LAST.FM: un sujet de conversation

  Last.fm listening stats. It's been a while.

THE NEED TO GROW TAKES YOU OVER

01. Zola Jesus - 63

02. Lanterns On The Lake - 45

03. The Field - 32

04. Death In Vegas - 31

05. St. Vincent - 22

06. Twin Sister - 20

07. Youth Lagoon - 16

08. A Winged Victory for the Sullen - 15

09. The Rosebuds - 12

09. Jacqueline Wilson - 12

1 – Can't stop listening to Conatus. Amazing. Well worth holding out on Witch House for this to arrive. What? Yes it is. IT SURROUNDS EVERYTHING.

2 – They were good at End of the Road and the album is pretty enjoyable too. Nothing spectacular though but easy to throw on when I'm not paying attention, hence the plays.\

3 – Impossible to ignore this when it's on, just sucks you in and zones you out. Psychedelic Swedish techno via Kompakt. The title track is unbelievable.

4 – Who knew they had a new album? Not me Now I do. It's no Contino Sessions.

5 – Strange Mercy has a couple of great tracks – Northern Lights especially – but it's not that great. Not as good as the EMA album.

6 – Booooooorrrrrriiiiiing.

7 – Baroque, dreamy melancholic reverb-washed pop solo artist. Another one? Yes. This one seems like a keeper.

8 – Going to be one of my albums of the year. So sensual. (incidentally, it's October – we have to get started on our AOTY about now don't we?)

9a – Loud Planes Fly Low released in June is still getting a lot of plays, which can only mean one thing; it;s very good.

9b – free audio book with the Guardian on Saturday. Syd wanted to listen to it while he ate dinner but it;s all about some mother and a cat dying. Not really much fun so he wanted to isten to Korn and Mastodon instead. Funny boy.

Last.fm "Last 12 Months" Top 20

My top 50 albums of the year list is still work in progress, not the positions, they're all dusted, it's the writing up that is taking the time and it should see the light of day sometime soon – before March this year hopefully! Until then, here's some raw stats to whet your appetite and keep you guessing.

01. Sing and Sign – 615

02. Washed Out - 566

03. Wild Nothing - 548

04. Oneohtrix Point Never - 507

05. Best Coast - 402

06. Twin Shadow - 356

07. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - 329

08. Dream Boat - 321

09. Gonjasufi - 316

10. Emeralds - 311

11. Ducktails - 304

12. Yo La Tengo - 302

12. Salem - 302

14. Deerhunter - 298

15. Mogwai - 284

16. Atlas Sound - 271

17. Burl Ives - 270

18. Gayngs - 247

19. Solar Bears - 242

20. Women – 236


1 - Syd has been properly discovering music this year and Sasha Felix was his favourite person for the first six months of the year. If we didn't only listen to it in the car then Chris T-T's Love Is Not Rescue would probably be joint top here with as many, if not more listens.

2 - The only albums I'd change in my 2009 end of year list, up into the top 5. Amazing, my total obsession until...

3 - ...Jack Tatum turned up, then there wasn't time to listen to them both 24/7.

4 – This is a lot of listening to the whole of Rifts, which I can easily stay consciously involved with for the entire duration. Built a lot of flat pack and did a lot of DIY to this; I'd recommend it, makes the job a lot less stressful. ONP, Games, Chuck Pearson....Dan Lopatin - Man of the year, surely.

5 – Incessant listen on its release, then as summer waned so did its appeal. Boyfriend and Honey are two of my tracks of the year though.

6 – Another obsessive interest of mine this year – seems to be the people I've fallen for hardest are the solo artists. A combination of Morrissey's allure on Latino America and the smouldering embers of Chillwave, plus guitar solos.

7 – Before Today really is an awesome album; uncompromising and radio friendly, like how Phil Spector taught us to be 60 years ago – a lesson Radio promptly forgot.

8 – The greatest Witch House band nobody ever talks about, released a string of incredible visceral, sexual, eps of Lynch-deep tension throughout the year and a full album that bettered everything before it, all on AmDiscs. Salem's equal for atmosphere and beats...with better vocals? Arguably.

9 – Perfect summer entertainment music. Put this on and people's eyes go wide as their mind goes wild.

10 – Almost all plays of Does It Look Like I'm Here? A fair few of the older tracks, but once the new album dropped there was no looking back really.

11 – Another solo artist, Chillwave's brightest star (much prefer him to Toro) and his new album is a killer.

12a – all plays of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out; my favourite album of all time.

12b – SALEM ARE AWESOME FUCK YOU HATERZ A HEX ON YOU AND ALL YOUR KIND

14 – Lots of Microcastle and Cryptograms in here, but probably mostly Halcyon Digest; a beautifully involving record.

15 – pretty much all plays of Come On Die Young. My second favourite album of all time.

16 – those four free albums from the end of the year are almost all total quality. How can Bradford Cox put out halcyon digest then just hand out these, like making one of the best albums of the (year (media)/decade(me)/ever(wife)?) is not enough, he then says “oh yeah, I did that but I knocked up a few other songs too”. Deerhunter; the new Radiohead? I bet all Thom Yorke has under his bed are socks.

17 – Another of Syd's favourite artists. Little White Duck, the train song, Froggy Went A Courtin, the Donut Song. Burl Ives makes kids go wild.

18 – 247 plays is not enough for this band. A piss take where the punchline is deadly serious? Something like that. If this didn't give your ears a wide-on from the first track inwards then you're numb in the head.

19 – Epic cosmic kraut radiation. No other music quite like this, despite it sharing the same descriptors...and two of the nicest guys I've been in contact with all year.

20 – Quite a special band . I'm still working out how their songs make the distance between A to B so dramatic, and how they make the trip so subtle. Did they ever split up in the end? Hope not.

last frigging fm

This weeks Drowned In Sound/Blog last.fm stats double post:

1. Sing and Sign - 108
2. Laurie Fyke - 39
3. King Kong Ding Dong - 24
4. Will Haven - 17
4. Gr†LLGR†LL - 17
6. Sun Araw - 16
6. Washed Out - 16
6. WHITE FENCE - 16
9. Wild Beasts - 13
10. Rudi Arapahoe - 12
10 - P For Persia - 12

Spent the last week on holiday so Syd has held strong sway over the ipod. This is probably a more accurate representation of what I spend my time listening to, it’s just usually the baby stuff is played on cd so they never got scrobbled but now they’re all on itunes it looks like that’s all about to change. Also, on holiday we tend not to listen to albums and shuffle the pod instead so that’s why the numbers are low. It's the only time I ever do shuffle; makes it feel more like holidays. Seemed to love Electrelane’s Axes a lot, played 4 tracks off it in one day.

1. Sasha Felix, baby signing queen of Brighton. www.singandsign.com Syd’s favourite thing in the world. I have half these songs going round my head all the time, they're surprisingly catchy, although the influence of having a real baby may influence that rosy opinion somewhat.

2. aka Jolly Phonics - letter sounds cd - reworked nursery rhymes that last about 10 second or less and there's 40 of them, so this should be way over 100, if not more.

3. Put out their album for free. It's great. Sounds like a loose combination of Black Dice and Animal Collective with the annoying bits reigned it. Get it here: http://www.kingkongdingdong.net/music

the rest you already know, so...

10b. Brighton based 3-piece pay loud and heavy across a Lightning Bolt/Melvins/Boredoms axis. Picked up their album when they played with Wolf Eyes. http://www.myspace.com/pforpersia

New SwännS))) Download

Here's another slightly self-indulgent post! The second instalment of the ongoing 'transparent band' project SwännS))) is on the internet. We had another rehearsal the other day, taped it up and uploaded the choice track to last.fm to stream or download:

We called it HRSH MRLD SHRKS. You can find it here:


http://www.last.fm/music/Sw%C3%A4nnS%29%29%29/_/HRSH+MRLD+SHRKS?autostart

This one will be condensed a bit I expect, and the levels are a bit off, but it’s a good noisy fun fest!

ENJOY!

I added a new post to our ongoing DiS thread HERE.

We also put some artwork/pretty pictures on the page too. How nice!


MxBx

Last FM last 12 months - 2009:

Wow. One month totally out of action. How'd that happen? Hello 2010!

Don't think we've missed out on all the end-of-year craziness; we might not have been posting ourselves, but our eyes have been everywhere and our fingers have been type-typing up our own albums and tracks run-downs from 2009. We'll have a full 50 albums and 101 tracks with you soon. For now as a teaser here's my Last FM last 12 months list. Maybe there's some clues to our top albums of the year, but maybe not....

Meatbreak:

1. Velvet Davenport - 332
2. Wild Beasts - 294
3. Sian Alice Group - 261
4. Awesome Wells - 233
5. Oneida - 206
6. Grampall Jookabox - 202
7. Thee Oh Sees - 199
8. Le Loup - 198
9. Woods - 193
10. Best Coast - 181
11. Teitanblood - 178
12. Fever Ray - 167
13. A Place to Bury Strangers - 163
14. The Fresh & Onlys - 160
15. Deerhunter - 157
16. Volcano Choir - 147
16. The Flowers of Hell - 147
18. Burl Ives - 145
19. Lotus Plaza - 143
20. Horse Feathers - 137


Fokka Wolfe:

1. The Horrors - 62
2. Electric Wizard - 57
3. Turbonegro - 55
4. The Smashing Pumpkins - 50
5. Fever Ray - 49
6. Bob Dylan - 48
7. Yeasayer - 41
7. Crystal Castles - 41
9. David Bowie - 38
9. Major Lazer - 38
11. Primal Scream - 37
12. she - 36
13. Bathory - 34
14. Hedgehog - 33
15. Snoop Dogg feat. Dr. Dre - 30
16. Alec Empire - 29
16. The Rolling Stones - 29
16. Dark Meat - 29
19. Black Lips - 28
20. Nachtmystium - 27

Drowned in Sound Vs. Last.fm Vs. NFR

Last week we decided to make things a little intereesting with people's Last.FM stats over at Drowned In Sound.

I have been collecting top 20’s from DiS user's 'Last 3 Months' lists to see what the collective top 20 is, and a whole load more besides.

Here's our proposition on the comm board: http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/music/4173478#last


I am working on the stats as we speak and will have a brainmelting cornucopia of illustrated results in the coming week. Stay posted.