This year was probably the year when people’s listening habits became more fragmented than ever – which left the music industry struggling to smother any individual with marketing. More of these kinds of thoughts later, but I say that because it leads me to this (then I will get on with the matter in hand):

Everyone seems to be saying that this year was genuinely pretty dull for music, and there were no Big Events like Arctic Monkeys. Whenever anyone says anything remotely close to that sentiment to me I always reply “you don’t listen to enough music” – which…

50. Wooden Shjips – Wooden Shjips
Holy Mountain
http://www.myspace.com/woodenshjips
http://www.holymountain.com
Five tracks of throbbing kaleidoscopic weed-smoke drone that instantly find their groove in ‘We Ask You To Ride’, introducing an album that sits in the foggy headspace of 60’s West-coast psych-rock, rolling around in the sun-baked blues trance for just over half an hour.

49. LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver
DFA
http://www.lcdsoundsystem.com
http://www.dfarecords.com
In Sound of Silver James Murphy produced the perfect foil for his debut, incorporating all the heroes he baited his listeners for holding up on ‘Losin’ My Edge’. There’s a lot of Bowie, Prince and Kraftwerk,…

50
Lair Of The Minotaur
The Ultimate Destroyer
Southern Lord
Metal hath no fury like death done well. People will tell you overly fussy and ineffectual complexities of Mastodon and the 'Matt Pike so it must be amazing' High On Fire are the hipster bands with the riffs, but compared to the 'Lair, that simply isn't so and few bands laid down the metal law with as much impeccable fury as The Ultimate Destroyer.

49
Xasthur
Subliminal Genocide
Hydra Head
A move to a major label and the purists cried foul but it didn't stop Malefic from creating another amazingly…

U.S. Christmas
Eat The Low Dogs
Neurot Recordings

I've had their self titled 12" for months and had it on heavy rotation. Heavy rotation is something these guys know a lot about. Blues based cosmic sludge, the coalescence of galactic effluence, psychedelic neon tails of burning dust lighting the night with their burning arcs and phosphorescent vapour. This album is something I've been waiting for. Coming from North Carolina, from a town in the Appalachians US Christmas (named after the Sam Pekinpah film), or USX for short, have a lot of space to star gaze, a lot of space to…

Pocket Change Records
A glimpse of the future in an interview with an internet label.

Post Rock, Ambient, Instrumental, Experimental, Electronic, Psychedelic, Analogue Noise. These are the sounds. The theme running through them, that binds all of Pocket Change Records’ releases so far, from the very first wreaths to the current (at time of writing) Talbot Arms, is one of an enveloping atmosphere. The ultimate goal of soundscape artists is to build a bubble that refracts the world beyond it; the wall of sound the speakers throw up doubling as a blank canvas for the listener to project synaesthetic…

1.How did you get into 29? (Chuck Berry)
On the radio, on tv, in films, in my record collection; Chuck’s always been there from day one.

2. What was the first song you ever heard by 22? (Le Loup)
Canto I – the first song on the album The Throne Of The Third Heaven Of The Nations' Millennium General Assembly. I tend to hear most stuff once I’ve got it rather than listen to a song first.

3. What's your favorite lyric by 33? (Secret Chiefs 3)
Holy Vehm’s ‘Exterminating Angel’…