This is a little collection of music which are just some of my favourite Christmas tracks, ranging from classic rock, indie numbers, crooners, jazz tracks and folk duets. This mix has been made to enjoy for an hour or so, but hopefully this will show some of you guys that there can be good Christmas music. Please buy any of the albums that the songs are from (except for the God awful RTL Christmas Fever), they are some of the best of the best. I’ve added some links to buy a couple of these Christmas album classics.

The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Songs For Christmas, Christmas With The Rat Pack

• Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Dean Martin
• Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Frank Sinatra
• Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer - Jack Johnson
• White Christmas – Frank Sinatra
• Christmas In Prison - Lightspeed Champion & Emmy The Great
• Skating – Vince Guaraldi
• Christmas TV – Slow Club
• Winter Wonderland - Phantom Planet
• Is This Christmas – The Wombats
• Christmas Time All Over The World – Sammy Davis Jr.
• Peace - Norah Jones
• Driving Home For Christmas - Chris Rea
• Silent Night - Sufjan Stevens
• O Tannenbaum – Vince Guaraldi
• Little Saint Nick - The Beach Boys

Playlist zipped.

Thanks for the image Chris Jones.

To give you guys a bit of a breather, and because I felt like showing my recent discoverings and findings within the electronic world, here is a brief playlist of fun electronic music. Enjoy in these stressful times…

1. Blue Skies (Twelves Remix) – Noah and the Whale
2. Armistice (Yacht Remix) – Phoenix
3. Mount Helicon – VanGuard
4. Baiser Sur La Disco (Rubix Refix) – Rubix
5. Flashback – Calvin Harris
6. Spiralling (Diplo vs Keane Mad Spirals Remix) – Diplo vs Keane
7. Breakin’ (Original Mix) – Strip Steve
8. I Love London – Crystal Fighters

The “Fun Electronic Mix” zipped!

Thanks to Pieter for the image.

I wanted to come back to 2008, even while everyone is starting their 2009 lists (don’t worry mine will be out soon enough), because I think it is worth seeing what a year might do to the “Best albums of 2008″. Of course, it helps me share some truly amazing music, once again. Remember, it’s ordered by my favourites.

Even after nearly two years, Vampire Weekend’s debut stands up as strong as ever. The melodies are still catchy, the variety of sounds and instruments never fails to please, the album is, simply put, a wonderful pop gem. Pretty Much Amazing recently showed me a quote from Pitchfork which is good at explaining what gives this album so much universal praise:

People spend a lot of time poking around for the edgy new underground thing, convinced that plain old pop songs have been done to death. But Vampire Weekend come along like Belle & Sebastian and the Strokes each did, sounding refreshingly laidback and uncomplicated, and with simple set-ups that make good songs sound exceedingly easy.

Mansford Roof

Unlike Vampire Weekend, Foals‘ Antidotes grew on me even more over the last year. The weaker tracks have proven themselves to me (yes, especially you Heavy Water). The album is a perfect combination of experimental sound dynamics and bass lines, melodies, riffs and lyrics which will get stuck in your body, as well as your head. I’m not exaggerating, I’m sure I’ve caught myself tapping Two, Steps Twice’s breakdown rhythm or Olympic Airways‘ bass riff far too many times.

Olympic Airways

Late of the Pier’s debut is a mutated beast of genres, contained within the bars of electronic music. There are so many weird sounds that initially I was drawn away from, but now suck me back any time I’m shuffling through my libary and I hit one of the tracks from this album. Fantasy Black Channel’s diverse use of synths brilliantly blended together by the traditional rock setup of bass, guitar and drums, generates some of the most interesting sounds around.

The Enemy Are The Future

I think it’s Noah and the Whale’s second album, full of its slow somber songs, which helped me appreciate this one more. The music is just so perfect, which contrasts Charlie’s wobbly, but captivating, vocals. Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down is a collection of sharp lyrics and beautiful instrumentation that forms a magical, emotional and, above all, fun album.

Jocasta

Devonte Hynes (aka Lightspeed Champion) writes amazing lyrics about his emotions, sexuality and racism. Hynes writes gorgeous melodies combined with perfect harmonies that will have you in ecstasy. Most importantly, Hynes can arrange like no other and therefore, putting these attributes together forms a debut, which is far too underheard.

Everyone I Know Is Listening To Crunk

Back to the 1960s, as Alex Turner proves he isn’t a one trick pony with his side project The Last Shadow Puppets. A dark, twisted album, The Age of Understatement, boasts an amazing orchestral backing. The lyrics are great (not quite as good as Arctic Monkeys’ ingenious wit) and the acoustic tracks still manage to hold my attention, in fact standing out as some of the best moments of the album.

Calm Like You

Los Campesinos‘ debut is an album made up of ferocious indie pop, with raw punk attributes; an interesting contrast to say the least. There are the aggressive riffs pulled off by the guitarist, fighting high octave keyboards and violins. The let’s-talk-really-really-fast-for-vocals from Gareth weaves in and out of sickly sweet girl vocals. The lyrics are well worth noting; fantastic monologues using the previously mentioned rapid fire anecdotes.

Broken Heartbeats Sound Like Breakbeats

Tokyo Police Club’s Elephant Shell is made up of fast tempos, hard synths and intimidating bass lines. It’s a slow start, but still a solid one. It’s not until Tessalte that you really start to understand these guys, and what makes their debut so awesome. Unexpectantly, they slow it down to something they’ve never done before, and even then they achieve something great. The Harrowing Adventures Of… is an ode to childhood with a glockenspiel, supported by a bass drum, hand claps and violins. The rest of the album keeps up the 5 star ratings, with the blistering fast Your English Is Good, another slow plodder Listen to The Math and the finale, The Baskervilles, returns full circle with more distorted bass riffs. The album cover is my best way of describing this album; a never-ending, aggressive, solid album which will keep spinning for a long time in your record collection.

Listen To The Math

This album is pure, organic and beautiful. It’s difficult to describe how. Fleet Foxes is just a collection extremely stunning music. Fleet Foxes have created something which is perfect; all the arrangements are so perfect. Sit back, relax and let your mind be blown softly.

White Winter Hymnal

Born Ruffians is bouncy indie rock you can’t help but smile to. It’s loud, boisterous in a charmingly childish way. The cover depicts a toy cowboy, a symbol of the boyish youth that the record pushes into the listeners ear. Apart from Red, Yellow & Blue (which soothingly sings vocal harmonies to the quiet march of drums), the album never let’s up it’s continues energy of jaunty rhythms and joyful vocals.

I Need A Life

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A strew of new leaked, early and preview singles have been coming out from artists which I really love, most of which are very good. But don’t get too excited, none of these albums or EPs are coming out until next year.

Audience – Cold War Kids

I adored their first album, their second not so much. Cold War Kids’ newest single is their poppiest track to date, but as usual, the vocalist really pulls the track through with those bluesy, depressing lyrics. It’s definitely a return to form.

Colours Fade - Blood Red Shoes

A perfect first release from their second album; it leaves the listener wanting so much more, but makes sure that he or she gives it five stars on their music playing device, straight away. The initial riff is still Blood Red Shoes, but it’s harsher and more raw. Dare I say, I was shocked? If the second album is anything like this single, expect something a lot darker and with a lot more experimentation (the last minute of this track is just playing with feedback), than on their basic indie rock debut. Thanks to It’s Getting Boring By The Sea for this one (no it’s not a Blood Red Shoes fansite, it’s actually a fantastic blog).

Horchata and Cousins – Vampire Weekend

Horchata didn’t blow me away, but the different sounds on it made me so excited for their second album. It’s just weird enough to make me desperate to hear what else is on the album. Fortunately, Cousins came out shortly after, and it was the complete opposite. Horchata is a slow track based around harmonious xylophones, while Cousins is like an aggressive take on A-Punk.

Noah and the Whale’s set was a mere six song short. It left me wanting so much more, but not because they underperformed. Quite the contrary, they completely blew me away. I knew it would be mainly depressing songs from their second album, but I was surprised by how much energy was thrown into the down tempo songs. They were loud, sweeping and as epic, as the songs deserved to be. They managed to pull all this off with only four band members. My highlight (which also is the highlight from their wonderful second album) was Love of an Orchestra. It produced a warm feeling which filled the soul, something even those there for Phoenix understood.

Phoenix started really dull. They could have lip synced and it wouldn’t have mattered. The audience weren’t effected though, the seemingly teenage dominated crowd, went crazy. It wasn’t until Love Like A Sunset that they forced me to start routing for them. The instrumental beauty was absolutely gorgeous and enthralling, and the light show didn’t help. They kept this momentum with Napoleon Says, the harsh but constant beat making for an even better track live. Consolation Prizes kept those positive vibes, and they finished with Rome, my least favourite track from their newest album. They couldn’t redeem themselves, with two acoustic pieces for an encore. His voice, and their musical style isn’t suited for it. They bounced back with a second encore of 1901. It was obvious they were going to pull this, so did you really have to wait?

Perhaps it was their music, but Phoenix were a bit boring. They just didn’t have a hook to make up for their excellent, but musically uninteresting catalogue. Noah and the Whale made me so excited for a return as a main act.

More picture here.

Update: Even after being blackmailed, my journalistic integrity is kept by announcing the winner and their comment:

Because my younger sister said that she’d stop listening to Lady Gaga for two months if I win this shirt.
Please.
Save me.

Well done Erika.

———————————

Look! It’s my first competition!

I wear far too much topman than I care to admit and I was delighted when their CTRL team contacted me. Topman CTRL is an awesome feature, where bands are selected to edit the CTRL blog and curate a live show. They’ve had Lightspeed Champion and Gallows (off the top my head), so they already have a pretty good list of some of my favourite bands. To get to the point, it’s Passion Pit (who I saw recently) this month and they offered me to give away one of the awesome T-Shirts pictured below. And if you have time you can catch their choices for a live show (Little Comets, Airship and Biycle Thieves) in Liverpool, for only five pounds.

To win, leave a comment telling me why you are most deserving of this t-shirt. Whether it’s funny, emotional or stupid, I will decide the best one.

Want to win a Passion Pit t-shirt? Go here!

I was hesitant to post this one, because more than four of my feeds (Funkism, Music Liberation, Too Many Sebastians and Party Aids) are posting a track and crying that they are the next thing. And really, we’ll have to put that into the persepctive of on an album or a live show. Fortunately, their live show is actually coming to Munich. This never happens for bands without a debut, so for this reason I’m also going to join the blog masses and nominate them as the best band to have existed so far (and that ever will).

You can’t help but think of Friendly Fires, when listening to their single Lies, but there is definately more electro and all those bongs and South American influences have been stripped out. It’s a basic cross of electronica and indie, and it’s really good.

myspace, twitter, beatport, itunes

My knowledge of this particular remixer consisted of his amazing remix of Franz Ferdinand’s Do You Want To and that he did that thing with Boys Noize (which was also pretty damn amazing). After researching (scourged for all his remixes and wikipedia’d the man), I discovered a couple of interesting things about this guy; he makes some crazy good, headbanging electronic remixes of indie artists (Bloc Party, Klaxons, Interpol and more) and produced the Late of the Pier record. For the second feat alone, I applaud him, it is quite a marvelous record. But that’s not why we are here, his remix of Death From Above is fantastic. Their aren’t words which can give this remix justice, but it’s basically just chopped up heavy, funky bass lines with some great build-ups.

Romantic Rights (Erol Akan’s Love From Below Re-Edit) – Death From Above 1979

Bonus: Waves – Erol Alkan & Boys Noize

official, myspace, beatport, podcast

Packed (but not uncomfortably) with The Streets blasting through the speakers, it seemed there were good signs the gig was going to be interesting. I Heart Sharks then stepped through the crowd and got their instruments ready, while the singer nervously slipped in and out of German and English. Since they were previously unknown to me, I’ll just throw some random observations out there.

1. The drummer was the most enthusiastic percussionist I’ve had witness to see. He seemed to be having more fun than the entire crowd combined, he was constantly getting up and his face was always changing from one expression to the next.
2. The sound in this venue seemed perfect (so I guess props to the sound technicians), not too loud, not too quiet, with everything the band playing easily slipping into the ear, quite hard for a band with a harsh electronic sound (think Does it Offend You, Yeah? or Friendly Fires).
3. My statement of hipsters not dancing, was once again proved, but fortunately this time it did not make the gig any less fun.

I can’t say their studio sound, which was given to me fresh ripped the night of the gig, is too special, but if you get the chance, catch them live, because they have enough songs to really get a party started. Here are my favourites from the evening; Dots Dots Dots and The World is Yours.

See more pictures here. And you can watch a montage of all the photos with Aerobics playing in the background here.