My Top Five Records of 2009
In spirit of year-end lists, I thought I'd share my top five recordings released this year. Considering the cross of genres, they aren't in any real particular order (aside from the mental priority list I cooked up in my head).
I really love sharing about music, so if you have any recommendations or a list of your own to drop please hook me up in the comments or on Twitter.
This is a quite valiant fourth studio effort from a group who single-handedly made it right to keep metal music in the larger audiences' ears this year.
Beyond just being a metal record though, it's a front-to-back Pink-Floydian experience that shouldn't be digested in bits or fall victim to tracks being separated. Swallow whole.
I'm a bit jaded since I loved his last record, 'True Magic', so much but this really is a solid hip hop record. Lyrically and from a production standpoint it's smart, insightful, and stands toe-to-toe with any of Mos Def's prior albums.
If 'Black on Both Sides' was groundbreaking then 'The Ecstatic' is flat out innovation.
There's really nothing else to say about this record besides the fact that
it is just absolutely punishing, brutal death metal. These guys made a pact twenty years ago to make death metal their priority, and now "anything else that comes with it is just a bonus".
'Blood Oath' is a seminal death metal album, and a highlight of 2009 for this group that is two decades deep into their career.
Although rumor has it that this may have been their last record, it would definitely be going out with a bang. Sonically pleasing & narcotically subtle, Isis pushes the boundaries of instrumentation yet again with what I can only describe as an almost perfectly intricate imagination of their entire catalog.
Headphones please.
The French electronic duo have been pushing out plenty of pleasing aural experiences over the last fifteen years, and 'Love 2' is no exception.
A textured masterpiece primed and ready to somehow find it's way into some blue jeans commercial, the guys that brought you the amazing music from The Virgin Suicides expand on their already signature sound with a new percussionist and a healthy sense of experimental space.
