This just came up as one of those terminally tragic Facebook reminder posts from late 2013 and I quite liked it. This is my albums of 2013, because 2020 was awful.
Here are my greatest albums of 2013 and why, by month:
JANUARY 2013
Felicity's Locket - Turntime
The debut from the Hoxton sextet pressed buttons I didn't know I had with its esperantic wilfulness of broken beats, bad-hearted blues and a welcome dollop of jasmine-pop.
DOWNLOAD: Grime Curves (Part mix)
FEBRUARY
Jaggernaut - As Well As *UCANDU*
Controversial rap-balloon duo Jaggernaut are possibly best known for their intriguing reworking of the kids' nursery rhyme, Nightmare Elements on the Butt of Gruel, but their third long-player, released only on cassette tape, had a quitless burden of immersive techno which utilised the six-five beat to its utmost. That said, its tattered volume rewiring and backwards masked breaks can get a little tiresome without brandy.
DOWNLOAD: Sweetheart Services at the Back of the Wideside
MARCH
Cannaquit Causes - XXVIII
Blood-metallers Cannaquit Causes stirred the shit out of the genre with an album tuned down six octaves. No instructions came with the CD-only release, which required turning up to full volume on an industrial sound system and upsampling fifty clicks before audibility resumed. The natural successors, for sure, to luminaries like Jesus Cunt and Exploded Godspunk.
DOWNLOAD: Satan FUCK
APRIL
Bill Carlos and the Funk Fifty - Frinkadelic Mysteries
Pure psych-gospel indulgence, best described as Cheggers on a motorbike throwing petrol at Alabama 3 - and drinking the lighter fluid.
DOWNLOAD: Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! (Pound Me Baby!)
MAY
Mondo Italiano - Con Peporoncino
Many people (myself included) felt this to be Jello Biafra messing about in a pretend project. but apparently not so - it was merely a normal singer played at 45 rather than 33rpm, which was erroneously printed in the middle of the record itself. Still, either way its blend of nutman guitars and gargantuan harmonics blasted its own ass out of the water, if the water was music and its ass was a song.
DOWNLOAD: Chickenshit Conformist (KFC in da Hoos)
JUNE
Three More Deaths - Y O Y O Y (aka 'The Red Beast')
Part of the Neue Deutsche Wichse movement, TMD's mash-up of spamtronica and electric monkeyballing bopped the eyes from many dancefloors from Berlin to Brussels over the summer, including the unforgettable Red Beast Dance, which swept the hostelries of the continent for six sweet weeks.
DOWNLOAD: Hotel KKKalifornia Mit Ein Pimmel
JULY
Cheeky Girls - Cheeky Girls
This ironic re-rendering of the kitsch Eastern European duo's entire first album was apparently undertaken by all the original members, producers, wrtiters, artists - and was so brilliantly realised that it was seen as true genius. Indeed, every single aspect of this postmodern take on the initial album was so perfectly re-constituted - dodgy vocals, garish arrangements, artwork, stickers, advertising campaign - that it was all but indistinguishable from the original. A pop art classic, then, with Warholian overtones and a sense of reclamation of noise unseen since Marinetti. Possibly the highlight of the year.
DOWNLOAD: (We are) The Cheeky Girls (Touch My Bum)
AUGUST
Sampological Fermentation - Greed, Greed and Toffee too
The 40th anniversary of the post-hippy space wizards went by without much ostentation, which is entirely in keeping with the fact that all of the original members died in 1972. However, this new album - the 15th since then - recovers more of the inter-take banter of those original sessions (which made up the 'Formica Blues' LP). The lo-heated bonks of microphones and muffled swearing at broken strings makes this a music concrete classic.
DOWNLOAD: Muff Says Bum
SEPTEMBER
Harmony in the UK - Babes
Not many people expected a bona fide soul-pop hit from this, the younger sisters of the cousins of the three girls that originally got sacked from the studio the day before the Sugababes' first incarnation told their management that they wanted to book an entirely different studio. But were we really surprised? Godfrey knows, as they would no doubt trill.
DOWNLOAD: Godfrey (Wop bob Shoop Song)
OCTOBER
The Oafs - Wizzlestop
Fire-branded West Country bottle-pranging tar-coated pop-fist weazel-whistle-wang bike-shed supermarket-sham diogenes-free burble.
DOWNLOAD: Tree, O Tree. Wherefore the Bee? Love My Don't, Dingle a Fag
NOVEMBER
Unfettered Auld Screamers feat. Shirley Brass - Ai Contempo - No Me Culo
Jumping up on the shoulders of all that had come before, with a nice line in bossa-nova style biblical meringue rock, the Screamers' huge sound and eighteen string guitar work recalled Yngwie and Vai throttling a pig whilst Ozzy stuck himself in the gonads with an errant dog tooth. The facts are that many bands have attained such a sound, but none with as little panache as the UAS. Not that their enormous-waisted fanclub cares; the kebabs still flow either way. One for the ladies.
DOWNLOAD: Uuuuuuuuuuuurgh
DECEMBER
B.B. Sacapuntas - Eight More Ways to Tulsa (And I'm Gone)
A Christmas album like no other from the notoriously eight-toothed pootler, this time roping in friends as diverse as Jackson Broon, Thom York, Paul Mackartnee and Bruce Li for the cover shot, which asymetrically recalls both Sgt Pfeffer and a hole. Three times around, this becomes an actual real life golem which will perform your every whim - remember, though, cats can't tell the difference. You dig?
DOWNLOAD: The night (the child) was born (in a stable) in Beth(le)he(m) (And I cried)
No comments:
Post a Comment