Record of the Year 2020

[john eden]

That King Mob poster is a bit full on though, I will grant you.

 

[john eden]

Personally I would worry about people who ONLY listened to stuff that is covered by The Wire 24/7.

 

[luka]

Oh ok, I misread it

 

[john eden]

Oh ok, I misread it

Yeah no worries, I can see how that might have happened. 😂

 

[luka]

John can you clock in on that Barty listen to this thread? Would you mind?

 

[john eden]

John can you clock in on that Barty listen to this thread? Would you mind?

I will get on that now, sure.

 

[luka]

I'm serious about this because it's music I believe in

 

[Leo]

While I wouldn't knock any albums in particular, the resulting Wire list is always shit. It's a list of albums that several of their contributors put somewhere on an individual list for some reason or other. That always leads to a list of relative common denominator blandness that pleases no one – except the people actually on the list, I suppose.

FWIW here's a list of albums they could have chosen: https://borritwem.blogspot.com/2020/12/2020.html

nice list, good call on witch'n monk. RE: the wire, it's interesting to not knock any of the albums yet dislike the list of them!

 

[DannyL]

Here's another year end list from someone to do with Tusk who I started following on Twitter. Posting 'cos of listened to a couple of these and they're great, and 'cos the majority of them are absent from any other lists I've seen.
Abra Cadabra- Product Of My Environment
African Head Charge - Churchical Chant of the Iyabinghi
Bacillus - Death Past Capacity Bad Amputee - Convenience Kills
Blóm - Flower Violence
Burd Ellen - Says the Never Beyond
Cath & Phil Tyler - To The Dust
Dead Meat - The End of Their World is Coming
Driss Hachim - African Space Command
Duma - Duma
Ghösh - (all their singles)
I Live In Netherlands - ILIN2
INFX - Consume Your Own Identity
Nazar - Guerrilla
nikishev. - Drum Works EP
Riivaaja Syvyyksistä - Demo IV: Tunnen läsnäoloa
Rubix Kitten - Existential Symbiotic Transitive Breakdown: A Precursor for Healing
SPICE SEARCH - SPICE SEARCH
Shirley Collins - Heart's Ease
Swamp Dogg - Sorry You Couldn't Make It
Tara Clerkin Trio - Tara Clerkin Trio
Victory Over The Sun - A Tessitura of Transfiguration
Zoe McPherson - States of Fugue

 

[wg-]

I read loads of Roberto Bolano when he got really hyped up a couple of years ago and the main thing I took away from them was that you'd get dragged away from the story when he'd start talking about all these shit poets or fake writers with terrible titles for anything they wrote. Had to re-read 2666 a couple of years ago for.. something, and that was the worst.

Railroad Perfection ffs. Maybe it was funny in Spanish

Anyway that's what those names in the Wire list feel like

 

[thirdform]

Here's another year end list from someone to do with Tusk who I started following on Twitter. Posting 'cos of listened to a couple of these and they're great, and 'cos the majority of them are absent from any other lists I've seen.
Abra Cadabra- Product Of My Environment
African Head Charge - Churchical Chant of the Iyabinghi
Bacillus - Death Past Capacity Bad Amputee - Convenience Kills
Blóm - Flower Violence
Burd Ellen - Says the Never Beyond
Cath & Phil Tyler - To The Dust
Dead Meat - The End of Their World is Coming
Driss Hachim - African Space Command
Duma - Duma
Ghösh - (all their singles)
I Live In Netherlands - ILIN2
INFX - Consume Your Own Identity
Nazar - Guerrilla
nikishev. - Drum Works EP
Riivaaja Syvyyksistä - Demo IV: Tunnen läsnäoloa
Rubix Kitten - Existential Symbiotic Transitive Breakdown: A Precursor for Healing
SPICE SEARCH - SPICE SEARCH
Shirley Collins - Heart's Ease
Swamp Dogg - Sorry You Couldn't Make It
Tara Clerkin Trio - Tara Clerkin Trio
Victory Over The Sun - A Tessitura of Transfiguration
Zoe McPherson - States of Fugue

That's dissensuses very own @bassbeyondreason

 

[thirdform]

and yes @catalog, i am 15 years in the future. Queerness is turning into heteroqueerness and the real man of steel homo/bisexuality is coming to the fore. or ultra aggressive butch lesbianism.

 

[subvert47]

The Wire is an easy target, like Cafe OTO.

Like, it is self-evident what most people will not like about them. And because of the self-deprecating or quasi-hipster nature of people that consume these things you won't get many passionate defenders of them either.

It's a very English anti-intellectual thing where people are a bit embarrassed about liking stuff.

Personally I like The Wire very much (and Oto as well). I just think their end of year lists are shit – inevitably so, because of how they're compiled.

 

[DannyL]

That's dissensuses very own @bassbeyondreason

i thought he must be on here.

 

[subvert47]

RE: the wire, it's interesting to not knock any of the albums yet dislike the list of them!

The albums may all be good. But trying to pick the best records by committee, you just get a list of decent albums that everyone quite likes. That's always going to be a meh sort of list.

 

[DannyL]

Yeah, you definitely don't get a sense of a strong personal aesthetic or taste. But as a general smorgasbord of "shit you've probably missed" i quite like it.

 

[catalog]

and yes @catalog, i am 15 years in the future. Queerness is turning into heteroqueerness and the real man of steel homo/bisexuality is coming to the fore. or ultra aggressive butch lesbianism.

I was listening to a podcast with this writer Thomas Moore and he was talking about how he hated how queer had become something that sainsburys can co-opt, with the pride sandwich. Is this what you mean? There must've been a thread for this somewhere, it's an interesting conversation.

 

[Leo]

The albums may all be good. But trying to pick the best records by committee, you just get a list of decent albums that everyone quite likes. That's always going to be a meh sort of list.

is there a better way for them to develop a list? or is any list developed by more than one person subject to that problem?

 

[luka]

I was listening to a podcast with this writer Thomas Moore and he was talking about how he hated how queer had become something that sainsburys can co-opt, with the pride sandwich. Is this what you mean? There must've been a thread for this somewhere, it's an interesting conversation.

Yes we have a gay sandwich thread

 

[luka]

The Wire is an easy target, like Cafe OTO.

Like, it is self-evident what most people will not like about them. And because of the self-deprecating or quasi-hipster nature of people that consume these things you won't get many passionate defenders of them either.

It's a very English anti-intellectual thing where people are a bit embarrassed about liking stuff.

It's interesting this comment because this is how you become a Tony Blair fan, this attitude is new labour. But John is notable and worthy of emulation specifically because he's not new labour