Happy New Year! Welcome to 2011! It’s time we celebrate the best music of the past year! During the ten days of my winter vacation on the beach, I agonized about my favourite selections of the year. In fact, I couldn’t properly relax until I was done with the entire list. But now that it is out of my system, I feel like I can finally enjoy this drink and this sun, and start another year of music in 2011.
Once again, I couldn’t fathom a proper placing of my favourite releases from 12k, n5MD, Ad Noiseam, Warp, and Raster-Noton within the same list. Try as I might, I just couldn’t find an appropriate scale to rate ambient pieces next to bass-heavy dubstep and glitched IDM. So this year, just as the year before, I’m sticking with my own made-up categories. From the lists below, pick a section that best suits your mood, the weather, or the time of day, and you will surely find some of the best music in the appropriate genres. Call it a theme-centred playlist of our favourites, if you like. And if you are familiar with a few albums within that selection, you will surely enjoy others!
My best of the year choices are limited only to full-length albums. There are tons of singles and EPs that, perhaps, I’ll get a chance to cover, not to mention a huge pile of 12″ from some of my favourite DJ-friendly genres. I’m also not listing re-mastered releases and reissues of previous years – those have already gained my recognition in the past, and may appear in a separate write up on these pages…
Since I don’t believe in rating music, all of the selections within each category are rated #1 – therefore I listed the entries in alphabetical order by artist’s name. They are all truly winners! This has been a tremendous year and I’m sure I’ve missed a ton of music! In fact, as soon as I’m done publishing this, I’ll probably scramble to pick up all of your recommendations…
Make sure to come back to this page on a daily basis until all of the lists are published! My reflections on the entire year will follow. And leave me a comment or two, will ya? I hope you enjoy…
~HC