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Destination Out: Year in Review 2008
Instead of building one top ten list from the many disparate styles of electronic ambience, non-linear improv, experimental rock, avant jazz, droning noise and many more, we’ve asked ten frequent contributors to the Destination Out reviews section to write about one release that most excited them this year.
Aidan Baker / Tim Hecker Fantasma Parastasie (Alien 8)
Two of Canada’s most adept practitioners of textured drone music join forces on this all-too brief disc. Bleary-eyed smears of guitar and brittle electronics churn slowly over seven dark-hued and elusive pieces. While oriented slightly toward Tim Hecker’s soundworld, Fantasma Parastasie nonetheless showcases Baker idiosyncratic guitar work. The diffuse, metal-informed distortion heard on Nadja’s recordings often surges into the foreground, as trickles of gently coaxed notes loop, forming shimmering pools. Like other outings by Baker and Hecker separately, things are consistently tenebrous, yet never unremittingly bleak. Rather than inspiring claustrophobia, the darkness heard here offers all-enveloping, nocturnal warmth, but with mild suspicion that some paranormal tampering is taking place somewhere nearby.
Nick Storring
Natasha Barrett Trade Winds (Aurora)
Barrett’s music matters because it raises our consciousness. Fascinated by her adopted home Norway’s maritime life, she explored sounds associated with old ships and the sea. By paying extra close attention to the burblings of water, both above the surface and below, bells, creaking planks, she collected timbres for Trade Winds, a tour de force series of electro-acoustic compositions. To add to the narrative arc, she includes a sailor’s story of a life-threatening storm at sea and punctuating organ chords, an allusion to Captain Nemo of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Beneath the Sea.
Glen Hall
Anthony Braxton 12 + 1tet (Victo)
This is a conducted work assembled from the series of scores and improvisational strategies that informs Braxton’s Ghost Trance music. There is a lot contained in this release, from the walking bass lines of jazz to moments of improvisation reminiscent 20th century classical to comic opera marches that could’ve come out of a Fellini movie. Above all, there is the unified sound of a band that has a thorough understanding of the materials and method of Braxton’s sound world and Braxton’s presence as conductor and musician ensures the fluidity of this inspired work.
Nilan Perera
Bulbs Light Ships (Freedom to Spend)
On Light Ships, ex-Axolotl members William Sabiston and Jon Almaraz have concocted a drum and guitar sound that threads glistening feedback through tumbledown near-rhythms. Their diverse and razor-sharp sonic vocabulary skirts the edges of free jazz, noise, minimal electronica and rock. Best of all, after laying down a one-two opening punch of extremely fractious string noise and Steve Reid like bass thumps, they become more cinematic, and slightly more jazzy. The title track suggests a delicate melody but avoids coalescing into anything grand, which keeps your ears open. There is some gorgeous pointillism on this record; some of the best non-idiomatic improv I’ve heard this year.
David Dacks
Empty Cage Quartet Stratostrophic (Clean Feed)
Hard to believe such rich, multilayered narratives could be constructed out of the sparse two horns, bass and drums format popularized by Ornette Coleman. Trumpeter Kris Tiner has a beautifully clear swing-to-freebop sound and a gift for phrases that hang provocatively in the air. He’s got a perfect partner in Jason Mears’ lemony alto, and the spiralling, witty extremity of their counterpoint rivals the Zorn/Douglas interplay in Masada. Ivan Johnson and Paul Kikuchi have blossomed into one of the supplest rhythm sections around: rather than locking in together, they pull away from each other in order to let these ultra-elastic grooves breathe.
Nate Dorward
Feuermusik No Contest (Standard Form)
What began as an innocent experiment between two hardcore punks blossomed into a gorgeous, multi-layered musical advancement by Toronto duo Feuermusik. Though they shake the novelty aspect of their bucket percussion/woodwinds configuration any time they play live, Gus Weinkauf and Jeremy Strachan entered sessions for No Contest with something to prove. The relative pop-cheer of 2006’s Goodbye, Lucille lurks within No Contest but the new record shoots for grace and poise first, hitting the mark with uncommon authority.
Vish Khanna
Christina Kubisch Five Electrical Walks (Important)
If folk music is about taking the temperature of the current culture, Christina Kubisch has created a wired folk masterpiece. Sourced from headphones specially designed to act as electrical antennae, recording the invisible information cycles that envelope our modern landscapes, Kubisch concatenates the ambient music of Times Square, the terrorized metal of airports and shopping malls and decaying structuralism of Birmingham. We’ve taught the world to sing, and Kubisch is now teaching us to listen to it.
Eric Hill
Phantom Orchard Orra (Tzadik)
Harp and electronics are the instruments employed by Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori — two downtown New York musicians known for their contributions to DNA, Electric Masada, Björk, Nels Cline, and many others — on Orra, but you’d be forgiven for imagining gamelan, Theremins and, on the final track, distorted guitars. For their second release as Phantom Orchard, Parkins and Mori transmute their raw musical materials into a meditation on the base elements of nature, an inviting soundscape with an undercurrent of doom-folk unease. Guests include Makigami Koichi on Jews harp and Josh Quillen on steel drum. This is one forest worth venturing into at night.
Jonny Dovercourt
Pocahaunted Island Diamonds (Not Not Fun)
What do you get when you cross a female primitivist guitar/vocal drone duo with the deep-fried bass rhythms of former the For Carnation member and California underground maverick Bobb Bruno? The answer: quite possibly the most viscous sonic concoction this side of Jamaica. This cracked-out proto-dub/deep psych masterpiece couldn’t have come at a better time, as the prolific yet monotonous girls of Pocahaunted were about to become a one-trick pony with their slippery brand of reverb-heavy moan. Bruno’s dank throb pulls the girls out from beneath the crust of the Earth, providing fresh kindling to augment their maniacal signal fires.
Bryon Hayes
Various 1970's Algerian Proto-Rai Underground (Sublime Frequencies)
Alan Bishop (of Sun City Girls) has helmed Sublime Frequencies for five years, and in that time he’s redressed the concept of “world music” from a new-age vanity to a pulsating global hotbed of cross-cultural experimentation. Among his favourite regions to discover is Algeria, and 1970’s Algerian Proto-Rai Undergound digs into the heart of this reclusive country and its political heartbeat of Rai deeper than any other compilation has previously ventured. The four acts here add to what is already a golden decade for African music, with proto-Rai fusing political sentiment with Arabic transcendentalism and West African poly-rhythms for as raucous a jam session as you’re likely to find anywhere in the twentieth century.
Dimitri Nasrallah
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Artists to Watch 2009
AIMToronto
Over the past four years, the Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto has affected tremendous change within an ever-expanding, inclusive community of motivated artists, banding together for the betterment of experimental music in the Big Smoke. Truthfully, AIMToronto is a centralized hub supporting a diverse range of creative improvised musicians across the city. With the interface series bringing inter/national artists to town for collaborations with local ones, and the Somewhere There venue buzzing with performances every week, 2009 promises to be the busiest, biggest year yet for AIMToronto.
Vish Khanna
Mary Halvorson
After a series of eventful recordings with master restructuralist Anthony Braxton, guitarist Mary Halvorson has just started emerging as a leader. Her new trio disc Dragon’s Head shows off her tough, richly atmospheric picking, full of just-right dissonances in the tradition of Monk or Andrew Hill. It also reveals a striking composer, her tunes elegant networks of gear-changes, silences and felicitous repetitions that are less a personal style than an entire musical language.
Nate Dorward
Risil
Like one of those geodesic trash bags designed to enshroud a grand piano, Guillermo (Scott) Herren of Savath & Savalas and Prefuse 73 fame has invented a musical that swallows avant-garde musicians whole. Risil is a revolving door that folks like Zach Hill (Hella), John McEntire (Tortoise) and Tyondai Braxton (Battles) have swung through, creating a peculiarly ambient miasma of beats and electronic noise. With limited vinyl releases slated, they are sure to be a collector geeks wet dream.
Eric Hill
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Frequencies: Year in Review 2008
 1. Cut Copy In Ghost Colours (Modular)
There are many effective ways of gauging if a band has had a breakout year. The first is usually record sales and chart placement, followed by critical reception, number of gigs, MySpace plays, and to a lesser extent, number of interviews giv...Read More
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Aggressive Tendencies: Year in Review 2008
 1. Genghis Tron Board Up The House (Relapse)
“The cliché is that as you get older, you soften up in terms of musical taste, and our band have seemingly gone in that direction.” Those aren’t the words most fans of a band known for their technical blend of whiplash grind and synth-battered electronics want to hear, but for Genghis Tron’s screaming keyboardist Mookie Singerman, it’s an undeniable truth. “We rarely listen to super brutal, technical stuff anymore so I don't think those elements are as present on Board Up the House as they were on previous records.”...Read More
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Wood Wires & Whiskey: Year in Review 2008
 1. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Lie Down In the Light (Drag City)
Fifteen years after releasing his first record, Will Oldham continues to compose some of the greatest American folk music of our time. While his profile has had peaks and valleys, Oldham has never disappeared nor diminished; with humility and a sense of purpose, he’s steadfastly completed the work most natural to him, instinctually expressing himself with authoritative force and enviable prolificacy. The consistency of Oldham’s genius is almost unsettling and, given his remarkable output, some fans can’t help but take his work for granted. It would be an outright shame, however, to wilfully ignore albums such as 2006’s brooding The Letting Go and its sunnier 2008 follow-up Lie Down in the Light, both artful, majestic works from a master....Read More
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Pop Rocks: Year in Review 2008
 1. Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)
Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold was once a tenth-grade dropout with an insatiable curiosity about music. Like any imaginative listener, he had fantastic visions of the geographic locales that spawned his favourite artists. “Growing up, I had a lot of crazy ideas about the UK because of Led Zeppelin and Lord of the Rings,” he laughs, on the phone in the middle of a European tour. “I probably thought when I went there I’d see thatched huts and all these fairy tales before my eyes.” He chuckles, adding, “Those ideas have certainly dissipated.”...Read More
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No Future: Year in Review 2008
 1. Fucked Up The Chemistry of Common Life (Matador)
“I’m almost completely satisfied with the way it turned out,” Damian Abraham, lead vocalist for Fucked Up tells me about his band’s newest album. Where the band’s previous full-length, Hidden World, relied heavily on long, meandering moments to create a visceral sonic landscape, ChemCom takes more of a direct approach. “The problem with Hidden World was that we never really did get the chance to self-edit,” Abraham says. “We were never given the opportunity to sit back and go, like, ‘maybe this is going on a little bit.’”...Read More
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Groove: Year in Review 2008
 1. Erykah Badu New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War (Motown)
When one-time neo-soul torchbearer Erykah Badu dropped the particularly directionless Worldwide Underground experiment back in 2003, many wondered if the world would ever again relive the euphoria surrounding her richly creative early releases. To some it seemed that a few years of misguided tour match-ups with powerhouse performer Jill Scott had stripped her of a bit of confidence, or that a life of motherhood had removed some of her musical drive. To say that there was great surprise that Badu could come back with such a strong and progressive record in this year’s New Amerykah after such a prolonged absence would be an understatement....Read More
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Beats & Rhymes: Year in Review 2008
 1. Lil Wayne Tha Carter III (Cash Money)
The endless period of prosperity that has blessed Cash Money millionaire Lil Wayne these past few years reached its stratospheric peak in 2008 with a record that firmly solidified the ever-maturing rapper’s dominant status. Tracks from the third instalment of his eye-opening namesake series were already burning through speakers months before the disc’s official birth date, but when Tha Carter III finally hit stores, cash registers long rusted shut from disuse were ringing the unfamiliar tune of a million-plus first week sales....Read More
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Though recently implying that he's tapped out musically, Sufjan Stevens has never created something as pointedly ambitious as The BQE. Originally commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a 2007 performance, as a take-home release The BQE consists of an uncompromising essay ostensibly all about the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, a visually stunning film, a stirring orchestral soundtrack, a stereoscopic View-Master reel, and, in limited edition, a 40-page comic book about characters known as the Hooper Heroes....
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