most regrettable choice for album of the year, as chosen by THE WIRE

btw best albums on this list are Bug, Ayler and Arrested Development real talk

lolling @ the wire is so fun

whiney please nominate your top five albums of "wire music" for 2011

The Ferraro record stands out as the least, uh, crafty of all these records, for sure.

i like those bjork records, portishead, the ayler i've never heard but i'm sure it's good

i'm listening to ferraro now oh wait i had to turn it off because i get the "joke" which just leaves unlistenable casio music

ATY over Comicopera.

whiney's jihad against neo-new-age is about 9 months past its sell-by imo sorry dude. if you can't hear the qualitative difference between ferraro & the altered zones shit you hate so much then you are doing some lazy listening imo

also, voted bjork because her music is & has always been horrible

not a big bjork fan, but vespertine is beautiful and bjork aside, the music on that is heaps more inventive than eg murray street

Vespertine, along with Tortoise, is the best, most ground-breaking record in terms of progressive sound on this list.

<3 vespertine, my 2nd favourite björk album

weirdly what stands out to me on glancing at this list is how uhhh mainstream the first 4 are! in the sense of their profile. tbh an equivalent list for most other publications would almost certainly be more embarrassing

I misread the title -- my two picks would be my favorites (and Vespertine).

weirdly what stands out to me on glancing at this list is how uhhh mainstream the first 4 are! in the sense of their profile. tbh an equivalent list for most other publications would almost certainly be more embarrassing
― degas-dirty monet (lex pretend),

Kerrang
1992 Alice In Chains - Dirt
1993 Pearl Jam - Vs
1994 Therapy? - Troublegum
1995 Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters
1996 Screaming Trees - Dust

Troublegum!

The Face
1992 1. Arrested Development - Three Years, Five Months And Two Days In The LIfe Of...
1993 Bjork - Debut
1994 Portishead – Dummy
1995 Tricky - Maxinquaye
1996 Fugees- The Score

welp, lex otm

looks like there was pretty much a consensus in those years GAPDYXX fans

I do like it when The Wire go to bat for an artist, esp. a newish one, one who is such typical fodder for the magazine. i.e. a band that only The Wire would put at #1, like Ayler, The Books, Actress.

Sorry for confusing verbs + nouns when switching btw "artist" and "band" I don't know how you guys keep it together

whiney please nominate your top five albums of "wire music" for 2011

― los krampusinos! (pomplamau5), Sunday, December 11, 2011 12:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Permalink

Article coming at the end of Dec, actually!

A GAME OF HORSESHOES

lol

Hate that The Bug POS so much, worse than Burial

Giving Far Side Virtual #1 is admirable trolling, wtg WIRE

the bug album is awesome

A Thousand Leaves is my favourite of these, and Murray Street is my least favourite. I've only heard about half of them though. Haven't heard the Ferraro.

Tony Herrington's comments on the 2011 list are interesting:

Because when you look closely, the individual wills that gave rise to such an outcome (The Wire‘s contributors say James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual is the best thing released this year) start to appear rather peculiar in relation to it, ie: out of an electorate of 60 voters, only seven actually voted for Far Side Virtual in their individual top tens – that’s less than 12 per cent of the total electorate; and none of those electors who did vote for it actually had it as their individual top release of the year.

PAZZ & JOP
1992 Arrested Development - 3 Years, 5 Months, And 2 Days In The Life Of...
1993 Liz Phair - Exile In Guyville
1994 Hole - Live Through This
1995 PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
1996 Beck - Odelay

P&J no different to other lists

I think Murray Street is the last true great SY album. I couldn't care less for the patchy, mediocre ATL. Murray Street is just so gripping, from beginning to end.

ditto

well except some of the ones since then have been pretty great, just not as great

Exactly. Sonic Nurse comes close, but it's no Murray Street

Fom their blog:

http://www.thewire.co.uk/themire/tag/releases-of-the-year

Anyway, sitting conspicuously at the top of The Wire’s Releases of the Year chart for 2011 is James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual, by dint of the simple and maybe even bleedingly obvious fact that more staff and contributors voted for it than any other release issued this year. But what does that mean exactly? Because when you look closely, the individual wills that gave rise to such an outcome (The Wire‘s contributors say James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual is the best thing released this year) start to appear rather peculiar in relation to it, ie: out of an electorate of 60 voters, only seven actually voted for Far Side Virtual in their individual top tens – that’s less than 12 per cent of the total electorate; and none of those electors who did vote for it actually had it as their individual top release of the year.

Far Side Virtual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OaIaQ8JefM

Oops sorry for posting that blog post again.

i fucking hate ilm so much

lol

But this is Sandbox ILM Lamp, you can make a REAL DIFFERENCE

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvepu1KTat1qexyuco1_400.gif

2006: Burial - Burial

yeah burial is probably the worst album itt and the most lol in retrospect (and thus regrettable?)

millions now living is maybe the worst choice in light of other options tho

waht... Millions now living is great!

And I still like Burial's album too ;_;

can someone transcribe The Wire's review of LULU from earlier this year? had no idea they liked it. looks like it made their 2011 top ten...

Two writers had it as their #1 iirc (Dave Keenan was one of them)

idg the burial skrillex.gif

the sound of one dubstep joke clapping

the Ayler box set is far and away the best of all of these.

but then the Ayler is the one thing on that list that wasn't contemporary, so it stands out in that regard.

But seriously, the concept of "album of the year" just seems so temporary as it is. And it's such an arbitrary exercise -- like a combo of stuffed-animal arranging and marketing ploy. The idea that years down the road people would discuss what is a "regrettable choice" just seems silly to me -- unless we're talking about having picked something that later led to mass murder, or the artist turned out to be a pedophile, wife-beater or racist or something.

isn't it so regrettable that they chose this one dude who can't even play a keyboard

considering how many singers that can't sing have gotten critical praise --

No idea whats funny about the James Ferraro record - I really quite like it. Prefer it to the others on this list

i have to admit i did laugh at the Casio Sk-1 and line 6 pedal combo -- because it was a cliche which led to an inside joke several years ago.

Come on what?

re: Ayler boxset. Knew of its existence but had no idea that he played w/Cecil and Graves...I've been asleep.

The early-to-mid 90s #1s are really gd. I guess people forget that Wire were staffed w/writers from both the Jazz AND the indie/pop end of the music press.

Not that I'll check but somehow doubt the latest crop of writers from the NME will get near so I wd guess (and I've only bought a cpl of issues in the last year) most of the writers come from the Merzbow end of the music paperless press.

That and K-Punk.

re: Ayler boxset. Knew of its existence but had no idea that he played w/Cecil and Graves...I've been asleep.

Graves was his go-to drummer for about a year and a half (he's on Love Cry). He didn't play much with Cecil: the snippet on the box may be the only time they played together. Supposedly, Jimmy Lyons (Cecil's alto saxophonist) wasn't a fan of Ayler's playing. But the Cecil-Ayler collaboration was long thought to be just a rumor before the box surfaced.