Essential Listening: The Best Albums Of 2021

Posted on 22/12/2021 by Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

Amidst the threat of yet another lockdown, cancelled Christmas parties, the prospect of me spending my first Christmas ever alone and potentially no football on Boxing Day (which is a defacto referendum on whether greed for the few is more important than common sense for the many, you’ll never guess who I think will win), instead of dwelling of the oddity of the new normal and whether this fucking nonsense will ever end (the pessimist in me is beginning to have doubts) I’m going to accentuate the positive. No roast Turkey for Christmas dinner! I’ve always hated that tradition. And a quiet Christmas of solitude sounds as if it’ll be a good opportunity to retreat into my own headspace for a couple of weeks; no work, no thoughts of Covid, or catching it, and generally taking measures to avoid as much irritating bullshit as I can.

So to this best releases of 2021 list. Ignore the post title, it’s a legacy of a time when I adhered to stringent criteria, in an attempt to…be more journalistic? How pathetic. There’s a lot of Bandcamp stuff on here this year. You can glean from this, that, similar to Soulseek, it’s a great resource for all kinds of music, new and reissued, that I can’t live without, and that I’m probably spending too much time (and money) on it.

Still, the world’s going to hell in the most tedious way possible, so if you enjoy something, I say indulge yourself. I just can’t abide the blithe, retrograde demonisation of consumerism, hedonism and materialism. But hey, let the attention seeking try-hard lot try and cancel them and see where it gets them.

Speaking of tedious, and this is yet another reason to be good to yourself (albeit in moderation) last Friday I queued in the cold for six hours to get my second vaccination shot. I should be thankful I got it and that it wasn’t even colder and raining, but man, waiting six hours for anything is misery. I could offer a long rant on many governments failing to offer a larger capacity for access to vaccines, that we’ve botched the whole thing from the beginning, but there are enough people making that point without me labouring it here. Yes I had the discipline for altruism, and so do a lot of other folks, but that alone won’t sustain me and this whole thing just doesn’t feel sustainable.

Even the topic of Covid in infecting our thoughts, leading to morose and inane conversations. I got a cab to the walk in vaccination site and when I told the cabbie I was going to get my second shot, he started ranting about how all this is a result of our unhygienic society. Before regaling me with examples, including when they were cleaned annually, that a disgusting amount of scum came out of the taps in the takeaway he used to work in.

What made the whole day remotely bearable was a really good pair of in-ear Sennheiser buds (and lossless audio – MP3 is shit, and Steve Jobs is scum to us audiophiles), and that you can listen to practically anything anywhere at any time. It made me appreciate music’s companionship and how much better our lives have become by technology (and vaccines).

And in an effort to not be boring I’m going to keep my reasons for these album recommendations concise, because you’re here for that and not pretentious prose, or anymore chat about fucking Coronavirus.

As per usual this list arrives in alphabetical order, no hierarchies here. Just ten releases that I enjoyed and will continue to. I’ll post my top songs of 2021 next week. Merry Christmas to the lot of you.

Bodytronixxx – LGHTR KRU: Nite Mode Vol.1

Stripped out atmospheric Vaporwave. Soft base lines and keyboards married with sharp inflections and sultry vocals. Certain elements made me think of Vangelis’ Blade Runner sound track, while also evoking the bedroom producer aesthetic. Another release that deserves your support.

Can – Live in Stuttgart ‘75

If you’re as undercapitalised in your collection of live albums as I am this is a good place to start, and if you mistakenly believe Pink Floyd to be truly avant-garde prog rock, this will correct that too. It also works well as a vector into Can’s wider discography. For the uninitiated Tago Mago might be disorienting, but five long jam sessions, where Michael Karoli’s guitar work secures central billing, will make sense to everyone.

DJ Sprinkles – Gayest Tits & Greyest Shits: 1998-2017 12 Inches & One-Offs

An absolute must for deep house heads. While Midtown 120 Blues is Thaemlitz’s most celebrated album (and the Will Long remixes are also stonking), this reissue/compilation is as close as you can get to that. Offers a thorough overview of an influential career that deserves far wider recognition than it’s received.

Floating Points, Pharaoh Sanders & London Symphony Orchestra – Promises

It’s a combination that promises (see what I did there? :rolleyesemoticon:) much and delivers. The lush Orchestra strings and Shepherd’s pings marry with Sanders’ sax eventually initiating a cataclysmic crescendo. If this doesn’t give you the feels then you’re an emotional husk and or serial killer.

Gnod – Easy to Build, Hard to Destroy

Influenced by Spirtualised (Spacemen 3), Brian Jonestown Massacre and Sun City Girls. Regardless the signatory vastness of their sound remains. More psyched out and less abrasive than Mirror or Infinity Machines – two other recent releases of theirs that I checked out and enjoyed.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!

Ignore the esoteric and silly album title. The song titles are far more fitting of a serious noise album, which this is. This is immersive music that’s menacing, yet that also ascends dramatically and emphatically, carrying you with it. Good pair of over-ear headphones recommended.

MMM (Errorsmith & Fiedel) – On The Edge

If you’re into early Booka Shade, this’ll work. It also borrows grime inflections, and utilises sound isolation that Stockhausen and Gage were famous for. Found it good music to exercise to, even though you can tell it’s been put together with delicate precision.

Planet Love Vol. 1 – Early Transmissions 1991-95

Embrace the quaintness of its pastiche. Let’s you nostalgically travel on the SS Hacienda through space, back to certain time where wearing a garish shell suit while on acid and ecstasy was an average weekend. Song titles such as ‘Mad Monks On Zinc’, ‘3 Nudes In a Purple Garden’ and ‘Dionysian Dream Statement’, gives you hint of what to expect, but think a mixture of Tangerine Dream, Underground Resistance and B12 if you still aren’t getting what I mean.

Skee Mask – Pool

The case for diversity and a homage. The punchy rave sonics are almost Aphex Twinian, there’s a nod to LFO with a track titled LFO and towards the end it sounds very early Squarepusher at times. I mean, the album doesn’t really have a theme or thread, but it’s a bloody good collection of tracks and ideas made with impeccable execution.

Various – Tresor 30

There’s a good chance you’ll already own a few of these offerings in this compilation, and I do, but don’t be dissuaded, as a collection this works cohesively. In case you didn’t know the specifics, this is an ode to the artists that the Berlin Tresor club has hosted in its thirty year existence.

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My wee Black Friday hypocrisy

Posted on 30/11/2021 by Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

So I received Black Friday emails titled ‘check out our great Black Friday discounts’ in early November this year.

What’s more grating, the slow creep of Black Friday becoming a month long event, or the Christmas fanatics who start counting down the days from, well, any date before the first of December? Or that shops now start punting Christmas tat in early autumn to appease them?

Clearly they’re all signs of the times and how the face of consumerism has changed. With the advent of the internet shopping in person (for most things) was always on borrowed time. That it’s taken this long for the paradigm to shift to the virtual sphere, is a testament to our weddedness to tradition and routine. But they’re no match for the combination of this peculiar time we’re living through and modernity, especially when the latter is utilised in the pursuit of profits.

I’ll concede this cascade of Black Friday emails from every company I’d consummated a transaction with is partly my fault. Buy something once and you’re on their list. Forever. It’s the new form of junk mail that you used to get pre-internet – do you remember? How on earth did we cope with such hardships? Yes most of them offer you the option to opt out of promotional offers when you sign up, but that’s semantics in the small print, lies at worst. Take opting out of promotions as a euphemism for tailored offers for you, not circulars. And just how smart are these algorithms anyway? Clearly you know I purchased a television recently, but why are you trying to sell me another one? Wait, am I meant to glean from this that there are people who buy a television every year or every other year? Is that what the market analytics say? As a bonkers Italian man once said, “are we crazy?”

Being anti consumerist is extremely futile. Its associated pathos occupies the same sphere as Veganism, it understands it’s a busted flush, hence the angry posturing of its acolytes (converts are always the worst, I find). Veganism and anti-consumerism are now surrogates for socialism, the grand-daddy failure of idealism – if we’re not having it, you shouldn’t either. I can’t take the side of the argument that says repent, don’t be taken in by the marketing, save your money for something meaningful. The word mellowed doesn’t sit well with me, but I can’t think of a better way to describe my attitude towards this. It’s your money, spend it however you please. Who am I to judge? I buy things too, so do you, and, get this, this year I’ve made a purchase during black Friday. In fact, make that several.

So, to avoid being a hypocrite, I have to renounce (some of) my previous ridicule of Black Friday. Which leads me back to a column (linked below) I wrote six years ago. I marvelled at the sheer oddity and mania of customers and the tactics that businesses had to adopt, including potentially turning away custom, just to protect the rabid Black Friday consumer from violent interactions and possible crush injuries.

Black Friday – a disgruntled view from the side-lines.

What is progress? And how do we measure it? Egalitarianism? Diversity? Inclusion? These are sensible and important goals but hard to measure with absolute certainty or consensus. In regards to Black Friday, while comparatively unimportant, the roadmap is clear and here. We can measure that it has progressed past the chaotic and bewildering scenes that characterised it’s hideous height mid last decade. It’s evolved into a predominantly online operation that’s slick, efficient, less anarchistic and removes some public displays of narcissism. The imposition of Covid has not only altered the nature of materialism and capitalism for most of us – it’s shown us that life is much better when stressful face to face interactions and hassle over trivialities are removed from your day to day existence. The vast majority will be doing their discount shopping online, not because it’s safer, but because it’s easier. Instead of sprained ankles, strained muscles lugging a heavy piece of equipment, a crushed rush through sliding glass doors when they first open at an ungodly hour, a sudden release which bears an uncanny resemblance to an obese cat finally fitting through the flap after an inelegant struggle, which includes two seconds of mortal thrashing panic that it might not make it, you’ll be on the couch, on the toilet, sitting at your computer, relaxed, warm, safe from infection, injury and infecting and injuring others. Soon this will become government advice too – Stay home when shopping. Protect the NHS. Save Lives.

So, how did I do in this brave new world? I bought a pop up plug replacement for my en-suite sink for £4 (can a sentence be more bourgeoisie?), a new electric pepper grinder (USB rechargeable with a motion sensor bitches! – ohhh snazzy) and some replacement lightbulbs for a tenner (okay, this one’s practical). None of these are grand purchases, but they’re things I could live without, well, apart from the lightbulbs.

While I’m not a Black Friday bargain hunting baller smugly buying that Sony OLED for £300 less than it cost a month before, and my small purchases are frivolous, I’m also not sniping at Black Friday with Trotskyist conviction. The tilt towards online shopping has normalised Black Friday for the indifferent and made me more normal in the process. Say it aint so?

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Song Of The Day – Vein by Cannibal Ox

Posted on 29/11/2021 by Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

From the album ‘The Cold Vein’ (2001)

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Song Of The Day – Michael Who Walks By Night by Strawberry Switchblade

Posted on 27/11/2021 by Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

From the compilation album ‘The 12″ Album’ (1985)

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By ratifying the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United the Premier League has lost control over its future

Posted on 31/10/2021 by Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard

Back in August I wrote that the Premier League’s blocking of the Newcastle takeover was arbitrary, cruel and inconsistent, given they’d already let another sovereign wealth fund belonging to a country with a questionable human rights record buy Manchester City over a decade earlier. What we know now that we didn’t then was why the proposed takeover was stalling. It wasn’t the Premier League’s concern with optics at allowing one of the most barbaric regimes around to enter their fraternity, but a preoccupation with protecting and enhancing the league’s revenues. Of course. A long standing disagreement between Qatari owned beIN Sports and Saudi Arabia, who were illegally streaming beIN’s coverage of Premier League matches in Saudi Arabia, was finally settled and the takeover ratified shortly afterwards. To clarify, beIN currently pays the Premier League $500m for those rights.

A more palatable justification, wrapped in legalese, for ratifying the deal was offered – the purchasing company, Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, is operated independently, and not on behalf, of the Saudi royal family, despite the king in waiting being its chairman and defacto ruler of the country. Nobody can blame the company that now owns Newcastle United for the human rights abuses of the country, but nobody with any semblance of integrity would parse them as separate entities.

Given the nature of mainstream football fandom in 2021, a better question might be why the Premier League even bothered to justify it at all.

The reaction to the takeover – a mixture of petty jealousy (partly masquerading a sense of helplessness) that another club was receiving this ill-gotten wealth, and ambivalence to the inadequate regulations that allowed yet another football club to be sold to the highest bidder with scant regard for the sporting, moral and political consequences, said much about the state of British society, culture and its engagement in politics, and none of it is good.

Whataboutery was rife, always the first reserve of the ideologically bankrupt simpleton. You know how it goes: the UK sells arms to Saudi Arabia. For Saudi Arabia’s decimation of Yemen read UK involvement in the upending of Iraq and Afghanistan and their subsequent desertion of ensuring democracy lasts in either. This disingenuous piety doesn’t stand up to scrutiny; women in Saudi Arabia aren’t treated as equal citizens, there is no freedom of the press, homosexuality is illegal, conversion therapy is common, journalists are murdered, people are beheaded, the state seizes the assets of certain wealthy individuals (yeah, you Tory fucks, they’d come for you too), torture is widespread, migrant workers are essentially slaves, and the barbaric sharia law is enforced. The difference between our freedoms and their oppressions is lost on so many because in the UK you’re free to ignore theirs if you choose.

Then there’s Gary Neville’s stupendously delusional argument that allowing Saudi Arabia, and other countries with questionable human rights records, to invest in the Premier League will lead to greater scrutiny on their mis-deeds and shame them into changing their laws and mores at home. It’s a wilful projection that forgets people tend to believe what suits them, political engagement and awareness is in decline or is consigned to social media echo-chambers, perception is reality, and people in power are often ruthless about maintaining it.

Saudi Arabia invested in Newcastle United because they knew whatever opinions the British masses hold of how they run their country become irrelevant in the thrall of football’s hyperspecific form of populist escapism. The Premier League confirmed that by ratifying the takeover. The Premier League were banking that the culture would be more concerned with how the new owners will run Newcastle United than how they choose to run their country. And they’re right. While some debated the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, most chose to speculate how much longer Steve Bruce would last (answer – not long), who would replace him and how soon Newcastle would be challenging the Manchester clubs, Liverpool and Chelsea for Champions League qualification and league titles (right now, no time soon). The Saudi royalty have the patience and money that the masses with shortening attention spans do not. All they need to do is wait, most of the remaining dissenting herd will eventually move on to graze elsewhere and their involvement in British football will become normalised. Go outside for a walk, you’ll see plastic bags ensnared in trees, or random litter in the street. Irksome, yes, but does it ruin your day? Will Newcastle United being owned by Saudi Arabia ruin your enjoyment of football? Has Abu Dhabi’s backing of Manchester City during the past decade?

Criticising Newcastle United fans for their servile and obsequious displays of delight at being taken over by a business subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s government is low hanging fruit. It’s easy to criticise (mostly young and male) idiots with zero self-esteem. But, introspect for a minute, imagine this was happening to your club, just how would you react? Particularly, if you were a club similar to Newcastle, success starved for years and owned by Mike Ashley, who clearly held the fanbase in complete contempt. Desperation for liberation makes uncomfortable compromises easier, though fittingly an effective argument against the sycophancy of the Newcastle fans wasn’t utilised. Juxtapose that with the oppression of gay folk or women in Saudi Arabia, who have no room or desire to compromise, and they have far more to lose by not doing so. All Newcastle’s acquiescence to one of the most grotesque regimes on earth reveals is how little they value themselves and what their club means to them.

Speaking of selling out, the Premier League has completely. What’s worse? That it can’t see the consequences of what it’s done or that it doesn’t care?

By making decisions in secret, and in this case one that could introduce an even greater level of financial disparity to the competition, without consulting the clubs, should prove to them and us that the Premier League doesn’t serve the interest of its clubs, much less the supporters of these clubs. Then there’s the looming threat of European Super League, which, with this decision, the Premier League seems to believe is an irrelevance to the continuation of its financial dominance. UEFA has to be worried watching this. The Premier League member clubs voted against it last time, but when the Premier league itself doesn’t have their own backs, why would the clubs vote against a modified European Super League proposal that removes the exclusivity that was so egregious last time? Then there’s the abject failure of Financial Fair Play to reign in Manchester City. The calls for stringent implementation at home and abroad will grow. You wonder how much longer the Premier League’s reticence to police Financial Fair Play will hold, especially as its premise contravenes their mantras of greed is good and the richer, the better.

Abu Dhabi backed Manchester City have won the league in three of the past four seasons. If you were being generous (and I’m not with this lot), then you might posit that part of the Premier League’s motivation for ratifying the Newcastle United takeover is a recognition that they needed to introduce another state backed club in a bid to keep the league competitive. Even Chelsea, owned by an extremely wealthy individual, and the organically grown wealth of Manchester United and Liverpool, wouldn’t dare, or simply cannot, match the spending power of Manchester City. But, remind me again, who created this ruse by allowing Abu Dhabi to buy the club in the first place, or before that allowing Roman Abramovich to ‘save’ Chelsea from the ignominy of having to operate within their means.

In 1992 nobody could’ve envisioned where things have travelled to. The Sky breakaway probably seemed like a good idea at the time. English football needed significant investment and modernisation as it was still reeling from the disasters at Bradford and Hillsborough, dilapidated stadiums, hooliganism and Thatcher’s perpetual attacks on it. But the process of homogenisation – specifically taking football away from being consumed solely on the terraces – altered the nature of fandom. Decades of hype, marketing and social media has completely bastardisied it. Now the most vocal and visible elements of a club’s support are characterised by infantile squabbling and impatience, where loyalty is conditional on wins, money spent and winning transfer windows and each defeat sees grown men resort to petulant wailing, a brand of self-pitying you’d normally associate with teenagers.

Heightened expectations from these consumers have led to greater financial demands on the clubs. These have been satiated by, and have become circularly dependent on, welcoming in any and all kinds of foreign wealth, no matter how tainted, either through philanthropic ownership or commercial agreements, just to keep up with the cost of spiralling wages of players and payments to agents to remain ‘the best league in the world’.

Just how depraved and inhumane does the regime that helped accumulate wealth need to be? A holocaust, genocide, a Stalinist purge? Hey, perhaps Kim Jong-un should buy Norwich City from Delia Smith? He isn’t feeding his people anyway (just himself, it seems) and Delia was better on telly than being the owner of a football club. By allowing the Saudis to buy Newcastle United, there’s simply no reasonable legal or moral standards left to disqualify anyone. The Premier League have basically advertised that cash is king, everything has a price, anything goes and your club could be sold to anyone.

Sound familiar? In 2008 we saw what happens when things aren’t regulated properly. But too often we’re happy to remain oblivious, or offer the benefit of the doubt, just as long as the illusion of competency remains. With the mortgage derivatives scandal we now know that bankers can’t be trusted to regulate themselves, and, with the sale Newcastle United to the Saudi government, neither can the Premier League.

All I can think of is a section from The Future. Lenny was a wise cat. He’d seen the unfettered spirit of modern mankind in a number of guises. Now that I’ve seen it a few times myself, his words have lost a bit of sparkle. Nonetheless, his commentary remains pertinent:

“Things gonna slide, slide in all directions,

Won’t be nothing, nothing you can measure anyone,

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold,

And it’s overturned, the order of the soul”

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