ARTICLES
2006 Top 10s and 20s
2006 Artist Picks

ALBUMS
17 Pictures
Angina P
Ateleia
Benni Hemm Hemm
The Boats
Cappablack
Celer
Dead Letters Dead Words
Deceptikon
Deerhunter
Denzel + Huhn
Displayaz
Dollboy
Drone
Eluvium
Emanuele Errante
The Eternals
Fear Falls Burning
Marcus Fjellström
Fonoda
Funkstörung
Goldfrapp
Gyroscope
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The Idealist
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Landing
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Library Tapes
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Mad EP
Mahogany
Melodium
Mem1
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Momus
Monoceros
Mormo
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Original Hamster
Pierson & Horton
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Radical Face
Retail Sectors / Yaporigami
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Scott Solter Plays PIM
Sideshow
Silicone Soul
Skream
Splinters
Mark Templeton
Thread Pulls
T. Raumschmiere
Tycho
Ultre
Virculum
Xela

COMPILATIONS/MIXES
AudioArt 03
Cumulous
Dubstep Allstars Vol. 4
Eriksen / Toft / Utarm
Katapult VA Vol. 3
Let's Lazertag Sometime
Mr Geoffrey & JD Franzke
Skagen / Halvorsen / Toft
Tectonic Plates

3"/7"/10"/12"/EPs
Gabriel Ananda
Robert Bardini
DAT Politics
Dead Letters / R. Sundin
Dogmixer
Benjamin Fehr
Fenin
HL
I Make This Sound
Zoë Irvine
Kyriakides and Moor
Lamont & 2tall
Ljud. & Piloten / Kama Aina
Jacob London
Sam Mcqueen
Miskate
Ryo Miyashita & Hiiragi_
[nara]
New Faces
Of / Greg Davis
Charlemagne Palestine
Phon.o vs Litwinenko
Portable
PostPrior
Samarah
Nicholas Sauser & Ditch
Someone Else
Hannes Teichmann
Tractile
Andy Vaz

IMAGES
F.S. Blumm

Momus: Ocky Milk
American Patchwork

Listeners new to Momus' (Nick Currie) music can be easily waylaid by Ocky Milk's serene, easy-listening surface and miss altogether the surreal lyrical depths lurking beneath the surface (the disco-lounge pop of “The Birdcatcher” includes the line “The headless horse was talking on the kitten's telephone”). Worked on in Berlin, Osaka, and New York, Ocky Milk (named after Ocky the Milkman, a character in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood) completes a trilogy begun with 2003's Oskar Tennis Champion and 2005's Otto Spooky.

The album's string-kissed bossa novas, vaudeville songs, and cabaret folk-pop are generally anything but off-putting, and his singing voice is appealing too; Momus often doubles his voice, with an octave separating the higher pitch and the subtly vocodered lower. “Moop Bears” opens the disc with a cabaret-folk jamboree that resembles Animal Collective jamming with Daedelus, “Frilly Military,” a Beatlesque romp in the musical spirit of “Martha My Dear,” features near-whispered references to a “strawberry kazoo” and the couplet “You can pull on my pony tail / But you'll have to spend your life in jail,” and “Devil Mask, Buddha Mind” suggests what might come from a merger of Hawaiian chant and Chinese instrumentation (bamboo flute, pipa). In “Pleasantness,” Momus' vocal style recalls David Sylvian's, perhaps due to the aura of dramatic theatricality that's present in both. Three songs in particular stand out: the entrancing madrigal ballad “Zanzibar,” “Hang Low,” gently swinging folk pop with a strong chorus hook (“Hang low/ Hang low/ And do no evil / Like airplanes on snow”), and “Nervous Heartbeat,” whose declaration d'amour may be tongue-in-cheek, but is nonetheless affecting on account of the strings' emotive swoop.

Unfortunately the album works less well during its self-indulgent final third, where “Count Ossie In China” argues that Momus should leave ragga-dub in others' hands, and “7000 BC” teeters on psychedelic excess. Despite that late-inning drop, Ocky Milk earns its recommendation for being so unashamedly idiosyncratic. How many other releases can one characterize as surrealistic poetry masquerading as conventional folk-pop?

January 2007