Year-End Critics' Polls 2013

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-14e_qNHTTzs/UUyXrsljWAI/AAAAAAAAMsY/xJv0Xmrw_e8/s1600/14_Joe_Satriani_Unstoppable_Momentum.jpg

Total Guitar's top 20 albums of 2013
http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/total-guitars-top-20-albums-of-2013-589937

20 Alkaline Trio – My Shame Is True
19 Joe Satriani – Unstoppable Momentum
18 Alice In Chains – The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
17 Biffy Clyro – Opposites
16 Deap Vally – Sistrionix
15 Tesseract – Altered State
14 The Artistocrats – Culture Clash
13 The National – Trouble Will Find Me
12 The Civil Wars – The Civil Wars
11 Bring Me The Horizon – Sempiternal
10 City And Colour – The Hurry And The Harm
09 Jimmy Eat World – Damage
08 Clutch – Earth Rocker
07 Karnivool – Asymmetry
06 Jon Gomm – Secrets Nobody Keeps
05 Dream Theater – Dream Theater
04 Soilwork – The Living Infinite
03 Avenged Sevenfold – Hail To The King
02 Russian Circles - Memorial
01 Alter Bridge – Fortress

so mark tremonti really brought the noise in 2013 who knew

A Closer Listen - Ambient Top Ten
http://acloserlisten.com/2013/12/17/acl-2013-top-ten-ambient/

Barn Owl ~ V (Thrill Jockey)
Ben Fleury-Steiner ~ Clearings (Rural Colours)
Federico Durand ~ El Idioma De Las Luciérnagas (Desire Path)
Field Rotation ~ Fatalist: The Repetition of History (Denovali)
Kreng ~ …And Then In the Morning (Sonic Pieces)
Loscil ~ City Hospital (Wist Records)
Raising Holy Sparks ~ For Fran, Etched in Glass & Water (Fallow Field)
Ruhe ~ Organs/Easing (Unknown Tone Records/Cotton Goods)
Wixel ~ Revox Tapes (Jordskred)
woodworkings ~ day breaks the morning shapes we speak (Own Records)

Other Music Top 30 Albums: http://othermusic.com/2013december16update.html

Has anyone done a "best film scores of 2013" list?

I dunno but Upstream Color and Room 237 were both really good. Oh and GTA!

Lots of good things on that Other Music list. Express Rising sounds p interesting.

And the Molly Drake album had totally passed me by. Anyone heard that? Nick Drake's mum playing the piano...

lol guitar mag lists are the best

Has anyone done a "best film scores of 2013" list?

PopMatters: http://www.popmatters.com/column/176673-the-best-film-scores-of-2013/
Indiewire: http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/the-15-best-film-scores-of-2013-20131205

yeah that express rising is great. mikal cronin's like a less extreme version of vampire weekend on these lists for me where it's someone whose work i enjoyed in the past despite obv potential criticisms but the latest release just did zero for me and i'm apparently the only one who felt the falloff.

cannot fathom the fact of anyone not dying at the feet of "weight"

yay whiney!

SPIN's 20 Best Avant Albums of 2013
http://www.spin.com/articles/20-best-avant-noise-jazz-etc-albums-of-2013/

rip big man etc

also, tiny mixed apes have started their countdown...

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/2013-favorite-50-albums-of-2013

this galcher thing - seeing it popping up everywhere. the music is sort of interesting but the singing and lyrics.

god.

re the Spin avant list, how am I just hearing about this BiS Kaidan thing now? sounds like a genius idea

There's some great stuff on it but it's not exactly 'genius', the anti-idol thing's not particularly new.

I've not read anything about that Galcher mix that's made me want to listen to it, but that's the same with a lot of these dance lists. That's possibly me being more disconnected from club culture now but the writing just makes them all sound so dull. Contrast with the Spin avant list where virtually everything sounds interesting even if in practice I might end up hating half of it.

#7
BiS-Kaidan, BiS-Kaidan (Avex Trax)

The real life Ciccone Youth, the dream of noise-as-pop: It ain't gonna be realized by Perfect Pussy's warmed-over Hüskerisms, folks. Live from the land of the rising Bad Moon, come the six members of real life J-pop idols BiS teaming with 30-year harsh noise institution Hijokaidan. Together it's the brightest, most beaming, sugar-coated double-rainbow melodies majestically rising from the most impenetrable, howling, feedbacky soup (with the occasional shriek for good measure). The absolute, natural, bulldozer-through-the-arena-wall end-point of the line that goes through White Light/White Heat, Daydream Nation, and Nevermind.

god bless u whiney

People, help me see the light. What am I missing with that Drake song that Pitchfork had as their #1? Because if I'm not mistaken, that song blows.

What does it mean that when I look over that Pitchfork list, there's quite a bit of music I like? I honestly have the feeling that whenever I look over their weekly picks and "best new music" categories during the year I struggle to find things.

Of course, maybe I'm just imaging things and should read Pfork more often?

Actually, looking over the Pitchfork list again, it becomes pretty clear how it weak a year it was for indie guitar music...

It's been a weak decade for indie guitar music

it's been a weak "since 1995" for indie guitar music

Indie guitar music is just weak

hit it with a shovel

hit it again, it's not dead yet

rip

Yeah, indie guitar music sux. Not like that great Drake song that won pitchfork. LOL, i'm kidding, that song blows.

Let it go.

People, people...indie guitar music has been lame for a while AND that Drake song is no big.

Some of the records on Pitchfork's honorable mentions list (outside the top 50) are pretty surprising:

http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/9292-albums-of-the-year-honorable-mention/1/

Particularly Hecker, Ka, Death Grips and Cronin. Would assume all would make the top 50.

Secret 13's 'Prominent Records of 2013' http://secretthirteen.org/30-prominent-records-of-2013/

i like how every pfork list this year has been shitty in a way that let's you know the next one is going to be even worse. the brain drain that's happened there is really really starting to show.

Secret 13 :-

Jar Moff – Commercial Mouth [PAN]
TM404 - TM404 - Kontra-Musik
Lycia – Quiet Moments [Handmade Birds]
Urpf Lanze - Procession Of Talking Mirrors - audioMER
Various - The End Of Civilization - Mannequin Records
Lebanon Hanover - Tomb For Two - Fabrika Records
Pharmakon – Abandon [Sacred Bones Records]
Shapednoise – Until Human Voices Wake Us [Opal Tapes]
Pete Swanson – Punk Authority [Software Records]
Violetshaped – The Remixes Part 2 [Violet Poison]
Emptyset – Material [Subtext]
Dale Cooper Quartet & The Dictaphones – Quatorze Pièces De Menace [Denovali Records] Automelodi – Surlendemains Acides [Hidden Treasure Music]
Mika Vainio - Kilo - Blast First Petite
Esplendor Geometrico - Ultraphoon - Geometrik
Kommando R.J.F. - Sweet Slow Suicide - Posh Isolation
Charlemagne Palestine Zev - Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear - Sub Rosa
Wolf Eyes – No Answer : Lower Floors [De Stijl Records]
Anne-James Chaton - Andy Moor - Transfer - Unsounds
Giuseppe Ielasi, Kassel Jaeger - Parallel - Grayscale - Editions Mego
Basic House - Oats - Alter
Graham Lambkin - Jason Lescalleet - Photographs - Erstwhile Records
Anton Heyboer - Rules Of The Universe - Kye
Ryoji Ikeda - Supercodex - Raster-Noton
aaNIPaa - Through A Pre-Memory - Editions Mego
Felix Kubin - Zemsta Plutona - Gagarin Records
Haus Arafna - All I Can Give - Galakthorro
Various - Interpretations On F C Judd - Public Information
Prurient - Through The Window - Blackest Ever Black

bout time EG got some respect

i like how every pfork list this year has been shitty in a way that let's you know the next one is going to be even worse. the brain drain that's happened there is really really starting to show.

― balls, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 12:01 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, i don't see how any of the p4k lists are substantially different from 80% of the lists already posted in this thread

hit it with a shovel

― karajan up the khyber (NickB), Tuesday, December 17, 2013 4:25 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hit it again, it's not dead yet

― sleeve, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 4:45 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hm, tough crowd...

Indie guitar music has always been the style it's safe to hate on ILM.

Is that indie guitar music or "indie" "guitar" "music" that we're slagging here

every year i'm always so fuckin blown away by how much interesting-looking stuff i've been unaware of, 99.99% of which is not the national. i'm glad we do this for the information in the process + don't care very much at all about the results when it comes down to it.

Oh, I do love the results. It sucks knowing that most of my favorite stuff doesn't resonate with many other people, but I love being able to peep in to sectors of ilm I normally don't follow and find out what they've liked the most.

so did anyone notice the fuckup with nosnitsky's blurb in the wire rewind issue? Either they've accidentally reprinted his 2012 writeup or he's due one hell of a latepass.

I didn't see that but the blurb for the Laurel Halo record (#2 in their overall list) made it sound like they hadn't listened to that album or the one before it either (which was #1 in last year's poll). don't have the quote to hand but i think it said something about the "auto-tuned" vocals on Quarantine being one of the component parts of Chance of Rain. nuh uh, wrong on both counts

In 2012 rap music was more fragmented than ever, with splinters both brilliant and dull. Last year’s lively experimental underground fizzled almost completely as its harbingers like Odd Future and Lil B retreated into their niches, and later interlopers like ASAP Rocky and Trinidad James grafted their swag onto more hollow and glossier forms. Instead some of the genre’s strangest mutations took place inside the major label system – Future found legitimate beauty in Auto-Tuned spitup on Pluto and Kendrick Lamar turned his average life into an slithery and spacey opera with “Good Kid, m.A.A.d. City”. Even Nicki Minaj took time out of her pop radio dominance to sprinkle her Roman Reloaded with a handful of eye, ear and skull popping performances. A nihilistic but vital new breed of youth oriented street rap blossomed via YouTube, with teens like Chicago’s Chief Keef and Washington DC’s Shy Glizzy realising that a HD camera makes for a cheaper (and wiser) investment than a brick of cocaine. Waka Flocka, an apparent influence on Keef, lost the script on his own sophomore album but his old Brick Squad mentor Gucci Mane caught a welcome second wind with a trio of mixtapes. Californian kids, on the other hand, seemed wholly unconcerned with the trappings of the trap, as producers like DJ Mustard and Iamsu pushed their high energy, clap heavy strain of Ratchet party rap instead. The rap game may be in a complete state of chaos, but at least that leaves a lot of options.

Indie guitar music has always been the style it's safe to hate on ILM.

just for the record i'll probably have at least 3 or 4 straight-up indie rock records on my ilx ballot (savages, esben & the witch, implodes) and there's a bunch of other stuff i liked (deerhunter, iceage, polvo) so i was being somewhat tongue in cheek there.

xp wuh!?

Yep that's in the print and digital editions. Oops!

maybe it's metacommentary idk