D.A.'s Favorite Five Records of 2009

D.A.'s Favorite* Five Records** of 2009

It's close enough to the end of the year for me to make some assessments of the albums I acquired in 二零零九年, or as the Chinese say, deuce double ought nine. It's been a tough year for music, I think, mostly from a personal standpoint: I spent a quarter of the year unemployed and the rest of it saving as much money as I could to pay UH's insane tuition, so I lacked the usual discretionary record-buying funds my income prior to 11/08 allowed.

Not buying records on a near-weekly basis has left me out of the loop. It used to be that I knew what had come out in the recent past and what was coming out in the immediate future, so I could pass more informed judgments about the state of music (music that might interest me, that is) for any given year than I can at the moment. For example, a year or two ago the appearance of a new Nile record would not have caught me completely by surprise, and I would've been aware that Portal would be unleashing another disc of extraplanar death metal, but not this year. It's not just poverty that keeps me from being a record nerd, of course. Between work and school I have a lot less free time than I used to, and I turned 30 three months ago, which officially makes me old, befuddled, and out of touch with the hip kids, so I'm not pulling from as extensive a list as I normally would.

Now that the excuses and rationalizations are out of the way, here are some records I really dug this year. Even if your taste in music differs from mine (which it inevitably does; don't worry, I won't mock you too much), these are albums I'd recommend to anyone. Whether or not you'll like them is, of course, a decision for you alone to make; I hope you take the time to check them out and make that decision.


Current 93- Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain

Matt, my brother from another mother with the same last name, turned me on to Current 93 about ten years ago. I won't try to describe, much less explain, this band (which is one dude, David Tibet, and a revolving handful of comrades) here, other than to say that they make folk music if folk music were written by an English prophet/artist even more obscure than William Blake who was into children's rhymes and prog rock. Or some such shit; the point is that C93 is unique, and "Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain" is unique among their discography, mainly because it's a pretty heavy, electric guitar-oriented record. Part of me doesn't want to talk too much about it in the hopes that my silence intrigues you enough to hear it for yoursel-and because silence is sacred- but another part of me could spend a solid hour talking, and maybe two hours writing, about this album. "Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain" is probably the best record of the year in my book.

N.B. If it's worth anything, I bought this on CD and on vinyl. Side 4 of the double LP has all the album's lyrics put to a piece of music not included among the normal tracks, and it works really, really well. I also got hold of a copy of "Monohallucinatory Mountain," which is a mono mix of "Aleph at...", through questionable channels (read: downloading). I'm not an audiophile, but I can say the difference between the regular and mono mixes is noticeable, and changes the atmosphere of the album in a way worth hearing. Yes, I have this album in three different formats, and it's completely worth it.


Deströyer 666- Defiance

Long story short: this is a band I blew off for far too long because I didn't care for their name. In late '03 or early '04 I got my shit together and bought "Cold Steel For An Iron Age", their latest record at the time. They promptly became, and remain, one of my favorite metal bands, and they exemplify the widely recognized excellence and brutality of Australian heavy metal. "Defiance" is their first full-length in six years, and while it may initially not impress fans in the way their older work does, after a few spins there's no doubt that this is quality stuff, and by no means a slack effort. As an added bonus, it contains one of the best lyrics I've ever heard: "have the gods not failed enough that we must conjure more?". Take that, theists.

Mastodon- Crack the Skye

I almost didn't include this. I listened to "Crack the Skye" about a thousand times in the month after it came out, and I saw Mastodon play the entire album live three weeks ago, so I'm almost burned out. Luckily, I already wrote a review of it, which you can find here at this very web log. 'Nuff said.


Wolves in the Throne Room- Black Cascade

Definitely harder to get into than their last full-length, "Two Hunters," and I'm still not sure why. At some point I thought I'd figured it out, but I've forgotten what my theory was. No matter; this is yet another stellar release from one of the newest crop of American black metal bands. All of their albums are near-masterpieces, and their sound and ideology, both of which have been criticized for numerous reasons but to little lasting effect, are a logical extension of and welcome addition to the black metal scene. Perhaps it's their roots in Washington State, and/or their Thoreau-like appreciation of nature, but Wolves in the Throne Room strike me as an alternate universe Beat black metal outfit. I don't know if the band would appreciate that or not, but I don't care: as I see it, if Jack Kerouac grew up on Romantic poetry and heavy metal tales of pagan forests, he may well have tried (and knowing Kerouac, likely failed) to start a band like this. Listen to "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog," especially the last two and a half minutes, and maybe you'll see what I mean.


YTCracker- Chrono Nurga vol. 1

"High five for the Cat5, and a fat drive, and a quarter of weed."

That pretty much sums up YTCracker's attitude on this album. If you aren't familiar with nerdcore hip-hop, of which YTCracker is a progenitor, imagine hip-hop with geeky subject matter: in this dude's case, spamming, Nintendo games, programming, defunct sodas, and nerd life in general. "Chrono Nurga vol. 1" consists of raps laid down over beats lifted from the old RPG Chrono Trigger, which I'm ashamed to admit I have yet to play despite hearing nothing but good about the game. You'd think such a project would have little more than novelty value, but you'd be wrong. (Such an argument could be made for nerdcore as a whole, but again, you'd be wrong.) Peppered throughout the album's eight tracks are lines that strike a chord, and not only because part of me is somehow still surprised by poignancy in music like this. "Chrono Nurga vol. 1" doesn't have the range of "Nerd Life" or even "Nerdrap Entertainment System," but it's a solid album in its own right, lyrically and musically. YTCracker, despite all his bragadoccio, most certainly knows what it's like to be a nerd. Be prepared for obtuse references, crudeness, and the us-versus-you attitude that so many of us who've always felt at odds with our less intelligent but somehow socially superior fellows have adopted from time to time. Don't sweat it if you don't catch some of the references, because I didn't either. What matters is that a dude ganked some old Playstation beats, threw this thing together in a day, and did it with enough heart and wit to beat out albums that might otherwise have made this list.

"Show that nerd life off, never hide it."



* In no particular order.
**Not just records, but CDs, tapes, mp3s, whatever.