Records of 2008 - Albums

NICO MUHLY - MOTHERTONGUE (Bedroom Community)

The most daring, complex and downright pretentious record of 2008. At times it threatens to implode under the strain of the ideas involved, but the sheer spirit of invention keeps it going until the end.

AUTECHRE - QUARISTICE (Warp)

Their live show in a London carpark on a cold February Tuesday evening reaffirmed to me that byzantine electronic music of this nature has an enormous following and we are better for having them still at the top of their game. It’s not their best album by a long shot, but they’re still far ahead of most others in the field.

HEINRICH DRESSEL - ESCAPE FROM THE HILL (Minimal Rome)

Mix obscure German Archaeology and old Italian synthesizers and you get one of the hidden gems of 2008.

KEVIN DRUMM - IMPERIAL DISTORTION (Hospital)

Nearly 2 hours of almost, dare I say it, blissful ambient drones from one of the true masters of noise. This is an unexpected change of direction from him.

MOVE D & BENJAMIN BRUNN - SONGS FROM THE BEEHIVE (Smallville)

Dave Moufang has been making excellent house for as long as anyone in Europe, and this collaboration of spontaneity and live recordings from him and Brunn contains some real beauty.

HEARTBREAK - LIES (Lex)

If only for “We’re Back” and “Regret”, two dancefloor behemoths that fuse the elephantine riffing of Black Sabbath with the naive spirit of Fred Ventura. Stadium Italo at its best (and most absurd).

SYCLOPS - I’VE GOT MY EYE ON YOU (DFA)

Maurice Fulton should really be much, much bigger than he is, but in a way I feel that this is a good thing, because he continues to make dancefloor records with a true alchemist’s touch. DFA are inflected far too much with the fashionista tag for my liking, but it’s difficult to escape the fact that they always release good records.

QUIET VILLAGE - SILENT MOVIE (K7!)

Fleetwood Mac meets Martin Denny. Much better than that description sounds, and the sort of album you’ll forget about and then put on 5 years later, and it’ll all come flooding back.

CARL CRAIG & MORITZ VON OSWALD - RECOMPOSED (Deutsche Grammophon)

This could have been a disaster or a revelation and the truth is that it’s somewhere in between. Applying John Cage tape-style trickery to a 1987 recording of two DG staples and reworking them worked in some areas and not in others, but again, it’s the concept that comes through in the end. One hopes that Moritz Von Oswald is also recovering after a recent health scare.

GAS - NAH UND FERN (Kompakt)

Yes, it’s a reissue, but if you didn’t have the foresight to purchase Gas albums when they were originally released, you’d be looking at shelling out 200 euri for all 4. This is a timely reminder of Wolfgang Voigt’s ability, and puts him firmly in the upper pantheon of electronic musicians for the last 20 years.

Toby Frith December 2008