Greetings, hipsters, hitpersons, bloggers and innocent bystanders and welcome to, what a cultural colossus* once called ‘the most meaningful awards in all human cultural endeavour thus far’.
Personally I think he* was understating the historicocritical import of them; I have seen two versions of the future one with these awards as you are currently reading them and one where I was prevented from completing them. Let us just say I know which future, untainted by the imminent bloody dominion of the Dread Lord Cthulhu I would rather be living.
Now, please be seated and as comfortable as your fetters will allow and we shall proceed.
Firstly, we have the Del Palmer Memorial Award for the records with the best cover art bought in 2024.
The nominees are: That Dog Totally Crushed Out. I love the teen romance mag cover painting for this excellent mid-90’s banger.
Fat Dog Woof. You have to love the Dinos and Jake Chapman-esque apocalyptic diorama, replete with comparatively vast dog, that these loud London reprobates came wrapped in.
Ash Ra Tempel. A wonderful reissue of this krautrock classic featuring all the original ingenious packaging – inserts, doors, strange but genuinely wonderful artwork from 1971, or 971BC.
The winner is Fat Dog Woof. They get bonus credit for using model-making skills and not just mocking the whole thing up on a PC.
The Wayne Kramer Memorial Award for the most LPs purchased by a single artist this year goes to IDLES with 4 this year. 2024 was the year that I went from quite liking a track and a lot of what they said in interviews, to rabid fandom following a gig at Glasgow SECC in November. Thanks to my son and heir and Mrs 1537 for this one. IDLES occasionally give me back some real faith in my broken much-mourned Britain.
Now after I ask you to join me in a toast of thanksgiving for the recent death of a certain anti-homosexuality campaigner, let us have another award. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Karl Wallinger Memorial Award for the Top 10 LPs of 2024.
1. Blood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere
A revelation to me this year. The Denver death metallers absolutely blew me away in 2024 primarily by harnessing their grizzled yet transcendent power to their love of prog rock. In this context I don’t mean they paid lip service to Floyd with some spacey passages, frontman Paul Riedl has put out a number of solo synth LPs and the band’s own synth album Timewave Zero is my most listened to album this year. Blood Incantation understand and get it on an almost cellular level, alleviating the brutality with flourishes of beauty and transcendence. Tangerine Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning guests.
Plus I just cannot resist an LP boasting only two tracks.
2. Jake Long City Swamp
The excellent English jazz drummer and bandleader of Maisha released the incredible City Swamp this year. How to describe it? yearning celestial, spiritual jazz spiralling up out of the funk and grind of the urban sprawl. Boasting the talents of Nubya Garcia, Shirley Tetteh**, Tamar Osborn and a host of others this is an LP that has gone everywhere with me. Recorded in 3 days in 2019 and then produced, mixed and mastered, dubbed, magicked and be-funkified until now, there must be a story in there.
The rhythms and fug of ‘Ideological Rubble’ are worth the price of admission alone.
3. Gillian Welch/David Rawlings Woodland.
A microscopically sweeter sounding LP than usual featuring some of the best vocal and guitar harmonies from two of the greatest musicians on our planet, Woodland quietly demands to be here/heard. There is a deceptive simplicity and an assured perfection to every second of this wise, wry album. I own very few albums with as much heart as Woodland. It is a beautifully produced and packaged object too.
4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead.
From the Gaza-referencing non-title in, this is a weighty work from artists who are utterly unfazed by what true heaviness is and demands of the soul. Again it thrills me how political fully instrumental music can be. They were astonishing yet again when I saw them this year and it can be hard to divorce the LP from that whole experience. Overall this is a more demanding listen than God’s Pee and takes us into some odd, psychedelic places but never, it seems, without the chance of redemptive melody; my fave track ‘Pale Spectator Takes Photographs’ is a perfect case in point.
5. The Smile Cutouts.
Two LPs in 2024? easy. Cutouts, released later in the year than Wall Of Eyes (also a very good LP) is a hell of an LP. Atoms For Peace style beats spill from ‘Zero Sum’ the best song in my entire collection to reference Windows 95. The minor clenched-fist tenseness of ‘Don’t Get Me Started’ is similarly great, as is the sheer flow of ‘No Words’. This is the sound of a band of supremely confident musicians having a lot of fun.
6. The Cure Songs Of A Lost World^.
A stately, elegiac return for a band who become increasingly important to me. This is not a miserable LP, despite a higher quota of death and loss than usual even for a Cure album. It is a dignified, exquisitely carved monument and the bass crunch of ‘Drone:Nodrone’ makes my blood pump.
7. Amyl & The Sniffers Cartoon Darkness.
From Melbourne with loud sweary love, I have really enjoyed Cartoon Darkness this year. Politically and socially spot on and boasting just great tunes like ‘U Should Not Be Doing That’ and ‘Me And The Girls’. There’s punk fury knocking around still (best example ‘Jerkin’) and some interesting diversions like ‘Big Dreams’.
8. Scarlet Rebels Where The Colours Meet.
From Llanelli with love, stadium rock choruses and some great tunes. This was an impulse buy/desire to support a West Walian band that absolutely paid off. The likes of ‘Secret Drug’, ‘Grace’ and ‘Let Me In’ are perfect top-down rockers and Scarlet Rebels were just superb when I saw them in Chester. Where The Colours Meet makes me happy.
9. Fu Manchu The Return Of Tomorrow.
The return of stoner rock royalty. The Return Of Tomorrow boasted some great rockers ‘Hands Of The Zodiac’, ‘Loch Ness Wrecking Machine’ and some more expansive numbers ‘Solar Baptized’. They really are still a class act, their only concession to the advancing years is a willingness to jam out a little and when it tastes as good as ‘High Tide’ I’ll spread it all day long.
10. Fat Dog Woof.
‘It’s fucking Fat Dog, baby!’ is the opening howl on Woof. From then on, after the prophetic spoken word intro all bets are off. This is a techno-punkrock-klezmer hoedown of the highest order. It is a noisy, unreflective good time all the time, perfect for throwing yourself around to in a confined sweaty space, delightfully short on nuance and subtlety. They remind me of the Moonlandingz, which is a very very good thing.
To the chosen, welcome; to those bubbling under slightly^^, sorry. While we wait for my hired goons to clear the tables and serve dessert let us have the Toumani Diabaté Memorial Award for the best old stuff discovered during 2024.
I bought far more LPs than I should have done last year, shocking I know. Amongst them all though three stand out Saint Vitus Born Too Late (doom!), Boy Harsher Careful (noir sleaze!), Sylvester Step II (life = affirmed!!!) and the winner, Blood Incantation Timewave Zero. The latter is basically the LP that classic era Tangerine Dream never quite got around to making.
Just before I have you all disposed of in that super villainy way I know you all find so endearing, let me thank each and every one of you for reading, commenting, agreeing and disagreeing with me. You all keep me going, keep me posting and keep me distracted from all the appalling shite happening in the world that would otherwise weigh me down. Thank you, I salute you all.
1264 Down (still).
PS: Brilliance.
*me.
**what an incredible guitarist.
^annoyingly I have been calling this LP Songs For A Lost World for months now.
^^St Vincent, Sheer Mag, Nubya Garcia, Idles, Public Service Broadcasting.
So Blood Incantation won, haven’t seen a metal album break out into mass acclaim like that for ages. The Cure album was super impressive.
I can’t think of a recent metal LP made with more imagination in a good while. I really liked the Cure one, it’s downbeat but not a depressing LP at all, more resigned and stately I would say.
I will be giving a listen to your listens just because your swings always catch some of the music ball.
Thank you! I’d imagine the Welch/Rawlings to be right in your wheelhouse CB.
Appreciate the work. Yes right in the wheelhouse. Isnt music great!
A very impressive attempt to ‘keep up’ with what’s happening out there. Well done, you.
Talking of out there, I made it to the end of the first Blood Incantation. Kind of Public Service Broadcasting possessed by a Norwegian death cult. Spent a few bob on that film, didn’t they? I think you either love a bit of guttural growling or, er, not. Liked the Tangerine Dreamy bits, though. And glad I’ve heard a slab, as your review was so enthusiastic; thanks for that.
That made me very happy to hear you tried it Bruce, thank you. I’m a very recent convert to guttural grunting vocals and I love how BI leaven the heaviness. Pure prog, in the sense of being truly progressive, I would say.
All great stuff, sir. Though you made a typo on buying more “LPs than I should have done” – not sure what it was meant to say.
Both the Cure and GSYBE! are riding high on my favourites pile from last year
Thank you Tony. My ‘typo’ was just a forlorn attempt to acknowledge the fact that I really should spend a far lower percentage of my cash on culture.
The Cure and GY!BE are excellent and in a less strong year would have tiptoed higher up my chart.
What a splendid set of awards, thank you. So our demise supervillain-style will be to the strains of Blood Incantation? Sounds about right.
I lost track of Gillian Welch after ‘Soul Journey’ but after yours and Hotfox63’s recommendations I will definitely check out Woodland, I loved her early albums.
Thanks Tim, as always. I always enjoy a good villainous montage to a good soundtrack. Far better than when directors choose a wackily inappropriate tune for a killing sequence; although Timmy Mallets ‘Itsy-weeny …’ may be worth a shot.
I’m with you, Soul Journey disappointed (several brilliant tracks aside) after the perfection of Time and I drifted off too. Woodland is a beautiful piece of work, significant too in that it is credited to her and Rawlings jointly, that feels right.
I rather suspect you’d dig this year’s Godspeed LP, if you don’t already know/have it yet too.
I’ll add it to the list, thank you! I was really into Godspeed on their first run but haven’t really reconnected with them since they started up again. Good to know that the new stuff is just as intense and politically charged!
That band from Llanelli sounded pretty good.
Scarlet Rebels are great, esp live.
Nice to see “Woodland” here. Excellent album. Songwriting on a high level with a melancholic, relaxed mood, without ever seeming banal or pathetic.
I reckon you bought Born Too Late too late.
If only I’d been born at exactly the right time.