From: Geoff Stahl <geoffs-NOSPAM@CAM.ORG>
To: <dougo@ccs.neu.edu>
Subject: Year End roundup
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 20:14:21 -0500

Here's my top ten (plus) list for this year, in random order:

Dump: A Plea for Tenderness CD (Brinkman) - for "Everlasting Love" and all
the Durutti Column bits
Autechre: LP5 CD (Warp) - for putting out a pop record.
Godspeed You Black Emperor: f#a#infinity CD (Kranky) - CD version - new
tracks! - for making Montreal's music scene come alive, well....that might
not be the right way to describe it...how about for poking the corpse a
little.
Komeda: What Makes it Go? CD (Minty Fresh) -for getting my days off to a
good start for weeks on end.
Add n to x: On the Wires of our Nerves LP (Satellite) - for a brilliant
followup album to their "Demon Seed" single.  Analog art terrorists go pop.
Boards of Canada: Music Has the Right to Children CD (Warp) - for the
inbetween bits between the longer tracks, which are themselves pretty spot
on.
Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea CD (Merge) - for just
about everything including the musical saw
Cat Power: Moon Pix CD (Matador) - for sheer moodiness.
RRR 500: various: 500 Lock-Grooves by 500 Artists LP (RRR) - for redefining
my relationship with my turntable.
Get Carter Soundtrack LP (Castle) - for reviving my interest in Michael
Caine and phone sex.

Honourable mentions:

Plone: Plock 12" (Warp) - for the vocoder (see also Air: Moon Safari)
Dymaxion  7-inch (Duophonic) - for their version of crime jazz pop
Tank: Gunnar 12" - for Neu influenced pop
Arc: Music of Dunedin CD (Arc) - for keeping the flame alive
Danielson Family: Tri-Danielson CD (Tooth and Nail) (more Christian indie
rock - as close as I'll ever get to millenial fever)
Lithops: Uni Um It CD (squelchy and squiggly as done by one half of Mouse
on Mars)
Tall Dwarfs: Fifty Flavours of Glue CD (Flying Nun) (better than their last
one, Slumpy)
Ultra Chicks: Volume 3 - Baby Pop CD (no label - coz it's a bootleg) (more
bootlegged beauty from Montreal record store guru - spotty but worthwhile
for Tuesday Weld, France Gall in German and some Portuguese and Spanish
numbers).
Blip, Bleep: Soundtracks to Imaginary Video Games CD (for cheekiness)
Pan-American: Eponymous CD (Kranky) (white guy from Labradford does dub)
Icu: Chotto Matte a Moment CD (K) (indie goes d'n'b)

Things that did not do it for me:

Belle and Sebastian: Boy with the Arab Strap (fey, retro, and sentimental
in all the wrong ways.  Who cares if it's that lost Smiths/Nick Drake
record.  Where be the sex?  Almost as if I was trying to reassert some sort
of cartoonish model of masculinity, I found myself drawn rather perversely
to Rob Zombie and the no-cock rock of Marliyn Manson as an antidote)
Stereolab: Chinese Whispers (a remix project gone horribly haywire)
Most of Flying Nun's releases - which were all about cannablizing their
past to compensate for their dark and dull present.  Shame - maybe Mushroom
(their distributor in Aus.) being bought out by Rupert Murdoch will put the
label out of its our misery as well as ours.

And more if I could only think of them....

Geoff

_____________________________________________
Geoff Stahl
Graduate Program in Communications
McGill University
Home page: http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/gpc/crccii/gstahl.htm
IASPM-Canada page: http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/gpc/iaspm/
And also remember CKUT 90.3 FM (Montreal) Wednesdays at Midnight for your
aural pleasure.

Postmodernism:  It's all fun and games until someone loses an I.
-Me
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