20) James Blake - I Only Know (What I Know Now)
I genuinely don’t think any new act impressed me as much this year, as twenty-two year old James Blake. Three stunning EP’s all sounding completely different from one another plus a quite brilliant cover of Feist’s Limit To Your Love, not a bad effort I think you would agree. I Only Know (What I Know Now) is from his third EP release of the year, the Klavierwerke EP. Blake’s trademark of messing up and distorting vocal samples and then adding all manners of diverse instrumentation is again present in this track but it feels more sparse than previous efforts. While the eerie, clipped vocal samples are very much ever present throughout the track, the instrumentation is very minimal Blake just utilising a small collection of sounds to create a distorted masterpiece. For something that is essentially a bit of bass, cymbal and piano with some weird vocal samples looped over it, it is quite astonishing how gorgeous it actually is.
19) Zola Jesus - Sea Talk
As good as previous Zola Jesus entry Night was, it is this track Sea Talk that I feel is her best work to date. Essentially a love song (albeit a very dark sounding one) about the breakdown of a relationship, it's vaguely unsettling yet at the same time utterly beautiful. Her voice, as usual, is the star of the show, heavily reverbed, soaring and wailing over some almost military-esque drums and some dark synths. Stunning.
18) Kele - Everything You Wanted
Everything You Wanted was the second single released from Kele’s debut solo album The Boxer. I found the record as a whole somewhat of a frustrating experience. There were elements of certain tracks that I liked, but I found it horribly inconsistent and most importantly very hard to connect with. None of this applies to Everything You Wanted. Unlike the rest of the record, it feels honest and heartfelt. All the synths in the world cannot compensate for a direct emotional connection and this is why it works so well. From the opening line of “I can see the bags in the empty hallway. I can tell that something has changed” one cannot help but feel, that this isn’t forced or contrived, but genuine, raw emotion. Tribal drums, an addictive piano line, and some dark electronics enhance the poignancy of the track, providing an excellent background to Kele’s pleading, yelping vocals.
17) Big Boi (feat Andre 3000 and Sleepy Brown) - Looking For Ya
Due to label disputes this Outkast reunion was left off Big Boi’s magnificent Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty album, which is a great shame as it is absolutely incredible. Boi-1da is on production duties and his synthy beat is perfectly good but it is Big Boi and Andre 3000’s verses that are the real stars of the show. Sounding like a perfect mix of The Love Below and Speakerboxx their delivery is quick, witty, intelligent and engaging as always. There are genuinely very few people in modern music as innovative as these two men. Sleepy Brown’s smooth chorus ensures the track flows and links everything together very nicely indeed. A new Outkast album now please gentlemen.
No comments:
Post a Comment