Honorable Mentions
b. Tim Hecker – Harmony in Ultraviolet.
The only non-rap new release I gave a shit about this year. The market for noisey, farty electronic music is small, but you’ll never stop hearing me tell people that it is the only other interesting genre of music going on today. Last year, the only albums I could honestly and fully praise would be ‘Most Known Unknown’ by Three-Six Mafia and ‘Multiples’ by Keith Fullerton Whitman. For me, Tim Hecker is the musician of this genre (‘glitch’ is a horrible descriptor) that I admire most. Perhaps, it’s simply because he’s a hoser and makes amazing non-kitschy albums consisting of Van Halen samples, but he seems to be the least pretentious of these artists and his music the least precious. Like Ghostface, Hecker’s music may mean too much to me to have an objective or conventional opinion. I think ‘Mirages’ and ‘My Love Is Rotten to the Core’ are his best albums, while most reviewers write-off ‘Mirages’ as “okay” and ‘My Love…’ as some kind of novelty record. ‘Radio Amor’ sounds too much like other albums of the genre (I’ve never heard ‘Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do it Again’), while the two I mentioned have this woozy, painkillers, brink-of-death-and-destruction feeling that makes it unlike most stuff I’ve heard in any genre.
I’m sounding like John Ruskin or somebody, but I think it is important that all art, especially music, contain this intangible sense of menace about it. For something to be great, it has to have this menace because that menace is the acknowledgement of death and if you’re not somehow addressing death, what the hell are you doing? Even when you’re partying it up, you better remember you’re going to fucking die one day. You’ll be dust and those jager-bombs won’t mean a thing. I can’t really articulate what menace sounds like, but I know it when I hear it. The Rolling Stones have it, the Beatles don’t. Philadelphia soul, especially the Thom Bell productions have it, while I don’t get that same feeling from Motown. Do you know that middle breakdown in Egyptian Lover’s ‘Egypt Egypt’, especially the extended version? That’s menace. Three-Six Mafia, everything they’ve done is nothing but menace, while Lil’ Jon is just twiddling his thumbs (or snapping his fingers…). Pharrell’s minimalism even at its goofiest, is full of menace, while Timbaland has no interest in such things. I could go on and on and it probably wouldn’t make any more sense, it’s just, that ‘Harmony in Ultraviolet’ does not have that menace, that sound of death within it. That’s okay, it’s still a good album but it doesn’t serve my sick, weird musical needs, so ‘Harmony in Ultraviolet’ only gets an ‘Honorable Mention’.
When I first heard ‘Harmony in Ultraviolet’ I commented to a friend that the album is “too good” or “too beautiful” and I still think that is true. Hecker removed the gimmicky aspect of his music, but a gimmick that I loved: the waves of static and talking. It put a thick fog over the music that made it much harder to penetrate and prevented anything from fully standing out. Instruments can actually be heard on the new album; the bassline in ‘Dungeoneering’ or the waves of electric guitar in ‘Whitecaps of White Noise I’ stand-out and this adds a precious aspect to the music, making it feel like post-rock or something equally sentimental. Hecker, on tracks like ‘Rainbow Blood’ (and ‘Blood Rainbow’) and ‘Harmony in Blue Pt. 2’ is moving towards having the kind of “transcendent” feeling that makes similar musicians like Belong or Phillip Jeck or even M83- mediocre or just plain crappy. I can see why Hecker would want to pull his music out of that fog, I’m sure some people considered it a crutch. Maybe he’s taken that sound as far as he can. I have no idea how Hecker makes his music, he may just send it through a single processor in some program and adds some radio static and it comes out sounding Hecker-like. I wouldn’t know and I wouldn’t care if it were that easy because it worked wonderfully. As I said before, the album is good, it just doesn’t satisfy my interest in Tim Hecker’s music. The album is impressive in its cohesion and consistency. Although that cohesion highlights some of my problems with ‘Harmony in Ultraviolet’ it also makes for a remarkably easy listen. The transition from ‘Palimpsest I’ to ‘Chimeras’ to ‘Dungeoneering’ feels nearly subliminal. It’s still worth listening, downloading, or purchasing.
‘Eleven Old Songs’ by Mt. Eerie was also very good. Kind-of like this parody or one-upping of that annoying Postal Service album. I don’t really have too much more to say about it though. It may have even come out in 05?
Reissues/Compilations from this Year:
-Arthur Russell – Another Thought
-Arthur Russell – First Thought, Best Thought
-Arthur Russell – Springfield
-Earth – Phase 3: Thrones & Dominions
-Earth – Pentastar: In the Style of Demons
-Sven Libaek – Innerspace: The Lost Film Music Of…
Most of the music I bought was not released this year, here’s stuff I just got around to hearing, a lot of it was records from Goodwills and stuff like that. I’m sure I’m lame for only just now hearing a lot of stuff on this list, so, fuck you.
-Bobby Caldwell – Cat in the Hat
-Bone Thugs-N-Harmony – E. 1999 Eternal
-Bronski Beat – Age of Consent
-Camel – Rain Dances
-Eightball & MJG – Comin’ Out Hard
-Henry Kaiser – It’s a Wonderful Life
-Jay Dee – Welcome 2 Detroit
-Jay Dee – Ruff Draft EP
-Keith Fullerton Whitman – Schoner Flussengel
-Merle Haggard – Mama Tried
-Modern Jazz Quartet – The Sheriff
-Roberta Flack – First Take
-Scott Walker – Climate of Hunter
-Spinners – Mighty Love
-Sun Ra – Solo Piano Vol. 1
-Tangerine Dream – Risky Business OST
-Thelonious Monk – It’s Monk’s Time
-Vangelis – China
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