Every year at this time, my friend Andy sends out a highly excitable e-mail asking about a dozen of his most rabid, music-obsessed friends -- sound engineers, club promoters, DJs, designers, anyone for whom music is less a casual dalliance and more like lifeblood -- to compile their personal lists of the year's best music, so we can all discover something new and/or gently mock each others' weird tastes in African banjo disco, kazoo jazz funk or ambient doom metal.
No music critic by training, I nevertheless dive into this venture with a great and all-consuming fervor coupled to a bottle of premium sake and much scouring of my ever-aflame iTunes library. More than 25 years of music ardor means my palate is still pretty wide and endlessly deep and I not-so-humbly submit that I know well of what I speak. Yes, even with the Danzig. Trust me.
10) Tame Impala - InnerSpeaker
Retro-cool ‘70s-inspired psychedelia from a quartet of young Aussie dudes who already sound so confident, accomplished and musically inventive, you'd think they were twice their age and half as stoned, and that no effing way was this their debut record. They call it "hypno-groove music" and you'd be hard-pressed to do any better.
9) Beach House - Teen Dream
The pinnacle of the compressed, dreamy, retro, happy-kids-in-the-sunshine, everybody-into-the-pool chillwave movement that hit last year and continued with startlingly good results through most of 2010, and included lovely popcraft from the likes of Tamaryn, Houses, Teen Daze, et al. Another one that came out way back in January and so almost gets forgotten. Don't let that happen.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/12/29/notes122910.DTL&nl=fix
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
