what's been your favourite album so far this year?
 

this year's been good for music
but whats been your favourite album so far (or are there any albums due for release before the end of the year that you're really looking forward to?)

i can't choose between Animal Collective or Dirty Projectors

hmmmmmmmm,

Honestly it'd probably be a hip hop album. This has been a banner year for hip hop, and Killer Mike's RAP Music I've gone back to over and over.

Corin Tucker Band "Kill My Blues" hands down most fun and yet most grown up record I've heard in years!

Myrrh - S/T
Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction
Newest Sylvester Anfang II LP
Swans - The Seer

Reissue gold stars to Majutsu no Niwa's "Frontera" (so excellent to finally have on 2xLP with a sidelong bonus track!) and the Sensations' Fix rarities/retrospective 2xLP "Music Is Painting In The Air."

It's been a killer year. I think GYBE pretty much pulled off the impossible and made an album that competes with their pre break up output. But I am going to have to do some digging and registering before I say with certainty which album is really the best.

Front runners are Animal Collective, Spiritualized, and GYBE, but I'm forgetting more of the good releases than I am remembering. No doubt ill be thinking on this all day. So much for work. Sick day?

Have you ever heard Picchio dal Pozzo? Great and much underrated Italian Prog band. I say underrated because when it comes to Italian Prog you often see Banco del Mutuo Soccorso or Area's names mentioned but these guys surely produced a fantastic first album which you don't see mentioned that often.

Choice cut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83RuO4OTkL4

Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory
Chromatics - Kill for Love

Thanks very much!
The best 70s Italo prog thing I have heard i recent years is Museo Rosenbach's "Zarathustra," and I also like Dolce Acqua a lot.
Needed more, so thanks.

Swans-The Seer.

That album rules so hard it's silly.

Glad I was of some service.

I bow down to Swans.

It's great. And darker than I expected. Which is good.
The Picchio dal Pozzo, that is.

And I just listened to the 1st record of The Seer 3xLP again too. Still not sick of it. So good.

Swans are turning more and more into the prog band with the overblown bits which you need right now. Swans are an overblown band to start with. They are arty and pretentious, all things I love.

The Seer is less an "album" than a "work." I really think they are making the best music of their lives right now.

Agreed. They hate distance between band and fans. Michael Gira was the nicest bloke when I approached him about some homophobic issues that were posted on here. KRAUTPROG, motherfuckers.

Ooh do tell!

probably listened to mv/ee space horizons or meg bairds latest more than anything, although the 11:29 CD from last year I got in Feb got more play, if I ever had time to really listen Glacial will probably be my release for the year.

I have been so broke, and so fucking busy and so full of crap to do that I have yet to hear any album released this year. I need to go through this thread and pull out some thangs to rock my world.

Frank Ocean

Oh yeah, Swans. God damn. Tough year. Such a kickass album.

You haven't heard Lee's 2012 album? Or Godspeed? Man I hate to. Say this but, you need to steal some music or something.

Great record indeed.

It must have been really hard for you to go trough Pitchfork's best so far and write like you're gay about music. Sorry. :confused:

yeah I don't really dig Swans but the Seer is a phenomenal record. I can listen to that one

Swans and Imikuzushi by Haino O rourke & Ambarchi

Shit, i forgot about that!
Thats really good too

love the YOKOKIMTHURSTON cd

very good year, tough to narrow it down but I'll try 10...
Haino / O'Rourke / Ambarchi - Imikuzushi (with Nazoranai not far behind as is the new Fushitsusha)
White Suns - Sinews
Actress - RIP
Russell Haswell - Scandinavian Parts (Immersive Live Salvage)
Robert Hampson - Repercussions
Vessel - Order of Noise
Shackleton - Music for the Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs
Andy Stott - Luxury Problems
Carter Tutti Void - Transverse
Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II
honourable mentions: Swans, Demdike Stare, the Haxan Cloak,JK Flesh, Lukid...forgetting a lot here. plus the Sunn O))) rehearsal demo and all the Merzbow boxes as the latter two don't really constitute albums at all.

Various releases by Gary Wrong, U.S. Girls, FNU Ronnies, Horsebladder, Puffy Areolas, Hákarl & Daniel Alexander Hignell, Dan Melchior, King Blood, Cop City/Chill Pillars, Swans, Casi Cada Minuto, Pink Reason, Midnite Snaxxx, Defibrillators and more I am forgetting now.

The FNU Ronnies record I have played the most.

You really wanna do yourselves a favour and listen to Cop City/Chill Pillars.

http://soundcloud.com/floridas-dying...-chill-pillars

Sick band.

Ex-Harry Pussy Mark Feehan's elle pee is also more than worth a pair of ears.

And the Blues Control album too!

Off the top of my head

Swans, Goat, Godspeed, La Vampires, Rangda, Earth, Actress, Shackleton, Sun Araw + Congos, Inner Tube, Ty Segall and Dean Blunt + Inga Copeland

Oh and Blues Control, that album is great.

I keep forgetting to ACTUALLY BUY THIS...

Another album worth checking out. I am pretty sure I first heard their music when the guy who runs Holy Mountain posted a clip on his FB page.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5DWd...eature=related

This was one of the first groups to emerge from the new Italian rock scene. They formed in London in 1967 on the initiative of pop singer Ricky Maiocchi (ex-Camaleonti) who needed a new backing group. Many British beat bands moved to Italy in the late sixties in search of gigs, among them The Sorrows, The Primitives and The Talismen. Most of the original Trip members were also English, including (future Deep Purple axeman) Ritchie Blackmore, who eventually became homesick and returned to England. When Joe Vescovi was recruited in 1969, he quickly became the leader of the group, updating their sound with the current (pioneering) Anglo-American attempts to expand the rock format, blending it together with the inspiration and composing techniques of 17th and 19th century classical music.
On their eponymous first album, The Trip almost sounded like a cross between Vanilla Fudge, The Nice and Quatermass (another group that had a great deal of influence on the early Italian rock scene; they released their only album in 1970). "Prologo" almost pastiched the organ work of Mark Stein on Vanilla Fudge's first album. Other enlightening features were Billy Gray's Blackmoresque guitar parts and Joe Vescovi's distinctive, high-pitched voice. The album showed great promise, but didn't quite succeed in creating an integrated group sound. Organ parts of great emotional intensity were sometimes followed by almost banal vocal arrangements in a more pop tradition.
However, better things were soon to come when The Trip released their masterpiece, "Caronte" in 1971. The powerful interplay between Gray and Vescovi is excellent throughout the album. If the "dream collaboration" between Jimi Hendrix and Keith Emerson had ever happened, then I imagine it would have sounded close to this! The finest example of this is on "Two Brothers", which merged psychedelic, heavy and classical flavours of rock. By now, Vescovi could afford a mellotron, offering mellow string textures on the track, "Little Janie". The excellent rhythm section throughout the album, courtesy of Andersen and Sinnone, was also notable. Speaking of Jimi Hendrix, the album also included the mournful requiem "Ode a J.Hendrix".
~ Internet Source.

Damn.

various - Time To Go
Thought Broadcast - Thought Broadcast
Vatican Shadow - forget the name of the LP

On the subject of mediterranean prog (greek in this case) my favourite thing i heard this year was this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vt3fkiYRDg

Digitalis has been intermitently brilliant it for the last 18 months too: Decimus, Discoverer, KPLR, Juergen Muller, etc.