IKRS Countdown: Onze favoriete albums uit 2010 - Nr. 2

Onze eindejaarscountdown! De tien favoriete albums van Linda, Ilse, en ondergetekende uitgebracht in 2010. Favoriet, omdat iedereen natuurlijk andere dingen leuk vindt en andere connotaties heeft bij de muziek en thema’s/genres die we daarin kunnen terugvinden. Dus dit zijn niet objectief de beste albums, maar de albums die op ons om de een of andere reden de meeste indruk hebben gemaakt. Enjoy!

Favorite albums of 2010: 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3

Nr. 2 – Linda
Album: Infra
Artist: Max Richter

I guess this is my odd one out this year. The music on this album was originally commissioned by the Royal Ballet as a collaboration between composer Max Richter, choreographer Wayne McGregor and artist Julian Opie (whom you might know from the Blur cover he did a lifetime ago). So surprisingly, I’ve got a ballet as my number two, even though I have never seen a ballet. It is also inspired by T.S. Elliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ and Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’, both of which I have never read or heard. Goodie.

The album isn’t actually the original piece. The original was 25 minutes long and recorded as a BBC documentary in 2008. Since then a lot has been added to the piece to make it suitable for recording as an album. Not that is a studio album in the strictest sense of the word. There are individual tracks, but you can’t really listen to on track on its own. The tracks come together to form one piece of music, and the separate tracks might be viewed as chapters. You could try and read a random chapter, but that would only end up like watching a single episode of Lost: complete gibberish (not that I’m insinuating that particular show would start making sense if you were to put yourself through watching more than one episode, or the entire series for that matter).

On this album, Max Richter combines classical music – when he performed the album this year, he was accompanied by a string quintet – with electronic noises, which I believe is the perfect way to get me listening to classical music. Apart from the fact that it’s absolutely beautiful. For the first half of this year I only listened to classical music when my flatmates were practising their violins and that came with a lot of Hungarian swearing (in which I am now quite proficient), so discovering to this was quite the epiphany. Maybe ballet ought to be up for 2011.
Random Track: ‘Infra 4’

Nr. 2 – Ilse
Album: Forget
Artist: Twin Shadow

Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear has invested well for his new label by putting out (and co-producing) Twin Shadow’s debut, as I instantly fell in love with this album and have been playing it over and over ever since I discovered it. It’s difficult to grasp what exactly it is I find so thrilling about it; perhaps it’s the heartfelt, romantic pop music in combination with George Lewis Junior’s smooth, melancholic voice, or that every single song on this album is in its very own way as solid as rock, which makes me consider ‘Forget’ an almost flawless album. In any case, the music has an incredible sense of nostalgia to it and the 80s disco pop and new wave influences are present at all times. In some songs it even has a gloomy and sinister mood to it, in ‘Castles in the Snow’ for example. The variation in both musical elements (synths, funky bass lines, striking guitar solos, and drumming Stephen Morris would be jealous of) and tempo (from slower, heavier moods to livelier, danceable pop music) are very well-balanced and all together they create charismatic melodies and dreamy soundscapes.

‘Forget’ provides great music for any given moment; whether you’re on a train, in your bedroom or on the dancefloor; you’ll have to restrain yourself from bobbing your head to the catchy rhythms of the unremembered eighties, and singing along to Lewis Junior’s lyrics of vague childhood memories and remembrances of ended love affairs. All in all, Twin Shadow has delivered a stunning debut with ‘Forget’ and it was definitely my ‘love at first listen’ for the year 2010.
Random Track: ‘Shooting Holes’

Nr. 2 – Stef
Album: The ArchAndroid
Artist: Janelle Monae

Janelle Monae has been working on a nice streak with the Metrpolis series, inspired if only in name by the Fritz Lang movie about a futuristic upstairs/downstairs live and how love and humanity should trump that. A film that also got a re-release in the Eighties with a Moroder soundtrack with, amongst others, Freddy Mercury on vocal duties. Much maligned, that version, I might add. Luckily this album wasn’t put on the same heap on release. Monae’s first full LP is a critically acclaimed one, and not without reason. That’s because of the talent, the music, the message, but perhaps above all the grand tour through music history she is giving us. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. People chide my previous pick for stealing and how unoriginal it is, but, you know, perhaps that is post-modernism. It’s not like anyone is hiding it anyway.

This album wears its influences on its sleeve. Sometimes its James Brown, sometimes it is a romantic crooner soundtrack from the 1940s (and in some cases it is almost as she literally takes snippets from these films), not to mention the numerous allusions to science fiction or, even, actual history and not even the years of yore cinematically. Weaved through that is the sci-fi story of Cindy and Mr. Greendown, one a human, one an android. Upstairs/downstairs. This story, although a tad more loosely than the previous EP which was heavy on theme, is weaved through all these songs with such different styles, but all with their own connotations. A constant through all this is Monae’s artistic and aesthetic vision, combined with those great vocals. Borrowing as much from what has been as LCD Soundsystem, but that doesn’t matter. She creates something new, daring, epic, and beautiful with it. It feels like an early Bowie album, and truthfully, there aren’t many compliments around more positive than that.
Random Track: ‘BaBopByeYa’