(t5!) My Year In Lists 2006: Albums! 30 to 26
In The Lost Take, Martin Dosh builds bridges between several disparate entities, uniting them into a winsome musical whole: IDM, pop, jazz, and hip-hop; synthetic and live instruments; looped samples and improvised instrumentation; emotional warmth and electronic precision; structures and accidents; clarity and intricacy. Often seen playing drums for Andrew Bird, the album uncovers that multi-instrumentalist Dosh is most apt behind the kit. The mix of toy keyboards, saxophones, pianos and Bird’s violins are absolutely spellbinding; but they’re mere flattering elements that weave in and out of compelling sections of his stuttering beats. The rhythm’s unassuming, but it’s the most enjoyable detail in Dosh’s expressive macrocosm.[Um, Circles And Squares | MPLS Rock And Roll | O Mexico]
If you’re a fan of Sondre Lerche, you saw this coming, right? So, calling this a change isn’t really appropriate, it’s more of a slight variation in style. There were hints of this vocal jazz affection bubbling from his past discs; but, in Duper Sessions, it bubbled out to the surface. No more jazz-tinged pop, just pop-tinged jazz. Gone are the Elvis Costello comparisons, he’s more akin to a Norwegian Cole Porter. The Faces Down Quartet are employed to back him up in this one and their musicianship and their jazz spontaneity makes them qualified assets. What remained though are Lerche’s boyishly charming tenor and his sweet-tempered melodies, which may be the perfect façade for this style of music.
[Everyone’s Rooting For You | Human Hands | (I Wanna) Call It Love]
The humbucking coil is an essential musical invention. Using two coils in reverse polarity, it eliminates the guitar’s interference and all that is left behind are the amplified vibrations of the string. The similarity between this science and Vienna’s B. Fleischmann’s new ambient techno full-length reveals that the titling of the album is no accident. Fleischmann’s record is clean, simple in execution, but effective at attaining emotional peaks. It accommodates slivers of subtle guitars that are prominent enough to regard but it’s never overbearing. His label, Morr Music, is notoriously renowned for popularizing “pop from laptops”; but, a more organic effort results from the addition of “humbucked’ guitars.
[First Times | Static Grate | From To]
In Emily Haines’ solo debut, she’s truly alone. Vacated by Metric’s energetic drums, heavy guitars and spastic keyboards, all you are left with is Haines and her haunting piano and it turns out that those are all you ever needed. Once in a while, she’s joined by The Soft Skeleton and their slight decorations of strings and horns, but they seem superfluous. Without other instrumentations, her delicate soprano surpasses anything she’s ever done with her Metric bandmates, sounding vulnerable yet breathtaking at the same time. For now, she’s not dancing succexily; for now, she’s opening her diary, sharing her most personal passages that relate to love, fame, and death, singing the anthems of a thirty-something-year old woman.
[Crowd Surf Off A Cliff | Reading In Bed | Winning]
Although it’s more like a career catalogue of beats than an album, it’s impossible not to include Donuts in a list of the year’s best. The majority of the tracks never linger past two minutes; but it’s ample time to discover that a legend is being witnessed here. In a sense, it’s completely instrumental—looped vocals are Dilla trademarks—but it has enough substance to be enjoyed even without verses. It confirms Dilla’s craft: the beat can stand alone yet when paired with rhymes and vocal accompaniment, it’s astonishingly complimentary. It’s a perfect summary of the aptitude of a musical genius that passed away too soon; an album that can be celebrated without the need for overrated posthumous admiration.
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