Thought you’d already put 2008 to bed? Wait a minute. Here’s a list of top tunes from last year selected by some of the country’s top vinyl junkies.
KINK FEATURING RACHEL ROW — WET
“This track is a definite floor-stomper. Bulgaria’s tech house hero brings his signature acid/bouncy sound as a backdrop to Row’s sexy and seductive vocals. The stutters midway make for an excellent buildup to an all-out acid bonanza. This tune destroyed the dance-floor many times while I was on tour this fall.” (Sona)
THE SUNBURST BAND — JOURNEY TO THE SUN
“It’s a 2008 release though it sounds like it came from some disco lab orbiting Earth since the early 1970s. Imagine a millennium party on the Starship Enterprise, all hands on deck and in the air, and you begin to get a feel for this timeless tune. To me, it’s not only the perfect musical embodiment of the Citrus party vibe, but reaffirms that house music can be great live music as well.” (SL)
PHOTONZ — SHABOO (ANDY’S EDIT)
“In the era of MP3 downloads, there is still room for underground music: Dissident Distribution release single-sided vinyl, each limited to 500 copies, and each of their 12 inches is just the bomb. This track sounds like a lost gem from [the] 1988-Chicago House era. Aciiiiid!!” (BB)
SIGUR ROS — MEO SUO I EYRUM VIO SPILUM ENDALAUST (ALBUM)
“I’ve been hunkered in the studio listening only to my own stuff for a long time. However, I cannot recommend discovering Sigur Ros highly enough. Their summer album was a perfect follow-up to the delicious Takk a few years back.” (Viba)
MIA — PAPER PLANES
“A Clash sample, finger snaps, four gunshots and a cash register ka-ching gets song-of-the-year honors. MIA’s brilliant Paper Planes pokes fun at immigrant life and confirms that Diplo is the sound of the 21st century. The song had legs all year because of the notable remixes (DFA) and TI’s hood anthem Swagger Like Us sampled MIA on the chorus. (Marcus Aurelius)
AUDIO SLINGERS FEAT. LESLEY WILLIAM — RADIO NOISE (KELEVRA REMIX)
This is a big-bass electro track with a female vocal. I find that you can get away with playing some really dirty sounding bass-driven tracks that have a sexy female vocal. It seems to even each other out and you end up with a phat-sounding track. (Matty D)
LIL WAYNE — A MILLI
“It’s like the minimalism of hip-hop. A Milli is a timeless track that’s not only made The Carter III a platinum album, it also shows the world what an outstanding rapper Lil Wayne really is. There’s nothing but dense rhymes plus hypnotic repetitive chanting of “A Milli” throughout this song. The more you listen to it, the more you will get hooked on it.” (Bigg’z)
JUNKIE TOWN — EL RITMO
“If you like your dance music with a lot of grooves, you’ll definitely get a kick out of this unconventional electro-tinged house release from Argentina. It’s got Latin-style trumpet riffs over snappy beats so smooth and funky that they set the floor burning nice and slow.” (Queen Bee)—QUEEN BEE
If you are a Western and especially a white foreign resident of Taiwan, you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of Taiwanese assuming you to be an English teacher. There are cultural and economic reasons for this, but one of the greatest determinants is the narrow range of work permit categories that exist for Taiwan’s foreign residents, which has in turn created an unofficial caste system for foreigners. Until recently, laowai (老外) — the Mandarin term for “foreigners,” which also implies citizenship in a rich, Western country and distinguishable from brown-skinned, southeast Asian migrant laborers, or wailao (外勞) — could only ever
Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 The construction of the Babao Irrigation Canal (八堡圳) was not going well. Large-scale irrigation structures were almost unheard of in Taiwan in 1709, but Shih Shih-pang (施世榜) was determined to divert water from the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪) to the Changhua plain, where he owned land, to promote wet rice cultivation. According to legend, a mysterious old man only known as Mr. Lin (林先生) appeared and taught Shih how to use woven conical baskets filled with rocks called shigou (石笱) to control water diversion, as well as other techniques such as surveying terrain by observing shadows during
In recent weeks news outlets have been reporting on rising rents. Last year they hit a 27 year high. It seems only a matter of time before they become a serious political issue. Fortunately, there is a whole political party that is laser focused on this issue, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP). They could have had a seat or two in the legislature, or at least, be large enough to attract media attention to the rent issue from time to time. Unfortunately, in the last election, Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) acted as a vote sink for
This is a film about two “fools,” according to the official synopsis. But admirable ones. In his late thirties, A-jen quits his high-paying tech job and buys a plot of land in the countryside, hoping to use municipal trash to revitalize the soil that has been contaminated by decades of pesticide and chemical fertilizer use. Brother An-ho, in his 60s, on the other hand, began using organic methods to revive the dead soil on his land 30 years ago despite the ridicule of his peers, methodically picking each pest off his produce by hand without killing them out of respect