The Festive Dozen 2016: Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra - Too Much Information (Laolu Remix Edit)

Contrary to my natural inclination to finish this year's festive countdown with something state-of-the-nation, politically relevant, poignant, and suitably downbeat, it also seems appropriate to help transport you into a NYE party state of mind by posting an edit of one of 2016's biggest club jams. Which, coincidentally, was released almost a year ago to the day ... roll on 2017.

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

 

 

The Festive Dozen 2016: James Vincent McMorrow - Get Low

Merry Festivities, boxing day hiccups, and thanks for reading in 2016.

We're nearly there, the penultimate tune of this year's dozen belongs to Irish folkie James Vincent McMorrow, with 'Get Low' ...

"I love the way your heart had no rules, loving what your heart becomes, even when you smile, you're still cruel ..."

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

The Festive Dozen 2016: The Radio Dept. - We Got Game

Sometimes it's the simple little things. Understated low key album tracks with cunning hooks. Extracts lifted from otherwise barely noticed albums. In this case, it's 'We Got Game', a stand-out track from Running Out of Love, the rather good 2016 album by Swedish indie-popsters The Radio Dept ... a tune that appears to owe a massive debt to the early Detroit techno stylings of Inner City producer Kevin Saunderson. You decide.

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

The Festive Dozen 2016: Radiohead - Burn The Witch

As boring and as cliché as it undoubtedly is, I'm going to find it very difficult to go past Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool for everythingsgonegreen's (much coveted!) album of the year. (The album isn't boring but I suspect my selection is predictable). That decision still hangs in the balance, and I'll probably end up making a definitive call while consuming a few too many fizzy drinks over the upcoming festive season. But in the meantime there's this, the strings-heavy 'Burn The Witch', one of two advance singles from back in May, a leftover from the Kid A sessions, and a rather deserving Grammy nominee for Best Rock Song of 2016. Enjoy the slightly disturbing Wicker Man-themed clip:

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

The Festive Dozen 2016: Earth Wind & Fire - Boogie Wonderland (LNTG Muscle Mix)

I know this is a 2016 list, but it's also a reflection of your blogger's pod activity across the year, and it wouldn't be an honest everythingsgonegreen list unless it contained a large element of all things retro. And so we celebrate a little bit of Earth Wind & Fire and Maurice White (R.I.P.), who we lost to the great Boogie Wonderland in the sky back in February. Presumably for a rendezvous in the Legends Lounge with Bowie, Prince, Ali, and the many others who left us during the year. This clip also gives me the chance to showcase the remix/edit work of Late Nite Tuff Guy, a master of housing up funk flavours from yester-year, and another post-production genius to figure prominently on my playlists throughout 2016:

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

The Festive Dozen 2016: Pitch Black - Circuit Bent

Pitch Black occupy a relatively unique place in the wider pantheon of New Zealand electronic music production. Nobody else comes close to matching the duo’s heady brand of electro dub across five flawless albums, and the same can be said about their extraordinary longevity within a genre that tends to date music a hell of a lot quicker than just about any other. 2016 saw Mike Hodgson and Paddy Free celebrate 20 years of working together, and part of that – upcoming extensive tour notwithstanding – was to release yet another state-of-the-art masterpiece in the form of (album) Filtered Senses. The advance single release from that work was the rather aptly-titled ‘Circuit Bent’, which was a firm favourite long before I finally got to hear the whole set.  

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

 

The Festive Dozen 2016: Guts - And The Living Is Easy (RocknRolla Soundsystem Edit)

Released mid-2016, during the northern hemisphere summer, this edit is great on so many levels. French hip hop producer Guts provides the beats that underpin an infectious little vocal loop from (Chess Records legend) Billy Stewart’s 1966 version of the much-covered soul/jazz classic ‘Summertime’. Which is then given a further spit and polish makeover by the prolific RocknRolla Soundsystem ... the end result being something close to genius.

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

 

 

The Festive Dozen 2016: Luxxury - Breathe

Everyone is partial to the odd morsel of delicious disco on occasion, right?

Whether it’s under the guise of deep house, nu disco, or an even more distant cousin like melodic techno, it’s essentially the same thing – music to buckle the knees and have you involuntarily gravitating towards the dancefloor. You know it’s wrong, but it just feels right. Well, sort of. It may seem less “right” to any innocent on-looker. Or perhaps that’s just me, still afflicted with an irrepressible side effect from ‘70s childhood conditioning.

A firm current favourite under the disco ball lights and on the kitchen tiles here at Chez everythingsgonegreen is funked-up throwback producer Luxxury, or the artist formerly known as Baron Von Luxxury, a purveyor of some of the finest retro sounds out there. ‘Breathe’ is one such 2016 trip, a tune to take you somewhere far away from the daily grind, even though it doesn’t really go anywhere in particular …

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...
 

 

 

The Festive Dozen 2016: The Chemical Brothers feat. Beck - Wide Open

Late 2015 saw the return of Nineties techno stalwarts the Chemical Brothers, with the release of an album called Born In The Echoes. The album included several notable collaborations, including this one, which features vocals from Beck. 'Wide Open' is one of the more radio-friendly or "commercial" releases of the duo's entire career, and it gave the Chemical Brothers fresh momentum across early 2016 when a freshly released innovative promo clip, featuring dancer Sonoya Mizuno, proved to be a big hit across social media ...

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

The Festive Dozen 2016: Fazerdaze - Little Uneasy

2016 was something of a breakthrough year for Red Bull Music Academy scholarship winner Amelia Murray, who not only got to hang with some of the industry’s key movers and shakers while attending the academy in Montreal, but was also able to perform and tour extensively across the UK, the USA, and Australia, as the key protagonist behind self-proclaimed “bedroom project”, Fazerdaze. The band also managed to pick up some great local (NZ) support slots as the year progressed. And although Fazerdaze’s discography is currently limited to the eponymous EP release from 2014 (here), plus this late 2015 single, ‘Little Uneasy’, it seems certain we’ll be hearing a lot more from Murray and friends during 2017, and well beyond. In fact, just a few days ago Murray’s bandmate and fellow Red Bull Academy attendee Merk (aka Mark Perkins) released a “solo” album of his own, Swordfish (here).

Not only was ‘Little Uneasy’ an infectious little vibe that my pod involuntarily kept defaulting to throughout the second half of the year, it also sported this pretty decent promo clip …

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

 

The Festive Dozen 2016: The Raveonettes - Junko Ozawa

Every month throughout 2016, Danish indie rock duo The Raveonettes released a new download single in an exercise dubbed “the anti-album” … rather fittingly, given their own commitment to using internet-based technology, one of those tunes was a tribute to Japanese game/arcade music composer Junko Ozawa. Here’s what The Raveonettes had in mind when releasing ‘Junko Ozawa’:

“This tune is dedicated to Junko Ozawa the great female game composer of such classics as Rolling Thunder, The Tower Of Druaga, etc. We wanted to keep all the instrumentation in the 8-12 bit range, only using low bit synths and sounds. Even the guitars have been re-sampled and played on a synth. Cool, uptempo shit!”

Rave on!

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...

 

The Festive Dozen 2016: David Bowie - Lazarus

As we look forward to the end of 2016 – and events this year have been so surreal it truly is a case of wanting to see the back of it as quickly as possible – it seems appropriate to commence the countdown of the annual everythingsgonegreen Festive Dozen with something from David Bowie and the album he left us with. There isn’t really much more I can add to accompany this particular clip, but the words “tragedy” and “genius” would tend to cover it …

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2016) ...