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

zvookster otm

absent a critic having a regular reviewing gig why would u expect numbers in advance of these?

I expect a rock critic to listen to records. The job requirement shouldn't have too much else really.

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!

― i genuinely thought when i first joined that he was the admin (ilxor), Wednesday, December 22, 2010 10:45 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

ilxor seeming to defend intentionally packing one's top list with recognizable, generally well-respected consensus picks (assuming that's what one's audience wants or could use). posted re: algerian goalkeeper's question. i can see the merit in this, tbh, especially if one were writing for entertainment weekly or something. but it still leaves me wondering: "really? has everybody really settled on these 20 or 30 consensus albums in varying order?" i mean, i wouldn't include any of the four albums ilxor names on my personal list. not that i don't like them; i do, they're great, but they don't number among my personal favorites of the year.

maybe jan 2011 is when we finally reach an understanding on how year-end lists should be.

my point was that a lot of people not on ILX or obsessed w/ various musics may not recognize, say, robyn or arcade fire or something on a critics' list. also, they probably dont take the time to look at 100+ lists in an ILX thread the moment each is released. so, as a result, they aren't all "OMG KANYE AGAIN CANT BELIEVE THIS LISTS DONT HAVE MORE VARIETY" -- if you only see 2 or 3 lists in a year, like the casual listener may, then it's not a chore to see those "consensus" albums at the top.

that said, i'm not defending intentionally packing one's list with any sort of picks, recognizable or not. just list what you enjoyed most!

xp to contenderizer

yeah, i get that. but i'm always more interested in lists that reflect a specific personality, with weird quirks of taste and enthusiasm, than in lists that merely attempt to highlight "quality". lists of the latter sort tend to dull consensus, for various reasons, and they bore me no matter how many or few of them i've read. lists of the former sort are intrinsically unpredictable and interesting, because people are both, when they allow themselves to be.

and that's horseshit, too, because there are lots of intensely "personal" and intensely boring lists out there consisting of obscure friend bands, wacky pop, and bad albums by has-been artists the listmaker bonded with in their youth and can't let go of. which recipe isn't really any more objectionable than the mix-n-match 10 crit pop hits with 10 indie pop hits formula. so i dunno...

some dude's lists are good because when u read the writeups its like, oh ya, that's actually what listening to albums is like when ppl are just being real & not trying to will a sense of the exciting new music of our time into existence. i'm prob as enthusiastic abt new music as anyone else here & find a lot of it to love but i relate to the distribution of love in al's list way more than something that's just nonstop gushing

ime the nonstop gushing & positivity can make people feel guilty abt not loving everything so much & i suspect a lot of that shit is at least partly dishonest tho not necessarily intentional or w/e

otoh he is a total curmudgeon tho. if all i read was ilx this year i wld think he didn't like rap music, since he's never really enthusiastic abt anything.

I expect a rock critic to listen to records. The job requirement shouldn't have too much else really.

― our man flint flo$$y (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, January 2, 2011

u seem to expect them to listen to new records all day every day, once or twice each.

surely a requirement for a critic is to write cogently abt what u do listen to. i'm not sure how much having given a listen to 800 records from the same year wld help with that. again i'm not dissing what u do, just the concept that ur experience is in any way required or best practice - that's a joke.

yeah

flopson & zvookster are both otm about al, contradictory or not lol

love al's writing btw.

http://www.thesilentballet.com/tsbt/2010/20_11.html

good stuff on the silent ballet-- too bad they are wrong about Cosmogramma being FlyLo's second album (it's his third!!!!)

how red their faces must be!!!!

dying

of embarrassment

He didn't get a Grammy nomination, but at least he made the Silent Ballet Top 100 (top 20 even).

oh come on, a personal list's #34 being "i heard this too, it wasn't bad" is like some sort of failing?

― zvookster, Sunday, January 2, 2011 12:59 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Kind of implies dude should hear more records imo

― our man flint flo$$y (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, January 2, 2011 1:18 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dunno man, what's your 34th favorite album of the year and would you say you love every minute of it? if it was met with a MBDTF level of acclaim would you think it was a bit overrated?

the idea that you need to cover some huge breadth of music to be a good music writer is 100% nonsense and has gotten more ridiculous than ever

^^^

I've heard probably less than 50 albums this year. Even that felt like too much, like it resulted in cursory attention to everything. I don't see how hearing more would make me a better writer.

"I don't see how hearing more would make me a better writer."

really?

i mean, the more you know, the more you know.

unless you write, like, zen music writing, i guess. and you just listen to the same song every day.

and you CAN study one drum beat or one bass line for days. i dig that.

i'm all for obsessiveness. and if you listen to too much you might get all mixed up. like me.

Hearing more albums = thinking less about each album I hear.

I think a lot of critics listen to a fantastic breadth of stuff but as a result don't really allow themselves a chance to develop a particularly nuanced take on much of the music they're listening to. Arguably one of the reasons so many critics' lists look the same is that critics are churning through so much music that it just saves time going into a listening experience applying whatever emergent critical consensus already exists as a kind of listening filter.

i think everyone's got a right to operate differently and figure out what works best for them. i could probably stand to hear more albums than i do, or from a wider range, but keeping tabs on the beats i already cover and the artists i already like and letting other stuff kind of fall in my lap semi-organically keeps me busy enough as it is.

i listen to a lot, but i also focus on one thing for a period of days sometimes. i can go either way. i get obsessed and interested about things and then i go deeper. but people DO have a natural built-in capacity for all kinds of things and you know when your tank is full. so, really, whatever works best for you. hearing many examples of one type of thing can be helpful to me. i think about how it all fits/doesn't fit/connects/doesn't connect/etc.

I've heard probably less than 50 albums this year.

Isn't this a little misleading given the number of individual tracks and DJ mixes you probably listen to? Like, it might sound like less listening than you actually do because of the type of material you focus on.

how red their faces must be!!!!

oh goodness

can you please descend back into yr circle of hell where people who enjoy "hey soul sister" are condemned to?

eh you may wanna just take that zing big guy

;_;

Tim F otm.

Isn't this a little misleading given the number of individual tracks and DJ mixes you probably listen to? Like, it might sound like less listening than you actually do because of the type of material you focus on.

I guess so, though a lot of the radio sets I listen to will be like 80% tracks I already know so it's hard to quantify this. My point was more that there seems to be this pernicious trend whereby critics now feel obliged to check out 200+ albums each year (and in particular albums that are getting hyped by other critics) simply because they can, and I don't know that it necessarily makes them better writers.

My listening to uk funky radio sets is effectively dead time in the above (omnivorus music critic) terms because no-one in the world cares - I may as well be listening to my old Joni Mitchell records for all that it contributes to a critical conversation about music in 2010. OTOH for the most part it develops my thoughts about music much more substantially than dutifully checking out x Best New Music album.

Brainwashed readers' poll results are up

#1 album starts with an "S" and ends with "WANS" ;)

http://brainwashed.com

probably agree more with tim here - if i listened to the amount of albums whiney does each year, there's no way i could get inside them enough to have more than a superficial opinion on any of them. also, it's perfectly possibly to get a grasp on an artist du jour without ever hearing the whole album. that said 50 does seem like a pretty small number - surely which 50 is even more dependent on luck/critical consensus?

Yeah 50 might be a slight exaggeration, if I really thought about it I might have heard 80 or so albums this year, but 30 or so only once and in those cases I don't even like to talk about them, I feel like my decision not to return to them comes with an acknowledgment that I have no business talking about them.

surely which 50 is even more dependent on luck/critical consensus?

well, I've only heard 8 of pitchfork's top 50 albums if that's any indication.

Listening to more records doesn't make you a better writer, it just makes you more aware of trends. Whether you write well about 20 albums or 200 albums is up to you.

Also not to spin this into yet another Pitchfork conversation, but I still maintain that people bestow the site with too much authority. If they give something a Best New Music then every critic becomes duty-bound to hear it and have an opinion on it. Nothing against Pitchfork - they like what they like - but the way they drive the conversation all year long, it's no surprise that everyone's EOY lists resemble theirs.

can anyone tell me about these records i haven't heard (& in many cases, even heard OF) from the Brainwashed top 100 ??

Cyclobe, "Wounded Galaxies Tap at The Window"
JG Thirlwell, "Manorexia: The Mesopelagic Waters"
Demdike Stare, "Liberation Through Hearing"
Demdike Stare , "Voices Of Dust "
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma , "Love is a Stream"
Foetus, "Hide"
Master Musicians Of Bukkake, "Totem 2"
Keith Fullerton Whitman, "Generator"
Baby Dee, "Book of Songs for Anne Marie"
The Fun Years, "God Was Like, No"
Demdike Stare, "Forest Of Evi"
Jana Winderen, "Energy Field"
Master Musicians Of Bukkake, "Visible Signs Of The Invisible"
TwinSisterMoon, "...Then Fell the Ashes"
Xela, "The Divine"
Anbb (Alva Noto & Blixa Bargeld), "Mimikry"
Nurse With Wound & Larsen , "Erroneous: A Selection Of Errors"
BJ Nilsen, "The Invisible City"
The North Sea, "Bloodlines"
Xela, "The Sublime"
Charlemagne Palestine, "Strumming Music For Piano Harpsichord And Strings Ensemble"
BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa, "Space Finale"
Ceremony, "Rocket Fire"
Jon Mueller, "The Whole"
Koen Holtkamp, "Gravity/Bees"
Nicholas Szczepanik, "Dear Dad"
Altar Eagle, "Mechanical Gardens"
Locrian, "The Crystal World"
Magic Lantern, "Platoon"
Natural Snow Buildings, "The Centauri Agent"
Eleh, "Radiant Intervals"
Organum, "Sorrow"
Svarte Greiner, "Penpals Forever And Ever"

Demdike Stare

if u page back once there's a youtube

thankx!

i think i remember contenderizer talking about magic lantern, & Lamp bj nilsen

It appears that more people are concerned with being good writers than good critics. It's understandable, good writing can lead to more/better opportunities, while good criticism isn't always even recognized by that large an audience. I've read plenty of good writing in poor reviews. Lovely metaphors and clever phrases that serve a writer's portfolio and ego more than the music. I can appreciate it briefly, but then it's quickly forgotten as I skim onward in search of good music. Even good writing that's also good criticism is going to be forgotten. It's never going to be literature (with perhaps a few exceptions from the likes of Bangs and Kent).

Good criticism isn't very flashy, and it takes an admirable suspension of ego to write efficiently in service of the music. And like the best writers, it involves plenty of research and preparation. I would not consider anyone who listens to only 4 new albums a month as having particularly deep knowledge of current music. Critics that can't be bothered to even hear at least 20 albums a month, let alone find more than 20 or 40 albums they truly like in a year are in the wrong damn field. Someone who really loves music should have no problem finding and hearing more than a couple hundred albums a year worth hearing. It's probably too much to ask of your average writer, certainly. But who wants average? I'm quite happy with the handful of crazy obsessives whose opinions I respect. I've always wished there was a way to add a filter to something like the Pazz & Jop based on the number of albums the writers heard that year. That list would be much more interesting. The rest can keep their polished reviews. Some of us just want to find the tunes.

funny post. do u do stand up?

it's like why didnt they just tweet reviews of the mona lisa fuck it save time

Deej, you listen to a ton of music. Why are you being such a champion of NOT listening to music?