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As a preamble, this is a music-related blog. I am what people in the States would probably consider a hipster. My top album of '09 was Machine Dreams by Little Dragon. I don't have the same music taste as many people here, but it isn't worth discarding my story or judgment on the subject. I listened to a lot of music this year, and while I have preferred things, I have things to say about music coming from myriad genres.
This story begins in April or May of last year. I had decided to put together a top 100 albums of 2010 and I had heard a lot of wonderful things. I knew it would be a difficult task, but I thought I was prepared for what would come. Within the months following, I gathered some more music and went about my daily life. I talked of the project and got virtually no reactions except the skeptical. The music sites that do their top 100s have dozens of writers, it's impossible to lay down such a list alone, how can you get enough music so that your list isn't just the 100 albums you heard this year? It certainly seemed challenging, and I was ready for it. Around June, two of my friends decided to do the same project, partially out of solidarity, and partially out of that hipster DIY spirit. We were embarking on a quest, and with compatriots, it was much easier to go about that trial.
Initially the biggest problem was the amount of music. It is not over the normal radar to listen to and assess more than 100 albums. To make it more challenging, I couldn't be close to 100. I had to be far beyond it. A top 100 means little if you aren't considering substantially more. In June, I had about 50 albums and my goal was to collect and judge 250. I assumed I wouldn't get close to that, but I set the goal high. I thought that I would probably manage 150 or so and work with that. I didn't consider the ranking at this point, since the amount was a more direct obstacle. This was the first real problem.
Through the summer I listened to and discussed a great deal of music, but there was a big shift climbing onto the radar. I discovered over the course of the summer that I would be leaving for Japan soon, and would have to deal with the project without the support of my cohorts and while stepping into a new life elsewhere. I considered things positively though. I knew that things would change, that perhaps my music taste would be flavored by Japan, and that I would have less time to put towards a project like this during a big shift in my life. That said, I was still committed and prepared. I had been accumulating albums, and had nearly 100. I figured that perhaps my 250 was within reach and that I could work hard to listen to the albums over time and judge them in the 11th hour.
So I moved to Japan and didn't focus on the project for a while. Such a big move occupied me entirely. It was a couple of weeks in that I even thought about the project, and then disaster struck. I was hit by a car on the way home from the bar on September 10th. Tossed across the road 5 or so meters by a driver running a red light, I was rendered immediately unconscious. Shocked observers of the scene called the police as the driver sped away from my body. I ended up spending around 2 weeks in the hospital with traumatic brain damage. I will have to live with the consequences forever. My hearing the right ear is low, since after the obstructions were cleared away by bodily processes it was discovered that the tiny bones there were separated permanently. The most brutal symptom of the impact with regard to the music project was substantial memory loss. I had difficulty remembering everything within a month or two before I came to Japan. I also lost substantial memories from a year or more before that. My memory after the accident was still not good. The best way to describe it is that I confronted past experiences with the same level of remembrance as with vivid dreams.
Obviously, the memory loss was a big problem for the top 100. I could remember the broad strokes of the year or so previous, but specifics were absolutely lost. Fortunately, I had cataloged my music well, and could rediscover the 2010 albums systematically. Every time I listened to an album, I couldn't remember it beforehand, but was flooded with opinions and memories associated with the songs as I heard them.
It is also worth noting that around this time I got a membership on what.cd, which is an amazing torrent community. This helped me bulk out my 2010 album list substantially. By early December, I managed to get over the 250 that I had considered my maximum achievable metric.
Then I was confronted with a another significant, and ultimately lethal problem. I had to make the actual list. For so long I had considered the main challenge to be the accumulation of albums. Ordering them after listening to them would be only a formality. Initially we planned on writing a bit about each album, and in this task the difficulty was revealed to me. I don't read music blogs and I don't know the terminology. This made things difficult. To boot, I was stuck listening to a selection of albums over and over, trying to place them with respect to one another. While this task is in essence what you are doing to create a top 100, it was also something of surprising difficulty. I had always assumed that listening to enough albums would be the biggest challenge, and here the ranking would be comparatively easy.
After January 1st, everything became denouement. At first, I kept trying to complete the task, struggling with the problems of comparing music in different genres and always aware that I had missed my deadline. This attention continued for some time, but around a week ago, I realized that I had failed. There would be no top 100 from me this year.
In 2011 I will try again. I know now that ranking is easily as difficult as attaining the music to rank. I had misplaced my concerns and it undermined me. I am confident for this year. I will of course try again.
The entire project has been very gratifying and interesting. Most of the time, one listens to fewer than 20 albums from a given year I imagine. I certainly didn't exceed that in the past several years. The experience of listening to 250 plus albums was amazing. I heard things I would never have listened to, and I know more about the music of 2010 than virtually everyone on the street. I will be excited to do it again and I hope that others are inspired to try with me.
The story concluded, I thought I would drop a loose top 10 to finish up. If anyone wants to know about albums I considered, or if you want recommendations I have, please PM me. I'm always open to this community.
1. Odd Blood by Yeasayer
2. Subiza by Delorean
3. The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monae
4. Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus
5. Relayted by Gayngs
6. Port Entropy by Shugo Tokumaru
7. Further by The Chemical Brothers
8. Crooks and Lovers by Mount Kimbie
9. The Waves by Tamaryn
10. Lucky Shiner by Gold Panda
Let me reiterate that I want anyone who has any questions about 2010 music, seeking suggestions, explanation, and discussion, should not hesitate to PM me. I would love to have a good chat about music with my fellow TLers. Also, I want to give a quick shoutout to our own J-dub, for his help and support. I hope you enjoy it brother.
I am putting together some recommendations of Japanese music. I am discovering a lot of amazing albums originating here that I would have been listening to if I knew about them before. Expect that sometime soon.
 
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Gr8 blog. Gotta check some of these bands out 
Btw, how did you like Animal Collectives Merriweather Post Pavillion? Def my top album of '09.
Edit: just remembered, had a project to do something similar with movies, never went through with it. Took up so much time and n energy. Kudos for doing this
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Good read
The few I don't know I will definitly be hitting up soon but it leaves me to wonder where Deerhunters latest would fall in your list.
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I think my top 10 for 2010 were
1. Kanye West - MBDTF (Rap, Post-Hiphop  )
2. Six Gallery - Breakthroughs in Modern Art (Post-rock/emo?)
3. Grum - Heartbeats (Electro-House)
4. Janelle Monae - The Archandroid (Pop?)
5. Nas & Damian Marley - Distant Relatives (Rap/Reggae)
6. Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History (Indie Rock/Electro-Pop)
7. Nomak - Dynamic Meditation (Instrumental Hip-Hop, Japanese)
8. Fang Island - Fang Island (Indie Rock
9. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot Son of Chico Dusty (Rap)
10. Caribou - Swim (Electronic)
As you can see there's a quite a selection there
Also, Lucky Shiner was awesome, pushed out of my top 10 by the rest of the awesome music that came out last year. Cosmogramma I couldn't really get into, maybe I should give it another listen...
Edit: As for recommendations of Japanese music I recommend:
Nomak (Instrumental Hip-Hop)
Envy (Screamo+Post Rock)
Rin Toshite Shigure (aka Ling Toshite Sigure) (Post-Hardcore
Lhasa (Screamo+Post Rock but waaaaaaaaay heavier than envy)
Anything by or associated with Nujabes (Jazzy Hip Hop)
Toe (Post-Rock, Instrumental Rock)
Te (Instrumental Rock)
Shinichi Osawa (House)
Mass of the Fermenting Dregs (Shoegaze/Rock)
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On February 13 2011 22:07 DoLookMoreLike wrote:
Btw, how did you like Animal Collectives Merriweather Post Pavillion? Def my top album of '09.
It was great! I have always liked Animal Collective and it didn't disappoint. There were a lot of great albums in 09 though.
On February 13 2011 23:03 kelstar wrote:
The few I don't know I will definitly be hitting up soon but it leaves me to wonder where Deerhunters latest would fall in your list.
In the last incarnation of the top 100, which reflected my opinions at just the point when I threw in the towel, Deerhunter had fallen into the 20s. The top 30 or so were very difficult because there were a lot of albums that I thought were amazing. It's hard to rank something you like a lot above another thing you like a lot. I never expected to run into such uncertainty until it was sneaking up behind me.
On February 13 2011 23:05 nataziel wrote:I think my top 10 for 2010 were 1. Kanye West - MBDTF (Rap, Post-Hiphop ) 2. Six Gallery - Breakthroughs in Modern Art (Post-rock/emo?) 3. Grum - Heartbeats (Electro-House) 4. Janelle Monae - The Archandroid (Pop?) 5. Nas & Damian Marley - Distant Relatives (Rap/Reggae) 6. Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History (Indie Rock/Electro-Pop) 7. Nomak - Dynamic Meditation (Instrumental Hip-Hop, Japanese) 8. Fang Island - Fang Island (Indie Rock 9. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot Son of Chico Dusty (Rap) 10. Caribou - Swim (Electronic)
You clearly have some broad tastes. Thanks for the Japanese band recommendations.
I didn't like Kanye as much as many people, thought I did dig the album overall. How I described it to someone via PM was
'I liked parts of the Kanye album, but there was a lot that didn't work for me. I think his guest artists were generally quite solid, and the production value was, as would be expected, amazing. I thought that the first third of the album was much stronger than the rest. It was a solid punch (excluding the intro on the first track, which is so silly it is probably a joke), followed by tracks that didn't stand out or were mildly abrasive. Don't get me wrong, I liked the album, but I feel like it mostly stands up on the production and the anthems of the earlier tracks. I don't think Kanye displays his skill as an MC as much on this album, and seeing as his uncanny ability on the mic has been one of his greatest assets, I feel this hurts the album a lot. Kanye is good, but my favorite lines on the album are dropped by Cudi. I think that says a lot.'
I thought Big Boi had easily the best hip hop album of the year, though I didn't explore very deeply as I did in other genres. That was a truly great hip hop album, with varying styles and pace, catchy tracks, technical tracks, and overall deft lyricism.
I liked Fang Island and Caribou a lot as well.
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Good blog - a great story, and good to read. I haven't heard any of your top 10 albums, and will be sure to check a couple out in the near future. Cheers
Having said that, I'm still amazed that even teams of writers can try and create a top 100 albums list of one year. I just feel like I can't really judge an album fairly unless I listen to it a a helluva a lot, particularly if it's any good. For example, I remember Faith No More's Angel Dust taking listen after listen to slowly unlock, and initially finding it harsh and grating after the poppier The Real Thing.
Furthermore, I feel if I don't like an album due to fairly subjective reasons, I can't get past those enough to really give it a fair review. For example, I hate the AC/DC's singer's voice. I can see they write good riffs and songs, and concede they're 'good', but still would never rank them with the greats because of how annoying I find that voice.
I'm also finding the more I get into other genres (particularly classical), the less impressive I'm finding a lot of music I'd have previously raved about. For one, it suddenly feels like no band is even close to being 'technically gifted', or harmonically clever. I guess for your project you must be pretty well versed in this kind of stuff though. Are you a music major?
Could you give us your top 10's of 2008 and 2009? I'm really curious.
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It is pretty tough. I feel like I understand what needs to be done better now, and I'm hopeful for next year. I didn't do a top 10 in years past, so I can't tell you right off. The first time I thought about ranking new music was this past year. It was such a great experience that I anticipate trying for a top 100 again from now on.
It is challenging to rank things, and I think you need to make some rules for yourself. I tried to rank albums on their own merit instead of comparing them to previous albums by the artist. For example, the Ratatat album didn't break new ground, and was disappointing for a lot of people. While I understood that disadvantage, I tried to assess its merits objectively and ended up keeping it high up.
The amount of listening can be something of a problem. I felt like I was affected too much by the amount that I listened to a given album. There were some albums I only listened to like five times, while others must have been in the hundreds. I found myself listening to a small group of albums that I was trying to rank closely to one another, and in listening to them so frequently my opinions changed a great deal and they ended up not being grouped closely at all. The biggest problem was moving things around constantly as a result of listening over and over and reranking abundantly.
The final thing that you brought up that I think is interesting is the genre issue. One of the biggest problems I had was comparing music of varying genres. I didn't want to falsely represent things positively to give my list variety. I couldn't place albums that I collected more sparsely in a given genre because I felt like they didn't represent a broad enough view of the genre this year. My realization on the subject, and now my firm stance, is that you need to put genre out of your head entirely. One man's top 100 isn't going to be fully representative. It's not going to be broad enough or exhaustive. I viewed it as a personal challenge, not an imitation of the combined hard work of many music blog contributors. I tried to just rank albums as I liked them, which gives my top 10 a distinct bias with regard to genre and style. It's my bias. That's how this works.
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That album made me fall asleep.
I admire the effort and desire it took to accomplish this. I'm personally against all types of lists in music journalism however. I think they are everything wrong with Indie, when hipsters try to standardize music opinion into a kind of cool. Lists are the bane of individual taste, they encourage people to be lazy and ignore the actual articles. Everyone has their favorites, but which criteria allow you to rank the #2 album above #3? What makes your #1 album the "top" album as opposed to merely your favorite album? Is "Relayted" really comparable to "Cosmogramma"? I don't like when people try to rank art in general, but especially in indie where people are way too quick to follow trends and listen to others, and where artists are supposed to experiment and find new sounds.
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On February 13 2011 23:33 thopol wrote:
Kanye is good, but my favorite lines on the album are dropped by Cudi. I think that says a lot.
Best lines by Cudi?? Not a fan of "ever had sex with a pharaoh? I put the pussy in a sarcophagus!"?
Best verse of the entire album was Nicki Minaj on monster, imo. I agree with what you're saying about the second half of the album not being as good, it's all golden up until monster, but so appalled, devil in a new dress and hell of a life are the weakest songs for sure.
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Gold Panda Lucky Shiner was a great album
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On February 14 2011 01:17 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I admire the effort and desire it took to accomplish this. I'm personally against all types of lists in music journalism however. I think they are everything wrong with Indie, when hipsters try to standardize music opinion into a kind of cool. Lists are the bane of individual taste, they encourage people to be lazy and ignore the actual articles. Everyone has their favorites, but which criteria allow you to rank the #2 album above #3? What makes your #1 album the "top" album as opposed to merely your favorite album? Is "Relayted" really comparable to "Cosmogramma"? I don't like when people try to rank art in general, but especially in indie where people are way too quick to follow trends and listen to others, and where artists are supposed to experiment and find new sounds.
I think that you are misplacing importance a little. I don't think a lot of lists are capable of being an exhaustive list of the best albums. Music taste is very subjective, and that is not overlooked. Lists either aim to benefit a certain scene or are simply a list based on personal preference. What makes my #1 album the top album is that it is my favorite album. I don't think it is possible to rank art objectively, but in even having an opinion you rank it. I have some favorite writers, favorite painters, favorite musicians, etc. This means that I'm placing greater personal value on certain work instead of others.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think it's very important to make something that strives towards an impossible ideal. The reasons behind the project were the experience the process, which was amazing, and to share the fruits of my labor with friends.
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United States4796 Posts
1. LCD Soundsystem- This Is Happening
2. Hot Chip- One Life Stand
3. Caribou- Swim
4. Uffie- Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans
5. Gorillaz- Plastic Beach
6. Darkstar- North
7. Flying Lotus- Cosmogramma
8. Kanye West- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
9. Booka Shade- More!
10. Delorean- Subiza
Honorable Mentions:
Vampire Weekend- Contra
Deerhunter- Halcyon Digest
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On February 14 2011 11:09 thopol wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2011 01:17 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I admire the effort and desire it took to accomplish this. I'm personally against all types of lists in music journalism however. I think they are everything wrong with Indie, when hipsters try to standardize music opinion into a kind of cool. Lists are the bane of individual taste, they encourage people to be lazy and ignore the actual articles. Everyone has their favorites, but which criteria allow you to rank the #2 album above #3? What makes your #1 album the "top" album as opposed to merely your favorite album? Is "Relayted" really comparable to "Cosmogramma"? I don't like when people try to rank art in general, but especially in indie where people are way too quick to follow trends and listen to others, and where artists are supposed to experiment and find new sounds.
I think that you are misplacing importance a little. I don't think a lot of lists are capable of being an exhaustive list of the best albums. Music taste is very subjective, and that is not overlooked. Lists either aim to benefit a certain scene or are simply a list based on personal preference. What makes my #1 album the top album is that it is my favorite album. I don't think it is possible to rank art objectively, but in even having an opinion you rank it. I have some favorite writers, favorite painters, favorite musicians, etc. This means that I'm placing greater personal value on certain work instead of others. I see where you're coming from, but I don't think it's very important to make something that strives towards an impossible ideal. The reasons behind the project were the experience the process, which was amazing, and to share the fruits of my labor with friends.
A way of sharing your fruits of labor would be to write your thoughts on the music you've listened to instead of compiling a list with no discernible criteria or thought behind it. You created a comprehensive ranking according to your personal value but refuse to share with those values are.
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On February 14 2011 19:41 zulu_nation8 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2011 11:09 thopol wrote:On February 14 2011 01:17 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I admire the effort and desire it took to accomplish this. I'm personally against all types of lists in music journalism however. I think they are everything wrong with Indie, when hipsters try to standardize music opinion into a kind of cool. Lists are the bane of individual taste, they encourage people to be lazy and ignore the actual articles. Everyone has their favorites, but which criteria allow you to rank the #2 album above #3? What makes your #1 album the "top" album as opposed to merely your favorite album? Is "Relayted" really comparable to "Cosmogramma"? I don't like when people try to rank art in general, but especially in indie where people are way too quick to follow trends and listen to others, and where artists are supposed to experiment and find new sounds.
I think that you are misplacing importance a little. I don't think a lot of lists are capable of being an exhaustive list of the best albums. Music taste is very subjective, and that is not overlooked. Lists either aim to benefit a certain scene or are simply a list based on personal preference. What makes my #1 album the top album is that it is my favorite album. I don't think it is possible to rank art objectively, but in even having an opinion you rank it. I have some favorite writers, favorite painters, favorite musicians, etc. This means that I'm placing greater personal value on certain work instead of others. I see where you're coming from, but I don't think it's very important to make something that strives towards an impossible ideal. The reasons behind the project were the experience the process, which was amazing, and to share the fruits of my labor with friends. A way of sharing your fruits of labor would be to write your thoughts on the music you've listened to instead of compiling a list with no discernible criteria or thought behind it. You created a comprehensive ranking according to your personal value but refuse to share with those values are.
I was planning on writing something about each and doing a top 50 songs too, but I had a poor assessment of the difficulty in ranking. There is certainly a lot of thought behind the top 10, but it is pretty loose. I had trouble keeping things in one position for long. My criteria are vague at best, since they are what I would call my taste in music. I don't think anyone has very straightforward music preferences with clearly enunciated turn ons and turn offs.
I'm sure that this list is not going to offer anything to some people, but I also think that it can be useful to others. If you liked one of those albums, there are others in the same vein. I'd also like to get off the list topic a bit and reiterate that anyone who might want my suggestions in some regard or thoughts on certain albums is welcome to PM me or ask things here.
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EPT
I thought it was def worth top 10 2010
