Best Albums of 2008: 15-11

15. M83 - Saturdays = Youth

France is not only the cutting edge of electronic music but there may be something in the water there and they have a talent for tap in to the heartbeat of the pop music generation. With the themes of love, teenagers…Anthony Gonzalez manages to mush together these elements into a great shoegaze-synth odyssey. M83 songs are perfect transmitters for something transcendent that has its roots in our childhood.

M83 - You Appearing [zshare] // [ysi]

14. College - Secret Diary

Staying in France and with the aesthetics of the 80s, College aka David Greiller made the debut LP of Valerie and it lives up to the expectations. As a concept album, it is about secrets and stalking and peeping, forbidden love and its secrecy. There’s even a special edition in VHS format! How cool is that? Accompanying the theme, the music is the best retro-future synths you can imagine and when there are vocals, they are like if they sounded from another world.

College - She Never Came Back [zshare] // [ysi]

13. Deerhunter - Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.

Dancing on the edge of weird ambient sounds and the hereditary indie-noise of the 90s, Bradford Cox created one of the best chaotic/escapist pop record of the year. It’s hard to give a pop dressing gown to experimental attitude and imagination and this album (along with the M83) is a perfect example that this is not an either-or decision between art and pop but the situation is much more complex. Deerhunter kept its intergrity in opening up.

Deerhunter - Never Stops [zshare] // [ysi]

12. Jaguar Love - Take Me to the Sea

As a lovechild of two amazing bands after their splits, Jaguar Love started with raised expectations. I’m not a fanatic fan-type who weeps at the split and then curses everything the ex-bandmates do afterwards out of resentment. Take Me to the Sea is a great indie album, full of energy, screams, giant guitar-waves and tragedies. The shifts and variations between sweet-sad melodies and the explosions give band an undeniable individual charm.

Jaguar Love - Georgia [zshare] // [ysi]

11. Foals - Antidotes

Oxford 5-piece, Foals, made into the list with their awesome debut, Antidotes. The album is full of hits and tracks representing a unique fingerprint. Futuristic indie-disco along the UK lines. Strange dance rhythms, post-punk dryness and the whole sound could be described with a glass-sound allegory or something. Both sensitive and aristocratically cold, Antidotes rocks the disco balls and even touches some parts of some souls.

Foals - Electric Bloom [zshare] // [ysi]

Sorry, I’m a little late with this one but I just got to it. I feel like I have to post it cause you know how much we’re in love with music that transcends conventional borders. This remix is sick. Ok, Deerhunter can be insane musically at some moments and I’m loving the neurotic psychedelia that dominates their sound. Of course, sometimes they are just these cute weirdo indie guys who’s been listening to too much Spiritualized and Velvet Underground. Certainly, their influences are awesome. On their 2008 album, Microcastle, which is my favourite so far, they pull everything off: lsd-d noise, haunting vocals, indie rock, sad singer-songwriter stuff, ghostly keyboards and gazing shoes. Even the folk hiding on the album sounds authentic. The record is great, and no, I’m not under the effect of Pitchfork. Bradford Cox, the vocalist and songwriter has an experimental post-rock + electro-ish project: Atlas Sound. And he’s a blogger, yay!! Still, it comes as a surprise that Simian Mobile Disco remixed a song from a previous album Cryptograms. Octet, as reworked by SMD, is very disturbing. Like a demon of mental illness in your head or dreaming that you are a schizophrenic serial killer. SMD managed to transfer some noise right into the listener’s brain. Dissonance is attractive here, on every level where SMD managed to spread it.

Deerhunter - Octet (Simian Mobile Disco rework) [zshare] // [ysi]