Quietus Tracks Of The Year 2014 (In Association With Norman Records)

Over perhaps one too many mugs of Yorkshire Tea, this year we decided to approach our tracks of the year chart a little differently. Rather than having all of our writers submit individual top tens, we went in for the tricky and harsh task of picking just top twos (with staff picking a few more), reasoning that these submissions would assemble themselves into a neat old top 100. Of course, the oversight on our part was the huge diversity in our writers’ tastes: rather than a number of tracks cropping up again, there was very little overlap. What multiple votes were received, though, did – and we can only assume through the guiding hand of some cosmic alignment – go on to form a handy, and perhaps tQ-appropriate, baker’s dozen of top tracks. The many, many picks that aren’t in that we thought would be best to present as one unranked list in alphabetical order, so what follows is a mammoth collection of individual earworms that the Quietus staff and contributors have enjoyed over the past 12 months.

Within that top 13, there’s Meridian Dan’s rewind-and-play-it-from-the-start out-and-out banger ‘German Whip’, Future Islands’ chest-thump synth-pop calling card ‘Seasons’ and ‘The Vile Stuff’, the wonderfully singular centrepiece to Newcastle musician Richard Dawson’s recent album Nothing Important. There’s a clutch of tracks that have become repeat plays in tQHQ’s Friday afternoon doofy techno sessions: Paula Temple, Furfriend and Ancient Methods having his way with Powell’s ‘Club Music’, capped off by Blacknecks’ interstellar leisure anthem ‘To The Cosmos, Let’s Go!’. Long-term Quietus favourites Karen Gwyer, The Fat White Family and Katie Gately all feature, the latter developing tendonitis in the making of ‘Pivot’; we’d be hesitant to say it was worth it, but the results are little short of magnificent – listen below. Pleasingly, the most voted-for track is Holly Herndon’s ‘Chorus’, which we feel both nods to what’s been an ace year for the San Francisco-based musician and her vocal manipulation, laptop-based output, as well as a recognition of how excited we are to see what she does in 2015. Her set at Incubate festival was one of the most forward-thinking and mind-blowing things we’ve seen recently, and, simply put, we can’t wait to see what’s next. We also doff our caps to the artists and bands who received multiple votes, but for different tracks: Black Bananas, The Charlatans, East India Youth, Grumbling Fur, Swans, Tweedy and Powell, who not only received votes for his tracks ‘So We Went Electric’ and ‘Maniac’, as well as the aforementioned ‘Club Music’, but whose Diagonal imprint put out the ace Bronze Teeth 12" that gets picked out here.

There’s a video or embedded track for almost every choice, so we hope this will offer you some hours of merry listening over the festive period. All that’s left for us to do is to thank all of our writers for contributing and picking such a wide and rewarding array of tracks, and, finally, to bid you all a very happy Christmas. See you in the new year. Laurie Tuffrey

13. Meridian Dan feat. Big H & JME – ‘German Whip’

(PMR Records)

Grime’s been bubbling away in fine shape for the last few years, so 2014’s excellent vintage might not have constituted the ‘genre revival’ hyperbole that inevitably accompanies tracks as weighty as ‘German Whip’. Nonetheless, the ubiquity of Meridian Dan’s slick, chrome-plated cruiser of a single was a joy to behold: commanding BBC radio as much as Rinse FM, it spent months booming from earbuds and passing car windows, framed by lyric posters pasted onto telephone boxes and concrete walls across the capital. Grime’s biggest hit in years, its popularity was a pleasant surprise yet still felt somehow inevitable – the mainstream-lapping crest of a wave that’s been gradually gathering momentum for quite some time. It helps, of course, that the track itself was tremendous. ‘German Whip’ packs many of grime’s most appealing characteristics into a lean, tough few minutes with barely a second wasted: it’s brash yet playful, deceptively smart, eminently quotable and loaded with surreal, subtly self-deprecating humour. Indeed, crucially, nothing of that vibrancy that defines the genre at underground level was lost in translation. It’s interesting to play compare-contrast with the year’s other big MC-led track, Mumdance and Novelist’s wiry, eerie ‘Take Time’ – massive cosmetic differences aside, both are underpinned by very similar impulses and character traits. But Meridian Dan owned 2014’s more cavernous dancefloors, epitomised by the flurry of online excitement following Rinse’s springtime rave at Fabric, when the rewinds on ‘German Whip’ reportedly almost hit double digits. Rory Gibb

12. Future Islands – ‘Seasons (Waiting On You)’, from Singles

(4AD)

There’s nothing necessarily groundbreaking going on sonically – it sounds like it could have stepped out of a John Hughes film – and looks-wise, they resemble a middle-aged Killers, but the hook-laden synthy romp sounded somewhat fresh and anthemic in a thin year for the indie. Samuel T Herring’s impassioned performances on various shows, wherein he would suddenly go "WUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHH!!!" while pacing around like a ketamined-up octopus who’s just had funk explained to it, may have enhanced its appeal too. Ian Wade

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Quietus Tracks Of The Year 2014 (In Association With Norman Records)

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