admit. If so, please pardon me while my head explodes.

TOP ALBUMS

1. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
2. Orbital - In Sides
3. Pulp - His'n'Hers
4. Woob - Woob 11:94
5. Orbital - Snivilization
6. The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
7. The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
8. Basic Channel - Basic Channel
9. Orbital - Brown Album
10. Pulp - Different Class
11. Depeche Mode - Violator
12. Stereolab - Mars Audiac Quintet
13. 808 State - Ex: El
14. Jeff Mills - mix-up vol. 2 (aka live at the liquid room)
15. Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
16. Autechre - Amber
17. Bardo Pond - Lapsed
18. Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible
19. Super Furry Animals - Guerilla
20. Blur - Parklife
21. Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
22. Slowdive - Souvlaki
23. Spice Girls - Spice
24. Labradford - Mi Media Naranja
25. Saint Etienne - Tiger Bay
26. Curve - Pubic Fruit
27. Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle
28. Th'Faith Healers - Lido
29. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol II
30. Motorbass - Pansoul

TOP TRACKS

1. Depeche Mode - "Enjoy the Silence"
2. Saint Etienne - "He's on the Phone"
3. James - "Laid"
4. Mogwai - "Mogwai Fear Satan"
5. Orbital - "Belfast"
6. My Bloody Valentine - "When You Sleep"
7. Adorable - "Sunshine Smile"
8. Underworld - "Cowgirl"
9. Yo La Tengo - "Nowhere Near.
10. Eddie Amador - "House Music"
11. Pulp - "Common People"
12. New Order - "Regret"
13. Saint Etienne - "Like a Motorway"
14. Slowdive - "Avalyn"
15. Pulp - "Disco 2000"
16. My Bloody Valentine - "To Here Knows When"
17. Monaco - "What Do You Want From Me?"
18. Massive Attack - "Karmacoma"
19. Pulp - "Something Changed"
20. Sinead O'Connor - "Nothing Compares 2 U"
21. Slowdive - "Allison"
22. The Breeders - "Cannonball"
23. Cornershop - "Brimful of Asha"
24. Madonna - "Ray of Light"
25. Dubstar - "Stars"
26. The Future Sound of London - "Papua New Guinea"
27. Smashing Pumpkins - "Cherub Rock"
28. Placebo - "Pure Morning"
29. Britney Spears - "Baby One More Time"
30. Jeru the Damaja - "Come Clean"

I've accidentally absorbed some information about the progress of Canadian Idol over the last several weeks, and was a bit shocked by my "good fortune" -- the one preliminary show I saw all those weeks ago has produced two of the top three contestants. And how are they doing?

Jacob is still a clown. Embarassing, cringe-worthy performances during every second of his stage time (there's a REASON that people have spent years making fun of the way Celine emotes the lyrics with her hands when she sings). His voice -- thin, reedy, Muppet-esque -- grates horribly on the ears after less than thirty seconds, while his actions (a Frankensteinian melding of Steve-O from "Jackass" and Chris Kattan's "Mango" from SNL) merely compound the agony. At least the fans were smart enough to vote off the right person.

Theresa's voice is pleasant, anodyne, and carries that tiny bit of post-70's Stevie Nicks' gravelly sexiness. She's got a farm girl cuteness and seems to be an extremely likeable person. But she's got nothing on even the top five women from last year's "American Idol". OK, she's got a much better voice than Jasmine, but Jasmine's looks and bubbly charm evens the score. Because (and I'll keep saying this until more people understand it), the purpose of the show is not to locate the greatest singers. Its purpose is to create pop stars. And the only one of the three people I saw tonight that has even a tiny bit of genuine star quality is Kalan. His voice -- a less polished, more uncertain version of Clay Aiken. His look -- 1993 Damon Albarn except 1000 times cuter. His singing is still a work in progress, but he's got the shy and bashful look down pat. It's that lost puppy blank stare that makes the girls think he's imminemtly attainable, which is not a bad position to be in.

Don't ask.

1) Len - Steal My Sunshine
2) Haddaway - What is Love
3) Sunscreem - Love U More
4) Apotheosis - O Fortuna
5) Aerosmith - I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
6) LaTour- People Are Still Having Sex
7) Space and Cerys Matthews - The Ballad of Tom Jones
8) Yo La Tengo/Daniel Johnston -- Speeding Motorcycle
9) Flaming Lips - She Don't Use Jelly
10) Donna Lewis - I Love You Always Forever
11) Fun Lovin' Criminals - Scooby Snacks
12) C & C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat(Everybody Dance Now)
13) Primitive Radio Gods - standing outside a broken phonebooth...
14) Blondie - Maria
15) Snow - Informer

Comments:
1) No OMG on this one. It's just a brilliant summer tune from a bunch of Missisauga slacker kids who fluked into making one hell of a funtastic pop song.
2) The video is the cheesiest thing ever. A Meatloaf ripoff that used 1/100th of the budget. The "A Night At the Roxbury" dudes ruined any chance that this song will ever be taken seriously anymore. And yet, it is beyond brilliant.
3) Hearing this played on a college episode of 90210, some two years after it was originally released (and before it became a proper hit), blew my mind. In retrospect, who the fuck knows why. I think I was in denial that Sunscreem were anything other than the perfect band to be played at a pool party for rich California college kids who wanted to think they were listening to actual techno. Definitely one of my top 10 all-time OMGWTFLOL TV moments. Nothing could possibly match hearing Mogwai on Sex and the City, though (twice!). That one's gonna be tough to top.
4) Not just an OMGWTFLOL slice of 90's music, but an OMGWTFLOL slice of rave. When you're too cheesy for the cheesiest of EARLY 90's RAVE MUSIC ... geez, that practically DEFINES "OMGWTFLOL".
5) I have no idea why I like this song. Absolutely none.
6) "Allen's Got a New Hi-Fi" is a better song, but it doesn't carry the OMGWTFLOL factor. What is that song about anyway? A guy who can't get his stereo to work? What a dumb idea for a song.
7) Space and Catatonia -- two bands that went from stardom to burnout in a spectacularly short amount of time. 1998 was the OMGWTFLOL *year* of the 1990's. Except for maybe 1992.
8) The YLT version is gorgeous. DJ's version is strangely affecting. This version is neither. It's just bizarre.
9) Might have been higher if Drugstore's version wasn't 1000% better.
10) Damn, how many of the artists on my list appeared on 90210? This is frightening.
11) I just realized, how many songs on my list rely heavily on samples? The ultimate OMGWTFLOL 90's mix tape would probably be chock full of songs based on samples. We really needed more 90's rave in that vein, like "Sesame's Treet" and "I'm Raving I'm Raving".
12) Bonus points for Borat's fine re-working.
13) I can't even remember much about this. But it was different.
14) If this poll were done in another five or ten years, it would likely finish much higher because more people would say "OMGWTFLOL!!! Blondie had a hit in the 90's???".
15) The real OMGWTFLOL moment was when Snow had another hit .... ten years later!!

MTV MUSIC VIDEO AWARDS.

8:03. JLo is here! But when she wears a dress this conservative to an awards show, what's the point?

8:05. So she just said nothing of note. That whole intro served only to get cheap pops from the Miami crowd, and introduce an nondescript Usher performance that seems to exist solely to get his abs some air time ...

8:07 ... UNTIL L'IL JON SHOWS UP! With Ludacris in tow, obviously. Hey, wasn't Usher on this record too? I forgot.

8:14 Will Smith reminds us that we're in Miami another 593 times and introduces Shaq. As long as he doesn't rap this is actually a nice surprise for this lively crowd. And Bill Simmons was right ... this is ANGRY Shaq, he looks like he's dropped loads of weight and is in fantastic shape, all ready to wreak vengeance on the Lakers for giving up on him.

8:17 Best Pop Vid (nominees are all women!) -- won by No Doubt (essentially one woman + her bitches) for their run-through-the-motions cover of "It's My Life". What's that, Nellee Hooper produced the song? And props to Gwen for acknowledging Talk Talk!! First time TT have been mentioned on MTV in, EVER?!? And can you believe it, we just had multiple white people on stage at the MVA's and none of them tried to make smooth and witty comments to the crowd. And none of them embarassed themselves in any way. So we're way ahead of last year's pace.

8:25. Hilary Duff cannot act convincingly -- can't even convince me for a second that her co-presenter isn't there. So she can't sing, act, or present awards. I'd still hit it, though.

8:27. 50Cent's "P.I.M.P." is nominated for Rap Video? Why is that this year? He even performed the song LAST year. Anyhow, Jay-Z wins for "99 Problems", and he looks amazing in a white suit and hat.

8:29. I love how mainstream rock is so immaterial these days that they (Jet/Hoobastank/band whose name I've already forgotten, oh yeah, Yellowcard) get the Medley Performance Treatment, a la bluegrass at the Grammys a couple of years ago. Actually, that was more of a "let's get this passing fad out of the way in one go". More infamous was the "194 'Urban' artists in seven minutes" segment at the Junos a few years ago, possibly the most ass-hatted programming choice at an awards show, ever. If you're going to make it so obvious that you don't care about these artists, then why bother?
It occurs to me that if I were a fan of one of these bands, and had tuned in specifically to see them, then I'd feel pretty ripped off right about now. Then it occurs to me that I don't give a damn about fans of these bands.

8:40. Who is this Matt Babel blonky on MM? Why is this Barry Bonds lookalike pimping upcoming MTV-esque programming on MM and CITV-TV? Why me?

8:42. Jon Stewart ends the Cool MVA Segments By White People Who Are Jewish streak that was carried over from last year. Everything he says (via tape) seems to go over the heads of the crowd.

8:46. Beyonce wins in the Catfight category against Britney, Xtina, etc.

8:47. Mark Anthony's emo-laden introduction for Kanye West is thankfully not *too* handwringing (compare to, say, Michael Stipe's interminable intro for the White Stripes at last year's MTV Europe Awards). And now here's Kanye to help save the show, just like he did at the MMVA's a few months ago ...

8:48 ... that is, until he's joined by a blimp, I mean, Chaka Khan who is HORRIBLY out of tune. We're talking American Idol audition bloopers here.

8:49. You know what's missing from this show? Humour. There's not a single solitary bit of it, which is directly traceable to the lack of a host. Like I said last year, Chris Rock needs host this, and every other major awards show on a permanent basis.

9:00. Xtina is out to present, dressed as Madonna in "Dick Tracy". And there's no awards envelope -- the winner is revealed by members of the pit lifting placards above their heads to reveal a picture of Usher. Who should never say the word "yeah!" ever again. Leave that to the other guys in your video, please.

9:04. The Kerry daughters are here, and are getting BOOED LIKE NUTS. The Bush Twins join us via tape from New York, and are met with a much warmer response. The message from both = vote for our dad, but make sure you do get involved, educate yourself, and vote. Good sentiments, but the crowd turned viciously on everything.

9:10. Alicia Keys wins ... something. I'm still in shock from the whole First Daughters thing and wasn't paying attention.

9:17 And it's Dave Chapelle to finally spice up the show by making fun of Cubans and Justin Timberlake. Then it's Petey Pablo, the Eastside Boyz, the Ying Yang twins, and the ubiquitous L'il Jon to wake up the subdued crowd. L'il Jon is playing 50 Cent's role from last year, in that he seems to be all over this show, looking like the breakout star that nobody can stop talking about.

9:26. Thank you Owen Wilson, I was forgetting what an uncool and unfunny white guy sounded like.

9:28. Jet win for Best Rock Video and are met with a nearly muted response. Yep, MTV 2004 doesn't care about rock, chart pop 2004 mainly neglects rock, and a Miami crowd certainly isn't one to give rock music the time of day.

9:34. "New Series" on CITY-TV = "Sex and the City". OK, it's an awesome show, but "new series"? Sure, they may be a season beyond on "America's Next Top Model" (which has already aired on Life Network), but at least that's a show still in production. And this Babel guy needs to put these "can Samantha stay on her feet" comments to rest -- she's a slut on the show, OK, we get it.

9:36. Hello, Olson twins, and Mary-Kate is still looking thin, easily as thin as she looked (in public, anyhow) before getting hospitalized. It's good that she's out and about, though. I guess.

9:40 Jessica Simpson gives an impassioned, determined performance. Wow, that was a nice surprise.

9:42. New category for best Video Game Soundtrack. Cool! You know what's not cool? Good Charlotte trying to be funny. On second thought, that it cool, because I get to laugh at them, which is fun.

9:47. More Jon Stewart and Al Sharpton "vote for Viewers Choice" total non-funniness.

9:53 This Jimmy Fallon vs Gary the Announcer fite has gone on for so long that's it's passed through "annoying" and travelled fully around the boundaries of good taste and is back to being funny.

9:54. Best Hip Hop video ... hold on, first we have to wait for Wayne Coyne to make his way over the crowd in a plastic ball (the same one he's been using at gigs, I suppose). Why are they playing the Strokes to introduce him? Play his band's music! Anyway, Wayne arrives with the Hey Ya envelope, and OutKast humbly accept the award (Andre and Big Boi together!).

10:00. Xtina and Nelly? She's a jazz and blues artist? Since when? Since this show started? What kind of an introductioni was that?
However, the performance is actually quite good! Nelly and Xtina have great chemistry, and the song has more funk than three-month old eggs (largely thanks to the "Superfly" bassline). And it's better than Maddy's "Dick Tracy" phase, because Xtina is ten times the singer Maddy was. And ten times hotter. Whose album is this appearing on?

10:10 I just noticed Diddy's mohawk. Huh? Who told him THAT would look good? He and Ma$e deliver another "get out and vote" message, although in truth, Ma$e was too busy yelling "welcome BACK!!" to really deliver any sort of coherent message.

10:13 Best Dance Video ( = indistinguishable from all the other categories judging by the nominees, gotta love the nonsensical MTV awards categories) goes, deservedly, to the biggest breakout stars of the year, Usher + crew for "Yeah". I must mention that the diamond goblet L'il Jon's been carrying to the stage all night is just about the coolest thing ever.

10:18. Alicia Keys is apparently this generation's Marvin Gaye. I guess Great Soul Singer = singing ballads while playing piano at the same time. Geez, even Axl Rose used to do that. But all gets forgiven when STEVIE WONDER appears to sing "Higher Ground"! At times like this, it's easy to forget that he hasn't recorded anything listenable in twenty-five years.
And just as quickly as it peaked, we fall from the apex as Lenny Kravitz gets to sing a verse. Too many cooks, etc.

10:30 I can't look at Paris Hilton without thinking of that Fashion Polizei skit from Ali G. I'd still hit it, though. Duh.

10:31. No Doubt win again. For Best Group Video. Next.

10:34. After some more advertisements for Tony Hawk Inc., Maroon 5 win for Best New Artist Video (or something to that effect). And they're not there? Come on, this isn't the MMVA's! Too bad, I actually don't mind this song, but at least we get spared from watching the band embarrass themselves by trying to give a funny acceptance speech, since they seem to be the sort of band that would attempt such a thing.

10:43. Interesting how the sasquatch gets more camera time than the Ray Charles tribute.

10:47. The Yellowcard guy is giving a serious acceptance speech? This ain't the Oscars, buddy.

10:49. The Polyphonic Spree are a band I've heard lots about but never actually heard. Verdict : they're the Flaming Lips redux. And they're going for the Acid Trip feel, seriously, if Brian Wilson was watching then he's already mumbling on the phone to his confused manager about altering the stage show for the "Smile" tours. Or maybe they really were mashed, the show is in Miami, after all. Anyhow, I needed that because the show was boring me to pieces for the last little bit.

11:00. What is this, a retirement ceremony for Jay-Z? This is ridiculous. I'm losing the will to type. I mean, if you want to honour Jay-Z, then just do it (even though nobody thinks he's really retiring). And if you want to have fun with him, just do it. This accomplished neither of those things.

11:04. Now it's Olympic bling time (JoJo, or whoever you are, never say that word again, I'm begging you) with swimming, gymnastics and volleyball champs. I knew that once you put Carly Patterson in a regular outfit then she'd look highly shaggable. Pardon the off-putting comment about underage girls, I am losing the will to go on because this is the longest show ever. Linkin Park win for Viewers Choice, and I really don't care.

11:11. Video of the Year. Finally. OutKast win. Of course.

11:15. Even John Mellencamp gets to come out to his own music. And Wayne Coyne doesn't. Anyway, it's Andre 3000 lip-synching ... is he really playing guitar or is he faking that too?

11:16. When they're projecting the American flag all over the arena and making people in the audience hold signs with the names of the states and messages like "I WILL VOTE", then things have gone too far. They're hitting us with a sledgehammer here. And everyone knows if you want a kid to do something then all you have to do is tell them a billion times and they will surely do it.

11:20. There are worse things than signing off an awards show with "Hey Ya!" (for the millionth time, ha, maybe even Andre is getting bored with it) but if I hadn't been lulled into a comatose state by the sheer length of this show. And a month from now I doubt I'll remember anything that didn't involve L'il Jon.

Now I'm going to do something, anything else that will get me the hell away from my TV.

I normally wouldn't "double post" like this, but I liked the stuff I wrote on these threads. Of course, I'm a sucker for any "Best of ..." list, so I'm eating this stuff up.

ILM Top 100 Tracks 2000-2004
No. 51
Artist: M83
Title: RUN INTO FLOWERS
(Barry blurbs about "Run Into Flowers", sort of)
I'm trying to give Daft Punk another chance, I really am. So much luv and high hopes are surrounding them. But first, I was listening to "Dead Cities ... " as the sun went down. I don't know where else to turn when I want to deafen myself with a choir of synths. It's got to be either this or the instrumental version of "The Perfect Kiss". In the meantime, "Run Into Flowers" got played twice, the second time twice as loud as the first. Aspiring trance producers can learn a lot from the mid-song break here. It rarely fails to get me to my feet, air guitaring (to a synth) and cheering.
Then I gave "Discovery" a spin while watching the Olympics and putting off cooking dinner. Suddenly, the rot of the day sat in as the apartment became darkened due to the lack of sun. And I was reminded about little I've actually done today in comparison with what I intended to do. So I'm done with *these* Frenchmen now, I'm returning to the others.
So now "Run Into Flowers" is deafening the neighbours again. I think I'll play the break twice this time.

ILM Top 100 Albums 2000-2004
No. 44
Artist: GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR
Title: LIFT YOUR SKINNY FISTS LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN
The debut was good. But it wasn't, um ... big enough. It was gloomy, cinematic, and pretentious (duh). One year later, they returned with 641 new members and an ep that sounded like the end of the world. Certainly the only piece of pre-millenium tension worth listening to. Gotta go with the biblical script when you need to make your apocolyptic point.
Then came this album, which has it all. Tantalising, extended intros blasting into screeching strings playing "Amazing Grace" soundalikes, careening into caustic drones and twinkly ambience. And that's just the first track!
That's their pre-9/11 album. Afterward, the focus turned toward proving that Lockheed Martin are destroying the world. Listening to crazy old men ranting about the golden days of Coney Island is somehow far more harmless, and considerably more poignant.

No.43
Artist: LOW
Title: THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE
Low were comfortably entrenched in their slow-and-quiet blueprint, and could have continued to duplicate it indefinitely without much protest from a majority of their fan base. They dip into whimisical pop ("Sunflower") and grim, sinister dirges ("Whitetail") but those styles turned out far better on the follow-up album, "Trust". But here, the less they do, the finer they sound. "Lazer Beam" is little more than four repeated twangs of a guitar and Mimi Rogers' haunting vocals. The other 90% of the song is blackened empty space. Overtop of drawling, pleading vocals, "Closer"'s lurching rhythms surge forward again and again, barely moving forward despite the greatest possible effort. And the sweet harmonies of album closer "In Metal" linger on the brain long after the CD stops spinning. A fine cap to an album that achieves maximalism through minimalism so very well.

No. 37
Artist: PRIMAL SCREAM
Title: XTRMNTR
XTRMNTR is angry as hell and noisy as a plane taking off. Sometimes it's a techno album, sometimes it's a guitar album, sometimes it's a hip-hop album with swearing and screaming on top. Sometimes it's a New Order album (with Barney Sumner on guitar for authenticity), sometimes it's an MBV album (with Kevin Shields on guitar for authenticity), and sometimes it's a David Holmes soundtrack album (with movie samples and er, David Holmes twiddling the knobs for authenticity). What more could you possibly want in an album???

----------------------------------------

All of these are more than deserving of their positions except for the Low album, which may not have finished that high on my own personal list (but was ranked #8 on my ballot since, uh, I wasn't familiar with much on the ballot other than the indie rock). I really would have liked to see "Run Into Flowers" higher, because I believe it's a truly original and uplifting single. The Godspeed album is top ten, easy, if the list were entirely my own (#3 on my ballot), and I would have expected some resistance to such a high ranking from that polarizing band, but it didn't happen. In contrast, I certainly wasn't prepared for the tempest in a teapot in the wake of PRML SCRM. Of course I stand by my #1 ranking and laugh in the face of those who find greater excitement from relative dullards such as DFT PNK and RDHD.

One of the things that makes "Swastika Eyes" so great is that unlike other well-received IDM/electronic bands *coughdaftpunkcough* it's not a watered down wimpy approximation of house and/or techno -- rather, it stands up to any of the hardest and finest house or techno that many DJ's would/should be proud to spin.

Berlin Music = forever be associated in my mind with the city of Berlin.

Teyl Eins. Cocteau Twins -- Twinlights ep. Discussed in detail last November. Berlin-music-cocteautwinlights are the first thing that come to mind in any word association game, easy.
Bardo Pond -- On the Ellipse. Spending hours in the lab around people most of the day only intensifies the craving for some alone time. I started sacrificing a bit of sleep for a dollop of serenity. I would stay up a bit longer when I returned home at night and would listen to music in the dark. It is a very effective sanity-preserving exercise. When things get busier then this is not possible because only an idiot would sacrifice any of the scant hours of sleep he has allocated. Fortunately, you can only work so much until a threshold is reached and you have to start with shift work in order to obtain both work and sleep for everyone involved in the project. Success! -- you start walking to and from work with only a discman for company, and you exceedingly rely on those few quiet, relaxing minutes to start and end your day (no matter what hour it is according to the sun).
For the early mornings and late nights alone, this album was the accompaniment.

Teyl Zwei. Cocteau Twins -- Twinlights ep. Yeah.
Plastikman -- Closer. Long train rides, silently gliding past tranquil run-down neighbourhoods, together with this album.

Teyl Drei. Galaxie 500 -- Today. The soundtrack for many sleepy days and nights, and there'd be times that I'd have it on repeat (or sometimes just one or two tracks from it) in a fruitless attempt to purge those tunes from my head.

Teyl Vier. Magnetic Fields -- 69 Love Songs (particularly vol. 1). Almost as good as actual love.
The Cure -- Disintegration. The anger and disappointment of missing their Toronto Curiosa stop were washed away (in small part) by hearing parts of this album nearly every day on the way to and from work (events which usually took place on different days of the week).