What a year 2010 turned out to be, filled with both adventure and peril, there was so much great music to be gained and lost this year. On the reissue front, I filled my head with glam rock and proto-punk - from Roxy Music and T. Rex to the Runaways and the Ramones - before stopping for a long gaze at the legendary Everly Brothers near the end of the year with a wonderful compilation covering their seminal years at Cadence (1957-1960).
I devoured books about music, blogs about music, and magazines about music - rooting myself in the timeless aesthetics, the same way that the earliest incarnation of the New York Dolls gathered themselves at local NYC dives, devoting themselves and their pocket change to rough and tumble jukebox singles artists such as Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and the Shirelles. I said goodbye to very important influences - Don Van Vliedt and Alex Chilton, while mourning the loss of John Lennon more than ever this year. 2010 was also the year the greatest of the Stooges' albums - Kill City - was cleaned up and reissued with the original cover art forever cementing the greatest of all American bands reputation as the hands-down best of all time, pissing gleefully on that old farty windbag named Springsteen. The Stones in all their glory just couldn't replicate the same thrills with the reissue of their masterpiece - Exile On Main Street - why, because the band has past its prime and any steps forward for them can only include reaching way back to apply the same faux-bling gleam to their back catalogue as the world of pop music those old bag of bones operate in now. It's because pop music completely divorced itself from reality this year, giving me ample time to focus on the music of my trade - electronic music - but still found time to dabble in dub, psychedelia, and kraut(ish)rock along the way. Hell, even John Frusciante and the Black Keys found time to tickle my fancy - pop stars in most people's opinion I suppose.
In 2010 there was the swingin Sixties music of Persia, African disco, a new Fall album, and even a little dubstep - although I wasn't easily swayed by what I see as just another manufactured flavor of the month ala drum & bass circa Timeless. Few dubstep artists are rooted in any solid aesthetic and with no foundation comes no future - just empty promises and weak excuses for the impending disaster that lay in the days ahead.
I became close to the Mexican music community, made friends in New York, Ibiza, and Berlin along the way, hearing great tracks played in the dark alleyways and corridors of Chico, San Francisco, and Seattle. There was simply too much to be thankful for so I thought it was time to look back on the year and found myself oddly nostalgic, a mood that rarely strikes me. So sparing you any further blah-blah-blah I present you the year that was. If one word could describe 2010 it would be unrepentant, because at my age and with the gazillions of records I have amassed in this lifetime, I finally had the notion to say "meh" to just about all of them and felt quite alright with that as I sank firmly into the Shaggs' masterpiece Philosophy Of The World. Let's hope 2011 offers more of the same...
Top 25 albums/compilations
1. Pulshar - Inside (Desolat)
2. Hatikvah - Synchronicity (Soma)
3. Agoria-Balance 016 2xCD (EQ)
4. Damian Lazarus - Fabric54 (Fabric)
5. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker (Modular)
6. Bjoern Torske - Kokning (Smalltown Supersound)
7. Black Keys - Brothers (Nonesuch)
8. Pezzner-The Tracks Are Alive (Freerange)
9. Sascha Dive - Restless Nights (Deep Vibes)
10. Crosstown Rebels pres Rebel Rave (Crosstown Rebels)
11. James Teej-Evening Harvest (Rekids)
12. Juan Maclean-DJ-Kicks (K7)
13. Ripperton-Niwa (Green)
14. Spirit Catcher - Partners In Crime (Systematic)
15. Kenneth James Gibson - Delusion Tales & Non Silence (Culprit)
16. Sebastian Mullaert -Wa Wu We 2x CD (Mule Electronic)
17. Limaçon-Tarry Not (Thoughtless Music)
18. Leo Zero - Disconnect (Strut)
19. Paul Schulleri - Strich & Faden (Subtrak)
20. Martyn-Fabric 50 (Fabric)
21. Guajira - Aguardiente (Ombligo)
22. Apparat - DJ-KiCKS (K7)
23. Various - Audiomatique History Part 1 (Audiomatique)
24. K-X-P - S/T (Smalltown Supersound)
25. Various - Finders Keepers Presents Pomegranates (B-Music)
Top 20 tracks
1. Brien Scott - Ickenham Station (Symbio Remix)(white)
2. Giovanni Verga - Afternight (Danilo Schneider Rmx) (Blaq)
3. Lula Circus - Morning Love (Broquade)
4. Audioelectronic - Two Trains Running (Nude Photo Music)
5. Morgans - Your Sweet Dream (Dialtone)
6. Robert Babicz - Pink Trees (Bedrock)
7. Yungchen Lhamo & Hamza - Wind Horse Rising (Windhorse)
8. Dolly La Parton - Cornbread, Fish & Collard Greens (Be My Sheep)
9. Deepak Sharma + Dieter Krause - Wolkenreise (DJ Qu Remix)(Hidden Recordings)
10. Android Cartel - One For Santiago (Sketchbook)
11. Sishi Roesch - Back To 92 (Diego Moreno Warehouse Mix)(Digital Delight)
12. Israel Vich - The Musicians (Pantamuzik)
13. Bloody Mary - Arabesque (Dame-Music)
14. Rodux - Iron Fan (Thoughtless Music)
15. Stefan Tretau - Dzongkha (Night Drive Music)
16. Chris Fortier - Despegue (Symbio's Deep Space Mix)(Fade)
17. Isaac - Pickles (We Are Here)
18. Riff Raff - Psycho Cycles (Riff Raff)
19. Derek Marin - Rakimuse (Thoughtless Music)
20. Slam - Hot Knives (Gary Beck Remix)(Paragraph)
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