Thursday, January 1, 2009

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: December 2008

Wow. Our last charts for 2008 include a sizeable portion of our own music. Thank you, listeners! Now go out and buy some for yourselves to help keep the wolf from our door, please.

The irrepressible Ari Up tops the chart with a great dancehall-punk rant from her recent solo album. Can we hope for some new Slits material in the new year?

The number two slot is held by a local mostly-instrumental group, the Interstellar Grains, and their brief sitar piece, "The Past". We have a couple of Interstellar Grains tracks on our upcoming playlist, and are looking forward to their show at the Boom Boom Room in a couple of weeks. We saw this band open for the Mountain Goats and Kaki King last year and asked them for a CD. Next thing you know, they're at number two. How about that?

Third is a Liliput track J Neo Marvin really loves. A convulsive post-punk roar. Fourth is 801, Phil Manzanera's side project from the 70s. Here, Brian Eno sings a song written by Charles Hayward, who went on to form the legendary post-punk band This Heat. Beautifully dreamy.

Brian Jonestown Massacre's "Feel So Good" is back again, and why not? A sexy, romantic male-female duet from these psychedelic provocateurs. An early Stones B-side with hilarious minimalist lyrics, a definitive Neu! drone piece which gave birth to a million Stereolab songs, and the Fall's trubute to reggae and Protestantism all make their appearance.

Belizer, an artist from the wartorn country of Georgia, shows up with a strident piece of criticism against...someone? And Takeshi Murata, our friend from Japan, re-enters with his On-U Sound-like instrumental number, "Decipher". Fuxa, a longtime Ear Candle favorite, delight us with their cover of Suicide's "Cheree".

And that's not all. A little roots reggae, Jesus & Mary Chain feedback, a dreamy song from the late great Electrelane, a hoedown from X-tal's former labelmates Harm Farm, and our friend Celine Keller's sultry Eurodisco theme for her animation featurette, Turnaround.

Artists, please get in touch to receive your Ear Candle Radio buttons! (And if you are a band, let us know how many people there are to send the appropriate number of buttons to.)

And listeners, remember it's your votes that matter most here. Keep listening; we have some excellent radio in store for you in 2009.

1. Ari Up - Allergic (Featuring Terranova) - Dread More Dan Dead
2. Interstellar Grains - The Past - Interstellar Grains
3. Liliput - DC-10 - Liliput/Kleenex
4. 801 - Rongwrong - 801 Live
5. X-tal - Apocalypservice - Who Owns Our Dreams
6. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Feel So Good (Previously Unreleased) - Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective (Disc 2)
7. The Rolling Stones - Stoned - The Rolling Stones Singles Collection: The London Years [Disc 1
8. Neu! - Fur Immer (Forever) - Neu! 2
9. X-tal - The Humboldt Desert - The Humboldt Desert
10. The Fall - Kurious Oranj - I Am Kurious Oranj
11. Belizer - No Deal - Catharsis Gallery
12. Fuxa - Cheree (Richard Formby mix) - Fuxa Commits Suicide
13. Earth & Stone - In Time To Come - Kool Roots
14. The Jesus And Mary Chain - Bo Diddley is Jesus - Barbed Wire Kisses
15. The Experimental Bunnies - Nonexistence - Music For The Integrity Tone Scale
16. Electrelane - To The East - No Shouts, No Calls
17. Takeshi Murata - Decipher - Decipher
18. J Neo Marvin And The Content Providers - Are You A Good Witch Or A Bad Witch? - What Is Truth?
19. Harm Farm - Jersey Devil - Spawn
20. Celine Keller and Holger Fath-Tati - Turnaround - Turnaround Soundtrack

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a funny story involving "Bo Diddley is Jesus", I saw the JAMC at the Nick Sanderson (drummer in Clock DVA, Gun Club, JAMC and the singer in Earl Brutus) tribute show and Black Box Recorder, who is the guitarist is John Moore (second JAMC drummer) and is a hardcore Bo Diddley fan, he has the guitar! on his myspace they is a picture of him with the man himself so I of course shouted "Bo Diddley is Jesus" at the end of the set and he had a big smile on his face, I also shouted "EXPRESSWAY" over and over which was his infamously shit band (the marketing of the album was the fact John was in JAMC for like 2 months), I have their album on cd and vinyl, you HAVE to see the youtube clip, it's hilarious.

J Neo Marvin said...

I'm glad you're out there heckling bands so I don't have to anymore.

Anonymous said...

I also heckled The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (good indie pop band from New York), when they went on about how they wrote this song about how cool it is that Kurt Cobain was a big Vaselines fan and I shouted "AND FLIPPER TOO!".

I only time I heckled anybody because I hated them was Evan Dando when he opened for The Jesus & Mary Chain.