Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

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.

Video on Youtube was uploaded in September 2011 and that's how I heard it.

it was doing the rounds from at least september 2011, which is when the official youtube was uploaded

xp

In September 2011, the song was chosen as the Record of the Week by Nick Grimshaw on BBC Radio 1

The Guardian gave the song a highly positive review and placed it at number 2 on their The Best Songs of 2011 list. In a review, Michael Cragg praised the song calling it "a startling three and a half minutes of attitude" as well as "incredible." Carrie Battan of Pitchfork Media complimented her "unpredictable vocal range" and wrote, "She clicks between characters and styles casually, effortlessly. No seams. A jaw-slackening demo reel." NME dubbed the song #18 on their 50 Best Tracks Of 2011, calling it "mischievous, quick-witted and full of filthy cunnilanguage: it’s made Azealia Banks, the coolest girl on the planet, and it delivered on 2011’s forward-thinking promise." NPR Music gave the song a positive review and listed it as one of their 100 Favorite Songs Of 2011, calling the song "the raunchiest shut-down of 2011." Pitchfork gave the song its Best New Music accolade and ranked it number 9 on their Top 100 Tracks of 2011 list

cunnilanguage

mixmag must have mentioned it in their 2011 coverage though, surely?

looks like the earliest they mentioned it was january 4th?

http://www.mixmag.net/words/features/big-tunes/jan12

weak

212 did come out really late, I only remember the Singles Jukebox tackling it right at the end of November so it's perfectly possible that the December Mixmag was way past its print deadline by then. Attempting to shoehorn it into a 2012 list is just lame though.

tbf to mixmag i think that's the only place i've seen 'latch' so far

not like they should be getting mad props for a no-brainer like that but since every other publication is so dumb there it is

i thought "control" was better than "latch", which never quite clicked w/me

while we're on the subject of disclosure i wish EOY lists would stop fronting like their remix of "running" is better than the original (if any ware remix is superior, it's the joe goddard one of "night light")

Hey guys, I found this vintage copy of Q from December 1993 in the shops

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/72367_10152337467005215_187229883_n.jpg

Oh wait

'latch' is a straight up anthem with (for once in our lives) the genuine chart stats to show for it, giving it no mention is criminal

i think that's the only place i've seen 'latch' so far

http://www.xlr8r.com/features/2012/12/xlr8rs-best-2012-overrated-relea

the blurb is... uh, quite something

oooffff that blurb, oh man how are people like that permitted to write in public

sigh can i not have one day without having a thundercloud of intense rage over me

wow what a moron. good to see the comments below are overwhelmingly negative too.

although to be fair, props for calling out some of the other records in that list