Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

no artists are definitely overtly marketing themselves that way

i mean not all of them obviously, but definitely some

]i don't know if this is true for the early days of uk funky, given how much it drew on house music with impeccable sound design!

― #YOLO ONO (lex pretend), Friday, November 30, 2012 7:58 AM Bookmark

The point isn't that it didn't have good sound design, but that it didn't seem overly focused on it as a pursuit in itself.

― these bitches is my sons and i make dad jokes (The Reverend), Friday, November 30, 2012 9:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think Rev is correct on this one. Even the "glossy" and "classy" aspects of uk funky were directly opposed to the qualities that tend to be associated with "good sound design" in dance music today, even leaving aside that there's an implicit anti-retro assumption to "good sound design" (which, if it is present in retro-leaning music, is always the modernist/contemporary twist on whatever else is going on). The point being that "sound design" is a loaded term, suggesting qualities which, even if not actively disruptive, distract the listener away from the (mere) operation/progression of the groove or the song. If dance music has sound design which is essentially ignorable (even if glossy/classy/tastefully executed) then I don't think of it as meriting the term.

Julio Bashmore's "Au Seve" is 2012's model: crisp, tactile, a perfect house tune that sounds a lot nicer to me than most of Bashmore's previous work but could never be accused of investing in "good sound design".

In the case of Voices From The Lake the pendulum is swung pretty hard towards sound design and away from groove/song in the sense that it's difficult to frame the album as anything other than a "listening experience".

i still think of booka shade as the ne plus ultra of sound design

distract the listener away from the (mere) operation/progression of the groove or the song

and i don't think booka shade's sound design did this at all

I would totally agree that prime Get Physical was a case of everything coming together so well that it's difficult to separate out these qualities. But I don't think that disproves what I'm saying b/c if Get Physical had an explicit purpose (in its early days) it was precisely to blur the distinction between "efficient" dance music and sumptuous production.

Which certainly means they indulged in these tendencies in a manner far more subtle than say Herbert or Luciano or Isolee (though it's easy to forget that Booka Shade's first album was much more deep and less cheerfully anthemic than Movements - see "Vertigo" for example, a wealth of little rustles and ear-tickling sounds to get lost in), but still, if you can get lost in the details of the production then you're not just focusing on the groove/song. Glossiness in an early Crazi Cousinz tune is not something you can get "lost" in. Whereas Get Physical's sound design calls attention to itself - forces itself into the listener's consciousness - even while playing the role of power behind the (groove's) throne so consummately.

To be clear I'm certainly not suggesting some zero sum game where sound design is always at the expense of groove primacy, more that "good sound design" encourages a mode of listening focused on "good sound design", it's not incidental to the groove.

I think of minimal as one of those genres in general where sound design and groove really came together, functional music that was all about finding new ways to make the space in the room and the space between sounds really work. It helped that most of these producers were making tracks with Berghain or Fabric-level sound systems in mind.

Meanwhile a lot of post-dubstep in particular seems to value sound design over groove in the way that's to its detriment. Although Martyn's 'Ghost People' led to me wonder whether I'd have got more out of eg Night Slugs if they'd been better at sound design.

Whereas with funky a track could sound cheap as hell and it just didn't matter because the grooves and hooks and songs were just so irresistible. It didn't fanny around, basically.

really quite impressive sound design, i said to myself while fashioning a noose

― r|t|c, Friday, 21 September 2012 12:02 (2 months ago) Bookmark

I know that Rate Your Music is polarizing to say the least, but here's the top 100 albums according to them (at least, as of this post):

1. Swans - The Seer
2. Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city
3. Max Richter - Recomposed: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons
4. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
5. Grizzly Bear - Shields
6. Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind
7. Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel…
8. Enslaved - RIITIIR
9. Between the Buried and Me - The Parallax II: Future Sequence
10. Tame Impala - Lonerism
11. Deftones - Koi no Yokan
12. Beach House - Bloom
13. Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music
14. Dead Can Dance - Anastasis
15. Scott Walker - Bish Bosch
16. Ne Obliviscaris - Portal of I
17. Änglagård - Viljans öga
18. Neil Young - Psychedelic Pill
19. Frank Ocean - Channel Orange
20. Dr. John - Locked Down
21. Anathema - Weather Systems
22. Rush - Clockwork Angels
23. Andy Stott - Luxury Problems
24. Aesop Rock - Skelethon
25. Dordeduh - Dar de duh
26. Kälter - Ubuntu
27. Wintersun - Time I
28. The Tallest Man on Earth - There's No Leaving Now
29. Threshold - March of Progress
30. Be'lakor - Of Breath and Bone
31. Jonny Greenwood - The Master
32. Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes
33. Bob Dylan - Tempest
34. Death Grips - The Money Store
35. Kamelot - Silverthorn
36. Testament - Dark Roots of Earth
37. Om - Advaitic Songs
38. Big Big Train - English Electric (Part One)
39. ∆ - An Awesome Wave
40. AtomA - Skylight
41. Aluk Todolo - Occult Rock
42. El-P - Cancer 4 Cure
43. Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light
44. Overkill - The Electric Age
45. Shackleton - Music for the Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs
46. Mgła - With Hearts Toward None
47. Wadada Leo Smith - Ten Freedom Summers
48. Borknagar - Urd
49. Blut aus Nord - 777 - Cosmosophy
50. Accept - Stalingrad
51. Aeternam - Moongod
52. iamamiwhoami - kin
53. Goat - World Music
54. Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pandora's Piñata
55. In Mourning - The Weight of Oceans
56. Various Artists - Moonrise Kingdom
57. Circus Maximus - Nine
58. High on Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis
59. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis - The Heist
60. Steven Wilson - Get All You Deserve
61. Clams Casino - Instrumentals 2
62. Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory
63. John Talabot - ƒIN
64. Donald Fagen - Sunken Condos
65. BADBADNOTGOOD - BBNG2
66. Raime - Quarter Turns Over a Living Line
67. Killing Joke - MMXII
68. Jack White - Blunderbuss
69. Sigh - In Somniphobia
70. Mount Eerie - Clear Moon
71. Nas - Life Is Good
72. Devin Townsend - Epicloud
73. A Forest of Stars - A Shadowplay for Yesterdays
74. Colour Haze - She Said
75. Paradise Lost - Tragic Idol
76. Dying Fetus - Reign Supreme
77. The Flower Kings - Banks of Eden
78. Evoken - Atra Mors
79. Orden Ogan - To the End
80. Tindersticks - The Something Rain
81. Japandroids - Celebration Rock
82. Lee Fields - Faithful Man
83. Ty Segall & White Fence - Hair
84. Neneh Cherry & The Thing - The Cherry Thing
85. The Faceless - Autotheism
86. Galneryus - Angel of Salvation
87. Thee Oh Sees - Putrifiers II
88. mewithoutYou - Ten Stories
89. Steve Hackett - Genesis Revisited II
90. Kreator - Phantom Antichrist
91. Thank You Scientist - Maps of Non-Existent Places
92. Katatonia - Dead End Kings
93. Arjen Anthony Lucassen - Lost in the New Real
94. Spawn of Possession - Incurso
95. Chris Robinson Brotherhood - Big Moon Ritual
96. Anaal Nathrakh - Vanitas
97. The Gathering - Disclosure
98. Sigur Rós - Valtari
99. Headspace - I Am Anonymous
100. Caspian - Waking Season

(Was debating listing all 1000 just to see Whiney annotate it.)

Matt otm

tbh there are def some ways in which our list will def differ from the rym one (Dawn Richard and Miguel will be top 5, Goat will be way higher) but I would be p happy if ILM albums list resembled that as a whole

whats the Dr John album like?

Is "sound design" in dance what we rockists call "arrangements"?

RYM list looks pretty okay to me.

Done a lot of catch-up listening this weekend:

Alabama Shakes - Retro blues-rock int he style of the BellRays. Could stray to the wrong side of pastiche (the singer has one of those voices) if it wasn't so well executed.

Chairlift - Yeah, I've been listening to bits of it all year but never all the way through. Some of the vocal melodies on here are just wonderful; maybe yet another take on the eighties, this time reminiscent (i.e. pinched) from the Mac or the Pretenders or even some early-90s Beats International/Soul II Soul type thing, but somehow never boring. It always heartens me when a band who released a just-okay debut come back with a first-class follow-up.

Swans - So yeah, I finally discovered and fell in love with this album a couple of weeks back but listening to the acoustic demoes gives a whole new insight into this album.

Fuckin' MAGNET's:
http://www.magnetmagazine.com/category/best-of-2012/

Best Of 2012: World Music
MAGNET’s j. poet picks the best world-music releases of the year.

1 TriBeCaStan New Deli (Evergreen)
2 Balkan Beat Box Give (National Geographic)
3 Taraf De Haïdouks & Kocani Orkestar Band Of Gypsies 2 (Crammed Discs)
4 Chicha Libre Canibalismo (Barbés/Crammed Discs)
5 Samite Trust (Musicians For World Harmony)
6 The Spy From Cairo Arabadub (Wonderwheel)
7 Wahid Road Poem (BMP Blouzo)
8 New York Gypsy All Stars Romantech (Traditional Crossroads)
9 Bang Data La Sopa (rOckOliTo)
10 Zdob Si Zdub Basta Mafia! (Asphalt Tango)

Best Of 2012: Noise
MAGNET’s Raymond Cummings picks the best noise releases of the year.

1 Penny Royale This Town (Sleepy Hollows Editions)
2 Grasshopper The Day America Forgot (SicSic)
3 Mike Shiflet Merciless (Type)
4 Pauline Oliveros Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970 (Important)
5 Natural Snow Buildings Night Coercion Into The Company Of Witches (Ba Da Bing)
6 Pacific 231 Scuffle (Nostalgie De La Boue)
7 Various Artists Compilation For A Cat (no label)
8 Neptune msg rcvd (Northern Spy)
9 Marta Zapparoli Codex (Zeromoon)
10 Lightning Bolt Oblivion Hunters (Load)

Best Of 2012: Hip Hop
MAGNET’s Elliott Sharp picks the best hip-hop releases of the year.

1 Kendrick Lamar Good Kid, m.A.A.d City (Interscope/Aftermath/Top Dawg)
2 E-40 The Block Brochure: Welcome To The Soil 1, 2 & 3 (Heavy On The Grind)
3 Future Pluto (Epic/A1/Free Bandz)
4 Ab-Soul Control System (Top Dawg)
5 Killer Mike R.A.P. Music (William Street)
6 IamSu! Kilt (Dat Piff DL)
7 Action Bronson Blue Chips (Fool’s Gold)
8 Aesop Rock Skelethon (Rhymesayers)
9 Main Attrakionz Bossalinis & Fooliyones (Young One)
10 Big K.R.I.T. Live From The Underground (Island Def Jam/Cinematic)

Alex Ross's best classical albums in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/ten-notable-classical-music-recordings-of-2012.html

Wire albums list news:

Hyperdub ‏@Hyperdub
Laurel Halo #1, Dean and Inga #17, Cooly G # 41, DVA # 49 in the best albums of the year in @thewiremagazine - thankyou!

Anyone seen the full list?

A little surprised to see Basta Mafia in the Magnet top ten, it's far from Zdob Si Zdub's best work. It's pretty good though.

lmao laurel halo #1

poor senile old dorks scammed two years in a row

lololololol

dean & inga copeland is nearly as bad

listening to this Purity Ring album for the first time. not really sure if i'm slowly starting to like it or if my critical faculties are working overtime and preventing me from quite yielding. also listened to the Goat album earlier and can say that i dig it.

these lists always strike me as weird. just seems a bit arbitrary to me to get fanatical about ordering things before the dust has truly settled. if there's logic and a rigourous protocol to the numbering, then it's kind of lost on me. i can get behind the one (Decibel?) that had Converge at number one though.

Lol, that noise list would be diff if I made it now!

Not by too much, but still

I like the queasy sub-aquatic feel of the Laurel Halo record. It's very collage-like and there aren't lots of obvious hooks, but the textures and the layering and whole weird way it's lit work really well for me.

End of year lists are having a slight but noticeable effect on the UK album charts: Goat #27, Grimes #35
http://www.officialcharts.com/record-store-albums-chart/

Raymond: great to see Natural Snow Buildings on yr list!

didn't know there was a new Neptune record, cool

that's p cool about the Goat album racing up the charts. I think Tame Impala are also seeing that effect.

Tame Impala is actually on its way down though!

Django Django otoh is a new entry @ 22

...and that's been out for months and months right?

ah okay, obv didn't pay enough attention. I guess that Tame Impala record hasn't been out so long so might be dropping after its first promo push.

I despise Alex Ross, but here are his notable classical releases of 2012

Feldman is the only release worthy of note for historical reasons.

FACTmag begins...

http://www.factmag.com/2012/12/03/the-50-best-albums-of-2012/

hope u liek clicking

Dummy have started their top 10 albums too, but it looks like they're being really slowcore about it and doing them one at a time. Good news for all you Dean & Inga fans:

http://dummymag.com/features/2012/12/03/10-dean-blunt-and-inga-copeland-black-is-beautiful/

haha so far my takeaway from the FACT list is "huh, I should be reading FACT"

note to self: never pay attention to FACT ever again

― OH NOES, Friday, 16 December 2011 17:46 (11 months ago)

Not listened to the Purity Ring album before. Kinda like Crystal Castles without the shouty noise?

xp haha

I am apparently the exact opposite person of who I was in 2011

I tend to think of Purity Ring as some weird intersection between CREEP and a flesh-eating fairy princess

Vice:

50. Someone who's just been signed.

49. Someone who's already been dropped.

48. Rapper who has done things that would make Chris Brown cut off his dick in shame, but because they're not to anyone famous, they still count towards his grizzled street cred with Pitchfork readers who are too scared and confused by WSHH to get their news from source.

47. Whatever Thom Yorke has blessed this year.

46. "Never heard of it."

45. "I've heard of it, but not actually gotten around to hearing it yet."

44. "Worst thing I've ever heard."

43. Kendrick Lamar.

42. Band who mistakenly believed they'd be given a big post-Olympics popularity boost by their very public decision to tell Danny Boyle and his Opening Ceremony to go fuck themselves.

41. Artist whose raw public confession of homosexuality wasn't quite as good as Frank Ocean's because he had the misfortune not to work in a genre that hates gays.

40. Peaking Lights

39. Woman compared to Kate Bush because of key overlaps: 1) being a woman, 2) singing, 3) giving the impression that she has difficulty coping with life.

38. Woman praised in copy for "striking a blow for modern femininity", a blow that so far consists of making mediocre indie-pop about past boyfriends.

37. Mac DeMarco

36. Album that everyone suddenly seems to be talking about like they've been into it for ages, despite the fact that you've never heard anyone other than the Quietus say a damned word about it, and never will again after 31 December.

35 – 31. Five acts who have all slept with someone who has slept with Swim Deep.

30. People voting for Django Django who meant to vote for Alt-J.

29. People voting for Alt-J who meant to vote for Django Django.

28. Act who changed name and moved to Montreal to make deep house two years after changing name and moving to Brooklyn to make witch garage two years after moving to Portland to make Apple advert indie.

27. Band who had the good fortune to be alphabetised in everyone's iTunes immediately after Grimes, leading to crucial "left it running" plays.

26. The much-feted return of a "living legend" who, despite enjoying a good feting, has mainly spent the past few months praying that no one finds out what happened in his Top Of The Pops dressing room in March 1973.

25. A "shadowy" post-dubstep producer, who spends his days cold-calling pensioners on behalf of EDF Energy.

24. Artist whom music journalists have decided to love because their former career as a journalist means that there's still hope for everyone's thwarted and stalled creative ambitions, #GodGetMeOutOfThisWakingNightmare.

23. Something on Not Not Fun that was recorded in a pristine, state of the art studio – in which the band were playing next door in the bogs for that authentic lo-fi sound.

22. Someone who might have been in Odd Future, but trying to deny it now.

21. Canadians making Canadian Music.

20. Toy

19. A bunch of super-smart, snot-nosed, wet behind the balls students whose lyrics seem to infer that they have had sexual intercourse, whereas one listen to the way they sing them confirms that they surely haven't.

18. Album that writer breathlessly describes as having "deconstructed pop", but which simply reflects the fact that said writer doesn't listen to much pop nowadays and is astonished at genre-blending that anyone with a working knowledge of Radio 1 will have long since taken as standard.

17. Beach House

16. Someone who once shared a cab with Kevin Parker.

15. Band who have released an "amusingly arch" record that they'd be mortified to hear described as such, because in fact they were being deadly serious and are just incredibly pretentious.

14. Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen

13. Fiona Apple or Cat Power

12. Dirty Projectors or David Byrne

11. "Sun-dappled dream-popper" who in truth only ever dreams about killing animals with a spade.

10. The xx or Chromatics

9. Album whose appraisal involved the editor having to do a ctrl+F to make damn sure she'd rooted out every last appearance of the word "shimmering".

8. Space reserved for old black legend being rebooted for modern coffee tables by Richard Russell.

7 – 2. The six highest-ranking albums of the year on Pitchfork that lazy hacks swotted up on to obscure the fact that they basically spent 2012 listening to nothing but real music, i.e. Muse and The Vaccines.

1. Album Of The Year: Mumfords (Q), Kendrick Lamar Spector (NME), Sven Vath (Mixmag), Andy Stott (Resident Advisor), Neil Young (Uncut), Neil Young (Mojo), Neil Young (Classic Rock), Neil Young (Home & Garden), people humming transcendentally over distorted tape loops of concrete being laid (The Wire).

LOL!

lol @ explicit reference to lil reese

implicit

people humming transcendentally over distorted tape loops of concrete being laid (The Wire)

Would listen

Sounds more promising than Laurel Halo anyway

purity ring record is my favorite discovery from list-time so far, it's right in my wheelhouse

Guardian also doing a top 10 slowroll: #10 is Bobby Womack

People don't like Laurel Halo any more all of a surgeon? I never even got the chance to hear it.