Universal Studios Florida’s 10 favourite songs from 2009:

ALASKAS – Diving In
Diving In is wordless bliss amidst a hail storm of larger than life hopes, dreams, and mandates. Every song on Set Yourself Free is a necessary rung in the ladder, and Diving In perfectly bridges the high-energy guitar riff in Pronoun with the sparse vocal manipulations of Easily, with cascading down-tuned open strums that give way to looped cacophony that you can feel being made and pulled apart even as it finds its way through your headphones.

Gold Panda – Back Home
We love Gold Panda, and we’re really psyched that he’s also contributing a track to the Darker Side of the Moon compilation that Nat from our label (Little Fury Things) is putting together. Quitter’s Raga has been getting a lot of attention (as well it should), but it’s Back Home from his first EP, Miyamae, that really impresses, with a hypnotically washed-over 4/4 pulse and carefully cut up instrumentation reminiscent of a Four Tet jam stripped of the but-the-kitchen-sink percussion.

Guido – Way You Make Me Feel
Guido’s emotively propulsive brand of synth-work is so far outside any other dubstep sphere (even that of the Purple Trinity) that it feels almost blasphemous to lump this in with any of the existing sub-genres, wonky or otherwise. Like it’s A-side and the Beautiful Complication single that followed it, Way You Make Me Feel is a shit-hot fever of yearning sub-bass and skittering percussion cast against mingling synth flutters and saxophone blasts, all on an alarmingly slow 94 BPM dubplate.

Julianna Barwick – Sunlight, Heaven
All of the tracks on Barwick’s debut EP are dense with a kind of cosmic sadness, but this song in particular, constructed entirely from ethereal choral loops, sounds like a forgotten companion of Brian Eno’s An Ending (Ascent), left orbiting.

Subeena – Analyse
2009 saw a slew of excellent 12″ releases from Planet Mu, and Subeena’s Solidify single topped the list. On the A-side she lets Jamie Woon croon his way over and around reverbed key plinks and winding Boards of Canada ambiance, but it’s on the b-side, the swirling and impeccably panned Analyse, where she lets her solo production aesthetic shine with digital chimes, rich bass hits, and arpeggiated bliss, landing somewhere between Vespertine and M83.

Animal Collective – Bluish
It would be hard to overstate our anticipation for (and eventual love of) this record. It was lush and consistent, and had a couple surprises, like the way this track unfolds—reincarnated 60’s pop hooks with an inspired, holometabolic structure and Avey Tare’s offbeat delivery. Dig it.

Bat for Lashes – Two Planets
Natasha Khan is the cutest person alive, and she made an exceedingly good choice in hiring David Kosten/Faultline to produce this Kate-Bush-by-way-of-Gang-Gang-Dance masterpiece. Nowhere on the record do the fullness of sound and throbbing percussion compliment Khan’s enchanting voice quite like they do here.

Big Spider’s Back – Don’t Make Me Laugh
To be fair, this has been a favorite of ours since we first heard it on (Jason’s radio show) Floating in Space. A year and change later, and the album version of this haunting piece of pop melancholia has been unleashed upon the world. We like to imagine this song as a seminal, lighter-raising sonic embrace. Or the perfect thing to listen to as you careen off the rain-slick midnight roads of the Pacific Northwest, to your death.

Boogie Boarder – Pig Pile Part II
This song has a great instrumental chorus that is jammy and infectious and more fun than most music we heard this year.

Dan Deacon – Snookered
At the expense of some other great tracks, we had to prostrate ourselves at the altar of Bromst. When everything drops out except the cut-up vocals and propellant drumming, we lose our shit. Then when the synths drop back in, it’s even more ear-pleasing. This song manages to be hyper-dense, expertly-produced, melancholic, and raucous all at once. Deacon’s finest song on an album that’s pure apocalyptic psychedelia and Sharpie-fume symphonics.

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