best albums you've discovered so far this year.

[iron mitchell]

mammal - nights (a little less of the boombap sound here. more fuzz and atmosphere. his stuff on the just now released split with bran (...) pos is even better, but the bran stuff is little less appealing to me than his older stuff. get both, though.)
reynols - the bolomo mogal f hits (hey! kinda moan-y psych-rock and a little of their classic drone sound mixed in with this newer, more accessible sound they're toying with.)
panicsville - sterile (holy shit! i can't believe he topped "evil"! seriously, he even revisits the classic vomit sound with what sounds like an extended dry heave! repeated over and over and over! andy's brand of anti-music is seriously making itself look more and more like the work of a genius rather than a sadistic "post-rrrecords" guy with each release! best album i've heard this year, i think.
knifestorm - body world (at first, i was way more into the staple pie cdr, finding this one a little less interesting and almost too drone-y. however, i've found myself popping this one in a lot in the last month or two and it's truly a piece of classic buzz drone. fucking classic like queen, man!)
fat worm of error - summer mixtape 2003 cassette (freaked the fuck out caroliner project! i find this to be a little bit more insane than caroliner's latest offerings, but that might just be because i had the chance to see caroliner live and that gives me a visual to go along with, unlike fat worm. either way, this is for any fan of caroliner, particularly the less bluegrass-influenced material.)
dead machines - plays vampire planet (wow, total lock groove static warmness. driving to any other album at night is retarded and boring now. like bathing, but not wet and annoying.)
noise nomads/diagram a - split (good lord, this was the fucking way to start the new year... insanely primitive caveman fucking RACKET on the nomads behalf and bizarre, almost (pre?)post-apocolyptic, analog noise from diagram a. this is great stuff for sitting in the park at night and listening to on headphones.
doktor kettu - black zeniths (completely rad space atmospherics with the smoke issued forth by his other cdr's pushed back into the background and the loneliness of the actual music brought to the front. really nice!)
john weise - ghost call (another instant classic from weise. this time i seriously can't think of a way to describe this record. all i know is it's really great and the only thing that has knocked it from it's pedestal on my turntable in the past two months for more than one play is pink floyd's "piper at the gates..." lp. that says a lot.
spykes - silent locks (this is the record that ANYONE who does drugs has to own! all completely mind/sound/matter fucked and it all came from the sounds that spykes gathered from an abandoned(?) house. it might seem random to some folks, but those people are fools.)

some other things that are growing on me really fast are:
chib - moco
tan as fuck - u-sound archive
aaron hibbs - companding
wolf eyes - droll 13
deerhoof - milk man
xiu xiu - fabulous muscles (got it in december but close enough)
black leather jesus - all of 'em i can find!
v/a - princess nicotine
amps for christ - the people at large
liars - they were wrong so we drowned (damned if these guys haven't gotten interesting all of a sudden!)
rubber-o cement/panicsville - split lp
mossmaster and mothmaster cdr's
daniel menche - invoker, blackwing, & scourge, that's her name!
thee silver mountain reveries - pretty little lightning paw (best thing they've done in some time!)

[The Anon]

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Altered States Of America
Godspeed You Black Emperor - Yanqui U.X.O.
Fantomas - Delirium Cordia
Meshuggah - Chaosphere
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around (IV)
Massive Attack - 100th Window
Iron Monkey - Our Problem

[iron mitchell]

if you like that godspeed album (which i think it's by far the worst thing they've done, which is way better than almost anything anyone else has done in years) then you should definitely get that silver mountain reveries album while you can... limited press and all. they are making leaps and bounds with this release, i fucking kid you not.

[CLICK9]

tre hardison- liberation
amel larrieux- bravebird
dwele- rise
goapele- even closer
jazzyfatnastees- once & future

[Protoclown]

pretentious twats - more obscure than you

[Miss Modular]

WINNER: PROTOCLOWN

[Rez]

ok.


(as soon as i read the first ppg, i knew it was iron mitch )

anyway. mine's not too obscure, and i like it that way for now. because even though i like daniel menche, mammal, and wolf eyes,

squarepusher, air, and dizzee rascal are the only ones this year that got me excited about music itself, not just what it's doing, which is the case for a lot of experimental people.

and fuck xiu xiu and deerhoof.

[iron mitchell]

i don't see anything i'd consider pretentious on the list, aside from godspeed (and what listening pile list doesn't include godspeed?). just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it's not obscure, and certainly not pretentious. it's just not the pixies, for once.

[Rez]

i never really got the pretentious label(cept for GYBE, but thats obvious when that band tries to classify what music is "art" and what isnt)... its music people like making...

[iron mitchell]

yep, and even my completely musically unaware friends who have gone to noise shows or heard noise records with me have no problem understanding that this is practically the opposite of pretention.

[Protoclown]

Chill out man, I was making a joke

I like some of that stuff, and I love Godspeed You Black Emperor!

[Helm]

The 3rd and the Mortal are excelent. Painting on Glass is one of the better albums I discovered this year.

Kayo Dot are amazing. Formerly Maudlin of the Well, who I still maintain are the best experimental metal has to offer.

[bigtimecow]

daughters - canada songs

[iron mitchell]

kayo dot are indeed fantastic.

[Helm]

Yes! I'm glad you liked. Say, would you like it if we traded a few burned CD-Rs or something? If I can make windows media player dump my ripped music list, you could pick whatever you might want.

[iron mitchell]

do you have soulseek? my two names are stumblerunfall and stumblerunfall2. for some reason the pc my stumblerunfall2 name is used seems to have a firewall on it. i certainly didn't put one there, but a friend of mine says that i have one. when i get the time to actually give a damn i'll fix it. otherwise, cdr's are rad too.

[crash0814]

Dizzee Rascal

Flushin' MC's down the loo
If you don't believe me bring your posse bring your crew

But I only jest, as I would like to say that Boy in Da Corner is fucking phenomenal.

[Ooner]

The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Out Hair When We're Gone?

[iron mitchell]

i want to fight everyone who likes the unicorns. they are seriously the worst band since creed.

[Royal Tenenbaum]

Rufus Wainwright - Want One
Papa M - Hole of Burning Alms
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Sings Palace Greatest Hits

[crash0814]

I don't "get" GY!BE. To me, they kinda just seem like classical with guitars thrown in.

[Helm]

i'm on soulseek but I'm on dial-up so it would take a week for me to get or send a record (not that that's stopped me from getting a few albums off of it). So I guess for your benefit CD-Rs are a better deal.

[Helm]

And that is because indeed GSYBE are more of a contemporary classical essemble than they are a rock band. Good thing your brain seems to understand it.

[iron mitchell]

okay, i dig ya'. i have so much shit that i'll never try to type up what i have but i can take your requests, whether it be "give me everything by no neck blues band" or "give me a bunch of shit that sounds like a ceiling fan". i may be a bit slow 'cuz i've scheduled burning approximately 200 cdr's in the next three weeks (i'm putting out a compilation to be due by the end of the month), but i'll try to be as swift as i can.
gybe don't seem very classical or rock to me. just because they use those instruments doesn't mean much. same way they're not a drone band just because they sometimes throw it about sometimes.

[Helm]

Let's do this after your compilation.

And GSYBE have more in common with (as I hear it at least) Bartok string quartet pieces than a rock group. So, um... contemporary classical. The focus on dynamics sets them a bit apart from everything else (what do you people call mogwai, post rock?) but the basis behind the music still reminds me of some con. classical composers like Philip Glass.