It’s that time of the year again and we’ve got a bunch of wintery goodness to give away. There are going to be three main drawings and a couple runners-up. You can enter to win up to four times, see below for details.
Comment on this post letting us know what your favorite post from the past year was. (be sure to include a valid email so that we can contact you if you win)
“Like” either the ISO50 or Tycho Facebook pages (liking both gets you 2 entries)
Who am I to say: “Hey, these are the best albums of 2010” or “yo buddy, listen to me, best records right here, check it out” I don’t even play a damn instrument, so I just can’t do that this year(check out my snobby 2008 or 2009 lists though). My final year end list is full of artists and friends that I work with and signed so I had to switch it up a bit here and include musicians that aren’t really in the ISO50/Moodgadget/Ghostly International bubble…yet.
I put together this list of albums that makes me feel good about digging for music everyday, its a job that ISO50 and Ghostly International let me do and i’m very grateful. These albums simply make me as happy as can be, sure there are going to be critics that fill their lists out with artists that sell out arenas but thats not the point here, this list is purely for a unique listening session. I numbered them as a fun activity for myself to do while I sat at a coffee shop making the small banners, I think the order came out pretty well and it hasn’t changed since I sat down and made it last week which is a relief.
I want to thank WordPress for making this playlist way easier to make then I thought it would be but it wouldn’t let me put it in the order I wanted it in *curses the sky*. I linked all the music to purchase, I know I hardly ever do that on the day to day because I find half the fun in hearing new music is the hunt for more of it. Look for my favorite 50 songs of 2010, hopefully i’ll be able to post those early December.
Found a few great shots of Abbey Road Studios, the legendary London studios where the Beatles recorded almost all of their albums. I particularly love that first one which is apparently a shot of the control room in Studio Three as it looked during the 70’s. I am betting it’s considerably more boring now. Studio One (second shot) on the other hand, hasn’t changed at all.
This is about as guitar-ish my posts will ever get. It started with actually finding a Bob Dylan song that I wanted to hear again and ended with finding this Erlend Oye again when it came up on shuffle. I added Arthur Russell to make it enjoyable for non-guitar fans that want unique melodies and Bon Iver is just in here for good taste even though I only like 4 of his songs, I couldn’t stand that autotune track he made. If anyone says that this is the best music post then i’ll just be super sad all weekend because I do my best to dig up stuff that isn’t this because I find this stuff to be EVERYWHERE.
Graham Smith’s brilliant Unevolved Brands is “A progressive study on brand & logo simplification“. It’s also a lot of fun; we sat here for quite a while going through each logo and trying to guess the brand it represented. They run the gamut from completely obvious to frustratingly cryptic and all the while Smith strings you along with vague hints as to the logo’s true identity. The fact that I recognized any of them is sort of a sad testament to the pervasiveness of the modern global brand. They’ve drilled these things into our heads to the point where all we need are a couple colors and basic shapes.
Unless some sort of Mad Max / Waterworld situation goes down and people start just wearing leather suits and fish skin canteen holsters, brands aren’t going anywhere. But it would be nice to see more companies start shifting to simpler, text-free versions like these (Nike and Apple are good examples of brands who have already gone pretty far in this direction). A lot of Smith’s simplifications are really nice to look at actually.
Be honest, did you get most of them? I feel like UK people have an advantage, a few those I’ve never even heard of.
If you love the world of mailorder labels then look no further than the catalog from Brooklyn’s Captured Tracks, beautiful limited vinyl only release with a diverse roster. I already have The Soft Moon S/T album in my top 10 for 2010 but thats just one of many releases that you should pick up.
Beautiful Bells doesn’t just sit down and work on one song, he experiments past what most producers even try to make and rides that out until he feels that journey has hit an enjoyable time for himself. That journey can be 20 mins or hours i’m sure but when it comes down to having a song I have a feeling its kind of fun digging thru that material, seems like an satisfying process. When it came down to picking a song from his album it was a bit hard since I think of the album as a listening session but I do find myself nodding my head to one of his more straight forward beats called Purple Topped and Flagrant.
Atlas Sound is giving away a free EP right now – DOWNLOAD IT HERE
My favorite live techno act is Portable, he’s miles ahead of most producers in that world, last time I saw him singing in a CV radio and in a Cosby sweater on a Manhattan rooftop in the rain. I saw Alan Abrahams aka Portable/Bodycode in 2005 in Detroit, he had long braids and had this amazing techno/tribal dance he was doing while he was playing, pure body music, dancing better than anyone that was on the dancefloor, so happy to see him remixing The Knife.
Banjo or Freakout, if your band name was different I would have probably checked you out earlier but i’m glad I finally did thanks to a few friend recommendations.
