Magazine/website/record store BEST OF 2011 end-of-year list pile-up

I mean, I really can only laugh when someone accuses me of being a sucker because I don't like Korn.

Like, yeah, that massive internet conspiracy to fool me into thinking John Maus is better than a terrible nu-metal band grafting shitty brostep over their songs got me. Thanks Altered Zones!

No, I totally understand not liking Korn. I don't understand liking John Maus.

i showed deathgrips to a friend who spent all of highschool trying to get me into k0rn and he loved it

OMG GOOGLE KORN FIND WIL SMIF

The John Maus album is really just "okay", but even the worst track on their was miles ahead of the three Korn/Skrillex songs I heard.

rights for gays oh yeah

i mean their list is whatever, but i'm deeply, sincerely embarrassed for anyone who honestly think john maus is better than korn. it's pretty much just admitting you believe everything you read.

twitter is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people for how they shall think

are you whiney dw/it.gif? do you like cities aviv??

Death Grips release is waaaay too harsh sounding, I can listen to like 1 song every other week or so.

trying again with the death grips mixtape now.

i think it hear a 50s sample in one of the songs? the mixtape song is spread eagle, i think; sample is link wray, maybe.

why does everyone think i'm whiney

VERY good question

People actually like that Beastie Boys lp huh?

Beastie Boys LP is dope

well, that mixtape is better than i first thought. got to be in the right mood for it, tho.

feel like i need to listen to the captain and tenille now.

maybe there should be a death-grips/captain-and-tenille collaboration.

OMG GOOGLE KORN FIND WIL SMIF

― v-shasty, Saturday, December 3, 2011 1:20 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

lol, isnt that how the bands name is spelled?

why does everyone think i'm whiney

well you have a similar posting style so i thought u might be

you can still tell me if you like cities aviv tho, im doing a survey

it's actually KoRn w/ a backwards R

cities aviv suck

i had always thought it was a backwards k... (xp)

i think it's supposed to be so that the K and R are facing each other

Korn (often stylized as KoЯn) is an American nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, formed in 1993.

Kohttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/math/3/0/c/30c28f76ef7517dbd19df4d4c683dbe6.png

I...like the first two Korn albums OK, and I think the John Maus album is amazing...?

where do I stand in the freethinking olympics?

hustla, u and whiney should totally hang out sometime

my point was more that its not a list of 50 records that sits comfortably together in my eyes, and that the only real throughline is 'tumblr buzz'

EOY lists are not meant to have any sort of "throughline"!

seriously...y'all know how every EOY list is made? it really is as simple as just balloting writers. no publication can be bothered to rig or fix the results, or craft a list that "espouses" a "hivemind" or "worldview". and nor should they. when an EOY list is shit, the thing to criticise is the shit taste of its contributors.

i mean unless you're still hung up on p4k's bizarro hivemind-brand obsession but that is not how music crit should work.

Quite. John Maus and Cold Cave are obscenely high in The Quietus list. This is really irritating not only because I fucking loathe the John Maus album and mildly dislike the Cold Cave one but because that apparently some people will naturally presume that I'm just dropping those names to be hip and may not even have heard them.

I don't know about other sites but tQ takes up so much of my time I don't have that much time to worry about what other sites are doing. Most of my information on other digital publications comes from ILM or Twitter. It's hard to build up any kind of convincing picture of what other sites consider core.

There are some posters here who will choose their albums of the year with one eye on how this will present them and their taste in music which is a good thing in some ways but I'm not convinced that any significant number of music journo/editorial types have that level of sophistication (or time) to present themselves in such a manner.

There are (what I take to be) obviously a few 'cool lists' out there every year but I wouldn't have the confidence to state definitively which they are. After all, I know my two colleagues love the John Maus album as we've had blazing rows about it. This is certainly not an affectation on their part so how can I level this criticism at others... no matter how irritating I find it.

If I were trying to construct a list that would have people take me more seriously btw, I wouldn't be repping for Obake and Cornershop I'd be repping for Beyonce and DJ Quik... it would be a lot easier for me to do this but I think the former are awesome and the latter merely good. But again that's only based on reading ILM not what other sites have to say.

john maus was amazing long before the press decided to get on board, i think at least one or two other ilxors also had 'love is real' on their 2007 ballots.

i am deeply, sincerely concerned for ppl on this board who have lost perspective to the extent that a korn/skrillex collaboration is eoty material

I thought that was just a running joke.

I mean, you have to work on that assumption, otherwise you're looking at some serious Mayan end tymes shit going on right here. Or maybe there's more to this Insane Clown Posse remixed by Bently Rhythm Ace shit that I'm initially hearing.

kmt at music journalists devoting attention to korn/skrillex either for the lulz (smh) or out of popularity-chasing desperation

good tactic for an irrelevant band like korn to gain some column inchezzz though

of all the criticisms I level at acts, "irrelevant" definitely makes me feel warmest inside

you loathe the John Maus album, Doran? that's slightly disheartening (considering that the Quietus half-year list is how I first heard of it)

okay, here comes the big one....

Total Guitar (UK) EOY 2011

01 Mastodon : The hunter
02 Foo Fighters : Wasting light
03 Japanese Voyeurs : Yok
04 Anna Calvi : Anna Calvi
05 Joe Bonamassa : Dust bowl
06 Rise Against : Endgame
07 Machine Head : Under the locust
08 Megadeth : Thirteen
09 Steve Cradock : Peace city west
10 Skindred : Urban black
11 Twin Atlantic : Free
12 Noel Gallaghers' High Flying Birds
13 Turbowolf : Turbowolf
14 Anthrax : Workshop music
15 Black Country Communion : II
16 Denis Coffey : Denis Coffey
17 Opeth : Heritage
18 Miles Kane : Colour of the trap
19 Funeral for a friend : Welcomme home Armagedon !
20 Tessercact : One
21 The Joy Formidable : The big roar
22 Sylesis : Edge of the earth
23 Vintage Trouble : The bomb shelter sessions
24 Trivium : In waves
25 Duane Eddy : Road trip
26 Alkaline trip : Damnesia
27 Death letter Circus : This is the warning
28 Dream Theater : A dramatic turns of events
29 Fleet Foxes : Helplessness blues
30 Johnathan Wilson : Gentle spirit
31 PJ Harvey : Let England shake
32 Social Distorsion : Hard Times & nursery rhymes
33 Elbow : Build a rocket boys !
34 Frankie & the Heartstrings : Tender
35 Evile : Five serpent's kiss
36 Pete Yorn : Pete Yorn
37 Rival Sons : Pressure & Tone
38 Russian Circles : Empros
39 White Denim : D
40 Amplifier : The octopus
41 Derek Sherinian : Oceana
42 The Answer : Revival
43 Gentlemans Pistols : At her majesty's pleasure
44 Letlive : Fake history
45 Mr Big : What if ...
46 Arch Enemy : Khaos Legions
47 Tedeshi Trucks Band : Revelator
48 The Dangerous Summer : War paint
49 We Are The Ocean : Go now and live
50 Philip Sayce : Ruby Electric

45 Mr Big : What if ...

lol we opened for these guys in August

totally disgusting that total guitar mag has only guitar music in their list

no publication can be bothered to rig or fix the results, or craft a list that "espouses" a "hivemind" or "worldview". and nor should they

yes they should. i mean maybe a generalist publication or daily paper can sorta get away with not having anything to say abt music except 'these X number of albums got made this year. we like them' but if yr publication isnt putting any thought into what yr eoy list says than maybe you dont need to make one

it is so depressing to me that anyone genuinely believs rigid, dogmatic bullshit like that

kind of like repping for an album is a political statement, as though what you're repping for are "values" or a "wider" "aesthetic" rather than the music - it doesn't acknowledge how consuming music is a messy and illogical affair, how stuff that moves you can come from any place or any aesthetic at any time, and that roping off an aesthetic is basically a mug's game

the music we talk abt on ilm/in these eoy lists is indivisible from the social/cultural/experiential context that envelops it. the 'values' (good word imo) that an album or song embody matter just as much as how a song sounds, really. pubs trying to front like all that matters are the formal qualities of ~~the music~~ are lying to themselves & their readers

anyway it doesnt make sense to me to divorce albums from context/taste and present them kinda sui generis or w/e

Henrietta: It kind of doesn't matter what I think about it personally (and I probably shouldn't have said anything on here) but the thing is, Luke, who I co-run the site with and Rory, our third member of staff, both love it. Personally I can see that there's an interesting story there and a decent debate to be had and I'm more than happy to have them on the site.

Loathe is perhaps too strong a word but I wanted to pick the most extreme example I could think of. I feel the same way about Gang Gang Dance and Ariel Pink and a few other American bands from the last couple of years but for the most part, we're all extremely happy about our top 50.

This poster ^^ above me is talking out of his/her hat. Having a list that reflects your tastes doesn't mean you don't have anything to say about music. I look at it as the one chance in the year that we get to talk about music in a much less involved way.

bullshit! that's entirely about pre-judging music based on a rigid "value system" that you're not prepared to admit is malleable or can be altered. that path is route one to eliminating all outliers and stuff that doesn't "fit" into your "value system"

xp obv

i mean that is basically how rock crit has functioned for years and years - privileging certain value systems over others - and it has not led to anywhere good.

also, it's like...it boxes you in as a critic as well. "oh no this album doesn't represent my ~values~ i can't vote for it." fuck off!

i mean lists of things are p fun to make i guess so w/e but i dont really see what possible value you two think your eoy lists have if they dont engage w/anything deeper

lol @ lex of all ppl fetting mad abt rigid value systems tho

and i mean the challenge isnt to discard albums you like from yr list because they dont fit but to engage w/ them so that you ~get~ why they fit w/ the system your already operating w/in