Hopefully you’ve already entered our first excellent Glass Half Full competition, where we gave you the chance to win the majority of our favourite 30 albums of the year so far. If you haven’t, then what are you waiting for? Click here, answer one simple question and you could have a lovely pile of records winging their way to your house.
Now, because we feel extremely generous – or because the unbearable heat has rendered us temporarily insane – we have a similarly splendid competition for our lovely readers, with the chance to win the majority of our top 30 compilations, reissues and live albums thus far of 2010.
To read the original list, click here. And to win the prize, just answer the following question:
‘Twinkling Stars’ by Nine Circles featured on our favourite compilation of the year so far, Cold Waves & Minimal Electronics Vol 1. But in what year did the Dutch band release their self-titled debut album?
No multiple choice options; send your answers to comps@thequietus.com with ‘Glass Half Full Competition Part Two’ in the subject field. To read The Quietus Competition Terms & Conditions, click here.
To help you answer the question, we’ve provided a motivational soundtrack filled with cuts from the list itself. We hope you enjoy…
30 Goatsnake – ‘Flower Of Disease’ from Flower Of Disease
"Anyone also looking forward to Soundgarden’s return would do well to take a sniff at Flowers Of Disease. Best enjoyed lying on a cold kitchen floor inhaling big green gulps from a bong made of horse’s shinbone."
Luke Turner
29. Pavement – ‘Gold Soundz’ from Quarantine The Past
"Some will never warm to Malkmus’s arch lyricism but to everyone else, this is a must, if you aren’t already acquainted with the genius of Pavement."
John Doran writing for Classic Rock Magazine.
28. Robert Wyatt – ‘Little Red Riding Hood Hit The Road’ from Greatest Misses
"When I try and sing it’s like a process of elimination and I try and avoid doing anything that I don’t think is necessary. I feel like I work in a very primitive way. I like to know what the notes are, what the words are and what the most effective way of getting them across is."
Robert Wyatt in a Quietus interview
27. Washed Out – ‘New Theory’ from Life Of Leisure
"There’s no sense of overbearingly hip replication, sources are simply gathered and assembled, then treated with swathes of reverb to transform them into depthless oceans of gently lapping sound – it’s either brilliantly cunning or brilliantly infuriating depending on your viewpoint."
Simon Jay Cattling
26. Various Artists To Scratch Your Heart
"Here, a musical setting is improvised – according to the makam system of corresponding modal sets – for poetry of the soul, wine, love and beauty."
Gokhan Ara in the liner notes of To Scratch Your Heart
25. Various Artists ‘I Want More’ by Can from Deutsche Elektronische Musik
"Back in the early 1970s in Germany, it seems you could throw a rock out of a speeding VW window and randomly hit a brilliant, superlative-inducing group of one sort or another. Can were the most famous, Kraftwerk had the most potential, Amon Duul II were (arguably) the most psychedelic, Guru Guru the most hellaciously boogieful and so on and so forth."
John Doran
24. Juan Maclean – ‘Feels So Good’ from DJ Kicks
"It would probably be an overstatement to say the story of John Maclean was one of redemption or deliverance, but it is true that the New Yorker has faced a demon or two on his way. MacLean has waded through a drug addiction that took him almost to the point of irrevocable destruction; the dissolution of a band beset by tragedy; and eventually a profound apathy towards the plasticity of the scenes he found himself in that made him give up music altogether."
Barnaby Smith
23. Various Artists – ‘Flying Turns’ by Crash Course In Science’ from The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol 1
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"It’s more avant garde. It’s delves deeply into how out there the artists of this era could be. Which is pretty far out… My fave is ‘Flying Turns’ by Crash Course In Science. It’s weird, intense, new wavey and it sounds like a hot summer sidewalk getting hotter. Also LCD Soundsystem blatantly ripped it off for ‘Losing My Edge’."
Joe Daniel on the difference between The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol 1 and his Angular compilation Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics Vol 1
22. Bardo Pond – ‘Amen 29: 15’ from Bufo Alvarius
"Bufo Alvarius never gives the impression that Bardo Pond were concerned with achieving extremes in anything, just in stepping in the jam room with some quarter-formed, rarely-hybridised ideas and seeing where they might lead.
John Doran
21. Fela Kuti Expensive Shit
"Fela Kuti’s 1975 twelfth album was always going to be a highlight of the ongoing epic reissue series of his back catalogue, and a timely reminder that this is one of the best albums of a decade. Many wonder what might have been had Kuti not been deported from the United States 1969, and had continued to work with James Brown’s band, and other Western musicians."
Luke Turner
20. Various Artists – ‘Disco Bomb’ by Dom Thomas from The Exploding Disco Inevitable
_Download ‘Disco Bomb’ here._
"This year Finders Keepers Records is five years old. Since its inception, the label has reissued and uncovered a vast and diverse range of music taking in Persian funk, Welsh folk, proto-feminist Czech cinema soundtracks, German library music and Pakistani electronic pop. And that’s just for starters."
Jonny Mugwump
19. Various Artists – ‘Esclavo Moderno’ by Manuel Alvarez y Sus Dangers from Palenque Palenque
"The Caribbean coast of Colombia has had a long relationship with Africa stretching back to the 17th Century. In the 1970s and ‘80s the sound system culture of the towns of Barranquilla and Cartagena started looking to Africa once again for musical influence. The DJs and ‘picos’ (soundsystems) began to play imported modern African and Caribbean Creole music alongside Colmbian hits and the ‘Champeta’ sound was born."
From www.forcedexposure.com.
18. Judas Priest – ‘Grinder’ from British Steel
"Whatever your take on them musically though, one thing is undeniable, they [Judas Priest] are one of the most important and innovative heavy rock bands ever. They bridged the gap between the heavy metal mark I of Black Sabbath and the myriad genres of the 80s and beyond. They basically laid the bedrock for thrash, death, black and other forms of metal madness that would save it from being just another offshoot of rock and help it become the most dominant musical genre of the last two decades."
John Doran
17. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Henry’s Dream
"None of 2010’s batch of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds reissues may be on a par with From Her To Eternity – re-released last year along with three other Bad Seeds albums – but Henry’s Dream surely comes close. Cave may have reportedly had misgivings about the work of long-term Neil Young collaborator David Briggs, but the producer’s commitment to recording live in the studio helped capture Cave’s bitter romanticism at its most poignant."
Ben Hewitt
16. Wooden Shjips – ‘Loose Lips’ from Volume 2
"Vol. 2 is a fine collection of rarities, foreign label releases and tour souvenir cuts that acts as a pit stop until these cosmic rough riders propel their next full-length album through your third eye to mainline straight to your addled brain."
Julian Marszalek
15. Disco Discharge – ‘When The Rain Begins To Fall’ by Jermaine Jackson & Pia Zadora from The Pink Pounders
"I came out at a Disco, the Masquerade in London’s Earls Court Road to be exact. It was situated in the basement of the local launderette (but then weren’t they all at this early period in Disco’s development that would see the expansion from tiny supper club to hi-tech hanger) and consisted of two large-ish rooms. One had a miniscule mirror-walled dance floor at the end. The other was where the Alkasura label (think early Vivienne Westwood) fashion queens congregated and ate the tiny salad that had to be a legal provision as per the outdated late-night licensing laws. You could only serve alcohol if some food was provided in the not so swinging 1971."
Alan Jones
14. Charanjit Singh – ‘B3 Raga Kalvati’ from Synthesizing – Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat
"In 2002 I went to India to look up and interview Bollywood composers and musicians, as I wanted to find out how this music was made and recorded. I landed in Delhi, and of course went to dusty and crowded old Delhi to look for records. In a shop I found Ten Ragas…, and was attracted by the title… Back in my hotel I played at my portable player, and I was blown away. It sounded like acid house, or like an ultra minimal Kraftwerk."
Edo Bouman, Bombay Connection
13. Neu! – ‘Hero’ from Box Set
"Michael Rother insisted that football was the main inspiration for the motorik beat: ‘I’m not sure that we thought it had anything to do with transport. I remember that Klaus [Dinger] and I never really talked a lot about theories we just both really enjoyed playing soccer. You know football, running up and down and everything. We even had a very good team with me and Klaus and Florian [Schneider, Kraftwerk] – he could run very fast. I remember on one tour there were some British bands there at a festival and we met them on the field. I remember we played against Family [UK hippy blues rock band] at one festival. We all loved to run fast and this feeling about running fast and fast movement, forward movement, rushing forwards that was something that we all had in common and the joy of fast movement is what or part of what we were trying to express in Neu!"
John Doran
12. Sam Spence – ‘World As One’ from Sam Spence Sounds
"Throughout the mid 60s Sam Spence kept his hand in popular music via his US connections. His original roots playing clarinet and sax in Californian swing bands had lead to paid work sending compositions to commercial Hollywood groups which lead to a part time interest in electronic instr5uments and the development of the synthesizer."
Andy Votel
11. A Certain Ratio -‘Mickey Way’ from Force
"The hinge moment on Force is undoubtedly ‘Mickey Way’. This proved to be the slab of quality funk to which they always aspired. For anyone who hung around Manchester in 1987, it remains impossible to hear this song without being instantly transported to vision of Hacienda bollards; of a club finally coming to terms with an influx of house and truly a parallel club to New York’s Paradise Garage."
Mick Middles
10. Various Artists – ‘Lufuala Ndonga’ by Konono No. 1′ from Congotronics Box Set
"Anyone who has spent time in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, will know that it’s a city that bustles with an industrious and infectious energy. Maybe it was living there that inspired Mawangu Mingiedi to take that energy and apply it like jump leads to the Bazombo trance music he had grown up with near the Angolan border. In doing so, he created a band called Konono No.1 and revolutionised a musical tradition that stretched back hundreds of years."
Kevin Perry
9. Optimo -‘Lady Shave’ by Fat Gadget from Fabric 52
"As one door shuts another opens. Sunday April 25 was the last Optimo (Espacio) party at the Sub Club in Glasgow. JD Twitch and JG Wilkes have been organizing Scotland’s most (rightfully) celebrated club night for the last 13 years and have put the night out to pasture in order to concentrate on other DJing, remixing and music related projects. Twitch (Keith McIvor), an Edinburgh born acid house fan, and Johnny Wilkes, a Belfast punk, met through the Pure night. Bored with the state of clubbing in the late 90s the pair formed Optimo as an excuse to play the kind of music that they never heard out. Whether that be EBM, techno, acid house, industrial, minimal, disco, funk, post punk… their only rules were to use the freedom of a Sunday night residency as freedom from the tyranny of the four to the floor house night hegemony."
John Doran
8. Various Artists – ‘Helelyos’ by Zia Atabi from Pomegranates
"It’s no accident that the phoenix is an exacted moral, mythical and figurative symbol in Iran. Like the phoenix, Iranian culture is in constant flux an, at times, elusive, with its existential wavering and blurred panoramas. Most of contemporary Iran’s artistic and creative leanings, its grapples with history and identity are loosely and mystically conjoined and contested in memory."
Mahssa Taghinia
7. The Cure -‘Pictures Of You’ from Disintegration
"Disintegration is spacious and melodic, and filled with moments of great beauty. Its pace is stately and elegiac. Bells twinkle like stars in the midnight sky; melodic basslines weave their way through the gentle sadness of sighing guitars and keyboards that rise up like glaciers."
Ben Graham
6. Virgo – ‘Ride’ from Virgo
"A year after the ‘Summer Of Love’, house music was in full swing in the UK, where ‘Do You Know Who You Are’ was picked up and led Sherman to combine both singles and license these out as the Virgo (this timne leaving ‘Four’ off) album to Radikal records. Their second single as M.E. was released a year later. ‘Winter Days & Summer Nights’, which featured r&b singer Yvonne Gage (‘Garden Of Eve’), stalled pretty quickly after Sherman refused to promo this to a local Chicago radio station. Merwin: ‘Larry told us they wanted it on cd to play it, and Larry refused to give them a cd, he said the vinyl pressing should’ve been good enough. We thought "Aw geesh, you gotta’ be kidding me!"
Christian Macdonald
5. Liars – ‘Proud Evolution’ from Live
"Liars are a band defined by the bubbles they’ve inhabited over the years. Trapped in the Brooklyn post-punk bubble for their appropriately named 2002 debut, They Threw Us All In A Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, the band escaped of the dance-punk tag by retreating to an isolated house in New Jersey. Free of Williamsburg’s hipsters, the band turned inwards, sinking into their own personal bubble and producing the phenomenal, though initially poorly received, They Were Wrong So We Drowned. Relocating to Berlin, Drums Not Dead and Liars benefited from the disassociation that comes with the expatriate lifestyle. Unable to speak the language, which effectively cut them off from large chunks of the surrounding culture, the band were once again free to focus on making what they wanted within a space influenced by little more than their own creative urges."
Charles Ubaghs
4. Godflesh – ‘Pulp’ from Streetcleaner
"[Streetcleaner] is an album that still remains a low water mark in nihilism and misanthropy, delivered with uttermost militancy in musical intensity and lyrical bile… Most brilliant (and some awful), machine tooled metal and industrial from the 90s onwards can trace its ancestry back to this uncompromising vision of a man made hell on earth."
John Doran writing in Metal Hammer magazine
3. Various Artists – ‘Breakthrough’ by The Funkees from The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia in 1970’s Nigeria
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"By unselfconsciously blending the (to us) familiar heady sounds of 60s psych and groove with traditional African rhythms andinstrumentations, these songs capture a sense of release and optimism, and a new music being forged a million miles from Western hippydom’s desperate decline."
Luke Turner writing in The Stool Pigeon newspaper.
2. Omar Souleyman – ‘Hafer Gabrak Bidi’ from Jazeera Nights
"A few muttered words in Arabic, shrouded in echo. And then it erupts. A day-glo cloudburst of warpspeed Bontempi rhythms and snaking microtonal melodies. Psychedelic invocation to some lascivious simultaneist idol. Urgent glossolalia of electronic thunder and lightning. Amphetamine-powered merengué of dysmorphic frequencies."
Robert Barry
1. Various Artists -‘Nine Circles’ by Twinkling Stars from Cold Waves & Minimal Electronics Vol 1
"Despite the icy, clinical connotations of the term cold wave, translated from the French la vague froid, this is a profoundly human album."
Tim Burrows
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