KBOO Programmers list their top 10's for this year:
Phil G - Grateful Dead and Friends - Noon - 2pm 4th Saturday host
Yorik Jones - host of A Popcalypse (retired show) and Blues Junction 5th Saturdays
Top ten releases of 2019 in order of wanting to listen again. roughly. w/labels:
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - "Fishing for Fishies" Flightless
Bad Religion - "Age Of Unreason" Epitaph (maybe their best ever. imnsho)
Gary Clark jr. - "This Land" Warner Bros.
The Hu - "The Gereg" Eleven Seven
Keb Mo' - "Oklahoma" Concord
Santana - "Africa Speaks" Concord
The Raconteurs - "Help Us Stranger" Third Man Records
Matmos - "Plastic Anniversary" Thrill Jockey
Marvin Gaye - "You're The Man" Motown
Weezer - "Black Album" Atlantic
My top ten releases of the past decade in roughly chronological order w/labels:
Carolina Chocolate Drops - "Genuine Negro Jig" Nonesuch 2010
Blair Crimmins & the Hookers - "The Musical Stylings Of" Goose Creek 2010
Robbie Robertson - "How To Become Clairvoyant" Macrobiotic Records 2011
Cambodian Space Project - "2011: A Space Odyssey" Metal Postcard 2011
Devil Makes Three - "Stomp and Smash" live, Milan 2011
Monophonics - "In Your Brain" Ubiquity Records 2012
C.W. Stoneking - "Gon' Boogaloo" King Hokum Records 2014
Alabama Shakes - "Sound And Color" Rough Trade 2015
Polyrhythmics - "Caldera" self released 2017
Dirtwire - "Road Goes All Night" Beats Antique Records 2018
Rich Lindsey - host of Radio Lost and Found (Every Other Thursday 10pm - Midnight)
Strain Crack & Break: Music From The Nurse With Wound List Volume One
The first foray in the long-awaited compendium - a sampler, in fact - of the infamous Nurse With Wound List - a long list of impossibly obscure artists as printed on the first (later appended on the second) Nurse With Wound LPs. It has since become a checklist for weirdo/Euro/sophisto/record collector scum. Finders Keepers' Andy Votel and NWW's Stephen Stapleton curate this collection of great weird records. I can't wait for Vols. 2 and 3.
Finders Keepers
Ernest Hood - Neighborhoods
The highly anticipated reissue of this much in-demand self released 1975 LP by Portland Jazz legend and later KBOO co-founder Ernest Hood. It's a wonderful pastiche of field recordings, zither improvisations and electronic music, all heavily steeped in nostalgia. It's been lovingly remastered and spread out across four sides and beautifully packaged. An A+ reissue.
Freedom To Spend Records
Negativland - True False
The 'band' Negativland doesn't so much reinvent itself so much as it coalesces from time to time out of the pile of cultural detritus to comment on the current mediascape. True False is an amazing album from start to finish. It seems to riff on the 'post-truth world' theory that's littering public discourse. It's also one of the best and most cohesive albums by them in quite a while and sounds phenomenal. Highly recommended. It's also their first vinyl long player in 30 years to boot!
Seeland Records
Jane Weaver - Loops In The Secret Society
Manchester singer/songwriter's followup to Modern Kosmology. Dreamy. Recommended.
Fire Records
Pharmakon - Devour
Margaret Chardiet's latest foray recorded live in the studio and it's intense. Not for the faint-hearted. Perhaps recommended only for weirdos like me who Diamanda Galás soothing. I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
Sacred Bones Records
Fred Lane and His Disheveled Monkeybiters - Icepick to the Moon
Tuscaloosa madman Fred Lane's first LP since 1986's Car Radio Jerome but you wouldn't know that there's a 30-plus year gap, as it's just as crazy as his previous outings. Like those two LPs, it runs the gamut from big band Jazz, unrestrained crooning, tent-revival gospel, insane children's records and that's just for starters. Insane.
Feeding Tube Records
The Rudy Schwartz Project - Take Me In Your Arms and Sing To Me Like Dick Powell
The Golden Age of Indie Cassette legend Rudy Schwartz Project/Joe Newman's latest CD release includes the song I predict to be the number one smash hit across Americaland, 'Dead Nazi By The Side of the Road', as well as some wonderful Zappa-esque instrumentals, an old 78 era chestnut and enough politically charged vitriol to Jonestown an entire Golden Corral on Saturday night, and that's a lot. Really sick and twisted but with its sick and twisted heart in the right place. Many tracks not suitable outside of FCC Safe Harbor.
Sick/DC Jam
Paul Ellis & Daryl Groetsch - Interior Rhythms
This collaboration between Vancouver WA's Paul Ellis and Portland Electronic musician Daryl Groetsch is a very analog sounding and spacey album, at times reminding me of Phaedra-era Tangerine Dream or the music of Klaus Schultze. Recommended.
Bandcamp
Andy Partridge & Robyn Hitchcock - Planet England
If you know me, you’d guess that news of a joint release by these two artists would make me emit a squee sound and you'd be right. Hopefully this four song EP is a taste of more madness to come.
Ape House
Suzanne Ciani - Flowers of Evil
Electronic music pioneer Ciani’s heavy electronic concept meditation on Baudelaire’s poem utilizing a Buchla synthesizer, originally recorded in 1969 but unreleased until 2019 (perhaps beaten to the punch by Ruth White’s also amazing interpretation released the same year). It’s like a soundtrack to your most fevered nightmare, so naturally I must heartily recommend it for easy listening around the house.
Finders Keepers Records
Rick Mitchell - Jazz in the New Millenium host and frequent on air substitute DJ
Best of 2019
Rolf Semprebon - Sounds Unsound (Every Other Sunday 12am - 3am) and member of A Different Nature collective
Erin Yanke - Life During Wartime (Every other Wednesday 10pm - Midnight)
Now Songs for Now Times. I’m not counting reissues here in my Top 10 of 2019, , or we’d be swimming in Raw Power, The Comes, Mercenarias, Polo Pepo, Lost Sounds etc. The new versions of the old songs are just too many, and while I appreciate the releases, I don’t think they should be on 2019 top tens. This includes what would be my number one record this year The Rats – In A Desperate Red.
The order of the alphabet seems best for this list, as the records that are best changes by my need for catharsis or fun.
Andy Human and the Reptoids – Psychic Sidekick (Total Punk) – you like your job
I liked the 7”’s, sure, but this record stayed on my turntable as my spring soundtrack. They lock it in to the deep grooves that DEVO and others have made in my heart, but keep it unpredictable. Great vocals. “You Like Your Job” is my favorite.
Control Top – Covert Contracts (Get Better Records) – Office Rage
Control Top shouts about things that I shout about! I feel comradery and also catharsis from this record.
Frenzy – s/t 12” (Distort Reality)
Noisy and frantic! This is my soundtrack when I can’t keep up with myself and the shitty world. I love the speed, the riffs, the vocals that are just so pointedly there – not yelling at me, but for me! They transmit the fun part of the spikey punk life.
Gonzo – do it better again (Anti Fade )
Australian punk that just scratches that rocknroll itch. They’re a rock band visiting us from an alternative timeline where rock wasn’t corrupted by major label bullshit politics, beauty standards, connections and shady shit.
Haram – where were you on 9/11? (Toxic State)
This record is so important! I appreciate the visceral soundtrack to surveillance culture and islamophobia, the people’s art where for so long the mainstream narrative has suffocated out the alternative views. Rad as in awesome and radical. Rad as in total resistance. This is why we are the punks.
Heterofobia – Queremos Ver El Mundo Arder (Drunken Sailor ) - Falsos Aliados
The same ingredients to make the best of rippin hardcore, but with depth of rage that makes this even better! Fully alive fully realized.
Physique – The Evolution of Combat / The Rhythm of Brutality (self released)
I can just repeat myself from last year: Physique is incredible. Magnetic. Palpably changing the people in the room from stiff self consconscious spikey punks to participatory comrades. I’m all in, ESPECIALLY after the live shows. TBoth these records came out this year, and they both are reminders of what we’re up against, and whos side I am on.
Preening – Gang laughter (Digital Regress)
Preening gets more interesting as the years go by, the tight rope balance of punk freedom of doing what you want with noise freak out scronking and seeing what happens – while not getting Too Free and leaving the listeners behind.
Scrap Brain – a Journey into madness (Thrilling Living)
Ah, I love this album as some true freak scene expression! Weirdo punk freedom ladies gritty and tough and fearless and in your damn fucking stupid face! This inspires me to reach deeper to all the parts of life, the ugly and the transcendent and the true of our damn times.
The UV Race – Made in China – (Aarght!)
The genius continues! Murder! They write for all the bad moods and sly romance vibes and the other emotions and experiences that don’t get songs written on the regular. Sparse and loose but not too loose. Mr. Blame! Plus catchy! Act Like Them! I just can’t get enough. Exuberant! Awesome!
BONUS TRACK!!!
Rolf's Top Ten of the DECADE!
1 Scout Paré-Phillips – Heed The Call
2 Big Blood – Radio Valkyrie +1905 + 1917+
3 Hertta Lussu Ässä – Hertta Lussu Ässä
4 Jenny Hval & Susanna – Meshes Of Voice
5 Volcano The Bear – Golden Rhythm / Ink Music
6 Neneh Cherry & The Thing – The Cherry Thing
7 Sabbath Assembly – Restored To One
8 Halasan Bazar & Tara King Th. – 8
9 Nalle – Wilder Shores Of Love
10 The Gray Field Recordings – Nature Desires Nature
On another day one of these would have made the list..
Fern Knight – Castings
Ora Clementi – Cover You Will Softer Me
Sanso-Xtro – Fountain Fountain Joyous Mountain
Maja S. K. Ratkje – Crepuscular Hour
Soap&Skin – Narrow
Spires That In The Sunset Rise – Ancient Patience Wills It Again
and Erin Yanke's Top 10 of the DECADE - This is the list I did for Maximum Rocknroll, so it's punk stuff only. It's too hard to do all the music.
Dead Moon – “Live at Satyricon” LP (Voodoo Doughnut Recordings)
The best band ever in the history of the world reminds us of their amazing live energy. Recorded at the scuzpit punk club that also doesn’t exist anymore, in 1993. They played the soundtrack to my life. They have style, perseverance, and charm. They had bad roads, great songs, hard luck, boundless independence and each other. Pure Love.
Good Throb “Fuck Off” LP (White Denim, SuperFi Records, Sabermetric)
When Fuck Off came out, and came into my life, it moved right on to the turntable for months. The perfect metamorphose of real life bullshit to art. Now that it’s been years, it’s a flawless representation of our very flawed society, culture, times and the energy and fun in resistance.
Haram “When You Have Won, You Have Lost” LP (La Vida Es Un Mus)
An important and ragin record by this important and ragin band. Bringing a visceral soundtrack to surveillance culture and Islamophobia, the people’s art where for so long the mainstream narrative has suffocated out the alternative views. Rad as in radical, totally essential punk for our times.
Lebenden Toten “Mind Parasites” LP (Self Released)
Literally the sounds of a mind fighting itself for survival through feedback, screaming, noisy unidentifiable bits, solid rhythm section and children’s audio, it is a triumph! Literally the best band in Portland and probably in punk. Longevity and dedication.
Long Knife “Meditations On Self Destruction” LP (Long Knife Records)
A perfect Side A, great songs, great nihilism, great lyrics, riffs, and rhythm. Powerful and sinister. Shredding, full on, all rage and destruction, and free will. A hardcore masterpiece that stands up with the best work of their map makers - Poison Idea.
Reigning Sound “Shattered” LP (Merge)
Greg Cartwright is an incredible songwriter, and proves it again with this record that really was a soundtrack of my life when it came out. Lots of fucked up shit happens, but you just get through it and then you move on and you’re not ever the same as you were before. Greg Cartwright turns the life wounds into scars into songs, and then makes a record that provides the perfect soundtrack for my loss and love, dead friends, collaborations, new responsibility, changing minds and changing hearts, and some settling in and some peace and some closure. Incredible.
Shopping “Consumer Complaints” LP (Fat Cat)
This record continues to delight and amaze me. Danceable and smart, anticapitalist postpunk that doesn’t hold back on creativity. Lively. Great.
Special Interest “Spiraling” LP (Raw Sugar)
What an awesome band! They are the best of the post punk jerk hurk but with the garage lofi, it embraces life - loud and rambunctious and true and blow out fun - the opposite of the no wave cold shoulder. Grimey groove and rowdy aggression!
Una Bestia Incontrolable “Observant com el mon es Destrueix” LP (La Vida Es Un Mus)
Hardcore with depth and groove, that doesn’t hold back on the rage and cathartic aggression.Having the ability to dance in the destruction and pain of the times while also feeling the rage is a delicate balance that this record manages perfectly.
UV Race “Homo” LP (In The Red)
Genius band with catchy songs and delight of not fitting the expectations. Murky and sloppy, interruptive, unpredictable, hilarious, thoughtful, messy, collaborative, so fun! Simple and complicated. Human. Alive. Truly fucking totally alive.