10. The Fiery Furnaces — I’m Going Away

It wouldn’t be an end-of-year music roundup from me without something related to The Fiery Furnaces appearing on the list. And here it is: I’m Going Away. This is probably the lowest they have appeared in my end-of-year list since I discovered them. Not that I’m Going Away is a poor album (otherwise it wouldn’t be in my top ten). But as The Fiery Furnaces have produced more conventional music, I have found them less interesting. Nevertheless, this album has some great tracks, not least ‘Charmaine Champagne’.

9. Bibio — Ambivalence Avenue

I had not taken much notice of Bibio in the past, but after hearing some clips from Ambivalence Avenue I decided to give it a shot. I was not disappointed. The influence of Boards of Canada is at times painfully obvious. But into the childlike nostalgic sepia-toned mix is thrown more folk-based influences, IDM, hip-hop and funk. And it all feels like it fits well. My favourite track is ‘Haikuesque (When She Laughs)’, even though it clearly owes so much to Boards of Canada.

8. Tortoise — Beacons of Ancestorship

I could not wait for this to come out, yet at the same time I was apprehensive about the results. Beacons of Ancestorship is Tortoise’s first proper album since 2003’s It’s All Around You. Even that was a bit of a let-down, and the bits of material they have released in the intervening period (*cough* not looking at any particular collaborations with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, you understand) have been poor.

But Beacons of Ancestorship, if not exactly up to the, ahem, Standards of their classic albums, is by no means a let-down. It’s just that you get the sense that nowadays Tortoise operate comfortably within their boundaries, rather than challenging them as they did in the past. What can’t be taken away, however, is the fact that this video for ‘Prepare Your Coffin’ is awesome.

7. Doves — Kingdom of Rust

You might rightly think, “Blimey, Doves. That’s that band that gets worse after every album.” Maybe so, but the fact that they do this and yet their latest album, Kingdom of Rust, is still brilliant demonstrates just how good a band Doves are. The first single worried me somewhat as it seemed like Doves by numbers. But it has grown on me, and the reset of the album shows a good development in the band’s sound, with a harder edge in some parts and a krautrocky and electronic vibe in others. The highlight is ‘10:03′.

6. Dirty Projectors — Bitte Orca

Dirty Projectors is an odd band, because they are one of the very few acts that I have ever managed to see live (when they supported Battles a couple of years ago). As a live act they were pretty impressive — the singing was incredible. When you hear Bitte Orca, it might sound suspiciously like the vocals are not real. But they definitely are.

Dirty Projectors are clearly going places. The band has doubled in size since I saw them, and Bitte Orca has been critically acclaimed. And for good reason. The band has a very distinctive sound and almost every song is good. This is ‘Useful Chamber’.

5. Animal Collective — Merriweather Post Pavilion

Animal Collective have been the darlings of the music press this year. While they don’t quite justify all of the hype, their album Merriweather Post Pavilion certainly deserves to be recognised as one of the best of the year. They have done a good job of crafting a poppier and more accessible sound while maintaining their experimental roots. This is ‘Summertime Clothes’.

4. Graham Coxon — The Spinning Top

After spending his past few albums apparently trying to make more mainstream albums, Graham Coxon went back to basics with The Spinning Top. It reminds me of his earliest albums, which is no bad thing. There is a wonderfully natural and gentle sound to this album and right from the first listen I knew I was going to love it. Here is the marvellous ‘Brave the Storm’.

3. Tyondai Braxton — Central Market

Tyondai Braxton is a pivotal member of the experimental electronic / rock band Battles. I think Battles is just about the best band going right now, and I was hugely looking forward to Tyondai Braxton’s solo effort, Central Market. It was not quite what I was expecting, but I was not disappointed. This is the sound of an artist truly pushing himself and exploring musical areas in a way that musicians should do more often.

Orchestral arrangements, crunching guitar loops, sweeping electronic effects and kazoos are fearlessly mixed together. As with his work with Battles, there are sometimes childish melodies — the sort of thing kids might hum in the playground. It would annoy you if it didn’t work so well. Despite the amazing scope of this album, I have chosen to feature one of the more conventional songs, ‘J. City’, because it is so irresistibly awesome.

2. Grizzly Bear — Veckatimest

Grizzly Bear is one of those bands that just gets better and better. Each album is an improvement on the last, and I can’t wait to hear what they can create in the future. They have a wonderful natural sound to them, which means that even though they are often described as an experimental rock band, they are nevertheless accessible. They just write great songs. ‘Two Weeks’ is an instant chamber pop classic.

1. Broadcast and The Focus Group — Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age

This is a true meeting of minds. Broadcast are already well established as a great band with an interesting take on bringing the past to the present in weird and wonderful ways. The Focus Group is Julian House, who has designed artwork for Broadcast for several years and is now one of the chief figureheads of the ‘hauntology’ genre, as co-founder of the incredible Ghost Box record label.

It has to be said that this album sounds like ten parts The Focus Group to one part Broadcast. (Who knows what Broadcast’s new material will be like? A new album is due in 2010, and perhaps it is heavily influenced by the happening hauntology sound.)

Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age presents a wonderful dreamworld collage of sound. Influenced by creepy 1970s B-movies and low-budget science fiction, psychedelia and folk music. Equally childlike and scary, this is the most different-sounding, yet oddly familiar-sounding, release of the year. I am sure that in years to come it will be viewed as the crowning glory of this strange and intriguing new genre. This is ‘I See, So I See So’.

Warp Records celebrated its twentieth anniversary this year with an extravagant box set, Warp20 (Box Set). Measuring in at 10 inches × 10 inches × 3 inches, it truly is a thing of beauty. Packed in there are five CDs and five 10 inch records, full of Warp goodness old and new.

It was not cheap either, so was only for the most fanatic of Warp followers. Luckily for Warp, there are plenty of fanatical followers — myself included.

Warp20 (Chosen)

Also released separately as a 2CD album on its own, Warp20 (Chosen) is designed to be a collection of the best of the first twenty years of Warp Records.

The first ten tracks, making up disc one, were chosen by voters on the internet. As such, the top ten is sadly predictable. You really could have forecast in advance the inclusion of the likes of ‘Windowlicker’, ‘Roygbiv’ and ‘My Red Hot Car’ in the top three.

The inclusion of most of these tracks was surely never in doubt. Certainly, the top eight are bona fide Warp classics (I am not so sure about Jimmy Edgar’s ‘I Wanna Be Your STD’ or Clark’s ‘Herzog’, but I can understand their inclusion). There is also a noticeable skew towards the late 1990s / early 2000s. Only one track, LFO’s ‘LFO (Leeds Warehouse Mix)’, is from before 1998.

It is clear that the current fans of Warp Records — at least those who voted in the internet poll — are a bit like me. They were not around for the birth of the label, and cling on to the late 1990s IDM explosion as Warp’s classic sound. I think this is Warp’s best period too, but I would have preferred a greater variety in the first disc.

Luckily, the second disc is on hand to provide some of that variety. Label boss and co-founder Steve Beckett chose a further fourteen tracks which make up disc two. While all the usual suspects are again present and correct (giving the likes of Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and Autechre two appearances on the compilation), other periods and genres are given rightful recognition.

Ultimately, though, while there are a couple of gems here that I didn’t previously own, Warp20 (Chosen) is a bit redundant for me, and no doubt for almost everyone else who bought this box set. If you are such a great fan of Warp that you are going to shell out eighty quid or so, you almost certainly need no such overview to the label.

Perhaps of more value is the fold-out poster of comments posted by the internet users who placed their votes, providing (relatively) qualitative information to accompany the raw top ten.

Warp20 (Recreated)

This is the surprise highlight of the package — a double-disc album of Warp artists covering classic Warp tracks. It shows you how far Warp has come in the past ten years. For its tenth anniversary, Warp released an album of Warp artists remixing classic Warp tracks.

But with a more diverse range of artists on its roster, and plenty of artists with a different set of skills, it seems as though it makes more sense to ask artists to do covers rather than remixes. The results are pleasingly wonderful. Clearly, when you take maverick musical geniuses and ask them to take on the works of other maverick musical geniuses, the results are going to be deliciously skewed and entertaining.

The album opens with Born Ruffians covering Aphex Twin’s classic humorous tracks from the mid-1990s, ‘Milkman’ and ‘To Cure a Weakling Child’. The band’s stripped down approach works surprisingly well. The vocals are shouted out as though from the rooftops, rather than being distorted by electronic effects, adding to the comedy effect.

Another surprise highlight is Maxïmo Park’s take on ‘When’, originally by Vincent Gallo. This is a wonderful piece of dark synth-pop. Hopefully it signals a new direction for Maxïmo Park, whose sound has otherwise become stale.

Meanwhile, Jamie Lidell’s version of Grizzly Bear’s ‘Little Brother’ is just as beautiful and organic as the original. It is another instance of an artist revealing something otherwise unheard in his audio arsenal.

But the real highlight of the album is ‘Phylactery’ by John Callaghan, which is based on Autechre’s ‘Tilapia’. This transforms one of the first signposts of Autechre’s foray into increasingly unique and obscure electronics into a wonderfully wonky pop song.

One instance where a remix may have been a better idea is when Luke Vibert tackled ‘LFO’. The results are actually rather good — undoubtedly a Luke Vibert take on a classic Warp track. But it certainly lacks the punch of the original. This makes it a slightly trudging, though intriguing, listen.

Overall, though, Warp20 (Recreated) is a marvellous document. It reveals sides to Warp artists that hadn’t been revealed before. It’s like peering into the fourth dimension of an already-extraordinary label.

Warp20 (Elemental)

This disc contains an hour-long mix of 65 Warp tracks, created by remix maestro Osymyso. A similar mix, by Buddy Peace and Zilla, was released five years ago along with the WarpVision DVD. Although Osymyso had five years’ worth of extra material to work with, I am less fond of his effort. Nonetheless, the creativity involved in creating such a mix, containing a diverse array of Warp music from the past twenty years, still astounds me.

Warp20 (Unheard)

Moving on to the vinyl in the box set, we have three ten inch records made up of eleven previously (sort of) unheard tracks. Incidentally, these are smartly presented with a minimalist design and debossed text.

The selection kicks off with Boards of Canada’s immersive ‘Seven Forty Seven’. This is not, strictly speaking, unheard. It was originally featured in an interactive Boards of Canada website several years ago. But it is the first time it has been presented as a track itself. It is so good that I can’t work out why it hasn’t been released before.

This is followed up by the equally exciting ‘Oval Moon (IBC mx)’ by Autechre. Named after IBC, the Manchester-based pirate radio station through which Autechre first made their name, this is real old school stuff. Having been produced in 1991, it is almost as old as the Warp label itself! And it’s excellent.

After these two stonkers, the rest of the collection does not quite stand up to the same level. But it is still a good listen. Fair efforts from Clark, Plaid and Flying Lotus are included, along with classic unreleased material from Elektroids and Nightmares on Wax.

Meanwhile, the plodding and uneventful ‘Sixty Forty’, originally from a 2003 Peel Session, is probably the most disappointing Broadcast song I have ever heard. The collection is rounded off with ‘As Link’, a new Seefeel track, whetting appetites for their rumoured comeback.

Warp20 (Infinite)

Musically, the box set is rounded off with a couple of records made up entirely of locked grooves. There are fifty loops in total, plundered from Warp’s back catalogue. It is an interesting experience to experiment with them for a bit, but probably of limited use to anyone who is not a DJ.

Warp20 (1989-2009) — The Complete Catalogue

The final item in the box is a large book that documents the artwork for every release on the Warp label. It is interesting to leaf through and assess how the label progressed over the years, and recall the memories of hearing all of this wonderful music for the first time.

Warp Records is almost as well known for its strong visual identity as for its music. There is some fantastic artwork in the Warp catalogue. While this book is not at all the best way to appreciate the artwork, it does serve as an excellent historical document cataloguing Warp’s classic covers.

This is the final selection of my overview of twenty interesting Warp albums from the record label’s twenty years. To read the other parts of this series, please check the table of contents on the right.

Jamie Lidell — Multiply

Jamie Lidell is clearly a very talented person. His voice is incredible, but perhaps more incredible is the fact that in his earlier career he contrived to hide it. His work as part of Super_Collider (along with Cristian Vogel) and his début album Muddlin Gear were dark, murky, electronic affairs. Although Jamie Lidell sang from time to time, he didn’t show it off.

With Multiply his sunnier persona was unleashed. Instead of the dark and glitchy music of his earlier material, Multiply is very clearly influenced by soul and funk.

But this album is anything but conventional and boring. Jamie Lidell’s considerable skills as an experimental and electronic musician are fully utilised too. This gives Multiply a great crossover appeal. This is on the brighter side of the border that separates pop from experimental music. But clearly there was no way to stop him from pushing the boat out a little bit. This makes Multiply equally enjoyable for those who like to tap their feed and those who like to stroke their chin.

Here is the odd video for the song that effectively introduced me to Jamie Lidell, ‘The City’:

Boards of Canada — Geogaddi

While most favour Boards of Canada’s earlier album Music Has the Right to Children, for me it’s all about Geogaddi. To me, this album is endlessly fascinating, and always an intense listen.

Geogaddi is the darkest of Boards of Canada’s albums. Their other material is known most for its innocent, childlike and nostalgic qualities. Geogaddi retains an element of that, but with a dark undercurrent running throughout.

The music is more complex and multi-layered. Hidden messages are peppered throughout, and some tracks reveal more about themselves when played in reverse. There are hidden references to religion, the occult, mathematics and numerology. Some even say it is a satanic album. (As a joke, the album lasts 66 minutes and 6 seconds — a silent track, ‘Magic Window’, was inserted at the end.)

Whether Boards of Canada were trying to send some sort of message by planting these references is doubtful. Such references are few and far between on Music Has the Right to Children, and absolutely non-existent on the follow-up album The Campfire Headphase. I think the references were planted in Geogaddi to create a talking point and nothing more.

It certainly got fans talking. This webpage lists a full selection of mysterious messages and trivia about the album, even with a track-by-track breakdown.

Needless to say, leaving aside the hidden messages, the music itself is fantastic. Geogaddi is an unsettling album to listen to, but nonetheless hugely enjoyable and an intense experience.

One of my highlights is ‘Gyroscope’, which manages to fuse great music with one of my other interests as it incorporates samples of a numbers station. This is a fan-made video for the track.

Prefuse 73 — One Word Extinguisher

With One Word Extinguisher, Prefuse 73 effortlessly fused experimental electronic music with energetic hip-hop to create a unique-sounding album. The album is jam-packed with ideas — perhaps too many of them. An idea is allowed to develop just as far as it will go and no more, making this an album of many, mainly short tracks.

The music is also quite diverse, fusing many of Prefuse 73’s musical interests, spanning hip-hop, IDM / glitch, rock music and perhaps even a little bit of jazz. As such, the album is a fantastically colourful and diverse journey. There is not much chance to catch your breath.

There are also plenty of collaborations on this album. While he went a bit overboard with the concept in the following album, Surrounded by Silence, on this album the right balance is struck. I particularly like ‘Dave’s Bonus Beats’, containing drumming by David Lebleu from post-rock group The Mercury Program. The track comes complete with the answerphone message sent to Scott Herren to confirm that the drum track had been sent, adding a personal layer to the music.

During this period, Scott Herren was clearly at his creative peak. Very soon after the release of One Word Extinguisher came the accompanying Extinguished, a distinct album made of the “out-takes” from One Word Extinguisher! For a collection of out-takes, Extinguished is surprisingly good — indeed, almost as good as the original album.

At the same time as the material released as Prefuse 73, Scott Herren was also churning out quality albums as Savath & Savalas, a project more focussed on folk and Spanish-influenced music. Sadly, his subsequent material has not been nearly as good. In contrast to the exciting explorations of his earlier music, Scott Herren began to use the same recognisable formulas over and over. I have since lost interest in Prefuse 73.

Nonetheless, One Word Extinguisher remains an excellent album. Here is a track towards the end of the album, ‘Styles That Fade Away With a Collonade Reprise’.

Grizzly Bear — Veckatimest

Warp played a blinder by signing Grizzly Bear. Their pre-Warp album, Horn of Plenty, was charming but not particularly special. After signing to Warp, they came up with the wonderful Yellow House which was full of hidden beauty.

This year, with Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear have released an indie-rock / chamber-pop masterpiece which has propelled them onto the cusp of stardom. Every track is a winner. Gently enticing and maturely constructed, I can’t get enough of this album. This album ought to become a rock classic.

Grizzly Bear is easily the greatest triumph of Warp’s recent policy to diversify further from electronic music. I look forward to hearing what they come up with in the future.

Here is the lead single, ‘Two Weeks’:

This month the seminal Warp Records label is celebrating its 20th anniversary. There is a heap of festivities planned, and I am expectantly waiting for the very awesome looking Warp20 box set to arrive in the next week or so.

They have a lot to celebrate. The label has personified the cutting-edge of electronic music for most of its existence. Few labels can claim to have been so seminal, and remain so strong for so long.

I discovered Warp at the beginning of this decade. I had already been developing a taste for experimental and electronic music, but before getting internet access I had no way to explore it. I had heard bits and bobs about Warp, but my first real exposure was when I saw the band Broadcast on one of those late-night music programmes on Channel 4. I remember very little about it, but I think the song that mesmerised me so much must have been ‘Illumination’. Here is a video of the band performing it live in 2005.

Once we got the internet, I was able to explore further. When I visited the Warp Records website, ‘Eros’ by Tortoise was playing on its front page. It was one of the most amazing and unique things I had ever heard.

The mixture of soaring sci-fi electronic sounds, intricate multi-layered drumming and funky guitar playing transformed my expectations of what music could achieve. Compared to the standardised indie-rock I had previously been listening to, hearing something as distinctive as this was an utter revelation.

I knew I had to continue on the path of discovery. Given that Tortoise shared the same label as Broadcast, there could be no starting point other than Warp. I was also quickly. attracted by Warp’s striking visual identity, which was largely shaped by The Designers Republic.

As I investigated the artists of Warp on the label’s website, I was surprised and delighted to discover a huge variety of new (to me) and exciting music. It is no surprise that today many of my favourite albums are ones released by Warp in 2001, when I was 14 and discovering all this amazing, diverse music.

But the Warp I discovered was already very different to the Warp that began in 1989. Back then, the promise of label founders Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell was for the Sheffield-based Warp to be a “recognised, credible, uncompromising dance label”. Inevitably though, a label cannot survive 20 years without evolving.

Between 1992 and 1994 the label released the seminal series of albums including the eponymous compilation Artificial Intelligence. The idea behind the series was to showcase “electronic listening music” which designed more for home listening than the dancefloor, or more for your head than your body. This series contained music by musicians that were later to become huge: Richard D James (best known as Aphex Twin), Autechre, Black Dog Productions (containing the members of Plaid), Alex Paterson (from The Orb), Richie Hawtin among others.

The cover of Artificial Intelligence depicts a robot reclining in an armchair with copies of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn lying on the floor — an indication of Warp’s ambitions. The label became the most famous outlet of what is known as Intelligent Dance Music or IDM.

The IDM moniker makes everyone cringe. Few of the best IDM artists think of themselves as IDM, and the artists that describe themselves as IDM are usually not worth listening to. Musically, it might be fair to describe it as dance music’s equivalent of progressive rock. It was the necessary next step, but is denigrated by those who think it is too pretentious and impossible to enjoy.

Like prog rock, IDM had a limited shelf-life and it peaked around the turn of the decade. Electronic music as a whole is not the money-maker it once was. So Warp have further diversified. In the words of Steve Beckett, “probably the first sacrilegious move” was to sign Seefeel in the mid-1990s. They are a more conventional band with guitars and drums, associated with shoegaze as much as techno.

More non-techno artists followed, including the jazzy trip-hop act Red Snapper, 1960s-influenced Broadcast and, er, the downright odd Jimi Tenor (I never really got that one). There was also an increased focus on hip-hop with the likes of Prefuse 73 and the Antipop Consortium. Later, there was a distinctive move towards more conventional rock. This was most notable, controversial and successful with the chart-friendly indie-rock band Maxïmo Park.

Today Warp has artists as diverse as its history suggests. It probably remains best-known for electronic music leaders such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada and Squarepusher. But on the same roster you can find electro-rock shape-shifters Battles, folk-rock bands like Grizzly Bear, the increasingly soul-oriented Jamie Liddell, hip-hopper Prefuse 73, indie band Maxïmo Park and even the satirist Chris Morris. Oh, and in addition to music they also now make films.

This diversity has been good and bad. Undoubtedly Warp lost its way a bit a few years ago as it struggled to find its feet after electronic music waned in popularity. But even after twenty years, Warp remains a path-finding label that anyone interested in experimental pop music should keep an eye on.

When I discovered Warp in 2001, the range of styles on offer was already massive. But each artist was notable for being interesting and innovative. It was easy to view the Warp label as a mark of quality, no matter what the genre was.

Long may it continue. There is absolutely no question that Warp Records transformed my outlook on music more than anything else. I am looking forward to the next 20 years of innovative music.

Over the next week or so I will write about 20 of the most interesting Warp albums from its 20 year history.

Around a year ago I wrote a post that analysed the year’s activity on Last.fm. For those who don’t know, Last.fm is a website that tracks your music listening habits. It produces lovely graphs and churns out recommendations as well as providing tailored radio stations for you to listen to at your leisure. I adore the site.

This year, instead of looking just at the past year’s statistics, I have decided to look at my entire Last.fm history. A couple of weeks ago, I hit my 100,000th scrobble (instance of listening to a track). It’s a suitably big landmark.

My 100,000th scrobble happened on 7 December, just over four years after my first scrobble on 18 November 2004. By that time I had listened to 730 different artists. Of these, 18 had 1,000 plays or more. 196 artists had over 100 plays.

My top thirty artists chart looked like this:

And my top thirty tracks were:

There are a few problems with this chart. The top track, ‘untitled (live)’ by Boards of Canada, is actually several different tracks from bootlegged gig recordings. I am quite sure that ‘Xmd 5a’ by AFX should not be that high, as one day I logged in and it showed many more plays than there should have been. It’s still a good track though.

John Cage tracks figure highly because I own three different recordings of Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. In fact, many of these tracks are high up simply because I own multiple versions, normally because I have the single as well as the album. Shining’s ‘To Be Proud of Crystal Colors is to Live Again’ is actually two different tracks with the same title. All of the Autechre tracks and most of the Jaga Jazzist tracks are here purely on their own steam.

It is obvious that, interesting though they are, Last.fm statistics are far from scientifically rigorous. For one thing, one track counts as one scrobble whether it’s 31 seconds long or 31 minutes long. One website, Last.fm Normaliser, attempts to get round this by weighting your artists by the average length of their tracks. This is also completely unscientific, but it is interesting nonetheless.

This table makes my obsession with Autechre even clearer. Even in the normal Last.fm table they have a huge lead. But by this measure I like Autechre twice as much as any other artist. The biggest climber in the top twenty is Steve Reich, who is number 20 in this table, but number 37 in my original Last.fm chart.

My favourite thing to do with Last.fm data, though, is to analyse it using LastGraph. I did this last year, looking at my Last.fm activity throughout 2007. This time, I am looking at my Last.fm activity as far back as the data goes — March 2005, just a few months after my first scrobble.

The graph is so huge that I can’t include a readable version on this page, but a miniaturised version appears below. Click on it to view it at its original size (Warning: It’s a large file).

I love looking at these graphs. They tell a story about my developing taste in music. But they also, in a way, tell a story about what is happening in my life at a certain point. I can glance at the graph and remember that I had exams during a certain period, or I was working lots in that summer, or whatever. It takes me back. I’m also quite surprised sometimes at which artists appear where on the graph. It appears that my memory was a bit out in a few places.

So there we have it. 100,000 scrobbles; four years of tracking my music listening habits.