by Malcolm Toogood

Created on: December 23, 2008

Well, it's that time of year again to review the music scene and for the 45th time select my personal Album of the Year. For those of you new to my musings on the subject, I have always selected a personal album of the year ever since I started buying vinyl, back in the sixties, and with the emergence of a whole new generation of artists & bands after the turn of the century, I began to compile a top-ten, simply because there was so much good music about.

The criteria I use are that I must have a copy of the album in my collection that has been purchased during the year, the album's UK release date has to be in the year being reviewed, and the final list can contain no compilations or live albums. Other than that, it's pretty-much open-house. So here are my Top Ten for 2008, in no particular order except for the top three at the end:

"Sam Sparro"

For the first time in years, several dance albums make my top ten, and of its genre, this ones a good un. All too often, a dance album, particularly one by a British artist, will start-off with a couple of rip-snorting singles, before fading-off by track five, but not this one. Having seen him perform live at one of our summer festivals, he clearly has the talent to stay around for some time, and his acoustic performance of the number one single "Black and Gold" showed he also has the range to cover a wider musical spectrum.

"Hercules & Love Affair"

There have been several new arty bands that have come out of New York this year, and although the PR for the album was all about it being "Experimental Disco", or "Disco for the 21st Century", it is just basically good old-fashioned Disco, and there is nothing wrong with that. The voice of one of the singers will sound familiar, being Antony Hegarty, better known as the lead singer of 2006 Mercury Prize winners, Antony & the Johnsons. This is a distinct change of style from the rather plaintive, but beautiful, ballads he produced then, but he nevertheless proves an inspired, if somewhat surprising, choice for this type of music.

Pendulum - "In Silico"

There was an awful lot of chatter on the 'net last year about this band who had arrived from Australia having had underground success with their first album, "Hold Your Colour". When the opening credits for the BBC's coverage of the Reading Festival this year showed a huge crowd spilling-out, hundreds-deep from the NME Newcomers' Tent, whilst the main stage mosh-pit was virtually empty, it turned-out to be because Pendulum

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