A look back at 2010

As with last year I’m gonna refrain from just doing straight up top 10 lists but will instead just highlight a few different bits and bobs that did it for me this year. The year started off a little sluggish for me, both in terms of gigs and releases, I felt like it took a while for the year to get going, but by the end there had been some wonderful stuff to choose from so here’s what floated my boat throughout the year, in no real order.

Some homegrown bizness
Both Tr-One and Leonid did a little bit more to get themselves out there with 2 enjoyable 12’s with the Carlow boys It Ain’t Hard To Tell being their strongest release to date while Leonid got his second release on Patrice Scott’s impressive Sistrum imprint (though I did prefer his first release on the label in 2009). While it did come out at the back end of 2009 I’m gonna mention Lerosa’s wonderful Dual Nature cassette album on Further as I only got it this year. Showing that there is more to him than house, it was a brilliant and coherent long player, something too many long players of it’s ilk fail at. Finally, coming at us with a truckload of hardware was the little known Automatic Tasty who made his vinyl debut on Lunar Disko (who also debuted the wonderful Submersible Machines this year too). His live shows were enough to get gear heads worked up into a sweaty mess and his sense of dynamics and melody were exceptional for such a young chap. This number off the In It For The Money ep was one of my tracks of the year, with a wonderful melodic progression that would melt the hardest of hearts, managing to recycle age-old sounds into something rather beautiful

Emeralds @ Unsound Festival
Now is probably a good time to apologise for never finishing off my review of the brilliant Unsound Festival which I attended in October in Krakow, Poland. Oops. The Saturday night gig at the fest had me ever so excited with Emeralds and Italian horror soundtrack maestros Goblin supplying the musaks. While Goblin were a little hit and miss, at times beefing their sound up into slightly ropey metal territory (I blame their drummer and his booming fills) there was some utterly brilliant moments, with them closing with a superb rendition of Profunda Rossa and earlier segments from Suspiria, Tenebre and Dawn of the Dead more than enough of a distraction from the lesser moments.

Warm up act Emeralds, in a mere 30-40min slot, stole the show though. Knocking the living shit out of me with an incredible opening 10minutes of “Genetic” there was little or no let up as they segued from one track to another without stopping, their slightly odd stage presence – motionless nerd, pretty boy guitar player, and fist thumping metaller; seemingly possessed by his analogue synths (no one was sure what he was shaking his fists so vigorously at, but that really was the definition of “getting into it” all the while with his back turned to us) and excellent visuals all adding to a wonderfully unique performance. Their album Does It Look Like I’m Here? was possibly my favourite long player of the year too. I’ll also add briefly that I bore witness to the worst dj set of the year at Unsound courtesy of Kyle Hall. Go away and learn how to dj for fuck sake, your butchering of some fine music was nothing short of disgraceful. Some selections were far from fine too.

Windy City Sounds
While it obviously never went away, old and new Chicago sounds continued to become more and more popular with the djs and clubbers of today. Rush Hour have landed themselves in every end of year review and looking at Chicago it was impossible not to mention them with their wonderful House of Trax series bringing back to life some stone cold classics. Top of the pick being Ron Hardy’s Sensation – though just how legit the Hardy re-issues were is debatable…My last two yearly round ups saw Clone getting shout outs for new and old Chicago and they provided one of the 12’s of the year in this vein – or any – with the Murphy Jax/Mike Dunn colab It’s The Music.

Chicago Skyway, Steven Tang and Tevo Howard brought some more goodness from the new school (though I’ve no idea what Tevo Howard is at re-releasing Without You with an utterly pointless new vocal from Tracey Thorn) and Jamal Moss’ Mathematics label was one of my favourite labels of the year. He didn’t restrict himself from just selecting Chicago artists for the excellent “Music From Mathematics” series but the city’s musical heritage was never far away in the music. In a show of blatant ISM back slapping another highlight was Noleian Reusse’s – Moss’ sometime partner in Africans With Mainframes – wonked out oddness of the Black Tekno ep on Love What You Feel. Another ISM acquintance, Disco Nihilist, closed off the year with the raw as a pig’s arse It’s Grim Up North ep, which came on like Steve Poindexter looking for a fight on the streets of Chi-town. His “Easy” track from earlier in the year was a deeper offering, but also another highlight of the year. Finally, in a proper WTF moment Chicago old school-er Dj Skull returned, seemingly completely out of nowhere, with the awesome Chi Life ep. The tensed up, nervous energy of “Floating” being my pick from this sterling release.

Polishing A Turd
A quick congratulations to Levon Vincent for re-creating Jus Ed’s embarrassing “I’m Coming” into one of the dancefloor bombs of the year. It was the remix of the year for me, with the Aardvark/Jared Wilson double whammy remixes of Skudge coming up closely behind (though the Skudge originals were pretty decent too, unlike the former)

The return of the After Hours?

For those of you who don’t know, Ireland has the most archaic liscensing laws in the whole of Europe but in the last few months a resurgence in all night warehouse parties has given Dublin’s nightlife a severely needed kick up the arse. While the internet ain’t somewhere to be talking too openly about where these parties are happening, peeps seem to be getting away with them so far (and much more so than in recent years) and hopefully it will continue on in to the new year. A recent party featuring Delta Funktionen, Lerosa and myself was a personal highlight of the year for me and was one of my favourite gigs I’ve ever played, when myself and Lerosa got the almost unheard-of-in-Ireland opportunity to play to a packed, blacked out warehouse at 7am for a few hours. Kudos for Lerosa’s impeccable selection of house and techno, far too many of which I didn’t have a clue what they were.

A couple of gnarly ol 303 lines from the 313
Moodymann’s “It’s 2 late 4 U and Me” from Ol’ Dirty Vinyl had more going on in it than most of RA’s top ten tracks of the year combined, with a rumbling 303 kicking off what was a classic piece of KDJ, one minute a stomping house cut, the next a poignant soul number. Scott Ferguson teased us with Keep On Loving Me waiting till half way through before unleashing on us a wicked acid line that cemented the song as my No.2 track of the year after the aformentioned KDJ.

Dj Mixes
Again, like last year I’ll leave you check out the mixes ISM brought to you in your own time and will instead mention a few others that did it for me.

The Scottish based Slabs of the Tabernacle label/night had a superb run of mixes on their website this year, my favourite of which came from John Heckle. More info on it here

Paudi Ahern 12 Live 009. Hailing from the wilds of Kerry in the south of Ireland, Paudi gave us a superb, rapid fire club mix that was recorded back in May in the Bernard Shaw in Dublin. Cramming in over 40 tracks in just under two hours, genres didn’t matter much with Dr Dre, Terrence Parker, The Hasbeens, Kraftwerk, Talking Heads and Flying Lotus all vying for space. Grab it here

NCW – News From The Borderline. Showing that a bit of humour goes along way sometimes, London based NCW threw in new beat, house, proto-electro, a couple of “I dunno should I like this” numbers and Frankie Goes To Hollywood into the cauldron. You may not have heard of him, but ISM readers will be hearing a bit more about him in the near future. S’all I’m saying for now. Download the mix here.

For a bit of no nonsense back in the day Techno the rather good promomixes website gave us Silent Servant’s Tresor 98 mix. Relive some gems in a supremely tight and intense dj mix. Tracklist / download

Obviously the likes of RA, Little White Earbuds, Mnml Ssgs and FACT delivered some top class mixes too, but you probably read those sites already so you can go and look them up yourself.

Matt Whitehead live @ Bleep43
Anyone who caught his set at Bloc (I didn’t) wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it so I was overjoyed to catch this chap at the October Bleep43 party in London. You know you are doing something right when you are the highlight of a night that also featured Urban Tribe, Convextion, Legowelt and Dj Overdose. His Raw Deal 12″ on Rebel Intelligence was bloody good too. The night after I attended a Sud Electronic party with Boo Williams as the big draw and once again it was the little guy – in this case ISM’s Jitterbug – who stole the show with a brilliant set of raw house music put together near perfectly.

Synth Pop lushness and that one brilliant record I missed out on from 2009.
I’m basically just repeating myself from my last records post with this entry. I’m talking about the Games mini album and that Gatekeeper 12. So as to not render this entry completely pointless I may as well mention that I quite enjoyed Oneohtrix Point Never’s Returnal album (though it didn’t match up to the Rifts comp) and Gatekeeper have some new material coming soon that is suitably barmy. Here’s some Games action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5scYXIvAr7w

What the hell, here’s a list for ya.
There was loads more music this year I’ve not gotten to mention so here’s a list of some other songs I picked up this year that were great. Re-issues are also included while some other gems have no doubt been forgotten. In no particular order:

Robert Hood – Alpha
Storm Queen – Look Right Through
Urban Tribe/Mariska – Insolitology
The Pinch – Shot Out
Shake – Frenchie
Mr Fingers – Waterfall
Pirahnahead – Mirror Muse Internal Inspiration
Big Strick – Old E 800
Lost Trax – Lost Trax 2
John Swing – Check It Out

One hope for 2011
That Marcellus Pittman’s stock continues to rise and he becomes a viable act for promoters in Ireland to book in 2011. Two more top notch 12″s this year proved again that he is one of the most dependable and unique producers of house and techno out there at the moment.

And finally…
Thanks to everyone who has continued to read this site over the last year, who knows if we are any way informative half the time, but it’s always fun. And big ups to Tom and the rest of the crew for pointing out plenty of new music to me as well as all the other nonsense that’s landed it’s way on to the site. 2011 should be big.