Year End Musical Lists: Niche Shit

[Servo2000]

What good stuff got released this year that people might have passed up on? Some random stuff (I don't really like lists so in no particular order, although feel free to list yours however):

I really enjoyed the always fantastic Mississippi Records Life is a Problem, some fantastic devils music played by preachers and various other religious folk.

Anyone have a copy of their Lipa Kodi Ya release that they could rip for me? Don't imagine you do, but I figured I'd ask.

I don't know that much about hip-hop, but I didn't see Blu and Exile's Below the Heavens appearing too often on year end lists and it ranked high with some people whose taste in hip-hop I trust better than my own (which isn't to say I havent been enjoying it as well). I also heard Ill Poetic's The World is Ours getting recommended alongside this but I haven't found a copy yet.

Really liked the YACHT / Lucky Dragons Nirvana or whatever that split is called, wavers between ambience, aggressive noise and... electro, sort of? You essentially can't recognize that all the sound sources come from original Nirvana material, and I like that. The Jim White / Nina Nastasia "collaboration" You Follow Me is great folk-ey sort of stuff.

That's enough for now. Fuck I'm tired.

[keagan]

the boston chinks coltrane seven inches of hectic fury from the form of foam from my foamy ass mouth.

[keagan]

(I got rabies.)

[Klangspiel]

For one, and because he just RIP only a few days ago,

the Henri Chopin LP on Tochnit Aleph.

[keagan]

good man innit ??///\/\/\/\/\/\/

[Servo2000]

So does everyone just listen to Justice and call it a day or what?

[mike lowrey]

I'm not as niche as you servo

what goes for possible under the radar stuff, I cant think of any releases right now so I'll list a few random bands:

I don't know if many americans have come across this bunch of ugly british dudes, The Enemy? to be honest I'm not very aware of what the general consensus on them is, whether or not its cool to think they're wack or not, so I guess I'm able to judge them just based on the music. I thought We'll Live and Die in These Towns has a very cool vibe, and the album is not half bad either.

a Parisian band I really liked is Brooklyn. they make upbeat pop music but theres something unpolished I like about their sound. too bad they dont have much tracks up anywhere, I have some though.

Robbers on Highstreet is a new york indie band with some pretty good tracks, I havent gone through all their discography but what I've heard has sounded good.

couple of other allright indie bands are We Are Standard from spain and The Tacticians from the UK.

dont know if those really fit the bill but figured they might be somewhat lesser-known.

[constant struggle]

The ergs! - upstairs/downstairs

The New Jersey-based trio draws influences from the strongest sections of the SST catalog, pop punk in the vein of both Ramones and Descendents, country, and even jazz. When listening to The Ergs, prepare to have your definition of pop punk challenged. As a band, everything goes; As listeners, everyone wins.

This cd is incredible, if you are a fan of the descenents you should definitely check this out...

www.myspace.com/theergs

[Double D]

Everyone who likes their crust, sludge and post-metal really really needs to acquire both Bossk EPs and the Fall of Efrafra LP, probably the two brightest prospects from around these parts at the moment.

[readytoignite]

Henri Chopin passed? That really sucks. I can't decide if it's cool or lame that Alga Marghen released those retrospective LP sets.

Wasn't too on top of music this year but the Wooden Shjips full-length was pretty cool. sort of the revival of the early and way cranked Spacemen 3 sound, yeah. I'm not down with Boris but the album with Michio Kurihara is pretty good, I mean it has Kurihara on it for crying out loud.

[CMYK]

I liked the new telepathe stuff.-chromes on it. SSION released some stuff as well as Spank rock. I have to say I like some of it.-=- UGH!

[notesee]

Dax Riggs, the original vocalist of the New Orleans sludge metal band Acid Bath who moved on to be in Agents of Oblivion and Deadboy & the Elephantmen released a solo project titled We Sing of Only Blood or Love. Definitely worth checking out.

[pavlova cakesworth]

I guess records pretty much unheard of outside Australia counts as some kind of niche? In that case put me down for I Heart Hiroshima's debut Tuff Teef and Kes' sophomore The Grey Goose Wing. All other Australian music is much less good.

Speaking of YACHT split 7"s, which someone or other at an earlier juncture, are there any stupidfuturists lucky enough for FADER to consider them "influencers"? Man, Black Lips/YACHT... I can't believe I chose to stop being an influence.

[sean_]

the arrested 7" by government warning

[lucky_cloud]

What counts as niche?

Um, let's see. Here's a few of the more fringe-type things I dug last year:

Group Inerane - music of niger, guitars from agadez

Group Doueh - guitar music from the western sahara

Field recordings of amazing, totally alien (to my ears) desert blues from Africa from the always-amazing Sublime frequencies label. Pretty lo-fi, but it's really nice to hear this kind of music with crowd participation (clapping, shouting) and local noise instead of just in a studio with Western-style production. Ripping, fuzzed-out blues licks with snaky African rhythms, occasional Afro-Cuban influence (horns, brass, spanish vocals) and lots of eerie, Mid-East-style microtonal chant vocals (sounds like a muezzin call!) that I have really been digging. Sometimes it's super minimal (one guy fingerpicking electric guitar and singing with maybe a shaker or handclaps for accompaniment), othertimes it's a full-blast freakout. Invigorating!

On this tip, the blog Awesome tapes from Africa is, as it claims, awesome.

The Cato Salsa Experience with The Thing and Joe McPhee - two bands and a legend

Scandinavian garage-rock band teams up with Scandinavian jazz power trio and American free-jazz saxophonist for an album of almost all covers (PJ Harvey, "Louie Louie", The Sonics) and absolutely rocks in a firebreathing style. This will blow your blood out. A couple peaceful, pretty tunes, too.

Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities - lucas

Pretty unclassifiable "indie" 10-piece plays an indescribable mishmash of bossa nova, free jazz, dubbed-out post-punk and psychedelic art-pop that will absolutely freak your mind. Criminally slept-on by just about everybody.

And here's some old albums I discovered last year:

Catherine Ribeiro et les Alpes - paix

From 1970, a mix of French chanson, gypsy folk, and Pink Floyd-esque space rock. Freaky and full-blooded.

Patty Waters - sings

Art-jazz songstress from 1969, only one album recorded. One side is heartstoppingly sad love ballads in miniature (all under two minutes), the other side is a screaming, free-vocal half-hour take on "Black Is The Color of My True Love's Hair".

Nuno Canavarro - plux quba

Beautiful, quirky experimental electronic composition from 1988.

Paul McCartney - ram & mccartney

Paul McCartney's early solo albums are neglected genius. He basically invented indie-pop with big melodies about small domestic pleasures, home-recorded but still beautifully produced. Silly, quirky, big-hearted, and catchy.

Etoile de Dakar - xalis

Youssou N'Dour's band before Paul Simon made him a star and basically invented "world music" as we know it (ruining a lot of African music in the process with Western 80's production and shitty synthesizers). This is still primo, though (in '78) -- Senegalese m'balax funk with some Cuban flourishes. Warm, joyous, gorgeous.

Here's my 2007 year-end list on my blog, if you're interested in reading some more of my yakking:

http://twoheaded-boy.livejournal.com/186687.html#cutid1

[Servo2000]

You put it in bold so it was the first thing I was, but I dug the Skeletons, etc... joint as well. I also liked Studio's release. I think this might've been bigger, probably made it on the Pitchfork year end lists and things like that but I can't stop listening to it.

Pre-Post Edit: quick review jack: "Robert Smith and the Cure done dub." Turns out I was right, number 23 on the Top 50 year end list over at Pitchfork.

I believe they described it as, "impossible visions of Can making a Happy Mondays tribute album or the Cure backed by Fela Kuti, the music moves imperceptibly from bouncy percussive workouts to undulating seas of dub echo and glittering starsailor guitar, all wrapped in a perfectionist 80s art-rock sheen."

[lucky_cloud]

i really wanted to like that studio album, ditto for mountain of one and the tough alliance. can't hang, though. it just sounds too cheesy to me.

in a similar vein, though, i do like air france.

[Servo2000]

i really wanted to like that studio album, ditto for mountain of one and the tough alliance. can't hang, though. it just sounds too cheesy to me.

in a similar vein, though, i do like air france.

It's funny, I didn't like either of those others myself but the Studio album didn't give me that same sensation.

[readytoignite]

ditto on the group doueh record, the last track on side one is crazy heavy and kills me everytime. macca's first is such a great and underrated record, plus it has the original recording of "maybe i'm amazed," such a classic.

patty waters recorded two albums at the time btw (the other being college tour), plus the "comeback" album & inevitable archival release.

[keagan]

Yearbook 1 was so fucking boring- in contrast to the electrifying review it got.

I really don't know why I still read pitchfork.

[keagan]

fifthly habits was good

Noone has heard it besides me

http://www.myspace.com/thedts

Good people.

[readytoignite]

finally listened to the broom dusters lp on siwa from last year, probably qualifies as a niche of a niche of a niche but the first side is pretty business. way more extroverted than most of kawaguchi's subsequent output so if you can't get enough of wild guitar solos in a vaguely garage rock setting you've found your next port of call. plus top notch silkscreened design as you would expect from alan.

very un-niche but the gwen stefani album was pretty top notch too. if charles ives was into grime, yodelling and stephen c foster, he still probably wouldn't come up with anything as insane as "wind it up" but it's the closest thing you're going to get to such a thing.

[poopslush]

Everyone who likes their crust, sludge and post-metal really really needs to acquire both Bossk EPs and the Fall of Efrafra LP, probably the two brightest prospects from around these parts at the moment.

Fall of Efrafa is my favorite crust band at the moment... really good stuff. I like thier first full length (Owlsa) better than the one they released this year (Elil) but Elil is still great.