Albums
of the year
2010
I felt it appropriate this year to change the title of my annual best albums post by replacing the word KILL with LIVE. It has the same effect I think, but with a positive slant. At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to do this post at all since, as some of you know, my Mom passed away last month from a 15+ year battle with congestive heart failure. My original intention was for the first time to actually write my own reviews (who would have thought, right?), but the events of the past couple months have had the bulk of my free time. So instead of not abandoning my yearly tradition (when there are so many great albums which must be heard by all of you!), I figured I would do it as I have in years past. To compensate, however, I created a companion playlist you can stream at Grooveshark so that you can effortlessly listen to tracks from this year’s esteemed “winners”! I picked two tracks from each album, which was a tough call as there really aren’t any bad tracks on any of these albums. For the album from Janelle Monáe I picked 3 songs to be fair, as the album is so incredibly long and every track is fantastic. I believe in my heart of hearts these albums would be rewarding for each and every one of you to pick up and listen to, in full, and as loud as possible. These are also in no particular order, except for the first album by Radio Dept, which is without any doubt the best of the year. Enjoy, and drive with aloha …
6
Oriol
Night and Day
“Oriol’s debut album is magnificent, plain and simple. True to the album’s title, he paints warm tropical soundscapes with the cool palette of night: late-album interlude ‘Fantasy’ sounds like some idealized tropical resort, letting the plumes of oppressive equatorial heat diffuse into the darkening sky as cooler temperatures take over and the listener is whisked into the humid reveries of ‘LW’. Oriol’s tunes tend to spiral out from the centre with luxurious, multi-layered synth lines, like the gentle lashings of fur-lined bliss on ‘Jam’ or the way the synth on ‘Flux’ sounds like it’s steadily sublimating around the track’s churning centre.” – Factmag
“The vibe of ‘Night & Day’ is helplessly happy and warm, soaked with a spectrum of Bermuda-short colours and a halcyon dazed stupor that says, fuck it, lets boogie.” – Boomkat