2006 Concensus Picks?

"Crazy"

(I note with a chortle that the Hot Chip album failed to chart this week either)

Burial
The Drift
Drowning in a Sea of Love
Silent Shout
Drum's Not Dead
Movements [Booka Shade]
Return to Cookie Mountain

Next Consensus

Triosk - The Headlight Serenade
http://www.posteverything.com/artists/release.php?id=14568
if Talk Talk or Bark Psychosis released this ILM would be all over it

Listen: to Triosk
http://www.myspace.com/triosk

Other Upcoming candidates

Junior Boys
Mastodon
DJ Shadow

the debut album from Cortney Tidwell
http://www.codaagency.com/cortney.html

When Cannibal Ox release their next album

hot chip isn't far behind

(I note with a chortle that the Hot Chip album failed to chart this week either)

I don't have any friends in the music business and I don't work in the music business myself. I mean, these are university educated late 20 somethings who largely live in West London and therefore I am prepared to admit are atypical, but It was just an anecdotal observation.

0. Scott Walker - The Drift
1. OM - Conference of the Birds
2. Magik Markers - A Panegyric to the Things I Do Not Understand
3. Liars - Drum's Not Dead
4. Comets On Fire - Avatar
5. Hototogisu - Prayer Rug Exorcism

these are all records I know I'll play next year, and the year after. maybe even 2 years from now...

...i meant

albums - booka shade, ellen allien and the knife
singles - nelly furtado and xtina

Like the new Xtina, and "Maneater" but not "Promiscuous Girl".

Like the Ellen Alium I've heard. About to buy it and Scritti.

That's about it for me and this thread.

Consensus = LORDI.

-- The Lex (alex.macpherso...), June 7th, 2006

Aren't you up on that Trap Hop?

Mission of Burma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_of_burma

I heard some of that Booka Shade album on XFM on Sunday night. Wasn't that knocked out by it.

and The Knife, to a lesser degree.

Very true!

Do you think that critics as a whole ever develop a vocabulary that describes touse and hechno as well as pazz and jop? :) You would've thought by now it wouldn't be a problem.

I dunno - it's just as a consumer I've bought far too many dance music records over the years with far too many duff tracks. The old three slabs of vinyl that could make one ace 12" phenomenon.

sorry but god i'm really struggling without a radio. 15 minutes of jo whiley on someone's 'ghetto blaster' on the bus this morning was like a message beamed from another planet.

it is AWESOME.

This is an extraordinary thing to say. Is your responding and feeling for something really so inhibited by the various articles of criticism around it?

Jenny Lewis made Rabbit Fur Coat, Neko Case made Fox Confessor, and now Amy Millan made the exquisite (fuck pfork's bratty review) Honey from the Tombs.

I think it's likely that electronic music just doesn't need criticism in the same way as your former axis which is centered around vocal music and contains ideologies as a matter of tradition (spines of dylan, punk, etc) and electronics is insensible, incantationary and functional.

The Drift
Rubies
Drum's Not Dead

I don't think very many people are going to care about Comets On Fire's "Avatar" except for Rizzx and I.

The Knife album is good only so far as they've developed a fairly unique tonal approach and production style, particularly with the vocal manipulations, but the songs sure don't stick with me.

I think it's the association of ideology strictly with vocal music that doesn't make sense to me. I think don't think music with vocals has to express a particular ideology, and I think that music without vocals can certainly be ideological.

It's an interesting argument that music with words invites a response with words while music without words doesn't; I suppose reviews of instrumental music could be expressed with rhythms and pitches. But that doesn't strike me as very practical.

haha their einar is the same as their bjork! (in that most of the time i think karin dreijer just pitches her voice down)

Neko Case was making country albums before she was ever in the New Pornographers, and Fox Confessor is the least country of any of them.

I expect pitchfork and the like to be creaming their pants over Avatar, or else...

Comets on Fire: Comets on Fire
[Alternative Tentacles; 2003] Rating: 8.2

Comets on Fire: Field Recordings from the Sun
[BaDaBing!; 2002] Rating: 8.0

Comets on Fire: Blue Cathedral
[Sub Pop; 2004] Rating: 8.5

yeah at least among people who have commented on it, that seems pretty consensual. less detractors even than fishscale. also has a pretty strong consensus among paid-in-print critics (altho did rolling stone really give it 2 stars like someone said? really?).

Ha! Well is that not what you were advocating, then? I was just trying to give your idea benefit of the doubt.

yes

1. El Perro Del Mar - s/t
2. Love Is All - Nine Times That Same Song
3. Ariel Pink - House Arrest

yeah at least among people who have commented on it, that seems pretty consensual.
__________________________________________
Kevin W gave it a 0:
This cd is a little too hyped because it is so whack t hat when I heard it I took a dump on it, cause it was the worst rap cd I had ever heard in my entire life. T.I. needs to get a real job instead of clucking too much and having 30 kids with this one girl from Atlanta who has been clucked so many times that her clussy is 8 inches wide...anyway this cd is NOT AS GOOD AS GHOSTFACE'S BECAUSE his raps arent as good as ghostface's but his productions is better than his. T.I. is too mainstream and white people are gonna be all over his nallots abd he is going to end up like 50 cent and be the wackest rapper ever once whittee starts liking him. Th

And while I hate to break it to all of you Dan Bejar fanatics, Rubies is the least talked-about talked-about album of the year-- as in, critics and fans talk about it a lot. No one else does (thank God). Also, I don't know a single person who has heard let alone actively listened to ...Cookie Mountain. And I'm a college student who watched TVOTR explode at the beginning of my freshman year. Additionally, I've heard the album, and it is, without any reservations, one of the more boring albums I've heard in recent memory.

Finally, Booka Shade is much too divisive.

Anyone......?

Eppy, baby, I think you've known me long enough to know that I can be a sarcastic fuck, too. I choose not to war.

PS- DAN BEJAR SUCKS.

-- trees (meltingglacier...) (webmail), June 7th, 2006. (treesessplode)

I think those comments regarding TVOTR and Destroyer are OTM, and I hate to break it to you, but the exact same applies to the first three on your list. It's only a certain subsect of music fans that are really digging Ellen Alien, Ariel Pink, and The Knife. Especially The Knife. It's not even available yet in the US, is it?

ITunes. Almost since the original release date, I think.

Open up the chests of all our best men...We don't demand villainry-- we demand a new dawn.

Wrong. It's because I like singers who can sing.

"Quality control reasons" mean nothing to me. What is still a problem with far too many electronic albums IMHO is the inability of critics to review them properly.

This is an extraordinary thing to say. Is your responding and feeling for something really so inhibited by the various articles of criticism around it?

-- matthew james (action_Respok...), June 7th, 2006.

Your last sentence was gibberish, as is the expression "Quality control reasons" in the context of a review. Here's my twelve quid; persuade me, in layman terms, why I should spend it on this record. Simple, really, isn't it?

I think it's likely that electronic music just doesn't need criticism in the same way as your former axis which is centered around vocal music and contains ideologies as a matter of tradition (spines of dylan, punk, etc) and electronics is insensible, incantationary and functional.

-- matthew james (action_Respok...), June 7th, 2006.

That's avoiding the real reason, which is that the majority of music critics are English Literature and/or philosophy graduates and are therefore capable only of assessing music in terms of its lyrical content, being by and large musically illiterate, so they cannot explain the mechanics of why a piece of music works musically.

OK, but I'm not talking about the review (which I agree is meaningless) - let's be honest, these days for me, the review is about telling me what tracks I should download before I decide whether to buy the album.

I'm talking about quality control issues on the actual record. The best albums for me are the ones without duff tracks. Maybe that's an overtly novelistic way of looking at things and there are exceptions - the second Tortoise album for example (DJed and preciously little else gets listened to) but yeah, in a critical context it is meaningless. But that wasn't my meaning...

Totally agree about the overly logocentric nature of much music criticism. Too many albums with clever lyrics and boring music. Possibly a reason for the canonisation of Bob Dylan?

I think that's more an issue with a certain type of music discussion - I think it's presumed on the Breakage thread that you won't be reading unless you're already deep into contemporary d&b breaks revivalism.

I imagine that if I subscribed to the kosmiche mailing list or some free jazz or heavy metal mailing list I'd run into the same problem almost immediately.