Best of 2008 - Part II
Sunday, December 28th, 2008Best 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]
synth-horror experience ha! Both mixes are heavy on the synth and rhythm side and you know that’s a dear thing to the Kunk heart. Really great stuff with the 80s feel and the distortion combined. He seems to be one of the producers in the UK who I’ve been on and on about a lot, mentioning Tronik Youth, South Central, or GRUM and Russ Chimes… You know, in spite of the fact that they play different styles but they are the ones who don’t only adapt stuff from abroad but experiment with stuff, have a great taste and they add the traditionally huge UK-factor to pop music. Neo Tokyo is from Wales and expect to hear a lot more about him in the future.
