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???

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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).

Staying up all night and listening to Labradford in the morning as the sun shines through a row of windows is a beautiful and tranquil feeling. In this case it was a live gig from the Fixed:Context era, which suits the early morning perfectly with the way they both hang in the air in suspended animation and pass the time impeceptibly.

Bowery Electric's "Lushlife" is almost a great album. I can't even call it a Verve Release, because there's not enough excellent material on it to warrant that label. But the intended results -- or at least, what I will assume they were trying to record -- are genius, yet overall, the album suffers from average execution at best.

In 1997, BE made "Beat", which is one of the many albums that was hailed as "what MBV might/should have recorded as the follow-up to Loveless". And in fact, the magnificent singles more than live up to that sort of praise. With its lurching tempo and shimmery chord sequence, "Empty Words" borrows considerably from MBV's "Slow", but strips aside the latters' gruff demeanor. If "Slow" is a crude sexual fantasy, then "Empty Words" is a considerably more innocent daydream on a humid day. "Fear of Flying" foreshadows what was to come with "Lushlife", with its looped drum break over another huge two-chord epiphany. I'm deliberately avoiding using all the tired cliched descriptions of hazy swirling wall of sound guitar gauze noise, but believe me, they ALL apply here. And they're more appropriate here than in 99% of the existing cases.

But despite all that, "Beat" isn't really a guitar album. It's an ambient drone album. Much of it is beatless (pardon the pun), and the parts that aren't have the (looped) percussion far back in the mix. If there's a touchstone for what was to come on "Lushlife", it's the title-track, with crackly hip-hop beat, this and chunky bassline, breathy, monotone vocals. and almost no guitar effects to speak of. It's also the opening track, and since little else on the album sounds like this, it comes off as a disjointed overture before the "real" album hits.

"Lushlife" sought to expand this overture into a full-blown album. It would be creeped-out and claustrophobic, something like cLOUDDEAD but insert Martha Schwendener's soft vocals instead of whatever they do that passes for rapping. Imagine basslines which completely swamp the mix and threaten to explode your headphones. They'd construct a wall of sound out of rhythms, dispense with guitar almost completely, and let the singing purr you to sleep. And the nighttime cityscape on the cover is the perfect prelude for all of this -- brooding, foreboding, and luminescent.

What happened? The beats feel too well-worn, too familiar, and too basic. Sure, the Funky Drummer Break and the Paid in Full Break are classics, but they've been used so many times that the excitement of hearing them is distressingly low. They are almost boring these days. "Floating World" and "Lushlife" are massive enough, but several other tracks offer interchangeable and unmemorable rhythms that ought to have catalogue numbers called Generic Hip Hop Beat #14A on a sample CD. The vocals do sound lovely, but are mainly drab and monotone. Sure, the opener of "Beat" featured this sort of singing, but that was only one track, not most of an album's worth. Even after several listens, I can recall almost no vocal melodies from this album. The scarcity of guitar is actually immaterial, but its absence does require something to fill that space -- I want a thundering and original beat quaking over shuddering synths, not just hip hop beats used for an indie hipness factor.

What went right? As I mentioned, the opening two tracks largely fulfilled their ambitions. "Freedom Fighter" uses a truly rocking break reminiscent of "Straight Outta Compton" together with a forceful and doom-laden vocal that recalls the more blistering moments of Curve's album "Cuckoo". A great choice for the single. And the closing "Passages" is a powerful piece of music stripped to its threadbare essentials, using a beat (the "Paid In Full" break, yeah, I said it was well-worn before but I've always been a sucker for it and it fits shockingly well here), two eerie chords (note: Bowery Electric should use only two chords as much as possible), and Schwedener's ghostly delivery to create a wonderfully unsettling piece of dance music. If nothing else, they did succeed in making a solid last impression with this finish to the album.

Wow, I've been in Berlin for ten days and I'm not yet bored of the hearing the CD's I brought. In fact, I've barely made a dent in them. However, I would like to clarify a couple of things
The Orb's "Spanish Castles in Space" : still one of the finest pieces of ambient music ever. It should be twice as long as it already is (15 min). The floaty portion at the end, just after the bass drops out and just before dripping water is the best part of the song, but you need the 10 + minute build to appreciate those moments of serenity.
Woob 1194 still owns you along with most of your family.

Pop radio : Newer stuff, obviously, but lots of standards that seemingly haven't left their spot in heavy rotation since my first trip here one year ago, such as :
Every Pink single from "Mizzundastood"
Every Evanescence single from "Fallen"
Every Black Eyed Peas single from "Elephunk"

Canadians continue to be well represented, with Alanis and Avril turning up often. Best of all -- I've heard "Enjoy the Silence" each of the last two days! I also remember hearing it on one of the other trips. When was the last time you heard DM's best single on North American pop radio? Anyone?

BIzarre and disturbing video aside, Britney's "Everytime" is her best single in ages despite its nearly-too-close-for-comfort ressemblance to Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting". Among her rivals, Xtina's "The Voice Within" (and to a lesser extent, Avril's "I'm With You") threatened to set the bar way higher than Britney could ever reach. Those tracks require a smashing set of pipes, which Britney doesn't have and never will. If these songs led the way, and pop became all about The Voice (also "blame" the Beyonces of the world for pushing this change as well) then Britney would obviously be left behind, dated and irrelevant. But then a funny thing happened, Xtina butchered "Beautiful" on the Grammys by throwing in 17 times more notes than necessary, and Britney released a wonderful single sung in a little girl lullaby voice (the perfect vehicle to showcase the talent she does have) and dare I say, let the melody run roughshod over the histrionics from now on.

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If I lived in Berlin, I would see to it that Dense was put out of business. Why? Because I would end up going there all the time and would buy so many CD's that they'd have no stock left, which would leave them no choice but to go out of business. Friday's R&R trip took in the standard stops (Dense, Neurotitan), and purchases of the standard music (noise, minimal techno). Unfortunately, the gentrification of the Hackescher Markt area may soon swallow up Neurotitan's building and morph it from its present character into (likely) another bar aimed at the tourist market. Along with other businesses in the building/alley/enclave, they are circulating a petition to prevent the building from being sold, citing historical reasons. This is hardly grasping for straws -- there is an Anne Frank exhibit in the building and there is a pictoral history of that city block displayed in the stairwell. The timeline goes back for hundreds of years.

Speaking of historical events, while in Neurotitan (for the last time? who knows, I guess), I learned of a grime party going down nearby -- the first grime party ever held in Berlin, according to the girl who worked there. I was craving a beer and my Carole Pope bio more than a party that night, but I was skeptical about her claim ... could it really have been the first grime party in the city? I'd have thought such a thing would have descended upon Berlin months ago. Perhaps I will be kicking myself for this decision somewhere down the road.

(entirely written in airports on JULY 16 and 17). I don't understand comments such as "if the White Album had been cut down to a single disc then it would have been a better album". Of course, trimming away the fat would produce a more consistently excellent album, but you could say that about *any* album. It's just more fashionable to say it about the long ones. Using this logic, since side one of "Loveless" is stronger than side two, so if they'd just released everything up to "I Only Said" and called it a mini-album or an e.p., then it would have been a stronger musical statement. Snipping away all but the very best tracks on any album must result in a better (track-for-track) record by its very definition. But what you're left with bears little resemblance to the original product, just as watching only the best scenes in a movie and skipping over the rest doesn't improve upon the film as a whole (although obviously it is fun to do sometimes).

Epics such as the White Album are supposed to be long and uneven. Every time somebody makes such a record they feel that it's necessary to take in every style of music from hard rock to Irish folk. Such an album is bound to be about as consistent as its many stylistic jumps (that is to say, not very consistent at all). It's bound to get silly in places, boring in others, and deliver some ill-thought sounds and lyrics that make you go "that was extremely unnecessary". You.re supposed to feel as though you.ve been listening forever. "Getting there" may not be half the fun, but it just wouldn't feel the same if you got there sooner.

Recently, I finally got around to exploring the Magnetic Fields' voluptuous "69 Love Songs". Some of it is missable, but "37 Love Songs" wouldn't carry the same weight, would it? Three albums, three hours, everything from punk to weepy folk ballads. You have to sit through all those one-minute tossed-off tunes and let each lo-fi pop song roll by until you can no longer distinguish between them. Or remember which disc of the three you're listening to at that moment. And wonder about the reasoning behind the track ordering on this beast, giving rise to questions like "why is the song I'm hearing at this exact moment on disc three instead of on disc one?" and "why did this reggae/English air/Steve Reich tape phasing composition just interject itself at this particular point on the album?" The rocky terrain and extended investment of your time makes for deeper feelings gleaned from sad songs like "Come Back From San Francisco" or "Acoustic Guitar". Good things come to those who wait around and get slapped out of thin air from "Tea in China" rhymed with "North Carolina" or "Louvre" with "manouvre". It's worth it for the poignant senses of "that song perfectly encapsulated my relationship with Person X".

A future task : get through the entire album in one sitting.

I'm baffled by the attention given to the recent arrest of a Hamilton man charged with bootlegging (Toronto Star story here). Here, bootlegging = live concert recordings sold without permission of the artist =! alcohol trafficking or rock remixes of Jay-Z (at least not this time). From the derogatory language directed at this incident, you'd think we were dealing with a brutal, heinous crime. You'd think he was a sex offender or something.

Jann Arden takes the concert experience WAAAAYYY too seriously. Writing about the Orb earlier in the week, I largely dismissed the role of poor sound quality negatively affecting the listener's perception of a gig's "specialness". And last year (in reference to a 1994 Depeche Mode concert), I wrote how memories can be tarnished by hearing inferior gigs (*not* inferior sound quality) months or years after the fact. The best recording quality in the world wouldn't have cleared up Dave Gahan's heroin-ravaged croak.

The article goes to length to explain what a bootleg is, and how they are recorded. I suppose in the year 2004 there are people unaware of these details that I take for granted. All the talk about internet piracy must have turned the spotlight away from bootleggers to the point that their trade must be re-explained to the next generation. But the anti-filesharing tone still permeates many paragraphs in the article. It depicts bootlegs as yet another of the myriad ways that starving artists and record companies are losing money. Hmmm ... unless you're Pearl Jam (and give official releases to all your concerts) then you're not losing any money on bootlegs, you're just not gaining money on them. Oh wait, if fans are buying the bootlegs then they might want to stick with their dicey recording instead of the superior sound, pictures, and scores of extras on the similarly-priced DVD. Or so the story goes.

This is one case where the jam bands have got it all figured out. They encourage bootlegging, they have no problem with people openly making soundboard recordings of their shows and distributing them via tape or the internet. Somebody should tell Jann Arden that fans get increasingly excited and devoted to their fave bands when they get to hear more of their music. Sharing concert tapes and stories with similarly-minded fans makes concert-going MORE special, not the opposite.

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I recently heard cover versions (that were new to me) by Lush and Xiu Xiu, which prompted the following three-way battles:

1. "Ceremony" : New Order vs Galaxie 500 vs Xiu Xiu. G500 covers are fantastic. Their version exhibits their trademark largo approach to tempos, stretching the drama out over six reverb-drenched minutes. Xiu Xiu's is more or less identical to NO's original, with little of the crackle and sudden noise blasts that are so common with XX. The dominating force is Jamie Stewart's delivery -- he sings it a full octave higher, which actually puts the higher notes out of his range. So of course he just screams those notes at the top of his lungs, leading to several blood-curdling moments (whether you view those words as complimentary will depend on how you take to Stewart's voice in general. One could claim that his off-key straining and wailing wrecks the song, but then you'd have to claim that about most of his band's output).

Unfortunately for the copyists, "Ceremony" is one of the top three songs NO ever did. They rule. NO > G500 > XX.

2. "Outdoor Miner" : Wire vs Lush vs Flying Saucer Attack. Wire's original is arguably the closest they got to a conventional two-minute pop single. It stands apart from the ambience and general strangeness on "Chairs Missing". Lush drenched the song in a few more wads of guitar and their immediately recognisable dual-female lead vocals. Such a production could have only been made between 1990-1995, during the extremely short lifetime of grrl group semi-shoegaze. FSA's effort adds even more guitar -- it's a blistering attack of treble, even for him -- and buries the vocals deep beneath all that chaos. This was the first version I heard, and I hold a big mushy soft spot for it in my heart because it's one of my favourite singles of the 90's. Many a morning was spent blowing my brains into consciousness with this song (the rest of the e.p. is damned good as well). And I'm also a big softie for Lush's harmonies, so ... FSA > Lush > Wire.

I've got half of an Orb gig from Detroit in 1995, which would make it only a few days removed from their tremendous gig here (a mainstay in all of my Top Ten Gigs Ever lists).

The sound isn't too good, but when gigs are this great it doesn't matter. An OK gig can come off good or great on the bootleg if it's a well-done recording, but great gigs retain their greatness nearly irrespective of recording quality (factors such as crowd chatter, and inconsistent volume or frequency levels are exceptions to this).

The versions and setlist order are pretty much the same as I remember them. "Towers of Dub" had a four minute beatless intro, and when the bass finally hit, the tension in the club completely exploded. Swaying and dancing ensued and the hippies who were camped out in the bass speakers completely lost it and started leaping up and down with the beat.

Then there was the fake ending. The song wound down, only to spring up again from nothing with the bass ever huger than before, but this time accompanied by live drums and percussion. The strange thing is, I'd completely forgotten about this ending -- it had slipped my mind literally for years -- but upon hearing it again it instantly sounded familiar again. And of course, with my memory freshly jogged, I now remember this moment from the gig. If it doesn't exist already, there *needs* to be a name for this phenomenon. It's like not seeing or thinking about an old friend for years, but subsequently running into them in the street and remembering them instantly as well as every silly prank you pulled together in grade 11 English class.

I've spilled a bunch of e-ink on the subject of 15-years worth of diversions on the path to hearing "Disintegration", but upon further thought, my record with ALL Cure albums is nothing to brag about. I didn't hear "Wish" in full until a few years after it's release. Despite seeing them live on the "Bloodflowers" tour, I have never heard the album. Compilations and live albums aside, the only other Cure album I own -- and have heard at all, for that matter -- is "Kiss Me x3".

Until this week, that is. Now I can add two others to the list: "Pornography" and "The Cure". The latter only came out a few weeks ago, now how's that for turning over a new leaf?

I hadn't planned to write anything about the former, but after hearing the new album, suddenly the two don't seem all that different. Almost nothing the Cure have done since "Pornography" can match the smothering, black, depressive cloud that it creates. But both albums sound so incredibly heavy -- the pounding drums, thick bass, messy and hazy guitars -- they're produced to sound more like metal albums than just about anything else in their catalogue. On the newest, thanks should be given to Russ Robinson. The press leading up to the release date intoned along the lines of "The Cure's latest self-titled effort is the fruit of a long-awaited collaboration with Ross Robinson", to which I self-intoned "who???" in response (I'm supposed to know who's been producing Korn's albums? As if). At first thought, a Cure album produced to sound like Korn appears disturbing, but producing something to sound like Korn isn't the same as, you know, actually sounding like Korn. Because laying down the heavy like this makes the Cure sound fantastic. The music thuds into the sternum. This is not the dreary goth music we grew up with, this is a snarling vicious beast of an album with Robert Smith wailing over it to help remind us that this really is a Cure album. "Pornography" isn't nearly this huge.

"Lost", the opener, vaguely recalls Smashing Pumpkins "Bodies", with its slow and steady build, balls-out conclusion, and a one-line chorus/mantra chanted throughout and screamed with crazed abandon by the end. "The End of the World", for reasons I can't explain, comes off miles better than I remember it from their Leno performance (its familiarity is the leading candidate to explain this). Overall, it's a blistering collection and Cure fans certainly needn't worry about making excuses for it (except for the cover, perhaps).

Contents of the late afternoon 5CD tray:

1) LFO -- Sheath. I sometimes wonder whether those who praised this album last year heard its predecessor, "Advance" (inasmuch as a record can be a "successor" to something after more than seven years. With Gaz leaving LFO for good, Mark keeping busy breathing techno-fied life into Bjork and Depeche Mode, it was more like coming out of retirement). "Advance" is louder, funkier and nastier than "Sheath". It's a sequence of rumbling, churning crescendos. In terms of speaker rattling bass quakes, it's also a no-contest. Other than "Blown", the astounding opener, "Sheath" generally doesn't hit those sorts of highs (at least that's one thing the albums have in common -- the best track comes first). It's an album of perfectly acceptable techno tracks such as "Mum-man", which build to something good and constantly threaten to explode into something wonderful, but they never do. Perhaps he was recording the real follow-up to "Advance" but the neighbours got tired of the noise and rebelled, forcing Mark Bell to strip away several layers from each track in order to finish the album.

In a sense, this makes it a sister album to Speedy J's "Public Energy", i.e. a techno-funk that's mostly lightning but without the thunder and hail (although in Speedy's case, he ended up getting it right with the follow-up, as opposed to the predecessor).

2. Xiu Xiu -- Fabulous Muscles. I've got it figured out -- if the stuff people said about Radiohead was actually true, then they'd sound like Xiu Xiu. Paranoia and self-loathing? Go home, Radiowimps, Xiu Xiu is the Colonel Kurtz of paranoia and self-loathing (RIP Marlon Brando). Xiu Xiu didn't just listen to a couple of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada records and proceed to whine on top of his best approximation of them, he brought the window-cracking NOIZ and proceeded to whine and scream on top of three-dollar drum machines.

3. SFA -- Guerilla. I finally remembered to rewind from track 1 in order to hear the hidden track. It's a worthy prologue. Still a killer album. And as I lamented at the time, I remain exceedingly doubtful that they will ever top it. Short of one A++ single ("Juxtapozed With U", the pinnacle of their career, about which there are not enough words in the language nor hours in the day required to trumpet its greatness), they haven't come close.

4. System 7 -- s/t. A strong contender in the "early 90's techno album that hasn't dated well" sweepstakes. With The Orb, Hillage's guitar parts were far more remote in the mix. Like with all great dub, it would drift in and out, as if the guitar were just another sample. With S7, the guitar takes a prominent role, leaving us with guitar solo wankery plus a drum machine.

With a bit of post-production to freshen up the sound, "Strange Quotations" could probably be a radio hit today.

5. V/A -- LANding. (lots and lots of noise here)(Perhaps I'd say more about it if I could read the liner notes (in German)).