everydayisamixtape

Click the name of each artist to check out some of their stuff I’ve posted.

10. Colleen Green - Milo Goes to Compton/4Loko2Kayla

It’s cheating to put albums together, but I listened to the 4Loko CDR pretty much every time I finished listening to the Milo tape. Simple, catchy, awesome stoner pop.

9. PPALMM - Cal-Aesthetics

Analog-synth heavy bedroom electropop gem that’s something like chillwave without the medicine head. I listened to a lot of albums in this sort of genre this year, but Cal-Aesthetics has that special something, I always keep coming back to it. HIGHLY RIYL if you have Emeralds on your 2k10 list.

8. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

If you like Dungen and you haven’t heard Tame Impala, stop reading this and go hear Tame Impala. Psych-alt-pop? Innerspeaker is an incredibly tight and catchy album that is borne of an increasing palette of influences. Perhaps floating on the fringe of what Pitchfork terms as “alt-bro”, this album is poppy as hell with great guitar and drum work. Kudos to the band for taking advantage of the album’s length to release this as a killer sounding 45 RPM 2xLP.

7. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast

Speaking of “alt bro”, this would be the album whose Pitchfork review is linked to in the previous blurb. Astro Coast is wall-to-wall sweet guitar riffs and driving choruses. In the alternate reality where MTV ss still awesome, this is in the Buzz Bin hall of fame. “Floating Vibes” into “Swim” into “Take It Easy” is one of the most fun opening progressions on an album this year.

6. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - Kollaps Tradixionales

Sporting nods to previous Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Silver Mt. Zion pieces, Kollaps is a sprawling yet precise album that might be Efrim & company’s most focused work yet. The postrocky silent-to-loud crescendos are in effect, but not overdone; and don’t feel played-out in this setting. Opener “There is a Light” is among the finest songs the collective has put to tape.

5. Gonjasufi - A Killer and a Sufi

Sumach Ecks’ debut release for Warp Records is a hip hop record that seems like the result of different laws of physics. Sort of an analogue to the arsenic-based life found in California, this album’s soul is borne out of the psych section. Ecks’ unique growl gives the entire album an otherworldly feel. A+ production by The Gaslamp Killer (most of the album), Mainframe (4 tracks), and Flying Lotus (1 track) provide plenty of variety; in 2010 I was definitely not expecting to hear a Jean Michel Lorgère sample on a hip-hop record.

4. The Morning Benders - Big Echo

The finest indie-pop album of the year got a Phil Spector-ish shot-in-the-arm from Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor. Big Echo is true to its name, sounding immense right from the opening of “Excuses”. The Brooklyn via Berkley, CA quartet has the chops to pull it off live, and their video for “All Day Day Light” would totally be all over the bizzaro-world MTV I mentioned earlier.

3. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal

As the noisy opening track “Nil Adimiari” subsides, the listener is greeted with the lush “Describing Bodies”. Maybe it’s just my sore ears, but track 2 is a lot sweeter after listening to the first. Awesome soundscapes, split by the hypnotic title track.

2. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma

Cosmic Jazz/Soul beast Cosmogramma is Flying Lotus finding his own sound. His previous work tended to have J Dilla mentioned prominently in the conversation (which is not to say that Los Angeles isn’t one of my favorite hip hop albums). This album is all FlyLo, a seemingly chaotic but supremely intricate chorus of harps, hyperactive bass, clangs & wobbles, and bits of arcade ambiance.

1. Tobacco - Maniac Meat

Ok, I drink the Black Moth Super Rainbow/Tobacco kool-aid pretty hard, but this album is aces. This feels like the real follow-up to BMSR’s Dandelion Gum (which happens to be my favorite album, no biggie). The creepy vocoded vocals are still in effect, along with a couple of Beck collabs. Psych-folk is tossed aside in favor of incredibly-catchy sinister synth-pop. Maniac Meat reminds me of the feeling I get when I watch crappy old exploitation horror movies; a sort of uneasy titillation - which seems to be exactly what Tobacco is looking for.