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

Whole bunch of stuff I've been liking a lot in no particular order:

White Manna - s/t
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - s/t
Laurel Halo - Quarantine
Sun Araw, M Geddes Gengras and the Congos - FRKWYS 9
Julia Holter - Ekstasis
Belbury Poly - The Belbury Tales
Shackleton - Music For The Quiet Hour
Cooly G - Playin Me
Silent Servant - Negative Fascination
Claro Intelecto - Reform Club
Deepchord - Sommer
V/A - Shangaan Shake
Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang - Eh Yay Sah
Batida - s/t
Paco Sala - Ro-Me-Ro
Gala Drop & Ben Chasny - Broda
Bear In Heaven - I Love You, It's Cool
White Hills - Frying On This Rock
Richard Youngs - Core To The Brave
Mirroring - Foreign Body
Vestals - Forever Falling Toward The Sky
Worm Ouroboros - Come The Thaw
Helm - Impossible Symmetry
Dustin Wong - Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads
Stealing Sheep - Into The Diamond Sun
Echo Lake - Wild Peace

^^^ Good list. What is "Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang - Eh Yay Sah"?

He's a Sierra Leonian ex-pat who plays an electric version of traditional bubu music with a bunch of NYC people (folks from Gang Gang Dance etc). First track on that album is one of the most deliriously infectious things I've heard all year...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYqdlMLgqM

jason lescalleet - songs about nothing
michael pisaro - fields have ears (6)
skogen - ist gefallen in den schnee
boris hauf sextet - next delusion
ariel pink - mature themes
laurel halo - quarantine
deerhoof - breakup song
house shoes - let it go
ouija boys - NOT funny
en - already gone

faves so far

I last posted here on the vernal equinox, and with the autumnal equinox coming up, I'll append:

2:54 - 2:54 imagine curve with a plodding rhythm section. or garbage.
Ane Brun - It All Starts With One belated American release of remarkable nordic dark art-pop. think k.bush's 9th wave suite
Beach House - Bloom enough said hereabouts. this decade's fleetwood mac, without the internal tensions.
Blondes - Blondes organic sample house for diletantes. like me.
Gazelle Twin - The Entire City Remixed the debut was a ballardian vision of lisa gerrard v. fever ray. this plays with the memorable tracks in a idm/mnml direction
iamamiwhoami - Kin inevitably shadowed by the knife, but it holds up to repeated plays tremendously well
Monolake - Ghosts the most consistantly good downtempo IDM artist. They created Ableton was created to facilitate this
Niki & the Dove - Instinct does not improve upon the EPs. thats ok
School of Seven Bells - Ghostory crafty production serves a lesser batch of songs
Sun Araw, M. Geddes & the Congos - Icon Give Thanks falsetto harmonies make laptop exotica palatable
Yppah - Eighty One if boards of canada made a trip-hop album

That Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang youtube is awesome! Thanks for the tip.

xps this is pretty great

^^^ love this

this would have been a big hit on outloud. :(

:(

Whole thing is up on Spotify cos it's on Luaka Bop and it's all good, but that's definitely my favourite song on it.

Yeah, I was just about to say I'd found it on Spotify. Giving it a spin.

my faves on the Janka are "Eh Mane Ah" and "Rotin"

Not on UK Spotify but the An Letah EP is - "En Mane Ah" is great.

Seandalai try here:
http://open.spotify.com/album/5iKu8TgFH5VR6Z3pVbaINZ

Oh I see...shouldn't have searched for "bubu"

yeah, that was a booboo

Woollen Kits - 'Out Of Whack' (NZ, noisy indie pop/rock) - from s/t album
Actress - 'Ascending' (gentle but euphoric soft techno, great album) - from 'R.I.P.' LP
Jacky Heron - 'Waste Of Time' (cover of Fabulous Stains from new band ft ex-Help She Can't Swim people) from comp LP 'Why Diet When You Can Riot'
The Pheromoans - 'I'm A You Know What' (Deadpan DIY guitar pop with messthetic & 60s garage genes) - from 'Does This Guy Stack Up?' LP on UTR
Tender Trap - 'Step One' (Amelia Fletcher etc goodness) - from new album 'Ten Songs About Girls'
Todd Terje - 'Inspector Norse' (great bright melodic techno, upbeat, for Daft Punk fans maybe) - from 'It's The Arps' EP
Novella - 'Don't Believe Ayn Rand' (post-Veronica Falls, gauzy melodic guitar pop - from s/t EP
Liechtenstein - 'Meantime' (Scando female indiepop, sparse and good) - from 'Fast Forward' LP
Divorce - 'Horseheads' (Brutal m8s) - off new s/t LP on Nightschool
Traxman - 'Footworkin on Air' (fractured beauty twists into skittery frugfest) - off 'Da Mind Of Traxman' LP
Strawberry Whiplash - 'Looking Out For Summer' (classic girl vocal indiepop, clean guitars) - from 'Hits In The Car' album
Hookworms - 'Form & Function' (driving, spacey krautrock from Leeds) - from split 7" w/Kogumaza on Gringo/Faux Discx
Cats on Fire - '1914 and Beyond' (awesome Finndie pop with folkish inflections) - from 'All Blackshirts To Me' LP
Slowcoaches - 'We're So Heavy' (grungish pop on Tye Die Tapes) - from s/t EP
Joanna Gruesome - 'Sweater' (boy/girl vocals, noisepop) - from 'Family Portrait' split 7" on Art Is Hard
Golden Grrrls - 'I Don't Want You Anyway' (Look Blue Go Purple cover)
Orca Team - 'Night Moves' (50s surf post-punk reverb indiepop) - from 'Restraint' LP on HHBTM

nice list

woollen kits are melbourne types, though i can see where the
confusion might lie

Shit, that's true, whoops. That'll teach me for posting to innernets when off sick.

<3 pheromoans

new Raveonettes is fucking great

^ seconded

i kind of forget about them sometimes...like i never think of them as one of the *best* bands...but yesterday i listened to a bunch of them on spotify and they've done a shitload of albums and they are all great, they are so consistently awesome

'Why Diet When You Can Riot'

how is this btw?

I've still only heard a couple of these Hospitality songs. It's a little interesting how it's got a jangly indie sound but it keeps doing these things (harmonically? someone with music theory please explain what I'm hearing in terms I won't understand) that are atypical of what I think of as indie rock (for what my narrow idea is worth). Like it might be more prog. sorts of turns in the music. I'm not crazy about the vocals, but maybe I could live with them. Also reminds me a bit of Company of Thieves in overall approach. (o. nate, have you heard them? I think you'd probably like them, though I don't know your taste that well. I'm still not completely sold on them--mostly based on vocal issues as usual, but most of the time they sound pretty good.)

I'm also trying to puzzle through why this album has rewarded so many repeated listens. A few possibilities...

- lots of atypical chord progressions. "The Birthday" has a couple i-iv moments but is mostly made up of unexpected turns. "Eighth Avenue" sounds like it's going to be a really twee and crappy I-IV-V borefest but the main progression turns dissonant quickly and the descending chromatics are effective. "Friends of Friends" again is saved by an unexpected but catchy progression.
- dissonant rather than twee transitional notes - quite a few in your face crunchy moments that I like a lot. "Liberal Arts" would be really boring if it weren't for the fact that the singer never gets off the tonic while the guitar progression continues.
- instrumentation - very sensitive use of hard and soft in the backing tracks, lots of different instruments, different guitar tones, acoustic/electric, brass, etc. The percussion is also interesting and varied.
- vocals - she doesn't have the strongest voice but it's very expressive and the dynamics are usually on target. Love the double tracking/yelling in "The Right Profession" to add some edge to one of the more traditional sounding choruses.
- borderline jammy bridges and guitar solos

Nice analysis. The Hospitality album has turned into one of my most listened to of the year so far.

Also, I would mention they have a pretty tight little rhythm section, unusual for this type of indie jangle pop.

Thanks skip. I'd like to give that Hospitality album a few more spins, at least before the oh so important ILM EOY poll comes around. (At this point I would want to distance myself a lot from the Company of Thieves comparison I made. The only big thing they have in common is just that they sometimes do things that are a little sophisticated harmonically/technically.)

If YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN - YT//ST [that's how I see it written out officially] can be considered a 2012 release then that is near the top of my list. It was released last year, but reissued this year by a label they just signed to--and I think last year's release might only have been as a download.

(Incidentally, o. nate you might just like that YT//ST. Definitely some nicely done prog things going on there, without it really being straight up prog. rock, although I guess parts of it can pass for prog-metal, which is one way I see them pigeon-holed.)

Still need to listen to Channel Orange. I started it and mostly liked it, but it's not really anything I would normally be in the mood for.

I like Channel Orange more than I thought I would. I'm not usually a big R&B fan tbh, but this creates a mood and atmosphere that puts me more in the mind of something like Stevie Wonder's "Fulfillingness' First Finale" (minus the more upbeat tracks).

I can't believe I haven't even heard Centipede Hz yet

lucky

trying to avoid it myself

Albums

Goat - World Music
Zambri - House of Baasa
Surnatural Orchestra - Pluir
Hafez Modirzadeh - Post-Chromodal Out!
Alio Die - Deconsecrated and Pure
Ramona Falls - Prophet
Harrison Birtwistle - Complete String Quartet (Arditti Quartet)
Niki and the Dove - Instinct
Deerhoof - Breakup Song
Tyme. x Tujiko - GYU
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
Mouse on Mars - Parastrophics
Quakers - Quakers
Various Artists - Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984

Tracks

Ab-Soul Ft. Danny Brown & Jhene Aiko - "Terrorist Threats"
Hundred In the Hands - "Keep it Low"
Georgia Anne Muldrow - "Best Love"

this year has been fucking incredible so far, I'm not ready to post a list just yet but I just wanted to say it's kind of hard to believe just how cool this year has been so far re: new music

Albums

Six Organs of Admittance - Ascent
Thee Oh Sees - Putrifiers ii
Angel Olsen - Half Way Home
JJ Doom - Key To The Cuff
LHF - Keepers Of The Light
Monolake - Ghosts
Perc - A New Brutality (ep)
Austin Cesear - Cruise Forever
Bill Fay - Life is People
Chris Forsyth - Kenzo Deluxe
Dr John - Locked Down
Holy Other - Held
LV - Sebenza

latest faves:

Purity Ring - Shrines
Farrah Abraham - My Teenage Dream Ended
The xx - Coexist
Psy - Gangnam Style
The Presets - Pacifica

One track to add:

Shiina Ringo - Jiyuu e Michizure

(TV show theme song.)

also add:

Elle Varner - Perfectly Imperfect

I listened to a snippet of that Goat album yesterday - sounds like it could be amazing.

Tracks

Shackleton - Music For The Quiet Hour part two
Gary War - Pleading For Annihilation
LV(featuring okmalumkoolkat) - DL
Cult Of Youth - Golden Age
Robert Hood - Better Life
Ruby My Dear- Uken
Shifted - Coax
Thee Oh Sees - Hang a Picture

Thee Oh Sees - Hang a Picture

this is a great, great song and still probably two better than it on the album, er, EP

gunplay - 601 & snort is good!

this is a great, great song and still probably two better than it on the album, er, EP

You are right Floods New Light is probably a better track.
It's still an EP with more great songs than the last TY full length album has! Just making the comparison because they get lumped together. FWIW I loved Goodbye Bread.

Yeah "Floods New Light" was one I was thinking of, so was "Lupine Dominus" but then I'm a sucker for that faux-kraut feel.

Various Artists - Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984

― Cliftonb, Wednesday, September 19, 2012 8:37 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Tell me about this, please.

ryan hemsworth 'last words' ep

cassegrain & tin man carnal (four tracks)

basic channel acid. ultra warm, repetitive