In case you haven’t noticed, things have slowed down here a bit on The Rotation. That’s because the semester is wrapping up, and the editors and writers are going home, not to mention they stopped liking music. I made that last part up. We’ve got some teary-eyed farewelling to do.
2010 was an incredible year for music, and it was truly difficult choosing the top ten albums of the year. Of course, there are some wonderful works missing, but that is the challenge of the top ten. Each of our writers had a different ballot, but this will hopefully reflect (as well as it can) the divergent tastes and opinions of our staff as well as a slice of 2010′s best. Read More »
Surviving a week of finals is a lot like surviving a massive zombie attack. You spend most of your time indoors trying to devise an ingenious scheme to make it out alive, or, in this case, to escape being reduced to a heap of tears in some dark corner of the library hoping the automated stacks will malfunction and put you out of your misery. Making it out alive, much like living through a zombie apocalypse, is really just a matter of mental fortitude. All those hours logged at Yates can’t save you from the impending onslaught of tests and papers; in fact, they may end up being your downfall. After all, it’s not your body the monster wants, it’s your brain. With this in mind here’s a playlist to remind you that there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel of bluebooks and page counts, and, much like the colony of human survivors you dream of as the zombie growls get louder and louder, winter break is out there somewhere. Click through to listen.
Yesterday in Red Square, I walked up to a stranger with a huge, furry beard who was wearing a huge, furry Elmer Fudd hat and said, “You must be Englishman.” Read More »
This album is certainly about Christmas, but it is not very special. The Boy Least Likely To have put together eleven tracks which are fairly innocuous and sometimes catchy, but nothing more. A holiday album is a project which should only be undertaken with great care, because it’s so hard to avoid sounding completely uninspired – anyone contemplating a Christmas album should remember that any original song idea they might come up with has probably already been done many times before. Read More »
I like to say that I’m not really into surf/beach rock, but there’s something about finding tracks so pleasant in the deathly hallows of the blogosphere that is immediately encouraging. To be fair, Teen Daze isn’t a project that exclusively wades in this genre, but as the ever-mysterious Canadian points out on his tumblr, “I really came to fall in love with the whole lo-fi pop scene this summer, and I wanted to see what I could come up with. After writing ‘Let’s Fall Asleep Together’, the last three just sort of happened in the span of a few days.” His EP, now available for download at a price you see fit, holds that fluid, emotive quality of a work completed in a constricted amount of time. There is an uncharacteristic distance between Teen Daze and the listener, but the distance isn’t discouraging, it’s seductive. In the fuzz we find space to observe from safety and approach the material at a pace we’re comfortable with. Give it a try for yourself below:
–Igor German
Ben Cooper, the creator of Radical Face, is a man of many talents. He is currently messing about with not one, not two, but FIVE different musical projects, all of which are mainly self-driven. This is not to mention various works of fiction that are currently underway, or the extremely low-budget short movies he produces. Touch the Sky, his latest release, is a short compilation of six songs, introduced as a transition of sorts between his first album under Radical Face and the second, anticipated album – both of which are part of a three-CD series. Read More »
It’s almost winter, and therefore the window is closing for being able to wear shorts and a t-shirt without dying or worse. That’s why we should all be thankful that Surf City’s just released their new album Kudos. Read More »
