Best of 2009 #1: All the kids are revolting

So this is how we begin the end. In spite of the doom and gloom spewed by the mouthpieces of the not-so-bloated anymore mass music industry, and her government pawns, we have witnessed, in 09, an absolute explosion of glorious stuff that have kept us shaking, then in our toes and eventually levitating in the power field of ecstasy and good vibes. We also found A&Rs from a major corporation we won’t name looking for food in the rubbish containers outside our house. We always knew they were goulish, but this!

Anyway, maybe the barriers to producing and distributing content online have fallen, and God knows that in spite of becoming a social wasteland for the 2.0 generation, Myspace is still a treasure trove of unsigned acts many of which will illuminate the days to come. But we are talking about the physical stuff too, black shiny discs of perchance anachronistic physically embedded content lining the shelves of the lounge at the centre of the spinning web which is our black crystal palace. In the following posts we will be telling you about these things.

As it has become traditional, and because we don’t like to repeat ourselves, these posts will bristle with music that either we didn’t post the first time around, stuff we just got access to, or stuff that shall be coming out next year and has us excited like the forward looking motherfuckers with a tiny speck of madness in their bloodshot eyes we actually are.

Love and napalm, let’s kick this punk out in strictly alphabetic order, synthesising minimalistically the best albums and things from that cradle of drone, fuzz and wail which is the ‘modern rock and roll scene’.

Blank Dogs- Under and Under: A cadre of No Wave terrorists slide past the vigilant gaze of Cerberus to steal torch music from the cold embrace of Death herself.

Cold Cave- Love Comes Close: The pale ghost of Ian Curtis smokes a cigarette in the back alleys behind the Hacienda wearing a garish dress and smudged make up.

Divorce – Pipe Down – A public service announcement in the library of Punk.

Eats Skull- Sick to Death- We will play top trumps in the smokey back of the bar, you bring your deck of forgotten country stars and I shall bring my deck of renowned American cannibals.

Foot Village- Anti-Magic- My daunting drumming halo wakes the underground dragon from its slumber so that it can rise and impale the love denialists with its mighty horn.

Ganglians- S/T- If Syd Barret had been born in Sacramento, the Piper at the Gates of Dawn would have sounded like this.

A Grave With No Name – Sofia – The disembodied spirit of Grunge possesses the Beach Boy’s lost reverb pedal.

HEALTH – Get Color- Splice the history of hardcore with stills from Lucifer Rising, take some drugs and fast forward so you can stare into the mad face of God

JD Twitch- 60 Minutes of Fear- A manifesto which is a love letter written in the concrete grounds of the parking lot which now stands where our culture was born.

Meth Teeth-Everything Went Wrong- There is a message written in the discarded license plates that pile up at the bottom of the Columbia river. It reads: ‘boogie is full of win’.

Lightning Bolt- Earthly Delights- Hyeronimus Bosch was a Hawkwind fan.

Little Claw- Human Taste- Spectral songs from deep in the well where I hurled my daughter in a moment of madness.

Mi Ami- Watersports- Mutant flowers stretch twisted towards the sun in the jungles that survived Agent Orange. There be Dub panthers here too.

Pens – Hey Friend What You Doing- Punk music to hold up the candy store

Railcars- Cathedral with no Eyes- Cenobites in the Warehouse.

Thee Oh Sees- Help- That gaunt crook John Dwyer is the master priest of a religion with temples spread across the garages of the land.

Times new Viking- Dig Yourself- And you will know them by the trail of broken hearts, and smouldering amps.

Vibes- Psychic 7”- The faces whose eyes belong to the hills have mouths that shriek and necks connected to torsos, arms and hands that slap the wah wah with abandon, because doom funk is such a blast.

Wavves – Summer Goth – Lightning rod for the distortion backlash crafts beautiful pop tunes before burying them in the garden of feedback hoping they’ll grow.

We warned you, and it happened- 2009 has been the year of Dude Culture: Upset the Rhythm’s Yes Way and the string of Sex is Disgusting London/Brighton celebrations  are examples & symptoms of an effervescent DIY UK  scene which has become the locus of mega-rapid forms of evolution with viciously exciting outcomes: Mazes, Cold Pumas, Male Bonding, Human Hair, Graffiti Island, Thee Fair Ohs, The Shitty Limits, Pens or Lovvers are some examples. We look forward to see what happens in 2010, which should be the year of Teen Sheikhs (scratch that, we just heard they are splitting up after their show this Sunday) and Peepholes amongst others.

In the meantime, we leave you with excellent Graffiti Island as featured in the G.G. Allin tribute 7” that was released earlier in the year. Here we have another new era barnyard stomper drenched in echo and nonchalant menace, cool stuff.

Graffiti Island- Drink, Fuck and Fight

Bathetic and LA Station Radar have kept the spiral of the eerie drone and haunted folk wheel spinning most mesmerisingly. Derelict landscapes of ambient beauty fractured by shards of noise, sing-along rhymes whispered in your ear by an invisible presence. Cough Cool, Jeans Wilder, Ela Orleans and The Dawns are but some examples of this craft.

We are particularly amazed by Pink Priest, who slip effortlessly between deconstructed drone, and industrial pounding and tearing. Some of the former in ‘Those Paws’, which could have soundtracked Valerie’s first menstruation and subsequent hallucinations, if she had been born in the post-apocalyptic landscapes that Cormac McCarthy described in The Road.

Pink Priest- Those Paws

Kill Shaman have been behind some of the coolest releases of the year, including Bad Dudes hyper-accelerated math punk and Pink Noise’s voodoo ruminations. Theirs is also the fortress of badness from which mystery grungegaze Angelino heroes Bipolar Bear organise their forays. They have released a couple of albums this year, including the pounding ‘Harlem Pripyat’ in Mexican Summer, as well as several 7” you’d be well advised to grab.

Graves is included in their forthcoming album, and it demonstrates why they make us drool every time: relentless crashing rhythms for a Terminator made of wood to rip the spine off the back of Sarah Connor, star-destroying zenta guitar rays and that oomph vibe, that oomph vibe which fills your aural space like psychedelic ooze collected from those magick places where the Red Crayola, the Seeds, Electric Prunes or Silver Apples first jammed the skulls of the clued upon populace of the Sixties underworld. Radness.

Bipolar Bear- Graves

We have another bunch of posts coming, which will cover other shadowy areas where we like to dwell. We will be dropping them during the next few days. Get ready.