Year-End Critics' Polls 2013

gvb really likes Autre Ne Veut huh

It's a pretty fun list though

top 2 makes me feel some type of way

Playing through this list now. I like that Blue Hawaii track, which is new to me.

I put a bunch of best-songs lists (Rolling Stone, Spin, NME, NPR, Paste, PopMatters, Complex, and Pretty Much Amazing) into a single Spotify playlist, deleting the dupes:
http://open.spotify.com/user/seaworthyset/playlist/7AhiUOmkHgiJIJGNOhSwZO

I know it's basically a christmas catalogue for tarts but I do love the end of year lists that Boomkat do, discovered so much good stuff through those.

― diego floorplan (NickB), Wednesday, December 11, 2013

i get this; i've discovered some great stuff from boomkat, too. but they seem to love everything, which makes it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

noisey magazine's best tapes of 2013 (in no order, from what i can tell):

Siriusmo - Enthusiast
Torky Tork - PR110
Thundercat - Apocalypse
Jai Paul - Unreleased Album
Aleph - 4th Way
Sweet Valley - SV
Himuro Yoshiteru - Get Money
Ta-Ku - Songs To Break Up To
Zomby - With Love
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

PJ ballot submitted.

I'm having second thoughts about the MIA track I picked, but fuck it

The Wire seemed to take a turn towards covering more pop around '93, and I read every issue through the mid-90s. I've been listening to a playlist with albums from the list all day and I thought of this for the first time in ages: http://unhappyhipsters.com/

I'm already reminiscing wistfully back to yesterday when I got to hear fun, stupid music.

which track did you pick, Raymond? (plz say Matangi, I am obsessed with that song)

Sorry Dan, I went with "Bring the Noize" - though now I'm second guessing my decision, thinking I should have gone with "Come Walk With Me."

Overall I was more certain/set in the albums I chose than the tracks.

All this talk of WIRE has me realizing that I've not purchased a copy in YEARS. Tend to browse in the store and put it back.

yeah come walk with me is my pick, too

V/A - Stand Up People: Gypsy Pop Songs From Tito's Yugoslavia 1964-1980
Orchestra Super Mazembe - Mazembe @ 45 rpm Vol 1

^ both fantastic

i remain baffled that on an album as strong as matangi anyone could highlight the lumbering "come walk with me" which is the only one i had to flat-out delete

I can't work out if The Wire has got noticeably more catholic in its tastes or whether other publications (chiefly FACT) have moved closer to it. Probably a combination of both because that Wire top 10 looks surprisingly safe.

dummy as well - a year or two ago dummy pretty much covered the same stuff as fact but its leaned a lot more towards the wire end of things now

Last years Kerrang had a top 100 that wasnt bad. But look at this piece of utter shit. Close this mag now!

Kerrang Albums of 2013 "The Albums That Rocked 2013"
25. A Day To Remember - Common Courtesy
24. Jamie Lenman - Muscle Memory
23. Panic At The Disco - Too Weird To Live,Too Rare To Die
22. The Defiled - Daggers
21. Nails - Abandon All Life
20. State Champs - The Finer Things
19. Deafheaven- Sunbather
18. Fall Out Boy - Save Rock And Roll
17. Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control
16. Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt
15. Alter Bridge - Fortress
14. Deaf Havana - Old Souls
13. Black Sabbath - 13
12. Watain - The Wild Hunt
11. Tonight Alive - The Other Side
10. Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork
09. The Bronx - The Bronx IV
08. The Wonder Years - The Greatest Generation
07. LetLive - The Blackest Beautiful
06. Paramore - Paramore
05. Avenged Sevenfold- Hail to the King
04. Asking Alexandria - From Death To Destiny
03. Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks
02. Biffy Clyro - Embarrassment to Scotland
01. Bring Me The Horizon - Sempiternal

No Carcass! What a joke!

Bring back DJ Martian!

heh i'm one of those old school wire readers - in the minority i'm sure - who has stopped buying the mag because of its drift towards the centre in the last few years. think this is partly just an effect of history - the big guns of 20th century free improv/jazz and electronic composition are dying off, so the mag has had to re-focus a bit - and partly a result of changes to the editorial makeup of the mag. i don't begrudge them trying to adapt and survive, but i miss the beardscratching and noisewank.

write-off since kopf took over

No CarcassSubRosa! What a joke!

well yeah but I dont expect Kerrang to cover them.

lol does the Wire really cost 6 quid now?!

They have genre lists too just like the wire!

Pop-punk
1. A Day To Remember
2. State Champs - The Finer Things
3. The Wonder Years - Te Greatest Generation
4. Tonight Alive - The Other Side
5. Fall Out Boy - Save Rock And Roll

The New Breed!
1. Asking Alexandria - From Death To Destiny
2. Falling In Reverse - Fashionably Late
3. Escape The Fate - Ungrateful
4. Glamour Of The Kill - Savages
5. Survive This! - The Life You've Chosen

Bring back Philip Sherburne for Critical Beats, Joe Muggs is a good writer but microhouse >>>> UK Bass/footwork

K-Punk was nail in the coffin too.

Although every now and again...I am vaguely interested in the South African jazz piece.

well yeah but I dont expect Kerrang to cover them.
I've never looked at that magazine so I wouldn't know what they cover but I just wanted to use the strikethrough function and look cool for a moment.

Alt. Weirdness
1. Biffy Clyro LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL "weirdness"
2. Arcane Roots - Blood & Chemistry
3. Tomahawk- Oddfellows
4. Jamie Lehman - Muscle Memory
5. Hawk Eyes - That's What This Is

no imago, no MUTation

Arena Rock!
1. Pearl Jam - Lightning Bolt
2. Nine Inch Nails- Hesitation Marks
3. Qotsa - ... Like Clockwork
4. Alter Bridge - Fortress
5. Alice In Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here

Club Metal!
1. Korn - The Paradigm Shift (still doing the pop dubstep rock thing i presume)
2. The Defiled - Daggers
3. Crossfaith - Apocalyze
4. Five Finger Death Punch - The Wrong Side Of Heaven and the Righteous Side Of Hell Volume 1
5. Device - Device

Extreme Metal!
1. Watain - The Wild Hunt
2. Carcass - Surgical Steel
3. Grave Miasma - Odori Sepulchorum
4. Moss- Horrible Night
5. In Solitude - Sister

In Solitude are extreme? They sounded to me like a cross between QOTSA and Echo & the Bunnymen

lol does the Wire really cost 6 quid now?!

err no

they arent extreme but their "expert" probably ran out of bands he knew..

bless

That's what the site said: https://thewire.co.uk/shop/basket. Looks like 4 quid something when you look at the cover closely.

yeah, it's £4.50

you can buy an e-version of the end of year one for cheap though:
https://twitter.com/thewiremagazine/status/410729095195279361

dunno if the wire is the intended target but this piece feels relevant to the discussion of where it's at:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/birdnestsoup/bb.png

Dazed Digital: Tracks http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/18137/1/top-ten-tracks-of-2013

10 Jon Hopkins - Open Eye Signal
09 Lorde - Tennis Court
08 Big Sean - Control ft. Jay Electronica & Kendrick Lamar
07 Autre Ne Veut - Play By Play
06 Mariah Carey - #Beautiful ft. Miguel
05 VIsionist - Pain
04 Ciara - Body Party
03 Glasser - Design
02 FKA Twigs - Water Me
01 Kingdom - Bank Head ft. Kelela

Underground has been populated by "cults of personality" since about 1287.

Britt Brown may well be otm but as a non-Wire reader it's funny to see Laurel Halo, James Ferraro and Oneohtrix held up as the acme of PR-led overexposure. I guess they are within a very tiny world.

6 quid will include postage?

That's true Julio, and there's also an air of waking up the sheeple about that piece, but some of it's feels right too? Not sure what this new conformity in the 'dance music revival' is though. xps

dunno if the wire is the intended target but this piece feels relevant to the discussion of where it's at

Yeah, that one resonates for me.

I really miss Penman and Watson in the Wire.

Even looking at the new issue in the newsagent's yesterday felt like going to school.

yeah that britt brown piece completely resonates

the examples are interesting too - in the mainstream, of course those names aren't the ultimate examples of PR-driven hype, but the inward-facing circles that the internet encourages all have their own established names who are considered important by default...

It adds a quid extra for p&p.

Nick - Most of it doesn't feel right at all: plenty of labels aren't just contemporary or retro, plenty of people are working to turn their talents (or lack ofs) into something/anything, and you can always go somewhere for a conversation.

Note how no concerts are mentioned - just internet and records.

I used to like abrasive, conceptual techno but now there is literally no other type of dance music being made or talked about, I'm starting to regret my tastes