Top Albums of 2012

Tav

Well, the thread title is a bit of a lie! There is lots of good music out there and I'm wondering what sorts of hidden gems I've missed out on over the past year, so hopefully a thread like this will help myself and others! So instead of just listing whatever's on the radio the most, put down some albums that you think didn't get the exposure they deserve (Or just put down whatever's on the radio if they were your favourite albums!).

I'll go first with these in no particular order!


Artist - Album: Grimes - Visions
RIYL: Zola Jesus, Crystal Castles, Purity Ring
Sample Song: Oblivion


Artist - Album: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
RIYL: Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, God Is An Astronaut
Sample Song: Mladic


Artist - Album: Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind
RIYL: Dillenger Escape Plan, Botch, any band that's been influenced by them in the past 20 years
Sample Song: Sadness Comes Home

edit: I chose to link Youtube videos so the entire thread isn't littered with them and it ends up taking forever to load. If you're going to link a video, link or spoiler it so the thread remains readable.

TubularLuggage

Artist: OSI
Album: Fire Make Thunder
Stylistically, it's sort of rock with some electronic and ambient elements.
Sample Song: Surprisingly difficult to find songs from the album on youtube. They do have an album sampler up; Sampler



Artist/Album: Storm Corrosion
A collaboration by Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree, and Mikael Akerfeldt from Opeth.
RIYL: Steven Wilson's solo material. Ambient, experimental type music.
Sample Song: Drag Ropes

KalTorak

T-Swizzle, motherfuckers

Gigazombie Cybermage

Artist: Coheed & Cambria
Album: The Afterman: Ascension
Stand Out Tracks: Evagria the Faithful, Vic the Butcher


Artist: The Mars Volta
Album: Noctourniquet
Stand Out Tracks: In Absentia, Vedamalady

Linespider5

Artist: Soundgarden
Album: King Animal

Standout Tracks:

Bones of Birds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkiMyBcJ470

Worse Dreams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj8ocvPEz2o

Chanus

This year has been all about this for me:



Artist: Of Monsters and Men
Album: My Head is an Animal
Sample: King and Lionheart

metaghost

Artist: You Slut!
Album: Medium Bastard
Sounds like: UK Maths, but without the post-rock influences most bands like that bring; super upbeat + fun.
Sample: Hiya Higher Hire



Artist: Rennaisance Sound
Album: S/T
Sounds like: Contemporary Jazz strongly influenced by the math/pop scene of Chicago (i.e. Tortoise)
Sample: Don't Eat My Dwarves



Artist: Kayo Dot
Album: Gamme Knife
Sounds like: Skronkin' pretentious American Black Metal with some prog influences, I guess — Krallice, Orthrelm, Behold the Arctopus
Sample: Ocellated God (followed by older song, Aura on an Asylum Wall)



Artist: El-P
Album: Cancer 4 Cure
Sounds like: El-P? He's not exactly unique, but his production style isn't exactly common these days. Aggressively dissonant, heavy bass, interesting song structure.
Sample: Oh Hail No

Ethan Smith

Second on El-P.


Cadence Weapon: Hope in Dirt City

Style: Similar to other Canadian hip-hop, he retains the 'old school' production method of using jazz samples to make his sound unique

Sample: Small Deaths

TubularLuggage

Oh, also;

Artist: Rush
Album: Clockwork Angels

Sample: Caravan, The Wreckers, Headlong Flight

The whole album is great, start to finish. Probably their best overall album in a long time.

Feral

Love those El-P tracks.

Motherfucking Squarepusher is old as dirt but has still got it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvLAKrVbCBM

y2jake215

Artist - Album: Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes
RIYL: jazz-influenced instrumental hip hop, J-Dilla, Madlib
Sample song: Tiny Tortures

Flying Lotus continues growing, past the often aggressive and raw cuts from Cosmogramma to more dreamy, jazzy tracks. Other standouts are Putty Boy Strut and The Nightcaller.

thanimations

The three albums I've dug the most this year:


Kimbra: Vows
Sounds like: Camille, Bjork (though much more accessible), Seal
Samples: Come Into My Head, Two Way Street, live cover of Two Weeks/Head Over Heels


Jessie Ware: Devotion
Sounds like: Adele by way of Sade?
Samples: Wildest Moments, 110%


Frank Ocean: Channel Orange
Sounds like: The Weeknd
Samples: Thinking Bout You, youtube.com/watch?v=zInf-88f0Hs

Also have to second Grimes, she's pretty fantastic.

y2jake215

big +1 to Vows, I love that album

A Dabble Of Thelonius

Eric Church: Chief
Style: Shitkicker country, traditional country or contemporary country. Depends on the track.
Samples: Springsteen, Drink In My Hand.

That probably concludes the country part of the thread. I'll just see myself out.

metaghost

@Feral - Definitely check out El-P's three LPs if you haven't before. He also produced Killer Mike's most recent record, R.A.P Music.

Also, on the topic of Squarepusher and music in the vein, highly recommend folks check out Three Trapped Tigers. Route One or Die was prob my favorite record of last year.



Artist: Three Trapped Tigers
Album: Route One or Die
Sounds Like: Organic Squarepusher drum&bass glitchy craziness with a strong foundation in Classical music.
Sample: Noise Trade

Some other jams of recent times:



Artist: Bruce Peninsula
Album: Open Flames
Sounds Like: Artsy Canadians appropriating Negro spirituals.
Sample: In Your Light



Artist: Boyfrndz
Album: All Day Pass
Sounds Like: Wall of Noise Shoegaze, My Bloody Valentine fused with Tera Melos; youthful and hypnotic.
Sample: Not That Sensitive

Atomika

I didn't think this was a particularly strong year for the kind of music I like. Several of my favorite bands put out albums that ranged from "meh" to "nope," including The Shins and Fiona Apple.

The good news is that my thirst for new music was slaked by digging into older bands that I wasn't terribly familiar with, meaning I now have all the Cowboy Junkies' stuff.

So It Goes

so much music I never listened to this year, sheesh

davidsdurions

So It Goes wrote: »

so much music I never listened to this year, sheesh

Me too, I have so many back logs in so many areas of my life, you would think I have been busy the last 5 years or something.

iguanacus

Damn, I was coming in to post Vows, just had to check to make sure it was released this year. Oh well, I then nominate



Artist: fun.
Album: Some Nights
Samples: Some Nights, We Are Young, Carry On

Atomika

Seconded. It's a hell of a fun(!) album, from start to finish.

Though I found out why they use so much autotune on that album; apparently, the lead singer can't sing for crap live.

Tav

metaghost wrote: »

Artist: Boyfrndz
Album: All Day Pass
Sounds Like: Wall of Noise Shoegaze, My Bloody Valentine fused with Tera Melos; youthful and hypnotic.
Sample: Not That Sensitive

Now this I like!

r4dr3z

Fiona Apple Idler Wheel

Centipede Damascus

Artist: Leonard Cohen
Album: Old Ideas
Sample Song: Going Home

Vesty

Artist: The Lumineers
Album: The Lumineers
Sounds Like: Folky
Sample: Ho Hey, Flowers In Your Hair, Dead Sea

Sangheili91

TubularLuggage wrote: »

Oh, also;

Artist: Rush
Album: Clockwork Angels

Sample: Caravan, The Wreckers, Headlong Flight

The whole album is great, start to finish. Probably their best overall album in a long time.

:^:

Came here to post this. Rush is my favorite band bar none, and Clockwork Angels is such a fantastic album. It's their best record in more than twenty years, at least. Probably more than that. So many standout tracks, and they're all amazing live too!

JRosey

Artist: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Album: The Heist
RIYL: Blue Scholars, Grimes, Seattle Hip Hop
Sample Song: Thrift Shop

Centipede Damascus

Artist: Nick Waterhouse
Album: Time's All Gone
Sample Song: I Can Only Give You Everything

Element Brian

Artst: Kendrick Lamar
Album: Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City
Sample Song: Swimming Pools

TehSpectre

Artist: Alt-J
Album: An Awesome Wave
Sample Songs: Breezeblocks Tessellate Leon




Artist: Imagine Dragons
Album: Night Visions
Sample Songs: Radioactive Bleeding Out It's Time (<-Hit Single)

Nova_C

Artist: Eisbrecher
Album: Die Holle Muss Warten
Sample Songs: Tanz Mit Mir, Verruckt

Eisbrecher is absolutely my favourite band. They go from heavy industrial to straight electronic and everything in between. Every song on this album is brilliant.

vegeta_666

I've been listening to these solid since they came out:



Artist: Hey Ocean!
Album: Is
Sample Songs: Big Blue Wave, I Am A Heart

They're a Canadian indie pop band that have a variety of genres mixed in with many of their songs. Some might know the lead singer as a voice actor from My Little Pony: FiM. I have never seen the show but I have seen this band live and they are super fun.



Artist: Metric
Album: Synthetica
Sample Songs: Youth Without Youth, Breathing Underwater

Another Canadian band! They've been around for a bit and I've really enjoyed all their albums so I was worried about their follow-up to Fantasies (2009), that they wouldn't be able to follow it up. When this landed this Summer all fears were dispelled.

Sparvy

Artist: Murder by Death
Album: Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon
Sample Song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX7unRaZNMo

Indie rock band taking inspiration from movies and folky stuff, often darker themes. I prefer their previous album but this one is great too.


One my favorite albums of this year is sadly all in swedish and probably a bit useless to most of you but I'll post it anyway:

Artist: Mando Diao
Album: Infruset
Sample Song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YPqM-MTKCI

A swedish rock band that did something different and put music to the poetry of Gustaf Fröding.

Echo

Artist: Grendel
Album: Timewave Zero

Grendel shifts things up yet again, they keep experimenting with styles between each album. They started as your average angry EBM, but they've gradually found their own sound.

This album has some more "commercial-sounding" (ugh now I sound all hipstery) songs, like Deep Waters, which is more of a club track, and the first Grendel song with female vocals at that, which makes it a pretty big step away from their older style.

Conflict Instigation is more towards their older style from their last album.

Echo

Here's a two-for-one. Hope you don't mind it being from 2011. Actually, one of them is from 2007, but I discovered Acretongue in 2011, so there!



I randomly stumbled upon a sample from Strange Cargo, and then discovered that the earlier album, Nihil from 2007, was made available for free from Bandcamp by the artist.

I love everything about Acretongue - the sound and the visuals. Here are two teasers from Strange Cargo, showing them both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewiCSpno5H4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr63nHhQc1U

PantsB

TehSpectre

you monster

MalReynolds

Atomic Ross wrote: »

Seconded. It's a hell of a fun(!) album, from start to finish.

Though I found out why they use so much autotune on that album; apparently, the lead singer can't sing for crap live.

He has a really strange voice; I saw fun. live once when they were supporting their first album (which didn't have much in the way of autotune) and he was pretty good, but years ago he was the frontman for The Format and his voice was pretty much exactly as it was on the album live. He does have a strange voice, though. I thought the rampant use of autotune was due to them taking inspiration from 808's and Heartbreaks, but I don't remember where I read that.

Atomika

MalReynolds wrote: »

Atomic Ross wrote: »

Seconded. It's a hell of a fun(!) album, from start to finish.

Though I found out why they use so much autotune on that album; apparently, the lead singer can't sing for crap live.

He has a really strange voice; I saw fun. live once when they were supporting their first album (which didn't have much in the way of autotune) and he was pretty good, but years ago he was the frontman for The Format and his voice was pretty much exactly as it was on the album live. He does have a strange voice, though. I thought the rampant use of autotune was due to them taking inspiration from 808's and Heartbreaks, but I don't remember where I read that.

He has two registers he sings in, a kind of whispering lilt and then a huge broadway-style belting, but it's when he shifts in and out of the two that he sometimes sounds like a kid going through puberty.

I mean, I still like them and all, but they're a much better studio band than they are a live band.

JRosey

There is a lot of seriously top-notch music up in here. Almost half of my top ten is in this thread.

oldmanken

I would like to put the latest Hey Rosetta! album up here, but it was released early last year, so not really a good fit. I will link to Yer Spring and Yer Fall though... good songs, and make me pine for home.

Happy to see Grimes get a mention, I second that one. Oblivion is a totally infectious song...

Podly

tentative list, which i will ruminate upon and make a proper post

1) Barker and Baumecker -- Transsektoral (This is def #1. One of the best electronic albums ever)
2) Robert Hood -- Motor: Nighttime World 3
3) Squarepusher -- Ufabulum
4) Silent Servant -- Negative Fascinations
5) Perc -- Wicker and Steel
6) Actress -- R.I.P.
7) Grimes -- Visions
8) Ricardo Villalobos -- Dependent and Happy
9) The Presets -- Pacifica
10) Frank Ocean -- Agent Orange (I actually don't listen to it much at all, but it's a great album nonetheless)