Wire Magazine's 50 Records Of The Year
 

1. BURIAL Burial
2. SCOTT WALKER The Drift
3. JOANNA NEWSOM Ys
4. CARLA BOZULICH Evangelista
5. WOLF EYES Human Animal
6. ORNETTE COLMAN Sound Grammar
7. EKKEHARD EHLERS A Life Without Fear
8. BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY The Letting Go
9. OM Conference Of The Birds
10.PHILL NIBLOCK Touch Three
11.SCRITTI POLITTI White Bread Black Beer
12.MATMOS The Rose Has Teeth...
13.SONIC YOUTH Rather Ripped
14.WOLF EYES & ANTHONY BRAXTON Black Vomit
15.THE KNIFE Silent Shout
16.CHRISTIAN WOLFF 10 Exercises
17.KEIJI HAINO & SITAAR TAH! Animamima
18.BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT Brightblack Morning Light
19.ARTHUR RUSSELL First Thought Best Thought
20.BROADCAST The Future Crayon
21.NIOBE White Hats
22.GRIZZLY BEAR Yellow House
23.REANIMATOR Special Powers
24.CURRENT 93 Black Ships Ate The Sky
25.EXCEPTER Alternation
26.ALEXANDER TUCKER Furrowed Brow
27.GRUPPO DI IMPROVISAZIONE NUOVA CONSONANZA Azioni
28.RAFAEL TORAL Space
29.GHOSTFACE KILLAH Fishscale
30.MV/EE & THE BUMMER ROAD Mother Of Thousands
31.WOODEN WAND & THE VANISHING VOICE Gipsy Freedom
32.CELTIC FROST Monotheist
33.KIERAN HEBDEN & STEVE REID The Exchange Sessions
34.RAN BLAKE All That Is Tied
35.MORDANT MUSIC Dead Air
36.JULIUS EASTMAN Unjust Malaise
37.LITTLE ANNIE Songs From The Coalmine Canary
38.RUFF SQWAD Guns And Roses Vol. 2
39.VOLCANO THE BEAR Classic Erasmus Fusion
40.LEOPARD LEG The Seven Sistered...
41.HARLASSEN A Way Now
42.TEXT OF LIGHT Metal Box
43.PEACHES Impeach My Bush
44.ROBERT ASHLEY Foreign Experiences
45.CHARALAMBIDES A Vintage Burden
46.PETER EVANS More Is More
47.SUNN O))) & BORIS Altar
48.DABRYE Two/Three
49.CHRIS CORSANO The Young Cricketer
50.JOSEPHINE FOSTER A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

Exactly like the combined forces of the Sonic Youth forum.Hurray!!!
!

wow, even the wire (who never miss any opportunity to praise sonic youth for whatever reason) don't have rather ripped in their top 10.

good one

The Wire don't do top tens.It's more of a generic(and democratic) list of records that the people who write for it liked and cherished.True that Sonic Youth always have the mafia backing them on it,though(Rob Young is a huge fan to start with).

best list i´ve seen so far

they might not do top tens but they are ranked in some way i guess? i remember sonic nurse being listed second (after the albert ayler box set) in 2004 and murray street being top of the list in 2002.

anyway, i haven't heard burial so i guess i'll have to check out what that's all about.

Categorically:NO.I don't understand where you are getting the impression either as The Wire never did traditional top anything.

alright, fine. it's not a top 50 then. i only read the wire occasionally.

i guess i've been getting the impression from the fact that they seem to be ranked in some way... if they aren't then they could at least have listed them alphabetically to avoid confusion. but for some reason they don't. in fact, they often list sonic youth as (one of) the first.

Thanks for the year-end list news.

I have the new Wolf Eyes and Awesome Color and just haven't listened to them yet. I did listen to Erase Errata - Nightlife the other day and it would probably make its way into a revised top 20.

I haven't heard many of the Wire picks.
I have bootlegs for about half of the new Text of Light, so I haven't heard all of it. Haven't heard anything from Chris Corsano, Current 93, or Carla B.
I have never even heard of their number one, Burial.

I haven't bought the latest issue but where do the numbers come from?A new thing?

i'm not sure if this is in the new issue or not (my town hasn't gotten it in yet).

i was at least expecting the new OOIOO, growing, and tv on the radio to go on there. other than those, the list is pretty much what i thought it was gonna be.

generally, the wire doesn't do things by ranking (to my knowledge). usually they just list a bunch of things and leave the ranking up to the reader.

Woo. I agree with their 2nd placed. 'The Drift' definitely one of my records of the year. (And nice to see 'Impeach My Bush' on at least ONE of these lists...)

It is in the new issue.

I only have Ran Blake and Sonic Youth out of the 50.

They ain't lyin' about this one!

Psych/folk witchcraft, but not some neo-hippie-dippie affair. This is chilling, sometimes rather densely textural and with some serious bile. Not for the weak!

Damn straight...

I have Taiga at number one.

It made my top twenty, but for all the critical hype I thought it was going to be better.

Also in my top 20:
Scritti Politti and Sonic Youth

I think I'll get ARTHUR RUSSELL First Thought Best Thought sometime.
David Van Tieghem plays percussion on the compilation.

Nice, I love Arthur Russell. Haven't listened to his stuff in a while.

Thanks for the list pookie, I was hoping for the latest issue for christmas, I really need something to read for my trip to montreal. I think Altar by Sunn0))) and Boris is much more deserving than Rather Ripped, although RR has a few promising tracks on it, but doesn't impact me as much as Altar does. Pretty good list overall I must say, and I'm glad Excepter made it on there.