Emusers top albums of the year?

xtrev

Do we want to compile our own top albums of the year list?
I'd like to, but I suspect there will be very few that appear on more than 2 or 3 individual's charts.
However, as that will only make it as meaningless as most of the other lists around, shall we do it anyway?
:-)


And no, we can't do an albums of the decade list unless somebody can convince me that the decade doesn't actually finish until the end of NEXT year. My inner pedant is still annoyed by all the 'end of the century' crap that happened a year early in 1999. I've got nothing against a good excuse for a party, but it was just WRONG.

Bad Thoughts

And no, we can't do an albums of the decade list unless somebody can convince me that the decade doesn't actually finish until the end of NEXT year.

Agreed. But can we do a list for the 2000s? (Hee-hee)

I'd like to hear what people think are the best things (or most significant) that happened in music downloading in the last year (starting from last December): the appearance of a label on eMusic or Amie, a sale, a new service (Lala) ... .

thomnottom

And no, we can't do an albums of the decade list unless somebody can convince me that the decade doesn't actually finish until the end of NEXT year. My inner pedant is still annoyed by all the 'end of the century' crap that happened a year early in 1999. I've got nothing against a good excuse for a party, but it was just WRONG.

Hate to turn this into a Grammar Nazi party, but this IS the last year of a decade (2000s) and 1999 WAS the last year of a century (1900s). While the Millenium (capital 'm') is a specific time period counted from year 1 (thus the First Millenium being 1 CE to 1000 CE and the Second Millenium being 1001 CE to 2000 CE), millienia, centuries and decades (all lowercase) are time periods referencing any arbitrary continuous period of 1000, 100, or 10 years.

For that reason, the 1900s as a century went from 1900 to 1999 and the 2000s as a decade go from 2000 to 2009.

thomnottom

Hmmm, I'll have to make a correction here. I may be incorrect regarding the capitalization. The distinction is made in the naming of said millennia or centuries. So if you are referring to the 20th century, you are correct that did not end until 12/31/2000. However centuries are still often referred to as the 1800s, 1900s, etc which would allow someone to call 12/31/1999 the end of a century.

cafreema

I was planning on doing a personal top 10 album list and trying to pare down my favorite songs of the year to a top 25 (not sure I can order that from 1 to 25, but I'm going to give it a shot).

My goal was to start looking at that over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Craig

thomnottom

Oh yeah, and I'm on board for sharing top ten lists, but I think compiling them might go nowhere at all.

Bad Thoughts

From the standpoint of many historians, the "Short Twentieth Century" (to use Hobsbawm's term) ended in 1991, so we have yet a few years to go on the second decade.

TimMason

I title per month of those I've downloaded from emusic over the last 12 :

November 08 - The Elephant Sleeps by Jack Dejohnette with Bill Frisell (much more interesting than Frisell's latest solo offering)
December 08 - Pond by Tod Dockstader & David Lee Myers - with help from a bunch of electronic frogs
Jan 09 - Tiny Resistors by Todd Sickafoose
Feb 09 - Tartini : The Devil's Sonata by Andrew Manze (or more proof that the Devil has all the best tunes)
March 09 - Shim Sham Shimmy by Various Artists (we all know about those foul-mouthed roosters by now, but the rest of the collection is foot-thumping too)
April 09 - Francisco Javier: La Ruta de Oriente by Hesperion XXI (Jordi Savall)
May - A Ass Pocket of Whisky by J.L. Burnside
June - Barsaat by Musafir (Raja groove, with amazing vocals)
July - Lebanon - the Baalbeck Festival by Fairuz (more amazing vocals. Most of the lady's recordings are sludge - this one, live, is simply superb)
August - Mozart : Complete Sonatas by Rachel Podger
September - La Monache de San Vito by Cappella Artemisia (more fine singing from a group that tries to recapture the musical ambiance of an Italian medieval nunnery)
October - Bangla Dub by Parvez (by House of Riddim Bangladeshi keyboard player)

xtrev

No need to restrict things to emusic downloads, any old product will do as long as it was released this year!

TimMason

I rarely check release dates; I'm not particularly interested in how fresh a product is to the rest of the world as it's whether it's new to me that counts. I won't be signing up for Amie St in the immediate future (its offers to Europeans seem restricted, and I'll probably go for Spotify when the eMu contracts run out). I do download from Amazon.fr, but mostly that has been repurchases of albums that went astray through one or another of life's upheavals - so they're not even new to me, let alone to you fellows.

The recent lists have driven home the fact that I'm just too much a child of the 50s and 60s to remain in the loop. It's not that my ears have sealed off at a certain date as I've been opening out to music of the Middle East recently, and am still willing to try something new to me that I come across on the boards. But your Vampire Weekends, your grime and dubstep, just don't do much to me at all. Doesn't mean it's bad, of course - just not for me.

Mind you, a lot of the music that I used to like, I can't listen to any more. I'm not sure how I ever could have been so enthusiastic about X or Y, and Z just leaves me cold these days. But the albums I've listed upstream have all given me a lot of good moments.

brittleblood

uh huh. i particularly enjoy noise from other places these days. flat out indie hit saturation for me about 3 years ago. not to harsh it - rather to hit the fundamentals > music is enjoyed 99% of the time in isolation. it's a highly personalized entanglement.

there's a one minute or so track off a japanese compilation - an older woman weaves between a traditional stringed instrument. the folks who have happened to hear it universally dismiss it as pure discord. to me, it's an extremely captivating tale + the accompaniment is flawless...

with that said, we can't outlaw year-end lists. let's make one of top three songs you connected most-deeply with during any memorable time frame - here's my three:

siivu by adjagas (amie st.)
Hara No Tatsutokya by Kotsuru Tade (rough guide to the music of japan)
fading lights are fading / reign rebuilder [tail out] - by set fire to flames (emusic)

amclark2

hey do you have this? See esp. song 2. Hmmmm I love this. Must redownload.

brittleblood

interrupting aposemat to sample