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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Caribou and Slim Moon.
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Listed: Caribou + Slim Moon
Caribou
Canadian math-whiz Dan Snaith seems to completely renew himself with each new release. Conveniently the law was on his side for the release of his new record, as his original pseudonym, Manitoba, was forfeit following the threat of a lawsuit by perennial chart-topper Handsome Dick Manitoba. Now know known as Caribou (formerly Dan Snaith's Manitoba), Snaith has taken the smooth beats of his debut and clean cut-ups of 2002's Up In Flames, and moved right along to the gong-banging chaos of 70s prog (albeit without the actual gongs). His new release, The Milk of Human Kindness is a typically genre-defying masterpiece of production and composition, and an exciting new chapter in this increasingly significant artist's catalog. Caribou are now on an extensive tour of North America.
1. Albert Ayler - Love Cry
It's tough to choose between Ayler's albums because they're all that good and he cycles through the same half dozen songs most of the time but the addition of a harpsichord on this one takes his already transcendent music to a higher level of heaviness.
2. Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow
No amount of hyperbole is too much for this band. Set all their imitators aside - their thundering is a call from on high.
3. Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Mozart eat your heart out. Some scraggly motherfuckers from Georgia/New Mexico just blew you a new asshole.
4. Phillipe Besombes - Libra OST
Avant-garde French composer Besombes has been largely forgotten since his heyday in the 1970s but this will be his year. Moogs, phasers, drums, sheepskin coats and pipes... this will serve as an adequate introduction to the man until he returns to storm the charts.
5. Madvillain - Madvillainy
An album that surpassed all my unreasonably high expectations for it. Madlib is seen here in his finest, rawest, maddest form with Doom at is peak matching him every step of the way.
6. Pharoah Sanders - Black Unity
Listening to this makes me wonder why no one makes records as heavy as this these days. The idea of this many ridiculously talented musicians pulling together something this momentous ever again seems laughable.
7. Faust - The BBC Sessions
When I think about this record I imagine it being recorded by a colony of rock giants dressed in sabre-toothed snugglies.
8. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs
Another album that has already been heaped with praise but deservedly so. An album that focuses all their best ideas and marks them as the truly important band that they are.
9. Lars Nistromsaand - The Molten Core of the Cosmos
People tend to associate progressive rock quite correctly with endless organ solos and wizard costumes but this classic album from 1982 recorded on one microphone captures the sound of three drum kits and three singing saws getting as conceptual as you like before Nistromsaand's career was cut unmercifully short by libellous allegations of paedophilia.
10. The Zombies - Odyssey and Oracle
Perfect pop, perfectly arranged and performed. Guaranteed to raise a smile from even the greatest misery Muppet.
Slim Moon
Kill Rock Stars / 5RC founder/operator Slim Moon is not your typical label executive. Operating out of Olympia, Washington, he started Kill Rock Stars in 1991 and 5RC in 1995. Since then has released over 200 records and countless singles, and seems to be going stronger now than ever before. While he's worked hard and successfully to sell records by some of the best records of the last 20 years (Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith, Deerhoof, just to name a few), Slim Moon has also spent plenty of time as a performing artist himself. He has played in bands such as Witchy Poo, The Punks, Earth (who knew?!), and a number of others. He has only ever written four songs completely by himself, but one of them made him $30,000.
1. Morrissey
The only thing more interesting than a great album or a great live performance is a great career. Of all the careers that began after I started paying attention, his has been the most interesting. Mostly because of the consistently great songs, full of both humor and pathos, and also for the completely thorough creation of a projected image, without letting us down or letting us see past the mask, ever.
2. Sonic Youth
Best rock band career - which is a hell of a lot harder than an individual artist. Imagine all of the conflicts and dead ends this band has had to work themselves through in order to have put out so damned many perfect albums!
3. Madonna
The master and mistress of the image reinvention. And the best pop for many many years.
4. Mecca Normal
Never have so few done so much with so little and been appreciated by so few.
5. Melvins
If ever there was a testament to the ultimate forceful personality, the edifice created by this band as a complete body of work should stand forever as a monument to the life-force known as Buzz Osbourne.
6. Ice Cube
From inventing gangster rap and turning the pop radio world upside down forever to "Barbershop 2 and everything in between - fascinating.
7. Tom Petty
The best.
8. Dwight Yoakum
The only mainstream country guy in the last 20 years worth giving a crap about.
9. Dr. Dre
Seems like you can always tell a Dr. Dre production the instant you hear it, whether it's JJ Fad, Mary J. Blige, or The Game.
10. Boredoms
The breadth of territory this band has covered in their career is staggering.
By Dusted Magazine
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