2010 Magazine's Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion

not sure if this counts as agreeing w tim, & even though this is in some ways the opposite of my own approach to listening to music, i would a hundred million percent rather read someone who focuses on a small number of tightly related genres & knows a lot about them & is consistent and discerning over some cosmopolitan dork overenthusiastically trying to capture some nonexistent zeitgeist who knows nothing. it's really interesting when you feel you understand someone's tastes, that you can see it as an aesthetic set, what makes a song functional or acceptable to them, it becomes possible to rediscover music & see if in a way totally foreign to you, & i think that's easiest to do if it's applied to a more limited range--although it can definitely stretch across genres if necessary

everyone who is a cool music fan should listen to as many albums outside of the most critically trumpeted set as out, imo. big world &c

not that i'm one to talk as my top 10 would include robyn, big boi, four tet, caribou, the-dream etc. etc.

yeah, i know the feeling. i bitch, but several obvious names are at least flirting with my ill-defined 2010 best list. no sin in that, but lists composed entirely of things found on everybody else's list are terribly depressing. i hope, as flopson says, for the expression of an interesting personal aesthetic.

one thing i like to keep in mind is audience. like, to other ILXors and critics, no one really cares that robyn or flying lotus or curren$y or caribou is on a best of 2010 list. seen that shit a million times. but to, say, a friend who casually listens to top 40 radio and that's it, those could be brand new. and great discoveries. not to say best-of lists shouldn't also poke around less critically-lauded circles, or challenge popular perceptions, but not everyone is obsessed with music like a lot of us are. we're looking at these "terribly depressing" lists from a different perspective. i mean, someone else may see arcade fire on a 2010 list not knowing them, and love that shit. who knows!

yeah, sure, it's all good, but i strive to believe, on some hippy-dippy level, that the truer you are to your own personal (and hopefully somewhat idiosyncratic) tastes, the more meaningful your expressions of those tastes will be to anyone who encounters them. even if they seem obscure, uncool, "weird" or whatever. that's something of an article of faith with me.

I'll second Karl on giving props to Andy K for including Mathew Jonson on his list. I have no idea why Agents of Time was so slept on bar that there was no interesting stories tell about the album, except quality.

Phonica's top 100 albums of 2010

100) Guido - Anidea
99) Arp - The Soft Wave
98) Julian Lynch - Mare
97) Moritz Von Oswald - Live In New York
96) ANTHONY 'SHAKE' SHAKIR - Frictionalism
95) COMMIX - Re:Call to Mind
94) DANGERMOUSE & SPARKLEHORSE - Dark Night of the Soul
93) MAGDA - From The Fallen Page
92) RED RACK'EM - The Early Years
91) LUKE ABBOTT - Holkham Drones
90) JOHN GRANT - Queen Of Denmark
89) OVAL - O
88) DONATO DOZZY - K
87) CONNAN MOCKASIN - Please Turn Me Into The Snat
86) JUS ED - Next Level
85) MAKAM - How Long Is Now?
84) JEFF PHELPS - Magnetic Eyes
83) EDWARD LARRY GORDON - Celestial Vibration
82) F - Energy Distortion
81) DUCKTAILS / DRACULA LEWIS - Split
80) WOLF + LAMB - Love Someone
79) PETER GORDON & THE LOVE OF LIFE ORCHESTRA - Love Of Life Orchestra
78) PAUL WHITE - Paul White & The Purple Brain
77) HOT CHIP - One Life Stand
76) THE HUNDRED IN THE HANDS - The Hundred In The Hands
75) WALLS - Walls
74) VOICE OF THE SEVEN THUNDERS - Voice Of The Seven Thunders
73) CHILLY GONZALES - Ivory Tower
72) SOLAR BEARS - She Was Coloured In
71) SALEM - King Night
70) AEROPLANE - We Can't Fly
69) ORIOL - Night And Day
68) MR G - Still Here
67) ARP & ANTHONY MOORE - Frkways 3
66) ROBERT HOOD - Omega
65) DEERHUNTER - Halcyon Digest
64) TORO Y MOI - Causers Of This
63) CHRIS CARTER - The Space Between
62) KONONO NO.1 - Assume Crash Position
61) SHIT ROBOT - From The Cradle To The Rave
60) MIM SULEIMAN - Tungi
59) MATTHEW DEAR - Black City
58) GAMES - That We Can Play
57) DEMDIKE STARE - Voices of Dust
56) ARCADE FIRE - The Suburbs
55) THE ALPS - Le Voyage
54) COS/MES - Gozmez Land Chaosexotica
53) TAME IMPALA - Innerspeaker
52) RECLOOSE - Early Works
51) LCD SOUNDSYSTEM - This Is Happening
50) CHARANJIT SINGH - Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat
49) ERYKAH BADU - New Amerykah Part Two: Return Of The Ankh
48) STL - STL And His Quest For Sound
47) SHACKLETON - Fabric 55
46) DAM-FUNK - Adolescent Funk
45) AUTECHRE - Oversteps
44) JIMMY EDGAR - XXX
43) HEDZOLEH SOUNDZ - Hedzoleh
42) STELLAR OM SOURCE - Trilogy Select
41) DARKSTAR - North
40) MASSIVE ATTACK - Heligoland
39) WBEEZA - Void
38) ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI - Before today
37) ALOE BLACC - Good Things
36) DIGITAL MYSTIKZ - Return II Space
35) SAN SODA - Immers & Daarentegen
34) SUFJAN STEVENS - The Age Of Adz
33) PASTOR T.L.BARRETT & THE YOUTH FOR CHRIST CHOIR - Like A Ship (Without A Sail)
32) LONE - Emerald Fantasy Tracks
31) THEO PARRISH - Sketches
30) CFCF - Continent
29) MARK MCGUIRE - Living With Yourself
28) AARDVARCK - Choice
27) ESP INSTITUTE - Concentration Volume I CD (mixed by Lovefingers)
26) BRIAN ENO - Small Craft on A Milk Sea
25) URBAN TRIBE - Urban Tribe
24) TEENGIRL FANTASY - 7 AM
23) ROLL THE DICE - Roll The Dice
22) NICOLAS JAAR / VARIOUS ARTISTS - Ines
21) GONJASUFI - A Sufi and a Killer
20) SCUBA - Triangulation
19) MARK E - Mark E Works 2005 - 2009 Selected Tracks & Edits
18) EMERALDS - Does It Look Like I'm Here?
17) FLYING LOTUS - Cosmogramma
16) GIL SCOTT-HERON - I'm New Here
15) PANTHA DU PRINCE - Black Noise
14) MOTOR CITY DRUM ENSEMBLE - Raw Cuts Vol. 1
13) MOUNT KIMBIE - Crooks & Lovers
12) GOLD PANDA - Lucky Shiner
11) SEAHAWKS - Ocean Trippin'
10) ONRA - Long Distance
09) FOUR TET - There Is Love In You
08) JOHN ROBERTS - Glass Eights
07) MAXMILLION DUNBAR - Cool Water
06) ACTRESS - Splazsh
05) ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER - Returnal
04) FOREST SWORDS - Dagger Paths
03) CARIBOU - Swim + Swim Remixes
02) VIRGO - Virgo
01) SHED - The Traveller

Must say I'm glad they mentioned Roll the Dice, Mim Suleiman's Tungi, and Oriol's Night and Day. Tungi is bubbling Fulton-produced goodness, while Night and Day contrasts the sharp cuts of something like the Soft Pink Truth's Promofunk against the hazy blurred discoid glow of the Avalanches. Wally Badarou looks on approvingly.

Boomkat end-of-year charts:

http://www.boomkat.com/charts.cfm

LOTS of different lists from various Boomkat types btw.

Looks like it's brought down their entire site now though - including the shop - so good work.

It was an impressive line up though, a pity it was for only ten seconds or so.

thing is, my eyes glaze over at relentless indieism, too. tried to get something out of those AMG lists, but if half your contributors stuff up their top 20s with some combo or variation on deerhunter/best coast/arcade fire/lcd soundsystem, then your definition of "allmusic" probably isn't broad enough to justify the name.

Those lists are from the willing editors and staff writers. Several people in the department -- some of whom specialize in something other than rock -- don't make year-end lists. I would love to incorporate lists from the dozens of active freelancers who cover everything else, but when it comes to year-end features, we are barely able to justify the time we spend on what we put together. (If you want a broader range of picks, check the genre/style posts. Most of the editors/writers who didn't make personal lists contributed to them.)

Kiran Sand of Blackest Ever Black has a strong look.

http://blackesteverblack.blogspot.com/

Oh yeah that boomkat and friends best of 2010 is awesome. All this stuff around the Raime post satanic techno industrial thing looks extremely interesting!

If someone were up for the task, they could make a master list of all these lists with the consensus ones filtered out. We'd just need to agree on what qualifies as consensus -- appearing on more than two other lists?

the Wall Street Journal weighs in on year-end lists in general (naming Stereogum's the best, among other random/silly awards)

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/22/best-of-the-best-of-music-lists-for-2010

this feature is awesome, btw

http://flavorwire.com/134970/stereotyping-you-by-your-favorite-album-of-2010

"I much prefer a list which is formally constrained and, as a result, is more inventive, unusual or informative."

DD!

double ditto

i made a youtube playlist of the top 50 rap songz

Lots of goodness, then E-40's "He's a Gangsta," which makes me want to never look at a computer again.

the video is a bit much -- cant believe they cut messy's verse from it smh

some great jacka lines on that -- dunno why but theres something weirdly evocative about describing your pistol as 'dripping' bullets

I hear what you're all saying about the usefulness of genre/specialty lists. However, I'd find it more interesting to know, say, what are the top 40 albums from the listmakers at Decibel, Terrorizer, etc. that weren't within their publications' parameters. Some of them must listen to some hip-hop, r&b, pop, indie, electronica, etc. Is there a particular Latin American album that struck the fancy of people at Rock-A-Rolla? Does anyone at The Wire like any metal anymore?

My specialties/obsessions rotate over the years. Lately I guess the Rodney Dangerfield's of my list are the neo-prog/hard/stoner/psych rock that gets no respect elsewhere. Maybe some post-punk/shoegaze influenced stuff, and other random quirky pop.

Mainly, most peoples' lists are too short ;) You just can't fit all the interesting stuff in just a top 10-50. I seriously have over 300 albums from this year on my continuous playlist. Bubbling under my top 100 are albums from around the globe and tons of stuff not on many lists.

Chico Mann - Analog Drift (Wax Poetics)
The Radio Dept. - Clinging To A Scheme (Labrador)
Tamikrest - Adagh (Glitterhouse)
Alasdair Roberts & Friends Too Long in This Condition (Drag City)
Black Angels - Phosphene Dream (Blue Horizon)
Calle 13 - Entre los que Quieran (Sony U.S. Latin)
Choc Quib Town - Oro (Nacional Records)
Afrocubism (World Circuit)
N.E.R.D. - Nothing (Star Trak)
Thee Oh Sees - Warm Slime (In the Red)
Khaira Arby - Timbuktu Tarab (Clermont Music)
Black Tusk - Taste The Sin (Relapse)
Yakuza - Of Seismic Consequence (Profound Lore)
Disappears - Lux (Kranky)
Oceansize - Self Preserved While The Bodies Float Up (Superball)
Faust - Faust Is Last (Klangbad)
Owen Pallett - Heartland (Domino)
Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3 - Northern Aggression (Yep Roc)
Grandfather - Why I'd Try (Grandfather)
Gnaw Their Tongues - Arrivée de la Terne Mort Triomphante (Crucial Blast)
Willie Nelson - Country Music (Rounder)
Cathedral - The Guessing Game (Nuclear Blast)
Ellen Allien - Dust (BPitch Control)
Black Sun - Twilight Of The Gods (Future Noise)
Monster Magnet - Mastermind (Napalm)
Zoroaster - Matador (E1)
Voice Of The Seven Thunders (Tchantinler)
Black Cobra - Chronomega (Southern Lord)
Kemialliset Ystävät - Ullakkopalo (Fonal)
Von Spar - Foreigner (Italic)
Sigh - Scenes From Hell (The End)
Seu Jorge and Almaz (Now-Again/Stones Throw)
Luisa Maita - Lero Lero (Cumbancha)
Night Horse - Perdition Hymns (Tee Pee)
SardoniS (Meteor City)
Brutus (Transubstans)
Plants And Animals - La La Land (Secret City)
Earthride - Something Wicked (Southern Lord)
Danzig - Deth Red Sabboath (Evilive
Celeste - Morte(s) Nee(s) (Denovali)
Khoma - A Final Storm (Selective Notes)
Karma To Burn - Appalachian Incantation (Napalm)
Free Energy - Stuck On Nothing (Astralwerks)
Endless Boogie - Full House Head (No Quarter)
Orphaned Land - The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR (Century Media)
The Secret - Solve Et Coagula (Southern Lord)
Solace - A.D (Smallstone)
Priestess - Prior To The Fire (Teepee)
King Sunny Ade - Babá mo Túndé (Mesa Blue/IndigeDisc)
Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars - Rise & Shine (Cumbancha)

However, I'd find it more interesting to know, say, what are the top 40 albums from the listmakers at Decibel, Terrorizer, etc. that weren't within their publications' parameters. Some of them must listen to some hip-hop, r&b, pop, indie, electronica, etc. Is there a particular Latin American album that struck the fancy of people at Rock-A-Rolla? Does anyone at The Wire like any metal anymore?

excerpting this to emphasize it. i totally agree with this. you can get an idea of this, to a limited extent, by reviewing the individual lists of a publication's writers. p4k used to release it's writers' individual lists, but i'm not sure they're doing that this year.

i totally dont agree, because ppl all end up being like "hey love that big boi

"

phew glad i closed that quote

xpost How can you find time to listen properly to more than 300 albums in a year for a continuous playlist? You're saying that you can listen, in effect, to a new album every day and listen to it closely appreciatively? Do you have time to listen to music for pleasure alone? Not snarking, genuinely wondering. No way I could manage that ...

i totally dont agree, because ppl all end up being like "hey love that big boi"

true in some cases, i'm sure, but hardly all. individual writer lists on, say, the dusted site rarely include the titles that dot the upper-end of most publications staff lists.

closed that quote for you, btw.

"I much prefer a list which is formally constrained and, as a result, is more inventive, unusual or informative."

I have only ranked albums with titles containing fewer than 20 syllables and no articles.

xpost How can you find time to listen properly to more than 300 albums in a year for a continuous playlist?

yeah, that fastnbulbous post kind of blew my mind a little, too. but let's say you're culling your rotating 300 from like five or six hundred albums in total that you heard during the year. if you listened to music for three to five hours a day, every day, you'd have plenty of time to separate the wheat from the chaff and to become familiar with your real favorites. i lack that kind of dedication, myself, plus i don't get free records, so there's a cost/time factor involved (shopping, downloading, etc).

yeah but dont yall have like social lives & jobs? do u exercise ever?

"looks like takeout again -- im only at 270 albums and the year is almost over!"

you think you're just shaping your abs, but you could also be getting your narcocorrido picks in order

yeah but dont yall have like social lives & jobs?

45 minute commute 2 ways = 1.5 hrs per day = 7.5 hrs listening time in car per week

do u exercise ever?

you'd be surprised -- running 50-60 miles per week and listening to 8-10 hrs of music go quite well together

let's say you're culling your rotating 300 from like five or six hundred albums in total that you heard during the year

that's the mind-blowing thing! if you have a continuous playlist of 300 - and spend time listening to albums not in that - how many times can you even listen to each? twice, three times?

i mean that's at least 15 hrs listening per week. and i probably heard about 100 newly released albums this year. soooo... what's that, like, 2 new albums per week for ~50 weeks? might listen to each one 2-3 times to digest the first time around. which takes maybe 4-5 hours of that 15. and that's not even counting 3-5 hours of shuffled ipod tunes in the office, per day.

xp to self

Glad someone pointed out to deej that you can listen to music while you work out. Also, I listen to music at work, at least about 60% of the time when not on the phone or in meetings. An hour on the train each way also affords lots of listening time. Surprised so many people on I LOVE MUSIC are blown away by people that obsessively listen to stuff.

I've got about 212 albums from this year that I started as the basis for my list-making.

part of the problem is that i still do a lot of my listening on vinyl. i certainly buy more vinyl than CDs/downloads. this inclines me to listen to many of my favorites only during the evening hours, where they have to compete with meals, friends & family, errands, TV & movies, parties, etc. plus i just don't often listen to music while i'm commuting or working. dunno why. certainly not enough so that i'd be able to listen to one or two new albums every day, on average. i mean, what about older stuff? at least two thirds of what i do listen to is over a year old...

i made a youtube playlist of the top 50 rap songz

Lots of goodness, then E-40's "He's a Gangsta," which makes me want to never look at a computer again.

― Pete Scholtes, Thursday, December 23, 2010 10:59 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

"He's a Gangsta" is a great song!

I have my entire collection backed up to 3TB of external drives at work, and listen at low levels for most of the day, and occasionally put on good sealed headphones when I'm doing something that I want to block out the chatter around me. I listen on my commute, but ironically never listen to music when I run 4-8 miles every day. It's just a habit from when I was a serious runner in college and a racing team in my 20s. I'm slower now, but did manage to get 6th/3,000 at the Santa Hustle 5K earlier this month, heh. There's safety reasons running in the dark with traffic, and not a bad idea to be alone with yr thoughts at least part of the day!

I put on music at home all the time unless watching tv/movies, and spend usually at least :45 to 4 hours with deep listening in the office with my AKG headphones, while writing/corresponding, working on site.

Glad someone pointed out to deej that you can listen to music while you work out.

^__________^

"He's a Gangsta" is a great song!

― rihanna rennavated my dick (rennavate), Thursday, 23 December 2010 20:15 (18 minutes ago) Permalink

pretty violent vid tho for sure. buttt yukmouth had a wayyy worse one this yr

Glad someone pointed out to deej that you can listen to music while you work out. Also, I listen to music at work, at least about 60% of the time when not on the phone or in meetings. An hour on the train each way also affords lots of listening time. Surprised so many people on I LOVE MUSIC are blown away by people that obsessively listen to stuff.

I've got about 212 albums from this year that I started as the basis for my list-making.

― one pretty obvious guy in the obvious (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, December 23, 2010 1:55 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i obsessively listen to music but i cant at work & the other thing is sometimes i dont want to listen to new records? or sometimes i want to hear things a bunch of times? 300 BEST albums sounds crazy as shit to me still. i think i only hear maybe 200 total records in a year max

(and less than a quarter of those are heard more than once i imagine)

Yeah, it's really hard for me to imagine liking that many albums from a current year. (I'm not sure there are any previous years for which I could say I like that many records, though it might be possible for some years in the late 60s or 70s.) I might hear 300 albums some years, but probably closer to 200 at most.

Oh yeah, deej, I'm with you on 300 BEST part, I didn't notice that originally. My 212 is the total new albums I heard this year, at least half of that was eliminated right away when I started thinking about my lists.

i guess to be fair i listen to lots of singles/youtubes