Flyweight : Top Ten Releases of 2007

Flyweight airs every Thursday evening 5:00- 7:00 pm. An expanded playlist of the 2007 retrospective show can be viewed here. This year's Top 10 in alphabetical order.
- Ravioli



A Place To Bury Strangers
"A Place To Bury Strangers"
(Killer Pimp)
Total Sonic Annihilation - a phrase attributed to their pedals and live shows.


Flyweight Track: "Ocean"
http://www.myspace.com/aplacetoburystrangers


Deerhunter
"Cryptograms"
(Kranky)
"Cryptograms" became an instant hit at the Z. The follow up "Flourescent Grey" EP and a Daytrotter Session rounded off a busy recording year for the beloved band.

Flyweight Track: "Octet"
http://www.myspace.com/deerhunter


Duke Spirit
"Cuts Across the Land"
(Startime)
The Duke Spirit evokes a sultry psychedelia crossed with The Gun Club, Nick Cave, Gallon Drunk & early PJ Harvey.

Flyweight Track: "Love Is An Unfamiliar Name"
http://www.myspace.com/thedukespirit


Film School
"Hideout"
(Beggars Banquet)
"Hideout" sounds like a lost recording from the classic shoegaze era sitting comfortably among MBV, Ride, and The Swirlies. Flyweight sponsored the Boston stop on their 2007 tour.

Flyweight Track: "Lectric"
http://www.myspace.com/filmschool


Loose Salute
"Tuned To Love"
(Graveface)
Dream country? They use terms like "sunny days", "mellow waves" and "bright stars" to describe their sound. The song "Mutineer" makes good on that. Features Ian McCutcheon of Mojave 3.

Flyweight Track: "Mutineer"
http://www.myspace.com/therealloosesalut



Sunny Day In Glasgow
"Scribble Mural Comic Journal"
(Notenuf)
A core of 3 siblings from Philadelphia, Sunny Day released a lysergic-laced, kaleidoscopic, psych- pop album.

Flyweight Track: "5:15 Train"
http://www.myspace.com/sunnydayinglasgow


Trembling Blue Stars
"The Last Holy Writer"
(Elefant)
Bobby Wratten may be the last holy dream popper. Fitting alongside the releases of his past projects, The Field Mice and Northern Picture Library, this album is a breezy, jangly, experimental pop album.

Flyweight Track: "Colder Darker Slower"
http://www.myspace.com/tremblingbluestars


Twilight Sad
"14 Autumns and 15 Winters "
(Fat Cat)
Oppressive. Intense. Dramatic. Album of the Year.


Flyweight Track: "Cold Days From The Birdhouse"
http://www.myspace.com/thetwilightsad


Wooden Shjips
"Wooden Shjips EP"
(Holy Mountain)
Hallucinatory, garagey, druggy, jammy, fuzzy, noisy, spacey, heady, psyche. Hooray!


Flyweight Track: "Losin Time"
http://www.myspace.com/woodenshjips


Working For A Nuclear Free City
"Businesmen and Ghosts"
(Deaf, Dumb and Blind)
A Manchester band pulling in elements of Stone Roses, Air, Beta Band, shoegaze, dub, Krautrock, 70's soundtracks, and more. Their US debut is an impressive 29 song release.

Flyweight Track: "Quiet Place"
http://www.myspace.com/wfanfc


Other releases this year:
A Northern Chorus - "The Millions Too Many"
Caribou - "Andorra"
Do Make Say Think - "You, You're A History In Rust"
Electrelane - "No Shouts, No Calls"
Explosions in The Sky - "All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone"
Flowers of Hell - "Flowers of Hell"
Fridge - "The Sun"
His Name Is Alive - "XMMER"
Hotel Alexis - "Goliath, I'm On Your Side"
Brad Laner - "Neighbor Singing"
Low - "Drums and Guns"
M83 - "Digital Shades Vol.1"
Mogwai - "Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait"
Mum - "Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy"
Pram - "The Moving Frontier"
Seefeel - "Quique (Redux)"
Siouxsie Sioux - "Mantaray"
The The - "Mrs Mac"
Thurston Moore - "Trees Outside The Academy"
Ulrich Schnauss - "Quicksand Memory EP"

And Yet Another Top Ten List!

Behold, we have two top ten lists for you today. First comes from Peter of Love and Mathematics (Monday Rock I) with Chris of Electric Blue Watermelon (Wed Rock 4) bringing up the rear.

1. Tristan Da Cunha, Instanter
2. Reports, Mosquito Nets
3. Big Disappointments, Big Disappointments
4. Prime Movers, Back in Line
5. Pernice Brothers, Live a Little
6. A.K.A.C.O.D., Happiness
7. Polyethylene, What Goes on Inside Houses
8. Frank Smith, Heavy Handed Peace and Love
9. Area C, Haunt
10. Jessica Rylan, Interior Designs

Other

1. Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
2. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
3. Panda Bear, Person/Pitch
4. The Field, From Here We Go Sublime
5. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam
6. Wooden Shjips, Wooden Shjips
7. Apparat, Walls
8. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
9. Burial, Untrue
10. Charalambides, Likeness

and now for Chris' list.


1 panda bear -person pith
2 !!! -myth takes
3 justice -cross
4 animal collective -strawberry jam
5 black dice -load blown
6 peter bjorn and john -writer's block
7 architecture in helsinki -places like this
8 dungen -tio bitar
9 no age -weirdo rippers
10 lcd soundsystem -sound of silver
11 devendra banhart -smokey rolls down thunder canyon
12 akron/family -love is simple
13 old time relijun -catharsis in crisis
14 battles -mirrored
15 health -s/t
16 chromeo -fancy footwork
17 deerhunter -cryptograms
18 rodrigo y gabriela -s/t
19 jose gonzalez -in our nature
20 black moth super rainbow -dandelion gum

woot woot.

Top Ten Madness Continues with Nick of Spectra Sonic Sound!

So every year, I sit down to come up with a list of records I've really like from the past year. And every year I find that my list never even comes close to hitting ten. Are my standards so high and lofty that few artists are capable of hitting the peak? Or am I really just a lazy fan and find myself listening to the same six records that I've been listening to since sophomore year of high school?

More than likely, it's the latter. But this year, I did it! I managed to come across ten records that actually held my attention for a calender year, and now I'm gonna list them here, complete with navel-gazing WTITYB mini-reviews too! A Christmas Miracle indeed.

10)
Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends

It's absolutely insane to think that the last new record we had from Les Savy Fav was also when I was a sophomore in high school (2002's Go Forth). Inches notwithstanding, it was far too long for me to go without a new record from Les Savy Fav. They've reigned in some of their more aggro tendencies, such as on the beautiful slow build of "Pots&Pans" and the meditative "Brace Yourself," which features some of Seth Jabber's most restrained playing to date. But that doesn't mean they still forgot how to shove a bag full of rocks down your throat. "The Equestrian", "Raging in the Plague Age", and "Slugs in the Shrubs" are all candidates for the LSF hall of fame of ragers.

9)
Health - Health

Heavy as shit without being metal. This is what My War-era Black Flag would sound like if they were still around today. Did I mention it's fucking heavy?

8)
No Age - Weirdo Rippers

What Damaged-era Black Flag would sound like if they were still around today.

7)
Ghostface Killah - The Big Doe Rehab

People may disagree and say it should be the new Wu-Tang record, but I haven't heard it yet (remember what I said about being a lazy listener?). Anyway, It's pretty hard for Ghostface to do anything wrong. And while Fishscale remains the gold standard he's set for the next few years, it's pretty hard to find anything remotely worth complaining about on The Big Doe Rehab, except maybe when that cunt-mop from Fall Out Boy bleats all over "The Prayer." Still though, it's Ghostface, you know it's gonna be good. And that's why it's number seven here.

6)
A Place to Bury Strangers - A Place to Bury Strangers

Well I say it's about goddamn time we had a shoegaze revival. Chapterhouse have some debts they need to pay off. And this is the perfect soundtrack to the nascent "nu-gaze" movement (you saw it here first folks). Best played at spirit crushing volume.

5)
Magik Markers - Boss

Now that we know they can play their instruments, they can start making albums that are just as arresting and powerful as Boss.

4)
Lil' Wayne - Services Rendered

Does Lil' Wayne sleep at night? I can't imagine that he does. The man is the hardest working rapper on the scene to day, even beating out Tupac (whose output has begun to look less like a geyser and more like a manageable stream). The fact is he's not even that great on the mic when you first hear him! He doesn't have the charisma of a Jay-Z or Snoop Dogg, and his albums are typically mixed bag affairs. So why is he number 4? I have no idea, except that he's managed to lodge onto my brain this year like a fucking STD.

3)
Times New Viking - Present the Paisley Reich

Times New Viking like to get beer thrown on them as they play. Times New Viking sound as though they were recorded in a tin can or in a Perfect Sound Forever afterthought. Times New Viking wrote the best song about being a teenager ever, which pretty much ensures their greatness for all time.

2)
Black Dice - Load Blown

Art school white boy funk for art school white boy people.

1)
Beirut - Fly Club Cup

:Fap fap fap: (Hey, Fuck you. It's good. He's like the indie Michael MacDonald or something.)

Top Records of the Year Continue

But first...

Celebrate the birth of your lord and savior in style this Christmas with JFK of Kick Out the James! He'll be rocking "Jesus" songs all day so be sure to check it out.

And now for Jess Kelly of Say Goodbye to the Ground and her favorite records of the year. You will notice that aside from number one, Jess has dispensed with any sort of numerical hierarchy. A bold statement that says something about our reliance on quantification and ranking? We can only hope so.

#1 to the Max:
Do Make Say Think – You, You’re a History In Rust

The following tie for “Totally Sweet Highlights of 2k7, but Not #1, Nope, No Way”:
Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
Halleljuah the Hills – Collective Pyschosis Begone
Bread and Roses – Deep River Day
The Lucksmiths – Spring a Leak
Trans Am – Sex Change
Feist – The Reminder
Jason Anderson - Tonight

Top Ten of 2007 Part II

Here's Rock DJ Mike Mulhall's Best of '07 list. You'll note the list was compiled in the standard 1-N format, not that ridiculous N-1 style that has caused so much trouble for so many. When all the other lists are posted you'll probably agree that this list is objectively better than all the other lists, and maybe even all the other lists combined.


1. Stars of the Lid- And their Refinement of the Decline


2. Sir Richard Bishop- While my Guitar Violently Bleeds


3. Blank Dogs- All those EPs if you Compile them Together and Pretend it was an LP


4. Glenn Mercer- Wheels in Motion


5. Carbonas- S/T


6. Liars- S/T


7. King Khan & the Shrines- What Is?!


8. Grinderman- S/T


9. Psychedelic Horseshit- Magic Flowers Droned


10. No Age- Weirdo Rippers

And So it Begins...

As 2007 sputters to a close, we here at the ZBC have been waxing nostalgic over the records we've heard this year. Yes, I will truly never forget the exact moment I heard the Jans Lekman record and thought, "Wow, this is really boring. Christ, did we really add this shit?"

Questionable adds aside, 2007 was a great year for music. For the next couple days, we'll be devoting blog space to our favorites of the year list and (probably) long-winded year end overviews. We promise that ours won't suck as hard as Pitchfork's though. Honest.

Today we have Court Hillman '07, former ZBC Rock DJ and resident computer dudes list. Stay tuned for more throughout the week!

Full Lengths

1. Panda Bear's Person Pitch
2. LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver
3. Zeitkratzer's take on Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music
4. Daft Punk's Alive 2007 live recording from Paris
5. Ricardo Villalobos' Fabric 36 mix
6. Rhys Chatham's A Crimson Grail (for 400 Electric Guitars)
7. Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam
8. Trans Am's Sex Change
9. Black Dice's Load Blown
10. Boredoms' Super Roots 8
11. Justice's †
12. Ellen Allien's Fabric 34 mix
13. Battles' Mirrored
14. Radiohead's In Rainbows
15. Aa's gAame
16. Pantha du Prince's This Bliss
17. MIA's Kala
18. Boris and Merzbow's live collaborative Rock Dream in Tokyo
19. HEALTH's self titled release
20. Deerhunter's Cryptogram's

EPs

- EYE's remixes of OOIOO (OOEYEOO)

- Gang Gang Dance's RAWWAR

- Free Blood's debut EP1

Thursday, December 13th: WZBC Countdown + 2 Featured DJs at River Gods

December 13th is the 2nd Thursday of the month, so:

Countdown from 10-11:
WZBC's favorite tracks from our favorite discs of November

Plus 2 Featured DJs:
8:30 - 10: Tracey Stark (host of WZBC’s Mass Ave & Beyond every Friday from 5-6 pm) spinning some of her favorite local holiday and non-holiday tunes. Bands are invited to come with their own CDs to play on the spot.

11-1: Linda (host of WZBC's Shadowbox every Sunday from 6-8 pm) embracing the frigid darkness of December by indulging in some of the most deliciously listenable goth-tinged tracks of the last 25 years.

21+, no cover
125 River Street near Central Square
kitchen closes at 10, bar closes at 1.

WZBC's Top-14 of November 2007:
No. 14: Prints, “Too Much Water,” Prints (Temporary Residence)
No. 13: Gravenhurst, “Trust,” The Western Lands (Warp)
No. 12: We Are Wolves, “Fight & Kiss,” Total Magique (Dare to Care Canada)
No. 11: Grizzly Bear/CSS, “Knife” (covered by CSS), Friend (Warp)
No. 10: Kinski, “Alcohol and Passwords,” Down Below It’s Chaos,” (Sub Pop)
No. 9: Six Organs of Admittance, “Coming to Get You,” Shelter from the Ash (Drag City)
No. 8: Yea Big and Kid Static, “Joining Forces,” Yea Big and Kid Static (Jib Door)
No. 7: Caribou, “Sandy,” Andorra,” (Merge)
No. 6: Christina Kubisch, “Homage with Minimal Disinformation," Five Electrical Walks (Important)
No. 5: Bear in Heaven, “Bag of Bags,” Red Bloom of the Boom (Exile on Mainstream)
No. 4: A Place to Bury Strangers, “To Fix the Gash in Your Head," A Place to Bury Strangers (Killer Pimp)
No. 3: Wooden Shijps, “Blue Sky Bends,” Wooden Shijps (Holy Mountain)
No. 2: Black Dice, “Gore,” Load Blown (Paw Tracks)

No. 1: M.I.A., “20 Dollar,” Kala (Interscope)

Well, What ZBC Wants to Know is Whatever Happened to the OLD Pornographers.

Hey folks, be sure to tune in next week as we will be giving away three passes to the New Pornographers show at the Berklee Performance Center next Wednesday (Dec. 12)!

A pair of tickets will be given away during Rock II (10AM-12pm) on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday next week, so make sure to listen in for your chance to see one of the best goddamn AM Pop bands since the DeFranco Family! Will all 47 members turn out? Only by listening in and winning can you find out!

Updatezzzz

For those of our listeners who don't notice every little development at WZBC (I'm talking about you Creepy Guy and the Democracy Now! audience), I'm happy to announce that we are now fully linked from our main web site wzbc.org! This means you don't have to go digging around through Google or scratch your head in confusion when someone mentions the WZBC Blog. It's right there, in all its hyperlinked glory.

In other news, we'll be posting individual DJs favorite records of 2007 lists here, so keep an eye out for those as the month goes on.

Also, thanks to everyone who tuned in for my Emo Sob Fest yesterday. You may notice on the program schedule listed on wzbc.org that Pip was scheduled to do a Test Pattern of "Good Vibrations" sessions. Well, I fucked up, and forgot that I was scheduled for next week, not yesterday. So those of you who tuned in to hear Brian Wilson shouting incomprehensible commands as grizzled session musicians only to hear poorly recorded ruminations on girls that don't exist and sunsets, I apologize. Pip will be doing his Test Pattern next Friday from 6pm - 7pm.

That's all for now!