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CYNE's Top 10
Yair Etziony's Top 10

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2tall
Abbasi Brothers
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Argy
Austere
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Black Devil Disco Club
Matt Borghi
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Celer
Leighton Craig
CYNE
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Koen Daigaku
Thomas Feiner
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Grouper
Marihiko Hara
Headphone Science
Akai Ikuo
Ariel Kalma
Like Kisses Of Thread
Lull
Yoshio Machida
Machinefabriek + Vitiello
Israel Martinez
Nurse With Wound
Oubys
Chris Paul and Mia V
Phasen
Pop Levi
Ruhlmann + Celer
Janek Schaefer
Henning Schmiedt
Sense Project
The Silverman
Slowcream
Spartak
Strom Noir
Subheim
TaughtMe
Cristian Vogel
Goro Watari

Compilations / Mixes
Adultnapper
Cocoon Compilation H
Marcel Dettmann
Emerging Organisms
Gothenburg 08
Onur Özer
Holgi Star & Harry Axt
Seed Records Vol. 2
Tech My House 2
Prins Thomas & Full Pupp

EPs
3ofmillions
A "New Generation" EP
Giesela
Brian James
Kontext
Outputmessage
Palac
Chris Paul
Lasse-Marc Riek
Simon Whetham

TaughtMe: Lady
Own Records

Lady's a bit of a mongrel album, something Blake Henderson (aka TaughtMe) himself acknowledges in the liner notes: “The pile of song and word that you are holding wanted to be released a long, long time ago. Since then it has aged and become grouchy. I exhale heartily and hand it over to you. My pockets are tired.” He's a singer-songwriter of eccentric vintage, a San Francisco-based troubadour whose stories concern yo-yos, socks, and pennies (“Gather”), childhood games (“Stomping of Boots”), insatiable desire (“Stranger Struggle”), and more. Guitar (acoustic and electric), electronics, drums, glockenspiel, percussion, and keyboards provide instrumental accompaniment, and Lady's spacious ambiance deepens its intimate “bedroom” feel. The album is musically most affecting in its gentlest moments, such as those that emerge during the languorous “Lady” and “Stranger Struggle.”

Trailed by a quivering vibrato, Henderson's fragile, sometimes straining voice is an acquired taste but the open-hearted vulnerability of the songs compensates (in “Stomping of Boots,” he sings, “We're watching the leaves fall from all of these trees and it's the same damned thing I wish would happen to me”); it would seem cold-hearted and mean-spirited, in other words, to reject material that's presented with such naked sincerity. The desperation expressed in “Heaviest,” on the other hand, turns out to be ideally suited to his vulnerable vocal style.

The album also exudes an innocent charm that's hard to resist. The lyrics, for example, aren't formally typed but hand-lettered on a folded sheet of lined paper like the kind you'd find in your high-school three-ring binder, and lyrically there's a sense of confessional, wide-eyed wonder as opposed to anything remotely resembling nihilism. When Henderson sings, “If I saw you cross my lawn with no coat or blanket / Humbly I'd invite you in despite your strangeness,” one can't help but think that the sentiment could just as meaningfully be directed towards him as to the one addressed in the song.

August 2008