Right click, save as!
Because a Song of the Year award would just go to POWER anyways, here’s a mix of our favorite songs! Tracklist after the jump. Continue reading
Category Archives: 2010 FOWRies
Best Songs of 2010 Mixtape!
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, necessity
Fuck Jesus Balls Ass Christ: Our Album of the Year Special
Everyone, we did it. We got to the end of 2010 and decided what was worthy of our best album of 2010. This podcast isn’t as much of a bloodbath as it was stressful. We were cutting off some incredible, incredible albums and it made us very, very sad. The only way to find out FOWR’s album of the year is to listen to this podcast. DO IT. Or never know. Continue reading
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, Podcast?
Best Rock Album of 2010
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
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, John
Best Rap Album of 2010
This was a pretty tops year for hip-hop, honestly. I had a really hard time contributing to the decision that we made as a group (can’t speak for Matt or John) for what our what the definitive FOWR rap album of the year would be. I probably, though, should just start by giving it up to Big Boi for making one of the coolest songs of the year, “Shutterbugg”, then Animalistic for being absolutely nuts, Black Milk for making some feel-good rap, Curren$y for “Michael Knight”, Das Racist for making what was to be their huge show-off scene for making legitimate rap music, and of course, Kanye West for making one of the tightest-sounding albums in terms of theme and production I’ve ever heard. But the time must come to decide, what was the most deserving out of all this rap goodness? You may actually be surprised.
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, Andrew
Best Electronic Album of 2010
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
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, John
Best Pop Album of 2010
Pop music, when you really think about it, is a frightening thing. There are designations to what makes a pop album a pop album, just as the situation is with any genre. However, for pop, it is slightly different. There is a formula but there isn’t. This makes talking about pop music specifics difficult. Fortunately, though, Fermata over Whole Rest has a fairly good idea of what makes a great pop album. And here is what we think the the best one of 2010 is.
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, Andrew
Best Debut Album of 2010
2010 seems to be the year for new artists coming out and rocking all of our faces. We had Baths come out with “Cerulean,” and while not rocking our faces off, it showed us that Trip-hop is still a thing that’s awesome. Sleigh Bells released “Treats” and has been acquainted to a love it or hate it reaction, but nonetheless still known. So who was it that we thought had the strongest debut album of 2010?
Best Coast! Nah, just kidding. Continue reading
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, Matt
Best G.O.O.D. Fridays Track Not on MBDTF
Here’s the deal. Kanye has done some goddamn amazing things in terms of his music this year. He went and released “Power” as a single during the summer, planned an album for the fall, and then was like “Yo, wouldn’t it be sick if I released a new song every week?” And he did. The result of that crazy idea became the “G.O.O.D. Fridays” series, a new song every week for free. This madness spawned songs like “Monster” and the amazing “Runaway Love (Remix)”, combining Raekwon and Justin Bieber and making it seem like some of the raddest shit ever. There was never a track that failed to impress me during its fourteen week stint, which made this choice extremely difficult when we excluded the three tracks that appeared on “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”.
But, hey, here’s our choice for the best “G.O.O.D. Fridays” that wasn’t on “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. Continue reading
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, Andrew
NOT Best Album of 2010
For every best there’s always a worst to accompany it. Let’s be honest here, it’s been a pretty good year for music. We here at the FOWR offices have been saying that for a while. But that still doesn’t change the fact that there’s a lot of shit floating around out there. In turn, we decided to give an award to the the worst album of the year.
Can you guess what it is?
It’s totally not what you’re thinking.
I think. Continue reading
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, Matt
Best Album released by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez in 2010
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
Filed under 2010 FOWRies, John
Fermata over Whole Rest 