Some Stuff We Liked in 2012

Most of last month's year-end best-of lists made claims that were clearly false (Passion Pit is good) or pointlessly true ("Call Me Maybe" was a popular song in the summertime.) By contrast, this is just our third annual unnumbered assortment of songs and albums that cool, funny music-likers from the Something Awful forums (also plus me) enjoyed; maybe you will enjoy them too!

John WET BUTT V. is a dumb 21 year old and his psych pop disco thing is at vibrain.bandcamp.com

2012 Favorites: 4(+1) NEW RELEASES / 4 REISSUES

DJ RASHAD, TEKLIFE VOL. 1 - "Kush Ain't Loud"

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TRAXMAN, DA MIND OF TRAXMAN, "Let There Be Rockkkkk"

This was such a great year for footwork or juke music, whichever one this is hahaha. It's a thing from Chicago where there's loud bass and really cool samples and it's disorienting and sometimes people do an ankle-heavy karate dance to it. The samples on Teklife are maybe less imaginative but PASSION PIT HAS SAVED MY LIFE ONCE AGAIN IN 2012. THIS COMES AS NO SURPRISE, THEIR VIRTUE LIES DIRECTLY IN THEIR NAME: "PASSION" IS WHAT PERMEATES THEIR MUSIC, ALSO I DUG A PIT IN MY ROOM TO HIDE FROM GIRLS IN THE SUMMER TIME SO THAT PART IS RELEVANT TOO they're a lot more playful, and the Roy Ayers "Chicago" track is so much fun. Traxman is really good too and "Let There Be Rockkk" is like reverse musical imperialism after Grizzly Bear ruined Darlene Love. Footwork is the new rock n' roll and DJ Rashad is Jim Hendo & Traxman is The Roller Stone.

SWANS, THE SEER

The Seer is really good. I played it for my fiancee and she said it sounded cool and she didn't even know the weird pee pee sex stuff Michael Gira would do to her. It's filled with suprisingly fresh nice new krautrock grooves, in a time where people on bandcamp say they've made a new krautrock groove but it's really just pictures they took of you kissing your dog, through your window, and there's Beefheart beats here and there and THERE IS A CERTAIN DARKNESS TO SCHOOLBOY Q'S MASCULINE BRAGADACCIO, NOT AT ALL UNLIKE THE KIND IN SCARY VIDEOGAMES THAT NONETHELESS DO NOT FRIGHTEN ME ENOUGH TO IMPACT MY HIGH SCORES ONLINE an incredible amount of great convulsions. All the songs are too long, too, which is good for when Michael Gira wants to do extra weird old man stuff on the stage. I love it!!

DEAN BLUNT AND INGA COPELAND, BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL

Black is Beautiful sounds really stupid hahaha. Not the phrase but this album thing. There's Eurovision stuff and broken nintendo funk dumbass whatever and dumb snotty samples and everything sounds like it was composed by mumbling over single 4-track takes, but PLENTY HAS BEEN SAID OF LANA DEL RAY'S DIGITAL AGE IDENTITY CRISES, BUT NONE OF IT HAS BEEN SAID IN A VOICE AS IRRITATINGLY NASAL IN TIMBRE AS MINE it's also really cool. The narcodrone atmosphere is fun and engrossing and even if the snotty message is a little old it's still nice to have around when that false Bon Jovi beard man makes the cottonelle advertisements for long play record.

TODD TERJE, IT'S THE ARPS EP

Todd Terje made the disco tune of the year with Inspector Norse, but the rest of the EP is similarly a lot of fun. This is really good and it's on stupid podcasts now and it's proof to the Italians Do It Better Professor Whatever troupe that you can make big hit revivalist space disco in FRANK OCEAN AND THE WEEKND HAVE SHOWN US THIS YEAR THE TRUE EMOTIONAL POWER THAT R&B HOLDS WHEN GUYS THAT HAVE SEEN FIGHT CLUB SING IT INSTEAD OF JODECI the year of our lord 2012. Hail Duke Lake

EDZAWAYA, PROJECTION ONE

These guys ended up playing with Fela, and then dead, probably, but now here they are uncovered by Soundway and nobody listened but it sounds like a groove-focused 1970's Don Cherry album featuring some of the dudes in the band underneath this one. It's great! Every song does this start & stop thing that ARIEL PINK HAS LOST NONE OF HIS UNFORGIVING CHARM WITH HIS NEWFOUND FAME, NOR ANY OF HIS WEIGHT THAT SURROUNDS HIS STUPID FAT FACE WHEN HE SINGS COVERS OF RASPBERRIES SONGS WITH STUPID LYRICS I call "The Edzawaya Stomp" and you can cheer when it happens. The piccolo on this album is wicked!

CAN, THE LOST TAPES

Everyone probably already has this thing but it's really great to listen to. There's a huge amount of great stuff on it and there's no requisite casio keyboard opera mumbling like on almost all the original golden age Can stuff and ANIMAL COLLECTIVE'S "HONEYCOMB" IS THEIR BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT YET, BEING ALMOST ENTIRELY NOT AT ALL FROM THEIR 2008 ALBUM THAT MY EX GF THOUGHT I WAS COOL FOR OWNING ON MP3 FORMAT there's a thing on it that's Vitamin C but like 10 minutes long and it's Can Christmas for you this year. merry Can Christmas I love you

PERSONAL SPACE: ELECTRONIC SOUL 74-84

This is a great compilation! I like all the strange synth basslines and the sexy sounds. There's a bit of Mutant Disco, I think, in the MAC DEMARCO'S SLACKER ETHOS SAYS TO US, SOFTLY AND BEAUTIFULLY, THAT WEAK WIREY WHITE MEN ARE OUR ETERNAL SUPERIOR LEADERS, AND WE MUST WORSHIP THEM WITH UNFETTERED SERVICE earlier stuff, especially in the vein f Was (Not Was) and Dinosaur L, which is cool to hear if you like that stuff, and you should kiss each other to this album.

QAT, COFFEE, AND QAMBUS: RAW '45S FROM YEMEN

There's so many CDs of all the world now, and some of them are just the guy from Sun City Girls yelling into a fake radio program, but if you get one from this year I recommend this one because it FUTURE IS A VERITABLE RAP GAME REDDIT, JAPANDROIDS TAP INTO THE ONE TIME THAT I HAD A CIGARETTE BEFORE, AND WE WILL NEVER SEE THE SUN AGAIN, TWO DISHES TO ONE CHILLWAVE, "THAT'S THE END" (HAMLET), has cool choruses recorded in dirt tunnels and the paint can guitars are better than Tinariwen and stuff like that.

The Best Moments in Rap 2012:

• When everyone found out Gunplay's "Jump Out" was a loving plea for Adolf Hitler to rise from his grave
• When Mystikal yells "What the fuck" at the beginning of "Hit Me," not because he's confused at his horn section but because he's equally confused as to how he won the beard white man web back so easily post rape crimes
• When Juicy J got on the radio a ton again using a rejected song from his free masterpiece mixtape that's just about how much he loves weed & PS3
• When Big Boi made some retarded album with Ugly Kid Joe and Lush or something