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Favorite Tracks:
50. Campfires - "Stormy Late Fall"
49. The Morning Benders - "Excuses"
48. The Books - "A Cold Freezing Night"
47. Tungs - "Dream Machine"
46. Oneohtrix Point Never - "Ouroboros"
45. Brother Raven - "Happy Astronaut"
44. Colored Mushroom & The Medicine Rocks - "Drifts"
43. Caddywhompus - "At Bay"
42. Actual Water - "Vari Baby"
41. Zach Hill - "Face Tat"
40. Deerhunter - "Coronado"
39. Wye Oak - "My Neighbor"
38. Autolux - "Supertoys"
37. Weekend - "Coma Summer"
36. Tera Melos - "Aped"
35. Sparkling Wide Pressure - "Hearts"
34. Phone Home - "Cozy Attack"
33. Deftones - "Beauty School"
32. Dth - "I Always Feel Like Crying (For Mom)"
31. Sightings - "Sky Above Mud Below"
30. Emeralds - "Goes By"
29. Clipd Beaks - "Home"
28. Mark McGuire - "Brothers (For Matt)"
27. Sane Smith - "Timeout"
26. How To Dress Well - "You Won't Need Me Where I'm Goin'"
25. Lower Dens - "I Get Nervous"
24. Marnie Stern - "Her Confidence"
23. Vampire Weekend - "Cousins"
22. Out Like Lambs - "Two Speeds"
21. Women - "Heat Distraction"
20. Abe Vigoda - "Crush"
19. The Babies - "Meet Me In The City"
18. Crystal Castles - "Celestica"
17. Rangers - "Deerfield Village"
16. Superchunk - "Digging For Something"
15. Calories - "FFWD"
14. Beach House - "Zebra"
13. Four Tet - "She Just Likes To Fight"
12. Pocahaunted - "Threshold"
11. RxRy - "Eaurowi"
10. Strong Arm Steady - "Best of Times"
9. Daughters - "The Hit"
8. Kanye West - "Devil In A New Dress"
7. Male Bonding - "Crooked Scene"
6. Turrks - "Bone Orchard"
5. Pospulenn - "This Is How I Sing To The Moment"
4. Quiet Lights - "Ablaze"
3. Baths - "Hall"
2. Thoughts On Air - "Up On The Downside"
1. Toro y Moi - "Low Shoulder"
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Honorable Mentions:
AIDS Wolf - March To The Sea (Skin Graft)
Autolux - Transit Transit (TBD)
Brother Raven - Diving Into The Pineapple Portal (Aguirre)
Caddywhompus - Remainder (Community)
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (Polydor)
The Dead C - Patience (BaDaBing!)
Deathspell Omega - Paracletus (Season of Mist)
Dth - I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day (Self-Released)
The Fun Years - God Was Like, No (Barge)
Heavy Winged - Sunspotted (Type)
Little Women - Throat (AUM Fidelity)
Lower Dens - Twin-Hand Movement (Gnomonsong)
Mark McGuire - Living With Yourself (Editions Mego)
Nails - Unsilent Death (Southern Lord)
Pale Blue Sky - Souvenir (Jugular Forest)
RxRy - RxRy (Self-Released)
Michael Santos - Memory Maker (Home Normal)
Solo Andata - Ritual (Desire Path)
Thoughts On Air - Mallo Yallo (Cloud Valley)
Various Artists - Wave The Ocean, Wave The Sea (Mississippi)
20. Sean McCann - Fable Shop (Cylindrical Habitat Modules)
Out of the many monoliths that mind-melting experimentalist Sean McCann has unleashed in 2010, one of his most subdued works, Fable Shop, resonated with me the most. Deep, organic drones weave in and out as the muffled clatter buries itself beneath. This cassette will keep me quilted during the winter.
19. Gil San Marcos - Domes (Bombay Cove)
Gil San Marcos’s first full-length shows a great representation of his sonic abilities. From the densely layered feedback exploits to his airy billowing drones, Marcos has what many-- if not most-- noise artists don’t: dynamics.
18. Sleetmute Nightmute - Night of the Long Knives (Fast Weapons)
Sleetmute Nightmute are a good example of the primal instinct that kicks in whenever I search for new music: from the moment I heard Night of the Long Knives, I knew that it would be something essential. What sparked this feeling? Whether you consider this a proper album or an EP, Night of the Long Knives contains six decaying masses of no wave splendor. Tortured guitar phrases, sputtering drums and rhythmic shouts are all permeated by an uneasy brand of energy-- the sound that I've been searching for all year has been unsheathed.
17. Toro y Moi - Causers of This (Carpark)
You know, sometimes I’ll have the tendency to put analysis ahead of genuine enjoyment, which frightens me. This tendency caused me to give the album in question a much less favorable review than I would write at this point. The thing is that Chazwick Bundick’s songs aren’t meant to be dissected, though they have plenty of subtleties; it’s pop music, and it achieves in every category that pop music should: bouncy synths, production equivalent to that of dance music, and fantastic hooks.
16. Superchunk - Majesty Shredding (Merge)
Every year has an album that caters to my sense of nostalgia, and Superchunk’s Majesty Shredding would be of that ilk for 2010. Abundant with anthemic hooks, hyper-melodic guitar solos a la Dinosaur Jr. and the pop-punk energy of a teenage coffee addict, Majesty Shredding truly relives the 90s with the sincerity and originality of an album that surfaced from that decade, which is no surprise considering that Superchunk reached their pinnacle in the 90s.
15. Marnie Stern - Marnie Stern (Kill Rock Stars)
For those who have heard either of Marnie’s past efforts, she hasn’t covered much new territory on her latest excursion-- nor does she need to. The melodic noodling, mousy chants and Zach Hill’s as-expected frantic drumming are still in tact. What amazes me is Marnie Stern’s capability of having consistency while somehow managing to surpass her earlier work.
14. Four Tet - There Is Love In You (Domino)
To me, the most striking quality in Kieran Hebden’s latest endeavor is his meticulous approach to composing music. There Is Love In You slowly flourishes and blossoms, beginning with a simple loop and gradually coloring the canvas. Each sample, snippet or interjection coincides with the next, snugly fitting together into a puzzle that is distinctly Hebden’s own.
13. Sightings - City of Straw (Brah)
The Brooklyn trio of Sightings are notorious for the aural abuse of their past albums on the great Load Records imprint, namely Absolutes. Since 2007’s Through the Panama, though, Sightings have acquired a significantly less contumacious sound, however City of Straw’s clarity manages to only make the noise more audible-- the source of the noise itself has remained absent.
12. Women - Public Strain (Jagjaguwar)
Women’s scattered and electrifying debut immediately left me questioning what was to come of a second effort. The outcome, Public Strain, is an example of the band gaining consistency-- and that consistency is based upon murky and spellbinding songs with eschewed pop melodies and kraut-rock inspired interplay, which not only hands Public Strain a hefty amount of cohesion-- but also lends Women a formula to set themselves apart from just about any other band.
11. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-A-Fella)
Even a more difficult task than compiling a year-end list is convincing a reader that my interest in this album is completely genuine, because this may seem like an obligatory music blogger move. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has, yes, received an overwhelming amount of critical acclaim, but this came as no surprise to me after several listens through. Kanye West, with this album, envisions hip-hop as a much more orchestral and compositional entity. With these 13 tracks, West’s viewpoint of songwriting comes from the perspective of a maestro, utilizing as much as possible with his guest contributors, and that coupled with his best rapping since 2005's Late Registration makes the final outcome quite outstanding, at least within the realm of mainstream hip-hop and rap.
10. Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here? (Editions Mego)
Even within the dozens of releases under their belt, Emeralds’ second proper full-length is the first time that the trio has escaped their improvisational template. Does It Look Like I’m Here? consists of 12 sequenced and condensed variations on the sound that Emeralds have established long ago. However, these pieces now showcase clear rhythmic patterns, the builds unwind more quickly, and even the 12-minute “Genetic” refrains from wandering. The sparkling textures and glimmering synthesizer tones are as gorgeous as they’ve ever sounded-- the trio has a greater sense of structure here, though, and that separates this album from any of Emeralds’ cassette-based work.
9. Yellow Swans - Going Places (Type)
The duo of Gabe Saloman and Pete Swanson are no strangers to the abrasive and blissful ends of the noise spectrum, but the posthumously released Going Places is the first time we’ve seen Yellow Swans blend these two aspects so seamlessly. With oscillating squirms buried underneath harmoniously billowing hums, the six pieces on Going Places display the duo in their most gritty and ethereal prime.
8. Out Like Lambs - Not So Winter Waltz (Music of the Spheres)
I had kept my eye on Out Like Lambs with high expectations after hearing their demo EP last year, and surely enough-- even more than what I had anticipated-- my expectations were fulfilled. What Not So Winter Waltz displays is a band of great songwriters, surrounded by the grandiosity of accompanying instruments. Dispersed among an hour, these nine ballads move slowly yet triumphantly with weeping strings and squealing saxophones coiling themselves around beautifully written folk songs.
7. Kellen Shipley - Found Out West (Cloud Valley)
As a part of the Roll Over Rover collective, the home of experimenters like Sean McCann, there’s no doubt that Kellen Shipley provides an ambitious set of songs on Found Out West. Accompanied by saxophone, banjo and glockenspiel among other instrumentation, Shipley composes five absolutely engrossing pieces with an equal balance of mystification and comfort.
6. Turrks - Bisbee (Deleted Art)
The Los Angeles band formerly known as Bipolar Bear have now finely tuned their murky noise rock under the name of Turrks. With Bisbee, Turrks have triggered a sweet spot with their dissonant melodies that hadn’t fully flourished on last year’s Harlem Pripyat. The guitars are jarringly ringing out, the monotonic chants are murkily rendered indecipherable, and the bass tone is groovy as hell; I couldn’t ask for anything else.
5. Clipd Beaks - To Realize (Lovepump United)
Album or anesthetic? The Californian trio of Clipd Beaks has had consistently solid releases to their name from the very start, however To Realize marks the band’s travel down a darker path. With an abundance of windy drones, clattering drums and moaned incantations, Clipd Beaks have reached the pinnacle of originality with To Realize. This hour of material never ceases to stupefy or mesmerize, though presented at a numbingly subdued pace.
4. Baths - Cerulean (anticon.)
Will Wiesenfeld's first venture under the Baths pseudonym couldn't have begun on a better note. Not only are his loops thoughtfully crafted and contain rich hooks, but the purest emotion seeps from Wiesenfeld's voice and personal lyricism. For a release that falls under the category of "electronic" music, Cerulean stands as the most intimate and natural album I've heard all year.
3. Daughters - Daughters (Hydra Head)
Daughters’ third and final installment in their discography, at 28 minutes, may seem like a brief wave goodbye. However, any listener familiar of their first two efforts will know how amazingly the band has developed since Hell Songs. The spastic two-minute jolts of frenetic discordance were certainly eye opening, but in no way do they match up to the cosmic noises present on the end of the trilogy. Daughters have evolved their material with complete song structures, tempo variations, and the lasting impression that the last two efforts hid.
2. Pospulenn - Sun People Sleepwalker (Housecraft)
If there were one album to appropriate every season of the year, it would be Pospulenn’s compilation Sun People Sleepwalker. Released in a limited edition of 50 copies, Sun People Sleepwalker is desperately in need of a repress. The warm, interweaving chimes of Kane Pour’s guitar correspond in harmony, creating a rhythmic tapestry of homegrown beauty. It would be blasphemous to consider this cassette “ambient” music; it’s much too perplexing.
1. Zs - New Slaves (The Social Registry)
Zs have always been an ambitious act, and though they may have alluded to their groundbreaking potential on 2009’s Music of the Modern White, the eight beastly demons contained on New Slaves make quite an anomaly within Zs’ discography. Rather than refining past work or honing their sound, Zs have managed to put forth an album containing songs that sound completely new-- not just in relation to the trio’s work but... ever. New Slaves is one of the most pioneering and forward-thinking albums I’ve heard in my life, though I doubt that it's preliminary in any way.
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With that said, this year in retrospect was pretty great for music. Significantly more standout music has come across my ears than last year. Due to this, the majority of Olive Music's reviews are of submissions from the artists themselves, which is fantastic. This has essentially rendered the idea of covering more critically acclaimed releases (in my eyes) pointless, and has given me the opportunity to introduce readers to artists that they would have otherwise never stumbled upon. I hope Olive Music has, in one way or another, held your interest and I hope you continue to read the blog in the following year(s).
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