Their top 5 albums for 2011

Currently recording their first proper demos, Clandestines are one of Malta’s youngest and most promising bands. These three lads have a firmly rooted indie sensibility, a lot of potential and cheeky grins permanently fixed on their faces, and with a UK festival performance already under their belt, what’s not to smile about?

Los Campesinos – Hello Sadness
Los Campesinos albums always deliver the goods and Hello Sadness is no exception. The album is obsessed with themes of despair and death, but as always, Gareth manages to add in some humour for good measure. It’s an intensely personal album, which makes it as intriguing as it is.

Bright Eyes – The People’s Key
In the past 10 years Bright Eyes have brought a lot of elements into their albums, and this latest one manages to collect a good number of them into one, including the hazy synth-rock present on the Digital Ash album and definite echoes from his more recent solo albums. It’s a well-crafted album and, like much of Conor Oberst’s other work, does justice to his tag as the newest of the new Dylan’s.

Male Bonding – Endless Now
London trio Male Bonding have definitely cleaned up the production since their Nothing Hurts debut album, but they’ve managed to keep that raw energy that we loved about it. There are loads of great catchy guitar riffs here as well as themes of pain, jealousy and depression. What more could you want out of a punk band?

Yuck – Yuck
This album has got the 1990s written all over it, which is in no way a bad thing, seeing there are so many bands we love from that decade. The mix of bright, almost-twee songs such as Georgia and mid-tempo tracks like Shook Down makes it all in all a really enjoyable listen, and you’ll definitely realise it was worth the time spent listening when you reach the slow, grinding, album closer Rubber.

Frankie and The Heartstrings – Hunger
Hunger is simply a great indie-pop album. People seem to be so focused on technical rhythms and outlandish influences that they tend to forget there’s nothing wrong with a good, catchy tune. Sometimes the simplest pleasures are, in fact, the best.

Nathan

A happy-go-lucky guy who is obsessed with radio and the internet, Nathan is completely into DJing, production and TV, and is usually the culprit behind every case of excessively loud music. He hosts the 89.7 Bay Drivetime show and the station’s weekly update of Malta’s Top 10 as well as being the co-host on Net TV’s Crazebook programme. If you find your head automatically bobbing to the beat without warning, you know who to blame.

Adele – 21
Adele is probably the biggest discovery in the music business this year. She managed to take the world by storm with her album 21 and is definitely one of my favourites. It’s difficult to find a single person who dislikes her voice… she’s ridiculously good! My top pick for 2011.

Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto
When a band like Coldplay announces a new album, you can feel the buzz around the music industry. I pre-booked my copy a month before its release and it’s still on my phone, which means I still listen to it every now and then. My favourite track on the album has to be Charlie Brown. I’m quite looking forward to see the video clip for it.

Digitalism – I Love You Dude
I knew about these guys from Hamburg for quite some time but never had the chance to hear a complete album of theirs before. I got to know about I Love You Dude via a remix of Circles, a track off the album, and I just fell in love with it.

Dolls for Idols – Cut, Paste, Rave ’n’ Roll
I consider these guys as geniuses when it comes to experimenting with sounds. They definitely show their great talent on this album. I’ve never heard something like it before from a local band, so I have to give this a 10+. I still get flashbacks of me being on stage with them at the BMAs.

Example – Dancing In The Shadows
This guy literally exploded this past year. He’s collaborated with different producers on his album and I really love the result. He’s quite likely one of the pioneers introducing Dubstep to mainstream audiences.

Danjeli

Besides being a maverick club DJ and an accomplished musician in his own right, Danjeli is also a member of the renegade Maltese folk band Brikkuni. This year, he released another solo album, Kontronatura available for free download from www.soundsagacity.com/015kontronatura.html.

Amon Tobin – ISAM
Amon Tobin has always gone one step further in his music, starting out in the mid-1990s with jazzy drum ’n’ bass and going on to the brilliant melodies that shaped his 2007 sample-based Supermodified album. This year he delivered the most sonically-impressive music I’ve ever heard and, judging by the Youtube footage of his live act, the most inspiring visual and sonic live electronic performance. The packaging of the album is also intriguing, though not necessarily reflecting the music.

Bjork – Biophilia
I was lucky to catch one of Bjork’s only performances before the album launch last September. The imagination and forethought she possesses is pure bliss to pop culture. Biophilia is not an album for the dance floor, well not in Paceville on a Saturday night, and I don’t expect it will get much radio play here either. Bjork’s taste of atonality and refusal to use the diatonic scale, along with the engineers and musicians she’s surrounded with make her alien to conventional pop culture. She is nevertheless far ahead of everyone. Interestingly, this album is also available as an iPad app which lets you control parts of the music; interactive and unpredictable – pure genius.

James Blake – James Blake
Besides being an able singer-songwriter, Blake is also a talented electronic music producer and a marvellous performer with a voice that has a particularly appealing feminine quality. My girlfriend introduced me to his music last summer and while I loved it instantly, I never expected he would be such a great live performer. The album is magnificent; way above any other Dubstep-orientated pop music, and Blake’s use of silence in his compositions is brilliant.

Vinicio Capossela – Marinai, Profeti E Balene
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a huge fan of Capossela. To me, he is Italy’s singer-songwriter of the new century in that he never disappoints. He’s never short of words, ideas or surprises. This album was constantly playing on my MP3 player for several weeks. I love its simplicity, musicianship and poetry. It sounds a lot like a musical, and is heavily inspired by traditional sea shanties from all around the world. Mainly piano-driven, the album also features exaggerated male choirs, banjos, marimbas, electronic effects and sea sounds. I especially like the track Polpo d’Amor (Squid Of Love), which in Capossela’s creative eye is about having “Eight arms to hug with”.

The local scene…
Each year I get more impressed with the local music scene, and this year I’ve bought several albums by Maltese bands, favourites among them being those by Dolls for Idols, The Areola Treat and Nosnow/Noalps. I also liked Stalko’s In a hurry. I would love to see more releases in Maltese since I love our native tongue, but I’m still enjoying the English language releases all the same.

Robert Pisani

A walking encyclopaedia of music, Pisani is better known as DJ Bob on the local alternative scene. Apart from staging (and DJing at) various popular alternative nights Pisani also spreads the indie gospel via regular posts on the Stagedive website and his weekly Vindictive Jukebox radio show on All Rock.

Balam Acab – Wander/Wonder
Do you remember the ‘creation’ sequence in Disney’s Fantasia? Well, this album should have been its soundtrack. Alec Koone’s first proper offering is 40 minutes filled with haunting vocals, watery sounds (in fact, water features a lot) and soft beats. It’s the sound of some sort of cosmic rebirth, where plants are budding, animals emerge from the sea and humans are being born. Wander/Wonder is an organic album that transports the listener to a new dimension, and when music does that, it deserves the top spot.

Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise
Although music tends to regurgitate the past, it is very rare to find an album that sounds like it came out of nowhere without any influences and Nicolas Jaar’s debut does exactly this. It’s a very unique record, mixing vocal samples with sounds of nature and the odd guitar riff. I also like the fact that it’s sequenced like some DJ set, starting quietly and building up momentum with each track. Maybe on paper it sounds messy but do check it out. Jaar definitely won’t have to worry about imitators because his style is everywhere.

John Maus – We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves
John Maus is roughly my age (that’s early 30s, folks) and in his music I hear a lot of things that shaped my own childhood, among them catchy synthpop-laden cartoon theme songs and rubbish TV shows of the 1980s and the pop music that dominated the radio during the late 1980s/early 1990s, so I was able to relate to his music. Maus in turn created an album with lots of catchy keyboard motifs while his baritone mumbles out various slogans. Mind you, it’s Molly Nilsson’s cover of Hey Moon which is the stand out.

James Blake – James Blake
Dubstep seems to be going in different directions and entering some kind of ‘post’ territory, and I see James Blake as part of this. He is essentially a crooner (and what a voice!) with a piano but when the bowel-quaking bass kicks in, you know there’s something special going on. He’s even made me appreciate auto-tune. Since the album’s release, he’s put out another two EPs that show his sound is already evolving at a fast rate. Be prepared, one day this guy will release a record that will change the world.

Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
Calvi strode the musical world like some (metaphorical) great giant. With her bellowing voice and triumphant tunes, it was impossible not to fall under her spell. Nearly all the tracks on this swaggering debut batter your eardrums to a pulp. Calvi however isn’t all ‘huff and puff’, and also displays a sensitive and sensual side on this album, making it a thrilling experience from beginning to end.