As 2011 rolls to a slow wintery end, team Drift have gathered together before the landscape becomes too blurred in the Christmas haze to argue, re appreciate and methodically list the last twelve months in music.
Below (in reverse chronological order) are our top 100 albums of the year. We've written a little bit about each of our year and our favourite albums that you can download and enjoy in the "End of Year" pdf… your total Christmas shopping plan in one handy eight page book!
How To Dress Well (aka Tom Krell) is
set to be one of the breakthrough artists of 2011 with a crossover
appeal somewhere between Burial and Panda Bear.
Berlin duo Modeselektor return full force with a new album that will inject the global dance community with inspiration that reverberates across the entire musical spectrum.
Washed Out submerges a sense of intense feeling within its '80s-fantasy electronic ether. the yearning-in-utero effect is strongest on woozy centerpiece 'Feel It All Around'.
Written in a cabin on the side of the volcanic Mount Meakan (Japan) and recorded in an abandoned train station in Detroit. Psychedelic and hand crafted.
Africa Hitech are Mark Pritchard (of Harmonic 313 / Global
Communications / countless more psuedonyms’ fame) and Steve Spacek (of
Spacek fame and notable Dilla collaborator).
I was born into a charismatic-nondenominational family in Nashville, TN.. My mother sang hymns and spoke in tongues. My dad played bluegrass. I hopped trains.
20 year old rapper, producer, writer, video
director, visual artist, skater, cultural lightning rod and leader of
LA’s acclaimed Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA)
Ducktails is the one-man psychedelic pop project of Matthew Mondanile,
guitarist for New Jersey’s Real Estate and, more importantly, a proud
son of the mid-1980s.
Chronicling the lift and death of Com Truise, the world’s first synthetic/robotic astronaut, from his creation and life on earth to his subsequent mission to a newly discovered galaxy called “Wave 1.”
Since her emergence onto the London music scene in 2007 Laura Marling has steadily secured her position as one of the most exciting musical talents of her generation.
Fuse the most fragile and graceful end of the folk music spectrum to the most luminous properties of cinemascope rock, and you have the stunning debut album from Lanterns On The Lake.
Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, Iceage release their debut album ‘New Brigade’. It contains 24 minutes of anthemic stress, of tension undiluted by worldly wisdom or amassed experience.
Combining pre-jazz American folk-form, surreal sound-collage, and evocative, unfolding melodies, Machine's Song is a wordless cinematic exploration. Highly Recommended.
First release on their own label, gloriously connecting their fascination with the traditional folk and gypsy
groups and their home
in the desert plains of the American Southwest.
Stepping away from the punk, noise and no-wave experimentalism that
often surrounds both Sonic Youth and Thurston Moore's solo work,
‘Demolished Thoughts’ will catch most off-guard.
Their wonderfully skewed Fits from 2009 with their extraordinary new record D, which takes its title from the fourth letter of the alphabet because, yes, it’s their fourth album.
Live at the South Bank stands as a memorial to a thrilling partnership sadly cut off in its prime. “I had as much fun playing that night as I’ve ever had playing music.” - Kieran Hebden
Nathan Salsburg is a folklorist, producer, and presenter of vernacular music for East Village Radio, the Drag City imprint Twos & Fews, and the Alan Lomax Archive, among other outlets.
Having been invited to let loose on stage across the planet alongside everyone from Tinariwen to Whitehouse; Zun Zun Egui deliver their debut album proper, and it’s one to savour.
Produced by the acclaimed David Holmes, Cashier No. 9 are the latest starlets of Belfast and with the support of Bella Union look to be big names in 2011.
Having introduced herself as a solo artist with the epically rocking
seven minute single 'grey ship', Ema invites you deeper into her world with her debut
album.
It's with the arrival of Looping State Of Mind that you finally realise that, for The Field's ambient techno explorer Axel Willner, the loop never stops.
Limited edition box set features an additional 12” EP of demo tracks from album sessions, plus 2LP and 2CD versions of the album, art prints and a laser cut stencil.
"Smother" is a deeply personal and immensely affecting record, which
maintains the delicate and evocative form of beauty Wild Beasts have
made their own.
Primal Splendour, who sends out innumerable rays, not perceptible by the senses, but collectively thinkable... the fifth full-length album from Sun Araw.
Badlands is the debut vinyl album from Dirty Beaches, a one-man project out of Montreal via Hawaii, China, Taiwan and a bunch of other disparate locales. S U P E R B ! ! !
Taking their debut as the prototype, Willis and Natalizia have taken those initial early-sunrise evocations and pushed them to even more grandiose expanse. Very Exciting.
Highly anticipated follow up to debut "For Emma..." LP. Recorded and mixed at April Base Studios, a remodeled veterinarian’s clinic located in rural Fall Creek, Wisconsin.
Sam Baker's Debut Album is 40 minutes of pure listening pleasure, a series of woozy, off-centre hip hop instrumentals drawing heavily on Baker's love of electronic funk.
Many asked where his songs would voyage next, but few predicted the inward journey Condon takes on 'The Rip Tide', an album with the most introspective and memorable songs of his young career.
With his immensely anticipated, two-years-in-the-making full length debut, Rustie ushers in an otherworldly landscape. Both epic and alien, beguiling synths and guitar meditations.
Toro Y Moi is 23 year old South Carolina native Chaz Bundick. 'Underneath The Pine' combines the electronic and live instrumentation of previous albums.
One artist Martyn's united with time and time again is Brainfeeder leader Flying Lotus. A close friend within whom he's always found creative alliance.
In 2007, with the underground in the midst of grime exploding nationwide and dubstep beginning to show new possibilities, a then 16-year old Joker was making his first contributions.
"Bad As Me is Tom Waits’ first studio album of all new music in seven years. This pivotal work refines the music that has come before and signals a new direction.
Sophomore album by this Madison, WI kraut-dub soundsystem super family is easily the greatest set of tranced post-reggae hypno-pop they've ever recorded or released.
"Valhalla Dancehall" is the band's
fourth album proper, following the Mercury-nominated "Do You Like Rock
Music?" in 2008 and the "Man Of Aran" soundtrack in 2009
Jeffrey Lewis returns with "A Turn In The Dream-Songs," his sixth album for Rough Trade Records, perhaps a sweeter record than any Jeffrey has released before.
Writing and performing with her longtime partner, David Rawlings, they present their haunting songs like rock and roll chamber music, with two acoustic guitars and two voices welded together.
When a band take a name like The Amazing, they’d better have the chops to back it up. Happily, this Swedish outfit are masterful enough to take that mantle on.
Formed by four best friends, their self-recorded and produced album is the product of months of meticulous craft-work to properly capture the band’s entrancing live performance.
Loose, shuffling and tuneful, sounds more like Wowee Zowee than Workingman’s
Dead, but it hits just the right note of tight
arrangements and 'weird
America' vibe.
One of the most talented producers of a generation and someone capable of negotiating skilfully between genres, be it jungle, dubstep, rave, garage or whatever tag you want to put on it.
The follow up to the critically acclaimed ‘Nights Out’.‘The English
Riviera’ is a sonic progression of epic proportions and affirms
Metronomy as a rare British
talent.
"I hate the phrase ‘going back to our roots’, but for this record we came home and made it in Kentucky. And it just felt a lot like it did when we were first starting out.” - Jim James
"The Gathering" is Arbouretum’s fourth full length album and was recorded in New York by Matt Boynton at Vacation Island Recording (Gang Gang Dance, IUD, Bat For Lashes).
Highly anticipated new album from Wooden Shjips, their first to be recorded in a traditional studio (Lucky Cat Studios in San Francisco) on the mighty Thrill Jockey.
Chad VanGaalen emerges from his bunker in Calgary with a batch of songs, giving us a window into the private world of this reclusive and enigmatic songwriter.
w h o k i l l, the sophomore album by Merrill Garbus' tUnE-yArDs, is a
thrill for fans of the live shows that left everyone stunned and amazed in 2010.
Warm, supple melodies etched in layers of stringed instruments and willowy organ motifs accompany his earnest, North Carolinian drawl as he tells tales of humane values lost and found.
A propulsive collusion between pop,
post-punk and experimental rock, allowing the group to shapeshift without losing any of the tension and unease that
runs throughout the record.
'Helplessness Blues' was recorded over the course of a year at Avast
Recording, Bear Creek Studios, Dreamland Studios, and Reciprocal
Recording. We're excited.
The New Jersey quartet of Martin Courtney IV, Matthew Mondanile III, Etienne Pierre Duguay and Alex Bleeker cut the sleeves short and the pop smooth to shade you from the midday heat.
Bill Callahan is a recording guru, a tastefully rampant
singer-songwriter, a heartthrob, a visual artist, a statesman for the
times and an author. His new album is a wonder.
Bill Callahan is a recording guru, a tastefully rampant
singer-songwriter, a heartthrob, a visual artist, a statesman for the
times and an author. His new album is a wonder.
![Modeselektor - Monkeytown [Bonus Edition] - CD | MONKEYTOWN015](/file/Yay3fqi/16963b30-6f34-4818-a781-49e5ece7afa2.jpg "Modeselektor - Monkeytown [Bonus Edition] - CD | MONKEYTOWN015")
![Modeselektor - Monkeytown [Bonus Edition] - CD | MONKEYTOWN015](/file/Yay3fqi/487a4669-a7c6-46df-8323-072b1adbe8a5.jpg "Modeselektor - Monkeytown [Bonus Edition] - CD | MONKEYTOWN015")
![Tom Waits - Bad As Me [Deluxe] - CD | 271772](/file/Yay3fqi/17ce0069-8a19-42f5-9ea2-5fce10dd5476.jpg "Tom Waits - Bad As Me [Deluxe] - CD | 271772")
![Tom Waits - Bad As Me [Deluxe] - CD | 271772](/file/Yay3fqi/1c4f714d-d6eb-4b66-bbdd-e726df7310ae.jpg "Tom Waits - Bad As Me [Deluxe] - CD | 271772")
![My Morning Jacket - Circuital [2CD Edition] - CD | VVR785909](/file/Yay3fqi/6704f519-ef2f-4271-b045-2a0c9970f86a.jpg "My Morning Jacket - Circuital [2CD Edition] - CD | VVR785909")
![My Morning Jacket - Circuital [2CD Edition] - CD | VVR785909](/file/Yay3fqi/6e127de2-3a87-4098-8a5a-6febfb6f6bd5.jpg "My Morning Jacket - Circuital [2CD Edition] - CD | VVR785909")
