Massive Attack
Heligoland
Virgin

Massive Attack's fifth studio album finally arrives, a full seven years after its predecessor. Clusters of gloomy chords, dubby basslines, and ominous breakbeats scattered across the album suggest that they haven't lifted their musical mood. Martina Topley-Bird's contributions scale the heights of astonishment Massive Attack has achieved with previous female collaborators. Set against a panoply of disjointed acidic bleeps and slippery electronic beats, it's taken into an entirely new emotional realm. The theme: sounds haunt to the point of terror. Some of the top tracks include "Pray For Rain," "Girl I Love You," and "Paradise Circus." All in all, a brilliant album.




Pantha Du Prince
Black Noise
Rough Trade

Firmly rooted in classic techno and house music, yet also appealing to a much wider audience (as also evident by their move to Rough Trade), Pantha Du Prince's album Black Noise is his stellar new release, elevating him to a status occupied by the likes of Ricardo Villalobos, The Field, and Isolee. A delicately nuanced album with romantic compositions, and dark panoramic splendour, maintaining a sense of minimalism amidst its textural, hypnotic feel. Whether its tribal (primal and child-like) rhythms, and trance-not-trance psychedelia, Pantha Du Prince is amongst the new breed (spearheaded by artists like Animal Collective) of highly accessible yet cerebral artists whose music flows from headphones like colors bleed from rainbows. Featuring Panda Bear from Animal Collective and Tyler Pope from LCD Soundsystem.

In recently trying to fill in a friend on what I'd spent the last year or two listening to, I realized that my personal taste tends to gravitate towards some element of either Folk form (any hint of hill-folk finger-pickin' or Ozark/Appalachian melancholy and I'm in), Psychedelia or the tendency to extend a theme for a good long jam (a category in which I include a lot of the Jazz that I like), or just a great, funky groove.

With those qualifiers in place, the following is a year by year review of the last decade which somehow got past me with out noticing it. I mean, really?!! 2010?!!!  I didn't see it coming: 

2000: Album of the Year

Air's enjoyable and wacky Moon Safari had been on the decks for a couple years before they contracted for the soundtrack to Sofia Coppolla's Virgin Suicides. The resultant score is absolutely sublime and marked the French electronauts as contenders to watch.

For myself, it was the defining sound of the millennium's new year.
















Shelby Lynne released a killer country-soul gem, I Am Shelby Lynne, that echoed early material from the likes of Bonnie Raitt. Thinking that it was a brilliant debut from a talented 32yo unknown, I was eventually shocked to find that it was her 6th album. I listened to it for months.

In recent years in many US and European major metropolitan areas various eco-friendly and anti-consumerism organizations have been staging fully legal acts of protest. One example is the above "awareness creation mechanism" in which once a month in the UK a group of anti-consumer activists all pushing deliberately-empty shopping carts ("trolleys") form a human chain of sorts as they push these symbols of consumerism in a zombie like fashion around the megamart. Thanks to Adbusters for this video posting. Incidentally, the music playing as the background soundtrack is Goldfrapp's "Lovely Head" off the CD Felt Mountain (Mute). For more information on this Whirl-Mart project click here.