In fourth position on Breaking More Waves albums of 2013 list is Immunity by Jon Hopkins. The one time Coldplay and King Creosote collaborator has cropped up on plenty of end of year lists already with this devilishly good electronic album and now we’re adding him to ours.
Immunity takes you on a propulsive and absorbing musical journey that matches some of the best work by the likes of Aphex Twin and Brian Eno. The road isn’t straight from A to B, that would be too simple. Instead it’s one that takes detours, sneaks down a side alley, shows you something you didn’t expect and only then delivers you safely at the end wanting to do it all again. It’s not a record to enjoy by pressing play on one song, skip the next and maybe listen to some others later. This is a record that requires you to set aside an hour and listen from to start to finish, with no distractions.
Immunity is an album formed from technology, but as many other commentators have suggested, it’s one that has in places a very human side (although other parts writhe around in celebration of technology). It plots a soundtrack from the opening doors and slithering glitchy beats of We Disappear to the ambient piano soundscape beauty of the closing title track and with it brings bags of imagery and emotion. Immunity is a ride, a relationship, an experience, a voyage of sound, sculptured from simple changes, minimalism, repetition, pulsing left field computerisations and wonder. It's one of our favourite long-players of 2013.
Jon Hopkins - Collider
Jon Hopkins - Open Eye Signal (Video)
Jon Hopkins 'Open Eye Signal' from
AOIFE MCARDLE on
Vimeo.
Our 5th favourite album of the year. Combining the sound of the late 80’s / early 90’s Madchester scene, 60’s harmonies, psychedelic swirls, sunshine guitar riffs, samples, loops, house and electronica, Howlin by Jagwar Ma is a hypnotically potent beast that will find you grooving your heart away.
Australians Jono Ma and Gabriel Winterfield have taken elements of the past and reconstructed them into something new. It’s an album that can be enjoyed by pill popping hedonists, indie kids, chilled dudes on the beach in summer and connoisseurs at home on their headphones. From the bleeps, pulses, percussive repeats and reverb laden floating vocal snatches of Four, to the more song based stomping surf rock of Let Her Go, Howlin is a record to get lost in, to dance to and to listen to with a big stupid grin on your face.
Jagwar Ma - The Throw
As what seems like every music blogger / website / critic / magazine / website / fan publishes their end of year list one thing is becoming clear, just as it does every year; pop music is being short-changed. For some reason when it comes to albums pop music is often not considered good enough by those who are ‘serious’ about their music.
Which is a shame; because as we've said in a number of these posts (and we feel the need to bang on about it again to make sure our message gets across) 2013 has been a very good year for quality pop. Being a serious muso all the time is really dull. In our top 15 albums we’ve already placed the likes of London Grammar, Lorde and Little Boots (it’s also been a good year for the letter L) and coming in at a strong sixth in our list is one Charlotte Emma Aitchinson aka Charli XCX with her debut album True Romance. No doubt the serious brigade will laugh in our face at this choice, but whilst they’re off scowling at the floor we’ll been having fun.
True Romance is an album that roughs things up with a mix of 80’s electro-pop, post Brit-pop girl band references and glossy but edgy production that embraces dance, house, electronica and even a little bit of hip-hop. It’s an album with a very modern synthetic sound but is painted with a darker wash of new wave and interesting, sometimes messy ideas. It’s a pop album from the city, not the countryside. The lyrics are (depending on the song) trashy, shallow, romantic, sad, sweary and try-hard-cool, in other words exactly what you’d expect from someone who was just a teenager when these songs were written. Probably when Charli is 35 she’ll look back at some of her songs here and be slightly embarrassed by them, but we suspect there will be part of her that is also nostalgically proud; because True Romance is a cracker. Sure go and listen to ‘serious’ music (you’ll find a few of those in our top 5) but have some fun with this hyper-modern class-A album as well.
Charli XCX - What I Like
Charli XCX - You're The One
Earlier this year when the on-line conversation turned to who would be on this year’s Mercury prize list, every time we were asked, amongst our predictions we included a dark horse. The album was Week of Pines by Georgia Ruth. We were absolutely convinced the record would get a nomination as what is commonly known as ‘the token folk act’. This wasn’t based on a wave of outstanding critics reviews or record industry gossip, but quite simply because this evocatively beautiful album bewitched us the first time we heard it and several months on it was still plucking (quite literally) at our heart.
We use the word pluck very purposefully here, because Georgia Ruth (who first appeared on Breaking More Waves way back in May 2010) not only sings but plays the harp, and it’s her powerfully intricate playing of this instrument as much as her crystal clear voice that enchanted us.
Our certainty in a Mercury nomination was eventually proved incorrect, it seemed that this year there wasn’t much of a place for albums outside of the mainstream, but solace was found in the fact that Week of Pines received a nomination for the Welsh Music Prize. Then to our delight it won the thing. So someone agrees with us.
Week of Pines contains songs recorded in both English and Welsh language. The music varies from traditional folk such as welsh sea shanty Codi Angor to the lonely and haunting sounding Mapping to the motorik beat pop of the title track (one of the finest songs we’ve heard this year). Week of Pines is an album that is rich in songcraft, strong emotion and near perfect musicianship. Recorded and produced by David Wrench over six days in August 2012 in Snowdonia’s Bryn Derwen studios, it’s a record to which the word timeless really does apply; Week of Pines really could have been recorded in any decade from the 60’s to now. Thankfully it was released in 2013 and so deservedly sits at number 7 in our albums of the year list.
Georgia Ruth - Week Of Pines (Video)
