Shall we? Unless we wanted to wait until next week?

Too late, it's started:

01. Run DMT - 468
02. Clams Casino – 256
03. Turbowolf – 245
04. Lilacs & Champagne - 224
05. Peaking Lights - 217
06. Total Control – 203
06. Hear Hums - 203
08. Cloud Nothings - 199
09. Pete and the Pirates - 198
10. Cold Cave - 186

1 – Great name, and it doesn't give away what it sounds like inside either; more Haunted Graffiti than Jam Master. Lysergic modern pop music slipping through a hypnogogic portal to the 60's heavily laden with harmony and hook.

2 - Pretty unbelievable how great Clammy’s productions are. So atmospheric. Some of them even manage to be grand and claustrophobic at the same time by mixing close beats with wide-open synth tones. They work even better on their own as instrumentals without people adding extra words over the top but the fact that they are complete entities that still allow space for vocals on the top is pretty special.

3 – I think that if they had released their album properly, on CD and vinyl, then they would be pretty massive but because it was just an itunes release no one takes them seriously. You should take them very seriously (with your tongue in cheek.) The best classic foot-on-the-monitor spectacle rock band since The Darkness, only with deadly tunes instead of flaccid proggy balladry nonsense. Believe in this band.

4 – Two guys from mystical ethno-post rock monolith Grails make an album of seductive mystical ethno soul featuring obscure Czech singers, sonic relics and vintage tones shot through a grainy super-8 filter. Easily one of my albums of the year.

5 – First artist to reach over 1000 plays in my library, deservedly so. That means I probably have listened to 936 about a hundred times because I play the vinyl a lot too. Imaginary Falcons gets a lot of spins as well. This band is the real thing. The music they make sounds like it existed before they got to it, yet no one else in the world would be capable of reproducing it, and that is the mark of greatness.

6a – Australian garage rock supergroup featuring members of UV Race, Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Straightjacket Nation. Not sure how this has so many more plays than bands like the Oh Sees and Ty Segal, because I seem to be listening to a lot of it at the moment. Garage Rock is on a roll right now.

6b – Hear Hums released a couple of albums last year but this is probably all plays of their most recent one Opens, released on Akashic Records and Inner Island, and available free on their Bandcamp (still, I think - http://www.hearhums.bandcamp/). Anyways, sounds like Animal Collective with a hippier earth-loving vibe (I allow myself that word for things like this) – better than Animal Collective, imho.

8 – Another one of my albums of the year, no doubt. Attack on Memory has everything I want in a rock album and it never stops sounding good. Every song has great sounds, raw but well considered, perfect timing and that poor little kid’s vocal chords must have been destroyed when recording was done. Brilliant stuff. I haven’t heard the first album.

9 – I got A Thousand Pictures this year, would easily have been in my albums of ’11 if I’d heard it at the time it was released. They write really good solid songs with a buoyant melancholy – nowhere as exciting as Cloud Nothings who have a similar feel. But yeah, easy listening, as the stats show.

10 – All plays of Cherish The Light Years – totally eclipses Love Comes Close in every way. Love how huge and anthemic it all is. I could talk about this album for hours, so all I’m going to say here is - Confrontational introspective darkwave ftw. <3 Eisold. I feel ya bro.

>>>>>

Now you go please.