sean

really? i didn't get anything out of listening to this. will give it another go.

that wasn't what i was saying. just that some stuff get forgotten and the year is front loaded with good and hyped releases relevant to DiS.

ha, I wish we were that malleable. the album of the year was decided over a week ago as we Does It Look Like I'm Here defines 2010s fractious nature.
sadly, it was as boring as VirginMedia 50meg broadband continuing to be rubbish (they seem to be blaming the weather). Have had issues for month and spent all of Friday trying to get artwork files and embed videos but my connection was on-and-off, down about 60% of the time.

I love this record is getting even more attention than it being in the list at 71 or something. it was very nearly in the list but not a lot of our staff loved it - perhaps because of the caveat I've heard a few times "you have to see them live, the records pale in comparison" is why it was one of the 140 or so records that could have gone in the list but sadly just missed the cut.
Or to put it another way, we do like Titus, so much so they recently played our DiS night in Sheffield. http://drownedinevents.tumblr.com

As it says in earlier parts of the list, this wasn't a tallied up, democratic thing. staff voted to get a sense of editorial love (more like a committee, with a sort of "house of lords" editorial team making the final yay and nays) and, as per my pre-amble, there was no consensus.

To add to which, defining "best" is near impossible but our favourites of the year, is what this list is all about. Does It Look Like I'm Here is the record that every time a member of our community recommended it, heaps of people started replying saying how much they love it. The passion of our community factored as much in this decision as the staff list. Sure, it was no-ones number one but it was on a lot of staff lists and a lot of reader lists, and with no clear definitive winner, I think a record like this defines 2010 and what DiS is about, much better than whatever the most popular choice might be. Not everyone will love it, and like I said, nearly all of this top 10 could have been number 1, of which, 2 of the records you suggest are in the top 2 and 2 more just outside of it. Thanks for your comment and I hope this helps to make better sense of this decision.
Best,
Sean

four tet is in there, at number 47 http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4141664

sorry, we can't hyper-personalize this list to each user. would be great if you and everyone else who disagrees could tell us and the 100k+ people who'll read this list over the next few days your top 10 and which records they should have been listening to instead.

Due to a technical issue/adverse weather conditions, our top 10 albums of the year will now be up tomorrow.

Kate Nash was very close to making the list as I totally agree, sadly we seem to be on my own with that, oddly.

me too but sadly we don't have the resources to labour over every review and who reviews it, and what they think before they've submitted the content (and we certainly aren't going to tell people who want a good or bad review on something). our reviews editor only works for DiS two days a week, and he spends a third of that writing reviews, another third getting hold of records and the third third subbing and setting stuff live (often before going to work at his day job).
also isn't helped by the fact we often only get a copy of the record a week or two before it is out, and listening to everything, let alone forming an opinion of it, is near impossible - which is part of the joy of the year-end, being able to take stock of everything, etc

"Editor's decision is final..." ;-)

i dunno about adding avi but you might wanna see here re: best coast http://twitter.com/seaninrcrds but then, i don't really dictate things. half the top 75 wouldn't be in my personal top 75 of the year, etc.

its a 8.5/10 album for me, personally and various other members of staff had it in their top 10s. reviews are just the opinion of whoever wrote the review, rather than the entire publication and we plan to make this much clearer in the next iteration of the website.

if i remember right, avi buffalo didn't get a single vote (was it out this year?). the rest are in the 75, i can reveal that much.

</it wouldn't make my top 100 list>

the users always do their own poll on the board. i started one but i think it's being scrapped in favour of top 5s rather than top 10s. and i got in too early (doing research for this, in earnest)

just haven't explicitly said so. this year i've become increasingly hating of the date-led way that music's merit is being judged by. popularity usually just leads to agreeability, rather than the exceptional but i hope, as you'll see, we've adapted the old system to create a list that represents what DiS has been about for the past 12months (and past 10 years too)

as you can't account for marketing. the only way to do it is to ask for top 3s or top 5s, as often, try as they might, people don't love more than 5 albums a year or explore far beyond the heavily marketed or "must hear" albums of the year. one staff member only submitted 3 records as they hadn't listened to any others from this year, and they didn't even particularly like their number 3 choice. admittedly, this is rare but without listening to and exploring 500+ records a year, which few people have the luxury of time/money to do.

to the best of my knowledge, he's on 4AD. haven't seen anything to the contrary (and kind of couldn't imagine him signing to a major). perhaps just an overzealous RIAA bot confusing search terms/song titles?

one of the most disappointing debut albums of the year. descriptions on paper and the EP held so much promise.

this is one of those rare occasions when me and that Roby lady disagree. No Age were amazing at iTC, it just took a while for the sound to settle. You'll read as much in Dom's review of ITC which will be up on Monday.

oh, i take that back, that IS you, though you had a different username :)

that goes to him out of Metronomy http://www.mixcloud.com/OLUGBENGA/diolch/

whoops, no idea how i managed to do that. thank you.

and have listened to it a lot more than than the two times i've watched the movie but you might be right. however, being the least good david lynch movie soundtrack is like being the 5th cutest kitten.

please click here http://open.spotify.com/user/seaninsound/playlist/2ZokPZLP4EIODwH1UJNMtW

If anyone is having problems with the links above, try click-clacking here: http://open.spotify.com/user/seaninsound/playlist/2ZokPZLP4EIODwH1UJNMtW

he wrote a biog for Patrick Wolf. And we ran the biog, as part of a week of running pieces artists had commissioned - including John 'Kill Your Friends' Niven's biog of the Manics, which was an incredible piece of writing.

they were always very good, now they're rather next level! not so sure it'll come across on the main stage but we'll see.

but none of us stuck our necks out for it and i don't really know anyone who loves that album. whereas, for all the abuse from people who've probably not heard the new Kate Nash record, it's a record that people have been pleasantly surprised by and become besotted with.

last year's cut off date was the day before the nominations were announced (which this year would make Kimbie eligible), so to save any muddle we decided to make The Neptune cut off date yesterday.

can be songs from any year/era but thought it easier to ask for playlists you will be playing this summer.

also, as it says in the first sentence, this was done via email.

i'll get stuck into listening to these in whatever format over the coming days.
i just made this mixtape using spotify if anyone fancies an extra playlist from me http://seaninsound.tumblr.com/post/721981471/mixtapemonday

1. The reason she took 4 years off was to have a child and to be a mother.
2. She mentions having a child several times in the new songs.
3. I genuinely think Uffie is an important artist, partly because she symptomatic of 'the age' in the ways in which she expresses herself half-internet-troll, half-intensely personal over-sharing.
4. I especially like when she refers about herself in the third person.
5. I love how this is like a Greatest Hits collection, rather than "an album"
6. I'd give the album an 8.
7. My interview with Uffie follows on Monday.

pharell def says moe-mento

i saw them at in the city in manchester last october playing for Huw Stephen's, went out of curiosity, left after 4 songs out of disdain because they could barely play, it was like attending a band practice. even more so than watching the xx learn to play bass live on stage.

which makes solving them all the more harder.
an era of aggregation, triangulation and hype-manipulation, almost all driven by data rather than passion, has taken down the path of existential crisis. i have 'some' solutions but implementing them requires resource or at the very least a sense of understanding.
i guess i don't have the silver bullet, yet but envisaging a better future and believing this is just a bit of a glut, that a fascination with crowdsourcing, nowstalgia and 80s nuance is coming to an end, is probably a good start, at least for my personal state of mind.

how i feel about music is how i feel about life.
and if life was easy, if music was easy to love, the things that i truly love would seem a bit hollow.
i don't really do niceties or turn 'like' into love for the same of appearing to be a happy-clappy-smiley kinda guy. most 'singles' don't really do miserable as pop and radio is all about being upbeat and adding a rhythm to people's days. i just find people who are upbeat to be liars. at least the likes of Bill Hicks and Peter Cook or even Russell Brand seemed pained to be funny or happy.

did i spell it wrong or summat? i knew what the lyric meant, it's just the way he says it that is a bit lame.

agreed!

that doesn't have a massive management company that have 'invested' 50k-100k into the band / marketing the band, before signing a deal.

but i think some of the more savvy majors have already cottoned on to this. Modest Mouse, Interpol, Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes (for UK/Europe), Kaiser Chiefs, etc were all upgraded from indies to majors, with varying results, skipping out the development and investment and risk, etc. Then there's the whole indie-that's-49%-part-of-a-major and you get situations like CSS being upgraded to Warners from Sub Pop and stuff like that.
p.s. Chapel Club, what's that all about?!

and reading this i was expecting you to give it a 9 but then realised all the things i love about the band are the exact things most people hate about 'rock'.
also i think your irony radar may have been a little off, unless, like, you think 'pork and beans' or anything by fountains of wayne was a serious slab of sensible summer-rock?!
this album makes me wanna drive with the roof down and live they shook my tiny little mind (and i'm not sure if i hadn't seen them live if i'd feel the same about the record, if you know what i mean?)

if we gave some kind of "DiS score" we could easily have people slagging off a record but it getting a high score because of some party-line. would be a little bit silly.

not much point telling us what you don't like.

and don't place such importance on a score awarded by an individual

if i ever start a fashion or politics blog i'm calling it aseaoffuckups.com
personally, i prefer this album to Sound of Silver as a 'whole' but then SoS has better moments/tracks. still, he's still head and shoulders above pretty much everyone else around at the moment and i can't wait to hear which way he veers next.
p.s. am amazed you managed to use that many words and not mentioned Bowie :)