Music For Your Tape Recorder

This year started with a rich mixture of contemporary releases and older hidden gems thanks to "legal downloads", until May or halfway through the list when I was recommended Trademark Ribbons of Gold. I almost didn't listen to anything else for four months until the pace picked up again when I finally purchased GTAIV and Rockstar did once again provide some well playlisted radio stations. Come the end of November I remembered to check for new releases which led to a cascade of new material for consumption. The below playlist is no longer by month as it would be pointless listing one track for each between May and September.

Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin's B-Side, while sufficiently out of print and almost referentially absent from the internet, does not win the Obscure Alternatives Award - rather it goes to the Associates for their final album Sulk which was, in the spirit of the competition, impossible to find new and yet delivered a spread of propulsive fever dreams that should never have been forgotten.

This year's Roygbiv Eargasm Award goes to Sunset Everett by VHS Head because I quite literally listen to it every day. It is the distant progeny of Paul Hardcastle's 19 and I can never get enough. The runner-up for this is Lone, who I really dig and have bought the majority of his back catalogue because I absolutely want my money going towards his continuing output. Whilst overshadowed by the particular summer earworm detailed above, Metronomy's The English Riviera is a remarkable qualitative leap - breaking out of the stylophonic flat-mixed wail that brought Nights Out down.

In the end I didn't listen to Geogaddi backwards again last year, I instead watched a TOTP2 80s special.

1. Go West - Don't Look Down ; Go West (1985)
2. Lone - To Be With A Person You Really Dig ; Ecstasy & Friends (2009)
3. Chairlift - Evident Utensil ; Does You Inspire You (2008)
4. Falco - Auf der Flucht ; Einzelhaft (1981)
5. Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin - Waiting in the Wings ; It's My Party [Single] (1981)
6. Skalpel - 1958 (Quantic Remix) ; Konfusion (2005)
7. Fujiya & Miyagi - Minestrone ; Ventriloquizzing (2011)
8. Stereolab - Wow and Flutter ; Mars Audiac Quintet (1994)
9. Oppenheimer Analysis - The Devil's Dancers ; New Mexico (2010)
10. Eurythmics - All The Young (People of Today) ; In the Garden (1981)
11. The Associates - Club Country ; Sulk (1982)
12. Toro Y Moi - How I Know ; Underneath the Pine (2011)
13. Nick Haydn - Brazilian Beauty ; Global Fusion (2003)
14. Lone - A Ridge Between Mountains ; Cluster Dreams (2009)
15. Metronomy - We Broke Free ; The English Riviera (2011)
16. Be Your Own Pet - Take That Walk ; Fire Department [Single] (2005)
17. VHS Head - Sunset Everett ; Trademark Ribbons of Gold (2010)
18. Casino Versus Japan - It's Very Sunny ; Go Hawaii (200x)
19. Interpol - Stella Was A Diver and She Was Always Down ; Turn on the Bright Lights (2002)
20. The Cardigans - Do You Believe ; Gran Turismo (1998)
21. Skalpel - Break In ; Skalpel (2004)
22. David Axelrod - Holy Thursday ; Song of Innocence (1968)
23. Small Faces - Ogden's Nut Gone Flake ;  Ogden's Nut Gone Flake (1968)
24. VHS Head - Death Dimension ; Midnight Section EP (2011)
25. Ford & Lopatin - Emergency Room ; Channel Pressure (2011) 
26. Com Truise - Norkuy ; Cyanide Sisters (2011) 
27. Mitch Murder - Quantum State ; Elevator Music EP (2011)
28. Thievery Corporation - Tower Seven, Culture of Fear (2011)
29. Martina McBride - When Love is Gone ; Muppet Christmas Carol OST (1992)
30. Paul McCartney - Wondeful Christmas Time ; McCartney II (1979)
31. Purity Ring - Lofticries ;  Ungirthed [Single] (2011)

Prij will return with the Scooby Gang or the clones of Big Boss...

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