From “Musical Instrument Support,” Edward L. Van Halen

In the spirit of Journalistic Douchebaggery, I’m providing my top 10 albums, EPs, and songs of the year! I have included streaming audio for everything I was able to find a source for.

Normally, I think that end-of-year lists are kind of a bad idea – everybody’s choices are pretty similar, and most of them are front-loaded to the last two months of the year anyways because our memories are pretty short when it comes to this stuff. But given how easy lala.com makes it to just stream stuff out, I figure it’s an easy way to recommend some stuff I really liked.

There were a few things I heard very recently that probably would have made the list if I had heard them a few months ago, like Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone and Animal Collective’s Fall Be Kind EP, but I don’t want my impulsive nature to corrupt the purely analytical experience of making an arbitrary list of some stuff I liked.

I am going to hide all the streaming audio below the fold: please click through to hear full samples of like 20-some albums and tracks and stuff.

Albums

Viva Voce – Rose City – it is a miscarriage of justice that I cannot find a streaming source for this wonderful album.

EPs

Tapes – Hissing Theatricals – click to listen.

Soom T- Dirty Money – click to listen.

Burial & Four Tet – Moth / Wolf Cub:

Gatekeeper – Optimus Maximus

Gatekeeper “Optimus Maximus” from Fright on Vimeo.

Tracks

Viva Voce – The Slow Fade – again, it’s horrible that this isn’t available for streaming anywhere I can find. This song is great.

Honorable mention – Warp20 box set – this was an absolutely ridiculously lavish package. 5 CDs, 5 10″ records, and a full-color book depicting the entire packaging/graphic design history of the label (most of which was crafted with care by the unparalleled Designers Republic). Two of the CDs were handpicked “best-of” comps. One of those was voted on by fans, whose messages actually appear in the packaging. Two of the CDs are a wide variety of artists covering songs off of the Warp catalogue. The fifth CD is an extremely ADD mix, which manages at one point to put Anti-Pop Consortium’s “Ghostlawns” smack on top of Squarepusher’s “My Red Hot Car” and turn the whole thing into this R&B/2-step hybrid. Craig David is rolling in his grave. Two of the 10″s are just locked groove loops, which means that finally you can just get so high and listen to the vocal hook on LFO’s “Freak” literally forever.

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
it was delicious
so sweet
and so cold
buuuuuuuuddy

From IMAGING METHOD AND SYSTEM, US 2007/0201731 A1 (Fedorovskaya et al.)

5:31 – This CNN touchscreen stuff is giving me vertigo.  So are the margaritas.  Meanwhile, on MSNBC, David Gregory borrowed on of Olbermann’s spare Klaus Nomi suits.

5:32 – Fox’s touchscreen is mad busted and laggy in comparison.  They have an Asian lady in Crown Point, IN; presumably because of acorns. 

5:38 – “I’m the most fortunate guy you’ll ever talk to.”  Correction, John McCain – you are about to be the second most fortunate guy Fox News will ever talk to.

5:43 – Hey!  Fred Barnes!  Bruce Vilanch wants his glasses back.

5:46 – Carol Marin on MSNBC!  Represent!  Hopefully they get an exclusive with Robin Robinson next.

5:47 – hahahaha, MSNBC has this ridiculous 3D pillar system to show imaginary, virtual charts.  Dude.

5:51 – William Kristol looks like a caricature of himself.  Brit Hume looks like a Pez dispenser.

5:57 – CNN – look at all these different guys with laptops (credit: Cex, “Furcoat”).

6:05 – CNN has declared Mark Eyebrows as the new senator of VA.

6:18 – Mayor Douglas Wilder looks like a photonegative of Abraham Lincoln.  (Stole that joke from MST3k, bro)

6:19 – These are not the holograms I seek!  Fake ass bullshit.

Alright, this isn’t fun, I have to drink.

(i) Records I Have Enjoyed As Of Late.

Devo – Be Stiff EP – Stiff Records (1978)

Six tracks, most of which were later re-recorded for use on their Warner Bros. debut, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo. The version of “Social Fools” on here is completely amazing and if you don’t like it you’re probably stupid, like in a clinical way. It’s a punk band on a punk label doing punk things, with all of the weirdness that they exhibited early on, utterly un-tempered by their corporate masters at WB. The EP contains the version of “Are We Not Men?” that includes a call-and-response riddle ode to their home state. It is also notable because it’s basically the only Devo recording I hadn’t heard, and now I have, so I can pretty much die whenever at this point because we got that speedbump squared away.

Devo – Social Fools

(ii) Coasters – I Am Fucking Sick of Great America

It’s depressing to have come to this point, but I have lived in or around Chicago, IL since I was five years old, and I think that I don’t ever want to see the inside of a well-populated Six Flags Great America again so long as I live. I stress the “well-populated” – if it was totally dead inside, I’d gladly go. But there’s almost nothing there that actually warrants the cost and the crowd.

My favorite rides at Great America are the Raging Bull and the Viper, both of which I have ridden so many times that muscle memory disallows me any fun – I instinctively know when to brace myself and exactly for what. If I had to rank all of the coasters at SFGAM, I guess it’d look like this:

1. Raging Bull

2. Viper

3. American Eagle

4. Deja Vu

5. Ragin’ Cajun

6. Superman

7. Vertical Velocity

8. Whizzer

9. Iron Wolf

Just looking at that list, in comparison to what other parks have, is depressing. I can go to Cedar Point (in fact, I am going, in just over a month), and they have a whole lot more rides than that, and several of them (Millenium Force!) are utterly amazing – not just in a thrillseeking sense, but in a “marvel of human ingenuity” sense. They work with the layout of the park, instead of being shoehorned into fucking part of the goddamned parking lot (hey there, Viper!). More importantly, it’s actually cheaper to get into Cedar Point, and it’s not staffed by subhuman assholes who are inspecting what my t-shirt means to determine whether or not I’ll have to turn it inside out (e.g. Greenhouse “Ska-plunk” shirt, parady of “Kerplunk” cover – told to turn it inside out for no reason except that the person looking didn’t understand). Going the SFGAM has been pretty much a never-ending calvalcade of horror, discomfort, and abuse, and I’m pretty sure that unless it’s some sort of private party or it’s otherwise free-of-charge, I don’t need their dirty, piece of shit park any more. Six Flags are a bad company and they should feel bad.

(iii) Drinks – You Can Totally Buy Beamish Again / Reviews of Cheap Wine

Beamish – Beamish Irish Stout is apparently available in the US again, after (???) resulted in there not being any fucking Beamish at the store for way too long. Beamish is a cream stout, akin to Guinness, except that it manages to be smoother and creamier. If you are looking for a cream stout, not one of those brutal, bitter imperials, you can’t really find one that is nicer to your mouth than Beamish.

Cheap Wine Reviews

Big House Pink – Last week was cheap rose week, and this one is ridiculously sweet with very little dryness to it. I think it cost about six bucks at the store. Screw-top. Would drink too quickly again.

Frontera Chilean Rose – Three bucks at the store next door. Tastes off, like vinegar.  Don’t drink this.

Schlitterbahn was originally built there to act as a waterpark fed by the water from the river – in fact, Schlitterbahn West (aka “Old Schlitterbahn”) still uses this gross-looking, fairly cold (around 70 degrees Fahrenheit) fresh water. Schlitterbahn East is a tram ride away (they’re probably about a mile apart), uses chlorinated water, and is home to the Master Blaster, which is repeatedly voted the best water ride in America. The Master Blaster is best described as a water coaster – in a two-person raft, you go up and down a number of hills. The ride uses a bunch of really strong jets to push your raft up the hills quickly. The effect is cool, and totally different. Also, at about a minute-and-a-half long, it’s the longest water slide I can think of. The format doesn’t exactly lend itself to long ride experiences, generally.

Schlitterbahn is different, though. Back at the old park, you can get on the Raging River Tube Chute, which is a 45-minute-long experience that ends with a tube trip down the Comal River itself. Basically, a series of slides and (sloooow-moving) lazy rivers takes you all the way across the park before dumping you into the river. As a ride, it’s not particularly thrilling (except for a monute-long trip through a very low tunnel that had me pulling with my hands as fast as possible in an attempt to get the fuck out of that terrifying, claustrophobic space) – but as an experience, it’s totally unique. I’ve been on slides of this type before (all of them at old parks – Disney World’s River Country [RIP] had one, as did (does?) Wet n’ Wild in Orlando), but they were all just brief excuses to roughhouse and get hurt. This was actually a pretty trip through a bunch of trees. The experience was diminished by the insane amount of people, and by the fact that it was cold – it had rained earlier, so the air wasn’t particularly hot – but I enjoyed myself.

This year, the park opened up Dragon’s Revenge – essentially a retheming of what was previously the Dragon Blaster. Like the Master Blaster above, this was a coaster-type ride. Unlike the Master Blaster, this one was heavily themed. Super over-the-top medieval music, a line spent partially inside of a run-down castle, fog effects, lighting effects, and one of those spinning tunnels like at the haunted house all added up to a ride that was probably a lot more boring before they added all of the stuff to it.

One last thing of note was the Torrent River. Every water park has a lazy river, and Schlitterbahn is no exception. However, they also have a wave river. The Torrent River had a wave generator that fed waves down the length of the lazy river, which was awesomely fun. Before we left, we rode around it three times. That was awesome.

On top of the rides I mentioned, food and drinks and even gifts were reasonably priced – and instead of having to carry cash, Schlitterbahn will sell you wristbands with easily removable denominations of money on them, valid everywhere in the park. This means that you can just sort of drink your way through lines and crowds with a mere flick of the wrist. Like everything else in Texas, it is made of magic and absolutely perfect*.

* – Glaringly false statement

The a-side builds from a single-note bassline, tagging on hats, blips and chords as it goes at its own leisurely pace. The claps and occasional stutters place it near the intersection of techno and electro, at least until about the three-minute mark. After a brief rest, a chord progression begins – wholly unexpected yet totally in-tune with everything else that’s happening – and this chord progression anchors the track the rest of the way through. It’s one of those perfect moments of golden ratio release where you just have to lean back and go “holy shit.”

“Sapphire” is followed by a remix by Daso & Pawas, and the way they jump right into the progression of the track, it feels like nothing changed except the weight. The kicks are louder and the synth touches are dubbier. It’s one of those mixes that ups the bounce quotient* of the original, doesn’t do anything life-changing but doesn’t fuck anything up. By being placed second on the EP instead of tacked onto the end, it works to prolong the joy of the original track while switching it up and injecting a nice, house-y vibe.

The last track, “Tonalite,” toes the electro line even closer than “Sapphire.” The template is the same – a single-note bassline gives way to a dream-like melody. It’d be hyperbolic to talk this one up as hard as the a-side, as the tracks are both fantastic. Strongly recommended.

Sapphire will be released as a 12″ or as a 320k, DRM-free MP3 download from Spectral Sound on June 24, 2008.

* “Bounce quotient” is totally a real thing, I learned it in physics in college

Bigger than Tony Yayo.