Dec 23, 2006
Bubbachups’ Top 10 albums 2006
1. OM – Conference of the Birds (Holy Mountain)
MP3: At Giza
The most consistently overwhelming record I’ve heard this year. With just the rhythm section of Chris Hakius on drums and Al Cisneros on bass this album takes you on a sonic journey of epic proportions. The gradually evolving patterns of bass and drum and the almost hypnotic chants of Al Cisneros leave you in a state of transcendence. A truly remarkable album which is astonishingly consistent throughout and never gets out of focus. Also this constant image, portrayed through both tracks is perfectly reflected by the marvellous artwork.
2. Paul Flaherty & Chris Corsano – The Beloved Music (Family Vineyard)
MP3: The Great Pine Tar Scandal
I was once asked by someone if this music could really be liked. Can you still describe this music as being attractive or even beautiful? Well, to me this is pretty much everything that music can give me. It’s raw and dirty, energetic and exuberant, full of passion and curiosity. This album gives me superhero powers as well as Zen like peace. That’s everything I could ever ask from music. So why should I care whether you can describe this music as being pretty? The powerful saxophone playing by Paul Flaherty and the rambunctious drumming by Chris Corsano make for a spectacular album which gave me the final push into free-jazz.
3. Charalambides – A Vintage Burden (Kranky)
MP3: Two Birds
Tom and Christina Carter have been responsible for some of the most interesting contributions to contemporary, psychedelic folk music. Far away from the current folk excitement they have been perfecting their own style through some amazing records. “A Vintage Burden” feels like the pinnacle of their development. The beautiful voice of Christina Carter and spectacular, yet introverted guitar playing of both create a cosmic as well as intimate album. It even surpasses my all-time favourite Charalambides album “Our Bed is Green”.
4. Joanna Newsom – Ys (Drag City)
MP3: Emily
You can’t write or speak about music in 2006 without mentioning Joanna Newsom. Such an ambitious and outspoken album is bound to raise discussion. For me, there is no doubt that this is one of the most advanced and sophisticated albums of the last couple of years that has the ability to appeal to a larger audience. Helped by a stellar crew she has made a record which not only defines the current “free-folk” movement but also takes it to another level. A level where the “free-folk” label is no longer suitable. A remarkable performance by such a young lady.
5. Sabir Mateen/Daniel Carter/Andrew Barker – Not on Earth…. In Your Soul! (Qbico)
MP3: In Your Soul!
The Italian label Qbico is always full of surprises and rarely fails to impress. With this LP we are treated with one of the most inspiring and energetic free-jazz performances of the year. The amazing drumming by Andrew Barker, the back and forth action between the two horn players and the chanted vocals make for an exhilarating and ecstatic experience. Also great about the label is their use of artwork. This one in particular is breathtaking. The musicians are captured in a moment which perfectly reflects their joyful and energetic playing.
6. Valley of Ashes – Cavehill Hunters’ Attrition (Blackvelvetfuckere)
MP3: Cavehill Hunters Magickian and a Clock of Spoons
This monumental 3LP record from the Louisville, KY collective “Valley of Ashes” was a surprise to say the least. This free rock collective (amongst them is Pete Nolan from Magik Markers, GHQ and many others) shows the ability to embrace many different styles and shape them into a strong collection of more than two hours of jams. Sweeping violins, distorted vocals, rumbling percussion and heavy electric guitars. Its all there and in a remarkably convincing manner.
7. Galbraith/Neilson/Youngs – Belsayer Time (Time-Lag)
MP3: Belsayer Time
What could you expect when such great names get together? Especially when the record is released by what is one of the most exciting labels around today. This is a beautiful dream-like album, multi-layered with droning electronics, free percussion and soaring vocals full of echoes. The title-track is exhilarating on its own, but feels like heaven when heard within the context of the entire album.
8. Boris & The Saltlicks – Cactusman Versus the Blue Demon (Frogville)
MP3: Gloriously Tangled
Not much exciting to hear in the Americana genre the last year. Luckily Boris McCutcheon & the Saltlicks are a fine exception from that downhill trend. They have delivered one of the most accomplished and sophisticated albums of the genre of the last couple of years. Boris McCutcheon has proven before what an amazing songwriter he is, but on this record he has found himself in a shape where he seems to be able to do everything right. I’ve had the privilege to see them perform twice last year and both times were nothing short of amazing.
9. Paul Labrecque & Valerie Webb – Trees, Chants and Hollers (Eclipse)
MP3: Many Horses Ride
Paul Labrecque & Valerie Webb were the happy couple around which the “Wedlock” album by Sunburned Hand of the Man was centred. Unfortunately they have already separated which adds a strange feeling to when listening to that record. Luckily enough we are treated this year with the recordings of both from a time when they were still happily married. A breathtaking album that recalls a chilly night on the American farmlands. Beautiful, yet icy folk songs with sparse banjo playing and careful drones.
10. Hisato Higuchi – Dialogue (Family Vineyard)
MP3: Manazashi No_Saki E
Barely more than a whisper. Frequently recalling the work of Loren MazzaCane Connors, yet Hisato Higuchi manages to form his own unique style of meditative blues. The former puppeteer from Tokio gives us one of the most touching albums of the year with his hushed vocals and intoxicating guitar playing. A beautiful album of which The Wire appropriately wrote: “These songs could be the whispers of lovers, the reassurances of parents to sleeping children, the prayers of the lost and lonely, or the tremulous breaths of the finally redeemed.”
And my year-end list is completed with the following records:
11. Comets on Fire – Avatar
12. Six Organs of Admittance – The Sun Awakens
13. Chris Corsano & Ben Chasny / Paul Metzger – Split LP
14. Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno – Starless and Bible Black Sabbath
15. Matt Valentine/Erika Elder/Alex Neilson/Moses Jiggs – Qbico 40
16. James Blackshaw – O True Believers
17. Tim Hecker – Harmony in Ultraviolet
18. Raccoo-oo-oon – Mythos Folkways Vol. No. 1
19. Centro-Matic – Fort Recovery
20. Jóhann Jóhannsson – IBM 1401 A Users Manual
21. Espers – II
22. Agitated Radio Pilot – Your Turn to Go It Alone
23. Wooden Wand & The Sky High Band – Second Attention
24. Good Stuff House – Good Stuff House
25. Cursillistas – Thrush Chimes in the Field Haunt
ahhhhhhhhhhhh…
no not Joana Newsom. lol.
okay now I have to tell.
“The End and the Beginning” list I previously post.
http://www.moteldemoka.com/2006/12/20/then-end-and-the-beginning/
Is really a refutation why “Y’s” is a lousy album. PARTICULARLY Emily.
(track 1 and 2, are example of similarly length track with much more solid composition idea)
the rest are various recording quality, the use of strings, sung poem, etc.
tavener for eg. is an example how a simple solo with melody can sustain entire composition without the need of elaborate lyrics that tells story. Tavener tells even bigger story than suicide…
–
okay I am done with my rant. :D
nice list. Charambalides is definitely noteworthy.
Lol, amusing to read your strong feelings against Joanna Newsom. :-)
About the Tavener track you mention, it is an amazing piece indeed, thank you for posting. And to answer your question from that post, it certainly isn’t too minimal for my taste. I would love to hear more where that came from. But I don’t think it’s very realistic to compare it with Joanna Newsom. Both are just entirely different. Especially compared to Tavener, Joanna Newsom makes pop music. It’s no use of comparing. I like both very much, but Tavener is not a 2006 release is it, so I can’t put it in my list. ;-)
I think what really gets me about Newsom’s song are the string section. They are terrible, excessive ornamentation and utterly unnecesary. In some section the strings are electronically tweaked. The acoustic is not natural. At least it really doesn’t sound like any string section I know.
About Tavener. That end/beginning list are not about 2006 releases. It’s just a theme, a loose sound essay. I only know one recording of “The protecting Veil”, Virgin 1992.
[...] * Bubbachops’ New Year List for 2006 on Motel de Moka. Varied list, haven’t heard most of these at all. (apart from Charalambides and Hisato Higuchi). Thanks! [...]
Nice list! two of these were on my top 20 of the year too (Om, Hisato Higuchi) most of them never heard and very curious about them. Loved the acid mothers temple pick on 14.
I still don’t know about Joanna Newsom, for me she’s a disgust I’d learned to court, I think Bubbachups makes a good point telling you can’t write or speak about music this year without Newsom. Said the gramophone threw a link one post ago to “the church of me” which articulates pretty well sean’s (and also my) ambivalent thoughts on Joanna Newsom:
“There are two records which may prove the most problematic of 2006. The first is the second Joanna Newsom album, which artefact is possibly the most critically overrated record since the second Pogues album. It is not entirely clear why this should be. Ms Newsom’s individual vocal stylings may be an ungainly bedspring coupling of Blossom Dearie massaging Kristin Hersh, but then so were those of the late Karen Dalton, so why should the latter move me and the former leave me cold, bored and knowingly bemused? On “Sawdust & Diamonds,” where she is left alone with her harp, the systems music/folk fusion, like Bert Jansch playing Terry Riley, is momentarily arresting, if only momentarily. And better a “burro, buck and bray songs of long face” than whatever friable garbage Chamillionaire or Cassie might ejaculate.
But nothing on Ys goes beyond that “momentarily.” Presumably Van Dyke Parks and his strings were drafted in to avoid aural monotony – no Ravi Shankar or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, she – but they actually make the end result a more bowdlerised spectacle. This is not necessarily Parks’ fault, since you can quickly tell that he has worked long and hard to complement and augment Newsom’s music. The danger of his arrangements overriding, or undermining, the music, however, would not be so urgent if he had stronger base material to work with; about three minutes into “Emily,” it’s clear that Newsom’s monomaniacal minimalism isn’t offering Parks the same level of harmonic or emotional challenge that Brian Wilson, or Parks himself (Song Cycle, Discover America), is able to furnish. Although there is a quite sublime moment towards the end of “Emily” where the strings atomise into intimate knitting needles around Newsom’s microsyllables, we never get the feeling of true interaction that we do from, say, Larry Fallon’s string charts for Astral Weeks; although the latter was most likely dubbed on after the event, it doesn’t feel as such, the strings acting as one improvising instrument, echoing and responding to Morrison’s musing. But then on Astral Weeks, Morrison had the benefit of a skilled improvising group – Richard Davis, Connie Kay, Jay Berliner et al – able to react immediately, both musically and emotionally. Although numerous other musicians wander in and out of Ys, there is not a feeling of a group playing; no one seems capable of stepping out of the set mould, or resetting it.
Furthermore, the music’s unwarranted contentment and indolent (as opposed to mild-altering) repetition can only reflect paucity of content. Stand in front of Patti Smith’s “Land” where the music, from Lenny Kaye’s opening dripping faucet onwards, walks, runs, swims and flies with Patti’s words every single second. You are witnessing a band in the process of creating something. Whereas the songs of Ys seem cast in unarguable concrete. Astral Weeks’ astonishing spirituality arises out of songs about frustrated paedophiles and ageing transvestites. But what do we have in Ys? Bland, yea-saying, non-committal odes to sisters, love found, lost or suspended. She recites “I’ll sleep through the rest of my days” as though reading the side of a cereal packet; compare with the melting, wordless, extended “mm-mm-mmm”s of Emily Haines on “Winning.” The “dance my darling” sequence in “Monkey & Bear” plays with words, whereas the Van Morrison who could stretch the word “eye” out to thirteen syllables inhabits his words.
Throughout Ys there is no sense of meaningful development, discovery or real invention; its sub-Northangerland homilies could theoretically appear in any order; each of the five treatises – they are hardly songs – sounds the same.
We can’t really blame Newsom either; a privileged play-actress, possibly, but precisely the same could be said of Gillian Welch – and it is when Ys is set next to Time (The Revelator), a record which superficially deploys similar minimalist intent, that its pallidity becomes more sorely apparent. Welch stretches out every note and word with such skill and vision that her root material evolves into something completely new and genuinely unprecedented, yet still with its own immaculate structural logic and symmetry. The difference? You end up counting the minutes until “Cosmia” splutters to its uneventful halt, whereas you want “I Dream A Highway” to run forever.”
The full article can be read here: http://cookham.blogspot.com/2006_12_03_cookham_archive.html#116530910154363435
I really can’t understand a thing he is saying.
… to me Y’s is not listenable. It just doesn’t feel like music. It’s broken. It leaves me bewildered and unable to grasp what is the point of her project. I like her first album a lot, the minimal instrumentation, thick harp sound in contrast to her squawking voice. It’s charming and a great work. Y’s on the other hand sounds very amateurish.
This album is dubious. She is in way over her head, as if she is trying to prove that she can do large, elaborate arrangement, which she fail to achieve.
It just doesn’t have the magnetism of the first album. Stong lyrics of charming poem over harp.
Y’s is just a failed chamber composition with rambling poems. She should play all her music in 3 minutes, then stop to recites her poem.
btw. I love OM, Sabir Mateen and Hisato.
amazing list bubbachups! i feel specially happy to see there valerie webb & paul labrecque, so unique and lovely album. and happy too to see an album that i didn’t know: Sabir Mateen/Daniel Carter/Andrew Barker – Not on Earth…. In Your Soul! . i love to discover new music…so thanks a lot.
by the way i’m trying to find that qbico album and it’s impossible, i can’t find it in soulsee. i love the song ‘in your soul!’. impresionante :)
Thanks Ana! I’m glad you like The Sabir Mateen album, it’s really good, very overwhelming!
I don’t know if there are mp3s available yet for this album as I don’t use programs like soulseek. I recorded this track from vinyl. I’m lucky that my local record shop always puts Qbico releases in stock, that’s how I discovered this album.
There are only two tracks, both a little longer than 15 minutes. You can hear a small piece of the first track on the Qbico website. It takes a while before the first track gets going but soon enough Andrew Barker gets into the rhythm and it’s a really sweet ride from there. :-)
[...] Last year’s album “Not on Earth… In Your Soul!” by Sabir Mateen, Daniel Carter and Andrew Barker on the Italian Qbico label was a huge revelation for me and ended up in fifth place in my top 10 list. It was their energetic playing that made it one of the most inspiring and exhilarating albums of 2006. You cannot help but being impressed when listening to this album. [...]
[...] See also: Moka’s top 12 albums 2007 2007 so far Largehearted boy’s 2007 year-end music lists Moka’s top 12 albums 2006 Bubbachups top 10 albums 2006 Moka’s top 5 albums 2005 [...]
[...] You also may well remember Sabir Mateen and Daniel Carter’s Not on Earth…In Your Soul! from my 2006 year-end list. In the same batch of jazz records that the Italian Qbico label released that month was Faruq Z. [...]
[...] so far Largehearted boy’s 2007 year-end music lists Moka’s top 12 albums 2006 Bubbachups top 10 albums 2006 Moka’s top 5 albums 2005 Posted by Moka in Acoustic, Motel de Moka [...]