For my apologies / frame of mind when making the list – check the mentions post:

Some notes : Hate to sound like a white suburban teenager, but the hazy lo-fi sounds of Matt Mondanile & friends has been the soundtrack to this year. Beware! too much of this will make you think that you live in a two storey prefab with American siding, have a bunch of lazy teenagers in trucker caps as friends and make love to sleazy girls at the beach. Which is quite the contrary to what we get in the urban jungle that is Istanbul. Anyway, kudos to everyone who’s managed to make “new age” a proper genre again. This also includes Mark McGuire and his work in Emeralds.

The most sublime musical moments this year were devised by Rune Grammofon’s In the Country, I’m shocked to see it neglected consistently on best of lists. Well, too bad.

Inspiration Information is hands down the hottest series around as I announced before, and two installments make it to the top cut. Akwaaba’s compilation of Carlos Lamartine was spectacular. Although the songs date back to the 70s, Benjamin did an amazing job to hunt and issue them for the first time outside Angola. Hopefully more will follow next year.

On the jazz front Steve Lehman and Vijay Iyer continue their roles as standardbearers of a newbreed of contemporary jazz. Haven’t checked enough Tzadik releases this year, but I’d have to have some form of dementia to miss an Ahleuchatistas album. Top class!

In Britain, King Midas Sound’s propagating of dubstep with trip-hop was a sigh of relief from the wonky dancefloor madness, although it definitely has way too much Tricky. Another release that I was going mental about was the Broadcast / The Focus Group collaboration. Like all good hauntologists I was interested more in The Focus Group than Broadcast. Frankly, found it a little bit underwhelming, but it’s still heads and shoulders above many.

Not quite sure about Thee oh Sees & Masha on the top 20 list, they might be more suitable for the mentions list. I’ve already realized that I forgot to put Masada Quintet, Peter Broderick vs Machinefabriek, Thomas Köner, Zomby, Yusef Lateef’s At Cranbrook and Elsewhere, Kreng etc. on either list, but it’s too late and life isn’t perfect.

Happy New Year. Hope to see you around for another year of great music and dismal writing.

Rest in Peace everyone who passed away this year. We suffered a lot of losses, but none hurt as much as the untimely deaths of Dani Baquet-Long of Celer and Jack Rose. Never forget!