Best of 2012: I Break Horses - Hearts

Even though it's everywhere, music is still an incredible mystery. What's new? What's good? What's going to keep me listening? If I get a lead on something, I'm still ready to investigate - and when it pans out, I find something as good as this I Break Horses record.

The two gateways were an intriguing Mojo review (although not a glowing one) and the fact that the record was released by the usually reliable Bella Union. Good start. I think I made it through half a song on Spotify before I went all in and bought it.

Hearts is a very electronic album, but it's hardly inorganic. Most songs build off a sequenced pulse which gradually is swallowed by waves of lush sounds and vocals. The throb of the beat is always there, but it's a distant signal by the time that songs hit their stride.

Winter Beats begins as technopop but ends up sounding like a homage to the sea of sound of Loveless.
Wired puts me in the mind of Stereolab's best marriages of French melody and German motorik rhythms (plus a couple of the 'Lab's classic breakdowns - a white noise section early on and a "wrong" sounding set of pitch downs to conclude.)

As for the majesty of mystery, I've realized that I still know almost nothing about I Break Horses, other than they are a duo and they are Swedish. I'm perfectly happy staying focused on the music instead.

Best of 2012: Grimes - Visions

Nobody's perfect. After all, how can an album so good be housed in a sleeve so atrocious and misrepresentative?

Visions by Grimes is not speed metal or gnarly Oi punk, nor was it created by a teenage skaterdood from Southern California. It is in fact the ugliest record cover in the history of 4AD Records, breaking a 30+ year streak of immortal to pretty good sleeves.

Luckily, it is one of the best records 4AD has put out in ages, mixing etherea with electronic, goth and pop, and other things you like with other things you like. For example, Genesis takes a call-and-response type vocal melody and drops layers of wordless voices and drummy loops to make a quite lovely pop confection.

In fact, there are loads of those varying vocal charms, mixed with modern electronica and classic technology. (Is that an Art Of Noise Fairlight string sting I hear on Oblivion? Not to mention a lot of OMD-before-they-met-John-Hughes sorts of bits too.)

When I put this in writing, it all sounds a little been there, done that, but there's a real magic to Visions. This isn't some retro throwback synth pop record. Nor is it some high-falutin' theoretical imagining of the future of music. At its heart, it's just... fun.

Don't believe me? Check out the ecstatic vocal swoops in Circumambient or the sheer hookiness of Be A Body. This one might take a while to grow on you. I'm still finding new favorites months later!

Best of 2012: VCMG - Ssss

When's the last time you bought a Depeche Mode or Erasure record? I would take the "under" on 1992, if you are like most people.

Twenty years later (yikes!), guess what? The two main guys from both bands* team up and make one of the best records of 2012. VCMG (that's Vince Clarke and Martin Gore) don't exactly reject their past, but this is electronic music that's pretty far afield of their current volume of work. For one thing, there are no vocals, and therefore no gloomy meditations of lust (DM) or dancing (E). There could be dancing, I suppose, since the beats are much more club oriented than latter-day DM drudgery, but only in the right kind of gothy Batcave club.

Sometimes, you'll hear the perky sequencers of an Erasure dancefloor anthem or some of the signature gloomy tones of Depeche Mode, but only in secondary roles. This is a completely different animal. Supposedly composed and recorded completely in isolation from one another, this is a very collaborative (and even playful) sounding record.

Spock and Single Blip are standouts to me, both anthemic, but I think they'd be ruined if turned into "real" songs with their most likely lyrics and vocals. (Sorry, Dave Gahan and Andy Bell.) Lowly puts me in mind both of a BBC World News intro bumper and Public Image's Radio 4 with a jacked up beat. Speaking of soundtracks, the most inspired bits of Ssss put me in the mind of Barry Adamson and his scores for imaginary films. Despite the bangin' beats, you might be surprised by putting on headphones and closing your eyes to conjure up your own chase scenes.

* I'm well aware that Vince Clarke founded Depeche Mode, but his stay was so short, saying that he was a driving force behind their signature sound is like The Wall was all Syd Barrett. But yes, Clarke and Gore have worked together before.