Number 8 - Deerhunter - Microcastle

Deerhunter plough a farrow that marks them out from the indie guitar orthodoxy.They blend a myriad of influences, MBV, Jesus and Mary Chain and Ride with the art rock of Sonic Youth and some of the latent mentalism of the Liars.

That Bradford Cox is only 26 is scary. You feel that is still loads to come from his fractured muse.

Number 9 - LambChop - Oh (Ohio)

Kurt Wagner is a genius of that there can be no doubt. Through his work with Lambchop he is amassing a body of work that is unrivaled in the alt.country cannon. Not that Lambchop are still an alt.country band - Wagner and his rotating group of musicians have long since transcended any genre boundaries.

On Oh Ohio Wagner again turns those tiny prosaic moments into musical miracles. He can spin story telling gold from a single phrase, a hushed mumble and some beautiful backing tracks. Hats off to you Mr Wagner.

Lambchop Home Page

Top Ten LPs of 2008 - Number 10 - Ezekiel Honig - Surfaces of A Broken Marching Band

I found this glorious gem of a record on emusic. I was hooked in by the cover even as a tiny jpg on the screen amongst others in the new interface when you log in.

Ezekiel Honig is a Brooklyn based electronica artist and has fashioned a work of wonder and drift on Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band.

This is blissful recording shifting between music concrete, static, reverb,field recordings and twisted acoustic sources. Surface noise dissolves into rhythm, rhythm twists into light, light disappears into dusk, dusk explodes into neon, neon fuses with static space, time bends.

Its a hollowed out ghostly version of dubstep. Its glides on eddies of surface noise and deep dubby drums. You can detect echoes within echoes. There are traces of Pole and Gas but the texture and tone is unique and beautiful. A melancholy reverberating glass heart.

Ezekiel Honig

Durrutti Column Master Tapes Found

Some great news from the Durutti Column website.

Anthony H Wilson's son Oli Wilson has discovered a host of master tapes in his Dad's loft.

The Return of the Master Tapes
A collection of over 50 (yes, fifty) master tapes of original recordings by The Durutti Column (plus a whole load of other tapes by other Factory bands) has been unearthed recently by Oli Wilson during his ongoing work to clear out his dad's loft (the "AHW Loft" to be more precise).

Watch this space for more news as it develops.

The Durrutti Column site is a real treasure trove of information and well worth a visit.

Here's some classic Vini in Finland in 1981