Top 30 Songs
30. Planningtorock – The Breaks
29. Destroyer – Suicide Demo for Kara Walker
28. Cold Cave – The Great Pan Is Dead
27. Lower Dens – Batman
26. Grouper – Water People
25. Prurient – Palm Tree Corpse
24. Kurt Vile – Runner Ups
23. Parenthetical Girls – Sympathy for Spastics
22. Ford & Lopatin – Joey Rogers
21. Burial – Stolen Dog
20. John Maus – Cop Killer
19. Hercules and Love Affair – Leonora
18. MEN – Who Am I to Feel so Free?
17. Gang Gang Dance – Chinese High
16. PJ Harvey – The Words That Maketh Murder
15. Peaking Lights – Tiger Eyes (Laid Back)
14. Future Islands – Where I Found You
13. Prince Rama – Summer of Love
12. Pictureplane – Negative Slave
11. Elite Gymnastics – So Close to Paradise 3 (Physical Therapy Remix)
10. Azealia Banks – 212
09. Kelly Rowland (ft. Lil Wayne) – Motivation
08. Kate Bush – Snowed in at Wheeler Street
07. Dirty Beaches – Lord Knows Best
06. Four Tet – Locked
05. SSION – NOTHING HAPPENS AT NITE
04. Braids – Lammicken
03. Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica
02. M83 – Midnight City
01. Prurient – Time’s Arrow
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Top 30 Albums
30. Cold Cave – Cherish the Light Years
29. Dope Body – Nupping
28. Clams Casino – Instrumentals
27. James Ferraro – Far Side Virtual
26. Björk – Biophilia
25. Atlas Sound – Parallax
24. Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972
23. Hunx and His Punx – Too Young to Be in Love
22. Leyland Kirby – Eager to Tear Apart the Stars
21. Julia Holter – Tragedy
20. Pictureplane – THEE PHYSICAL
19. Wild Beasts – Smother
18. Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact
17. Four Tet – Fabriclive.59
16. Beyoncé – 4
15. Destroyer – Kaputt
14. tUnE-yArDs – w h o k i l l
13. Tearist – Living: 2009–Present
12. Bill Callahan – Apocalypse
11. Braids – Native Speaker
10. SSION – BENT
“I definitely want to approach the next record totally differently. It’s funny, I really want to do something that’s just horrible (laughs). I’ve really been trying to make good pop music, so I was like, ‘Next record we should just do something in a week and make the shittiest thing possible!’ You know? Just to get it out of my system.” ‘Sup Magazine
09. Deerhoof – Deerhoof vs. Evil
“But the other person in this band who’s been in the band longest is Satomi, and she’s someone who joined the band in 1995 having had no musical experience at all. She had just moved to San Francisco from Tokyo and was staying with a mutual friend. And this guy happened to know that Rob and me were looking for a singer, and she was like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” She was just looking to make some friends or something. Fifteen years later, I can say that music really was a calling for her. I can sit there, Mr. Conservatory Dude, struggling with a song for months. Whereas a lot of time she’s like, “Oh, write a song? Okay!,” press “record” on her tape machine, and five minutes later she’s got a finished song, with lyrics and it’s all totally done.” Interview Magazine
08. EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints
“If I’m going to make art and converse with people, I want it to be as honest as possible. If it’s just going to be neutered or calculated then fuck it. There’s not a point for me. I will go and do something else. I also still have doubts that I will be a huge pop artist.” Spectrum Culture
07. John Maus – We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
“It’s this whole idea, the politics of aesthetics or whatever, that any genuine work, right, is always a disruption of the police. I would hope, of course, that everybody would grant that I’m not talking about shooting human beings, I’m not talking about shooting or killing a human being, I’m talking about the police, talking about cops, the cops in our heads, the cops that are everything other than us, everything inhuman, that would put us to work towards an end other than each other.” The Quietus
06. Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges
“The saxophone is one of the things that leads me to write and perform this way because the instrument can generate an enormous amount of separate sounds and ultimately an enormous amount of independent lines all at the same time. Acoustically it has a lot of potential. So all these sounds are happening live all the time but are usually unmic’d and unrecorded.” The Quietus
05. Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica
“The short format is just appealing to me because I guess I didn’t want to make another record that was an extremely dense, long form, sort of expansive thing that grows in time. I wanted [the songs] to be really streamlined and fit and spacious in a way that was like listening to club music or pop jams on the radio in taxi cabs like in New York or on tour or whatever.” The Fader
04. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
“I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It’s to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It’s also full of many wonderful things and love and hope. And I tried to offset the brutal language with very beautiful music.” NPR
03. Future Islands – On the Water
“I don’t know, as calm and easy-going as “On the Water” is, I also think it’s the least accessible and the deepest of the three. I don’t say that because it’s sonically challenging, but just because it’s so honest that I think some people won’t be able to accept it right off. It’s definitely a grower, but I think all of our music works that way. And isn’t it good to challenge your audience and not give them what they want, what they expect?” Owl Mag
02. Prurient – Bermuda Drain
“I think there’s a problem now where noise for many people simply means distortion, and to me that might be noise sound but the ideology of it is really just total selfishness and self-exploration. And it is anti-social, in the sense that it’s about the internal world. That’s why I think that in some ways– in attitude – this record is the most noise record that I’ve ever made. Even though it may not be seen to be linked sonically to people’s idea of what noise is.” FACT
01. Julianna Barwick – The Magic Place
“We had sheep. There were a few spots on the land that were interesting: there was a small cemetery near the property, there was a field of hay bales good for jumping on, there was a creek, there was a weird dump-type area where it looked like people over many years put stuff they didn’t know what to do with like old bottles, strollers – all kinds of fun stuff for a kid to pilfer through. But ‘The Magic Place’ was actually just one unusually large bois d’arc tree [also known as an osage orange] that had grown up, down and around so it was almost like a house. The limbs were really low and wide and you could lay in them. There was all kinds of stuff to dig for and explore. It was a very special place – it kind of gave me that excited feeling in my stomach.” The Quietus
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Favorite Reissue
Carol Kleyn - Love Has Made Me Stronger (1976)
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Favorite Concerts
Robyn, Diamond Rings @ Ram’s Head Live (Baltimore, 2/1/2011)
Baths, Braids @ Black Cat (DC, 2/11/2011)
Hunx and His Punx @ The Windup Space (Baltimore, 9/4/11)
Xiu Xiu @ Metro Gallery (Baltimore, 9/11/11)
tUnE-yArDs @ The Ottoabar (Baltimore, 10/7/11)
