Tuesday, 23rd of January, 2001

New! I've added perma-links to all blog entries now, going all the way back, so you can permanently link to any particular blog entry I've written. So please, when you're crediting or drawing attention to a post of mine (as you do frequently, of course), use the "permanent link" link at the bottom of the post.

Monday, 22nd of January, 2001

Just a quick note that my current listening/reading lists have been updated in the left-hand column.
Way busy right now, so can't do a proper blog entry – soon I promise! (Yeah you believe that…)

Monday, 8th of January, 2001

OK, yep yeah. Time for the Top 10 lists of 2000.
I want to stress first of all that I HATE Top 10/Top 5 type lists. I can't make up my mind, it's all so arbitrary anyway. At least with just 2000 there's a somewhat shrunken sample space to choose from, but as you can see I've kinda cheated anyway. But hopefully this will be interesting reading all the same!
This list began its life as a list created for Synaesthesia's end of 2000 top 10 lists, which can still be seen at this page here. I've added stuff though. On the Synaesthesia top 10 lists page Mark describes me as:
* peter hollo* (raven / fourplay – customer obsessive in extremis) – and I suppose I have to agree!

Top 11½ (sorry) compilations/remix CDs of the year:

• American Breakbeat comp on Klangkrieg
• Attitude 3" comp CD on Tigerbeat6
• Chihuahuas and Chinese Noodles comp on 555 Recordings of Leeds, UK
• Kid 606 And Friends Vol 1 ("We Are All Winners") remixes comp on Tigerbeat6
• Lily of the Valley comp on Schematic
• Mice Parade – Collaborations on Bubblecore
• Neurokinetic comp on Toytronic
• Planet Mu Allstars – Criminal 12"
• Slicker – Remixes on Hefty
• Sonig Comp on Sonig
• Xen Cuts 3CD comp on Ninja Tune
• Plus latecomer: The Emiliana Torrini remixes (e-rmx 7" series) on Fat Cat, featuring Mice Parade, Motion, V/VM, Antenna Farm, Lucky Kitchen, Process, etc etc. You can download all the remixes as mp3s from the linked site. Can't be bothered linking all the remixers – so sue me!

Top 10 (actually 11, I cheated) single-artist albums on the year:

• A Silver Mt Zion – He has left us alone but shards of light sometimes grace the corner of our rooms
• Boom Bip & Doseone – Circle
• General Magic – Rechenkonig
• Gimmik – Slow Motion Process
• Godspeed You Black Emperor! – levez vos skinny fists comme antennas to heaven!
• Holger Hiller – Holger Hiller
• Kid 606 – Down With the Scene (also – ps I love you)
• Savath + Savalas – folk songs for trains, trees and honey
• Amon Tobin – Supermodified
• Unagi Patrol – Elevate & Pool

Top 10 EP/singles of the year:

• Boards of Canada – In a Beautiful Place in the Country
• Bola – Mauver 12"
• Cex – Role Playa 12"
• Downpour – Don't Go Stepping on My Art 7"
• Hrvatski – Raume 7"
• Matmos/Motion split 12" on Fat Cat
• The Remote Viewer – Tormille 12"
• The The – Interpretations Issue 1 (came out last year, but only got this year, and Foetus covering The The is indispensible! The Daau track is amazing too)
• Third Eye Foundation – What Is It With You
• Tipper – Dissolve (out) [not just Phoenecia (see below) but Mu-ziq and Buckfunk 3000 remixes!]

Top 5 remixes of the year:

• Phoenecia remix Tipper – Dissolve (out)
• Hrvatski remixes Kid 606 – catstep/my kitten/catnap vatstep dsp mix
• Danny Lohner featuring Telefon Tel Aviv (Hefty act) remix Nine Inch Nails – Where Is Everbody?
• Hecker remixes Chicks on Speed – Night of the Pedestrian
• All those FourPlay remixes as yet unreleased, to come out on our double-CD remix comp around Feb next year!

Top 5 labels of the year:

• 555 Recordings of Leeds, UK
• Bubblecore
• Ninja Tune
• Reckankreutzungsklankewerkzeuge Recordings of Cambridge, MASS (despite not having any releases)
• Mego

Top 5 CDRs of the year:

• Fennesz and Rehberg & Bauer – Live at Synaesthesia
• Hrvatski – stuff from mp3s scoured off the net
• Marxist Real Estate 3CD comp – a friend from Adelaide, fabbo post-rock
• Pimmon – private CD-R of stuff some of which still hasn't come out
• Raven – ongoing Progress Report CD-Rs of my electronica to date ;)

Top live electronica gig:

• Mouse on Mars at the London ULU
• [Runners up: Skot, Fennesz, Pita at What Is Music? Festival]

Top 5 Aussie electronica releases of the year:

• Pimmon – Assembler
• Purdy – Kevolution
• Snog – Relax Into the Abyss remix 12"/CD
• Tooth – Sirens from Here to Titan (ok so I'm on it… and it's not officially released until Feb… still!)
• Just Is comp on Kookyburra Droppings (ok well I'm on it too, but hey…)

Top um… x number of CDs that didn't get included because they're not electronica or post-rock:

• Acapelicans – Little Mountains
• Radiohead – Kid A
• Tin Hat Trio – Helium
• John Zorn – Filmworks IX
• Machine Translations' 3 CDs (even though not from 2000)
• Plus as you all know I've been listening to heaps of other gypsy and klezmer music this year, such as Taraf de Haïdouks, Bratsch, Les Yeux Noirs, Kroke… the list goes on. Not much released in 2000 though…

Four utterly brilliant movies from 2000. Can't remember enough…

• American Beauty
• Being John Malkovich
• Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (just made it into 2000, and a glorious film!)
• Three Kings
• Plus some pretty good ones:
• Better Than Sex (nice Aussie comedy, nothing that special)
• Chicken Run (although I was kinda disappointed…)
• X-Men (seriously!)
• Plus missed Magnolia, but will see soon, and will see Brother Where Art Thou? soon too.
  Can't wait for Requiem for a Dream to come out here!

Top reading in 2000

• Kathleen Ann Goonan – The Bones of Time, Mississippi Blues, Crescent City Rhapsody (all fantastic hard science-fiction)
• Justina Robson – Silver Screen (great hard science-fiction, explores many different possible modes of AI)
• Simon Ings – Hothead, Hotwire, Headlong (all three are mind-bending hard science-fiction of the highest calibre)
• John Meaney – To Hold Infinity
• New Legends (excellent anthology edited by Greg Bear, of hard science-fiction short stories, including all-round genius Greg Egan, and newly-discovered (for me) legend Paul J McAuley)
• Nanotech (anthology of science-fiction stories about nanotech, featuring a Greg Egan story I already knew, but also a Kathleen Ann Goonan story and much other great stuff)
• Still reading Dennett's Philosophy – A Comprehensive Assessment, but it might as well go in this list
• Seth Rogovoy – The Essential Klezmer (not only a fascinating history of klezmer music from the 19th century and earlier up to the year 2000, but it also contains a fairly comprehensive list of available klezmer releases on CD…)
• A couple of dozen issues of UK science-fiction magazine Interzone, which frequently publishes Greg Egan, and has introduced me to the writing of countless wonderful authors, including the aforementioned Paul J McAuley, Simon Ings and John Meaney, plus Brian Stableford (how could I have missed him? an utter genius…), Alastair Reynolds, Linda Nagata, Kim Newman and countless others. Not only first-rate short stories, but essential book reviews, movie reviews to die for, interviews, David Langford's classic Ansible Link, etc etc…
• Still of course every issue of UK music magazine The Wire. Completely Essential

Top legends of 2000 – a small sampling

• Angela, Julieanne, Mark, Mike, Chris, Bronny, Naima, Rella, acb, Graham, Tim (of course!) and Lorana, Lara, Veren, Jordan, Libby and Barbara, Ally, Katie, Claire, Sal, Kate D, Kate M, Kate L, Danny, Yaron, Svet, Julian, Michael, Shawn, Tiina, Stu… Dare I go on? I've missed too many people already, but I love you all and you make everything worthwhile. Hugs and kisses to you all.
• Oh OK… Mark Harwood, Seb Chan and Luke Dearnley, Shane Robbo and Kevin Purdy, Kenny Sabir, Mal Webb…


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Wednesday, 3rd of January, 2001

Coming soon! My best (& worst) of 2000 list. Bit late you say? Well, it's hot. That's my pan-excuse. And it was my birthday yesterday. 27 (3-cubed), way past it now.

A new book by Jeff Noon? Woo-hoo!
It's called Cobralingus, and is due out in February from Codex Books.
Jeff Noon wrote the amazing Vurt and various Vurt-related sequels, as well as last year's bizarre Needle in the Groove. Always strange and hallucinatory, excellent characterisation, and pretty much uncategorisable. Somewhat like cyberpunk without the technology. Not what you'd call hard science-fiction, but not fantasy at all either. Highly postmodern but I like it anyway (hey! I like postmodernism in literature, music etc. Just not in philosophy… for that matter, in criticism (its home discipline if ever there is one), it's pretty pretentious and annoying too). [Am I baiting anyone here? No, honest! I just gotta say this stuff... I'm me, so sue me.])