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Welcome to the twenty-sixth episode of The Quiet Sounds. In this segment, I’ll be exploring my favorite music of the year 2009. There was a lot of great ambient and electronic music this year (not to mention other styles), and I felt that only two episodes could cover my favorites completely. So please stay tuned for the next episode coming within the month.

Tracklist:

1. “100 Years Ago” by Tim Hecker from An Imaginary Country (Kranky)
I played a portion of the terrific new Tim Hecker album last episode, but it’s worth exploring a little more. I think Hecker is producing some of the most interesting and oddly symphonic ambient noise around, and his style seems to become more refined with each release.

2. “We Might Just Have What You Need” by The Fun Years from Split 10″ w/.cut (Three:Four)
The Fun Years are a relatively new project, one guy on guitar, one guy on turntables. There’s a power to the overlapping sounds that builds in intensity over each of their tracks. I highly recommend their two albums on the Barge label, which give their sound a chance to stretch out in longer lengths, but you get an idea of what they can do with this brief track from a recent split 10″ on the Three:Four label out of Switzerland.

3. “The ACC” by Simon Scott from Navigare (Miasmah)
All you 90s era indie-kids probably remember Slowdive from your years of digging through record crates looking for albums as good as what My Bloody Valentine were doing at the time. Scott, Slowdive’s former drummer, has returned as label owner and artist in his own right, releasing this excellent drone record (with distinct rock moments) on Erik K. Skodvin’s (Svarte Greiner, Deaf Center) label, Miasmah. It’s loud and vast, yet still peaceful, and I find it a hell of a lot more engaging than Mojave 3 ever were.

4. “Sunday After the War” by Harold Budd & Clive Wright from Candylion (Darla)
One day in the future, Harold Budd will be regarded as a unique American treasure. Until that time, we’ll have to sate ourselves with his unabashedly pretty and elegant records. Candylion is much more to my liking than his previous work with Wright, and reminds me of Budd’s other great work from this century, the painfully beautiful Avalon Sutra.

5. “Gaited Florets” by Celer from Mane Blooms (Low Point)
It seems unfair that the year Celer produced their most mature and exciting records was also the year the project was forced to end due to the untimely and tragic death of founding member Dani Baquet-Long. Nevertheless, musically, the duo have left some staggering works this year to remember her by, including this fine 7″ on Low Point, as well as the truly remarkable works on labels like Home Normal, Sentient Recognition Archive, Slow Flow, and others.

6. “Canal Rocks” by Solo Andata from Solo Andata (12K)
This Australian act caught my ear this year with an engaging set of naturalistic ambience that recalls latter period Biosphere and Italian ritual-ambient master Alio Die. While I find myself tired of the recent spate of neo-classical passages in a lot of current electronic music, here the instruments are used tastefully and for dramatic color, not as a stab at schmalzy “imaginary film soundtracks.”

7. “Xerrox Sora” by Alva Noto from Xerrox, Vol. 2 (Raster Noton)
This is my first experience with Alva Noto, who I’d previously thought only made albums of difficult computer noise. I’m glad I found out otherwise because this is a truly fine record slewing back and forth between Basinski-esque orchestral mashings and digital detritus. Apparently this is part two in a projected six-part series and I’m curious to watch its development over the coming releases.

8. “Ships Without Meaning” by Oneohtrix Point Never from Rifts (Not Not Fun)
Oneohtrix Point Never hit me by surprise this year, with a mammoth collection of the majority of his recorded work on various labels. Fans of early-80s synth masterpieces by Vangelis, Jarre, and Tangerine Dream who were put off by these artists’ decision to head down the path of electro-cheese will die for Point Never’s incredible synth arpeggio armada. My wife thinks it sounds like the music for L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics commercials from the 80s, but that’s the point, right?

9. “Lord, Am I Going Down?” by Mokira from Persona (Type)
Andreas Tilliander revives his Mokira project for this absolutely staggering album, ostensibly a tribute to heroin-stewed space-rockers Spacemen 3, but really a paean to the heartfelt things software can do in the right hands. This one takes a little work to fully get into, but the payoff is evident as Tilliander manages to thread together Spacemen 3 phase-rock, Inoue-style ambient, William Basinski tape loops, Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle,” and Tilliander’s own clip-hop beginnings into a futuristic ur-music.

10. “Blooming Woods” by Sleepy Town Manufacture & Unit 21 from No Traces (Infraction)
The burgeoning Russian ambient music scene has produced a lot of excellent music, not much of which has met with Western ears as of yet. This record (as well as STM’s side-project Beautumn and the incredible work of Parks) makes a fine introduction. Sleepy Town adds the oddly nostalgic and yet still modern electronic sound of Pete Namlook (or Biosphere, for that matter) to the warm crackle of Unit 21′s LP collection plunderings. It’s a beautiful and foreign experience to hear old spoken-word story-records from Russia amidst haunting forest ambience and the hooting of a distant owl. Applause to Infraction Records for shedding light on these woefully obscure projects with domestic releases.