2012 Album of the Year, Part One: The Long-List

So it's that time of year again - Christmas is done and the excess food has started to fester. Gifts have been exchanged and everyone is now thinking about going back to work. Happy happy joy joy. 

To see you through this dark week I'll be posting my picks for 2012's best album, but before we get to the top ten I wanted to call out some of the albums that were very close to making this list but were pushed out.

I've also put together a Spotify playlist that includes tracks from every album on the long-list and the top ten (provided they are available on Spotify in the UK) and a good deal of other tracks that weren't necessarily from great albums but were notable all the same. You can check that out and subscribe to it here.

And without further ado, the 2012 long-list - note the top ten are not on this list and that this list is not in any order. Links on the title / artist go to the BlackPlastic.co.uk review (where one exists), Amazon links are to Amazon.co.uk and are affiliate links:

• Solo Piano II - Chilly Gonzales [Spotify / Amazon]
• Until The Quiet Comes - Flying Lotus [Amazon]
• They Shall Inherit - Menagerie [Spotify / Amazon]
• Confess - Twin Shadow [Spotify / Amazon]
• Beams - Matthew Dear [Spotify / Amazon]
• Give You The Ghost - POLIÇA [Spotify / Amazon]
• Heirlooms - Dave Aju [Spotify / Amazon]
• Nocturne - Wild Nothing [Spotify / Amazon]
• Bloom - Beach House [Spotify / Amazon]
• Kaleidoscope Dream - Miguel [Spotify / Amazon]
• Celebration Rock - Japandroids [Spotify / Amazon]
• Electric Cables - Lightships [Spotify / Amazon]
• Sweet Heart Sweet Light - Spiritualized [Spotify / Amazon]
• Coexist - The xx [Spotify / Amazon]
• Something - Chairlift [Spotify / Amazon]
• DRM - Merveille & Crosson [Amazon]

Come back tomorrow for the first half of the top ten: 10-6!

Album Review: Beams - Matthew Dear

Beams continues the divergent course started by Matthew Dear's last two albums. His approach to musical production (seemingly try anything once) and his lyrical stream-of-consciousness style calls to mind Brian Eno's warm and complex electronic experiments.

Compared to Black City this feels like an even more experimental album. Where the last album was knitted together in Dear's exploration of a defined concept - nighttime urban sprawl and adventures within it - Beams is defined by no such boundaries. Each track feels like it is of its own moment, born solely through Dear's requirement to create.

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​Beams - Matthew Dear

The album opens with the dense and progressive 'Her Fantasy' and it immediately feels like a transformation - more complex, uplifting and intense than anything we have heard from Dear before. Each track inhabits its own, so on the other end of the spectrum is 'Shake Me', a cavernous, introspective song with slow, layered drum beats and partially obscured piano.

It isn't just the music that shifts on this record either. Where Black City's lyrics were autobiographical through a lens of the creator's own construction - see the twisted dark heart of 'You Put A Smell On Me' - Beams is true stream of consciousness stuff. At times it is as though feelings were felt and immediately laid down in vocal form without passing through consciousness.

There are slightly more coherent moments - 'Fighting Is Futile' is a documentary of Dear's own (hell, everyone's?) tendency to fall head over heels with a single other person at the expense of anything else. But on 'Headcage' pinning any meaning down seems impossible, just fragments of ideas ("I don't want a new life", ”Your momma won't care if you stay out tonight") that seem to praise some hedonistic ideal.

Matthew Dear's music has never been about lyrical depth, though one suspects there is a significant cryptic meaning behind much of what is here, so the opaque nature of the lyrics isn't a significant barrier to enjoyment. Beams sustains most of the disparate themes thrown at it without letting the listener question too much. The only downside is that there is nothing quite as transparent and touching as Black City's 'Gem' or Asa Breed's 'Don & Sherri'.

Ultimately Dear as a music maker is as strong as ever - the chugging rock rhythms and distorted vocal chorus of 'Earthforms' and the complex drum patterns and creative sample based melodies of 'Ahead of Myself' showcase some of his best work. Fans of electronic music have much here to love and Matthew Dear remains an captivating inventor of sound.

Beams is out now through Ghostly International, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].​

Album Review: Black City - Matthew Dear

Sometimes Matthew Dear makes glitch. Sometimes he makes techno. Sometimes he just makes insanity. And increasingly he appears to be favouring the latter.

Sometimes Matthew Dear makes glitch. Sometimes he makes techno. Sometimes he just makes insanity. And increasingly he appears to be favouring the latter.

Following up on his first two albums, Leave Luck to Heaven and Backstroke, Asa Breed was a startling revelation. As much pop as dance, in places tender and wounded and in others aloof and lyrically impenetrable. And since BlackPlastic is ultimately often fond of music that requires a bit of thought, it was one of those albums that we kept coming back to.

Black City is as the title implies - a dark journey through a nighttime urban sprawl inside Dear's mind. It's a darker affair that culminates in the sordid workout of album centrepiece and highlight, the fantastically titled 'You Put A Smell On Me'. Dear's vocals are hardly robust but when he tweaks them in the right way, as he does here - "I'm gonna try you on, and exercise" - he nails his 'thing' somewhere south of sub-zero on the cool wall.

So if you hadn't already guessed, Black City is at times a touch sordid. Whilst nothing touches the mechanical sleazy genius of 'You Put A Smell On Me' in terms of pure filth there is a vibe of sex and alienation that runs throughout the album. 'I Can't Feel' sounds like serial copulation carried out in in a bid to feel something, anything, and as the album progresses the it feels increasingly like a commentary on the instant-gratification-based but veil-thin nature of modern society.

Album closer 'Gem' really nails it, revealing Dear's apparent confusion and isolation. Over a ballad, the vocals are a modest and understated cry for help and attention:

All of my sad songs can't make you change,

They'll just keep pushing you further away.

One of your great regrets will be staying in place,

I can't hold you back from your dreams.

When you figure out what's real I'll be standing here,

A little bit older but forgiving as the night of the day.

In today's modern world it's difficult not to feel a certain empathy with Dear's confusion. Black City not only builds on what Asa Breed achieved - it establishes Dear as a song writer up there with some of the best. This is music to make you dance, think and feel.

BP x

Black City is out now on Ghostly International, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD, LP and MP3 [affiliate links].