Top Music From 2008

I’m a whore for music. Whether it’s indiepop, hip-hop, electronica or children’s songs, I’m always keeping an open ear out for new music. With that said, there’s always two sites that I eagerly visit when the end of the year comes, Pitch Fork Media and Quark Henares’ blog. Why? For their year-end charts of 2008’s best albums.  I don’t remember when this started, probably 2-3, maybe 4, years ago.

I’ve always been a fan of Quark Henares, in terms of his involvement with the local music and film scene, and generally see him as one of the coolest dudes in Manila (although I haven’t personally met the guy, and I say this with ‘no homo’). And not to mention, he’s a fan of Futura 2000 as well.  I remember chancing upon his year-end list before and just tried to download some of the albums listed. And most of those albums that I downloaded off the list became some of the most listened albums on my mp3 player.

People have coined Pitch Fork to be a hipster’s site. With musical selection and direction that play to the growing hipster scene. I don’t see it like that though, I like Pitch Fork simply because of their diversity, they don’t just do indie or electronica, they have hip-hop too. Albiet it’s not underground hip-hop, but I like the fact that they don’t box themselves into a certain genre. I’ll admit though that I don’t agree with some of the album reviews and the albums they put on their ‘Top Of’ lists, but overall there are still lots of good surprises in their lists and with that, I shall follow them for years to come.

As for me, I’m no music expert nor am I able to review albums with such depth or analysis. If I like what I hear, I listen to it. It’s a simple formula that has worked for me. Some of the best I’ve heard for this year would probably be Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut album and probably the album by the Fleet Foxes. And locally, it’s gotta be Taken By Cars with Endings of A New Kind, totally blew me away with I first heard of “Uh-Oh”. Another favorite is Up Dharma Down and their late 2008 release of Bipolar.

I listened to Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak as well, it wasn’t as bad as what hip-hop critics have been saying but far from his best work. Probably like the “Welcome To Heartbreak” track the best as it sounds most honest. Most of the year was spent listening to old reliables like At The Drive-In, Stars, among others. I also listened to some old hip-hop albums by A Tribe Called Quest and Gang Starr. 2008 was also the year I discovered and got into trip-hop, with albums by DJ Krush, DJ Shadow and some of the old Unkle and Nigo (of A Bathing Ape fame) mash-ups.

Overall, I would say 2008 was a pretty interesting and eclectic year for me in terms of music.

You can view Quark’s year-end list here. There are also links to his previous reviews in the post. And Pitch Fork’s top 50 of 2008 over here.

93 ‘Til Infinity

Nothing much to report about these days, lots of background chatter, something might happen soon. But for now, I’ll leave you guys with some 90’s hip-hop from the Souls Of Mischief, the track is called 93 ‘Til Infinity.

On Further Cultural Studies

In the name of continuous learning, I spent the past few nights watching some classic films in the graffiti, hip-hop and b-boy scene. I started with Wild Style, then with Beat Street and finally Style Wars. Funny thing is that most of these films were released in between ‘82 to ‘84, I reckon the period looks like one of the key periods that catapulted the culture to the level it is currently. It is also the last few years of subway “bombing” as New York adopted more stricter security measures and harsher penalties to violators which lead to many graffiti artists hanging up their cans and pens.

Personally I feel that this change helped open up people to the artists themselves as they started to focus their work towards art galleries and shows, although some bombers might contest that the trains was the best medium for their work, I think art shows is something that was bound to happen when you start generating interest like they did in the 80’s. While some might coin this as selling out, I simply think that it is evolution, albeit somewhat forced. It’s funny how fast graffiti moved from being just vandalism and now it is considered to be part of modern and pop art. Artists like Keith Haring, Futura, Jean-Michel Basquiat, once the vandals of society and now their paintings probably cost more than the salary of the Mayor of New York.

It’s great to see how the vibe of New York at the time was, it was like in the infancy stages and now it’s fully grown. While I never really knew how it felt back then, watching these films at least gives me a glimpse of the culture’s past.

For me, the really interesting insight I got was how influential the 80’s were to the current generation. I can only wonder if our current generation can leave as great an impact as the past has done to us.