I have less to report this year. Not enough for a full 100, next stop down is of course 69. My music listening did not have a clear direction this year; no single style that I followed comprehensively. There were many small journeys though. This year was more album oriented for me than others so I'll start with them.

Albums
1. Total Loss - How to Dress Well
2. Armor On - Dawn Richard
3. Ekstasis - Julia Holter
4. Room(s) - Machinedrum
5. kills - jj
6. Acid Reflex - The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
7. Kill…

No major musical breakthroughs to report; just lots of good music. At various points it seemed as if we were entering a new golden age of goth. Not sure if this is true but just thinking about this made me very happy. Here are the 100 tracks I liked best. I start first with some albums though.

Albums:
I listened to the following albums a lot. I had musical infatuations with the first two - there were periods when I couldn’t bring myself to anything other than The Weeknd and Austra .

1. House of Balloons - The Weeknd
2.…

I complained last year about the over-accessibility of music and the lack of a clear musical direction in my life. Thankfully I had only the former to complain about this year and as far as complaints go, it’s an entirely self-inflicted one. z-soldier and I realized that we had a downloading addiction (52GB in 14 days; mediafire archives the new crack) and so this year we swapped downloading duties: when one of us was in charge of downloading, the other stayed `on the wagon’ so to speak; music would appear magically in our shared dropbox folder.

Two exciting new musical…

Kris Menace is one of my favorite electronic artists right now. He does a lot of remixes and that is how I got introduced to him via MaPey. What I love about Kris Menace is how he can make tracks sound like they could go on forever. He is able to identify the most hypnotic/ecstatic parts of a track and expand them. And sometimes when there are no hypnotic/ecstatic parts, he invents and inserts them! All of this means that when he does a new remix, I have to track it down even if (/especially when?) it is a…

My music listening this year was highly influenced and not always positively by how easily music is available now on blogs and how much. I even did a one month downloading embargo but when it ended things went back to before. Other than that I found to my mild consternation that my musical tastes have become in synch with pitchfork.com. I guess I've become more indie in what I like and indie has become electronic. Finally the year for me was marked by the absence of any major new musical direction. My love affair with Sweden and synths continued.

Songs+…

Every now and then I make compilations for friends. I find this quite
rewarding because it makes me listen to music more carefully and think
about why I want someone to listen to a track. So I thought I'd write
out the tracklists of some of these compilations along with some of the
`decision making' that went into choosing the tracks.

This particular mix cd is for Brian K. Brian made me a very nice mix cd
earlier this year and I promised I'd do the same. It only took me four months.

Mix for Brian

1. Oxygene Part 4…

Inspired by a question Z-soldier asked me, I have decided to list out the songs and albums that happened to me this year. These weren't necessarily released this year - they just entered my life properly this year.

To help me get started, I am just going to list the track/albums. Then later I'll add specific comments to the entries. Mostly this is going to be an unsorted list.

Track of the year:
Where is home? (Burial Mix) - Bloc Party

- I think I saw this track on Z-soldier's page. It is a good demonstration of…

I've been listening to Night Falls Over Kortedala and reflecting on the peculiar genius of Mr. Jens Lekman. I even contemplated writing to my various last.fm friends from Sweden and telling them of my love for Mr. Lekman but then decided against it (be thankful, you know who you are).

But I did decide to go and visit Mr. Lekman's ever entertaining web-site: http://www.jenslekman.com/ and realized that an album that I had been waiting for for a while is now out. See http://www.jenslekman.com/records/smalltalk.htm.

It's called `Four Songs by Arthur Russell', and is a cover album of four songs by…

Mon 16 Jul – The Field, Matters and Dunaway, Baltimoroder, DJ Die Young

I was in two mind whether it made sense to drive a
100 miles from Western Massachusetts to Boston to
hear The Field but it was totally
worth it. He played for about an hour from his
Vaio laptop, wearing a striped red t-shirt. For
some reason, I thought he'd look a little more strung
out (like Luomo!). He looked a mixture of shy
and having fun; but without the public persona of a
DJ. When someone from the audience raised her hand
to reach him (the…

Sun 15 Jul – A Night of Wyrdery and Cacaphony

I arrived late and largely missed the first
performer. The Ancient and The Transmundane, which was the organizer
of the show, Ryan, all by himself came next. I enjoyed
his performance a lot. He sang/vocalized backed
by a little guitar and it sounded pretty eerie in
the best way possible. Lots of beautiful sounds mixed
with strange rasping voices would come out from his
mouth. The harshness of those sounds made the overall
feel of beauty deeper. The set ended with a piece
for organ that for me was…