Shower gel and sexy funk

Just to get you up to speed, two things sparked off this blog entry: one, dancing like an idiot around my room to Big Boi's latest album and two, using Original Source black pepper and cardomom shower gel. In the shower that is, not in combination with the dancing and music.

In the shower I was faced with the choice of two shower gel options, the nice winter cardomom stuff or lime and tea tree. I had a brief thought that the lime and tee tree might work as something to take the edge off the horrendous cold weather that London has been having. It may well seem painfully obvious to anyone reading this, but the kind of light Brazilian bossa fantasies that flashed through my mind when I was making the crucial shower gel decision don't really work in the depths of winter. Black pepper and cardomom definitely wins the day. Then, in a fairly inspired piece of musical synesthesia I thought of two albums I have been listening to a fair bit in recent months, each one corresponding to one of the shower gel options. The lime and tea tree is an excellent collection of German-Brazillian crossover house music mixed by the perma-genius Rainer Truby, called Glucklich Vol.3, the black pepper and cardomom is Sir Lucious Left Foot: Son of Chico Dusty by Big Boi.

I love the kind of music that weaves inbetween latin, jazz and more traditional European house styles, so when I came across Glucklich three months ago it was a dream. Even though the summer was already becoming a distant memory, Truby's picks dominated my stereo like a funkier version of the music bore you find in the corner of all the best parties. Summer does fade however, and with it the pleasure of lime shower gel goes too. Winter requires deeper, dirtier notes to get things moving, whether you find them in soap or audio. So although it was actually released right in the middle of summer, when Big Boi came into my life about a month ago with his dirty winter stank, well, sorry Rainer, but there was no contest.

To cut a long story short, the video below celebrates the kind of butt-naked funk that should be the soundtrack to your Winter. And in case a fortitous google search should bring you here six months late, have some lime-flavoured house on me too.

Top 10 albums of the year- and a few more

Album of the year lists are always a bit tricky for me, as I am pretty crap at listening to stuff in the year it comes out. I tend to shy away from stuff that’s being hyped up, then ‘discover it’ on my own terms a few months or years down the line when everyone has moved on. Kind of like the music-nerd equivalent of an urban fox raiding a bin in the dead of night. This year I was a bit more on-point than usual but there was another complication in that 2010 was the best year for music in a long time. Frankly, there was too much stuff for someone as lazy as me to keep up with. To that end I have included a list of honourable mentions for records which I am almost certain I would have loved, but have only heard parts of, or haven’t heard at all yet, and so can’t work out if would be better than the top 10 I have selected. In the case of the Basia Bulat and Roots/John Legend records I gave them a lot of attention and enjoyed them a lot, but not quite as much as the final 10 I picked.

Gorillaz – Plastic Beach – A clear standout for album of the year for me, expansive, daring, stylistically diverse and yet at heart an amazing pop album. Damon Albarn now surely deserves the cliché of national treasure.

Caribou – Swim – I read somewhere about this record that it is both the perfect Saturday night and Sunday morning record. That sums up the thing better than anything else I could say.

Gil Scott Heron – I’m New Here – Astonishing reinvention from Scott Heron, aided by the head of XL records Richard Russell. I gave the record 9/10 in my review for DiS here http://drownedinsound.com/releases/15097/reviews/4139058

Pantha Du Prince – Black Noise – The best electronic record of the year for me, in a year with tons of outstanding examples of that genre. The thing I loved most about Black Noise was that although minimal and cerebral, warmth radiated from every second of it.

Strong Arm Steady – In Search of Stoney Jackson – My favourite hip-hop record of the year, and part of a vintage year of releases for Stonesthrow.

Mount Kimbie – Crooks & Lovers – Brilliant exploration of the further reaches of dubstep, and very user-friendly for those uninitiated in the ways of bass music.

Big Boi – Sir Luscious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty – This album would almost be worth including in the list for the fact that it contains one of the songs of the year in Shutterbug alone, but the fact that the rest of the album is awesome seals the deal.



Scuba – Triangulation – Really, there isn’t more than a thin and curly hair between this and the other electronic albums in this selection, but purely in terms of the fact that Triangulation has spent slightly less time on rotation in my stereo it has the lowest position of the four.

Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest – Deerhunter’s latest record is a mysterious trawl through the fog of hindsight and loss. Definitely my favourite guitar album of the year.

The Ruby Suns – Fight Softly – This album didn’t get a lot of love across the music press/blogosphere, but I thought it retained all the fun and charm of previous Ruby Suns records while ditching the world music for electronic influences. For more wise words on why this record was great read this
http://drownedinsound.com/releases/15174/reviews/4139298


Honourable mentions
The Phantom Band – Wants
Janell Monae – The ArchAndroid
Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
The Acorn – No Ghost
Gangrene – Gutter Water
Basia Bulat – Heart of My Own
The Roots, John Legend – Wake Up