Dear lord I sincerely hope you're coming / because you really started something

I’ve blogged a best of the year styled list for quiet some years now and I guess I need to do something similar, if only to satisfy myself. I don’t really like these lists simply because there are so many records I’ve simply not heard, probably more than ever, being, as I am, somewhere to the left of Papua new Guinea these days. Bali is not a great place to acquire music. You can buy a pirated copy of virtually any pop disc with a week of international release. But anything interesting is almost an impossibility. Fortunately I get to travel a bit and, to Brigid’s enduring bemusement, my first stop in almost any city is whatever independent record store I can track down. Some places are better than other. Singapore has nothing of interest..the corporates have strangled it and its record shops are as soulless as its other shopping (unless you want something electrical). On the other hand, if you know where to go, Bangkok, and Jakarta are both absolute goldmines.

Thank god for all the freebies I continue to get in the mail (thank you), and of the course the internet in its various retail and digital forms.

So, rambling ahead, below are the records I heard that I liked a lot this year…

I had a brief love affair with Studio’s pretty album West Coast a month or so ago, but after a week or two it felt a little twee and overly try-hard in places, although their Escape From Chinatown, with Brennan Green is rather lovely. But, to be honest I’m finding much of the Scandinavian nu-Balearica a bit much now, that said however Origin off the album is still an absolute classic, and for that track alone its worth a mention.

And that track is not a million miles away from one of my most played albums of 2007. I’m cheating because The L.E.D.S debut was released in 2006, but I didn’t get it until June..so…I’ve already gone on at length here about how much I loved this album, and suffice to say I’ve been thrashing the unmixed tracks from the unreleased second album that they were kind enough to send to me. Why in gods sake don’t these people have a record deal???

NZ wise, it’s easy to lose touch but I liked the Phoenix Foundation’s Bright Grey, despite that fact that it was resoundingly old fashioned, like a happy warm kiwi rug. It was just a nice song and stood out from the relentless chaff on the Kiwi Hit Discs. I’ve yet to hear the album.

My other NZ moment was the mighty Something Error Happens by The Others Requiem, but hey, I’m biased and rather proud of it.

I got a buzz from the one off supergroup The Good, the Bad and The Queen, mostly because of the lopping bass playing from the long missing in action (musically anyway) Paul Simonen. The former Clash-man is my favourite rock’n’roll bassist ever but it was a wake up call how old and weedy the erstwhile glamour boy now looks (this was the year that Sid Vicious would’ve turned 50 after all..think about that!)

And talking of The Clash, the cover of The Call Up , as reworked by Martin Buttrich with The Far East Band is kinda perfect, mashing my nostalgia with a classic sparse dubby electronic thingy that builds for ten or so minutes with nice swooping synth lines. A huge favourite right now.

Yep, electronic music really is in really good shape, with the tail end of the minimal thing and the thing they call dubstep both turning out future classics. The two genres met in the Ricardo Villalobos mix of Shakletons’ Blood on My Hands, all 19 odd (and I mean that in every sense) minutes of the hypnotic, sparse, repetitive loopingness (new word I think) that only sounds like, ahh, Ricardo Villalobos. His sound is so thoroughly unique and so is he…taking his Fabric album and turning it into an artist album by only using his own productions could’ve failed embarrassingly but was, instead, rather a triumph, especially the middle where it gets quite quirkily nutty.

Other singles or tracks I liked: both sides of the Hercules & Love Affair single; Joakim’s Lonely Hearts; Aeroplane by, uhh, Aeroplane; the DJ Koze mix of The Battles’ Atlas (and I truly disliked the original); Rekorder 8; Francois K’s Road of Life as reworked in a very tracky manner by Quiet Village; the almost Planet Rock-ish (which brings it all back to the beginning) remix of Cybotron’s Clear by Cobblestone Jazz; Âme’s Balandine EP; Nard’s by Trusme; Anders Trentemøller’s Djuma Soundsystem mix, and his Evening with Bobi Bros and, god, dozens more…

Both the Burial album and the Pinch album (now out with a bonus disc..doesn’t that piss you off) easily sit in my favourite long players of 2007. I love the fact that dubstep is the bastard child of so many things, not least is the Bristol movement of the late eighties onwards.

And to Carl Craig….his side on the Kings Of Techno double was ruined by his crowd rousing voiceovers (unlike the sublime Laurent Garnier mix), but elsewhere he continued to excel, like the entrancing live remake of At Les on the Paris Live EP; the Angola-ish remix of Tony Allen’s Kilode; his Faze Action re-visit; and the remixes of Inner City, Siobhan Donaghy, the Lazy fat People. His take of LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver was just another highlight in James Murphy’s calendar rather chocka full of them.

Anyway you look at it LCD ruled 2007. The Sound Of Silver album slayed almost everyone (almost..it utterly confused much of America, which is not surprising…middle America has been a Walmart driven musical vacuum for decades, as evidenced by all those god awful post frat bands the likes of Pitchfork so love to tout). And to top it off, the 45.33 Nike thing was finally given an official release. They are this decade’s great band.

It was completely different but the Nomumbah album Love Moves, recommended to me by Cian at Conch, remains the supreme, for want of a better word (and one is needed if we are to avoid all the horrendous connotations of the word), chillout, record. God knows how many afternoons I’ve played this, and I’m playing it as I type.

Kathy Diamond’s Miss Diamond to You was the torch vocal album of the year…it’s odd how all those faux Amy Winehouses and their ilk get the word when there are records this damned good smouldering away below the radar.

I have to admit a soft spot for the odd noisy band. The Arctic Monkeys, The Klaxons and Justice all found themselves getting played rather loudly in the bale on more than a few occasions. Snotty noise is good.

And on a completely different tangent, I found a place for Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’s Rising Sand and was pleased to see that Plant has decided to put this project ahead of any bloody Zeppelin tour…the idea of which appals me…please, no…the man has soul.

There were lots of worthy reissues and re-releases. Over the years my copy of The Young Marble Giants’ Colossal Youth has almost worn through, but now, of course we have it remastered with two bonus discs, so I can file the vinyl.

The Eddie Kendricks collection, The Thin Man, featuring the second batch of his solo albums at Motown is quite something (even it was officially 2006), as is the recent Aretha outtakes double, and the two albums on Numero Group, Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label and Good God both of which I discovered this year.

And it wouldn’t, for me at least, be complete without mentioning the remastered Car Crash Set album..it’s not out until 2008 but if I can talk about records released before 2007, surely I can enthuse about one still to come….

Technorati Tags: Best of 2007,pop music

People who life in Bali.....

Sitting with a friend, a German furniture manufacturer of some reputation here in Bali, a few days back and he was bemoaning the lack of precision in the country. The problem, it seems, comes from the Indonesian adherence to the centimetre as a the smallest unit of distance. The ‘Centi’ as it’s called here is the standard applied to all building and manufacturing processes. In much of the rest of the world (the USA aside, they’re still somewhere in the middle of the British Empire circa 1776, with inches and yards for gods sake) the millimetre is the defining unit, thus allowing for a level of precision that using centis prevents. I guess that explains the gaps in buildings all over the island. Indonesian architects may build fine multi storey malls and towers in Jakarta, the equal of any in Asia, but here in Bali, the builders and architects seem unable to make walls satisfactorily meet floors. Visit the newish Discovery Mall in Tuban (the link is worth a read..if their building skills are as good as their English, or their web design...), which just feels like its falling to pieces, and tell me it ain’t so.

However that said, I’m mightily impressed by the new footpaths that have been going down around the Kuta area over the past two years. They are well built, the stones fit snugly and they seem to be very disabled friendly, which is quite a step forward. In particular they all feature those yellow plastic middle tiles designed to aide blind folks navigate the streets.

However the footpath building spree seems to have ended, as most of the footpaths in the busy areas have been done and now, disabled or blind you can walk the streets of Kuta with increased confidence…..

To the far side of town / where the thin men stalk the streets / and the sane stay underground

So here we are in the midst of the UN climate talks in Bali, most of which is being held some 20km away from where I’m writing, at the gilded ghetto (that’s what it’s actually often called) of Nusa Dua.

It’s actually not been as bad as we all thought it might have been. 10,000, mostly lower level, functionaries, their spouses, and, by all accounts a swarm of the next generation of snake oil merchants, carbon credit merchants..mostly out of NYC it seems. The Americans may be the environmental bad boys but they are not adverse to making money out of Kyoto.

Lots of places one may have though would be rather over populated are quite quiet (see Ku de Ta on left last week), although the Queen's Tandoor was pumping a couple of nights back.

The traffic has been the usual quagmire but apart from the odd bus full of spouses being dragged up to the silver shops or the monkey forest, screaming past on the bypass at 90 kmh with flashing police escort as all and sundry dive out of the way, not that much worse than before. Oh and there are guys in cheap plastic shades (all aged circa 17) standing on each corner with submachine guns, almost like Singapore. As Brigid pointed out, if one was to want to execute a very, very important person, a sniper shot to each of these guys first, as obvious as they are (and I really don’t think the guys arranging this are smart enough to have thought about hidden gunmen too..in RI its all about the obvious bravado) would allow an aspiring assassin free reign.

There are Indonesian navy patrol boats off shore too. I guess there is some concern about Al-Qaeda trained Sea Turtles on suicide missions.

My favourite comment so far is from the lady from Uganda who commented on how orderly and well behaved the traffic in Bali was. I’ve made a note to keep out of East Africa.

It’s a conference of contradictions to be sure.

Firstly there is the venue. Nusa Dua, built by the World Bank, in collusion with the Suharto family and assorted buddies has a bit of a taint to it in this part of the world, what with villages having being forced out without compensation, reefs being dynamited and the like. It's a part of Bali's often dark, and still unresolved (or admitted) past. It seems like an odd place for the World to come together to sort out its problems. That coupled with the fact that locals, unless they work there, are really not that welcome within its walled 60 acres (nor would they likely wish to..its a ghastly, horrendously overpriced, sterile sort of place with little soul populated by garish they-could-be-anywhere chain hotels).

Secondly the idea that over 100 jets needed to be parked in the region seems at odds to the whole concept of climate control..haven’t these people heard of plane pooling……

I’m not at all sure about any of this.

Technorati Tags: Bali Climate Conference

Pardon the way that I stare / There's nothing else to compare

It felt like a cross between a National party convention and a Fellini movie. But, ten, not having been to one perhaps that’s what all National party conventions feel like.

I’m talking about the annual Rotary Club of Bali Christmas party to which we were invited last night. We were invited by our friends, S & K, whom we like a lot (although K is the sort of guy I don’t talk politics with..he’s my hard right wing buddy who mused last night that the leftie "wingnut" media makes up all the bad news, Iran needs taking out, and GWB is on a hell of a roll..at that point I moved the subject towards their recent African vacation).

But mostly we laughed. There were, naturally, the speeches and the charity auctions, and raffles (first prize, two tickets to Jakarta on, ummm, Mandala Airlines, and a section of floral nylon sheets), oh and there was a Santa who arrived on a large painted paper maché bull. All good.

And I can deal with the jolly ex-pat Hotelliers..most were rather pleasant and fun. Although too many years in the expat world does funny things to one, and you will never get me in one of those rayon pseudo batik shirts so beloved of aging gents in this part of the work. That I swear.

The whole thought of Rotary or Lions or any of those sorts of blokey (regardless of the actual sex of the devotee) “good works” fellowships make me cringe. They really do have an aura of National Party-ness about them (as do the shirts).

As the night went on we were introduced to a series (two or three, its hard to tell, one looks much the same of the next if I’m honest) shows from Divas.

The Diva concept is a hard one to properly explain to a non-Indonesian resident. You could throw the oft used “all round entertainer” term around but it doesn’t do the “Diva” justice. Imagine Oprah Winfrey with huge hair, overblown, almost grotesque makeup, a pawing public who wants to know your every move (to whom you are happy to have your publicist feed all sorts of personal trivia, giving you an almost goddess status amongst many), a starring role in a series of shockingly awful soaps, the odd movie and a parallel career as a singer of gruesome clichéd pop pap complete with huge live Saturday night shows, all singing and dancing like, and you almost come close.

So, we were, lucky us, treated to three Diva sequences. Only second level Divas mind, as the A list would be unlikely to deign to treat the good folks of the Bali Rotary Club to their Xmas presence. They are strictly Jakarta AAA and Bali is only for the beachside villa and odd open air throng of adoring thousands.

The second Diva (or perhaps it was a second set from the first) opened her show by telling us she was performing for free..and offered to auction herself. Exactly what that meant I didn’t get to find out. But, as she launched into an extended version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You, complete with a radio mike as she wandered into the audience looking for singalong, there were few takers. That was probably partially because as she got closer, and the makeup hid fewer flaws, our Diva looked increasingly rough (ok call me sexist, but it was the women in our group who first called that).

Over the next hour or two Diva one, two and three treated us to quite a selection…Feelings is a goodie, no? Never heard that one before, or Simply The Best, or a couple of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s bigger hits…although the aura of Suharto gives anything from Evita a resonance in RI.

The invite threatened a magician but he didn’t show and no-one asked where he was. In Indonesia you don’t complain, a local friend of ours tell us. However the listed dancing troupe most surely did show and took the evening to another level.

Personally, whilst I got a buzz from the two Come Dancing refugees waltzing (or something to do with their feet) out of step with each other whilst dressed as Senorita and Bullfighter, I though the plate dancing (!), and the Can-Can dancers who repeatedly lifted their skirts for extended periods, and bent forward, spreading their legs in slender G-Strings, had a certain something and certainly the local lads in the audience (and their wives too) seemed to agree, with a roar of glee each time (there were a few).

I’d always though the Can-can was about titillation, but like the spirit of Christmas here (the staff at Ace Hardware wearing reindeer antlers for example), some things are reinterpreted in ways we don’t always expect.

Wonder how that anti-porn bill is doing in the legislature at the mo….

Technorati Tags: Bali,Christmas

But killing is really merely scene changer / All men are bored with other men's lives

A few things I came across last night that I found of interest, which I’ll link to with little comment…first up this story on the disappearance of Iraq’s Christians….under the watch of a born again President….

All of the major Republican presidential candidates, echoing the White House, assure us the surge is working, that things are much better in Iraq. They say we're winning, that Iraq is a generational ideological battlefield.

These men believe invading a Muslim country that posed no threat to America was a good idea, but not one of them has explained to their predominantly Christian base that the policies they embraced not only killed or displaced milliions of Muslims but also opened a pandora's box that obliterated a million member Christian community. Someone should ask them about that.

Then a rather pragmatic Salon piece about the Surge from Professor Juan Cole…

What the recent publicity about the "success" of the troop surge has ignored is this: The Bush administration has downplayed the collapsing political situation in Iraq by directing the public's attention to fluctuating numbers of civilians killed. While there have been some relative gains in security recently, even there the picture remains dubious. The Iraqi ministry of health, long known for cooking the books, says that a few hundred Iraqis were killed in political violence in November. However, independent observers such as Iraq Body Count cite a much higher number -- some 1,100 civilians killed in Iraq in November. They reported that bombings and assassinations accounted for 63 persons on Saturday, the first day of December, alone.

Then, in the aftermath of the rather shocking (for those who want yet more blood in the Middle East) US NIE report comes this timeline from Digby illustrating how the US hard right have made it up to suit their agendas for years: and from Arms Control Wonk, who argue that none of this is really a surprise to anyone who’d actually thought about it..or of course if you’d listened to Mohamed ElBaradei, this is pretty much what he and his agency have been saying for a hell of long time.

“Despite repeated smear campaigns, the I.A.E.A. has stood its ground and concluded time and again that since 2002 there was no evidence of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran,” a senior agency official said. “It also validates the assessment of the director general that what the I.A.E.A. inspectors have seen in Iran represented no imminent danger.”

Technorati Tags: Iran,Iraq,NIE