Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

tay swift threads are pretty run of the mill ilx fav kool aid threads ime, nothing more embarrassing than the avg the-dream thread

Or do we STILL think it's only OK to talk about pop in an unexcitable serious rock critic dude who only takes serious critical consensus music seriously

some dude otm

haven't read it but the reviews were very mixed on that, quotes i saw made me pretty disinterested (xp)

― some dude, Wednesday, 19 December 2012 15:32 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The one I read (in the Wire) was glowing, and I agree with it. If you're looking for a book about composition and harmony, look elsewhere. But Byrne's whole schtick is that setting, performance, recording media and pretty much all external factors are as important in the grander scheme of things as that romantic notion of a "bolt-from-the-blue" in the mind of the songwriter or composer. It's something Byrne (and especially Eno) have been talking about at length for years and years: creativity thrives on restriction, but it works both as a manifesto, a chocolate box of interesting factoids and a loose autobiography (although you really don't have to be a TH stan to enjoy it).

you guys broke lex

it was like that when i found it

let's talk about lex

Has riff raff made any lists?

I voted for Birth of an Icon in the Crack list. Didn't make it in.

Bird On A Wire has turned up on a few

The Liminal - Albums of the Year
http://www.theliminal.co.uk/2012/12/the-liminal-albums-of-the-year-2012/

1. Pelt – Effigy (MIE)
2. Shackleton – Music for the Quiet Hour / Drawbar Organ (Woe To The Sceptic Heart)
3. Actress – R.I.P. (Honest Jons)
4. Hallock Hill – A Hem of Evening (MIE)
5. Raime – Quarter Turns Over A Living Line (Blackest Ever Black)
6. Lee Gamble – Dutch Tvashar Plumes (PAN)
7. Richard Skelton – Verse of Birds (Corble Stone Press)
8. Holly Herndon – Movements (RVNG Intl)
9. Sidsel Endresen / Stian Westerhus – Didymoi Dreams (Rune Grammofon)
10. Oren Ambarchi – Audience of One (Touch)
11. Simon Scott – Below Sea Level (12K) (interview with Simon Scott)
12. Hildur Guðnadóttir – Leyfðu Ljósinu (Touch) (Full review)
13. Scott Walker – Bish Bosch (4AD) (Full review)
14. Duane Pitre – Feel Free (Important)
15. Andy Stott – Luxury Problems (Modern Love)
16. High Aura’d – Sanguine Futures (Bathetic Records)
17. The Swifter – The Swifter (The Wormhole) (Full review)
18. Mark Fell – Sentielle Objectif Actualité (Editions Mego)
19. Richard Youngs – Amaranthine (MIE Music)
20. Ekkehard Ehlers – Adikia (Staubgold Digital)
21. Mt Eerie – Clear Moon (P.W. Elverum & Sun)
22. Stian Westerhus – The Matriarch And The Wrong Kind Of Flowers (Rune Grammofon)
23. The Puddle – Secret Holiday & Victory Blues (Fish Ride Records)
24. Motion Sickness of Time Travel – Motion Sickness of Time Travel (Editions Mego)
25. Loscil – Sketches from New Brighton (Kranky)
26. Jacques Brodier – ‘Filtre De Réalité’ (Penultimate Press)
27. Jim O’Rourke – Old News Series (Old News)
28. Evan Parker Electroacoustic Ensemble – Hasselt (Psi Recordings)
29. Oberman Knocks – Beatcroff Slabs (Aperture)
30. Gunn-Trusinski Duo – Ocean Parkway (Three Lobed)
31. Vindicatrix – Mengamuk (Mordant Music)
32. Andrew Bird – Hands of Glory (Mom & Pop)
33. Talvihorros / Damian Valles – Monuments And Ruis (Textura)
34. Various Artists – Night Music: Voice in the Leaves (Louth Contemporary Music)
35. Panopticon – Kentucky (Pagan Flames) (Minimal review)
36. Jakob Ullmann – Fremde Zeit Addendum (Edition RZ)
37. Lower Dens – Nootropics (Ribbon)
38. Four Tet – Pink (Text Records)
39. Darling Farah – Body (Civil Music)
40. Helm – Impossible Symmetry (PAN) (Full review)
41. Fire! with Oren Ambarchi – In The Mouth A Hand (Rune Grammofon)
42. Joe McPhee/Eli Keszler – Ithaca (8MM) (Minimal review)
43. Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform)
44. The Clean – Oddities (Five Four-0)
45. Carmina Quartet – Bartok String Quartets 1 and 2 (Solo Musica)
46. Traxman – Da Mind Of Traxman (Planet Mu)
47. Ash Borer – Cold of Ages (Profound Lore Records)
48. Trapist – The Golden Years (Staubgold)
49. Matt Elliott – The Broken Man (Ici d’ailleurs)
50. John Maus – A Collection of Rarities and Previously Unreleased Material (Ribbon Music)

Bit odd seeing a couple of venerable Flying Nun acts show up there among some of the more leftfield stuff

Oren Ambarchi wasn't really on my radar before (though the name was vaguely familiar), but I've enjoyed some of what I've heard thanks to ILM nominations lists, especially material from Audience of One.

the instrumental stuff anyway

"Pye Corner Audio/Holly Herndon/Goat/Diiv/Beak> are solid but others do similar better imo"

like what?

pan records have had a great year :) have been meaning to start a pan records s/d for a while.

Shame Matthew Bourne hasn't made any lists so far, Montauk Variations is a beautiful beautiful record probably my favourite of the year. Stewart Lee chose it as his record of the year, that's the only place I've seen it.

pan records have had a great year :) have been meaning to start a pan records s/d for a while.

Steve!

Heatsick Steve (oh, lol)? I finally gave Deviation a proper listen this weekend; really enjoyed it, it's soo *Steve*, which sounds kind of trite, but what I mean is (we went to the same school) he's always done a good job of walking the line between super serious and super fun and all the while doing it with style.

Is the Sensate Focus/Heatsick remix thing worth tracking down?

It's up on the PAN soundcloud page:
https://soundcloud.com/pan_recs

everybody knows steve

xp ooh didn't think of looking there, thanks!

I wanted to like that Pelt album more than I ended up doing

Anyways, I think the fact that "Point That Thing Somewhere Else" exists means that outre psych/drone fans will always have time for the Clean

Shame Matthew Bourne hasn't made any lists so far, Montauk Variations is a beautiful beautiful record probably my favourite of the year. Stewart Lee chose it as his record of the year, that's the only place I've seen it.

Hmm. Wonder what Lee Gamble's favourite joke was?

What's some good dad techno?

Gotta be something by Michael Mayer, although most of that Kompakt stuff sounds more like house to me. I should properly said the RA list was dominated by "dad house" but dad techno had more of a ring to it. Like the man say, nobody listens to techno.

Actually there's something a little perverse about the phrase "dad house" but that's probably just me.

FWIW, acclaimedmusic.net, in their most recent metapoll of 68 published critic polls (so far, with idiosyncratic weighting), available only to registered members ATM, scores these as the top 20 polled albums of the year:

1. Frank Ocean 2. Tame Impala 3. Grimes 4. Grizzly Bear 5. Kendrick Lamar 6. The XX 7. alt-J 8. Chromatics 9. Jack White 10. Beach House 11. Swans 12. Dirty Projectors 13. Django Django 14. Cat Power 15. Fiona Apple 16. Sharon Van Etten 17. Japandroids 18. Flying Lotus 19. Jessie Ware 20. Alabama Shakes

Grimes and Django Django are beloved in the UK, less so elsewhere. Fiona Apple, Japandroids and Swans are North American critic fare. The XX and Dirty Projectors won high rankings mostly in the non-Anglophone world.

surprised at cat power doing so well, most of the reviews i skimmed for that seemed to be saying it was just so-so

Always weird to me when a band like Tame Impala suddenly gets a ton of praise for a second album that doesn't sound too different from the first. Did critics come late to the debut? Was this one promoted more?

i would guess it's mostly critics coming late to the debut and catching up in time for the second

I remember people being all over the first Tame Impala. I remember being surprised how quickly they caught on, their first U.S. tour sold out everywhere, etc. Though the response may have been a bit too late for the polls on the first one.

Rock-A-Rolla Top 50 Albums of 2012

01 Neurosis - Honor Found In Decay
02 Goat - World Music
03 Om - Advaitic Songs
04 Earth - Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light II
05 Baroness - Yellow & Green
06 Swans - The Seer
07 Melvins Lite - Freak Puke
08 Old Man Gloom - No
09 Pig Destroyer - Book Burner
10 Amenra - Mass V
11 GY!BE - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
12 Converge - All We Love We Leave
13 The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet
14 Ey Vind Kang - The Narrow Garden
15 Eagle twin - The Feather Tipped The Serpent's Scale
16 Scott Walker - Bish Bosch
17 Mono - For My Parents
18 Torche - Harmonicraft
19 Dysrhythmia - Test Of Submission
20 Liars - WIXIW
21 Black Bananas - Rad Times Express IV
22 Hexvessel - No Holier Temple
23 Ufomammut - Oro: Opus Primum & Alter
24 Witch Mountain - Cauldron of the Wild
25 Atriarch - Ritual Of Passing
26 Alcest - Les Voyages De L'Ame
27 Meshuggah - Koloss
28 Enabler - All Hail the Void
29 Jodis - Black Curtain
30 Orange Goblin - A Euology for the Damned
31 Switchblade - Switchblade
32 Open Ambarchi - Sagittarian Domain
33 Menace Ruine - Alight in Ashes
34 Killing Joke - MMXII
35 Sidsel Endresen & Stian Westerhus - Didymoi Dreams
36 Father Murphy - Anyway, Your Children Will Deny It
37 Ash Borer - Cold of Ages
38 Nazoranai - Nazoranai
39 Bong - Mana-Yood-Sushai
40 Unsane - Wreck
41 Anaal Nathrakh - Vanitas
42 Motorpsycho & Ståle Storløkken - The Death Defying Unicorn
43 Saint Vitus - Lillie: F-65
44 Royal Thunder - CVI
45 Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra - Theatre Is Evil
46 JK Flesh - Posthuman
47 Lento - Anxiety Despair Languish
48 Okkultokrati - Snakereigns
49 KTL - V
50 Black Shape of Nexus - Negative Black

<3 rock-a-rolla

14 Ey Vind Kang - The Narrow Garden

"Eyvind Kang" didn't look exotic enough?

seriously what's the appeal of this lotus plaza song? it's something I would expect from a local amateur band who just had their first exposure to indie rock.

wtf why hadn't I heard anything about "climax" before these lists came out?? SUCH AN ANTHEM.

not sure if anyone saw this earlier, so re-posting:

http://www.splicetoday.com/music/the-2012-splice-today-albums-poll

yaaay inspector norse: http://www.mixmag.net/words/features/best-2012-tunes-5-1

Putting '212' in the top five is just fucking lazy, Mixmag.

lol @ mixmag

can critics at least pretend to pay attention to when a song comes out, your critical faculties don't depend on it actually being culturally ubiquitous or getting a video to kick in

i mean fair enough we all get to some things late (though not usually...a song as big as "212") but the price we pay is that we DON'T THEN GET TO VOTE FOR THEM

wow, having their top songs of the year list spread through 20 pages that AREN'T EVEN FUCKING LINKED TOGETHER is just infuriating

Pretty sure Mixmag knew about 212 last year.

yeah there are so many EOY lists that i haven't even bothered to look at because of the intolerable clickthru thing

That Rock-A-Rolla list is great. Never read it, is it a site or a mag?

212 was released in December 2011, so maybe Mixmag's 2011 poll was decided earlier on?

i'm sure it came out earlier than that? it was on a lot of end of year lists last year

it feels like it's been around forever

dunno, that's what wiki said. i only noticed it being played/talked about offline in about Jan/Feb this year. Always tricky with thigns that come out later in the year.