Some time before the new year, we will be releasing our top 10 albums of the year, but for now please enjoy some lists from the sites we love…

Pitchfork Top 50 Albums

I Guess I’m Floating Top 25 Albums

Aquarium Drunkard Top 5 Albums (x3)

The Yellow Stereo Top 20 Songs

You Ain’t No Picasso 12 Days of X-mas

Said the Gramophone Top 10 albums and top 50 songs

Rubin Recommends Top Albums

If The Graduate was reworked for the millennium generation, that line about plastics would sound something like, “I want to say one word to you.  Just one word…. Lifestyles.”

I’m pretty confident in saying that the collision course between commerce and culture have officially impacted.  Technology has created a global situation where every aspect of culture can be scraped, sorted and sold.  This lifestyle aggregation creates a more interactive and submersive  experience for the consumer, and exposes them to multi-medium recommendations.  A “If you like this - maybe you’ll like that” mentality.

That being said - there is no better arena for fusing lifestyle than music and fashion, and so it was a slam dunk to hear about the creation of Invisible DJ as music czar of Ron Herman.  Musicians have been fashion forward for decades, whether they chose to or not, and bundling the two is an obvious decision.  This coincides with the fact that we are in a carefree musical period of dance beats, high fashion and partying.  Bright Eyes is out - Boys Noize is in.

As a part of Invisible DJ’s collaboration with  Ron Herman, they are releasing a compilation on January 6th of the juiciest tracks they could wrangle.  Check out the tracklist below and drop in and pick out the best jacket to go with your Santogold.

Santogold - Say Aha

Von Sudenfed - The Rinohead

Time Machine - Beat It Up

White Arrows - City Boy (KKS Remix)

Kid Sister - Control

Jacques Renault - Magic Games

Hey Willpower - Uh-Uh-Uh

Adult - Nite Life

Sunny Day Sets Fire - Wilderness

120 Days - Sleepwalking

Casxio - Seventeen (Noel Zancanella remix)

Mighty Six Ninety - Mistakes Like These (Milo Decruz Remix)

Hockey - Work

Heartsrevolution - Digital Suicide (Lullaby)

Owen Pallett has provided a bit of a head scratcher on his pre, proper LP Heartland release - Plays to Please.  Throughout the five song EP, there are attempts to wrap his classically inspired instrumentation into a more condensed, vocaled narrative; however, he ends up finding himself stuck somewhere between sonata composer and singer songwriter.

Since this is a lead up to Heartland, it’s reasonable to think these are more a collection of half baked b-sides.  “Horsetail Feathers” is probably the most LP worthy song on Plays to Please.  A theatrical, musical inspired track, you can almost picture Owen tap dancing his way down a constructed city street set in an old Canadian theater.

The longer I’ve sat with this five song collection, the more I’ve warmed up to it and found the melodies and through lines in each song that really passed by me the first few plays.  If you enjoyed Final Fantasy’s last LP He Poos Clouds (terrible name but great record!) then give this EP a few times through before you reach your conclusion.

[mp3] Final Fantasy - Horsetail Feathers

The origins of Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit’s musical collaboration are about as “by chance” as they get.  Esau is an immigrant to East London via Malawi, East Africa and runs a used furniture store in Clapton.  Radioclit happen to own a studio right down the street from Esau’s furniture store.  They invited him to a party one night and soon after began making music.

‘The Very Best’ Mixtape is a reinvention of several recent indie highlights (MIA, Vampire Weekend and Architecture in Helsinki to name a few), and more obscure pulls from film scores etc…  In this sample heavy age of Pro Tools, there needs to be further distinction between what constitutes a “remix” and a “reworking.”  XXXchange is a fantastic remixer.  I talked about his talents a while back.  Panda Bear on the other hand is more of a reworker.  Jonathan elaborated on this point last month, when he covered the Notwist reworking.  The Very Best fits somewhere in the middle, because of the wholly unique vocals of Esau.  This element makes The Very Best feel more like a proper album than mixtape.

Click HERE to download the entire mixtape FREE.

Getting a genuine reaction from a crowd is a hard thing to come by.  Especially when your methods are derived from musical instruments and the city you preside in is Los Angeles.  Let’s be honest, despite my love for the city of angels, we don’t provide the warmest musical environment for younger artists - especially on the West side of LA.  However, No Age are part of a handful of bands that defied LA’s smug attitude by starting their own scene in (still somewhat uncharted) downtown LA at a venue called The Smell.  It was this energy and spirit that filled the Troubadour last week.

Titus Andronicus’ stage presence and strong ability to rock was a great appetizer for people to munch on before the No Age entree arrived.  I grabbed their LP off Emusic a while back, but never got too far into it.  That will quickly change after witnessing their live show.  The night quickly picked up the pace once No Age made it to the stage.

Luckily, the crowd present knew nothing of the traditional cross armed, slouched approach to watching live music, and quickly plowed out a ten foot free flowing dance/mosh pit.  I use the word mosh pretty loosely since at one point someone’s glasses fell off and the “moshers” quickly stopped and started shining their cellphones across the ground until the spectacles were retrieved safely.  The moment proved to be kind of funny, and yet another indication that the fans of No Age aren’t your typical cynics.

This was my third time seeing the wonder duo, and the charm that they speak of is true.  I’ve come to realize that lower-fi the artist, the higher-fi the system necessary for them to perform up to snuff.  It may be an oxymoron or an obvious statement, but I hadn’t thought about it until No Age’s guitar and drum assault began.  Under the roof of a classic music venue, the raw explosion of DIY (hate that term but it definitely works in this case) punk rock finally came into bloom in a way only the recorded albums had before.

Thanks to Shock Hound for putting on this free show!

[mp3] No Age - Everybody’s Down

Over at Rewriteable Content, I used to write a reoccurring post that paired up recent books I’d been reading with a corresponding song.  I thought I would start that tradition on this blog as well.

Infinite Jest

[mp3] Antony and the Johnsons - Another World

Rant

[mp3] Bonnie Prince Billy - The Seedling

The Year of Magical Thinking

[mp3] Department of Eagles - What Can Be Done

Ghost Wars

[mp3] Black Mountain - Tyrants

The Road

[mp3] Modest Mouse - Tiny Cities Made of Ashes