Top 5 Albums of the Year : Vic Spanner

Vic Spanner will be familiat to most regular reader's to this site, having recorded the genre-defying, "Sympathy For The Hermit", which is a crazy album mixing the best of electronica with folk, rock, hip-hop and just as everything else. I called it "warped, chaotic and downright sinister..". His other project, Bonehill, is an orchestra of real-life objects which are used to make some "wonderfully out-there" sounds.

So, as you can imagine, this list is going to be extremely eclectic and most definitely wonderful. His next album, "Microtheft" is due in Spring 2007. But for now he is recording his annual Christmas project, "Buffalo Bill's Big Bag Of Baad Jazz" (Part 5). I urge everyone to join his mad world
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First, though, a quick message from Vic himself.....

"My only complaints about 2006 are that there's not enough time and money in the world to listen to everything I want to, but that won't stop me trying. Also, where the hell was MF Doom this year? By his usual rate we should have had two albums from him, so I can only conclude that Dangermouse somehow destroyed his creativity after the Dangerdoom album".


5. Various Artists - "Gold Leaf Branches" (Digitalis )

"If there was one record label I obsessed over this year, it was Brad Rose's Digitalis label. This 3 cd, 59 track compilation was ridiculously well priced, and has so much on it that I'm still working through it now. The immediate highlights were all new tracks from James Blackshaw, Six Organs Of Admittance, The Gray Field Recordings, and Agitated Radio Pilot, to name a few. Worth owning just for Timothy, Revelator's incredible version of "Friday Morning", which features probably the loveliest banjo playing I've ever heard."


4. Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice - "Gypsy Freedom" (5RC)

"There's the forest, the backwoods, and somewhere way beyond that, there's this lot. On one album they manage to sound like music from the Clangers, a Pagan ritual, scratchy Blues improv, Led Zeppelin, Twin Peaks and that feeling where you wake up from an odd dream but have no memory of what it actually was. My personal favourite is the lovely, dreamy folk of "Dread Effigy"



3. A Hawk And A Hacksaw - "The Way The Wind Blows" (Leaf)

"I wasn't sure Jeremy Barnes could top the last AHAAH album, but by teaming up with Balkan speedfolk demons Fanfare Ciocarlia, the lucky listener gets an album that is both haunting and fun and had me dancing around the room. Catch them live too, if only to see how many instruments one man can play at the same time"




2. Yndi Halda - "Enjoy Eternal Bliss" (Big Scary Monsters/ Burnt Toast Vinyl)

"Three tracks, 45 minutes. Local heroes Yndi Halda's epic E.P. arrived in the form of a personalised hardback copy of "Danger In Deep Space" (a Tom Corbett Space Cadet Adventure), with nature shots inserted by the band, and a note apologising for the delay in sending it (they like to hand make their cds). The music ?: Epic, beautiful, spine chilling, sad and incredible, the world needs some new adjectives for this music. There's a moment exactly ten minutes into "We Flood Empty Lakes" that sounds like a million superheroes flying through the stormy skies at once. Finally, a band worth giving a shit about"


1. James Blackshaw - "Sunshrine" (Digitalis)

"An album ? An E.P.? .Who knows ?. Either way, the first of the two tracks is 26 gorgeous minutes of slowly building 6 and 12 string guitar, bells, glockenspiel and the like, which occasionally wanders into the same strange, exotic land as The Doors' "The End" ,minus the weird poetry. Perfect for staring into the flames of a summer campfire at 2am. Blackshaw barely took a breath before releasing the four track album "O True Believers" (Important Records), proving once more that one man and a guitar needn't mean tedious singer-songwriters."