What album is this on? I need a warning.

The Good Dr. Bill = Cock Tease

juelz santana - from me to u

Joanna Newsom = annoying twat

I think I'll just give in and admit that I like Midlake, a lot. And slept on them till our singles list. Since this album has charted can someone post it in the SOMB top 100 fish thread? Sweet.

The title track on Last Exit is my favorite Junior Boys song ever.

Wow, why did I let people's lukewarm reactions turn me off this Yeah Yeah Yeahs album? Listening to it now, this seems really, really good.

Other things I slept on that are now rocking my world: The Knife, Ellen Allien.

Yeah, Orchestra of Bubbles is easily my discovery of the thread so far.

Would have voted it #2 or something had I heard it in time.

Booka Shade and Camera Obscura albums are both also really good.

"OMG"

Just listening to this one now. A lot. So good.

You guys need to give respect to Apparat. Seriously.

I think I'm just gonna go and end up buyng both of those Junior Boys albums. I get the impression that I'd dig it.

Skits on hip-hop albums aren't always bad. Sometimes they're funny and sometimes they serve as a nice break from the action. I don't mind the skits on The Chronic or Stankonia, to use a couple of really obvious, classic examples. I don't even mind all the school-related stuff on the Kanye albums. ("I bet I can count up the change in your purse really fast.") But, some of the Fishscale skits are just silly, forced attempts at humor that add nothing to the album and I just sit there, thinking about how much better and stronger the album would seem if the songs were back-to-back-to-back.

It'd be funny if Dr Bill refuses to post the rest of the list as punishment for how lame this thread has become.

As if the top 5 wouldn't be punishment enough.

Word.

The "Orchestra of Bubbles" was a really nice record. I won't argue against it. However, the state of electronica and especially, ambient electronica, saw so many brilliant records this year that the majority haven't heard.

Check out the ambient thread (where we actually cross the line of "ambient") and the addition of of my favorite 2 posters (Bruegel and Avec) who recommend awesome electronic music.

Oh well, at least the Tim Hecker record made a nice showing in our list.

If anything, its great that some experimental electronica is finally making a statement around here.

It welcomes a fantastic diversity on the board that we've never seen.

And that's a really, really good thing.

Bill is eBaying the top 20

helmet, for whatever reason i never got into this newest Hecker record. Maybe i just wasn't feeling that style of stuff this year or what, i dunno. LOVED Radio Amor and enjoyed him live last year in Barcelona.

He should start a new thread for the rest.

I hope everyone's new year's resolutions are:

1) Post better.
2) Vote better.

Not necessarily in that order.

as long as your prepared to take your own advice

True dat. Bruegel and Avec really direct their readers to the righteous clicks, beeps and hums, the electronic stuff we'd otherwise have to wade through pages of weird euro blog to discover. And now that I can actually download all of these fantastic recs, I appreciate them even more (and the welcome recent SOMBIE diversity Helmet's rightly identified).

The interweb is a pretty amazing resource. MacBooks are incredible. I can't believe I lived without mine for so long.

That Tim Hecker has grown on me more and more. It requires really good speakers, volume that goes to eleven, and attentive ears. It's an experience, to be sure.

One of my 2007 resolutions is gonna be to give back more to the SOMB in terms of uploads. Expect lots of reggae and dub, just because that's a sorely underrepresented and underappreciated genre in these parts. I know there isn't a huge and receptive audience for that stuff here, but maybe I can win over a few ears to Jah's riddims.

That's because a majority of electronica doesn't bridge the gap between directionless ambient music and the indie-crowd, things that Orchestra of Bubbles, LCD Soundsystem, Junior Boys, etc. do.

And that's not necessarily a fault, there are different genre's for a reason, but that's the reason you don't see all the hype about those records.

Me either. It's very odd-sounding.


I'm looking forward to hearing some. It's music I seldom seek out but seem to enjoy whenever I come across it.

Yeah, good to see experimental electronic shit doing well, etc., but Villalobos should have been way higher. That record fucking cooks. GODDAMN.

this is great; I'm just starting to get into reggae by way of Marley mostly, and am
curious to delve into more. I'd be supportive of a reggae thread, most definitely.




another of those day late, dollar short albums (like Helios)
that is getting post-list respect. That's one of the great things
about this countdown, the discoveries along the way.

And also bitching about how high things should be IMO.

HA! Better = More like ME!

Did Bill hide the countdown between lines of mindless bickering this year? Is it like a magic eye thing?

....Cause I'm not seeing anything...

yeah, I voted for the other one, ya know, the one no one really likes. its the slowest song in the world but its pretty cool.

I don't think Orchestra of Bubbles is really a bridge album. Why would it be? Because it has a guitar in it sometimes? To me it's pretty much as out there as Magneton, which wasn't a popular voting choice.

So yeah, Artem, you're coming across really fucking whiny, I'm enjoying it because it's a great album, not because it's hip to like electronica (which is probably my favourite genre anyway).

i wasn't being serious about people putting it on their lists. it's just that same haiku from stulys that i found funny.

i just think that album sucks. very plain and borring. the drums, man! dum dum dum dum!

I hope Bill's excuse is that he's having wild sex all day and all night, because I wouldn't accept any other for this delinquency.

i miss the good doctor. really. seriously. i mean i like listening to you ramble on about how you think your #1 is better than the list's possible #1, personally i'm waiting for bill to post the #1 before i start to bitch.

#20.




The Knife - Silent Shout
(1345 Points, 39 Votes, Two #1 Votes)

US Chart Position: #20 Electronic

UK Chart Position: n/a

Charting Singles: "Silent Shout" (#12 Dance Sales US), "We Share Our Mother's Health" (#22 Dance Sales US)

Acclaimed Music Ranking: #14 (Year)

SOMB Says: Those Dreijer kids must have been a nightmare, brilliant kids that their parents had to back to make their fortunes and see them through a comfortable retirement but Jesus, those mood swings.

The shift from the joy of Deep Cuts to the sparse misery of Silent Shout is mind boggling. If the former is the sound of joyous kids waking up on Christmas morning then the latter is surely the sound of bedroom doors being slammed by kids who didn’t get the presents they wanted.

Their loss is my gain, this album doesn’t let up. Throwing weird beats and noises at you until you submit to them. I guess you’d term this dance music, but Neverland, the title track and We share our mother’s health (or at least the Trentemoller remix) aside, I’m not really sure how you’d dance to any of this. Not that you’d really want to, it’s far more pleasant sitting back and being transported to the snowy Stockholm ghetto where I now imagine them to live. It’d all be quite upsetting if it wasn’t so monumentally glorious.

It took him more than a few days to pull it off, but thank god for eventually getting round to producing schizophrenic Swedish siblings. -Rob

Ranked Highest By: Falling and Laughing and Rob (#1) (also ranked #2 by Cool Blue and Lil' Oaty, #3 by BangBangBangSkeetSkeetSkeet, #4 by Elastico and Umbrellatimes and #5 by Petey and Whichonespink)

Amazon Link

oh my

I'm afraid that once this happened, we set ourselves up for disaster, however unlikely it seemed at the time.

Welcome back Dr. Bill. I've never been so happy to see an animated hamburger gif. : )

#19.




Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
(1356 Points, 35 Votes, Five #1 Votes)

US Chart Position: n/a

UK Chart Position: n/a

Charting Singles: n/a

Acclaimed Music Ranking: n/a

SOMB Says: The train is packed and you're right in the goddamned middle of it, stuffed between the hungover frat guy loudly describing his peculiar bathroom behavior and the mother of three too engrossed in her cell-phone conversation to notice two of her kids yelling and fighting over who's "it" against your leg. So you adjust your headphones, turn up the volume and convince yourself that you can make it through without screaming if you can just hold on for the last few minutes before your stop. That's when the train slows down to insufferable speeds.
Spencer Krug wants to scream. Every time he sings, it seems as though he's just barely holding on; as though he's using every bit of strength to keep his voice from slipping past anything more than a desperate whisper. The music is full of desperation, discordant melodies, and sharp, sharp edges. It's the kind of music that makes your chest tight. It makes you claustrophobic when you weren't sure if the walls were closing in. And it works so well.
You can practically see Spencer standing on the other side of the train, twitching, eyes clinched, just waiting for his chance to get off. And it's a good feeling to know that there's someone else. It's not a cure, but it's a good feeling. -Raleigh St. Clair

Ranked Highest By: Chrono, Dr. Jimmy, New Bedlam, Raleigh St. Clair and shampoosuicide (#1) (also ranked #2 by Hewlett's Daughter, #3 by Dark Flame, Kaocism and Melted Flame, #4 by SuckeredYou and #5 by TheNameofThisPosterIsDave)

Amazon Link

Never heard it. But no thanks.

#18.




Liars - Drum's Not Dead
(1376 Points, 37 Votes, One #1 Vote)

US Chart Position: n/a

UK Chart Position: n/a

Charting Singles: n/a

Acclaimed Music Ranking: #21 (Year)

SOMB Says: "Initially, I didn’t know what to make of this album. Sure, I’d heard They Threw Us All in a Trench, but I had skipped over They Were Wrong. So, obviously, the style change was a bit jarring. However, even with that, I didn’t recoil from the album. I was just curious to figure out why it was so damned hypnotizing. At first, I just decided it had everything to do with rhythm. Afterall, it is called Drum’s Not Dead. But then again, not every song even has drums in it. Was it the warped vocals? The strange cymbal work? And then I read that they were living in Germany, and it all made sense. This is just an album after my own heart (and cultural background). It’s so damned serious that you can’t be sure if their pulling your leg. It takes bizarre conceits and turn them into strange moments of beauty. It is also damned hard to understand, but impossible to resist. And the best part is that so damned pretty. Through the course of the album Liars somehow turn the darkest, barest sounds into primal, infectious compositions, and, finally slap you in the face with what is simply the most beautiful thing any rock band did this year in the form of “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack” -killerparties

Ranked Highest By: Ash (#1) (also ranked #2 by jspaceman and Killerparties, #3 by Bleach, Nick and Sparkleface, #4 by Melted Cheese and #5 by AlkalineDrown, Animals and Men, Fallingandlaughing and Quyinga)

Amazon Link

Welcome Back Welcome Back Welcome Back

Liars are strictly a live band if there ever was one.

wow, didn't expect it to be so high, though I never heard it. assumed that it was a
controversial album on the SOMB and would've been much lower.

So what does Sunset Rubdown sound like? I think I've been avoiding because it's an album by a white dude named Spencer, that kinda screams "Whiny" at me.

And as much as that Liars album rules I was listening to Tago Mago earlier and Aumgn basically blows that whole album away in one track.

Just like killerparties, I was pretty floored by the first Liars full-length but a bit turned off by the follow-up, though hardly as much as most other people seemed to be. It was a mess but it had a truly frightening, pagan vibe to it the likes of which I'd never heard before (was hoping they'd jumpstart a new genre called "witchbeat" but it never happened). Still, I was skeptical about Drum's Not Dead, unfortunately even moreso after the reviews started coming in. I finally downloaded it and I can see what they're trying to do and it's a pretty staggering vision, but it hasn't come to life for me just yet.

Not sure if I should use the words "staggering vision" to describe an album made by a bunch of dudes with a bunch of drugs in a basement.


Pretty amazing when I saw them. I don't even know if it's any of the same members anymore, aside from the lead singer.

I saw them do the stuff from They Were Wrong before I heard it, and maybe that completely ruined the album for me. Same to a lesser extent with their other albums.

good start to the top 20

I was going to go redeem this coupon for a free box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts (expires after today). And then maybe go get a library card. Not sure what to do now.

I don't have plans for another four and a half hours

life's good