Dec 8, 2008
Moka’s Top 10 Albums 2008
1. Paavoharju – Laulu Laakson Kukista (Fonal)
MP3: Ursulan Uni
Laulu Laakson Kukista feels like gazing into the global subconscious, like finding a damaged film reel filled with some of the most beautiful and mysterious images you’ve ever seen, while a silent frustration overcomes at all those cigarette burns and missing scenes. The story might not make any sense, but you cannot resist the urge of watching it unfold. This is what Paavoharju does best, weaving together all sort of disparate musical elements to make one loveably pastiche whole.
2. Jacaszek – Treny (Miasmah)
MP3: Walc
MP3: Powoli
Aided by a small string ensemble and inspired by a series of writings renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski wrote after the death of his three year-old daughter, Jacaszek has created in Treny one of the most gorgeous sounding albums I’ve heard in years. Despite the mournful nature of the poems which could suggest a dismal and wearisome experience, Treny is remarkably cohesive. Jacazsek’s adept sense of pacing and stark attention to detail, allows each of the album’s 11 tracks to unfold as if they were blossoming into a living, breathing entity. It’s easy to become deeply engaged with the sound, discovering new intricacies and small features in the music with each further listen. This is season fruit, one that grows best in cold weather and cabin fever.
3. Scott Tuma – Not For Nobody (Digitalis)
MP3: Tiktaalik
MP3: Rakes
On Not For Nobody, Tuma creates structureless pieces consisting mainly of acoustic guitar and then plays with the tape speed and pitch all over the album without ever sacrificing the pungent nostalgic sound that made his last albums so memorable. Ideas only stick around as long as they’re interesting, many times giving the feel of 3 different songs condensed into one, when it’s actually the same guitar figures continously evolving, falling off a cliff and coming back even more striking than they did before.
4. Shed – Shedding the Past (Ostgut Ton)
MP3: Estrange
My soundsystem is far from being perfect, speakers are blown and some of them are apart in construction by decades. Basically all I did was take every speaker from every stereo there was in my house and see what happened when assembled together. I’m telling you this because this was my favorite record to test my faulty soundsystem to. Shedding the past loves the speakers, it licks every sound with its steely-hued tongue and touches every corner of the room filled with glimmering vigor and energy. Not an inch is left unmoved. Shedding the past is a stud. You can tell my speakers loved him too.
5. Tape – Luminarium (Häpna)
MP3: Moth Wings
Tape’s blending of electronic and acoustic instruments are steeped in a consistency and elegance that only few artists can master. Luminarium sounds at many points weightless but it wraps around you like a warm blanket, making it my album of choice for the many sleepless nights I spent this year. This is a slumber-inducing album with a subtle erotic pulse and of course I say this with the utmost respect and adoration for their music. To paraphrase Brian Eno, sometimes falling asleep to an artist’s music can be the greatest compliment a listener can give.
6. Fleet Foxes – fleet foxes (Sub pop)
MP3: White Winter Hymnal
For me, this is all about the vocal harmonies, underpinned by slowly building melodies sometimes embellished by winds, strings and piano, these Fleet Foxes chant in a gorgeous mixture of southern baptist and sunshine pop choirs which seem to lift every sound around to a higher level. The production is unfortunately soaked in reverb in all the wrong places, but the overall product is so good on the ears that it is easy to overlook its minor flaws. One of the strongest and most refreshing debuts of the year.
7. Bruno Pronsato – Why can’t we be like us (Hello? Repeat)
MP3: At home I’m a tourist
In a genre mostly known for its mechanical precision and a desire to erase any traces of humanity, Bruno Pronsato’s unconventionaly erratic execution and his ability to give some undeniable psychedelic characteristic to the album’s production separates ‘Why can’t we be like us’ from the rest of its techno counterparts, achieving what many others aspire to, but ultimately fail at: creating an album that seeps into your subconscious with subtlety, but still leaves a lasting imprint.
8. Grouper – Dragging a dead dear up the hill (Type)
MP3: Travelling Through a Sea
MP3: Heavy Water / I’d rather be sleeping
After her previous album efforts which had a heavy emphasis on atmosphere and texture rather than on fully formed melodies, on ‘Dragging a Dead Deer’, Liz Harris reduces her style to a singular approach of layers of guitar and voice, finally allowing her songs to breathe and drown everything in sight with their unsettling melancholia, a testament to the power of simplicity in music. Listening to this record is a disorienting experience, like stuffing on barbiturates and attempting a 90 mile nocturnal drive on deer-crash season. You’re free to guess how that story ends.
9. Lykke Li – Youth Novels (LL)
MP3: Little Bit
In a year where I felt most of the mainstream pop became too cynical for its own good, Lykke Li was like a breath of fresh air. Ingeniously produced by Bjorn Yttling, the arrangements in every song on ‘youth novels’ are disarmingly minimal, all charmingly simple melodies and genuinely naïve lyrics that are hard to unglue from your brain. One of the most immediate and enjoyable albums of the year.
10. Zdzislaw Piernik & Piotr Zbrodzki – Namanga (Vivo)
MP3: Lekcja Chemii
MP3: Perły Przed Kruki
Perhaps it is because I don’t listen to enough jazz, but hearing Namanga for the first time was a bewildering experience for me. Piernik’s tuba slobbers and gurgles out of control like an epileptic alien form while the rest of the ensemble follows along in a commonly restrained and melancholic fashion, as if they were trying to calm this hyperactive creature down. At times menacing, at others playful, you can’t help but feel ambivalently confused and amazed at all of the different emotions Namanga keeps bringing up and down in such a short time span.
See also:
Moka’s top 12 albums 2007
Bubbachups’ top 10 albums 2007
Moka’s top 12 albums 2006
Bubbachups’ top 10 albums 2006
Moka’s top 5 albums 2005
Already!
Sure are stocking our stuffings…er, stuffing our stockings early this year, Moka!
Thank you again for all the effort you and the rest of MdM spend with every post.
Here’s calling for another drive or whatever fund raiser–I would like to donate/support you guys in some way.
Best,
alexuser
fleet foxes is heaven, as paavoharju…
and lyyke li live is an unforgettable experience!!
Zdzislaw Piernik is a very interesting discovery.
by the way, did you try these ones :
- dm stith
- micachu and the shapes
- the magic ID
- food for animals
- yximalloo (unpop)
these are my favourites so far for 2008
I haven’t listened to any of these yet, but I’m sure they are wonderful. Every year I make a mixtape with your top ten to listen while driving, and it just stays there for weeks and weeks, can’t take it out. There’s always such great discoveries of great and fresh songs. I’m sure this one will have the same fate as I’ll burn it today.
So, yeah, I would really like to thank you so much.
Wow, two polish albums on the top ten list! Learning about music from your own country from a foreign blog. You gotta love the internet.
Wow, what a treat. Thanks so much for assembling this list (and linking to past ones).
Wow. Intrigueing list even by MDM’s standards. After one listen I’ve already ordered the Shed and Jacaszek albums.
Thanks so much for an inspiring site.
First list that has some from my list of 12 on it (Jacaszeck, Grouper, Fleet Foxes, Paavohraju, Scott Tuma). Mine has a few more indie rockers (Department of Eagles, Chad VanGaalen, The Foals), a little Mount Eerie, Peter Broderick, and some Dubstep (Nomad, Benga). Great list though…can’t wait to listen to the few new ones.
Thanks for your work this year – I really enjoyed your blog!
Yeah ! Paavoharju !
paavoharju is amazing, thank you! it sounds like a grownup cocorosie broadcasting from the inside of a puddle…maybe an oil slick puddle. pretty cool.
What a christmas gift of taste.
I love this blog – it helps me find music that I wouldn’t have been able to find othewise.
All excellent stuff!
Fantastic stuff, your blog has been a musical blessing this last year for me…
Moka,
I agree with you wholeheartedly on your no. 1 pick.
Paavoharju is mind altering.
Thank you everybody for the kind comments. Very glad to see there’s many Paavoharju enthusiasts amongst the visitor’s to this little corner on the net. I would recommend also checking out Joose Keskitalo’s album from which I posted one track some months ago, he is a frequent guest on Paavoharju’s records and I think it might be just up your alley.
I would love to read any recommendations on the records you think I might have missed this year.
David: I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t listened to any of the records you mention, I know squashed has posted some DM stith in the past and I loved that song so I have to check that out with the rest of the albums you recommend. I’m throwing DM Stith a line this week with the intention of having him do a guest post over here since I’ve seen him wandering around the motel’s rooms every now and then and he seems pretty well-versed on music.
I was definitely enticed by your selections, considering your aural eclecticism
and your posts which are always interesting…
I thought for certain that All India Radio’s latest offering would make your grade but alas I was mistaken…
It is definitely in my top 10 and you turned me on to their existence, so thank-you for that, among countless others I have discovered because of your blog…
I am also enamoured with almost every cut from the free 2 disk set by The Pretty Lights…
Check it out if you haven’t already?
http://www.prettylightsmusic.com
Happiest of Holidays and stay up on the rise!
L/V
[...] Shed Titolo: Estrange Links: PLAY & DOWNLOAD Credits: Motel De Moka Pubblicato da pullinpulse Archiviato in Musica Contrassegnato da tag: Giacomo De Poli, motel de [...]
i just really wanted to say thank you for everything you guys have posted. without this blog i really wouldnt have even discovered a quarter of the music that i find on here.
if there is anything i can do to help, just hollaaaaa
thank you motel de moka, and happy holidays!
Recommendation: Umalali: The Garifuna Women’s Collective
http://www.cumbancha.com/albums/umalali
Great list, Moka! Several of these are among my favourites too and I’m enjoying the songs you posted from the albums I didn’t know yet. I have to admit though, I feel stupid for still not having picked up those Paavoharju and Jacaszek albums. They have been recommended to me over and over again but somehow they never found their way to my stereo. Not having been able to listen to too much music for the last couple of months didn’t help much either. I will try to make my year-end list next weekend, there is at least one album that our lists will have in common.
Also, couldn’t help but notice the wonderful job you did on the album artwork and fonts! Looks very good.
thanks!
Wow, what a magnificent list. Most of these artists are completely new to me. It’s like Christmas morning. Thank’ee.
beautiful as usual, moka. your list is always one of my favorites, and i’m excited to listen to some of these choices for the first time. your words perfectly articulate what i love about the paavoharju album.
During the 2008 I liked the most:
- Crimewave, by Crystal Castles
- LP8, by Ratatat
- Good Arrows, by Tunng
And the “Kings of leon”?….
Thank you for the recommendations, I’ll be using some of these on future playlists.
Bubba: Well I just followed the format of your past year-end list because I find it very attractive, it’s actually your idea not mine ;) I await eagerly to read your list if you decide to make one this year, I always find out about some great records I missed with yours. I also love the contrast between your taste and mine, think this will be the first year we share one album in common on our lists.
Jungle: I didn’t consider any of those you mention because I didn’t find the albums to be very good as a whole but if I made some sort of 50 favourite songs of the year, it’s very likely yhat ‘mirando’ and ‘crimewave’ would end up high in there.
Crimewave is the first album of Crystal Castles and their myspace has more then 9.838.295 of visualizations, more then 5.000.000 of listenings of their most popular song…
concisa, exquisita y visualmente preciosa :) coincido totalmente con Paavoharju…yo estoy enamorada de Kevätrumpu
Fleet Foxes is the revelation of the year 2008. Their sound has managed to step aside from the so called ‘trend’. And what they did is something wonderful. I discovered their music by reading an article in Die Zeit. If I didn’t know that their album was launched in 2008 and was asked to name a year for this band, I’d say something around the ’70. Yet, they are not oldies. They sound very well for our century. :)
ecléctica y concisa. shed, pronsato y lykke li son también de lo que encabeza mi lista este fin de año. el trabajo de lykke li me recuerda a ratos a anja garbarek, cuestión geográfica según yo. de shed y prensato, como diria van der rhoe: less is more… por cierto, aquí bien hubiera cabido mencionar (en tu lista) el recomposed que carl craig y moritz von oswald hicieron del trabajo de ravel para la deutsche grammophon. en fin, ¡saludos y abrazos decembrinos!
[...] Bubbachups Top 10 on Motel de Moka (Birchville Cat Motel, Sun Kil Moon,Scott Tuma), also Moka’s Top 10 (Paavoharju, Jacaszek, [...]
[...] also : Almost Elegant No.4c – 2007, Moka’s Top 10 Albums 2008, Bubbachups top 10 albums [...]
Hello David
Thanks!
David?
There comes a moment – in time – that you have to leave the pigeons.. just to find a place more interesting and far from the ordinary. And here I am – or the eagle has landed – down in the middle of something strange but yet so familiar. I look around and think: “This is exactly what I had in mind”
I’ve been listening to ambient music for many years now and as a result of that I became more interested in artists from the upper north (Scandinavia I mean) rather then to go south. Paavo harju’s track ursulan uni (Finland I suppose) is a nice cup of coffee! Put it on my personal explicit and – last but not least – arctic playlist now.