2011 may not have been a great blogging year for me, but on so many other levels, it has been an awesome year. Unlike my blog, life has not been a bunch of unkept promises of comebacks and of what I’m going to do. Musically it’s been fantastic. I suppose I haven’t found time or the will to blog just because I’ve been listening to so much fantastic music that 2011 had to offer, not to mention attending festivals and gigs and other stuff too. Promising that 2012 will be a better year blogwise is redundant but what I can promise is this, which can almost make up for the lack of posts in 2011. My roundup lists of the music year 2011 starts here in this post with the honourable mention albums, which will be followed in the next few days by the top 30 albums, the honourable mention tracks, and the top 50 (yes, 50!) tracks. I haven’t had this much fun creating year-end lists since ever. Partly because there’s been so much good music, partly because I’ve really committed myself to listen to a ridiculous amount of albums and songs over the past year, partly because I feel that my taste and writing has refined and become more aware, sensible, focused, mature but also empathetic and more emotionally in touch with myself in relation to the songs and the world around me. So I’m very proud to announce the only 2011 lists I think anyone’s ever going to need upon entering 2012. I stepped up the ambition as sole dictator writer and editor of this blog and of my taste and opinions by producing more or less comprehensible texts about each album and track. And if any trolls out there think that I’m just imitating Pitchfork at the end of the day, then I’ll thank you for the compliment.

In no specific order, as is customary, after the bump you find 12 albums that not quite made it onto my top 30 but still are worthy taking my hat off for and with love mention and recommend.

Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo

There are times when you want to fill your time with absolutely nothing, as if you could fill it with a vacuum, and at the same time make it feel meaningful or at least no wasteful. Smoke Ring For My Halo was the substance you filled those blanks with. 11 intricately arranged and masterfully executed guitar-led songs and 45+ minutes at a time, Kurt Vile showed he had become the constant hitmaker he promised to be four years ago.

Listen to Smoke Ring For My Halo on Spotify!

Handsome Furs – Sound Kapital

Alexei Perry’s new wave keyboards is the main instrumental capital on Handsome Furs’ third album and letting some of the punk go might just have been what this wife and husband duo needed to feel reinvigorated. Leaving room for Wolf Paradiere Dan Boeckner to yelp out despair, frustration and exaltation over synthpop that is majestic yet rickety in all its ragged post-punk glory is the best thing this forever-punk couple could have done in the wake of Wolf Parade’s hiatus and stylistically painting themselves into a corner on the jagged electropunk fest of Face Control. Apparently some of the songs were inspired by the struggles of bands in Burma being oppressed by the authorities, as witnessed by Boecker and Perry themselves. In light of that background it’s suddenly easy to point out why Sound Kapital feels like the most undeservedly underdog album of 2011, crystal clear in its vision, piercing in its messages, but satisfyingly decadent and loose within its own confines. Now that Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon have separated it will have to be on the globetrotting Handsome Furs we depend for twosome punk love (no pressure!) and to bash out clear-eyed post-punk and sympathetic shout-outs and love to all the underdogs out there over idiosyncratic electropop (definitely pressure!).

Listen to Sound Kapital on Spotify!

Friendly Fires – Pala

The self-titled ten track debut was a smash indie hit and understandably so, since it had a 10/10 ratio of singleworthiness. It was an album chockfull of pop with insanely clever and spot-on emo melodic touches paired with funked-up danceability and production with ethereal shoegaze sensibilities. If you’re looking for more of the same kind of choruses and melodies that etch themselves onto your brain the first time you hear them, you might have been disappointed with Friendly Fire’s sophomore effort. Pala is more uniform in its daydreaming and night-erasing course to escape reality, but no less fun. The band conjure a one-way ticket to exotic raves on far-off islands, oozing with sweat from beach parties, tribal house and streamlined arena-disco touches á la the latest Jamiroquai album. With titles like Pull Me Back To Earth and Helpless and lines like ”Can I take this all in?” or ”All I want is to feel real love”, it seems as if the band are caught in the tropical dance-storm they whipped up themselves. Indeed, it is infectious.

Listen to Pala on Spotify!

Tyler, The Creator – Goblin

Goblin is hard to understand for people who are new to the OFWGKTA output and manifesto. It’s mainly because they don’t have a manifesto, it’s a constantly ongoing one that deepens and broadens with every release, every video and every raunchy live performance, and Goblin bears testimony to this. Long, dark and rambling, the album does little to help the listener understand what’s going on. The point is that neither is Tyler, with his newfound fame and turbulent reception into the consciousness of the music discussion. Yet there are pieces to instantly pick up among his self-scrutinizing grunting rants. Criticisms fly all over the place, essentially he tells the world to fuck off. That’s his thing. But there’s something ingenious in painting a vivid character like Goblin about an alienated brat-rap kid like Tyler, and allowing it to take time and take over the entirety of an album. Something not to be underestimated.

Listen to Goblin on Spotify!

Azari & III – Azari & III

There were two notable acts reviving late 80′s and especially 90′s house this year: Hercules & Love Affair and Azari & III and the latter came out the winner. It was almost shocking how sub-par the former’s album, Blue Songs, was, considering the absolutely splendid sense of style and songcraft showcased on the self-titled 2008 disco debut. Azari & III had a fresher take with their self-titled debut this year, updating the sound just enough to fit 2011 and completely ruled the hipper dance aficionado circles, just like Hercules & Love Affair did four years ago. Clearly this album can’t be compared to the sheer brilliance that H&LA displayed, but it’s nonetheless a definite highlight of dance albums in a bass-music-dominated year with its seductive grooves and retro charms offering visions of urban delights in black spandex tights.

Listen to Azari & III on Spotify!

Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

Have we ever been as aware and obsessed with the passage of time as we were in 2011? In my book Tim Hecker ranked alongside the likes of Dirty Beaches and The Caretaker as one of those who put his own twist to the concept – and how! Just the question as to wether Ravedeath, 1972 is mimicking and portraying the decay of music or if it is music decaying in itself is mind-twisting on its own. Inspirations such as ”the Kazakhstan government cracks down on piracy and there’s pictures of 10 million DVDs and CDRs being pushed by bulldozers”, song titles like ”Hatred Of Music” and ”Studio Suicide, 1980″ and his use of a photograph where students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology throw a piano off a roof as the album cover all point towards the same point: that this is profoundly confounding, inspired and inspiring ambient music.

Listen to Ravedeath, 1972 on Spotify!

Wild Beasts – Smother

Delicate is the first word that pops up in my head when I want to describe Smother. Delicate implies savouring something and sweet satisfaction, but also elegance and restraint. It seems Wild Beasts are getting more and more delicate as they grow with each consecutive album. If Brave Bulging Bouyant Clairvoyants was a decadent party in the baroque era and We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues was suggesting ”just a little fun” then Deeper goes, well, even deeper than that. Although not really dealing with topics that are unfamiliar to them on the timid and sensual Smother, Wild Beasts are indeed reaching a bit further, grasping a maturity that has traveled far from their brave baroque rockin’ in the band’s youth. It suits them very well.

Listen to Smother on Spotify!

Jay-Z and Kanye West – Watch The Throne

You could almost feel the hip hop game changing in 2011. Emo and indie are two words being thrown around. Neither could be applied to Jay-Z or Kanye West, at least not if listening to the triumphant and gilded Watch The Throne. The two veterans do wisely in cementing their names as mainstays in the ever-changing climate of hip hop by joining ranks for a two-punch combo so pumping with testosterone, talent, braggadocio and potency neither of us will probably experience something similar in our lifetime. Thankfully they did it using production that undoubtedly will feel fresh in 2013 too because it sounds timeless but very much like what LARGE hip hop should sound like in 2011. Aside from checking their bases and feeding off of each others’ strengths, it was about time Hova and Yeezy worked on some bigger project together. Listening to two of the largest egos on this earth meeting on this album is an exhilarating experience and it’s almost as fun hearing them pile endless memorable lines about how incredibly rich they are and how incredibly fun that is as it is mind-boggling in a year of international financial crises. It was brave, but it payed off, as always with these two. Watch The Throne not only secures the statuses of the biggest rapper and the biggest producer in hip hop, it makes us feel like we are actually about to lift off, taking these two men’s careers to even more wuthering heights. How is that even possible? And why aren’t we Occupying The Throne? The truth is we don’t want to.

Listen to Watch The Throne on Spotify!

The Antlers – Burst Apart

One of the releases I was most anxious about in 2011 was The Antlers’ follow-up to their fantastic breakthrough album Hospice. I had backtracked Peter Silberman’s solo recordings under the Antlers name with great pleasure since even when he was as obscure and home recording as your next Youth Lagoon, he had an admirable ambition and the talent to let those ambitions form two small albums, Uprooted and In The Attic Of The Universe, that created small separate universes inside their brief duration. While Hospice was a clear shift towards working with a clear concept and a purely narrative style, Burst Apart is closer to those early albums’ creatively meandering and psychologically intricate expression of Silberman’s fascination with the world and his search for a place in it. It’s way more subtle than the cathartic and emotionally drained noisy lo-fi folkpop of Hospice, the band creating dense atmospheres that are as important as Silberman’s songwriting itself. There are no songs as direct, sentimental or painful as Hospice, which may put some fans at doubt, but everyone keeps saying that this album is a grower and at the end of the year Burst Apart has quietly dawned upon your mind and revealed itself as a worthy piece in Silberman’s continuously rewarding output.

Listen to Burst Apart on Spotify!

Indian – Guiltless

I got into lots of the extremer sides of heavy metal this year and it was about time. In the metal world it’s all about black metal these days if you want to be hip, which most metalheads would rather die than to be called, or at least seem like you’re in the know and have a refined taste, something most metalheads would or should accept as a compliment. What do I know, I’m not a metalhead, I’m just a music fan, so it’s my duty to study this darkest and heaviest side of the rock spectrum. What I found was Guiltless, an incredibly heavy piece by Chicago quartet Indian whose deeply punishing and uncompromising doom metal made a lasting impression on me. Guiltless does indeed prove it’s lack of guilt when pounding out metal that is pleasingly bleak and stubborn but still managing to locate the dynamics possible in its sonic vision. Indian make the most out of the downtempo pace, the crusty guitars and the strangulated but mad as hell vocals in their seven-song, 40-minute run. It’s a pleasure to hear a band showcase for the naysayers that even slowpaced doom metal can have an intensity and palette that outshines most of its dark peers. Above all, this has spirit.

Listen to Guiltless on Spotify!

Dirty Beaches – Badlands

Alex Zhang Hungtai’s one-man-band project was the act that best of all lived up to the title ”project” in 2011. Badlands is essentially a projection of a man’s imagination of himself as a forgotten old-timey crooner lost among the badlands of society after the impending apocalypse; a record that you find as a I Am Legend-style sole survivor in what used to be a small summer cottage just outside of the city, pop in when you get back home and is overwhelmed by the spooky sounds of the past right before the zombies come knocking on your door. In that sense Dirty Beaches plays to one of the more recurring themes in 2011: memory and the passage of time, along with the likes of Tim Hecker and The Caretaker. While the music doesn’t do so much more for me than , making it impossible for me to let Badlands into the top 30, I still want to give two grand props to Alex: Badlands is the coolest album of the year and features the coolest album cover. Because THIS is music noir.

Listen to Badlands on Spotify!

Iceage – New Brigade

Even before Iceage got around to release their debut album New Brigade internationally, my friend Jacob, being the punk aficionado he is, had already picked up these young Danish hellstarters and praised the album as his favourite of the year so far. Seeing them live this fall didn’t elevate me to the top tier fan base but the album had since long gripped me by the throat and slung me across the room. Many are quick to point out and appreciate the band for their perfect mix of no wave post-punk, thriftstore hardcore, pseudo-gothy atmospheres, lo-fi 90′s-style indie rock and just plain old angsty youthful straightforwardly riffing punk rock. Indeed, they have a varied sound while still sounding perfectly at home in their sound without loosing the edge. But what sold me beyond mere multiple genre connotations, was the underlying atmosphere, the sense that Iceage actually ease you into the notion that they are the spearhead of what could be a new brigade delivering passionate rage and punk sensibilities as if we were to enter a musical ice age where we freeze our current condition of infinitely reusing old genre templates. I’d rather that ice age sounding like New Brigade than spending 10 000 years trying to figure out where to go next with dubstep.

Listen to New Brigade on Spotify!