DJ/Rupture sums it all up perfectly with his DJ/Rupture's Top 5 Problems With Top 10 Albums of the Year Lists
Here's my best of 2010.
Best track
Limit To Your Love - James Blake
Limit To Your Love - James Blake
James Blake - Limit To Your Love from James Blake on Vimeo.
Best albums
I can't narrow it down to one.
Crooks & Lovers - Mount Kimbie
Will anyone be listening to this in 20 years? Probably not but it's a good album and it's actually an album as opposed to a bunch of tracks compiled to make an album. The proof is in the listening. Has anyone not heard it yet?
The Traveller - Shed
I'd never heard of Shed before. I may be alone in this opinion but whilst stylistically different, it has a very similar feel to Crooks & Lovers (see above).
Best music trend thing
House music. Is anyone not claiming to make house music? Here's a great track from 2010. Let's just call it house.
Cooly G - Dis Boy (DVA's Hi Emotions Remix) [DVA Music] DVA006 by stholdings
Best dude
Up until this year I particularly idolised two people, Muhammad Ali and John Coltrane. I have found someone new to add to this list: Jay Electronica.
His rhymes are insightful and clever. His twitter feed is always entertaining, amusing, educational, interesting. He got signed and, I'm going to assume, will release an album on his terms at a time he has decided is right. (I like Jay Z more and more every day, from his appearances on Oprah to his most recent album and, of course signing Jay Electronica.)
At the announcement of his signing he messes up... a lot. Who cares when they're this good: “Your plans is foiled / Your guns is borrowed / We living in tomorrow / A tissue for your sorrows”.
Better yet, if your saying “We not illuminati but our eye is on the money” and people are too stupid to understand and start accusing you of being part of the Illuminati, you must be doing something right!
I doubt Jay Electronica will disappoint with his album.
Best TV
The Daily Show and Colbert Report
Jon Stewart is a bleeding heart lefty which, I guess, is why he has extended interviews with right wing military generals such as Hugh Shelton and allows them to have their say without interruption or belittling. It's the old be reasonable and let them have their say left wing media gotcha trap.
The best part is a survey which found 32% of younger Americans get their news from satirical sources such as Stewart and Colbert. There's hope yet.
Best DJ mixes
Brendon Moeller at Deep Space NYC
I've posted it before and I'm happy to post it again until everyone listens to it. Brendon Moeller's 4 ½ hour set from Deep Space NYC is the best mix I've heard in years, never a dull moment and seamlessly mixed, encompassing everything from Einsturzende Neubaten, A Tribe Called Quest to Lou Rawls and Harmonic 313.
Even better, he has actually responded to the numerous requests for track titles on the Soundcloud comments!
DJ set at www.deepspacenyc.com on Nov. 1st 2010 by brendonmoeller
Neut - Six Ton Armor Psychcast 15
If you like psych and deep bass growls you'll love this. You can read about Neut here. Neut is a reasonably prolific mixtape maker and it's always good stuff, from downtempo beats to dubstep to psych. This one's particularly good. The Six Ton Armor site is worth a look as well with some serious and also surprising collectors/contributors. You can download Neut's Psychcast here
Oneman Rinse FM show
Honourable mention! Just so you know, his show is on at 10am Monday mornings, Sydney time. He's just got an intuition and brings out the soul in anything. Sure he talks all over the top and that annoys some people, but all I can do is picture a guy with 2 crates of records, picking them as he goes and loving it.
Best discovery of old ethnic music
Hossein Omoumi - Persian Classical Music
This is an amazing album. Check some info etc at the Bravo Juju blog.
Simple, beautiful. There's not much more to say.
The video below is also amazing but different in the sense that the album does not have any vocals. But the female vocalist gives me goosebumps.
Best gig
Kingdom at The Black Boater
The venue is now called Tone and is a million times better but props to United Colours crew for putting on Kingdom. A really talented DJ, no one else puts together different sounds and tracks the way he does and he totally delivered for me.
His slew of remixes have also been great, especially this remix of Rita Indiana
Deadboy at Goodgod Smallclub
Garage... Just another word for house! Deadboy delivered a solid garage set. His mixing seemed pretty shaky on occasions but that doesn't really matter when you play such great music.
Best worst snobby music nerd antics
Jessica Mauboy at the ARIAS
OK, so she said de-butt instead of debut. What an idiot! Oh and how people who care nothing for the ARIAS or the music it celebrates saw fit to ridicule her. And, you know, what is twitter for but to ridicule a young girl for being poorly educated because she left school to pursue a pop music career – or maybe she's not that smart, but does it matter? Make fun of the young girl, not the fact no one running the ARIA's TV event saw fit to do a rehearsal or the fact they have nothing to do with music. Stupid girl, how dare she not be as smart as us.
Boring old fart of the year
Brian Eno
Wow, he's on Warp. Well, that says it all, really. Warp has had their day, hence the box set being the best thing they released. Eno is annoying and look! He can take the piss out of himself... well, not really, because he still has to make unnecessary academic, art, political and cultural references. If I was asked to make his promo video I would have had him lie on the ground trying to piss in his own mouth with John Farnham's Your The Voice playing.
Hope for 2011
Musically, it's probably worth taking a look at this list! Otherwise, I hope the world will become a better place this year and 2011 is looking like a year of revolution... hopefully the bloodshed will be minimal.