Top albums of 2011

Looks like I've kind of neglected this blog... whoops. Let's get back into it. A whole year has passed since I last posted, so to follow up my top albums of 2010, here's my top albums of 2011! With links included so you can check them out. Not in any order this year, just things that I loved and listened to over and over! Also I should say top releases, 'cause not all of them are albums:

Circle Takes the Square - Decompositions Vol. 1, Chapter 1: Rites of Initiation.
(only an ep/the first part of their upcoming album. But probably my favourite thing of the whole year.)

Bomb the Music Industry! - Vacation!

Adalita - Adalita

Fuck The Facts - Die Miserable

Thursday - No Devolucion

Glassjaw - Our Colour Green / Colouring Book (2 EPs count as one album, right?)

Harmony - Harmony

WILD FLAG - Wild Flag

Battles - Gloss Drop

Russian Circles - Empros

Saul Williams - Volcanic Sunlight

Raein - Sulla linea dell'orizzonte fra questa mia vita e quella di tutti gli altri

Ouch My Face - Build a House / Eyeball to Eyeball (Only a single, but what a single!)
 
and Death by Death Ray - Here is the Revolution! (only a single again, and a bit of shameless self-promotion, but it's the best recording I've ever done, so gotta plug it somehow!)

word cloud

Wordle is a pretty awesome site that lets you make word clouds like this from any text you want, or any blog with an rss feed (like say, this one!) Obviously the post about NIN below pretty heavily influenced what you see. I wish it would go back through all the archives of this entire blog and do it though, it'd be interesting to see how that would come up.

On the music front, I'm loving the new Every Time I Die album at the moment, and am back on Cursive's latest album Mama, I'm Swollen because it is brilliant (like every Cursive album). And I just picked up Babes Say the Hottest Things by Mustache!, an old school sleazy rock 'n' roll band similar to Eagles of Death Metal featuring Adam from Murder By Death's "cousin". And finally also listening to the Saul Williams/Thomas Kessler/Arditti String Quartet collaboration NGH WHT, a combination of hip hop and strings which places one of Williams' poems from The Dead Emcee Scrolls over an experimental composition by Kessler.

All of the above are awesome and should be checked out.

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Now playing: Saul Williams - Chapter 18

trip roundup

i never got around to finishing up my trip blogs. i traveled around a lot more in europe and therefore had less access to the internet and no home base to do blogs from. i'm writing this now in 2009 as i have decided to revive my blog, focusing more on music this time around. i've been bringing across previous posts/reviews from other sites, but i decided i'd better give some closure to this story before i move on. suffice it to say the rest of the trip was as awesome as the beginning. i'm not gonna go into too much detail about actions, but musically i got to see some great things. a local band called The Bookhouse Boys in London, and Krafty kuts in Brighton. I don't have any photos of either, but here's a video clip from The Bookhouse Boys, I thought they were fantastic.


I also went to the O2 wireless festival over 2 days in Hyde park in London, where I saw some fantastic acts, including:


Saul Williams


Jay-Z ("best rapper alive")


Jaguar Love (featuring former members of The Blood Brothers and Pretty Girls Make Graves)


Beck.
Morrissey headlined the second day, but he turned out to be a bit of a wingeing old bore really.

oh, and here's the massive box of stuff i purchased overseas and sent home.