Mission Freak Year End #4: The American Dollar
This is that crit-dick move that some people pulled back in 2004, by throwing DJ Dangermouse’s mash-up masterpiece The Grey Album on their best of lists instead of the great original material (Animal Collective, Ghostface, Madvilliany, etc…). But if you’re going to put an obscure album that more or less amounts to a remix collection, might as well be this or Dangermouse’s breakout.
This year, The American Dollar went from being a post-rock duo to the prospective heirs to Brian Eno’s throne–via Aphex Twin. The Queens outfit’s fourth album, Ambient One, is a collection of re-imagined tracks from their first three albums. However, instead of more sprawling guitars or drums with a thicker coating of reverb, they ditched the drums all together and brought in an array of keyboards and digital tool to re-caste their material in an ambient mold.
It should come as no shock that post-rock’s contemplative bent is complimentary to and even shares an ethos with the goals of ambient music, so the transition is pretty seamless. What makes this stand out further is that the two aren’t doing covers but they’re using their original compositions as templates or springboards into other ideas and territories. (Look at this screen capture of what the thing looks like on iTunes.) Some pieces are extrapolated and expanded upon four or five times; yet, it’s all bite-size–no song clocks in over four minutes. Instead of the sprawling tracks from original compositions and the template set forth by Eno, Fripp, Budd, and Co., these become miniature meditations packed into a larger, cohesive whole. Despite the numerous breaks in action, Ambient One adheres to a consistent mood and the instrumentation remains more or less the same throughout. Check out the opening “Starscapes” suite below, expand that idea just over an hour, and you’re getting the idea.
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Download: The American Dollar – Starscapes
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The American Dollar – Starscapes [streaming only]
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The American Dollar – Starscapes [streaming only]
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The American Dollar – Starscapes [streaming only]
Read the rest of John’s top 10 records of 2009 after the jump.
2. Future of the Left – Travels With Myself and Another
3. Mos Def – The Ecstatic
4. Wet Hair – Dream and Glass Fountain
5. Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem
6. Marble Sky – Some Laughing Afterwards, Sway and The Sad Return (reissue)
7. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
8. Mastadon – Crack the Skye
9. Woods – Songs of Shame
10. Bill Callahan – Sometime I Wish We Were an Eagle
