2007 in music.

it’s time for the obligatory top ten! there was a lot to choose from this year, but i’ve picked the records that somehow really stood out.

10. Stars of the Lid – … And Their Refinement of the Decline

i have a soft spot for electronic classical music, or contemporary classical music, or whatever you want to call it. the stars of the lid are probably the best band working in this minimalistic, chilly genre right now, and it had been six years since the tired sounds of stars of the lid… but their breathless, airy compositions with exactly the right drones at the right time still sound blissful and pregnant with meaning, and that’s all this blogger asked for. more organic than their previous work though – more lamonte young than delia derbyshire. which isn’t at all a bad thing either.

 

 

09. Studio – Yearbook One

studio are a swedish duo. their music is an unlikely combination of krautrock, balearic trance circa 1988 and pet shop boys-ish synthpop. that might sound a bit repelling and too scene for its own good (like, the kind of music scene people wearing couture that looks like thriftstore gear listen to in lounge bars or wherever hipsters go to die), but yearbook one is actually really good. i challenge you to listen to ‘radio edit’ or ‘no comply’ without feeling the desire for a royal serving of ecstasy.

 

 

08. M.I.A. – Kala

some people say music shouldn’t be political. m.i.a., everybody’s favourite tamil tiger, would probably bang their heads against a wall. hiphop infused with the modern lovers, new order, the clash and with aboriginal children on the mic is fine with me, and even if you would want to block the political messages (which i happen to agree with) out, there’d be a hell of a listenable dance record left. and it’s good to know an AK-47 is $20 in most of africa these days, not to mention the fact that she’s out for your money, and she’ll shoot you for it (i’d shoot you if you were a capitalist, stock exchange-crawling parasite and take your money, too, hypothetically speaking).

 

07. Electrelane – No Shouts, No Calls

every once in a while some major label pundit crawls out from under his rock and screams the album format is dead. if they just listened to no shouts, no calls, they’d know this is definitely not the case. electrelane’s specialty is the kind of stereolabby kraut-pop one gets obsessed with before he knows it even happened. this is probably the most cohesive album of the year: 11 concise, pretty songs that break your heart and spin your world around.

 

 

06. Deerhoof – Friend Opportunity

i got into deerhoof with friend opportunity, way back when in 2005 (haha). if that album was a noiserock assault on the senses, friend opportunity is its crazy cousin who lives in a nepali ashram and claims she’s in contact with the cosmic entities after she’s sniffed a gallon’s worth of diesel fumes. on this little objet d’art, deerhoof switch from noisy guitars to menacing tropicalia to japanese synthpop every two minutes or so. ready your ritalin and off we stride!

 

 

 

05. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver

yeah well, if you haven’t heard this album chances are you’ve been in a particularly nasty coma for the better part of 2007. to sum it up shortly, james murphy expands on his eponymous debut’s chunky dance-rock, coming off like this generation’s eno or kraftwerk in the process, and well, it’s a really good album. that port-a-cath does look nasty, dear, you should go download ’someone great’ and rest for a little while, maybe.

 

 

 

04. Caribou – Andorra

dan snaith, aka caribou, has spent most of his career synthesizing sixties psychedelia, latter-day folktronica and 70s drugscapes. on andorra, his fourth album, he somehow permutates sixties sunshine pop, creating a little universe of songs about girls with grannies’ names, sometimes steve reich-ian, sometimes droning, sometimes jarring, at times very ornate and chocked up with strings – andorra is like a bonbon box full of yummy chocolate, there simply isn’t room for even one more heavenly sighed word, drone, or found sound, and it’s just so… satisfying to listen to.

 

 

03. of Montreal – Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

kevin barnes, of montreal’s only real member, had hit a bad patch when recording this little gem. his wife had ran off, leaving him snowed in in norway, in the grip of a bad chemical depression, which in turn spawned hissing fauna. i’ve rarely heard a more accurate expression of serious depression – yes, it sounds glammy, but isn’t glamour the saddest things at times? and yes, it’s bouncy, but if you were on ten tabs of lithium a day, you’d be hopping around like a kangaroo too, trust me. hissing fauna is both catchy and sad, hopeful and desperate. the irony of it all is that this record seems to have been of montreal’s big commercial break – but then kevin and nina are back together and both way happier than they were.

 

02. Panda Bear – Person Pitch

disclaimer: i really loathe animal collective and wouldn’t call it music (all i have to say about animal collective is: fuck off, americans, get a job). i consequently didn’t think panda bear’s solo stuff would be any good, but it is. person pitch sounds like a protools collage of the tribal chants of a long-lost country, the best in acoustic developments this century, and delicious warbly organ drones. it’s a thing of beauty, and i’m addicted to it… but animal collective are still wankers.

 

 

 

01. The Fiery Furnaces – Widow City

the fiery furnaces have always been a tricky band, to say the least. they seem to be stuck in a cyclical movement between awesomeness (blueberry boat!) and complete suckiness (their opus about, and sung by, their late grandmother olga saranthos. it has to be heard to be believed). widow city finds them back in greatness-mode: it’s a 70s-inspired classic rock story about being carried off to decorate bordellos, dancing naked for the sultan of medina sidonia, the hieroglyph for french canal boat, feeling really lonely, inventing ‘the emergency cigarette behind glass’, cairo, demonic husbands with mistresses, the duplexes of the dead, a murderous grand jury, and doormats with nautical prints. oh yeah, the music is quite brilliant too – menacing, sexy math rock grooves, contradictory as that might seem. this is an album that makes me feel like somebody, something not many albums could possibly pull off.

merci, les friedberger.

Not quite there, but really pretty close, really:

a couple of records that are not on this list but almost, almost were: blonde redhead’s 23,  scout niblett’s this fool can die now, the field’s from here we go sublime, matthew dear’s asa breed and chromatics’ night drive (iv).

The Worst of 2007, at least the worst of the so-called good:

animal collective (!!!!!), beirut (!!!!!), justice (!!!!!!), architecture in helsinki, a place to bury strangers, midnight juggernauts, and the worst record i’ve heard for as long as i can remember: white williams. it’s so bad it gets… well, it doesn’t get good, but it makes you want to introduce mr. ‘white williams’ to the dutch euthanasia procedure. worse than yoko ono, worse than bob dylan when he went christian, worse than animal collective, even.

porno.

watching ‘emmanuelle’ movies slumped on the couch with my mum on boring sunday nights is one of the things i associate with my youth. growing up on a diet of seventies soft-porn may not be pedagogically correct, but it certainly helped.

when i went to france last summer, we watched lots of long, boring french movies with the neighbours, sat out on the terrace and drank litres of alcohol. on one particular occasion i drank a whole bottle of awful cheap caramel vodka with neighbouring Nurse Marie, while we were yelping about our unsatisfying lives. saying goodbye to these people i have always known, and care about, felt like saying goodbye to a still rather innocent phase of my life.

however, the night before i left was particularly crazy. i sat out on the community bench, chainsmoking, looking over the purply evening ridges and watching my last day (for a while at least, i’m not getting all that dramatic) in the village i love so much come to an end. i was also listening to the magnetic fields and crying my eyes out.

then something peculiar happened. out of nowhere, jackie and richard, the british hippie couple, pulled over in their car, and we all cried, embraced each other, and said it was going to be… well, ok. things certainly aren’t ok right now, but they were right about one thing: i’m older, and it’s an experience.

village + villagers, i think of you.

in the morning in the window.

when i had my masterplan for escaping belgium all figured out, i only needed a few more things. one of them was an indecent amount of luck, and the other the help of louise, ex-scholarship recipient. i tricked her into helping me by playing the ‘good friend + physical attraction’ part, which was risky but paid off well: she filled out all the forms i needed.

i was moderately grateful and concentrated on not going to class and bitching about belgium. hanging out with friends and fundraising were other major problems: i didn’t want to come back to europe and find everybody estranged. while i was jumping the hurdles of my sophomore year, smoking pot, listening to stereolab and reading ayn rand, i somehow managed to get a five year scholarship off the taiwanese government, which was definitely more than one could hope for. i was ready to go, after a short and money-consuming holiday. (well short, five weeks is short for me.)

jeez louise.

this louise character was kind of exuberant: the stereotypical dirty indie girl, with clumsily dyed hair and weird clothes that looked like they came straight from oxfam. now that’s exactly the kind of girl i happen to like, so i decided to socialise with her. well, she was easy to get along with. she was always stoned, maybe that has something to do with it. a typical conversation with louise would be like this:

‘hey louise, what’s up?’

‘hey simon, i smoke too much pot.’

‘yes, you better slow down before you’re underground!’

‘it’s because of taiwan.’

‘oh really?’

‘taiwan is the ibiza of asia. gay people are very hip there. urban cityscapes like that movie bladerunner. blah blah blah.’

my interest was immediately sparked. i imposed my presence on her (’shall we do some calligraphy together?’) to get to know more about the scholarship that got her to taiwan. i SO wanted to get out of that small and incestuous, clinically dead circle of east asian languages students (and academics).

anecdote: i had actually gone out with my classmates, one long, boring evening. first they watched a boring chinese movie, then they went to a bar next to the faculty to sip ice tea and exchange gossip about classmates, and then they went to sleep at 11. i felt rather angelic and nice because of all the meth, but i’d rather locked myself up at home with brooke, ridge, an iris murdoch novel and a big shotgun. it was clearly time to get out of that dusty place.

louise would be my pathway to liberty. ha. well, she got me the scholarship, all right. i’m extremely lazy and have no patience at all for filling up forms. also, the required hiv test scared me (not that i had any good reason to be scared… i’m not that stupid.), so she went along to the clinic with me etc. the problem with her was…

that she was lying and had a huge grudge against taiwan. and apparently against me. being in taiwan for a year had been her saison d’enfer, dark night of the soul, you name it. i’ll elaborate later – when i saw my illusions collapse in face of em, reality.

autumn oh-five.

i decided to go live in the college town in september 2005. i settled on the worst-looking place there was available: stalinist soviet structures didn’t come worse-looking than this. actually, it was a sixties-early seventies experimental housing unit that was poised to be torn down some years after its completion, BUT the funds lacked, so they just decided to keep it open as a housing facility, and watch it desintegrate merrily. ah, the belgian ways of doing things.

my first contact with my roommates brooke and ridge wasn’t so good. i walked through the dark cold war-style corridor when i saw two ghastly figures (one tall, one short) emerging from the emm… fog. one turned out to be a girl in a tartan skirt, and the other one a girl wrapped in what seemed to be a tablecloth. it quickly turned out to be a tablecloth, when they gathered around me and asked if i had a safety pin.

well, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but everything turned for the better. short brooke was an avid music fan, and a sneering, bitter intellectual on top of that. (give her a bottle of vodka and she’ll start to cry & lock herself up in the bathroom.) tall ridge was an avid eh… seducer of men. of course that didn’t always work out as planned. (give her a bottle of vodka and she’ll climb over the bathroom door to rescue brooke from her alcohol-fueled oblivion, then she’ll start to cry & hide under her bed.)

so we were stuck in our respective situations, but at least we were stuck together. decadent evenings with chloe helped as well: lots of cannabis, phil collins, kevin blechdom, chocolate brownies, and the more explicit peaches lyrics available. schoolwise, everything was just as bad as it’d ever be, since all the nice kids had flunked big time, and those who were left with me were about as exciting as Ambien 500. (of course there were some good people. i shan’t generalise. nooooooo)

well, something had to give, and it certainly wasn’t me. and this is where, deus ex machina-like, ‘louise’ stumbled into our classroom. probably wearing something purply and made out of cheesecloth.

let’s make love and listen to death from above…

…is the best song of this year. anyway, the rest of that first bachelor year was boring. nikita cracked down and didn’t do her exams (much to the dismay of her ‘friend’, ‘mrs. thatcher the wet dog’, an ignorant bitch if there ever was one), and nicoline vanished, because she was afraid of the slightly chubby, very gay, 45 y.o. chinese teacher (he was caucasian. how is that possible?).

so i was left to my own devices, weren’t it for chloe and chacha, my next and somewhat more faithful sidekicks. everything slipped by unnoticed really: ‘maggie thatcher’’s pathetic stabs at intellectual superiority – i always preferred physical superiority anyway – and my eventful relationship with the jap boy, which would end in a rather regretful scene that august (2005).

i went to france for a couple of months, and had long and engaging conversations with my parents’ friends: the greek writer and his consort, the art gallery owners dancing to disco versions of cuban revolutionary anthems, the british hippie couple with an austin morris from the seventies, etc. i love them, and they’re wonderful freaks. now, things really should start to get interesting.

autumn oh-four.

when i started learning chinese, my whole world caved in around me. speaking seemed to be easy enough (if you could live with the fact that nobody would ever understand you), but writing was a herculean task. fortunately there were some nice people around, including nikita and ‘nicoline’, my faithful sidekicks during the first term, and ‘the teddybear’, a cute, slightly older boy with long, fluffy blonde hair. he’d turn out to be something to stare at when i was high on meth and ostentatively not paying attention to the chinese history class. (don’t ask me anything about the 1911 xinhai uprising, but i know everything about the way he smiles.)

so in short, i had a crush, enough drugs and two faithful sidekicks. nicoline was extremely nice. her goody-goody looks concealed an endless ability to lure boys into liaisons (we had a plan a and a plan b, and neither worked out, of course). she wasn’t reluctant to join me for ‘alternative economy class’: drinking vodka and wallowing about how we should’ve been in class etc.

now for the drugs. how did i get them? well, they were provided to me by a cute japanese boy i got to know during that first term, and whom i’d start a relationship with shortly afterwards. it was the only thing that got me through really, most of those university students were about as interesting as frances farmer (if you’ve seen that movie ‘the frances farmer story’). of course he was an absolutely awful person, and seven years older than me, but i’m kind of into that stuff.

hello.

haha so this appears to be my first post. so anyway. i was born in 1987, in a small-time city, grew up in an even smaller-time town and in an isolated place somewhere in southern france, where i learned how to absorb huge quantities of alcohol, read every book i could get my hands on, and developed a good taste for music and clothes… rather gradually. you wouldn’t want to know me as i was in 2000, unless you love psycho nerds.

when i had to go to uni, i had no idea what to choose, it all semt boring as hell. anyway, i decided to learn chinese, which was boring as hell, but i met some people who would become the best friends one could ask for, and one person that proved to be a decisive influence… and the reason why i’m typing this here, in taipei. bear with me while i start my epic story, in a belgian college town, in the autumn of 2004.