The crown jewel of our annual Best Of series has got to be the Album list. It’s the one list we put most effort into - as we start working on it early November but keep on changing things up until we started writing this little piece of text to accompany it - and most people seem to look forward to. Without further ado…
01 Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel 02 Lana Del Rey - Born To Die 03 Frank Ocean - channel ORANGE 04 Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d. city 05 Cold Specks - I Predict A Graceful Expulsion 06 Bat For Lashes - The Haunted Man 07 Cat Power - Sun 08 Jessie Ware - Devotion 09 The xx - Coexist 10 Grizzly Bear - Shields 11 Clock Opera - Ways To Forget 12 First Aid Kit - The Lion’s Roar 13 How to Dress Well - Total Loss 14 Beach House - Bloom 15 iamamiwhoami - kin 16 Niki & the Dove - Instinct 17 Chairlift - Something 18 Grimes - Visions 19 Chromatics - Kill For Love 20 Alt-J - An Awesome Wave 21 Marina & the Diamonds - Electra Heart 22 El Perro Del Mar - Pale Fire 23 Porcelain Raft - Strange Weekend 24 Bobby Womack - The Bravest Man In The Universe 25 Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan 26 Holy Other - Held 27 Perfume Genius - Put Your Back N 2 It 28 Lower Dens - Nootropics 29 Kindness - World, You Need A Change Of Mind 30 Taken By Trees - Other Worlds
A special mention goes out to Antony and the Johnsons’ Cut The World - we don’t include live recordings or anthologies or anything like that in our yearly Album list, but if we did it would be very high up this list. Same goes for last year by the way: the “new” Kate Bush record Director’s Cut would have been top 3 for sure if we included those kind of records.
We don’t include mixtapes either, but decided to do a list our favorites up anyway - the list is quite short, but all are of a very high quality.
01 Mykki Blanco - Cosmic Angel: The Illuminati Prince/ss 02 Lorine Chia - Lorine 03 Angel Haze - Reservation 04 Evian Christ - Kings And Them 05 Chromatics - Running From The Sun
These are the EP’s we strongly enjoyed in 2012 (and will probably enjoy for all the years to come). As usual, we require a release to have at least 3 tracks to be considered as an EP, so singles with a b-side or double a-side singles or whatever don’t count towards this EP list.
Our number one pick is pretty obvious, as it’s the one EP we’ve been listening to on constant repeat all through 2012 (for real). There have been a lot of stellar EP’s this year though, so we urge you to check all of them out.
01 Haim - Forever 02 Solange - True 03 MS MR - Candy Bar Creep Show 04 Imaginary Family - Hidden 05 S O H N - The Wheel 06 Laura Mvula - She 07 Howl - Happy Valley 08 Daniel Rossen - Silent Hour / Golden Mile 09 Twigs - Twigs 10 Ryan Hemsworth - Last Words 11 Rhye - Open 12 Eddi Front - Eddi Front 13 Faws - Antonym 14 Halona King - Halona King 15 Romare - Meditations On Afrocentrism 16 CFCF - Exercises 17 Foxes - Warrior 18 Pacific Air - Long Live KO KO 19 s / s / s - Beak & Claw 20 Slime - Increases II 21 Rainy Milo - Limey 22 Pure Bathing Culture - Pure Bathing Culture 23 Ratking - Wiki93 24 Sky Ferreira - Ghost 25 Disclosure - The Face
As usual, we take a look back and list our personal highlights of the past year. What records did we enjoy most, what songs in particular were on constant repeat (on our stereo and/or in our heads) and what videos have we gazed upon a million times (rough guess) throughout 2012?
Today we kick off our Best of 2012 series with the best videos of 2012. We care a lot about a visual accompaniment of a song: it’s the one thing (take note: remixes can’t) that can give a song a boost and make you “experience” in a more visual way. Sometimes videos are so great that we actually start liking the song more because we know the story behind it or just have something to visualize it with.
That being said - here are -in no particular order (but if you’d ask Lana Del Rey’s video for Ride would be our Number One)- our favorite Videos of 2012.
