Well, well, what can I say. Is there a project on earth any cooler that what those crazy lads from Spain, Buffetlibre, put together? And they’ve totally outdone themselves with this latest incarnation. 89 friggin’ songs! Are you kidding me? It’s a goldmine of neo-nostalgia. I don’t even wanna think about the organizational effort that went into producing this collection. Including Little Boots, Miami Horror, Au Revoir Simone, Bonde Do Role, the Glass, and on and on and on, with covers of Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, Tears for Fears, New Kids on the Block, and on and on again. Even both Kunkers’ home cities (San Francisco, Budapest) are represented in the form of Baron von Luxxury, and TMX, respectively. Since they were kind enough to share the entire lot of songs with us, we’ve got a hell of a lot to choose from for sharing. But somehow we’ll have to manage, so here it goes… (we may post some down the road as well)

Au Revoir Simone - Here Is The News (ELO cover) // [ysi]

Electric Youth - Lying Still (Level 42 cover) // [ysi]

We Have Band - West End Girls (Pet Shop Boys cover) // [ysi]

Baron von Luxxury - Y Control (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover) // [ysi]

Our favorite of the above is cover laid down by the high school sweathearts/futuro electro duo, Electric Youth. Sweet voice, sweet editing, those kids are on the up and up, and will be coming euro-side in spring of this year!

The Best Albums of 2008: 5-1

5. Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream

The debut of Pnau genuis’ other project, Empire of the Sun, is a gorgeous space-glam opera. Australia is really full of bands now who can mix this dreamwave-indie-pop into the nu-disco with taste. In addition, Walking on a Dream has a great concept both musically and visually and conjures a world that you can nearly taste and touch. The vocals even remind me of Michael Jackson or Prince… 80s are so loveable resurrected here that you just wanna close your eyes, pop a xanax and make this your dream-soundtrack.

Empire of the Sun - We are the People [zshare] // [ysi]

4. TV on the Radio - Dear Science,

How do we come to terms and digest the past? TV on the Radio provides the depressing answer on the new album. They are followed by ghosts and they need the perfect expression of being haunted: the need of communication produces the ambivalence and beauty of this album, namely, the already mentioned thin line or weird dimensional space between art and pop. Dear Science, is one of the greatests this year because this is the record that found the best unique way between tradition and nonconformism, popularity and experimental aesthetics. You can’t stop listening to the noise they make.

TV on the Radio - Family Tree [zshare] // [ysi]

3. Spiritualized - Songs in A&E

An opus from the beginning to the end, Spiritualized’s new album is like a conversation with someone you love. Jason Pierce manages to grab the listener and hold her close until the album’s over. Personal and intimate, the tone of Songs in A&E is impossible to resist. Psychedelia and folkish sound goes hand in hand here but they don’t result in some weird unapproachable something but you feel like someone’s crying on your shoulder sometimes tears of joy, other times of sadness. Beautiful, setting souls on fire.

Spiritualized - Sweet Talk [zshare] // [ysi]

2. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours

What the fuck should I say? It’s Cut Fucking Copy! Feel the love!

Cut Copy - Unforgettable Season [zshare] // [ysi]

1. The Kills - Midnight Boom

This year’s best album is Midnight Boom by The Kills. Neurotic sexiness, dirty possessive love, mental disorders, drugs, garage rock and they like shout in your ears: “have fun on the ruins of the world!” The lyrics and vocals symbol a disappearing voice in the big void of overdosed euphoria… Can’t really find the words, Midnight Boom has it’s own articulation and somehow it seems that in the big plan of God for the world that this articulation is one with the objective purpose of rock n roll: to keep the joy when everything around you falls apart. You can either sit on the ground smoking with a half-smile, or air-guitar on the dancefloor, it doesn’t matter as long as you notice that the furniture, the buildings and fields slowly disintegrate into deep space.

The Kills - Black Balloon [zshare] // [ysi]

***

Btw I decided not to do a tracks list. We’ve been posting about the best tracks throughtout the year so it would be pointless.

Best Albums of 2008: 10-6

 10. Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

Of Montreal’s Skeletal Lamping is the most delightful example of avantgard-pop creativity. Keeping indie relevant and showing off the cheerful side of pop-music art, Kevin Barnes, at least we hope, has many many more songs and albums to give birth to from the womb of his musical imagination. (Don’t worry, gonna drop the metaphor now.) I just love the pretended innocence, the half-smiling happiness and the naive atmosphere that surrounds the record and makes it one of the bests this year.

Of Montreal - An Eluardian Instance [zshare] // [ysi]

9. Bloc Party - Intimacy

This must come off as a strange choice but Bloc Party’s Intimacy just grew on me. First listen, I thought it sucks, second, I felt there’s something interesting, third, I wanted to hear it more times. Not an album of originality and not even the best indie-pop around but there’s something in the sensitivity and the intimacy (ooops…sorry) of the band’s attitude. I mean, there something touching in how they work with concepts related to relationships, love, loss, etcetc and sometimes it’s aggressive in heavy songs, sometimes it’s beautiful and dressed in weird electronic compositions and perfect lyrics.

Bloc Party - Biko [zshare] // [ysi]

8. Van She - V

2008 was unquestionably the year of Australian music. Many many artists from the brilliant Modular label emerged and made cool tracks and made the world listen to them. On of them is Van She who’s been around for a while but this proper debut is full of their best songs. Combining shoegazing and electronic sound, V breaks your heart and makes you wanna dance at the same time. Among the many cool electronic artists, Van She is one who can really create songs like a real band. The start of Memory Man is so huge, it’ll give you chills.

Van She - Memory Man [zshare] // [ysi]

7. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles

Canadian duo, Crystal Castles are the pioneers of a sick 8-bit gameboy-disco that rules the clubs nowadays. Alice Glass, the girl vocalist, I guess already has some distortion in herself so she fits nicely with the over-distorted screaming-singing and the post-punk pseudo-robotic stuff. The whole album is a lsd-induced nightmare-trip in cyberpunk clubs of the dystopian future where everyone is perverted, every family is dysfunctional and drugs are like food.

Crystal Castles - Reckless [zshare] // [ysi]

6. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires

UK’s Friendly Fires made an amazing debut this year. Why is it better than the Foals’ album? - you could ask. My answer is: it’s more elegant, more diverse, more beautiful and more touching. I usually compare and pair up Friendly Fires with Foals but in this respect they are rather like Van She. Mixture of dance music and shoegaze, atmospheric electronica and indie. These guys make such a great and soulful sound that their place in the list is hardly questionable. The songs reach for the sky and the stars.

Friendly Fires - Jump in the Pool [zshare] // [ysi]

Best Albums of 2008: 15-11

15. M83 - Saturdays = Youth

France is not only the cutting edge of electronic music but there may be something in the water there and they have a talent for tap in to the heartbeat of the pop music generation. With the themes of love, teenagers…Anthony Gonzalez manages to mush together these elements into a great shoegaze-synth odyssey. M83 songs are perfect transmitters for something transcendent that has its roots in our childhood.

M83 - You Appearing [zshare] // [ysi]

14. College - Secret Diary

Staying in France and with the aesthetics of the 80s, College aka David Greiller made the debut LP of Valerie and it lives up to the expectations. As a concept album, it is about secrets and stalking and peeping, forbidden love and its secrecy. There’s even a special edition in VHS format! How cool is that? Accompanying the theme, the music is the best retro-future synths you can imagine and when there are vocals, they are like if they sounded from another world.

College - She Never Came Back [zshare] // [ysi]

13. Deerhunter - Microcastle/Weird Era Cont.

Dancing on the edge of weird ambient sounds and the hereditary indie-noise of the 90s, Bradford Cox created one of the best chaotic/escapist pop record of the year. It’s hard to give a pop dressing gown to experimental attitude and imagination and this album (along with the M83) is a perfect example that this is not an either-or decision between art and pop but the situation is much more complex. Deerhunter kept its intergrity in opening up.

Deerhunter - Never Stops [zshare] // [ysi]

12. Jaguar Love - Take Me to the Sea

As a lovechild of two amazing bands after their splits, Jaguar Love started with raised expectations. I’m not a fanatic fan-type who weeps at the split and then curses everything the ex-bandmates do afterwards out of resentment. Take Me to the Sea is a great indie album, full of energy, screams, giant guitar-waves and tragedies. The shifts and variations between sweet-sad melodies and the explosions give band an undeniable individual charm.

Jaguar Love - Georgia [zshare] // [ysi]

11. Foals - Antidotes

Oxford 5-piece, Foals, made into the list with their awesome debut, Antidotes. The album is full of hits and tracks representing a unique fingerprint. Futuristic indie-disco along the UK lines. Strange dance rhythms, post-punk dryness and the whole sound could be described with a glass-sound allegory or something. Both sensitive and aristocratically cold, Antidotes rocks the disco balls and even touches some parts of some souls.

Foals - Electric Bloom [zshare] // [ysi]

Hiya! Short explanation first. Kunk’s best albums of the year posts start now. Top 20 albums will be shared in 4 days and will be followed by the 40 best tracks+remixes on the last day. The list isn’t totally personal nor is an official list of our blog but balanced somewhere between it. It’s really hard to decide on the criteria of bestness: close to the heart, banging the dancefloor or both? Well, we don’t live in a perfect world. Nevertheless, I had to choose some things so I chose to mention some favourites in every aspect of the word. Take it as a list of artist that I thought deserved to be mentioned among the bests. Naturally, I had to leave out a lot of stuff.

Since I’m only capable of putting together a list from 20 to 1, I have to mention a few albums that are left out. During this great struggle, I felt like I have to regulate my chaotic music-listening habits. I could put together something like 40-21 but that’d be a pain in the ass. So I’m just gonna act like I was easy-going and casual and mention a couple of artists now. Many electronic stuff couldn’t make it to the top 20. Like The Presets. They made an awesome album, full of darkness and evil-evoking tribal-dance stuff, still, somehow it started to bore me. Or The Whip. Great singles and they are on the most loveable side of their genre. Their debut, unfortunately, isn’t that exciting after a couple listens. There’s Ladyhawke who is cute and bringing back the 80s as we like it but it seems it’s not enough for a superb album, only a great one. I’m not doing justice to Late of the Pier. Obviously, we really love them and nearly everything that came out from the guy is pure gold, only to listen to it for more than a couple songs in a row, it can’t keep up the energy. Hercules and Love Affair should’ve been on the list too, I don’t have a proper explanation for leaving them off, maybe personality disorders. Sebastien Tellier made one of the best ‘concept albums’ this year but it’s somehow too funny to give it a number and put it in a list. Or how do you put the playful electro-pop of Air France in a list? Also, The Black Ghosts album didn’t get in cause I realized it’s much better for a dancefloor than for listening at home but still, their debut is more than promising.

So as you can see, I left out a lot of stuff that we usually blog about or rule the HypeM charts. Of course, I had to rape my weirdo side too and leave some records out from the ‘weirder’ genres to make room for my pop-y choices. I really loved the No Age’s fresh dirty and experimental sound. Much like Times New Viking, they keep up the noise of the 90s and the spirit. Gang Gang Dance consistently keep up their accomplishments and reach for something interesting with every album. The Notwist’s melancholical charm is undeniable on The Devil, You + Me. Brooklyn’s Love as Laughter is very very close to my heart still and with every album. I don’t think I need to mention Stephen Malkmus and Real Emotional Trash to anyone with a little interest in US indie rock. And, staying in the US, this years Castanets album beautifully keeps your mind on the border of dream and nightmare sounds. Nine Inch Nails, one of the greatest stuff of all times, deserves a shout out too for the amazing The Slip. The Mae Shi and Forward, Russia! are somehow similar and somehow made great records on the experimental-shouting-screaming edge of indie music. The Young Knives are one of the bands who still have courage and balls to go on in the non-NME era, and Superabundance is worth a lot of listens.

Fleet Foxes are left out on a very determined purpose. That album is a theatrical piece of overhyped shit.

Best Albums of 2008: 20-16

20. The Teenagers - Reality Check

The severe criticism that hit the debut of The Teenagers is, of course, understandable. On the other hand, we think they made one of the funniest, wittiest and totally danceable weirdo/postmodern pop record of the year.

The Teenagers - Starlett Johansson [zshare] // [ysi]

19.  Does It Offend You, Yeah? - You Have Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into

Underrated once again, DIOYY is heavy, fierce and full of energy. I don’t know, I kinda like when someone makes serious fun of electronic music by ridiculing it with making a banging electro-rock album. Screams and chainsaw guitars are the most enjoyable part of this electronic post-punk explosion.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? -  With a Heavy Heart (I Regret to Inform You) [zshare] // [ysi]

18. Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire - Lost Wisdom

A beautiful folk-pop record with infinite sadness and the desperate impression of “everything will be allright”. Mount Eerie originates from the legendary Microphones, Julie Doiron is a Canadian singer-songwriter with a haunted voice and her guitarist Fred Squire. Lost Wisdom is deep in mourning for something none of us totally gets but the music is evoking it in the most adequate way.

Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire - Lost Wisdom [zshare] // [ysi]

17. Hot Chip - Made in the Dark

Hot Chip’s new album is better than the debut. Colourful and diverse, Made in the Dark set an awesome new direction for this band. Disco and melody, sometimes broken, sometimes smooth, perfect for clubbing. Slower songs are on the other hand create a great atmosphere and make the record enjoyable for a long time.

Hot Chip - Ready for the Floor [zshare] // [ysi]

16. The Sea and Cake - Car Alarm

Hailing from Chicago, The Sea and Cake are among the many post-rock bands of the 90s, like the legendary Tortoise. Their new one, Car Alarm is smooth indie-pop with underlying twists: experiments in rhythm, structure and noise. Surfing on the noisy guitars, vocals are like Thurston Moore and the whole record meant to be a river of sound that you could listen to all day long.

The Sea and Cake - Weekend [zshare] // [ysi]

Back tomorrow…

Some are into leather, some are into lace. Some are into copious amounts of latex. Some girls like cups filled with brown goo. But whatever your ‘thang, there’s a little fetishist in all of us. For example, i fetishize Carl Sagan… but i’m strange like that. This being established, there’ll be a little something for all of us with the inner child who begs to be let out into the adult world via a tunnel opened with a patent leather zipper, tonight at Merlin. I could be talking about nothing less then Pep Magaizine’s quarterly mag release doo.

Expect the usual panoply of local acts including our favorite Croatians, Xenia Flex and a boatload of others. Visiting this time is Peter Glam, who’s a throwback to the highwater days of the goth dance scene, mixed in with a little Larry Tee. So throw on an old Bauhaus record and bring out the gimp! (just be sure to save a little gimp for the next evening to rock it with us and Grum at Trafo :))

Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi’s Dead // [ysi]

Maybe I should feel ashamed of my attempt to pimp our Saturday party this much but I have my non-selfish reasons too. For one, it’s a remix by Clockwork, superbly talented youngster from LA. His name is Henry Steinway and he’s so nice, he keeps sending us his newest productions. This one is not his newest but still… Woah is a glorious dancefloor-filler in itself and Clockwork manages to add his personal touch to the track. Really cool hi-hats and claps there. A bit different and it’s enough for a unique feel and keeps the dance epidemic dynamics in Grum’s song. Club’s get ready to blow up!

GRUM - Woah (Clockwork remix) [zshare] // [ysi]

Er… you catch my drift. Unless you’ve been under a wet rock you haven’t been able to avoid the awesomeness emanating out of this young man’s lappy in the last half-year. His edit of Anoraak’s Nightdrive with You vaulted the track into iconic status, while his broad assortment of other remix work has been no less solid, and we’ve touched on it round here before. Now his originals have been burning it up as well, it wasn’t long ago he topped out the hypem charts on the back of the infectious, cowbell-laden, Woah,  which has inspired some amusing dance videos of its own. On top of all that he’s fresh of gigs in New York and a tour through Australia. Not bad for a kid from Leeds, eh?

So suffice it to say the Kunkers are totally stoked to be rocking it this saturday with Grum. A wicked set will be on tap for sure, just bring some cowbell to go along with that electro … a great kick-off for the winter break.

Kunk presents: GRUM (UK)
December 20, Saturday, 2008
Trafó Bár Tangó
IX. Lilliom u. 41
Entrance: 1000 huf
Djs: GRUM, We Plants Are Happy Plants (Ektiv), Kitten Killers (Gumipop), Brandon & Cigi (Kunk), DJ Res (Seattle, USA)

There’s so much out there already from Grum on das Internetten, so we’ve decided to go with the winner of the Palms Out remix contest on Woah from last month along with a funny yet funky fresh conflaboration of Grum with Surkin, mixed by another fave of ours, the Cryptonites.

GRUM - Woah (TADT Remix) // [ysi]

Surkin vs. GRUM - Next of Mexico (Cryptonites Remix) // [ysi]

Chateau Marmont are dudes out of (where else) Paris who have appeared on quite a few different singles of late, on the remix side of things, most notably for the Midnight Juggs, Ladyhawke, and Poney Poney. Of late however more original work has been cropping up and is pretty solid, if not life transforming, digital rock. In some bizarro way, Diane reminds me of a sped up Kraftwerk — nothing wrong with that. Perfect when  you feeling like busting out the “i’m a robot” dance.

Their Solar Apex EP is out on uber-label Institubes, so those who wanna tip the scales their way rather than ‘rival’ Kitsune, know what to click on.

Chateau Marmont - Diane // [ysi]

You know, this is not the era of British indie. More like the era of weird electronic music from weird parts of the world. However, one can find hidden gems in the trash that used to be the NME-scene. One town is still particularly interesting: Leeds. Grammatics are a four-piece who are on the same ‘team’ sound-wise as Forward, Russia!, This Et Al and even a bit emo-y. On the other hand, the use strange dance-rhythms and stuff that puts them in league with Foals and These New Puritans. On thing I’m not totally down with is the vocals… too emotional and reminds me of Coldplay sometimes. If I wanna be nice, then Radiohead or Placebo. Otherwise, with the girl-vocal on Inkjet Lakes it is kinda cool. If there’s something worth paying attention to in this genre, the Grammatics are definetly one of them. While waiting for the debut, buy the Vague Archive single and show some myspace-love and check out their videos.

Grammatics - Inkjet Lakes [zshare] // [ysi]