marathonpacks’ Year-(Fri)end Bonanza, Volume III: Josh Olivo/goodhandsteam

(in no particular order):

gang gang dance saint dymphna
my favorite album this year. because it’s the jam. sounds kinda like it’s probably the closest they can come to making a pop record.

flying lotus los angeles
a good hip hop record in a year of not that many good hip hop records. very minimal bouncy beatmakings.

mgmt oracular spectacular
i overheard a local record store employee disregarding this record as immediate and hollow or something similar. on the contrary, i think it is a very well crafted group of pop songs that sound like an album that a lot of bands wish they could make.

deerhoof offend maggie
i dont think these guys can do much wrong. and any band that sells books of the musical arrangements of their albums at their shows gets props.

high places s/t
this album kinda reminds of the panda bear album. but obviously w/ female vocals. great use of those multi-ethnic beat slices.

copy hair guitar
the problem w/ a lot of “chip tunes” is that it can turn into a redundant cycle of what sounds like mario running around on methamphetamines. which is ok in its own right, but this album comes off as less gimmicky, and more dancy. (great album for biking)

growing all the way / lateral ep
both of these releases came out this year on social registry – a super great label in my opinion. growing continue to blend sounds together to make expansive peaks and valleys of sonic introspection.

portishead third
don’t call it a comeback. portishead seems to have retained the dark/noir part of the equation, but let go the trip hop concentration that largely blew them up in the 90s. but thats ok because it’s a pretty strong album which i consider worth the wait.

M83 saturdays=youth
best soundtrack to a non-existent john hughes movie EVER. the massive layers of synths are like a (french) ice cream sundae.

girl talk feed the animals
my wife and i had to move twice in four months (long story) this year. this album helped me a lot while making trips from point a to point b over and over. feels like a guilty pleasure, but i think the dude is just as viable as social commentator as he is a mp3 masher.

one day as a lion s/t
ok this album isn’t that great. but it is the vocalist for rage against the machine plus the previous drummer from the mars volta. it made me nostalgic of my time as an angst-ridden teen…who repeatedly bought platinum albums from a band whose biggest bitch was the pitfalls of capitalism. irony.

basic channel bcd-2
somewhat secretive recording/procudction/label thing, basic channel has been a huge presence of minimal techno on a bunch of great vinyl only releases in the 90s. this (only their second) cd has a bunch of those previously vinyl only singles.

vampire weekend s/t
i didn’t know what it was that made me like this record so much until i read an article about the band. they said the way they arrange songs has a lot to do with african music. this album is chalked full of short ear worms filled with quirky northeast college town existentialisms. the seemingly ‘mid-fi’ production quality is what knocks it over the fence for me. very much worth the massive hype.

autechre quaristice
i like to pretend that this is what it sounded like inside of the mars rover as it was puttering around. this warp records flagship seems to be one of the only uk glitchsters that are maintaining any type of relevance. perhaps that is because they were never entirely relevant to begin with?

sigur rós með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
this album is WAY happier than anything else that sigur rós has done. especially considering the huge financial problems that have recently landed directly onto iceland’s forehead. hopefully it works out for them, and hopefully this band continues to make incredibly thoughtful music.

fennesz black sea
perhaps the fact that christian fennesz is from vienna, one of the most important places in the history of western music, makes his output that much more compelling, and pleasant. there’s a lot of artists on touch records that sound similar, but fennesz continues to put out very strong albums of sonic bliss.

love is all a hundred things keep me up at night
i am forever a sucker for a swedish pop sensibility…

shows i dug (in no particular order):

tussle (the bluebird, bloomington, in)
these dudes can make a big sloppy pounding beat happen like no one’s business. i am dubbing this type of music ‘some wave.’

radiohead (verizon wireless, noblesville, in) most shows in this venue sound awful and generally suck. this one very much did not. the band (and intense lighting) was in super good form. although, the typical massive traffic jam getting in from I-69 probably didn’t save as many carbon emissions as the band had hoped.

M83 (the bottom lounge, chicago, il) so M83 is basically this one guy. but live he has a crew of musicians, and some magical clear box of knobs and lights that seem to hold his venerable synthsplosions to a pretty high standard. (although opener school of seven bells was a bit of a disappointment live.)

deerhoof (the buskirk chumley theater, bloomington, in) the hoof rocked the house. seems like they are all operating with the same brain. and they sound live as opposed to exactly like the record…which is great. i think their drummer is an alien.

elliot lipp (neal marshall grand hall, bloomington, in) this dude opened for and completely outplayed daedelus. he had some slammin beats and some modular synth setup that spat out squiggly melody and rad bass lines.