Monday, November 29, 2010

The LPC Staff's Top Ten of 2010: StarFoxDisciple



Welcome to the second week of the LPC staff's top ten lists featuring their favorite albums from 2010. Today, we feature one of our more unique writers in StarFoxDisciple. SFD holds a job hosting a radio show at the University of California - San Diego's radio station (KSDT). It's titled "Stoned Out of My Mind" after a song by Speed, Glue, & Shinki and he goes under the DJ name Debaser.

It's a show that features some of the best garage punk/rock out there along with great psychedelic music and more. It airs at 5 PM ET/2 PM PT every Monday and it's always worth the hour-long listen.

This is a different list - SFD preferred to not rank these albums - but different doesn't mean it's bad. It means it's just that much more awesome.

Here's SFD's top ten albums of 2010:

sun city girls - "funeral mariachi"
The final album by one of the most special, unclassifiable bands that has ever existed. Along with the rest of their output, this album is hard to put into words, so you might as well just listen to it!

crazy spirit - s/t 7"
The best hardcore punk album of this year, on so many levels, Would even appeal to people not so much into the genre, I'd imagine. It is just pure awesomeness that you want to nod your head along to until you get a migraine.

drunkdriver - s/t
I am not even sure if this album even saw a true release. It was originally going to come out on Load, but they got dropped due to drama in the band and then Parts Unknown was going to release it and I am not sure if they ever did. Anyway, this is band synergy to the maximum. American hardcore in the vein of Brainbombs; ear-shredding hostility. Shit you listen to when you're mad and want to feel insanity incarnate.

jim shepard - "v-3 next album"
Jim Shepard is a god. This is the material recorded for his band V-3 in the 90s (before his suicide) never released before, but finally out on proper issue on Columbus Discount Records. No-holds-barred lo-fi rock in its most pure manifestation. Bummed out drug anthems ("I thought there was no need to worry, surely no need for alarm / I sent my brother two-hundred dollars and he put it in his arm"). Imagine a more organic sounding GBV or Pavement, if you can, and it sounds like that except better.

guinea worms - "sorcerers of madness"
Guinea Worms have been around for quite some time and never really gotten much attention. Their first album after all that time (a double LP at that) is difficult to put into perspective without first realizing that this isn't just some new upstart band but rather a fixture of the contemporary Ohio garage rock scene. And since the recordings on it could have been written at any point during the band's long existence, it may seem incoherent as a start-and-finish album, but if you consider it more like a relatively old band's first (belated?) trapse into the world of full-length albums, as kind of an anthology of what they've done in that time, it will make that much more sense.

the men - "immaculada"
Brooklyn punks that cross so many genres you never heard anything like this before. From black metal to power pop, these dudes put their own spin on whatever the fuck the feel like and it sounds incredibly good. Self-released and they have another album in the works, expect to hear more about them in the near future from those wiser than I.

swans - "my father will guide me..."
It's Swans, it's Michael Gira, and it's a really good album. I'm not sure what else I can say that a quick Internet search would put more eloquently.

slices - "cruising"
Before I heard that Crazy Spirit ep, this was my hardcore punk album of the year. Incredibly good traditional hardcore with a few pauses to let you catch your breath then kicks you in the balls when you think you're ready (you're not).

nothing people - "soft crash"
Every new release I hear by these guys is better than the last, and this is their greatest work to date. Disconcerting creep punk for late-night listening.

salem - "king night"
In spite of their sub-par live shows, this is a band with a vision of combining two genres that, to any rational person, probably wouldn't make a lot of sense. But when you actually hear it, Christ on the cross, does it sound good. Darkwave and Southern hip-hop... who'd a thunk, right?

Great job as always, SFD. Don't forget to give a listen to his show sometime at ksdt.ucsd.edu.

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