Rolling "favorite music of 2012 so far" thread (albums and/or tracks edition)

xpost to Nick: Beach House and Dirty Three would be my safest tips, based on what I know of your tastes. Next would come Django Django, Todd Terje, Tindersticks. In the "hopefully he gets it" pile: Laurel Halo (plenty of people hate this, though), Matt Elliott (nobody is talking about this record, which is sad), Carter Tutti Void. I think you'd also like Get The Blessing, NZCA/LINES, Ulrich Schnauss/Mark Peters, Batida, Neneh Cherry & the Thing, Auntie Flo.

i've had a few weeks off new music and i really really need to be recommended some stuff that'll make me excited about music again

I'm not sure what to make of the Rudi Zygadlo album. It's incredible on a technical level, but despite that it manages to kind of drift by after a few songs..

I'm enjoying

Aleph - From Chaos to Cosmos
Black Dice - Mr Impossible
The Black Lips - Arabia Mountain
Dave Nada - Blow Your Head Two: Dave Nada presents Moombahton
Dream Continuum - Reworks EP
Flaming Lips - ...& Head Fwends
Ital - Hive Mind
King Creosote - I Learned From the Gaels
Neuport - CHORIZO ep
Peaking Lights - Lucifer
Philip Storey - Outside This House
Prinzhorn Dance School - Happy In Bits
Traxman - The Mind Of Traxman
UFOmammut - Oro: Opus Primum

Not really listened to all that much techno this year, but have really been enjoying Claro Intelecto - Reform Club these last few weeks.

Thanks Mike. Of those I've got (and quite like) Django Django, and I bought the Neneh Cherry & The Thing at the weekend. I've never got the fuss about Beach House, and don't know most of the others.

2nd quarter wrapup.....

01 Beak> "Spinning Top"
02 Frank Ocean "Super Rich Kids"
03 Broken Water "Coming Down"
04 Nicki Minaj "Come On A Cone"
05 Japandroids "The Nights of Wine and Roses"
06 Drake "The Motto"
07 Eric Copeland "Car Alarm"
08 Kitty Pryde "Okay Cupid"
09 Waka Flocka Flame "Foreign Shit"
10 Guided By Voices "Roll of the Dice, Kick In The Head"

albums
Beak>
Blanche Blanche Blanche
Merchandise
King Tuff
Broken Water
Japandroids
Black Dice
Speedy Ortiz
Frank Ocean

Track:

Sa Dingding - Lai Zhe Mo Jie

More from the same album on the way, possibly followed by the whole album, but I'm confused by my response to it.

Yes, it is sometimes bombastic New Age world music from China with politically dubious appropriations of Tibetan and ethnic minority themes (she's half-Mongolian herself, however), but. . .

Album:

Sa Dingding - The Coming Ones

(As predicted.) I like about half the songs a lot, and you just have to kind of ride the storm of the excessively mellow ones in-between. So much about the production is wrong here, but to me that just says that it must be her musicality that's coming through underneath. And then there are her vocals, all over the place in a good way, over top.

top 10
1. baroness
2. dj rashad
3. beak>
4. action bronson
5. swans
6. killer mike
7. white suns
8. pallbearer
9. torche
10. future

go hard or go home imo

home seems preferable tbh. cozy.

just jankin' you whines i ain't heard any of that shit

that does look like a cool list

haha pallbearer is like a big pillow

man, I wish I hadn't pictures of Action Bronson when googling for Blue Chips because I don't know if I'll be able to get over the "Violent J's legit side project" vibes

haha okay the music is actually putting that to rest, phew

also it is REALLY PISSING ME OFF that I like "The Motto"

portishead sideproject fan to messageboard: "go hard or go home"

Favourite trax right now:

F(x) - Electric shock
Jeri-Jeri with Mbene Diatta Seck - Mbeuguel Dafa Nekh
Alex Anwandter - Cómo Puedes Vivir Contigo Mismo?
Annelies Monseré - All Things Are Quite Silent
Georgia Anne Muldrow - Best Love
Heatsick - No Fixed Address
AlunaGeorge - You Know You Like It
Ikonika - I Make Lists

Best Coast, The Only Place--title song seems obligatory, sincere, self/peer-mocking, past that it's mostly a blue Pacific twilight breakup album, interrogating self and the ex, developing a tough Bronx accent sometimes, or maybe it's an Italian thing.
Patti Smith, Banga--ditch the first three tracks, maybe the last, "After The Gold Rush", which starts out as the perfect follow-up to themes and imagery in several originals, but then she shifts from"in the Nineteen Seven-ties" to "The Twenty-first Cen-tur-ee," repeated way too many times by a kiddie choir (!), and way too reductive when she ends it there, no burned-out basement, no thinking about what a friend had said. But most of the album still seems pretty damn strong so far--you can hear it and all her others on her MySpace---eeewww! But it's true, lot of other artists have tons of their albums on there, now that nobody goes.

portishead sideproject fan to messageboard: "go hard or go home"

― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, July 20, 2012 12:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

have u heard portishead in the last five years?

no thank god

You might should give <i>Third</i> a whirl. I'm not that big a fan of 90s Portishead, but <i>Third</i> is one of my favorite albums of the last several years. And that BEAK> album is the fucking business.

damn you bbcode!

yeah, dude, i was NEVER a big fan of 90s Portishead and Third blew my brain open. It's their best album by a country mile

I'm a have to third this opinion--the last Portishead record is their best record (and the new Beak> album is pretty good, too, as was that Anika disc)...

third is easily the worst portishead album (it's ok though)

^ all the evidence you need to determine it's amazing.

I can imagine liking the third Portishead album but not the first (and the first album but not the third) but it would seem odd to me to feel very differently about the second and third.

Portishead's good 90s tracks come from the second album, definitely.

it would seem odd to me to feel very differently about the second and third.

why would it seem odd? they're very different albums with very different aesthetics over a decade apart.

the second is my favourite portishead album, i love the first two, i admire the third but i never got beyond admire into love - it kind of stayed at this level of forbidding that meant i never really wanted to listen to it

I thought I hated Portishead until Third (although "Over" is grate)

Beak> is my Geoff Barrow-related record to date. I'm kind of tired of people as describing "kraut" as something dated or used-up, to my ears it's a living, breathing genre that has unfortunately been tied to a time and place

Also it should be noted that Geoff Barrow is a member of Beak> but he is not the primary creative force i.e songwriter

I can imagine liking the third Portishead album but not the first (and the first album but not the third) but it would seem odd to me to feel very differently about the second and third.--G.E. Moore.

Odd, really? Beth changed up her melody style 100% on Third. Also Silver Apples fixation [plus] silence and emptiness [minus] spy soundtrack groovieness [plus] English girl losing her mind [minus] MPC [plus] EMS

Third is by far my favourite Portishead album, it's perfect. I think they got better with each album, can't wait for the next one.

I wish I knew how incredible Portishead would be in the '00s before they scheduled that ATP they curated

Yep whiney I like third, I like beak too, I bought third on vinyl but the first shipment was warped but the store let me return it

I just thought go hard or go home was funny, but you were just schticking anyway I know

I dunno, i know its schticky, but i kind of do feel like its 2012 and life is hectic (cash rules) and there's no time to be making or listening to soft shit.

Beak> isn't like Cattle Decap or nuthin but it's moody and gloomy and nauseous and abrasive and weird

I agree with that

I like your list. That pallbearer is way better than baroness though.....what is white suns?

Future is interesting to read about, didn't really strike me that much though

White Suns is a noize band who kind of mixes AmRep noise-metal with void-gazing feedback drones in fits and starts

go hard or go home imo

lol you can't have it both ways, either you go hard or you put baroness in your #1 spot

it would seem odd to me to feel very differently about the second and third.

why would it seem odd? they're very different albums with very different aesthetics over a decade apart.

― bitch I'm on the 242 (lex pretend), Saturday, July 21, 2012 9:41 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was thinking more that I would expect people who love Third for its forbidding darkness to find that Portishead already anticipated a lot of that vibe, albeit not nearly as dramatically - esp. on "Cowboys", "Half Day Closing", "Elysium", etc. It seems odd to me that people could hate or dismiss it and then go on to love the next one.

It's my favourite as well.

the third isn't so stylebound.

My prob with 90s Portishead is I can't stand Beth when she tries to sing "jazzy". Thankfully, by Third she had cut that out.

I dunno, i know its schticky, but i kind of do feel like its 2012 and life is hectic (cash rules) and there's no time to be making or listening to soft shit.

― camp lo magellan (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, July 21, 2012 9:52 AM (2 hours ago)

aero otm. i love that baroness album, but it's about as hard as a toasted marshmallow. it's like a comforter made out of chest hair. camping trips...

and portishead hasn't made a bad album

contendo OTM, all three Portishead albums are fantastic

I also agree with Tim in that I don't get how anyone couldn't see the roots of Third in Portishead