Top 50 Albums of 2010: 1-10

1

Pantha du Prince

"Black Noise" (Rough Trade)

Black Noise is Hendrik Weber’s third album as Pantha du Prince and his first for indie label Rough Trade. Expanding upon his ‘Minimal Techno with dark bells’ sound with guest spots from bassist Tyler Pope (!!!/LCD) and vocals from Animal Collective’s Panda Bear. A superb album and one that is finally getting Pantha the attention he deserves.
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2

Morgan Packard

"Moment Again Elsewhere" (Anticipate)

Packard's latest full-length is his most self-assured release to date. His unique brand of jazz-influenced glitch moves effortlessly through ambient to IDM and deep house. Piano, accordion, and saxophone intertwine with electronics creating brittle layers of analogue warmth. An intimate and compelling headphone experience.

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3

Mountain Man

"Made The Harbor" (Partisan)

Mountain Man is three girls from Vermont who sing gorgeously sparse, mostly a cappella, indie-folk with a strong Appalachian bent. What strikes you most is the purity of the sound, the raw sweetness of just voice. Sounding like something from a bygone era, a Lomax archive perhaps, it is refreshingly un-hip and timeless.

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4

John Roberts

"Glass Eights" (Dial)

Roberts, a deep house producer from Ohio, is the first American signed to Hamburg's Dial label. With his lean, reverb-laden production, static-laced samples and percussiveness, it fits in with Dial's sound. Equal parts Berlin and Chicago, off-key and sometimes dark, the end result is uplifting, whether on the headphones or in the club.

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5

LCD Soundsystem

"This Is Happening" (DFA)

LCD’s James Murphy has said that this, the third album by LCD Soundsystem, will be their last and it is a great high to go out on. LCD wear their influences on their sleeve - take disco, add some post-punk basslines, some Bowie-esque guitar riffs and synth and Murphy’s inimitable nasally vocals. A simple yet brilliant recipe.

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6

The Knife (w/ Mt. Sims & Planningtorock)

"Tomorrow, In A Year" (Rabid)

The brother/sister team, known for their atmospheric and eccentric electro-pop songs, eschews the pop entirely for a ninety-minute electronic opera and concept album based on Charles Darwin’s "On the Origin of Species". The Knife is clearly passionate about the evolution of its music: Tomorrow, In A Year is stunning, terrifying and unique.

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7

Kanye West

"My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (Roc-A-Fella)

Despite loving a few of his tracks (“Flashing Lights” comes to mind) I’ve never enjoyed a Kanye album all the way through - my teeth grate at the sound of auto-tune so 808s and Heartbreaks is off limits - but this album blows my mind. Epic, vulnerable, uplifting and impossible to not play on repeat.

Watch his insane short film "Runaway"

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8

The Books

"The Way Out" (Temporary Residence Ltd)

Like Negativland before them, The Books base their music on samples of everyday American culture – TV evangelists, self-help gurus, cartoons  – and place them out of context, twisting them to subversively comedic effect. Skilled musicians, they place highly rhythmic live instrumentation atop the samples, creating a truly individual sound.

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9

Ólafur Arnalds

"...And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness" (Erased Tapes)

Starting out as a drummer in various Hardcore bands in his native Iceland, multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds makes Modern Classical. This is his second album and a masterpiece. Similar in feel to Balmorhea or the arrangements in Sigur Rós, who Arnalds toured with, it is an achingly melancholic tapestry of strings and piano.

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10

It Kills

"It Kills" (It Kills)

The eponymous debut by Nova Scotians It Kills is one of most under-appreciated albums of the year. Sounding a lot like other orchestral Post-Rockers such as Explosions In The Sky, what sets them apart is their airy, soaring vocals. A fluid and accomplished debut that should for sure make it to the next Polaris long-list.

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Music Review: The Knife – Tomorrow, In A Year

When faced with a new work by Swedish Electro-Pop artist The Knife you would expect it to be strange, even want it to be. But with "Tomorrow, In A Year", the brother/sister team of Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer bring the listener so far past the boundaries of “strangeness,” that all reference points become useless, like trail markers buried under snow. Known for their atmospheric and eccentric songs, with this album, the duo eschews the pop entirely for a ninety-minute electronic opera and a concept album based on Charles Darwin’s "On the Origin of Species".

As strange as it may sound, the weirdness is perhaps not wholly surprising from a band who on their debut album had a song with the lyrics "making lasagna... above the clouds" and given that Andersson recently attended a Swedish award ceremony draped in a red veil to reveal a rubber alien mask and accepted the award, for her Fever Ray album, with barely audible raspy grunts in place of words.

Commissioned by Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma to create music for the opera they had written about Darwin, it began life as a soundtrack to a live performance before it took root as an album. The record was made in collaboration with Berlin based bands Planningtorock and Mt. Sims and features mezzo-soprano (medium soprano) Kristina Wahlin Momme on operatic vocal duties. As Olof Dreijer says: “At first it was very difficult as we really didn’t know anything about opera. We’d never been to one. But after some studying, and just getting used to opera’s essence of pretentious and dramatic gestures, I found that there is a lot to learn and play with.” If it took Dreijer that long to appreciate it, it will take the audience maybe longer, especially when juxtaposed with the overloaded bass, glitchy distortion and nature samples.

Charles Darwin traveled to The Galápagos Islands, an archipelago of volcanic islands off the coast of what is now Ecuador, to research and write his famous work but The Knife chose the relatively nearby Amazon to record bird and insect sounds for this particular opus. The track "Colouring Of Pigeons" comes close to resembling a familiar sound but even in this, one of the more accessible tracks on the album, the opera and bass drone throw things sumptuously off-centre.

An ambitious, courageous album – opera fans won’t love it due to the distortion and most likely the average electronic music fan won’t love it due to the heavy presence of opera. It's obtuse, unwieldy, intense and astonishing. It is also one of the albums of the year and perhaps of the new decade but it will be one of those albums whose time hasn’t come quite yet. It will be talked about, half-forgotten, then dug up and lauded, probably once The Knife are in retirement; the familiar curse of visionary artists the world over.

With little of their trademark sweeteners - handclaps, pulsating dance beats or disco hi-hat – to balance the brooding darkness, this long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s Silent Shout, like Darwin's book, will be received with a certain measure of indignation and disbelief. The Knife is passionate about the evolution of its music: Let this album sink slowly into your skin and the rewards will be rich. Just don’t listen to it alone; “Tomorrow, In A Year” is as terrifying as it is unique.

Music Review: The Knife – Tomorrow, In A Year [Short]

When faced with a new work by Swedish Electro-Pop artist The Knife you would expect it to be strange, even want it to be. But with "Tomorrow, In A Year", the brother/sister team of Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer bring the listener so far past the boundaries of “strangeness,” that all reference points become useless, like trail markers buried under snow. Known for their atmospheric and eccentric songs, with this album, the duo eschews the pop entirely for a ninety-minute electronic opera and a concept album based on Charles Darwin’s "On the Origin of Species". With little of their trademark sweeteners - hand claps, pulsating dance beats or disco hi-hat – to balance the brooding darkness, this long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s Silent Shout, like Darwin's book, will be received with a certain measure of indignation and disbelief. But The Knife is passionate about the evolution of its music: Let this album sink slowly into your skin and the rewards will be rich. Just don’t listen to it alone; “Tomorrow, In A Year” is as terrifying as it is unique.