This Music Wins Review Of The Year 2011 on Resonance FM

After writing an albums of the year list longer than probably all my posts across the entire year put together, putting together a 90 minute radio show for Resonance FM seemed like a breeze. So, here it is: 15 or so of my favourite songs of the year in Radio Show format. View the written list here.

DOWNLOAD: This Music Wins Review Of The Year 2011 (MP3)

To air New Years Day 10pm (GMT) on Resonance 104.4FM London, and again Saturday 7th January 10.30am.

1. Kuhrye-OO - Soul Handsome

2. Kurt Vile - Runner Ups

3. Mutual Benefit - Auburn Epitaphs

4. Swansea Recreation Centre - First Time European

5. Youth Lagoon - July

6. Woodsman - In Circles

7. Twin Sister - Kimmi In A Rice Field

8. Deptford Goth - Real Love Fantasy

9. Dead Gaze - Fishing With Robert

10. Evenings - Lo-Velo

11. Little Dragon - Ritual Union

12. Conifers - Legs And Arms

13. How To Dress Well - Here In Heaven (Elite Gymnastics Cover)

14. Ricky Eat Acid ft. Arrange - P.S.L.W

15. Dive - Sometime

16. Porcelain Raft - Amateur’s Feeling

17. Braids - Plath Heart

18. The War On Drugs - Come To The City

19. Fleet Foxes - The Shrine / An Argument

And with these musical highlights of 2011 in mind, we can put it behind us. I wish everyone a great 2012.

Perfume Genius - All Waters

Michael Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius) has surely been inspired by Ricky Eat Acid and How To Dress Well’s RnB-tinged 2011 delvings in to the ballad on this icy soft-synth infused track ‘All Waters’. The three taken together all resemble shades of 80s and 90s heartfelt, idyllic pop music in a kind of morbid, yet ruggedly uplifting way - Perfume Genius offering his song in support of his second album “Put Your Back N 2 It”. If its as cold and keyboard vibe-driven as this precursor, we surely have one of next 2012’s most promising releases already in our sights. Pre-order the album via Turnstile Music. Tour dates to be announced soon.

Perfume Genius - All Waters (MP3)

Arrange & Ricky Eat Acid - P.S.L.W

As trickles of authentic piano carefully descend from their former glories, these intricacies are simultaneously extirpated and engulfed by a soaring resilience; a down-cast and nostalgic arrangement transcended in itself only by the overwhelming elegiac mood which it conveys. Its strange emotional allure, stark admissions to early 90s RnB, and timeless, heart-wrenching delivery, warrants comparisons to How To Dress Well’s recent cover of ‘Here In Heaven’.

The two musicians in question, Baltimore’s Ricky Eat Acid and Arrange, Malcolm Lacey of Southern Florida, share a common orchestral ground both in their emotional pull and the motifs and intonations which they frequently employ - when taken together, as occurs here, the results are uplifting. We can only hope the duo have more to come.

• Arrange & Ricky Eat Acid - P.S.L.W (MP3)

New: How To Dress Well - Here In Heaven (Elite Gymnastics Cover)

‘Here In Heaven’ stirs up an awkward and bright pink winter-time nostalgia which I’m not sure whether to feel guilty about or to encourage. Keyboard vibes circa 1990s seize the song’s main body and hold it rigid, cascading on repeat, and in slow-motion trickles the overwhelming purple colouration of abstraction as a quivering USA RnB vocal gently rides the wave. Its one muffled and reverberant, as with much of How To Dress Well’s material, and is recorded with a whispery close microphone sound. From Elite Gymnastics’ original, it has had every bit of energy drained, leaving behind the remnants of a heavenly skeleton with little more than a puzzling hint of grandeur, a candle burnt out, to entertain. Something is unnervingly spiritual and cold, yet stark and uplifting. Barely a minute in and it becomes clear, this take couldn’t be more beautiful.

Thank you very much Acéphale Records (Air France, Salem, Korallreven).

How To Dress Well - Here In Heaven (Elite Gymnastics Cover) (MP3)

This week’s show featuring the lossless noise pop from San Francisco band Young Prisms, I Don’t Get Much from their debut Kanine Records release ‘Friends For Now’. Also the spiritualist rework of Matthew Dear’s Slowdance by German producer How To Dress Well, and a track from High High’s upcoming record due 2011. A submission: we have StaG’s beautiful ‘Tired’, which I describe in full detail on Resonance this week, followed by a reminder of just how incredible Burial is in light of recent album announcements, and closing this week with New Beat from Toro Y Moi’s wonderful ‘Underneath The Pine’ which I got for my birthday. Enjoy.

[LISTEN TO RESONANCE FM SATURDAY @ 6.30]

Update: This show now goes out 2nd April.

[DOWNLOAD MP3 OF SHOW]

1. Young Prisms - I Don’t Get Much (MP3)

2. Matthew Dear - Slowdance (How To Dress Well Seance) (MP3)

3. High Highs - Horses (MP3)

Tired by StaG

5. Burial - Etched Headplate (MP3)

6. Toro Y Moi - New Beat (MP3)

Technorati Claim Code: 4Q9ZBFU8FA7R

I must have posted three hundred times on This Music Wins, but I can say with full confidence that I have never posted a ‘seance’ until now. The term, here used in place of the rather trivial and uninspiring term ‘remix’, can be loosely defined as an attempt to communicate with spirits - and in so far as definitions will take us, the haunting and other-worldly rendition of Matthew Dear’s ‘Slowdance’ track by the young German Philosopher Thomas Krell, perhaps better known by his musical pseudonym, ‘How To Dress Well’, certainly seems to match up. Originally featured on TMW last year for his Jackson sampling drug anthem ‘Ecstasy With Jojo’, Krell takes that crackling lo-fi niche which he has created for himself an makes something a little more downtempo, reflective, and disengaging. This is the music of depth, introvert moods and dark evenings alone on cold winter nights - it is the musical realisation of a deep and innate desire for truth and meaning which even the reflective, soul-searching individual may find impossible to grasp.

The original Matthew Dear track first appeared on 2010’s Black City, and will see the light of day once more as part of the ‘Slowdance EP’, due April 5th via the aptly titled Ghostly International. Look out for ‘Slowdance’ as reworked by How To Dress Well, a new song by name of ‘Innh Dahh’ and more songs transposed directly from Black City. In the meantime, communicate with other worlds via the MP3 below.

Matthew Dear - Slowdance (MP3)

Matthew Dear - Slowdance (How To Dress Well Seance) (MP3)