2011, a strange year in music. at least for me personally.
there really have been three big pillars to my music year: cumbia, opera and hiphop.
I almost lost all interest in guitar-driven indie rock, tough. a sign of age? well.

anyway, there have been some really good, some great and a few truly amazing records this year.

opeth surprised quite a few people with the way they went all-out progressive rock on their album "Heritage". frankly, this sounds more like jethro tull than anything else, but in a good way.

Demolished Thoughts by thurston moore is a beautiful, quiet singer-songwriter album produced by beck. a quiet grower.

austrian music seemed to be in an all-time high this year. recordings studios seem to have become better and cheaper, and due to a new state fund, young musicians have more time and less commerial pressure to develop ideas. Kreisky, M185, Broken Heart Collector released great albums, but above them all throne ja, panik with their unbelievable DMD KIU LIDT. people have compared this with blonde on blonde, and rightfully so. unfortunately, you miss a lot of the fun if you don't understand german.

feist completely reinvents herself with Metals. gone is the fluffy, mostly insubstantial easy-listeneing aor pop of the past - this is a completely different beast.

and shabazz palaces were just incredible.

my collection has grown by only 380 items in 2011.
(see albums I added to my collection in 2011 - the madness continues)
how sad.
but hey, at least 73 more than in 2010.
(as seen in albums I added to my collection in 2010)
now let's see if I can hit 450 in 2012.
:-)

so I seem to have aquired 307 cds and lps in 2010.
hey, that's less than one cd a day! quite lame, really.
let's see if I can do better this year. :-)

this will be interesting: I'll list everything I buy this year in order of aquisition.
very curious how many items will be on this list by the end of the year.

now this was an interesting year, musicwise. first and foremost, janelle monae has done some incredible things on her album "the archandroid" - I tend to believe that this album may have done for contemporary r&b what missy did for hiphop a decade earlier - that is, expand the boundaries and turn it inside out. motown, bowie, stevie wonder are obvious influences - but hell, some tracks sound like obscure acidfolk and late sixties psych here - something I cenrtainly didn't expect to heart on an r&b-album, much less a commercially sucessful one.

gonjasufi was also great.

hiphop, huh? I had almost written off kanye west after his last two records, but late in autumn, he came up with something quite amazing - sampling both king crimson and aphex twin, this is probably the nerd-friendliest hiphop-album ever.

after that, you need to listen to gonjasufi.

talking of nerds - oval had a great comeback and in the process bridged the gap between electronica and postrock. completely abstract, yet very listenable and, yes, beautiful.

they put gonjasufi in the reggae-department in a big viennese recordstore. it does not belong there. it belongs in the beefheart-department.

indie-rock? the bees, menomena, arcade fire and mgmt, among others, have put out some really good stuff this year.

and while gonjasufi is not exactly indie-rock, he is, in a way.

hadestown by anais mitchel would have been a close contender for the greatest joanna newsom-album of the year, if it weren't for the tacky lyrics. as it is, the greatest joanna newsom-album of the year comes from no other than joanna newsom. surprise.

if joanna newsom were a guy, she would probably sing like gonjasufi. but she isn't.

post-rock: I adored holy fuck's abstract motorik, the red sparrowes released a monolithic soundwall, and the master musicians of bukkake brought together morricone, freak-folk, drone-metal and tribal chants. my winner in this genre must be the books, tough. not really post-rock - glitch-folk might be the genre name for this.

is gonjasufi post-rock? in a way. but he's got dreadlocks. which could lead you to belevie he's a reggae-artist. well, he isn't.

metal: do yourself a favour and listen to japanische kampfhörspiele. really. whether you like death metal or not, this is a masterpiece.

some metal musicians also have dreadlocks. like gonjasufi. some soul-artists also do.

aloe blacc does not, but he still made a great bill withers-album, while kings go forth sound a lot like curtis mayfield.  it seems the seventies are back big way.

which has nothing whatsoever to do with gonjasufi.

not too many exciting things on the home front - but viennese pianist hannes löschl, aided by phil minton, has made a great album that doesn't sound austrian at all. which is probably a good thing.

oh, and don't forget to buy that gonjasufi album.

my favourite new albums from 2008.

there was some excellent chamber-folk from Sun Kil Moon, Juana Molina did some mind-blowing things on Un día, the amzing Baby Dee released her best album so far and made me laugh, cry and dance on various occasions.
I was initally put-off by the hype around the Fleet Foxes, but the album has eventually grown on me.

there was some incredible abstract sound architecture from the likes of Horst Prillinger, Carl Craig & Moritz von Oswald and Sunn O))).

having formerly dismissed Gustav as a novelty-act was a grave mistake -I saw her live in november and was rather surprised by the sheer magnificence of her performance. a true genius.Verlass die Stadt is quite possibly the greatest pop-album produced in austria in this decade.

((other than that, I was really disappionted at how little progress there seemed to be in the world of indie-pop and rock. 2004 and 2005 were landmark years for the genre, since then, it has gone mostly downhill for me. ))
EDIT: nonsense. looking back from a little distance, this was actually an amazing year in music.

I didn´t find much notable stuff in the world of hip hop this year. the real innovations are probably going on in metal and dubstep/grime - two fields of music I will have to watch more closely in the future.

personally, my tastes were going firmly retro in 2008: I had a massive Santana-phase, I discovered some incredible albums by the great, great, great Jorge Ben.

my love for classical indian music, especially the austere dhrupad-tradition, has re-emerged this year. Gopal Krishan has been a frequent guest in my music room.

I also filled some important gaps in my sixties-collection and enjoyed great albums by The Kinks, The Byrds, The Youngbloods, The Young Rascals and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

there is so much old stuff I have yet to discover - there will always be plenty of "new" music for me to buy and enjoy, regardless of the release date.

and I´m sure 2009 will be the greatest year since 1967.

my favourite new albums from 2007. mostly alternative/indie/folk and the like. in no particular order.
(and yes, some of these are from 2006. I only discovered them in 2007 and didn´t have them on last years´s list altough I should have, so they are here.)

this list is about reissues and records I discovered aor rediscovered this year that did not, for obvious reasons, qualify for the "best new music"-list.

wow, yet another decade has passed. in music-wise, the noughties were to the nineties what the seventies were to the sixties - a long come-down, a period of refinement and consolidation, lots of retro-trends going on. a bit boring, actually.
still, there was some amazibng music in this decade. so let´s see what albums have rocked my world and/or shaped and expanded my listening-habits since 2000.
in chronological order. still work-in-progress.

here are some of my favorite dub and roots albums, in no particular order.

an attempt to collect the recorded output of bass player scott lafaro - arguably one of the greatest jazz musicians who never recorded as a leader.

just for the sake of convenience, here´s all the volumes of the fabulous ethiopiques series in one place.

my favourite psychedelic albums 1965 - 1975

musicians I have interviewed over the years.