Too early? Definitely. Probably.

I think I have a Tune Of The Year already.

Despite the fact that 2011 isn’t even five-twelfths gone, it’s especially ludicrous as I generally dislike end-of-year list collation and evaluation. Not because of the usual criticisms of it being reductionist and biased, but because even when forced to choose, I’m never 1000000% sure of my choices. My usual day-to-day is enough of a multiple personality music disorder as it is, with promiscuous ears at the mercy of my moods, constantly and impulsively falling for something new. Compiling my top RA tracks of last year was agonising, and I shuffled and reshuffled my list for weeks until deadline day.

2009 is the only year I can remember with one all-out stand-out favourite – Azari & III’s “Hungry For The Power” – which was partly because it covered enough ground and could be appropriately applied to enough scenarios for it to emerge as my most essential listen of that year.

This year – well, this year as of as of May 13 anyway – my tuuune of 2011 is Braille’s “Year 3000”.

Braille, real name Praveen Sharma, is from NYC. He teams up with Travis Stewart/Machinedrum as Hot Flush duo Sepalcure, and he seems to have a raft of other projects that I need to check out once I’ve stopped listening to “Year 3000” on repeat, which won’t be anytime soon.

The most immediately notable and noticeable element of the track for me is Sharma’s sampling of the Sterling Void/Marshall Jefferson good-time rave anthem “It’s Alright”

Initially I thought it was pure nostalgia that hooked me, but when I thought about it, other versions of “It’s Alright” that I’m familiar with – Pet Shop Boys’ euro dance cover, and Hercules & Love Affair’s horrifyingly earnest ballad – both send me seeking the comfort of the original. To be fair, not a huge amount of “It’s Alright” has been used by Sharma. There are no sing-along choruses or thunderous Marshall Jefferson pianos here, but instead there are arena-sized flanging synths, and a kind of casually in-between not-house/not-bass tempo. And bongos. But there’s something of the original spirit of “It’s Alright” that’s carried over into “Year 3000”. I think it’s the progression, huge swells of cresting prog-ness (and i hate prog!), and dramatic light/dark contrasts; it has an epic scope but still remains quite understated within it.

So it’s now stupid o’clock on a school night, and I’m on the 30th listen or so in as many hours, through a ghetto set-up of poor quality promo mp3, played from a shitty old phone that’s plugged into an old amp (a long story involving an audio cable snapping off inside my computer headphone outlet), and I’ll probably still give it another whirl or 2 before I call it a day. Like most songs that I love wholly and instinctively, I can’t identify exactly what it is that I like so much (or even even adequately describe it), but tracks like this one make me excited to still feel so excited about music. Or something.

BRAILLE – THE YEAR 3000 – RUSH HOUR DIRECT

… what else have I been up to, I hear you ask?

Well I’ve quizzed Nico Jaar, travelled into Future Times, got pampered at SchoenBErlin, got futuristic again with the Future Classic chaps, sweltered with Toro Y Moi, listened to the ra-ra-radio, and learned from Juju & Jordash that dance music can indeed be about the Holocaust.

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