The end of the year, the need to sum up and contain. Lists, lists, and lists, but all I can think of is the long / glide / into / the deep.

When I reflect on 2007, one of the key distinguishing features of the music that really moved me was this concept of slowly coasting into a place where the light leaves and everything dissipates. A place that might be the sea below (but without the pressure), the sky above (but without the stars), or the dark corner of the dancefloor (without the sticky spilled drink or couple kissing).

I get to this place (or feel it very strongly) through house tracks by Cassy, Cobblestone Jazz, the Mountain People, Tobias, Kerri Chandler, Andy Stott, and Thomas Melchior (among others), as well as most of the compelling output from labels like Kompakt, Mule, Cocoon, and Dial – in fact, almost everything on Dial this year. Against the relentlessness over over-compressed drums, the “long glide into the deep” was a strong return of lightness, breath, and dynamism. It’s music that’s got soft roll, low friction drift, and blanketed clatter to it.

I have no doubt this is what appealed to so many about The Field’s From Here We Go Sublime, a whole album in every way like a pebble skimmed over a shallow pond. Efdemin and This Bliss operated in the same way, especially in the longer tracks like Efdemin’s “April Fools” and Pantha’s “Urlichten”. Then there are the last ten minutes of False’s 2007, where the music appears to have expended the last of its kinetic energy, and just spins through itself in dissipating eddies until it finally slows to a juddering halt.

But the glide wasn’t only in the little whirlpools of low-circulation deep techno releases. It could also be heard in a lot of other indie chart toppers like LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver and Panda Bear’s Person Pitch as well as ambient works like Stars of the Lid’s And Their Refinement of the Decline and Klimek’s Dedications, or those moments on Burial’s Untrue where the boom-klak faded into the rain. I can’t help but think that this may be why Björk’s Volta and Murcof’s Cosmos jarred so much, or at least (by most accounts) failed to find an earhold on the year’s sensibilities. Of course it’s ridiculous to suggest, but had they released Vespertine and Martes this year…well, who knows? I don’t want to suggest there’s some kind of pseudo-Jungian collective unconscious at work here – maybe it’s just the price you pay for working ahead of the curve, or out of it.

I really liked 2007, for a lot of reasons, but musically, it was a year to enter the music, to lie in it, to flow with it. A lot of musical forms seemed to have expended a lot of their earlier energies (hence the size of the vapour trails), and spent the year coasting on their long glide into the deep. Here’s a set by the Mountain People which glides for three hours – perfect for pondering the glide on those fading afternoons after over-indulgent end of year celebrations.

[Peter Chambers]