This was a breezy, dream-pop delight. Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally's third record as Beach House moved away from the (sorry guys) usual Galaxie 500/Mazzy Star comparisons and opened up new avenues of aural delights.
Legrand's low, forceful voice and organ combined with Scally's guitar to produce the graceful, woozy and occasionally droning - a good thing, since you're asking - songs found on Teen Dream. There's a sadness at the record's heart (listen to 'Walk in the Park', that's one sad and lonely drum machine) but after witnessing the band live earlier in the year, the choruses lift the listener away from the gloom to somewhere more hopeful. Lovely stuff.
16.Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma.
Whoah! Flying Lotus, aka Steve Ellison, came at the listener with the most ambitious and sprawling electronica record of the year. Taking in hip hop, jazz, glitch, IDM and found sounds, Cosmogramma is a multi-faceted treat.
Listening to the record, you can hear nods to the past in the jazz elements (Ellison is the nephew of jazz legend Alice Coltrane), but this is music that is taking great leaps forward in terms of what a musician can achieve in the space of 45mins or so. There's the bass-heavy 'Pickled!', the soulful 'Mmmhmm' and the spluttering, manic 'Nose Art' - but there's so much going on, and the tracks bleed into one another, that it could take weeks for you to get a real handle on this record.
It reminds me in many ways of Four Tet's wonderful Dialogue album. If you liked that record, please do check out Cosmogramma. Flying Lotus is only going to get better.
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