Author Archives: jms

I think it’s fair to say that rock music is still the soul of this thing we do here. Our range does expand past the bravado of guitar acts and isn’t closed to much of anything, although I suppose country is underrepresented. At the same time, that is Iggy fucking Pop in the banner up there freaking out from the terrible power of The Stooges (also heroin). Rock music is a key element of this website, and of western music. This year had a lot of music that fought hard for what they thought rock and roll meant. Warpaint melted into itself, Frog Eyes filled the air with thunder, Soft Pack made a scale model city, Surfer Blood worked through human existance, and Menomena drowned in people.

So what rang out louder than all of this? Continue reading →

I personally have always had higher expectations for electronic music. As a “musician,” I’ve always been intimidated by the toolsets involved, as when faced with the ability to create ANY SOUND, my mind just shuts down. So when it came to decide the best electronic album of the year, my mind was torn. Our discussion of the topic spread between sound collage (The Books, and to a lesser extent Girl Talk), emotionally charged dance music (Baths and Caribou), and whatever the hell Down There was.

The reality of the situation is this. Continue reading →

So while the Complete & Accurate Omar Rodriguez-Lopez is so far big ambition and little writing, I do still keep up to date with the man’s music, and over the year he dropped eight full recordings. They all held a great degree of variety and importance to his development as a composer, and they’re mostly fine records.

For the record: I’m not as willing to count the live record as a part of critical analysis, and as I was writing this, Un Escorpion Perfumado was released. That’s why those two aren’t on here.

I’m going to address them in quicker detail, as to save content for future entries in the C&A: Over half of the releases featured Ximena Sarinana, with two of those albums being incredibly noteworthy. Two other albums were noted by the participation of John Fruiscante, an important figure in the history of The Mars Volta. The other two records, I have little to say about at the moment, given I’ve made it through Mantra Hiroshima once and Un Escorpion Perfumado nonce. I will say that I wasn’t particularly taken by Mantra on the first listen, though.

So which of these records was the best released in 2010?
Continue reading →