[0] KM kicks things off

It seems like just last week we were putting the finishing touches on our "Best of 06" columns, yet here we are again trying to make sense of another four seasons of musical output. In retrospect, it seems like I didn't really come across a lot of new music that was breathtakingly new this year, but I did hear plenty of stuff that pleased my ears just fine. Like my friend Tony Dale (below), I'll call it a year of consolidation and expansion rather than revolutionary advance, but I don't think that's a bad thing at all; refining and extending are worthwhile steps that easily can be forgotten in the midst of today's constant mania for novelty.

Some of the freshest and most surprising music that hit my stereo this year was actually old music, and generally also from elsewhere, wherever that may have been. For several years now a rapidly rising tide of reissues of music from Africa, South America, Asia and the Middle East have allowed even a bumpkin such as myself to hear and appreciate some of the mindbendingly inventive forms of popular music that developed in other times and places but never got any exposure here in the West. So I spent a lot of time having my ears rewired by Ghanaian Afrobeat, Cambodian go-go garage rock, Turkish psychedelia, Andean progressive folk, Congolese rumba, and dozens more fantastical genres besides.

Today, of course, we have a much larger set of resources for exposure to music from everywhere (everywhere that's wired, at least). And even if the business of music marketing still tends to keep the exchange uneven, at the same time the network encourages all sorts of surprising subterranean connections. For instance, look at how the ubran-traditional dance music of Congolese groups like Konono No. 1 and others (check out last year's excellent Congotronics 2 compilation, w/the bonus DVD) found enthusiastic ears among international electronic/post-rock musicians and fans, who immediately caught the sympathetic resonances with their own sounds. Such a situation allows for Konono et al to find a type of international exposure that would've been hard to imagine 30 years ago, reaching outside their local home audiences without compromising the raw authenticity of their sounds.

[0] Mali and North Africa have also seen exciting resurgences of new music in the past few years, with artists like Tartit, Etran Finatawa, Vieux Farka Toure (Ali's son), Toumane Diabate, Group Inerane, and others releasing great music that is actually findable outside their homelands. Leading the pack is the amazing Tinariwen, whose third album Aman Iman: Water Is Life (World Village [1]) was only topped this year by the thrill of seeing them play live. Forget the "desert blues" hokum that often gets ladled onto this stuff; try to separate out the exoticism that Westerners often get fixated on - including maybe over-romanticizing the group's story (which, to be fair, is pretty remarkable; not all of us can lay claim to a nomadic tribal background as revolutionary desert guerrillas) - and let the music speak for itself, what you'll hear is pure electric roots trance music of the highest order. Deep, supple electric bass and driving hand percussion set up complex rhythmic flows, through which dance big chunky guitars playing effortlessly interlocking rhythmic/melodic conflations, while layered m/f call-response vocals (plenty of ululations too, if like me you're a fan of such) and wailing psychedelic lead guitars float overhead. To Western ears this seems to take up a space between the heavy polyrhythms associated with West African music and the modal hypnotic forms of Arabic music, and it's a glorious sound of huge skies and wide open spaces. I might even call it the best rock album I heard all year, except it isn't really rock...

One thing that's becoming clearer as a result of all the global reissues mentioned above is that creative musicians from all over the world have often been several legs up on us Westerners in terms of trying to understand and incorporate sounds from elsewhere. Part of that seeming consolidation Tony points out could in fact be folks pausing to absorb all this fresh input; certainly some of my favorite releases this year were about finding new bridges between different sounds and contexts.

[1] In that vein, I especially enjoyed the self-titled first full-length from Voice of the Seven Woods (Twisted Nerve [2]), the musical name of London guitarist Rick Tomlinson. Tomlinson is an associate of the folks behind UK store/labels Finders Keepers and B-Music, who for the past couple of years have been excavating interesting out-of-the-way corners of vintage psych-era music from around the world and presenting them in quite nice CD editions, so presumably he knows his musical arcana. As Voice of the Seven Woods, he seems to be especially interested in exploring shared territory between underground UK acid- and folk-rock of the 60s and 70s, and Turkish and Middle-Eastern music of the same era. The CD's ten tracks (with two bonus hidden on the US edition) weave a variety of brightly colored threads of East-West interchange into an explicitly trippy tapestry - some songs could be a lost collaboration between UK guitarist Davy Graham and Turkish ethno-rock group Mogollar, while others sound like Anatolian guitar hero Erkin Koray took control of the Led Zeppelin... With further nods toward Spanish guitar music and psychedelia of various genealogies, Tomlinson brings together ouds, sitars, and violin with lyrical folk-raga guitar, thumping rock rhythm section, periodic fuzz leads, and occasional floating vocals. It's all richly recorded, dramatically structured and full of surprises, throwing in heavy psychedelic rock and wan songwriter-isms alongside the modal ragas and progressive ethno-explorations with some authority. This tantalizingly short album is full of the sound of possibility, and it's an invigorating thing to hear.

I've been a fan of Steven R. Smith's music for years, initially with avant psych-rock group Mirza back in the late 90s, but perhaps even more what he's done since, playing free-form improvised soundscapes in Thuja (alongside other ex-Mirza folk and stalwarts of the dependable Jeweled Antler label gang), developing a unique style of stately, cinematic drone-rock under his given name, and exploring Eastern European folk forms in the guise of Hala Strana. Heave the Gambrel Roof, the latest Hala Strana album, was initially released by Music Fellowship [3] in a limited-edition art-object format - quarter-inch thick piece of wood as a cover, a medieval-style etching of a village on the front and album info carved into the back; as far as lavishly over-the-top limited edition type things go, it's a pretty nice one. Of course, those have long since been snatched up by sweaty collector paws, but fortunately the music is available in a non-limited CD edition, as Heave features my favorite Hala Strana sounds to date, both earthy and abstract simultaneously. While the method isn't entirely different from his eponymous releases - layered psychedelic instrumental drones - the final results end up in a different land entirely, partly due to the instrumental array - gourd guitar, fretted spike fiddle, hurdy gurdy, psaltery, bouzouki, accordion, mandolute, harmonium, bul bul tarang... you get the idea - and partly to the musical sources - four of the songs are adaptations of traditional Albanian tunes, and others carve out variations of those forms in a space between the Slavic modal minimalism of composer Arvo Pärt and the crumbling psychedelic majesty of Smith's other solo work. It's equally effective conceptually and as a minor-key mood piece, with a melancholy wintry feel; a dense, woody center, the flickering light of a roaring fire, hovering smoky drone haze, and a blanket of snow across a mountainside village.

[3]The Family Elan is the solo identity of Glasgewian string wizard Chris Hladowski, and his (their? its?) debut full-length release was this year's Stare of Dawn (Locust [4]), which whips up discrete whirlwinds of visionary acoustic swirl via a variety of European and Middle Eastern folk forms. Hladowski's resume has been filling up with group projects and supporting roles over the past few years, wide in range and all excellent - from Scatter's art-punk-folk-freejazz, to surrealist chamber music with Daniel Padden's One Ensemble, to edgily spare art-folk with Nalle, to freeform freakout drone as the Mystery Water Saloon Boys (with Ashtray Navigations' Phil Todd; see below). Hladowski says his inspirations for this particular album came from Greek rebetiko, Kurdish sufi devotional music, and Azerbaijani folk, and one can hear bits of UK trad peeking through as well; but it's no kind of pastiche, Hladowski clearly understands and loves these disparate sources, and they're drawn together with care. The album was recorded by John Cavanagh (aka Phosphene), pretty much a guarantee of sonic excellence, and the moving thickets of sound are captured with crystalline clarity. The result is nearly perfect, a free-flowing Arabesque of plucked, strummed, and bowed string instruments and shaken, rattled and thumped hand percussion (plus occasional woodwinds from Nalle partner Hanna Tuulikki) that effortlessly blends its various modes and styles into an out-of-time cohesive whole.

On the other hand to much of the above, recent work from English folksinger Sharron Kraus shows that the biggest move forward can sometimes be to go further back into one's own roots. In late 2006 Kraus released Leaves from Off the Tree, a low-key album of folk songs in collaboration with Helena Espvall and Meg Baird (of Philadelphia's Espers), and it turns out that was an indicator of even better things to come - Baird's Dear Companion from this year was a beautiful collection of American folk song that probably should be on this list too, and Sharron's new Right Wantonly A-Mumming (Bo'Weavil [5]) takes a parallel line, with a program of new and trad songs that move through the seasons skillfully enough that the new and old is hard to tell apart. In its original contexts of course, folk was not a music marketing genre but an expression of community life and shared experiences within the contexts of larger natural processes - ceremonies for changing seasons, stages of life, etc. This seasonal/occasional approach can be hard to hold onto in a contemporary music making context, but there have been a few great modern folk concept albums about the seasonal and occasional roots of folk music, things like the Watersons' Frost & Fire or Malicorne's Almanach, and Right Wantonly sounds real nice next to both of those. It doesn't hurt that Kraus has surrounded herself with a crack squad of contemporary English folk players, including members of vocal group GMW, and the great Jon Boden and John Spiers (whose fine work as a duo and with the big band Bellowhead has helped reenergize the whole form). To the modern ear the arrangements might sound comparatively spare, but the songs have a fine variety of voices and trad instrumentation, with just subtle hints of her more psychedelic/experimental earlier work (such as the Yuletide collaborations with avant-folk group the Iditarod back in the early 00s), and this is a fine thing to drink a pint with at any of the seasons represented within.

[5]We are currently living through a happy time for fans of acoustic guitar music, as players like Glenn Jones, Jack Rose, Harris Newman, and Steffen Basho-Junghans have been continuing to make hay out of possibilities opened up back in the 60s and 70s by John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Sandy Bull, and a bunch more besides. Probably my favorite of the younger guitarists is London-based James Blackshaw, whose The Cloud of Unknowing (Tompkins Square [6]) is another step forward for him. If anything, Blackshaw's flowing picking technique has gotten even more dizzying than on his past releases, and it's brought to the fore here; the mystical drone sections that colored his earlier releases are mostly absent, with only occasional violin supporting the kaleidoscopic acoustic guitar. The album features five original instrumental pieces for uniquely-tuned 12-string acoustic that reach well outside of folk music per se, drawing more from Renaissance religious music and classical composition (West and East) than from conventional folk sources. Which sounds all heavy I know, but Blackshaw's playing and this album are really anything but - in fact, the dominant mood throughout is almost holy, open and spiritual and quite a joy to hear, capturing a mood of watching sunlight play through the stained glass of an old cathedral while a vaguely-perceived ceremony of spirits raise elegant songs of praise all around.

My other favorite guitar album of the year doesn't actually have any guitar on it. On Deliverance (Locust [7]), Minneapolis-based Paul Metzger plays a modified 21-string banjo of his own devising; with an expanded range and a layer of resonating sympathetic strings, it often sounds more like an Indian vina or sarod than any conventional banjo. Metzger developed his elaborate, mercurial playing style on this and other homemade instruments during some 20 years of woodshedding, while publicly playing post-punk art-rock with his unjustly neglected trio TVBC. Long believing that no one would be interested in hearing his extended meditative improvisations on strange instruments, Metzger was finally persuaded a few years back by his friend Erik Wivinus (guitarist for DW psych-rock faves Salamander) to share this stuff with the rest of us mere mortals. During that long period of development, Metzger developed a mercurial style that places a crazed array of techniques (plucking, strumming, picking, bowing, tapping) and an unparalleled instrumental command at the service of long-form structured improvisations that tread musical territories shared by Indian ragas and Middle Eastern devotional music. Deliverance builds on Paul's first two solo albums, with clearer sonics and even more extended pieces (the title track clocking at over 30 minutes), all amazingly recorded in one take on a single evening. Such length might seem daunting, but there's not a wasted note throughout; this is the tightest and most focused music you could imagine, with a wild balance of freedom and control.

One of the godfathers of this whole ongoing avant/free/acid/whatever-folk thing is most certainly Ben Chasny's Six Organs of Admittance, though it's not really fair to either praise or blame him for any intentionality. Back in the late 90s, it would've seemed fairly goofy to imagine that the idea of self-released recordings of modal deep woods folk guitar psychedelia would somehow catch on and become a "thing." Chasny has definitely seemed uncomfortable sticking with that prototype, spending more time playing hairy freak-rock with Comets on Fire and making experimental sounds with several collaborative projects. Meanwhile, Six Organs moved from its homemade origins into a professional recording environment a couple of albums back, and while the results sounded great and allowed for more space, they perhaps didn't fully utilize the possibilities of the situation. This year's Shelter from the Ash (Drag City [8]), however, is a decidedly studio-centric move, as all the pieces were sketched out in advance and structured in the studio. The result is a conceptually united album that, while still leaving room for psychedelic excess, keeps the focus on a set of exceptionally dark, edgy songs. Far from the kind of unfocused messing about and ostensibly mystical pastiches that have sometimes bogged down Six Organs' imitators, these pieces share a deliberate and thematically unified bleak melancholy that is carefully arranged for maximum impact. This is also the most effective mix yet of electric and acoustic elements on a Six Organs record, Chasny allowing his collaborators to open up some cracks of light within the shadowy emotional apocalypse of the songs. Naff packaging, but otherwise pretty great.

[8] Another artist who keeps remarkably finding ways to hone his approach is Japanese psychedelic guru Makoto Kawabata. As much as I've admired his various projects (from the spacerock noise of Acid Mothers Temple to the ethnic mysticism of his Inui releases, and all stops in between), I do understand those who complain that a tighter focus or more editing might serve them well (too many releases that, whatever their individual qualities, can be hard to distinguish). This year the prodigious output slowed down a tad and the results are impressive - the latest from Acid Mothers Temple, Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under the Stars (on Important Records [9]), is one of their finest releases. Kawabata often uses classic freak-rock totems as launching platforms; here the title and cover art reference the mid-70s post-hippy lysergic space-prog of Gong and the Cosmic Jokers, influences heard most directly on the 22-minute "Crystal Rainbow Pyramid", a loping outer-space gleaming silver guitar boogie decorated with cosmic synth swirls (plus an invasion of jabbering UFO-mushroom-gnome chanting). The disc's centerpiece though is the 40-minute "Electric Psilocybin Flashback", which adds ethnic instrumentation (including bouzouki and fuzz sitar), saxophone, nylon-string guitar, and lovely female vocals to its epic ebb and flow; listened to correctly, it can indeed create the condition it describes whether or not one personally has any experience in that area. This also deserves praise as the best-sounding AMT release to date, which helps a lot - on past recordings the band's overwhelming telepathic blitzkrieg, so massive in a live setting, often became swamped by general all-in-the-red sonic extremity, so it's cool to have a sound you can get lost in rather than one that just pummels you into submission. If one were only going to own a few Acid Mothers releases (a course of action we in no way recommend), this should certainly be one of them.

The San Francisco-based Holy Mountain [10] label was on some kind of tear this year, with excellent releases from Wooden Shjips, Daniel Higgs, Mammatus, Blues Control, and my personal favorite, La Otracina's Tonal Ellipse of the One. This New York group has been around for a few years, with documentation of their steady progress into leftfield progspace via a clutch of limited releases. Tonal Ellipse finds the reconstituted group firing on all rocket cylinders, blasting off into a veritable whirlwind of muscular cosmic action that avoids any cheese potential contained in the source materials by processing it all via a thick layer of urban klang and grime. The lineup is stripped down - two guitars, drums, occasional bass - but the sounds are intense and expansive, with a totally graceful and unselfconscious ability to mix free jazz (the tracks with electric bass could be from some long-lost Ray Russell/John McLaughlin collaboration) with the heavy cosmic end of Krautrock (Guru Guru, Ash Ra Tempel) and classic heads-down progrock (especially ca. 73-75 King Crimson), while finding contemporary sonic references in the extended noise-rock spaceouts of Bardo Pond and Kawabata's more aggressive jazz-rock outings (the Mothers of Invasion, Musica Transonic). But these are just comparison points to emphasize the style-free nature of what these guys are up to, and from a listening angle it's anything but an intellectual exercise - this is seriously involving elsewhere-minded stuff with an emphasis on group interplay and dymanics, and is one of the year's more thrilling listens if you care for that sort of thing.

[10] This was also a solid year for noise-oriented music. From avant minimalism to post-metal maximalism (and sometimes vice versa), those with an ear for bracing sound experimentation had much to chew on (hmmm, aural chewing?). As seems to be a theme here, many of my favorites came from the UK, with excellent releases from both the ceremonial drone-freakout contingent - Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof!, Astral Social Club - and the avant-free wing - including a number of releases featuring the amazing free drummer Alex Nielson, especially duos with Richard Youngs and with Ben Reynolds (as Motor Ghost). One artist who bridges both of those realms and many others is Phil Todd, whose work under the Ashtray Navigations banner (and others) continued to pour forth from a variety of sources in 07 (even though his label Memoirs of an Aeshtete seems to have gone on hiatus). Over the past decade and a half Todd has created his very own world of sound that is both instantly recognizable and endlessly varied - layers of sounds, bubbling, whirring, buzzing, distorted, and ghostly sounds, often oriented to a particular scale or mode (which gives some of the resonance of Indian and SE Asian musics), out of which simple, floating melody lines effervesce and evolve, with an overall impact that is often simultaneously coruscating and beautiful. Todd is also a master of long-form construction and dynamics, as evidenced on my pick of this year's AN litter, a quite gorgeous vinyl LP on the excellent QBICO [11] label (often noted for its avant-garde and free-jazz releases, also this year for a whole batch of stunningly-packaged UK noise-drone LPs) that features just one lengthy track per album side. On side A's delightfully-titled "Throw Up in the Sky", a tribally free-bashed drum kit underpins an outwardly-bound almost-rock whooshing drone that starts on a single note and expands to symphonic overload intensity. "With Fine Clinking Magnets" over on side B is more restrained, using a heavily effected acoustic slide (resonator?) guitar as the focus for a slow-building free raga that gradually ratchets up the tension before being overtaken at the end by several minutes of furiously squalling electronics. It may seem odd, but this stuff is ideal meditation music, not in a mushy new agey way, but as a kind of lysergic cranial scouring, sonically scraping away mental plaque, leaving one feeling refreshed and cleansed, if perhaps a bit spent.

Most of the releases mentioned in passing above could be considered "honorable mentions"; a few others that didn't fit anywhere else: Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood - Preying in Circles (Root Strata); GHQ - Crystal Healing (Three Lobed); Giant Skyflower Band - Blood of the Sunworm (Soft Abuse); Kemialliset Ystavat (Fonal); Linus Pauling Quartet - All Things Are Light (Camera Obscura); Marissa Nadler - Songs III: Bird on the Water (Peacefrog); The North Sea - Exquisite Idols (Type); Sapat - Mortise and Tenon (Siltbreeze); Softwar (Digitalis); Mike Tamburo - Language of the Birds and Other Fantasies (New American Folk Hero/Music Fellowship); Wovoka - Paiste De (Holy Room).

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Passing the baton to Tony Dale

Maybe I was looking the wrong way, but 2007 seemed to me an unremarkable year musically, certainly lacking in discernable major movements - the kind that come along every so often and shake the culture to its fundaments - and also lacking in bellwether releases. There seemed to be a lot of consolidation going on. Indicative of the year was that much discussion revolved around delivery (the continued ascent of digital downloads, the resurgence of vinyl) rather than content. A shift starkly illustrated by the column inches devoted not to the musical and technical merits of the new Radiohead album, but its mode of first release (pay-what-you-feel-like digital download as commercial Trojan horse). 2007 was also a year in which I threw my hands in the air and gave up on any pretense of trying to keep up with the CD-R underground, where I'm sure a great deal of stellar work was done. Trying to track, select and acquire key works in this sub-cultural matrix presented a logistical nightmare, so what did pass across the desk was probably random, arbitrary and not necessarily representative. Apologies to the works I missed - it was practical not personal. What follows are some releases that broke through the ordinary fog of daily routine and demanded to be listened to intently, and not as sonic wallpaper.

[11] Here at Deep Water, we've devoted a lot of text to the endeavors of the fine United Bible Studies collective and their main conduit to the world, Deserted Village [12] records. 2007 was a quiet year for both, as hard drive crashes and long-gestation projects occupied their time. A new release by Dave Colohan's Agitated Radio Pilot project, World Winding Down, did see the light of day on the Deadslackstring imprint, and immediately justified its long-awaited status, presenting the listener with a richly imagined double CD of exquisitely melancholy singer-songwriter fare, stark instrumentals and field-recordings. Contributions from Mirakil Whip, Sharron Kraus, Phosphene, Allison O'Donnell (ex Mellow Candle), Richard Moult, Maya Elliott, Richard Skelton and others helped Colohan perform his alchemy, and the whole thing resonated majestically in the best tradition of artists like Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt and Tindersticks. Also from Deserted Village Records [13] but in a completely different vein was the deeply unsettling debut CD (awakeinwhitechapel) from Norwegian "splatter-folk" duo Thinguma-jigsaw. A winning mixture of pop-culture deconstruction, absurdist theatre and performance art, the record appears to have been made by mad children whose entire musical upbringing entailed being played Comus's First Utterance on endless loop, with the occasional merciful switch to some Phillip Glass soundtrack or other. Hallucinatory banjo and flute and musical saw back unfettered vocals from both Seth Buncombe and Martha Redivivus in a vividly cinematic stew that is as compelling as it is unsettling. It's a world where David Tibet and Tim Renner meet Dock Boggs in a damp cobbled lane under gaslight to drink absinthe and await the end of days.

Taking the concept of reissuing a rare 70s private pressing further than I can ever recall before, Tim Renner's Hand/Eye [14] label did a magnificent job of bringing the delicate Christian psych-folk of the Trees Community to an unsuspecting public. After hearing a CD-R of their very rare The Christ Tree LP, Tim made it his mission to track down community members and see what existed in the way of source materials for a reissue. Not only did he succeed in finding many members of the collective, but unearthed boxes of hitherto unreleased tapes, mainly of live recordings. Ultimately throwing rational rules of commerce to the four winds, the single LP turned into a deluxe 4CD package with literally hours of transcendental bliss contained within. It sold out before most folks even knew it had been released, and was followed up by a single disc edition of the primary material. Forensic in detail, fanatical in execution, and meritorious musically, the standard by which future reissues of deep obscurities should be measured.

[14] Tara Burke's work as Fursaxa will probably always be best received in a live setting, or on a really good set of live recordings like Amulet a few years back, but Alone in the Dark Wood (ATP Recordings [15]) is still several levels of existence above most of the year's offerings. As I wrote earlier in the year in a review elsewhere: "Tara Burke's music has always been a web of paradoxes. At once post-modern and medieval, technologically-aware and lo-fi, part of a free folk movement and sui generis, her project Fursaxa has often sounded like the perfect accompaniment to the unmaking of the world." My dream band would be her out in front of Bardo Pond (of which there is a taste on Amulet). But the instrumentation here is nonetheless beautiful and timeless: chord organ, casiotone and Farfisa, detuned guitar, and looped, multi-tracked voice are augmented by violin, banjo, balalaika, organ, bells, flute and percussion to quantum-shifting, mind-altering effect. Equally transformative (as one would expect from the title) is Songs of Transformation from Martyn Bates and Max Eastley on Musica Maxima Magnetica [16] (the same label that gave us the Murder Ballads series of discs from Bates). Bates gives vocally extraordinary interpretations of traditional folk songs that had a profound effect on him as a young ‘un, and the whole thing pays tribute to a youth spent under the covers listening to Shirley Collins and the like on radio broadcasts that must have seems to come from another time entirely. If you thought it impossible for anyone to do anything new with a ballad such as "Nottamun Town", take a listen to the version on here. Max Eastley does a wonderful job of creating a spooked electronic accompaniment to Bates's peerless vocals, though closer inspection reveals that only acoustic instruments were used. Songs of Transformation was originally commissioned by Virgin Records UK for release in 1997, but never came out when its sponsor left the company. At last it can be given its proper place among the great works of imaginative folk music interpretation.

One challenge all teenage prodigies surely face is how to transition to an adult artist. For Marianne Nowottny, who hadn't released a full-length studio recording for five years before the new What Is She Doing? (on Abaton Book Company [17]), it seemed to be a question of allowing things to happen in their own time, getting studies out of the way, experimenting with new instruments and forms, and just not rushing into things. Ms. Nowottny came to the attention of New York avant garde music and art circles in 1998, at the age of sixteen, with the release of Afraid of Me, described as "one of the most astonishing debuts ever" by New York Press. In 2000, the double CD set Manmade Girl was described as "probably the most important album of the new millennium." I'm not sure what some of those early reviewers would think of What Is She Doing?, a self-confessed attempt to create an album to be, in her own words, "as much Fleetwood Mac as Lil' Kim". I'm not sure it sounds like either, but it is full of delirious pop-tart melodies, danceable rhythms wrangled from cheesy drum machines, the familiar toy instruments used in new and shiny ways, and a beaming sense of fun surrounding the obvious cleverness and wonderfully skewed torch vocals.

[17] The pairing of quicksilver-changing Japanese psychonauts Boris with possibly the world's finest and most expressive psych guitarist Michio Kurihara might seem like one of those fantasy hook-ups music nerds think up during extended smoking sessions, but the concept was made real with the album Rainbow (Drag City [18] in 2007, a 2006 release in Japan). I've never been a massive Boris fan, but they collaborate well here, as they did previously with Sunn0))) on Altar. Tracks range from vintage MBV shoegaze damage, through scorching power-trio workouts made even more fried by the addition of Kurihara's unfettered six-string carnage, to deep-temple ruminations that would not be out of place on a Ghost album, fittingly I suppose. Sometimes they seem to get lost in what they are doing, and fail to self-edit, and that is not an unusual thing for Japanese psych artists either, witness the excesses of the Acid Mothers Temple catalog. At its best though it's jaw-dropping. Which neatly brings us to the maestros. I remember thinking when I received Ghost's In Stormy Nights (Drag City [19]) in January 2007 that the album of the year was probably already in the bag, and there surely is a case to be made that that was so. Three years on from Hypnotic Underworld, another progressive rock epic from Masaki Batoh and collaborators, every bit as solemn and dignified as its predecessor. Sure, the 28 minute Faustian collage of "Hemicyclic Anthelion" divided fans looking for the next "Guru in the Echo", but Ghost were astute enough to follow this challenge with a bubbling, driven set of tracks that could not be denied by the most persnickety of fans. The tribal anthem "Caledonia", originally recorded by ESP Disk freaks Cromagnon, gets a fine reading, and the album concludes with some placating and glorious psych-folk in "Motherly Bluster" and the exquisite closing track "Grisaille".

One of the best things about Rickie Lee Jones's startling The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard (New West [20]), is trying to figure out whether it's actually a Christian singer-songwriter record, or some kind of meta-Christian analysis of a range of aspects of how Christianity is used by interest groups to their own ends at this point in history. Deriving inspiration from her chum Lee Cantelon's book The Words (a modern rendering of the words of Christ), Jones has created an album that seems to go some way to reclaiming Christianity from the charlatans, moneylenders and hypocrites that form the bulk of the religious right. It's like nothing RLJ has recorded before, and not like much else either, certainly not from the mainstream. Much use is made of stream-of-consciousness improvisation, but the results don't sound half-assed in any way. She's accompanied by a great band as well, and at times the whole thing rocks like a some untainted, pre-Charismatic, pre-Pentacostal congregation just out to enjoy some kick-ass proselytizing.

[20] It's been a bumper year for Christian Kiefer fans, with him releasing about as much material as he did in the previous five or so years. Dogs and Donkeys (Undertow [21]) is among the strongest works he has been involved with, equal to the sublime Medicine Show (Extreme 2003) and superior to The Black Dove (Tompkins Square), his 2006 collaboration with Sharron Kraus (a great champion of his behind the scenes who should be now acknowledged). Brilliant songwriting, production and musicianship collide for possibly the year's finest record: key contributions by Wilco's Nels Cline, Low's Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, and the Band's Garth Hudson (coup!) are used with the skill of a master tactician. And "Economic Theory" is one of the finest tracks I've heard in a decade. His next project is a 3CD set for the Standard Recording Company called Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs about 43 U.S. Presidencies: one song for each US president, with Kiefer, Jefferson Pitcher (Above the Orange Trees) and Matthew Gerken (Nice Monster) sharing song-writing duties equally. Having heard some of this material I can safely say that it will be appearing in quite a few end-of-2008 lists.

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