//From the Camp NO FEAR Bunker buried deep within the Costco parking lot, Gila Bend, Arizona 1/4/11. The soundtrack to when we re-conquer the surface will be Umberto - "Prophecy Of The Black Widow" and it shall rule. //
Sun City Girls - Funeral Mariachi (out with a bang, not with a whisper)
Faun Fables - Light Of A Vaster Dark (finally took a break from raising little Edda to put the songs on record that I've fallen in love with live already twice by now. "Sweeping Spell" and "Hear The Grinder Creak" were like my mantras at work even before this came out.)
Master Musicians Of Bukkake - Totem 2
Daniel Higgs - Say God (there god is - there is god: there god is not - there is god)
Hype Williams - Do Roids And Kill E'rything/ Untitled/ Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, And Start Gettin Real (haters will hate but pro-lazy hypno-hop brings the gold in my book)
Neil Young - Le Noise (really fucking crazy that he could pull out something as good as Crazy Horse, solo, almost more than 30 years later, but then again he ain't just another fucking Bob Dylan "People may find this hard to believe, but I only really care about the music, that's it" - NY)
Bernardino Femminelli - La Montaña Del Capricornio
Dirty Beaches - Night City/True Blue/ Golden Desert Sun (kid is just positively amazing and pulls your heartstrings like none other than Alan Vega or Ian Curtis without saying a particularly audible word)
Broken Water - Whet/ Broken Water Cassette (really Whet is the best, but both releases create such perfect Oregon swamp fog bud-fused burnout early 90s high school vibes, it's the meeting of genres and punks and minds that should have happened back then)
Forest Swords - Dagger Paths (accompanied so many wide open window lone-ranger cruises through the Sonoran desert and Tucson's ghettos. a total psychedelic art-anime western)
James Ferraro - Feed Me/ Night Dolls With Hair Spray (finally becoming the rock star from another galaxy he always wanted to be, Unarius finally found him! it's so wonderful)
Outer Limits Recordings - Julie/ I Need My TV
Zola Jesus - Stridulum/ Valusia (finally becoming the cute gothy pop star from next door she always wanted to be)
Gary War - Police Water (only 4 songs but even better than all of Horribles Parade, keep 'em coming)
Salem - King Night (guilty as charged. but if it makes you feel any better, I thought the Levi Fader fort fiasco was horrible as well. and all other witch house is terrible. period.)
We Like Cats - We Like Cats (cat dub 4-EVER)
Dire Wolves - Jams And The Giant Peace (people could just fart out jam sessions like these forever and I'd be happy)
LA Vampires meets Zola Jesus/LA Vampires Featuring Matrix Metals - "So Unreal"/ Psychic Reality/ LA Vampires Split (I never really liked Pocahaunted at all, ever, so I experienced their end as kind of a blessing, but Amanda's side projects are blowing my mind these days; Vibes, as well, was good. Bethany's Best Coast is ok too but a far cry away in quality/originality. and sorry, Sun Araw still sucks)
Donato Epiro - Supercontinent (like a massive playhouse of mangled psychedelic toys in a Jim Woodring kind of way, Stunned continues to kick ass despite releasing the occasional turd)
Sean McCann - Fable Shop/Fountains/Open Resolve (continues being a nonstop genius)
Bill Orcutt - A New Way To Pay Old Debts (normally not into something this deep into free improv, but this just carried me right from the beginning. I've got blisters on me fingers!!!)
Scorn - Refuse;Start Fires (just so fucking brutal. "Take Someone's Eye Out" makes we want to go all mecha in the desert rescuing illegals from the US Army District 9 style)
Fursaxa - Mycorrhizae Realm (why ever listen to anything else she's made, this is just too beautiful)
Cyclobe - Wounded Galaxies Tap At the Window (not as maximal as earlier stuff but this is definitely the soundtrack to opening the horrible non-euclidean doors of reality with blasphemous chaos rituals)
Moon Wiring Club - A Spare Tabby At The Cat's Wedding/ the whole Ghost Box Study Series (these guys continue to bring what Boards Of Canada promised us, albeit in a different cultural form)
Games - That We Can Play (the rejected soundtrack to Tron Legacy's original incarnation: Tron 2D: Digital Beach Party)
Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal (still not as heavily into this as Rifts, but the self-titled track is just too good a song to not mention this. not to forget the thousand TR-303s retro noise-assault bookends to the album)
Cloudland Ballroom - Blues From The Sun/ Split w/ Sundrips (best of the massive synth crop this year, the Sacred Phrases & Fadeaway Tapes labels are shaping up to be something great. Cloudland Ballroom [edit] is from Ireland of all places, too. all those Sundrips tapes were cool too, but there's nothing much to say about them)
Chrome Wings - Time Patterns (more explosive goodness from Stunned)
Golden Retriever - 2 (so fucking magical. for once this kind of space-jazz-modal-synth stuff delivers what it promises, best thing since Ariel Kalma or Terry Riley's Poppy No Good And The Phantom Band)
Vibracathedral Orchestra - Joka Baya (the astrological infinite concert continues ad infinitum, on and on)
Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here? (listening to this on the way to Cape Canaveral to see a space shuttle launch is positively unforgettable)
Barn Owl - Ancestral Star (more underwhelming than I had hoped, and certainly not as good as Evan Caminiti's last two solo records, but still glorious in its own understated deeply heartfelt way)
Yellow Swans - Going Places (released in 2009 originally I know, but reissued in 2010. another fucking amazing final album)
Woods - At Echo Lake (took me a while and some maturing to get into this stuff, but this is wonderful holy campfire hippie summer camp music)
Honorable Mentions:
Skullflower/ White Medal split
Skullflower - Strange Keys To Untune God's Firmament (still pretty meh compared to Circulus)
Sleep ∞ Over - Sleep Over/ Outer Limits (is this witch house? because I guess I still have no fucking idea what that means, whatever, this is still pretty decent)
Earth Station - Control Belief
a whole slew of random synth/drone releases that didn't make the cut on Digitalis Ltd, Housecraft, Stunned, etc.
Ancillary bizarre crap that I'm afraid to admit:
Haus Arafna - You (really weird considering I was wayyy into this stuff in high school, but they just came back to perfect the formal power electronics-meets-minimal synth with severe amounts of goth on this one. not too much electro like the last November Novelet album, but not Subliminal or some death industrial horseshit either. makes up for the fact that Maska Genetik called it quits with music)
MIA - MAYA (super mainstream I know but I had to have some cheery anthem to throwing molotov cocktails at border patrol trucks here now)
Die Antwoord - $O$ (shut up I know, shut up shut up shut up can't hear you lalalalala)
Rewind Selecta!!:
Silver Bullets - Free Radical (cannot believe this slipped by me last year, mind. is. blown.)
the whole Ghost Box label
CoH - Above Air
Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls
Outer Limits Recordings - Foxy Baby (helll yeaaah motherfucker)
Discovery Zone:
Ghost Box
The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud (had a really bleak period in the middle of the year where I got way into them)
that black metal is becoming irrelevant
Julianna Barwick
Gary War
Hype Williams
Herz Jühning
Geneva Jacuzzi - Lamaze
Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem
Mount Vernon Arts Lab
CoH
Night People
that Stunned is actually a pretty great label
Dirty Beaches
getting way more into Harappian Night Recordings & Neokarma Jooklo Trio
Factums
ok that should cover at least some of it...BOOOM 2011!
8 comments:
Great list, love it. Is Going Places (my no 1 of 2010) really a 2009 release? I'm not so sure. Master Musicians of Bukkake is phenomenal, discovered them too late for my year end.
COH's above air came out at least 5 years ago.
thus it's under the "Discovery Zone" section, which is stuff I discovered this year and dug
Okay, I'm gonna go and DL the SALEM album only b/c you kept it trill; the Levi's fiasco was beyond the word bad. And witch house sucks.
(BUT Balam Acab ain't bad! Wet slow ass beats. C'mon! Hype Williams is on this list, I KNOW YOU LIKE BEATS!)
This list you got here, doesn't suck.
Thanks for the tunes and info throughout the year. I appreciate it.
BEETS.
dear monsieur Valentine, dunno if it was just you but all the other random year-end lists I read, but you just completely tripped my nut w/ getting into the beat-zone. Balam Acab is the shit, but now I've been sucked into the vortex of non-Warped out, fuck-IDM, conscious and expansive beat-making made over the last year in the wake of Flying Lotus that's flown completely over my head (albeit for a couple of burnt-out-on psych listening sessions). my perspective on music has been, possibly temporarily, changed. p.s. have you heard the Dunian/ Monster Rally split?
Hi, just wanted to point out that Cloudland Ballroom is from Ireland. Not Sacred Phrases, they are are based in Indiana, US. Many thanks for the inclusion on your list - James (Cloudland Ballroom)
Hey thanks for the clarity holmes! Fixed.
Sorry that I left you hanging.
First time doing my round of blog looky looing in a bit.
Thank you sfor the recommendation! I've looked at Monster Rally's bandcamp in the past week or so, but forgot about it. Your response comment lead me back around and to DUNIAN - an instant head banger.
Ras G is a beast, Teebs a mellow superstar, and Lotus has beyond-cool Coltrane in his blood. These are observations of their physical/personal attributes and musical sensibilities. So much of this "new beat scene" shit is good to go.
I love droning to Yellow Swans, Grouper, Lichens (a big favorite), Lau Nau, the Fursaxa discography, and any-freakin-thing from EARN and his Ekhein label but I can't commit to em' for every paper plane I fly on.
Hmmm what's caught my ear lately...I almost told you a list of bands that I've DL'd from your page. This is kinda' intimidating...
Well here, I dig the comp "So young but So Cold: Underground French Music 77-83", the Dead Can Dance discography (stuck on the self titled and Aion), a Josephine Baker comp "Breezin' Along", and the tracks "Much Better Off" by Smokey Rob and the Miracles, "Bad.day" by Young Montana, and any damn thing from Shlohmo (try "My Drum Loop Is Stuck in Molasses" around 1:35 it gets heavy, and "Teeth [Asura Remix]." His Camping EP is a sure shot.)
Yay run-on sentence! Have a grrrrreat day.
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