The chaps from Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes’ new band… spiky and surprisingly poppy, with a nice line in surf-guitar-meets-abrasive-noise.

9. The Flowers Of Hell – Come Hell Or High Water

Woo, this is pretty! It sounds a bit like all the lovely little instrumental bits in Spiritualized’s best stuff.

8. And So I Watch You From Afar – And So I Watch You From Afar

Didn’t realise this came out in 2009 ’til I checked. That Fucking Tank’s record is the only one that pushes this in terms of monster riffs per minute. But this rocks harder.

7. Dan Deacon - Bromst

Whee! Dan Deacon is insane. I saw him with an eleven-piece laptop ensemble at Primavera and it was DIGITAL MANNA FROM HEAVEN, though I was powered by Jaegerbombs and it was 1am at the time. But Bromst is fabulously-nuts ADHD electro nonsense.

6. Shannon Wright – Honeybee Girls

I love Shannon Wright. She could basically record an EP of the sound of her farting in the bath and the only reason it wouldn’t hit my top ten albums would be technicalities over the format. And it was a total surprise to me that a new record appeared from her this year, since I only discovered it existed through a random googling – haven’t really seen it reviewed anywhere. Anyway, this is a lot more sparse than her previous records and gives her incredible voice room to express itself. I’d been looking for a record of heartbreaking tunes all year, and the new Eitzel and Julie Doiron records were kinda patchy, but this one hits the buttons.

5. Beak> – Beak>

Bloke from Portishead who loves Silver Apples forms side project and records album that sounds quite a lot like Silver Apples. Only with some krauty guitar explorations thrown into the mix too. It’s a really simple idea, but basically updates some of that ace 60s/70s psychedelia and krautrock with a whole dose of lovely 2009 synths. Thanks Geoff!

4. Mono – Hymn To The Immortal Wind

Or ‘A lesson in how to be Explosions in the Sky without sucking’. On paper, Mono should be awful: a four-piece post-rock band with only one trick in their armoury, and that’s starting quiet and then ending loud. But they do massive, soaring endings better than pretty much anyone. And they spend each album trying to top the last in the Ben Hur stakes: the closing minutes of ‘Everlasting Light’ are just obscenely epic.

3. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

Music from OUTER SPACE.

2. The Paperchase – Someday This Will All Be Yours Vol. 1

A cursory glance at my Last.fm charts tells me I’ve listened to The Paperchase more than is healthy this year, particularly this bombastic, melodramatic collection of songs portending some kind of undefined impending apocalypse. Bonus points for squeezing a chorus out of the ‘he’s got the whole world in his hands’, which I haven’t heard since I had to sing it in school assembly when I was six.

1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

Predictable. But yeah, this’ll basically be the top of everyone’s album of the year charts, right? Since it’s obviously the best thing released this year and quite probably one of the best records of the decade. If you’ve not heard it, it’s bloody astonishingly brilliant.

Katie Jane Garside from Queen Adreena played at Modern Art Oxford a couple of years ago – I’ve just found this picture, in which I caught her between songs, in a rare moment of not being right in the audience’s face.

Check the links below and get yourself some free music, all legal and above board and that. There’s plenty of  good stuff from Amazon for free to promote their MP3 offer, but for reasons best known to themselves, they make you install an Amazon MP3 installer before you can download anything, the cads.

Wichita Recordings album sampler

4AD 2008 sampler album

4AD at SXSW sampler (includes M. Ward and Camera Obscura)

Teepee Records sampler (featuring doomy metal, including J. Mascis’ metal band Witch)

Jagjaguwar 2008/9 compilation (from Amazon)

Secretly Canadian 2008/9 compilation (from Amazon)

Sub Pop sampler (from Amazon)

Stereo Test Kit Records sampler

Exotic Fever records from DC

Ioda SXSW opening day sampler

NPR Music at SXSW sampler (includes Dirty Projectors and The Decemberists)

Full Time Hobby sampler (features Fujiya & Miyagi, The Hold Steady, Tunng)

Matador Records Autumn 2008 sampler (Pavement, Fucked Up, Mogwai)

Eine Kleine Nacht Musik (inspirational krautrock mixtape)

And while I’m here, download the first recordings by From Light To Sound. They’re great, honestly.

AUDIOSCOPE is just one date on Four Tet’s biggest tour yet. Stuart Fowkes caught up with Kieran on the eve of the tour to talk about charity shows, live performance and why one of his biggest influences is jazz…

Everything about Kieran’s fourth album under the Four Tet banner, Everything Ecstatic, is bursting with a zest and vigour that sets it apart from so many dour electronica contemporaries. The decision to put together a record full of joy was made at the very outset, he says: ‘I wanted to make something that would make people want to run around in the streets and celebrate. I’ve been listening to a lot of gamelan music, religious music and free jazz, and wanted to infuse the record with the kind of passion I found there, and create something with a sense of ambition. The energy of gospel music is incredible, with that feeling that the singers are communicating directly with God, or with people not on this planet. I wanted Everything Ecstatic to convey the celebration of the potential for euphoria that music has.’

An accusation often levelled at electronica artists (albeit usually by the sort of people who can’t really get their heads around electronic music in the first place) is that it’s all just a few blokes with laptops, and can’t possibly amount to an exciting live show. Kieran is, understandably, quick to defend his position. ‘People performing behind laptops doesn’t have to be boring, so long as you believe you’re doing something musically challenging. I’m a huge jazz fan, and that really informs the way I play live. Jazz musicians would create something on a record, then push it and explore it live, varying the melodies and themes until they eventually ended up with something completely different. If you look at some of the recordings of the same Coltrane track over a period of years, for instance, the journey between the two recordings means that two versions of the same track are almost completely different. By the time Audioscope comes around, I’ll have been on tour for six or seven weeks, so who knows what I’ll end up playing?’

Domino’s limited CD-R release Live in Copenhagen provided some insight into how Kieran approaches his live shows – fragments of recognisable melodies from album tracks build and develop into extended remixes, with some songs going off at such a tangent that they’re scarcely recognisable. As Kieran explains, his tunes are far from set in stone: ‘What’s on my albums is just the starting point for those tracks as they sounded at a given point in time – over the course of a tour, they might change completely. Rounds was the first album I really toured properly, so the new album is informed by the live performances of the material from Rounds over the last year or so.’

How live exactly is the Four Tet live show? The simple answer is ‘completely live’, it would seem: ‘I use two computers, a sampler with trigger pads and a mixer with a built-in sampler, and every show really is completely different. I might start with a prepared drum loop, or a bassline or main theme from one of my tracks, and then drop bits in, sample myself live, create live loops and just see where it takes me.’ For live inspiration, Kieran looks to an earlier wave of electronica artists who were constantly breaking new ground: ‘I remember seeing Aphex Twin when I was 18, on stage with a troop of people dressed as teddy bears and just being incredibly excited, thinking this was real ‘next level’ stuff which could change everything. But that first wave of amazing innovators has been followed by a wave of people who don’t seem to putting themselves forward with confidence, and who haven’t continued to innovate. I was a teenager when drum ‘n’ bass really kicked off, and I found two-step garage really exciting too – just to hear people developing what was really ‘new’-sounding music. ‘

Things seem to have gone quiet over the last couple of years for Fridge, the gorgeous post-rock outfit featuring Kieran and Domino labelmate Adem Ilhan. Does the success of Four Tet and Adem’s solo record mean we’ve seen the last of them? Apparently not, says Kieran: ‘Fridge has been on hold for a couple of years – we’ve been doing it since we were fifteen, so it wasn’t strange to us to take a break from it to do other things. But we’ve started on rough recordings for a new record, and we’re aiming to get these finished and get an album out some time next year. Four Tet has given me so many great opportunities over the last couple of years that it seemed silly not to take them up. It’s been a rollercoaster and I’ve been having a lot of fun seeing where it takes me, but I may take a break next year to catch up on other things.’

So Four Tet’s been something that’s been spurred on by its own success? ‘Yes – to be honest, if the reaction the Four Tet stuff got hadn’t been so good, I probably wouldn’t have carried on with it, but it made me think ‘hang on, I might be quite good at making music with a computer’. Four Tet was originally meant to be just one record, with me putting together a hip hop/electronica record influenced by jazz. I felt that most jazz-influenced electronica took its cue from the lighter end of jazz and was quite boring, so wanted to do something a bit different – ’3625′ was that record, but the reaction to it was so good that I decided I’d do an album, and things went from there.’

AUDIOSCOPE has particular resonance for Kieran, as he’s been a supporter of Shelter’s work for several years already: ‘I’ve been donating money to Shelter regularly for the last four years. I’ve lived in London my whole life, and currently live in Camden, so the problems of homelessness have surrounded me and been something I’ve worried about every day. The work Shelter do is extremely worthwhile and important, and it’s obvious that they’re achieving great things.’

Are charity shows something you see as more than just a quick fundraiser – can they really raise long-term awareness of a charity’s work? ‘I think so – musicians have so many forums in which they can talk to people, in the wide range of magazines and websites, that when you see an artist choosing to associate themselves with a charity, it’s hugely impactful. Having the chance to raise money for a charity at the same time as reminding people what that charity is all about is a fantastic thing.’

In fact, Anticon is so clearly a point of reference, with the chatterbox repetition of abstract lyrical motifs riding on top of all sorts of electronic undulations that you can’t help but expect one of their prolific voices-for-hire like Boom Bip to rock up and throw in a guest verse. Not that he needs to – the delivery is sharp and incisive throughout, and imaginatively laid askew on top of the beats, even bringing to mind Def Jux maestros Company Flow in places. The two takes on the title track are dead ringers for something like Sage Francis, while the quasi-industrial soundscaping of ‘Atomic Test Site’ is as close as they come to the real hip hop boundary-pushers. While most of the record is great, I can’t help feeling they’re keeping themselves reined in within the safety of a set of defined influences, when there’s clearly enough talent and potential here to do something quite unlike anyone else.

Recording-wise, it’s also rough around the edges throughout – the mix is a bit uneven and muddy in places, and the beats not as crisp and decisive as they need to be. For the most part, that’s not a problem, and actually does the most to lend a chimeric, cLOUDDEAD-esque quality to some of the recording, but when they go into for Dalek-style huge washes of synth, it clouds the sound rather than giving it the distinct kick it needs. These slight reservations aside, Rough Tongue Surfaces is a first-rate bit of inquisitive, sharp UK hip hop that’s easily the match of anything else on the scene. Let’s just hope the next record takes them even further.

Listen to ‘Whitesands’

Jamesphoney & Jamesreindeer

This, his new EP on Fat Cat, is much more straightforward by his standards, the treatments of the piano for the most part of subtle as to appear little more than a slight difference in tuning from time to time. While John Cage is a definite influence on earlier material, on opener ‘Ginsterweg’ it’s Steve Reich who exerts a stronger hold, with several overlapping piano lines booming dramatically on top of one another in the manner of the opening credits of a Michael Haneke movie. ‘Tanz’ is a joyous nine-minute exploration accompanied by strings as played by Sigur Ros if they’d grown up on eastern European folk music. ‘Hauberg’ brings to mind the more contemplative moments of Dirty Three, while ‘Wonder’, which could be an instrumental Tunng track, brings in some electronic clicks and buzzes to change the pace.

What’s remarkable is the huge range of moods and textures at play here within the space of an EP, from what’s ostensibly a simple palete, and the sense of space and scale the tracks hit at their peak. Perhaps more direct and accessible than ever before, but no less inventive or exploratory for it. Excellent.

Listen to ‘Wonder’

Hauschka

Hauschka on MySpace

What’s most offputting, though, is that the whole enterprise seems dreadfully dated – not in a knowing, massive-in-Hoxton retro kind of way, but in sounding suspiciously like something Ninja Tune might have put out in 1996. ‘Mecha Squirrel (part two)’ kicks off with a breakbeat that’s a dead ringer for ‘Higher State of Consciousness’ and ended up like a 2009 dancefloor take on an old Coldcut track. The beat patterns are all pretty generic and the dry drum sounds don’t do the tracks any favours by sounding like they’ve been lifted straight off a Future Music sample CD. While there are some neat electro bass figures in the mix, there’s rarely a melody strong enough to stay in your head for longer than the track’s duration. But if you long for the days when nothing rocked the party like a conga breakdown, you might find something pleasingly old-school about this.

Listen to ‘Shy’

DC Recordings

It’s not taken the Kid long to whack out some new material, following on from his excellent ‘Die Soundboy Die’ EP (which is reviewed here), even if it’s that old standard of a stopgap measure, the (mostly) remix EP.

Lead-off track ‘Kill Soundboy Kill’, in truth, isn’t that far removed from its source material, but if you’ve not picked that up, then this is a fine straight-ahead floor-filler with a fabulous bassline worth the entry fee alone. The Ove-Naxxesque ‘Spruce Goose’ brings a little of Kid606′s sense of mischief to the party, sampling a simplistic little thumb piano rhythm, slotting it in alongside some wobbly bottom end pulses, and possibly coining the genre ‘thumbstep’ in the process. The best of the originals, though, is ‘Circuitstep’, a wonderfully-chaotic and confusing slab of thick, subby pulses and impish, impatient leads.

But it’s when 606 hands over the mantle to others that the real treats come in. Bruce Stallion’s fantastic remix of ‘Raving Cain’ turns the original into dancefloor gold by making more of the vocals and cranking up the dial marked ‘filthy dubstep’ to 11, while the dub mix of T.Y.T.R. (from Pretty Girls Make Raves) brings a persistent techno stomp and some always-welcome 303 sirens to the party.

Well worth your time, whether you’re spinning it or jigging around like a loon to it.

Listen to ‘T.Y.T.R. (instrumental dub mix)’

Kid606

The Tupolev Ghost have got one thing right – they know as well as anyone that there are few song titles that can’t be improved with the addition of a nice big ‘Fucking’ in the middle. Even better, ‘Giant Fucking Haystacks’ is apparently an ode to the titular unsung hero of eighties wrestling. A shame, then, that there’s something unnervingly lightweight about The Tupolev Ghost’s pop-hardcore in places. There’s something about ‘The Night’, for instance, that feels like it’s holding back from fully committing to blasting through some hardcore vitriol: a kind of squeaky-clean demureness for which there’s no place in this kind of music, and which means that the song doesn’t keep the attention for anything like its five-minute runtime. ‘Diagrams’, meanwhile, suffers from a real ‘heard-it-before’ feeling from the riffs through to the structure, and can’t separate itself from the pack of thousands of bands doing this kind of thing right now. Could it be that the slick, polished-to-a-shine nature of the recording actually doesn’t do them any favours?

There are some great moments that point to a bright way forward – ‘Our Great Destroyer’ could almost have come from At The Drive-In’s most melodic Acrobatic Tenement moments, and has some real purpose and character about it. And the aforementioned paean to Big Daddy’s nemesis has a nice dynamic, some interesting twists and turns in the way the sections fit together and, well, rocks hardest of all the tracks on offer. A bit more blood and thunder and a bit less spit and polish and we might be in business here.

Listen to ‘Diagrams’

The Tupolev Ghost

An Italian duo combining ghostly drum machine breakbeats, swirls of ambience and reverb-drenched Constellation-style guitar lines, Japanese Gum offer nothing much to surprise your average fan of the artier side of rock, but plenty to keep them interested.

‘Chlorine Blue’ is the best track on offer here, starting off as a somnambulant Piano Magic lilt emerging through a synthy brume, then halfway through kicking into a piercingly-high end onslaught, like A Place To Bury Strangers if they were beard-stroking post-rockers rather than goth doomsters.

‘Part-Time Assholes’ too is rather lovely, combining mournful guitars with understated electronic beats, and suggesting something like what Flying Saucer Attack might have sounded like if they’d ended up on Anticon in 2005.

The EP as a whole, though, suffers slightly from the combined effect of its apparently lo-fi origins, some anaemic snare sounds, and the miasmal washes of feedback that cover much of its running time, lending the overall feel that it’s perhaps a work in progress or a demo rather than the finished article. Most evident on ‘Cannibalism Next Door’, it crucially robs the recordings of some of their punch and sense of focus, when they’d kick much harder with a better mix. Part of me wants to hear a souped-up, mega-studio Trent Reznor version of the same songs to see how they hold up with some crystal-clear industrial crunch behind the instruments. Far better than Nine Inch Nails would with a home recording setup and only the songs to rely on, I’ll warrant.

Listen to Chlorine Blue

Japanese Gum