BLOWY SHIRTS

YEAR OF THE COWS, CHICKENS, DOGS

A guy playing Spooky Black helped ring in 2015. Last night, after two great but exhausting weeks in Taiwan, punctuated by a child (ours) screaming hysterically for the last twenty minutes of our flight, we landed at JFK and packed all our things (mostly the child’s) into a small cab. The driver was wearing baggy jeans, a baggy striped oxford and a New York Giants beanie. We hadn’t even gotten out of the airport before he started asking us questions about where we’d been (”Taiwan? Is that Thailand?”). He was a 22-year-old guy from Richmond Hill, a part of Queens that’s largely populated by immigrants from India and Guyana (”a lot of similarities, a lot of the same last names”). His family had moved here from India when he was two. And while his folks went back every year, he hadn’t been back until recently, when he started making a little money. He wasn’t sure why it had never occurred to him to go with them. I saw a plastic khanda hanging from his rear-view mirror. This trip back to India had been for a cousin’s wedding, and it was okay. People respected him but he didn’t really experience anything too different while he was there, because the place where his cousin’s family lived had the same modern conveniences as here. Except for the traffic. “Animals everywhere,” he laughed. I noticed the sharp, angular trim of his goatee. “Cows, chickens, dogs.”

He said it must have been a rough trip for a child so young and then looked into the rear-view mirror at Carol and Zeke and smiled. The kind of passing observation from a stranger that feels strangely and intimately kind. I asked him if he felt any connection to India, having only consciously been there once. He was listening to Sikh devotional music which, mingling with the blare of Taxi TV, sounded like mid-nineties trip-hop. Being here or there didn’t matter all that much. He said his family and friends kept him in touch with his roots. We crossed the Kosciuszko Bridge, all bumps and pot-holes as the new one bridge constructed a few hundred feet away. I asked if he knew when they were supposed to finish. “January 1. But it’s not going to happen. You know contractors. It’s all politics and corruption.” He waited a moment before the inevitable next question. “So, what do you think about Trump?” I laughed. “What do you think I think? It’s going to be bad.” He said he had gone to Times Square the night of the election, thinking it would be a party. When he saw Trump’s electoral votes surge, he decided to go home. They were both bad candidates he said. “But one was a lot worse,” I replied. He was a little worried–it’s going to be hard for Muslims, he said, and I wondered if he frequently got mistaken for one himself. “He don’t pay no taxes, he shows no respect to girls,” he said, before correcting himself. “I mean, women.” But living in New York meant some measure of protection because he’d never picked up a fare from anyone who didn’t hate the guy. “Hope he does some good things, man. Hope he does some good things.” We were both quiet for a second. “Because otherwise,” he continued, “he’s just evil.”

I DID NOT DO A VERY SYSTEMATIC JOB OF JOTTING DOWN EVERYTHING I LIKED THIS YEAR. REALLY, IT WAS JUST A GMAIL DRAFT. SO THERE IS PROBABLY A LOT OF STUFF MISSING HERE.

EVERY YEAR HE PUTS OUT SOMETHING THAT BRINGS ME A LOT OF JOY
Nef the Pharoah, Neffy Got Wings

SO GOOD THAT IN THE NEAR FUTURE THEY WILL REFER TO JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE, AND RINGO AS “THE WHITE BEATLES”
Rae Sremmurd featuring Gucci Mane, “Black Beatles”

I HAD TO, LIKE, OPEN THE BRUISE UP, AND LET SOME OF THE BRUISE BLOOD COME OUT TO SHOW THEM
Yves Tumor, Serpent Music

“TRIED BY 12″ VIBES
Young M.A., “OOOUUU”

NAG NAG NAG
Danny Brown, Atrocity Exhibition

ANORAK CITY
Frankie Cosmos, Next Thing

I CAN
D.R.A.M. feat. Lil Yachty, “Broccoli”

808s AND HEARTBREAK
Bon Iver, 22, A Million

A SONG THAT MADE ME WANT TO GET SOUP DUMPLINGS
Pearson Sound, “XLB”

AND A FEW THAT STAYED ON MY SHUFFLE
TOKiMONSTA, “I’m Waiting”
21 Savage and Metro Boomin, “No Heart”
Kodak Black feat. Gucci Mane, “Vibin in this Bih”
Eric Copeland, “Fuck it Up”
Future, “Perkys Calling”
Africaine 808, “Tummy Tumma (Esa’s Afro Synth Bubblegum remix)”
Young Thug, “With Them”
Migos feat. Lil Uzi Vert, “Bad and Boujee”
Hidden Spheres, “Well Well”

THROUGHOUT HISTORY THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT OF POP SONGS ABOUT A BAD BREAK-UP BUT FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY ARE AS GOOD AS
Parquet Courts, “Human Performance”

DARK TWISTED FANTASY
Zeroh, Tinnitus

BEST COLLABORATION WITH AN ETHIOPIAN VEGAN RESTAURANT
Ras G X Azla Vegan, Azla Sounds Vol. 1

EVERY COUPLE YEARS THERE’S A DVA SONG I REALLY LIKE; IN THIS CASE I LIKE THE FACT THAT IT FEELS AS THOUGH 35% OF THIS SONG IS MISSING
DVA, “Take it All”

STUFF I LIKED FROM ONE OF MY FAVORITE LABELS, 1080p
Elka, Chants
Sasha Jan Rezzie, “All My Dreams”

BLACKEST EVER BLACK PUT OUT A LOT OF GOOD RECORDS THIS YEAR TOO
Raime, Tooth
Carla Dal Forno, You Know What It’s Like

THIS YEAR’S “RIYL: KAMASI WASHINGTON”S
Yussef Kamaal, Black Focus
Shabaka and the Ancestors, Wisdom of Elders

I’LL GIVE ANY ATTEMPT TO MAKE BUSTED 80S GROOVES (AND AALIYAH’S OEUVRE) NEW AGAIN A LISTEN
Jessy Lanza, “Going Somewhere”
Nite Jewel, “I Mean It”

SAME BUT WITH THE MID-2000s
VanJess x Darehouse, “Favor”

BEST NAME EVER, HANDS DOWN, AND ONE OF MY FAVORITE SONGS OF THE YEAR, TOO
Ross From Friends, “Talk to Me You’ll Understand”

HALL OF FAME-LEVEL SONG TITLE
Mall Grab, “I’ve Always Liked Grime”

A NICE PAY-AS-YOU-LIKE COMPILATION OF LOW-KEY DANCE MUSIC FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON
North Pole Boogie Vol 16

BEST OTHER TLOPs (WHICH ONE?)
The Life of Peder
Toyomu - Imagining “The Life of Pablo”
The live bootleg from Madison Square Garden which I still like a lot because of how cavernous it sounds

IF YOU HAD A TWIN I MIGHT CHOOSE THE OTHER
“Work” dancehall refix featuring Mavado 
“Work” freestyle by Burna Boy
“Work” cover by salute and RobLaw
”Work (Jersey Club remix)” by DJ Taj

I ALMOST FEEL LIKE THE GUITARS ON HERE WERE MEANT IRONICALLY
Rihanna, “Kiss it Better”

THE NINETIES ARE BACK!
The Game, 1992
Nap Eyes, “Mixer”
Teenage Fanclub, Here
Psychic Ills feat. Hope Sandoval, “I Don’t Mind”
Beach Slang, Here I Made This For You

IT’S COOL WHEN THINGS CHANGE, TOO
DJ Shadow and Nils Frahm, “Bergschrund”

PREDICTABLY, I WILL GLADLY LISTEN TO ANYTHING FEATURING THESE PEOPLE
French Montana featuring Puff Daddy and Jadakiss, “Old Man Wildin’”
French Montana featuring Jadakiss, Beanie Sigel and Styles P, “Have Mercy”

I LISTEN TO A LOT OF OLD MUSIC AND HERE ARE A FEW OF THE COMPILATIONS I REMEMBER, THOUGH I’M SURE THERE WERE DOZENS MORE I SHOULD HAVE KEPT BETTER TRACK OF
Sitting in the Park (RIP Bob Abrahamian)
Greg Belson’s Divine Disco (American Gospel Disco 1974-1984)
Boogie Breakdown: South African Synth Disco 1980-1984

AND SOME REISSUES (AGAIN VERY RANDOM)
Syrinx, Tumblers From the Vault
(is this? just rarities, really) Chris Knox, KnoxTraxFine
SunPath, Dream Music
all these Wong Kar-wai soundtracks

I LISTENED TO THESE A LOT AND LOVED THEM BUT I HAVE MORE OR LESS NOTHING INTELLIGENT TO SAY ABOUT THEM
Leon Vynehall, Rojus
21 Savage and Metro Boomin, Savage Mode
MJ Guider, Precious Systems
Tokyo Black Star, Fantasy Live 1999

I LIKED THIS ENOUGH TO BOTHER BUYING IT ON CD, OR: ANNUAL SPOT RESERVED FOR ANYTHING SELA.-RELATED
SELA., DJ A-Flow and Foodman, S.A.F.E.

SO GOOD, TOO SHORT
VHVL, evn

WOULD HAVE BOUGHT AND MAYBE NOT LIKED AT AGE 17, WOULD HAVE APPRECIATED AT AGE 27, WOULD HAVE LOVED AT AGE 37
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, EARS
Ian William Craig, Centres

WOULD HAVE LIKED AT AGE 17, 27, 37
Yohuna, Patientness

SAM RAY-RELATED
Teen Suicide, It’s the Big Joyous Celebration, Let’s Stir the Honeypot
Julia Brown, An Abundance of Strawberries (reissue)

TWIN PEAKS-RELATED
Julee Cruise and King Dude “Sing Each Others Songs For You”

[**]THESE WERE GREAT. BUT ALSO! THEY WERE THE PERFECT LENGTH, WHICH COUNTS FOR A LOT IN MY BOOK
Angel Olsen, My Woman
clipping., Splendor and Misery
Ezale and DJ Fresh, The Tonite Show
Weyes Blood, Front Row Seat to Earth

AN ALBUM THAT WAS WAAAAAAY TOO LONG BUT, AS EXPECTED, I STILL ENDED UP LISTENING TO 5-7 OF THESE SONGS OVER AND OVER
Drake, Views

COOL PART OF “ONE DANCE” WAS THE MINI-REVIVAL OF
Kyla, “Do You Mind?”

…I HAD TOTALLY FORGOTTEN THAT THE XX COVERED IT, TOO
The xx, “Do You Mind?”

A BIT ROTE BUT TEXXAS FOREVER
The xx, “On Hold”

A PROMO I STREAMED BECAUSE I WAS PROCRASTINATING, AND BY MISTAKE, AND I THOUGHT IT SOUNDED SURPRISINGLY GOOD, THOUGH NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME TO EVER WANT TO REVISIT IT AND VERIFY THAT JUDGMENT
The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Getaway

I PLAYED CELLO FROM 1989-1995 AND I WILL RIDE FOR ANY CELLIST MAKING COOL MUSIC
Oliver Coates, Upstepping
Oliver Coates and Mica Levi, Remain Calm
Kelsey Lu, Church

ESPECIALLY THIS ON THE KELSEY LU EP
Kelsey Lu, “Liar”

STAYING ON THE SUBJECT OF THE NINETIES: AM SLIGHTLY REGRETTING HALF-REMEMBERED RHCP LOVE. THEN AGAIN, THIS WAS A YEAR WHERE I ENDED UP DOWN MANY A LATE NIGHT YOUTUBE NOSTALGIA K-HOLE, ESPECIALLY THESE, I HAVE NO IDEA WHY:
Drop Nineteens, “Winona”
Drop Nineteens, “My Aquarium (acoustic)”
Swervedriver, “Duel”
Ride, “In a Different Place”
Lee Ranaldo, “Notebook”
The Roy Davis Project, “I’m Here to Spread Love”
Jayo Felony, “Sherm Stick”
WC and Maad Circle, “Dress Code”
Company Flow, “8 Steps to Perfection”
Mos Def, “Umi Says”

BEST INTERLUDES
Every second of Master P on the Solange album
“Tina Taught Me” on the Solange album

MY FAVORITE SONG ON THE SOLANGE ALBUM
“F.U.B.U.”

WORST INTERLUDE, POSSIBLY OF ALL TIME
”Facebook Story”

A DAY IN THE LIFE, DONE IN THE STYLE OF ONE LONG INTERLUDE, WHICH I MEAN IN A REALLY GOOD WAY
Kilo Kish, Reflections in Real Time

I LISTENED TO THESE PURELY BASED ON THE BAND NAMES AND I AM GLAD I DID THAT
Japanese Breakfast, Psychopomp
Let’s Eat Grandma, I, Gemini

I LOVED THOSE MORNINGS, WHEN THE SUN’S UP
Sampha, “Plastic (live)”

A GREAT ALBUM THAT STILL FELT OVERLOOKED BUT MAYBE IT’S JUST ME
Schoolboy Q, Blank Face

UNFINISHED SYMPHONY
Desiigner, “Timmy Turner (freestyle)”

ALBUMS I’M POSITIVE WILL GROW ON ME IN 2017
Gucci Mane, The Return of East Atlanta Santa
Kaytranada, 99.9%
Katie Dey, Flood Network

WAY TOO MANY MORNING-BECOMING-DAYS-BECOMING-WEEKS THIS YEAR WHERE I LISTENED TO NOTHING BUT
David Bowie
Prince
A Tribe Called Quest
George Michael
Earth Wind and Fire
Leonard Cohen
Sharon Jones
too many more to name

RIP DAVID MANCUSO
“It’s amazing what one tambourine can do.”

RELATED: A COVER THAT I FOUND REALLY MOVING
Los Cenzontles, “Young Americans”

AND THIS WAS GOOD, AND IT SEEMED EVEN BETTER/MORE VITAL BECAUSE OF “CIRCUMSTANCES”
A Tribe Called Quest, We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service

(FALSE PROPHECY, OR: BEST 2016 WARRIORS FREESTYLE
Mistah F.A.B.)

PROPHECY AND MAGIC, OR: AN AMERICA I WANT TO MOVE TO
Blood Orange, Freetown Sound
Frankie Reyes, Boleros, Valses y Mas
Helado Negro, Private Energy
Mitski, Puberty 2
Frank Ocean, Blonde
KING, We are KING
Car Seat Headrest, Teens of Denial
Noname, Telefone
Amber Mark, “S P A C E”
DJ Taye, “Burnin Ya Boa”
Valerie June, “Astral Plane”
Chance the Rapper, Coloring Book
Beyonce, “Formation”
Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam, I Had a Dream That You Were Mine
Kanye West, "Ultralight Beam” [especially this]
Terrace Martin, Velvet Portraits

AN ALBUM THAT REMINDED ME THAT WE DESERVE BETTER
Anohni, Hopelessness

ADMITTEDLY I HAVE A SOFT SPOT FOR SONGS THAT DO THIS. BUT NEVER NOT SMITTEN WITH THE WAY IT SWITCHES UP @ 3:30
Frank Ocean, “Nights”

I HEARD THIS ON MY STUDENT ZACK’S SHOW ON 11/10 AND IT WAS A REVELATION
Mal Devisa, “Sea of Limbs”

ANOTHER ONE!
Guerrilla Toss, “Grass Shack (Giant Claw remix)”

IT WAS A SHITTY SUMMER AND I THINK I LISTENED TO THIS MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE OTHER THAN TLOP, ESPECIALLY JULY-SEPT (ICYMI I WROTE ABOUT IT HERE)
Julius Eastman, Femenine

IF I REALLY HAD TO CHOOSE, MY FAVORITE SONG THIS YEAR, BECAUSE IT SEEMED TO CONTAIN EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER LIKED ALL AT ONCE IN ONE SONG:
Yaeji, "New York 93″

THIS MADE ME REALLY HAPPY TO BE ALIVE
Kamaiyah, A Good Night in the Ghetto

AN ALBUM THAT I LIKED AND FORGOT ABOUT UNTIL IT SOMEHOW ENDED UP IN AN EPISODE OF HBOS’S ‘BALLERS’ AND IF THAT ISN’T PROOF THAT THE ALGORITHM IS POINTLESS I’M NOT SURE WHAT IS, HAPPY 2017
LUH, Spiritual Songs for Lovers to Sing

IF YOU REMOTELY ENJOYED READING THIS, THEN DO I HAVE A QUASI-ACADEMIC BOOK ABOUT REVENGE, FBI SURVEILLANCE, “CULTURAL APPROPRIATION,” FAILURE, AND CHINA/AMERICA FOR YOU
Hua Hsu, A Floating Chinaman

Punched Chads

I have this memory of Outkast playing Letterman a few days after the 2000 election. Stankonia had just come out and Florida was in the midst of their ballot recount. I remember “Bombs Over Baghdad” seeming even more magical and weird in that context, and I remember Big Boi yelling “Al Gore for President y’all” over and over as the song ended. Anyhow—neither YouTube nor Google confirmed that this actually happened, and I was looking around my hard drive for any notes or old emails about this, and I found this old piece for eMusic about the year 2000.

***
2000: Another World Was Possible
hhh

It started with a note of relief. Our computers had survived; we had made it. The clocks had passed midnight into the year 2000, not 1900, and all those tanks of propane and fresh water cached in the garage became souvenirs of an instantly embarrassing paranoia.

Perhaps the year 2000 was the last time many would regard a computer with suspicion. Fears of the machine-chaos that would ensue as computer clocks the world over tried in vain to rollover from 1999 to 2000 had been exaggerated. With Y2K—the very name musty and primitive-sounding to modern ears—out of the way: the future, our sturdiest muse, was here. After all, few new years arrive with such readymade heft, the overlapping infinities of that haunting ribbon of zeroes suggestive of the brave new worlds to come.

Though the world’s digital infrastructure had not succumbed to the haunting possibility of software code that lacked the proper foresight, it was still possible at the time to question technology’s promise. Crashing hard drives, the static dirge of a dial-up connection, the impertinent whirr of a disk drive: these were the raw materials of the late 1990s glitch scene, a noisy and inward turn for electronic dance music. The mood was perfectly captured by Uwe Schmidt (using his Geeez’n’Gosh moniker) and his 2000 masterpiece My Life With Jesus, a gospel house record translated into the language of nervous, distorted bass-lines, bubbly rhythms and shards of twitchy synths. Whatever communion Schmidt was imagining was one forged within the casing of a computer. On “Gotta Pray,” the playfully heretical Schmidt diced up the cries of true believers and buried them under a gurgle of tones and pulses. Where then to deposit one’s faith?

The sound of an eternally hiccupping CD could become its own kind of pop music; texture became its own kind of narrative. In the Bay Area, a bratty, showman producer named Kid606 and his Tigerbeat6 collective began issuing bruised, spastic and abrasive electronic records that made a mockery of previous standards of punk aggression. There was a texture to his howls, a bi-polar energy unimaginable without the aid of hacked electronics. Where Kid606, Cex and Matmos came across as surgical machine-pranksters, others seemed more anxious. A millennial tension shaded the works of Schmidt and fellow visionaries like Wolfgang Voigt (the pop ambient mastermind behind Gas’ Pop) and Sasu Ripatti (as Luomo, his 2000 microhouse masterwork Vocalcity remains one of the decade’s masterpieces), each of whom seemed to celebrate the possibilities of a laptop or software, all while drawing attention to the devices’ potential for malfunction.

All of these artists, separated by style and geography, shared something else in common: that year, they all released records on Mille Plateaux, a Frankfurt-based label that had borrowed its name from a 1980 book of the same name about “capitalism and schizophrenia” by French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Snobbish affectations aside, the rise of Mille Plateaux-the-label was itself a strange, digital echo of something else: Mille Plateaux-the-book was making a comeback of sorts as well, having inspired Michael Hardt and Antonio Negiri’s Empire, one of the year’s truly unexpected literary successes.

Empire offered a grim view of world forces that were reordering themselves without our consent. Hardt and Negiri tamped down post-cold war optimism about the possibilities of globalization, a term less fraught then than it is today. They placed their faith in the multitude, a new vision of the collective that could become the true embodiment of democratic possibility. Where would this multitude come from? How would it be activated? Hardt and Negiri didn’t have that part figured out—it was up to their sundry readers to collect themselves.

New communities were emerging out of new global circuits made possible by quantum leaps in Internet connectivity. By the end of 2000, digital technology, which once threatened to self-destruct at the incomputable prospect of “11:59:59,” was outpacing our ability to think about it. Napster—a different expression of the multitude—had emerged the year before and, without benefit of traditional advertising strategies, become the kind of effortless and ubiquitous success story that makes business school seem like a joke. It was started for want of free music and it threatened to erode the very foundations of the entertainment industry. Soon, fans were getting sued by heroes. Metallica would never seem transgressive again.

In place of the old heroes, new ones emerged. Sigur Ros and godspeed you! black emperor released captivating albums, as though the tides of history could be frozen in these magnificently heavy, heaving bursts of slow motion sound. In October, two of the decade’s most important and paradigm-shifting records were released: Radiohead’s Kid A and Outkast’s Stankonia. From the post-guitar arena electronica of “Idioteque” to the free-associative jungle riot of “Bombs Over Baghdad,” each album represented a break from their own histories as well as the histories of their preferred genres. These albums felt futuristic; they attested to the possibilities of more data, more information, more technology and more inputs, even as they lusted after moments of intimate reprieve.

The following year, something terrible would happen. Now, reflecting on the year 2000, it is difficult not to read our memories as an anticipation of 9/11 and the world that would follow. Eventually, the glitches and bugs would be vanquished: technology would soon become a seemingly neutral world of faces and spaces, pods and diaries. The multitude started blog and shopped online. I mis-remember Outkast’s “Gasoline Dreams” as a post-9/11 screed against George Bush, even if it was recorded in a blissful state of spring 2000 ignorance, back when Al Gore seemed like a Presidential shoo-in. It was the stroke before a decade-long midnight, when the future seemed to hang on a chad, hole-punched debris dangling from a slip of paper. A reason to distrust old technology, too.