The Poptimist is Always Disappointed

10 The Black Ghosts ‘Any Way You Choose To Give It’ (Fake Blood mix from 2007)

As we’re on a maximal dance-track tip, this is maximal max-ed out. I have found the original track on the net (which is still pretty good), but not the ID of the remixer (Fake Blood) who has gone beyond the call of duty to throw everything they have into this. Listening to this remix is like watching a childish show-off perform for their life. It trots out every trick they know and then when they’re worried they have nowhere to go and the audience might be relaxing, they are left with just a kitchen-sink Scanners’ head-explosion to keep their attention and bow out. Exhausting, uninhibited, stripped-of-dignity, brilliant.

9 DJ Ozma ‘Age Age Every Night’ (from 2006)

Gonzo dance music j-pop style. This is a note to myself to listen to some more DJO. All I know is that he has three albums called “I ♥ Party People” (1, 2 and 3), and that this song came to me as part of FreakyTrigger’s Poptimism Podcast (almost definitely from Cis - thanks again).

This is in my top 40 ‘number of plays in iTunes’ chart for the decade for sure. Look for the studio performance video on YouTube – it’s insane. (The actual official video is a bit meh.)

8 Scooter ‘Shake That’ (from 2004 ‘Mind the Gap’)

I can’t choose a favourite Scooter track. So here is one of their more accessible songs, using a big KC and the Sunshine Band sample (and most likely a Black Star quote) instead of their usual patchwork of more obscure pop-cult references and in-jokes.

Scooter are an honest, funny, clever and canny outfit, and don’t deserve their received image of puerile functionalism at all. Well perhaps a little.

7 Doves ‘The Man Who Told Everything’ (from 2000 ‘Lost Souls’)

Back to albums that I unreservedly loved every track of. There’s a range and texture to the music in Doves albums as a whole that I don’t hear in many bands they are compared to. (I can’t say the same for the vocals.) And it’s not just down to their well-known dance origins. From the very first track on the first album, exotic sounds ripple around the more traditional instrumentation, which even half-listening you’ll find threaded through the more vocally plodding of tracks.

Time for something more upbeat…

6 It’s Jo And Danny ‘Solar Plexus’ (from 2000 ‘Lank Haired Girl to Bearded Boy’)

Another album opener, but this time because it’s an enormous build-up track that the rest of the album didn’t live up to – should have been the closer, innit. IJAD were considered part of a scene often dubbed “new wave of folk” (hello Bob Stanley) or “Quiet is the New Loud”. A genre of acoustic indie that idolized Nick Drake, and was typified by the tedious Turin Brakes and Kings of Convenience.

There’s a revival of all this again now at the end of the decade. And from the lauded Fleet Foxes to the reviled and myriad landfill singer-strummers, I just can’t be doing with it. Of course this track brings the noise. I can never fully get away from the noise.

5 Broadcast ‘Long Was The Year’ (from 2000 ‘The Noise Made By People’)

Another post-trip-hop sound, and it’s only the opening track because I CANNOT CHOOSE ANY ONE TRACK from such a glacial monolith of an album. The first album of the decade that I can remember getting stuck on repeat. (Though maybe I’ll remember another as I go along here.)

Sidenote: I was a bit of a Warp snob around this time. This meant that after my general indifference to Radiohead’s whiny “OK Computer” I was completely turned off them when I heard a track or two of Kid A. Now that enough time has elapsed, I think I’ll give it a go. Visceral dislike of a band’s singer or vocals shouldn’t necessarily get in the way of enjoying the music, should they? (But they often do.)

4 Lemon Jelly ‘Page One’ (from 2000 ‘Lemonjelly.ky’)

My non-pop tastes in the early 2000s were way more laid back. This is one of LemonJelly’s more upbeat songs, a relaxed groove that works itself out almost like a trad-rave-song NOT on acid (or on 33). There’s a twiddling build up, drop-out “Nothing” and BANG the beat’s back. It’s even the track before the album’s final “chill-out” track.

3 Princess Superstar ‘Coochie Coo’ (from 2005 ‘My Machine’)

She’s filthy and furious. From the (loose) concept album whose credits read like a super-group of producers. Funny, but the 2000s seemed to produce these (loose) concept albums quite regularly (and no, Chemistry doesn’t count). More evidence of prog’s return? Now I’m trying to think of some 90s concept albums.

Ok, always stop the noise on a crescendo. A change of mood coming up…

2 The Presets ‘This Boys’s In Love’ (from 2008 ‘Apocalypso’)

Rather than going for the white-noise of constant  contrast I think I’ll post songs in textural mini-sets — songs that are associated in my head even if separated by a few years.

There are some Presets songs that I swear I can hear the Alpine Stars dude’s voice on.

1 Alpinestars ‘Vital Love Disciple’ (from 2002 ‘White Noise’)

Underneath the usual lush and bubbly Alpinestars fluff a bruising and sustained buzzing synth sound rips loose. It makes it for me, it might break it for you.