Our top 10 favorite albums of 2011 thus far – Nr. 6

This is our favorite albums of 2011 so far countdown! So just us saying which albums have been doing it for us in the first half year of 2011. I love scouring lists like these as there is so much music coming out I find it impossible to keep track of everything. And these lists indicate what people really have been enjoying, and sometimes you agree, sometimes disagree, and sometimes it tips you on a future favourite. So hence this list, and hope you find some stuff to enjoy in there!

Favorite albums of 2011 at the halfway point : 10 - 9 - 8 - 7

Ilse: Nr. 6. Tom Vek – Leisure Seizure (Island Records)
The last time we heard from British multi-instrumentalist Tom Vek was when he released his debut album ‘We Have Sound’ way back in 2005. After that, he silently seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, without anyone questioning or noticing it. Back in 2005 I considered him a great talent with amazing abilities, as he was capable of playing multiple instruments, often even at the same time. This hasn’t changed much and I was by any means pleasantly surprised when he was suddenly back in the musical picture again: releasing a new record, followed by an international tour, oh my! On this new album, Tom Vek generally maintains the same mixture of lo-fi, garage, indie and electro he presented on his debut, though the electro more significantly has the upper hand now. His vocals are a bit more ‘dirty’ and ennui-filled, and the music and beats are groovier than on ‘We Have Sound’, also marking the more disco-feel to his electronic sound than before. All I hope for now is that I still get a chance to see him live (being drowned in college work unfortunately prevented me from attending his gig in Amsterdam last month) before he decides to hide under a rock and retreat from the music industry for another 6 years again. Or that someone will stop him from doing this, might be even better. In any case, the absence didn’t do him any harm because this album managed to convince me: Tom Vek is still alive.

Random track to listen to: ‘Someone Loves You’

Linda: Nr. 6. Nicolas Jaar – Space is only noise (Circus Company)

This one took me by surprise. I think a track of the album popped up in one of the Drowned in Sound SpotiFriday playlists and I was immediately sold. There’s a hint of the Max Richter album I loved last year in there, but at the same time it goes in an entirely different direction. Unfortunately for me, that direction also seems to allow only for weekday midnight gigs, which is not something that is really an option if you’ve got 9 o’clock meetings planned the very next day. What is also unfortunate is that Jaar seems to think that space is only noise. As a self-acclaimed space nerd who’s had an interest in anything extraterrestrial since I found a book talking about a mysterious ‘planet X’ at my local library (which turned out to be Pluto, and had been discovered as early as 1930, just to illustrate how up to date local village libraries were ‘back then’) I can safely say that space is much more than that. Or less actually, as most of it consists of a vacuum which doesn’t even allow for noise to exist, we just so happen to live in that one tiny corner of the universe with an atmosphere that does allow for sound to penetrate the air. Space can never be ‘only’ one thing. It is way too vast, or maybe even infinite (thought that seems to be a bit weird if it is expanding, and there’s something paradoxical about an infinite thing expanding...) to use a term as derogative as ‘only’. But other than that: nice album.

Random track to listen to: Space is only noise if you can see

Stef: Nr. 6. YACHT – Shangri-La (DFA)

YACHT are such a great bunch. Just the clarity of their vision, and how much effort they then put into their output. Hats off to that. “I’m here to tell you that the world’s last unpleasant experience is a precisely dateable event”. Now, if you don’t exactly know what you want to do and where you are going, you are not going to be able to churn out sentences like that. They read up on the idea of Utopia, put their own spin on it and their own experiences in it, and what you’ve got is a funky, hook-laden album with songs as fun as they are clever. Clever both lyrically as well as musically. Their sound is assured, brazen, and bold. Like people completely in command of what they want to do and what they like to say. ‘One Step’ for instance is as simple as it is clever. It is a continuous repetition both musically as well as lyrically, in the mean time narrating the anxiety of someone trying to actually do something out of his routine, out of his own repetitive motions. Which goes from feeling like you’re doing something wrong to even a point where you are not sure if it has changed anything whatsoever. ‘Beam Me Up’, ‘Paradise Engineering’, and ‘Tripped and Fell in Love’ are darker in feel and more immediate in terms of music, whereas earlier it all felt a bit lighter and more pop. And the last track almost evokes a sort image of communal singing. It is so immaculately crafted this album, both in sound as in vision, I cannot help but admire it a great deal.

Random track to listen to: ‘Tripped and Fell in Love’