Teleosteopathy

10. Petre Inspirescu - “La Crème Bonjour” [Cadenza]
Well, this one’s pretty well universally acclaimed. The whole 2xLP is joyous and fleet of foot, reaching a ditzy high with this final cut. This and Cobblestone Jazz’s “Put The Lime In Da Coconut” have both made their way into my head completely unbidden while at work this year. Bit embarrassing really, since I end up bopping my head and making little blip noises…

09. Minilogue - “Elephant’s Parade” [Wagon Repair]
A great year for Wagon Repair was marked early on with this stomper, which seems to focus less on the elephants and more on the flies buzzing round their flappy ears. I found this track addictive where others found it boring. I regret not hearing it out loud anywhere, but there are a few good videos on youtube that make up for it a little bit. Minilogue didn’t produce anything quite as astonishing this year as 2006’s “The Girl From Botany Bay”, but what they DID release was usually of high quality nonetheless: “Inca” and “Ghost” in particular. Now where the hell is the album?

08. Marco Carola - “Dancing Days” [Plus 8]
Oh more cowbell. This whole record was really good, as were the two bonus tracks. But “Dancing Days” stands above the others - I think I heard Luciano play it at Renaissance’s anniversary celebrations and remember it being all solid and gutpunching. In a year where melody seemed to be everyone’s cup of tea, Carola managed to make me think that the 70%abv shot of cowbell and thud was all I needed to get through the night. His absolutely pummeling set at Electric Picnic proved this.

07. Shyza Minelli - “Set The Limit” [Tuning Spork]
I think Tuning Spork is my label of the year. Three of my top ten come from Jay Haze’s stable, with Shyza’s 11 minute exploration of a clapped-out wind turbine being definitely the most punishing. There’s really not much to it in terms of variations or movements. It’s just the continuous tweaking and warping of the tin-can clank, the almost-reassuring vocal and of course the flatlined drums, which never give the echoing pay-off you expect. Instead there’s just the neverending thwack of scrap metal against scrap metal.

06. Michal Ho - “Take Away (feat. JonJon)” [Tuning Spork]
Tuning Spork at it again, and this one comes from one of the best full-lengths of the year, Michal Ho’s Screw The Coffeemaker. Going against both the trend for loopy obfuscation (looking at you, Özer) and the trend for washy melodrama (now you, Âme), Ho came along with ten down-the-line no-nonsense songs, albeit with little singing and lots of Spastik-like percussion. But most of the album’s cuts still sound like songs, in a way I hadn’t heard since We Are Monster. “Take Away” is the most immediately catchy, and came accompanied by great remixes by the Romanian, Rhadoo, and Spork boss Jay Haze.

One release that I haven’t included on this list, but only because I rate the record as a whole rather than just one part of it, is dop’s Between The Blues EP on Circus Company. My last mix kicked off with the loopy “Allo Boom Boom”, and the next one is going to feature “Dopamen”, which also makes use of the lovely Nôze (of “Kitchen” fame, at least that’s the one that sticks in my mind.) The title track soundtracks odd new-age musings on desire, sense and, uh, guts. It’s the funkier, less cloying younger brother of Mouse On Mars’ “Unity Concepts”. Good stuff all round then.

15. Mikael Stavöstrand - “Housedays” [Sushitech]
This one’s the creaking bones and grumbling mutterings of an 80-year old, albeit an 80-year old driving along at over 120bpm. With a woodblock. Getting more and more manic as time passes. By the 7 minute mark, the pensioner’s bumped into a cyborg and they trade insults about the cowbell. It actually sounds like that. Stavöstrand is one of my producers of the year - he managed to cover a lot of ground while maintaining a unified sound that was uniquely his, which is really all you can ask for. And that woodblock.

14. Cobblestone Jazz - “Put The Lime In Da Coconut” [Wagon Repair]
This one squiggles its way into your grey matter like a particularly persistent and hyperactive worm, tunneling for more and more energy sources and every so often coming across a hidden stash of edible neurons that send it into further joyful paroxysms. It keeps on doing this even after its finished. Infectious is the word, I suppose. 23 Seconds was definitely one of my pleasant surprises of the year - I started off a little wary, but it’s won me round big time.

13. Plan Tec - “Espias Psiquicos [Jonas Kopp Psiquic Remix]” [Spectral Sound]
This is the first entry from Spectral’s Death Is Nothing To Fear series and was the only good thing to be said about my generally disappointing night at Manchester’s Warehouse Project back in November. It’s a cavernous anthem that matched the gaping arches of the venue and the faint whiffs of grease and oil in the air. Unfortunately, after this one dropped, the evening went the way of deep house, something which I really wasn’t in the mood for. I’ve been told it was bad timing on my part (which I’m sure is true) but I nevertheless felt pretty unimpressed with Sven Väth’s set. Oh well. At least this got played.

12. Stefan Goldmann - “Lunatic Fringe” [Macro]
I remember really not liking this the first time I heard it. The choir is so dischordant and I was already put off the whole idea by that Viktor Casanova track. Goldmann’s is a more subtle approach, though, and I came to appreciate that in spite of the whole thing sounding out of tune, actually you can divine some interplay between the synths and the singers if you have a bit more patience. And then that mosquito comes along and floors you. I really need to hear that Agoria At The Controls mix if only to hear how he deals with the totally different halves of this track.

11. Dubfire - “I Feel Speed [Audion Remix]” [White Label]
A latecomer. For all the quibbling about Dubfire’s authenticity I actually found “Ribcage” quite diverting in the hands of Richie Hawtin. I’m not well placed to argue the details of its importance (or lack thereof) though, so I’d rather focus on this track, which has got me all excited these past couple of weeks. I suppose the Audion involvement makes me immediately a little easier to persuade, and I also don’t know the extent of his fucking with it, but either way this track is needlingly hooky and really fun to whistle. You can get a 192kbps version at The Ill-Ec-Tro-Nic.

Some tracks I didn’t get into quite as much as some people this year: Kabale & Liebe’s “Mumbling Yeah” (this worked amazingly well when I heard it played out, but not so much for home listening, although I suppose that’s my fault for not going out so much); Petre Inspirescu’s “Sakadat” (I heard Ananda’s “Trommelstunde” first and preferred it); Catz ‘n Dogz’ “Fixation”; Norman Nodge’s “NN 8.0″.

20. Johan Fotmeijer - “Batucada Da Villa” [Unreleased]
No info on this one other than ohmygosh.se posting it quite a few months back and not heard of since. As far as I could tell it emerged at the same time as “Primer Encuentro”, but, where Villalobos swam, Fotmeijer sank without a trace. A real shame that, because this is an airy 12-minute flit through a carnival that predated (as far as I can tell) all the fuss over Matt John’s “Soulkaramba” and Villalobos’ fabric mix. I wonder if it will ever get a release. You can still get it over at Ohmygosh.se.

19. False - “Fed On Youth” [M_nus]
This is the first of many appearances for Matthew Dear in this rundown. I’m like a Beatles fan or something when it comes to him and his aliases. 2007 provided one of the more thought-provoking full-lengths of this year, aside from this completely ridiculous monstrosity sitting at its peak. There’s no chin-stroking or head-scratching here. There’s just a beat that sounds like rotting sewers, some ponderous squelchinng, and oh those godawful blaring sirens. The b-side “Face The Rain” was rightfully many people’s choice for cut of the album, but none of the mix demanded to stand out on its own like this one.

18. Gabriel Ananda - “Stream Of Consciousness” [Karmarouge]
Gabriel Ananda was responsible for one of my favourite cds of the year, Bambusbeats. This single was a bit of an unexpectedly trancey outing after the album’s more rhythmic attack, but still preserved those jungly drums that got to me in the first place. Their cyclical patter combines with the keyboards to conjure up monsoons and canopies. Check out this awesome fan video made by spikee92, combined the Bambusbeats cover design with other Ananda artwork.

17. Luciano - “Fourges Et Sabres” [Perlon]
15 minutes of meandering, contemplative, expressive music, released by the leader of one of my favourite labels (Cadenza) on another of my favourite labels (Perlon). The other side “Back To Front” has its moments but it’s this side that wins me over each time, gradually drawing me into its clangy ruminations.

16. Miguel Toro - “Otro” [Moon Harbour]
This is a bit like “Fed On Youth” in the dirty stakes, although it doesn’t contain the same groaning monsters. It’s a bit jumpier, a bit leaner, and it has this compulsive clacking noise in it that gets into my ears in the same way most of Michal Ho’s album has managed in the last few weeks. It takes nearly 5 minutes for the real hook to hit and when it does you wish there wasn’t only 90 seconds left. I guess I’d call it this year’s “Seeing Through Shadows” in that respect.

Other tracks that didn’t make it but that I nonetheless recommend include: Tractile’s “Dynam”; Massi DL’s “Barbabietola E Spinas”; DJ Koze’s “Es Scheppert Wie Def Leppard”; and Stimming’s slithering “Funkworm”.

To make up for being away for so long (moving flat AGAIN, no internet, blah) I’m going to count down my top 25 tracks of the year (no album-only tracks) five at a time - starting this evening.

25. Kasper - “Turn Tricks On The Side” [Items And Things]
I found this all but impossible to mix because of its jerky, skittery rhythm and unexpected breakdowns, but the urge to get it right was overpowering. The cyclical bassline ambles along to nowhere in particular in a way that complements the spastic saw buzzing over the top. It’s all very quirky, but in a very likable way. The same couldn’t be said for Marc Houle’s track on the same record…

24. Aquilina & Venturi - “3 Hours” [Trapez]

23. Lucio Aquilina - “Magic M” [Cocoon]
Lucio Aquilina had a pretty good year. These two tracks are quite different from each other - the first matches Faki-like drums (punishing) with a completely OTT synth line. It jumps and bounces along in a way reminiscent of Minilogue’s “Elephant Parade” although, I think, less intriguingly so. I like it after 4 minutes, as it winds down like a music box, beats getting missed here and there and the whole thing creaking to a stop. “Magic M” is obviously the real music box track, sounding like Aphex’s “Nannou” but with a 4/4 underpinning. Hypnotic and enchanting.

22. Mark Broom - “New Life [Donnacha Costello Remix]” [Minimise]
This is a really goofy inclusion on this list, but I’m afraid I’m not much of one for sophisticated favourites. In fact, most of my picks this year are big, unsubtle what-you-might-call-’bangers’ (with the omission of “Heater” which I do enjoy but not as much as these.) This track could almost be on the Cybernetic Broadcasting System’s top list, if it weren’t perhaps for the rolling, stuttering drums (also used to great effect on Luca Bachetti’s “Rolling Brooklyn” release) and the lack of cheesy, strongly-accented vocals about love and the hills of Katmandu. ANYWAY, it’s also got one of the best clapping-breakdowns of the year and some hilariously cheap synth chromatics. As I said, goofy.

21. Efdemin - “Just A Track”
I actually far preferred Pantha Du Prince’s This Bliss to Efdemin’s self-titled album. However, this track stands as my favourite of the whole deep house revival shenanigans everyone was going on about for most of 2007. It was also one of the earliest, I think. It wasn’t as saccharine as I found many other similarly well-loved tracks (”Balandine”, “Massacre”, “Hooked”.) I liked Aju’s “Be Like The Sun” for the same reason - it wasn’t overstated.

A few tracks that didn’t make the list but could well have on a different day: Mr G.’s “U Askin?”; Sebbo’s “Beirut Boogie”; any number of C2 remixes; Len Faki’s various epics; Trentemøller & Buda’s “Gamma [Perc Remix]“, one of the scariest cuts of the year… More tomorrow.