The top 30, part one.

I tried, I really did, to cram this into a top 10. It just didn't happen. As I did last year, I've broken this into electronic and pop/rock/heavy/whatever. I'll work on the latter soon. This took me a week to assemble and write, so you better enjoy it, dammit.


15. Ratatat - Classics - XL
"Montanita" sweeps into your ears like a twang-heavy Hawaiian cowboy troupe, organs and accordians at a slow n' steady boil. It's a kind and romantic sound, setting the stage for steady funk-hop, guitars squealing in harmony, in reverse. The addictive pop shuffle of "Wildcat" is what sealed this one for me. Another genius album from well, geniuses. Who knew?




14. Girl Talk - Night Ripper - Illegal Art
When I was in New York for CMJ, I had coffee with the publicist for Girl Talk AKA Gregg Gillis, and he told me just how he does it. Dude wrote a PROGRAM that, for every song picked, produces 3 or 4 tracks that his computer 'knows' will jam the fuck out. That blows my mind. Sure, it's like DJing-by-numbers, but who plays the Pixies AND Clipse? Gillis and ONLY Gillis. This record made me smile the most in 2006, easy.




13. Quantic - An Announcement to an Answer - Tru Thoughts/Ubiquity
Chinese strings. Dirty trumpets. Crooners. Divas. Perhaps the most soul a white guy has ever poured onto wax, save perhaps Jamie Lidell. I love how there's no masking Will Holland's influences in a year where people seemed desperate to obscure them. He loves, in this order: the world...women...late-90s hip-hop-heavy jazz breaks. Funk strings bleed all over the dancefloor in "Meet me at the Pomegranete Tree"; it's like a broken beat wet dream. This could be the best record Herbaliser and Up, Bustle & Out never got to make...or had the balls to.




12. Herbert - Scale - !K7
Pardon my french, but this is music for fucking. Seriously, there isn't a sexier album this entire year. Dani Siciliano is back on the vocals, hotting you out with every word that leaves her lips...in fact, I've heard this record called a "true weapon of mass seduction". On the subject of weaponry, Herbert's own politics are front and centre: "I just don't know how to bring about/your downfall, damn fool go figure out/how those christian bones can orchestrate/shock and awe", Sicilliano coos. This is the thinking person's audiophilia, get it while it's hot.




11. Copy - Mobius Beard - Audio Dregs
Among the most abused terms of 2006: Emo. I won't get into my age-old defense of the word, of the genre that started when Panic!At The BlahBlah was still in diapers...but I'll say that the word has loaned itself well to an emerging, lets say, sensitivity, in music this year, especially in electronic music. Copy seems to embody that very sensitivity - this is thoughtful, dense, driving tech-house with a songwriters' touch - bridges, choruses, hooks (OMG A HOOK IN A TECHNO SONG WHATWHAT). This disc hooked me from the first listen, and kept me rockin' all summer and fall. A must-have of 2006.



10. MSTRKRFT - The Looks - Last Gang
So it's NOT all hype after all. On one hand, I could gush about the sheer quality of the production on this, the gorgeous Seripop album art, but what this comes down to is dancing. Clap, sing, shout, boogie, shuffle bob, weave - do whatcha gotta, but you cannot sit still listening to this record. On the other hand, I've seen them live now...4 times in '06, and its, well, boring. C'est la vie.




9. Hu Vibrational - Boonghee Music 2: Universal Mother - Soul Jazz
If there are two things I'm a sucker for, it's album art and Soul Jazz Records. This one caught my eye when I was in NYC, but I didn't pick it up until I was back in Toronto. What a fascinating album. It has one leg firmly planted in the NYC hippy jam world, the other deep in the Konono N°1 camp, playing really rudimentary instruments, live off the floor, while digging deep into the 'vibes of the tribe' (a'la Phil Ranelin) sound of steady rumbles and shoulder-bouncing tranced-out rhythms heard noplace else than in African music.




8. Burnt Friedman & Jaki Liebezeit - Secret Rhythms vol.2 - Nonplace
I was first attracted to the idea of this pairing. I've been a fan of B.Friedman's epic pop soundscapes for a while now, and was curious to see what he and Liebezeit (formerly the drummer for uber-influentialCan) would come up with...in essence, this is a fantastic jazz record, steeped in dub, broken beat and glitch-hop, pushing basslines deeper and IQs higher. I honestly feel smarter after listening to this record, like I've been taught a lesson about life or something.




7. Motor - Klunk - Mute
2006 seemed to be the year of relentless techno. Digitalism tore new assholes. MSTRKRFT cut you wide open on the dancefloor. Motor is like a slow torture (the best kind, right?) of HARD,808 bass in your face, acid-soaked woomph-woomph fatness. Get it? Good. Naming your tracks things like "Botox", "Yak" and "MDXT-A" would normally evoke a clean, clinical feel...which is so far from reality. This is dirty, mean, angry, in-your-face dance music, not for the faint of heart, but SO SO SO good.




6. The Knife - Silent Shout - Mute/Rabid
This one takes the cake for most INTERESTING album of the year. Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson have been blowing minds for several years now, but it took until this past year for them to release anything in the states, let alone tour. I got to see them in NYC, and was mesmerized by their stage/light show, their deep deep bass, their take on vocal electro and whether or not it's HER REAL VOICE. Apparently, it is. The single "We Share our Mother's Health" has been remixed to death this fall, but the original stands strong as their ticket into the hearts, minds and dancefloors of North America. The Knife, we welcome you with open arms.




5. Shout Out Out Out Out -Not Saying/Just Saying - NRMLS WLCM
Call me bias, whatever. This record destroys. Falling under the 'relentless' category is S04, but it's waaaay more...funky. My personal favorite on the record is "Do I Stutter?", a choppy, thoughtful number most DEFINITELY written in tribute to Delia & Gavin; though the only non-danceable track on the record, it's a perfect sealant to a disc full of clicks, pops, beeps, bass shreds, sick keyboard lines, mr.roboto vocoder attack, and of course, sad & mad lyrics about gentrification, debt and missing your loved one. THAT is what dance music should be about: honesty. SO4 pull it off in spades.




4. Tiga - Sexor - Last Gang
Chalk another one up on the 'sensitive' chart. Tiga has assembled a masterpiece of an album with Sexor, his first full-length record. "Far From Home" might be my favorite single of 2006, if not for its oh-so-catchy chorus, "as far as I go/as far as I know/I've always got/a place called home". Sigh. What a romantic, in the literary sense of the word. The well-placed cover of "Burnin' Down the House" is also a choice cut...his vocals seem so natural and effortless, like he's just chillin on his couch as he makes you dance, step, hop & leap. What I think I love most about this record, and Booka Shade's (below) is the tendency of new dancefloor techno to have a really...trancey element to it, minus all the cheese and horns and lame builds/drops. It's the chugging momentum that feels just right when it's 2 AM, way too much vodka and Red Bull are coursing through your system, and your feet ache...but you gotta keep dancing.




3. Booka Shade - Movements - Get Physical
The trancey element of which I speak is on full display on this BRILLIANT album from Frankfurt's Booka Shade. Don't misread me, this is not a trance record, but it IS an exploration of the same repetitive tendencies, re-shaped around nearly every genre in the book, from funky breaks to hard techno. Walter Merziger and Arno Kammermeier have truly embraced what it means to be 'progressive' without any of the pitfalls of being labelled a 'progressive' act. It means, evolving & growing & changing & moving FORWARD. 'Future thinking' is what I like to call it. Booka is doing plenty of just that. "Body Language" might be the best track on the disc, with it's half-step break just one beat behind it's housier side. It's...lovely, is what it is.




2. Spank Rock - YoYoYoYo - Big Dada
Dirty. Sexy. Hard. Funky. Booty-shaking. Funny? Yes, funny. Those are all perfect words to describe this stunning debut from B-More's finest. Not only does it contain one of the best lyrics of the year ("behind my gameboy/I got game, girl"), but the beats are so ridiculously tight that I almost FEAR watching XXXChange and MC Spank Rock evolve as musicians, for fear that they'll blow everyone else out of the water, raising the bar while at the same time heightening the standard so that all the crap rises to the middle (post-OK Computer brit rock, anyone?). Whatever, I got my dancin' tunes for now.




1. Hot Chip - The Warning - DFA/Astralwerks
There was simply no better record released this year than Hot Chip's The Warning; an almost flawless album from start to finish, they have captured what it means to make ORIGINAL music, by definition. Having had the luck to see them twice this year, in both a supporting (w/ Stereolab) and headlining (w/ GangGang Dance) capacity, it was amazing to see how much they've matured as performers, taking risks and challenging themselves to BE BETTER than they already are. Sing it with me now, "Hot Chip will break your legs/snap off your head/Hot Chip will put you down/into the ground". Brilliant. This is the pinnacle of the sensitive stuff I was on about earlier - thoughtful, intelligent music made by and for booties and brains alike. I can't wait to hear what they'll come up with next.


Compilations/DJ mixes, in no order:

-DFA Remixes Volume 2
-Four Tet: DJ kicks
-Cut Copy: FabricLive28
-Dubstep Allstars Volume 4 (DJs Youngsta & Hatcha)



And that's it. For now. The rest is yet to come.