2013: Jonny's Top Albums, Songs & Live Shows

Jonny's Top Everything of 2013

10 Songs, 15 Live Shows and 50 Albums

Hasn't 2013 been great? Ignoring the fact no real classics have come out, it's really hard to complain. Daft Punk and Boards of Canada came back from the dead, Justin Bieber announced his impending retirement and someone threw eggs at Simon Cowell. It's also great because the world was supposed to end last year, so I guess we're all still running off the high from that.

Looking at these lists, they're a little weighted. The songs list is mostly electronic and the albums are almost entirely ambient, so while I tried to be objective it obviously hasn't worked as well as I'd hoped. Still, I rate how I feel; and apparently I either feel mellow or hyper. Anything in between is for people who vote Lib Dem and listen to Enya.

Artist of the Day: Clem Leek

Clem Leek first caught my eye as part of Black Elk, who released an album called Sparks last year which turned out to be pretty damn awesome (#18 on my end of year list). The south England lad's been pretty busy since then, with the ultimate result being two rather tasty EPs since the beginning of 2013. One took a slightly experimental path parallel to Sparks in a modern-classical-come-ambient way. The other is entirely different, and more than a little difficult to come by.

Released on the wonderfully informal Brian Records, Rest seems more like an afternoon's session of slow guitar jams than a full record. The 17 minute duration is occupied with the most restrained form of emotional post-rock: a minimal collection of ambient buzz and a handful of guitar tracks. Clean, calm and beautiful would be the best way to describe it -favourite of the year so far beautiful, to put it in context- but with a limited release of only 40 vinyls and a small stack of CDs, beauty can't be for everyone.

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