March first is a good day to post this, right? I mean, the rush to get these out is gone, so now mine will appear more impor­tant for lack of competition.

So, remem­ber how I did it last year? The tier­ing sys­tem, as opposed to rank­ings? Yeah, that’s how I’ve been rat­ing every­thing since then. Hard and fast rank­ings are for the inflex­i­ble and narrow-minded.

The movers

The xx The xx
Tele­fon Tel Aviv Immo­late Your­self
DJ Sprin­kles Mid­town 120 Blues
The Lul­laby League Dormio Ani­mus
Mono­lake Silence
Intru­sion The Seduc­tion of Silence

Yep, these are the best. Not only are they really good, but they’re really mov­ing. That may come as a sur­prise in the case of Mono­lake. It’s a good Mono­lake album, on par with Inter­state, for sure, but mov­ing? Per­haps an odd claim, but I find this album really affect­ing. The same goes for the Intru­sion album. Not only am I com­pletely com­fort­able call­ing that one of the best (dub or oth­er­wise) techno albums of all time, it’s so evocative.

DJ Sprin­kles is Terre Thaemlitz’s moniker for house-influenced mate­r­ial, as opposed to his usual glitched ambi­ence. Amaz­ing how one guy (er) could do two such diverse gen­res so well. Mid­town 120 Blues is one of the three best house albums I’ve ever heard. Granted I’m not a house head, so my tastes are a bit off, but this is a clas­sic. It’s really warm and organic, uplift­ing yet moody, and just sloppy enough. Oh, you can dance to it, of course. Now that you know about Terre, I bet the Lul­laby League is the obscurest thing here. I don’t know much about them either. I stum­bled across this album, and it trans­fixed me. It’s also warm, organic, and kinda sloppy, but it’s a slightly glitchy ambi­ent album with some great spo­ken word on top. It does won­der­ful things: when you’re try­ing to fall asleep and lis­ten­ing to it, it keeps you in the space between asleep and awake. Really cool.

Many know the story of the Tele­fon Tel Aviv album at this point: two guys, one of them kills him­self the week before this album is released. I don’t bite on those kinds of sto­ries; the music stands alone to me. In the end, I am self­ishly moved by his death, because this is the first Tele­fon Tel Aviv album that blew me away…and now I don’t get another. Shitty. So go buy this one. It’s shoegazey-IDM-synthpop. Odd combo, I know, but I love it.

And then…the xx. Forced to choose, I think I have to go with this album as my favourite of last year (with very close com­pe­ti­tion from Intru­sion). It’s pretty much per­fect. A lot has already been said about it, so I’ll try and not repeat any of it. It’s amaz­ing. Go buy it. (Crap, that’s already been said.) The most aston­ish­ing thing about this album is its restraint. To make an album so sub­tle and relaxed is not com­pletely aston­ish­ing, but it is for four 20-year-olds. That’s the age when rock­ing is impor­tant. Sub­tlety is for the old who can’t han­dle the noise. Let this be the first sign of a new era in barely-there music.

Weird-looking, but secretly the most inter­est­ing peo­ple at the party

The Twi­light Sad For­get the Night Ahead
Shack­le­ton 3 EPs
Piano Magic Ova­tions
Bvdub White Clouds Drift on and on

Kind of an odd assort­ment here, but they make sense together: they’re all very good, but there’s a lit­tle hook to each one that might drive some peo­ple away. If you can get over the hump, though, you’ll be rewarded. (The bumps? Twi­light Sad: “Haven’t I heard this before?” Shack­le­ton: “This is a lit­tle repet­i­tive.” Piano Magic: “This is kinda wannabe late-period Dead Can Dance.” Bvdub: “Wait, it’s over and I for­got to pay attention.”)

Pre­co­cious vinyl

Bur­ial / Four Tet split 12″
Oth­ers in Con­ver­sa­tion “Two Instru­men­tals“
Data & Cell “Doors of Per­cep­tion“
Indigo/Synkro “Runes/My Own World”

Putting out two tracks on a piece of vinyl usu­ally pre­cludes you from get­ting on year-end best-release lists. Not for me. Qual­i­ta­tively, these records are 100% awesome.

Returns to form

Gus Gus 24/7
Tor­toise Bea­cons of Ancestorship

Tor­toise and Gus Gus are each com­ing off two albums or so of so-so mate­r­ial. Ah, they’re back! These albums hold their own against their best.

Doing what they do, and doing it well

Flux­ion Con­stant Lim­ber
Alva Noto Xer­rox vol. 2
jj jj n°2
Lawrence Until Then, Goodbye

Much like find­ing your way back from a period of point­less­ness, there’s some­thing to be said for know­ing how to do what you do, and then doing it very well. (Junior shout-out to Flux­ion, who decided to make a track with a vocal­ist, and made my jaw drop. It was so unex­pected and not ter­ri­bly orig­i­nal, but the fact that it hap­pened and was suc­cess­ful is something.)

Artist of the year

Fever Ray

Oh yeah, yes, YES. Karin Drei­jer Ander­s­son, wel­come to the pan­theon, Micah’s Pan­theon of Sorta-Crazy, Intensely Cre­ative, Inspi­ra­tional Women. You already know Kate Bush and Björk, of course.

This album is stun­ning. The sin­gles are stun­ning. The remixes are stun­ning. The graphic design and videos are stun­ning. The live show (going from the live album) was stun­ning. What can’t this woman do? I was sur­prised at how mel­low, dark, and per­sonal this album is. The Knife are dark, and sorta per­sonal, but rarely mel­low. She turned it around for the album. The moment that gets me the most is in the album’s cen­ter­piece, “Keep the Streets Empty for Me”. The last line, repeated, is “uncover our heads and reveal our souls”. Def­i­nitely heavy com­ing from a woman known for wear­ing strange and com­plex masks for pub­lic appearances.

Remixes of the year

Flo­rence & the Machine “You’ve Got the Love” xx Remix
Hell “The DJ” Radio Slave Remix

Hey, it’s the xx again. These damn sneaky kids, in addi­tion to pro­duc­ing their own album, are appar­ently capa­ble enough to turn out an amaz­ing remix of a song, not in their style, and twist it around to their style. [shakes fist]

I’ll keep shak­ing my fist at Matt Edwards, Mr Radio Slave, doing what he does so well: show­ing you that when you think you’ve had enough, stick­ing with it a lit­tle longer is bet­ter than enough. Great track for him to work his magic on, too. This DJ Hell album missed the above short­list by only a lit­tle bit (iron­i­cally, it’s too long), but this track is great. It’s good on the album, bet­ter as a remix. All of this is pre­lude to my say­ing that I’m aston­ished I ever loved a track with Diddy (yes, Sean Combs) rant­ing about DJs who only play edits and should be play­ing the extended ver­sions instead.

(If I hadn’t already given the praise to Fever Ray, we’d see the Rex the Dog remixes of “Tri­an­gle Walks” and the Scuba remixes of “Seven” here.)

Great pro­ducer choice

Fuck But­tons Tarot Sport

Their pre­vi­ous album I loved when I first heard it, but it fell down the list pretty quickly. Why? Too nar­rowly focused, no soul. What can fix that? Get­ting Andrew Weather­all to pro­duce, of course! A turn­around and a great piece of work. Cheers, gents.

Ask me when sum­mer comes

King Midas Sound Wait­ing for You

I think I like this…but as a soft-yet-thick reg­gae album (or a dubstep-with-vocals album), I’m not going to know until sum­mer. Just the way it is. Can’t fully grok this kind of music until it’s warm out and I’m liv­ing on Cruzan Sin­gle Bar­rel Estate Rum.

It’s ambi­ent music

Ley­land Kirby Sadly, the Future is No Longer What It Was

It’s four hours of dis­tressed record­ings of worn-out 78s. Oh, it’s ambi­ent in the tra­di­tional Eno def­i­n­i­tion: aural wall­pa­per. Wall­pa­per can be oppres­sive and really affect your sub­con­scious, though…

Dis­ap­point­ment

Sven Weise­mann Xine

The “Xine Zero” 12″ is great. A pretty tight lit­tle com­bi­na­tion of elec­tronic rhythms, strings, and piano. It’s quite orig­i­nal. So why is the album so painfully dull? Not enough elec­tron­ics. Only a cou­ple tracks really bring it all together nicely. With­out the beats, it just sounds like sketches for a snip­pets of a sound­track. A shame, as I was really look­ing for­ward to hear­ing this kind of sound…

Oh wait, what’s this?

Field Rota­tion Licht und Schatten

Hey, here it is, sub­tle elec­tron­ics with strings and piano. Sven has more of a minimal-housey flavour to his work, Field Rota­tion sounds more like Move D: sorta housey, sorta ambi­ent techno. Damn good. Excel­lent work by this obscure pro­ducer. Now, make haste over to his web­page for two free remix EPs.

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