MY FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2012

Nothing stood out as remarkable or revolutionary this year. Here's what I dug the most:

10. Go-Kart Mozart - On the Hot Dog Streets

9. Jens Lekman - I Know What Love Isn't

 

8. James Blackshaw - Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death

 

7. CS Yeh - Transitions

 

6. Julia Holter - Exstasis

 

5. Bobby Conn - Macaroni

 

4. Saint Etienne - Words and Music by...

 

3. Beach house - Bloom

 

2. Wild Nothing - Nocturne

 

1. Lil B - God's Father

Honarable mentions:

Taken by Trees - Other Worlds

Swans - The Seer

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Mature Themes

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah!  Don't Bend! Ascend!

Chelsea Wolfe - Unknown Rooms

Antony and the Johnsons - Cut the World

 Heroin in Tahiti - Death Surf

Daughn Gibson - All Hell

Fascinator - Birth EP
 
Future of the Left - The Plot Against Common Sense

Diamond Rings - Free Dimensional [Note: guilty pleasure of the year]

Elite Gymnastics - Ruin 3/4


Lone - Galaxy Garden

Sun Kil Moon - Among the Leaves

Phil Thomas Katt - Those Nites

Proto-chill wave?

Algebra Suicide - Lethargy

Jens Lekman - "Erica America"

Jens' newest album will likely be somewhere at the front of the BS year-end list and I got to see him and his endearing band play it in its entirety this Monday. ,If you ever get a chance to see Jens Lekman live, please do. One of the most sad and joyous performances I've seen all year.

Fascinator - Sexuality Mystery

I get many emails from bands asking me to do write-ups or inclusions with their music, however, most of these are more or less PR plugs spammed to every 'indie' blog on whatever list whoever has compiled, or just do not fit the general aesthetic of my blog. Because of this, 99% are ignored, but the song featured in the video below really caught my ear and I would like to promote it. Check it:



I have yet to hear the EP, however, there is more where this came from at Fascinator's Soundcloud:

http://soundcloud.com/fascinatormusic

On an unrelated note, my mediafire account was suspended for the first time in three years thanks to none other than.....wait....Brian Jonestown Massacre?

Unexpected (especially on a mix with two big label tracks), but irking, as mixes with single songs from artists are intended to PROMOTE the artist. An album would be understanding, but I am generally fairly tactful with what albums I post and which ones I do not. Oh well, guess I won't be buying any BJM records ever again....thanks label!

New links will be up sometime soon.

MIX - Raw Dogs in Heat

For the young, dumb, drugged, and dangerous. 

Tracklist:

01) Heroin in Tahiti - Sartana
02) Liars - Scarecrows on a Killer Slant
03) Mu - My Name is Tommi
04) SpaceGhostPurrp - The Black God
05) Gold Chains - Much Currency Flows
06) Xiu Xiu - Don Diasco
07) The Shadow Ring - City Lights
08) Third Sight - Tonto
09) Zazen Boys - Friday Night
10) Lil B - I Own Swag
11) MEDIAFIRED - Inner Jerks
12) A.R.E. Weapons - Headbanger Face
13) Die Antw00rd - Baby's On Fire
14)  McLusky - Without MSG I'm Nothing
15) Arca - 2 Blunted
16) The Goslings - Croatan
17) The Angels of Light - Not Here / Not Now
18) Smog - Sleepy Joe
19) Brian Jonestown Massacre - Cabin Fever

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MIX - The Sun Crosses Overhead

Music for pits, grottos, wells, chasms, tombs, trenches, etc.

Tracklist:
01) Mount Eerie - "My Heart is Not at Peace"
02) Tuxedomoon - "Dark Temple"
03) Crawling Chaos - "Danger in Paradise"
04) Thighpaulsandra - "Vomitting Child"
05) The Residents - "Almost Perfect"
06) German Shepherds - "Love Me"
07) Mark Lane - "Tsar"
08) The Shadow Ring - "City Lights"
09) Karl Blake - "Babies in Grey"
10) Xiu Xiu - "Poe Poe"
11) Swans - "How They Suffer"
12) Negativland - "View to the Sun"
13) Flaming chunes - "Generous Moon"
14) Legendary Pink Dots - "Ghost"
15) Akira Yamaoka - "Never Forgive Me, Never Forget Me"
16) Martyn Bates - "And I Don't Know How Long it Will Be"
17) Simon Fisher Turner - "A Gourmet's Love Song"

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The Assembly - Never Never

HOLY SHIT Autumn mix tapes

1 - https://s3.amazonaws.com/fixe/ON_AUTUMN_COURSE_PART_1.zip
2 - https://s3.amazonaws.com/fixe/ON_AUTUMN_COURSE_PART_2.zip

Jorge Ben - Santa Clara Clareou

Peter Watkins - Punishment Park (1971)

SOMEONE 'GETS' IT

The best playlist I have ever encountered in my entire life: 

http://trustzine.com/

Elite Gymnastics - Andreja 4 Ever

Help me fund my debut novel!

Forgive me for using BS as a platform to shamelessly plug the Kickstarter page for my first novel. The more money that is donated, the less hours I have to work, and the more time I can spend getting words down and the closer my book is to completion. Please, if you like the idea of the book....pledge or even just share this link on facebook or twitter or your blog. Pledges get a copy of the book when it's released (Estimated Spring/Summer 2013), a custom physical mix cd with the theme of your choosing, and of course my gratitude forever. Thanks in advance!

MIX - Respect Your Elders! (You Might Just Learn Something)

Thanks to everyone who posts in the BS facebook group, and also to Austin Tretwold and Jason Yates for always sharing the jams.

Tracklist:

01) Vernon Wray - Facing All the Same Tomorrows
02) Alex Fergusson - I'm Obsessed
03) Lou Christie - Pot of Gold
04) Prefab Sprout - Bonnie (Acoustic)
05) Luis Alberto Spinetta - Rezo Por Vos
06) The Jazz Butchers - Get it Wrong
07) 800 Cherries - B.B.V.U. (Give me Give me)
08) Rollerskate Skinny - Speed to My Side
09) Kid Creole and The Coconuts - My Male Curiosity (extended mix)
10) Adam Ant - Crackpot History and the Right to Lie
11) T-Rex - Main Man
12) The Index - Fire Eyes
13) Lives of Angels - In the Image of Youth
14) Modern Eon - Child's Play
15) The Field Mice - Missing the Moon
16) Carly Simon - Why
17) Dorothy - Softness

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MIX - Music for Mannequins

 

Music For Mannequins

Tracklist:

Intro -

情報デスクVIRTUAL - 7 WONDERS OF THE INTERNET

01) Bobby Conn - The Truth

02) MEDIAFIRED - Spring is Here

03)John Maus - I Want to Live

04) SpaceGhostPurrp - Osiris of the East

05) Lou Reed - Magic and Loss

06) Antony and the Johnsons - Cripple and the Starfish

07) Papa M - Roadrunner

08) Roxy Music - Eight Miles High

09) Gary Wilson - Come on Mary

10) Ariel Pink - The List (My Favorite Song)

11) Gary War - Clouds That Went Away

12) Holy Shit - You Made My Dreams Come True (extended)

13) Eternal Summers - You Kill

14) They Go Boom!! - Candy

15) Go-Kart Mozart - Blowin' in a Secular Breeze

16) Band of Holy Joy - Bitten Lips

17) Donnie and Joe Emersen - Dream Full of Dreams

18) Momus - Precocious Young Miss Calloway

19) Grace Jones - I've Seen That Face Before

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Wilhelm Reich - Listen, Little Man! (1945)

 

For years now, I have often had engaged in internal debates on the ideas of pedantry and pretension, and whether or not in any case they should be justified, and I still cannot come to a solid conclusion. It is empowering and psychologically fruitful to feel better than someone, and even moreso to display your superiority in regards to them, however, this is a very backwards, primitive thought process. It's true that if you spend many years developing yourself, that you would want to hold others to the same standards in which you so rigorously apply inwards, and you may constantly compare yourself to others, and you may feel that you are right, that you are in some ways -objectively- better than your neighbor or peer. However, it is possible to have empathy for your fellow man or woman, and realize that their ignorance is not entirely their fault - that they are products of a society and education system which are designed to keep them stupid and complacent and subservient, and they have just not had the critical teaching you have had the privilege of getting. Still, there are the cases such as this book, where the author( a very interesting man)has throughout the years tried and tried to help the 'little man' - and his efforts have been ignored or taken for granted or he himself continually ostracized, and in these rare cases, an arrogant or spitefully condescending tone, is very much understandable.

My point being that the one minor issue I had with this book, was its tone. Yes, in many ways, the tone is deserving, but also it does not help to communicate the ideas within, nor does it align with the 'transcendency' which the book itself preaches. That being said, however, I feel that this little book should be mandatory reading for all 6th grade students, worldwide. Its ideas on de-oppressing yourself (and yes, there is a good chance that even you, my reader, are oppressed in some way - lord knows I am), are of the most crucial kind for changing things on an individual, social, and global level. Here ares some excerpts and illustrations from within:

 
     "Faced with the choice with a library or a brawl, you would unquestionably choose the brawl."
"You fail to perceive the bottomless stupidity and the disgustingly bad taste of these things which are designed to catch your ear."   "....you have to improve economic conditions  if you want to enjoy your life; that hungry individuals  are unable to further culture; that all conditions of life, without exception, belong here; that you have to emancipate yourself  and your society from all tyranny"






"You built your house on sand and you did all this because you are incapable of feeling life in yourself, because you kill love in your child even before it is born.; because you cannot tolerate any alive expression, any free, natural movement."





"Perhaps a little more to the  "left" than the "right," but not ONE MILLIMETER FORWARD!"


 

"Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when the mood of Beethoven or Bach will be the mood of your total existence (you have it in you, little man, buried deeply in a corner of your self); when your thinking will be in harmony, and no longer at variance with your feelings....

....when you feel elevation at hearing truths, and feel horror of formalities; when you have intercourse with your work comrades directly, and not though diplomats; when your adolescent daughter's happiness in love will delight instead of enraging you, when you will shake your head at the times when one punished little children for touching their love organs;  when human faces on the street will express freedom, animation, and joy and no longer sadness and misery; when people no longer will walk on this earth with retracted and rigid pelves and deadened sexual organs."

 

"'There is one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily.  Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times.' And in the quiet of the evening, the day's work done, when I sit on the meadow in front of the house with my wife or my child and feel the breathing of nature, I hear a melody, the melody of the future: 'OH ye millions, I embrace ye, with a kiss for all the world!' Then I wish fervently that this life  would learn to insist on its rights, to change the hard and the timid souls who make the cannons sound. They only do it because life eluded them. And I hug my little son who asks me: 'Father, the sun has gone down. Where has it gone? Will it come back soon?' And I tell him: "Yes, son, it will be back soon to warm us."

情報デスクVIRTUAL - BUBBLEGUM

情報デスクVIRTUAL - 風船ガムBUBBLEGUM from Jónó Mí Ló on Vimeo.

SUMMER GUEST MIX(ES)

Two fabulous summertime mixes from my buddy Matt Koons.

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//////\\\\\\SUMMER~MIX~2012/////\\\\\\
( ( (( ((( - _ - ))) )) )( (( ((( - _ - ))) )) ) )
✷ ✸ ✹✶ ✷ ✸ ✹✶ ✷ ✸ ✹✶ ✷ ✸ ✹✶ ✷ ✸

1. Erkin Koray - Nihansin Dideden
2. Sun Araw - Crown Shell
3. The Congos w/ Sun Araw, Gengras - Food, Clothing, Shelter
4. King Benny Nawahi - Waikiki

5. Los Orientales de Paramonga - Captura Los Lobos
6. Junior Byles - Curley Locks
7. ?????? - Balaslah Surahtku
8. Raymond Scott - Little Miss Echo
9. Les Rallizes Desnudes - Enter the Mirror
10 The Men - Country Song
11 The Kinks - Fancy
12 Pandit Pran Nath - Komel re Asawari (excerpt)
13 The Invitations - Written on the Wall
14 Super Boiro Band - Kha Mu Lan Ma
15. Equator Sound Band - Mpenzi Nimerudi
16. The Techniques - You Don't Care
17. The Upsetters - Part 2
18. Otis the 3rd - Time
19. Joyce Davis - Stop Giving Your Man Away
20. Bembaya Jazz National - Doni Doni

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☯♥✌☯JaH PrOvIdEs 2012☯♥✌☯
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A really BaSeD tRiPpY screwed
♥✌mixtape for late summer✌☯ 

 1. Three Suns - Moonlight and Roses
2. The Clean - Traped in Amber
3. The Upsetters - Crab Yars
4. Harald Grosskopf - Emphasis
5. The Fireballs - Nearly Sunrise
6. Pete Drake - Forever
7. The Pheasants - Out of the Mist
8. The Kinks - This is Where I Belong
9. Superiors - What is Love
10. The Makers - Don't Challenge Me
11. Kraftwerk - Neon Lights
12. Emeralds - Candy Shoppe
13. Stag Hare - Allah


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Albums of the year, so far

I'll be short and sweet with my comments, off the top of my head kinda thing. In alphabetical order

Beach House – Bloom

Pretty, pretty, pretty, sad, happy, dream those tears away.

Bobby Conn – Macaroni

Damn fucking awesome energized experimental political pop punk from a guy I've never heard of.

Daughn Gibson – All Hell

Another guy I've never heard of and another great, fresh-sounding pop album that blends country with scratches and beats. 

Dolphins Into the Future – On Sea-Faring Isolation

Retro-styled emulation of 60's proto-ambient marine biology documentary soundtracks.

Future of the Left – The Plot Against Common Sense

Sounds like the best, most intelligent 90s alternative album that never was. Some people dissed this for sounding too polished and being too far of a departure from McLusky, those people are are no friends of mine.

Go-Kart Mozart – On the Hot Dog Streets

New music from Lawrence Hayward. You may have heard of him...

James Blackshaw – Love is the Plan, The Plan is Death

Man, this dude can play a guitar. The cover art is a painting of a campfire and appropriately so - such beautiful, complex and tremendously emotive acoustic pickings - the perfect kind of hypnotic arrangements which pop and crack like heat pockets among the embers of a campfire.

John Maus – A Collection of Rarities…

Contains reworkings of several of my favorite John Maus songs ("The Law," "The Fear," "Mental Breakdown"), so essentially a proper release of several of my favorite songs ever on a single disc/vinyl. And then there's "Bennington"....

Lil B – God’s Father

A mind-blowing 34 track assault in the form of a mixtape, a mixtape that Lil B says is 'better than some niggas' albums' when the truth is its better than 99% of most rappers -discographies-. Album of the year, probably.

Le1f - Dark York

2012 : the year of progression for rap production.   This is a very listenable experimental-psych-chiptune-club-pcp-melange album, sharing some similarities with SpaceGhostPurrp below, but not quite as sinister feeling.

Saint Etienne – Words and Music by Saint Etienne

A perfect pop album from start to finish, enough said.

 

SpaceGhostPurrp – Mysterious Phonk : The Chronicles of SpaceGhostPurrp

Dark, druggy psychedelic/trance-inducing rap. Lyrically subpar, sonically progressive.

Sun Kil Moon – Among the Leaves

If you're a Mark Kozelek fan like myself, you will like this record and find it's simple folk song structures to be a breathe of fresh air after all the recent classical guitar styles on his previous (also good) album. If you aren't a fan, you'll probably find this to be boring. 

Voices From the Lake – s/t

80+ minutes of deep looping minimal grooves evincing early Richard D. James. For those of you waiting for Selected Ambient Works Vol. 3.....this is probably as close as you're gonna get.