Thursday, December 21, 2006  3:44 am 

2OO6 - a year of jaded Jazz Funk Greats? Nah it was fairly cool actually

Here’s the moment everyone was waiting for, right, 20jazzfunkgreats bunch of 2006 lists and stuff, records we dug, things we have felt, reminiscences, cries, silly dances and the like. Befitting our non-competitive approach to music and life, generally, we’re not ordering the lists, how the fuck do you compare these records? would you feel comfy weighting chunks of bleeding heart in some fancy roman scales and saying, after some pondering, ahoy this is heavier, this is lighter, would you? We wouldn’t, so we won’t, and here we go.

Juan’s favourite music spells of 2006 on strict alphabetic order

Black Dice- Manoman Ep (DFA)

Realise that the hum that fills the space between the thoughts in your brain is a monologue sent by spider-shaped Aliens hidden in the dark side of the moon. Reprogram your calculator, plug it to the ham radio and start a dialogue with them, inform them about the situation of the scene down here and obtain, in exchange, secret technological and compositional tips to make the audience at your gigs go ‘man, oh, man’.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy- The Letting Go (Drag City)

Start singing songs because if you don’t you know you’ll die and, by the time you have released this album, you’ll be closer to most of your listeners than their (fucking, loving) lovers.

Child Pornography/Quam Queritis Split (Not Not Fun)

Play No Wave hopscotch on fractured emerald green tiles for a swift teletransportation to the land of Oz where you will have all sorts of fun adventures with Dorothy-is-a-punk-rocker, synth-man and the bad ass green skeen witches.

Clipse- Hell hath Fury (Jive)

Build a boom bap spaceship and travel to Neptune, convince the rulers of that strange land to come over to Earth and defeat the forces of clone teenage millionaireing with the flick of a spastic drum machine and the smoothest skills in the rhyme skool.

Coughs- Secret Passage (Load)

If you drum on enough rusty things with enough arms and close your eyes hard enough and shriek like a psychic banshee reaching the right pitch, count one two three four five with your fingers then don’t be surprised if you end up creating a vortex of novel colours that will teach people new ways of seeing and feeling.

Gay Against You- Muscle Milk (Aadadat)

Mix pop rad sugar, analogue keyboards, general niceness, insane teddybear outfits and unicorn horn candy in a big cauldron, run around it yelling, pogoing, moshing, and you’ll find everyone loves you.

Ghostface Killah- Fishscale (Def Jam)

Summon Baron Samedi and listen to the stories of the most raucous ghosts ever to trouble the mysterious streets of alphabet city, track them one by one and pin them down to the black grooves of your record using dope beats as weights. Thus become even more of a legend yourself.

Jay Reatard- Blood Visions (In The Red)

Snakes and snails and punk rock tales won’t make the high school sweetheart fall for you but you’re a bad boy and you don’t give a flying fuck (except when you’re inside your bedroom listening to Red Kross and crying your heart out).

Liars- Drum’s not Dead (Mute)

Find a true heart, bury it in the middle of the forest, wait for a a year, go back and dance around the ensuing jack o’lantern to the riddim of the thumping beats until the morning, guaranteed to clean your spirit and make your eyes bristle with mystery. (Ok this is actually my favourite record of all the list but don’t tell anyone yeah?)

Mika Miko- C.Y.S.L.A.B.F. (KRS)

Find a brick wall behind an abandoned venue, break a piece of chalk & draw the most fun ever bunch of punk rock girls in it, click the toes of your chucks three times in front of the portrait and wish hard, if you be lucky they’ll come to life and take you on tour to do their merch or something.

Motor- Klunk (Novamute)

Fuck your car, have babies, let them dress up like Lada bad ass motherfuckers and joy ride teenage yoofs down the streets striking fear in the heart of the confused Scientologists.

OOIOO- Taiga (Thrill Jockey)

Be Yoshimi and make magic. Add lots of drums and make us happy.

Parts and Labor- Stay Afraid (Jagjaguwar)

Banish the demon of despair snarling at you from a TV scream with post-hardcore lightning bolts, synth electric shocks and the strength of your convictions.

Scott Walker- The Drift (4AD)

Stand in the darkness watching the moon reflected in a massive mirror, listen to your breath taking over the silence and discover the hidden truth, we just keep talking, writing, living, because in the dark of the night when it’s all quiet and we’re alone with ourselves we could be dead and buried, for all we know.

Wizardzz- Hidden City of Taurmond (Load)

Now seriously, you have to defeat a horde of Orcs hidden in those dungeons. It won’t be easy, perhaps it would be a good idea for Borbo the halfling pickpocket to don his invisibility cloak and create some sort of distraction over there at the watermill. Anyway, if you overcome the orcs, defeat their leader, Undead lord skullface and recover, and make sense of the wormhole scroll, then perhaps you might be able to travel through dimensions and return to that role playing game session you were having in Providence, R.I. when you started listening to Wizardzz and everything went kinda funny. I must say that missing double chip chocolate muffins, wanting to be able to read that stupid 20JFg zine and play the Wii are lame excuses to abandon this world of sword and sorcery adventures.

Also honourable- Les Georges Leningrad (Sangue Puro), Shoplifting (Body Stories), Hawnay Troof (Dollar and Deed), The Gossip (Standing in the Way of Control), Espers (Espers 2), Tara Jane O’Neil (In Circles), T.I.T.S./Leopard Leg Split yada yada.

Juan’s 8 to dance the year away

‘It was the best of times, it was blurst of times’… Aldous Huxley couldn’t have put it better…

‘But if the good 20jazzfunkgreats brothers never rose into the air, they at least performed the most amazing feats on the floor. Sometimes, says Genuine Guy, ‘Juan passed the left foot over the shoulder to the cheek. He also passed his feet over his head, until the big toes touched the nose. Steven again was able to stretch his legs so far to the left and right that he sat on the ground, without any space being visible between his body and the floor. One, Stuart, stretched his legs to such an extraordinary extent that, toe to toe, the distance was seven feet, though he himself was but four feet high’. Reading such accounts of these nerds’ performances, one is forced to the conclusion that as well as naturaliter bizarra, the 20jazzfunkgreat soul is naturaliter drum-majoretta. So far as the eternal 20jfg nerd is concerned, a taste for acrobacy and exhibitionism would seem to be built-in, only awaiting for a banging tune to manifest itself in handsprings and back somersaults. In the case of socially-disabled contemplatives, such opportunities are not a frequent occurrence. It took eight songs and an able DJ to create the circumstances in which, at long last, it became possible for brother Juan to do the splits’.

(Again alphabetical as fuck, I mean, alphabetical as cfku)

David Banner- Play

Gay Against You- TeleRad

Green Velvet- Shake and Pop

Hawnay Troof- Man on my Bak

Justice- Let there be Light (DJ Funk’s Bounce dat Ass Remix)

Motor- Spazm

OOIOO- Uma

Wiley- Eskiboy

GIGS WE ENJOYED

(Videos not necessarily from the specific events where your wee 20jazzfunkgreats bore witness)

Boredoms at Primavera Sound

Liars at Frieze festival

Coughs at the Albert

The Knife at the Forum

Gang Gang Dance at Audio

Les Georges Leningrad at Audio

Animal Collective at Primavera Sound

!!! at Concorde 2

Gay Against You at the Do

Yeborobo at the Do

WTF NO VIDEOS OF YEBOROBO???????

Crystal Castles/Stinkmitt/Silverlink at the Do

Scotch Egg at Sabbath

Dat Politics at 7 Year Glitch.

xxJFSteve’s top tips to physically manifest his top 10 LP’s of 2OO6:

The Knife- Silent Shout
Hitch a ride on a Dragon’s back to deepest, darkest Sweden and burrow a large cave under the snow. Draw a crazy picture in your own blood, the kind that you should never show anyone for fear of arrest, and then sit infront of a projection of it. Then, throw your head back and alternately scream/body-pop/cry to the sound that should now be in your head.
Download: Forest Families (Live in Gothenburg 2OO6)

Planningtorock- Have It All
Zap yourself back to medieval times and kidnap a European princess with the help of Robin Hood. Zap back and learn violin, double bass and other assorted string instruments. Play the entire back catalogue of Kate Bush to the princess, hand her a microphone and then form a tribute band to this years most amazing woman, PTR.
Download: Local Foreigner

The Emperor Machine- Vertical Tones & Horizontal Noise
Hop into that smooth bullet shaped Flight Of The Navigator spacemobile and set a course for the shoulder of Orion. Past an asteroid belt you should find a small moon that is pure overgrown jungle. A giant citadel juts out all jagged and sharp from the ground and in the highest tower are two pure white shining beings that when they open their mouth to talk to you, strange space bleeps and black hole rumbles will pour out amongst shades of blue, red, pink, green and yellow.
Download: Fear Of Woman

Skatebard- Midnight Magic
Hot-wire Kavinsky’s Ferrari and hurtle through time and space to 2O12 where you should then adopt the lifestyle of a Transylvanian cyber-goth Vampyr and only feed on the warm red machine oil that courses through your Android victim’s prosthetic veins.
Download: Rock On

Zeigenbock Kopf- Fuck You To Dust
Lay waist to some speakers with a golf club then head to a gay leather bar with them and replace the soundsystem with your broken customised ones. Get the DJ to play all the pumping house at 33rpm and then get sweaty and snort poppers with the clientel.
Download: I Cum Too Much

DAT Politics- Wow Twist
Play the DVD of Gremlins 2 and then right at the bit where the bad Gremlins are all partying like its 1999 in the Clamp offices lobby, climb into the TV and join them. Dance and prance with the electric Gremlin that is stuck in the phone system. Make all the Gremlins wear oversized sunglasses.
Download: Viper Eyes

Zombi- Surface To Air
Head to a graveyard and dig up some corpses which, by way of voodoo rituals and Nuclear waste, you should fashion into brain-starved Zombies. Go to the Moon and set them free and play ‘chase me’ with them in zero gravity. Don’t smile and laugh though, its a serious business.
Download: Legacy

Grabba Grabba Tape- Kurt Kobaya y Grox Man Odia Nirvana
Get Dr Seuss to redesign Daft Punk and then sprinkle magic pixie dust across the pages and take the resulting neon pink daemons to Spain. Film all of these events and play it back at x5 the speed.
Download: Dr. Groxtronix & Lil Kul Lol

Simon Bookish- Unfair/Funfair
Destroy your laptop to the point where it will power up but everything on the screen looks like what you think a Crystal Castles promo video should be. Then, shrink yourself to the size of an ant and crawl across this warped, technological scrapyard nightmare terrain wearing a snazzy ruby-red blazer and being charming and dapper to all the sonic creatures you might meet, telling them all about London, Richard of York and Guillotines.
Download: Handsome Girls

Arthur Russell- Springfield
Hang on street corners of New York in full 1980’s clothing doing everything in slow motion /or/ Wipe tears away from your eyes on the Eurostar on the way back from Paris while listening to the DFA remix of the title track.
Download: You Have Did The Right Thing When You Put That Skylight In

Steve’s top 5 singles that make him feel warm/evil/angry/robotic/spazzy:

WARM: Sally Shapiro- I’ll Be By Your Side 12″

EVIL: Black Devil Disco Club- 28 After 12″

ANGRY: Channels 3×4- Christian Girls Like To Get Cut 12″

ROBOTIC: Chromatics- Nite 12″

SPAZZY: Crystal Castles- Air War 7″

Word of da year

Shu Hut Yuh Muh

Predictions

1- All the indie kids have a massive comedown after all those mdmazing times and shoegazing is revived, problem is THIS TIME SHOES ARE STARING BACK

2- Spoken Word Crunk becomes the genre de jour.

3- Vice mag releases the complete discography of the Boredoms on vinyl and the world melts in the definitive NEU! Rave apocalypse. This is the real thing kids.

4-Wave of mergers and acquisitions in the baby torturing industry. A couple of bullish 20jazzfunkgreatsters sell their stock wisely and use the ensuing windfall to buy wiis, never to be seen again.

5-Records to look forward to- !!!, LCD Soundsystem, Dizzee Rascal, Yeborobo, Crystal Castles, Simon Bookish, Glass Candy, Scotch Egg, Silverlink, Chromatics, Justice, M.I.A., Animal Collective, Les Savy Fav, Daft Punk, Lightning Bolt, hum, we’re kind of assuming stuff here, can Liars release another record too?

6- 20jazzfunkgreats make even more spelling mistakes and talk more bullshit, they end up trapped inside a burning Wicker Man in the Brighton Beach while the enraged populace feasts outside. They die pavorous deaths brimming with dreadful pain and their puny spirits crawl into the sea to frolic with the rosy crabs, this is where they should have been from the beginning anyway.

And that’s it, we’re off for a while kids, enjoy christmas and be sweet as nuts. Don’t hesitate to retaliate against rude people though. And stroke your kittens or doggies for us. We love you, and we are working hard to overcome all those issues we have with people invading our personal space, come ‘ere, give us a big hug!

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Ugh, enough now.

labels >> xxjfg