My top 5 list for 2008
1. My Entire Record Collection Honestly, I don't think I heard more than ten records that were even released this year. I spent most of the year digitizing my current collection, along with reaquirring a couple hundred albums I had lost over the past 5 to 8 years. I now have about 100gbs worth of music dating back to 1934 all the up to last week.
Now my turntable, 4-track, computer, and stereo have been effectively mereged into one symbotic system. Each part is able to send and receive music from one piece to any other without much or any thought/effort on my part. (except obviously, the turntable only sends music)
I've started using a a program called Amarok to play all my music. It's a great player, I can load all 16,997 and growing songs in my collection all at once, and it'll play tracks at random for the six weeks and one day that would take. It also reports my playlist directly to my lastfm account, which makes lastfm alot more useful to me than it was before. (It even has a really nice profile for Marvin The Robot, which I did not create) It somehow knows to play hip hop in the morning and Elvis Costello at night, very brilliant!!!
2. The Invisible Hand - self titled cassette This Ohio/West Virgina two piece has all the hooks of Alien Lanes, mixxed with all the harmonic sweetness/oddity of the best Elephant 6 releases. Just lo-fi enough to make my heart sing, but crystal clear and delightful all the way.
3. Nas - The N Word album, mixtape, or any of the 800 versions of it out there Here's the portrait of a web 2.0 album. This record had half a dozen fan remixes before it even hit the street. Throw on top of that the deliberately early releases and decoy releases meant to subvert and throw off bootleggers. It's a phenomena that's much bigger than a simple Nas release. Between it's unspeakable tittle, and way the interenet immediately took ownership of this recording. It's been incredibly fun to watch.
4. Silver Jews - Look Out Moutain, Look Out Sea I owned this record for two days before I could play and sing along with every song. I think I listened to nothing else that whole week.
5. Stark Folk - Ryan Shaffer and Brady Burkett have been one of my favorite songwritting duos for just over a decade now. This newest incarnation of their musical friendship has been a real treat. The name of the band says everything about the sound except how good it all is.
_________________ You can't forgive yourself. You can't forgive your dreams. But if you say the right words, your uniform gets cleaned. -American Music Club
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