Music, The Daily Feed, We Love Music

Favorite Albums Of 2010

While I consider my Best Concerts list to be a pretty definitive guide to what concerts totally rocked socks in the DC area in the past year, I think that top album lists are a bit more vague and really only serve as guides to albums the reader may have missed. I am much more a theme-based best-of list maker. I usually don’t compile a best albums of the year list, but I have received several requests for me to do one this year.

I acquire music rapidly and without much regard to year. So really albums are not so much attached to years for me as they are tied to whatever genre or sub-genre kick I am on at a given time.* It was actually pretty difficult for me to put together my starting list. A lot of what I thought were 2010 albums were actually from ’09! That said I did put together a list of about 50 or so albums from this year that are worthy of mention. From that list I battled them down to a top 10. These are not the best albums of 2010, they are simply my favorite. Maybe you’ll find something new here to check out. Maybe you won’t. Readers you asked for it, you got it. My picks in reverse order (along with a taste of each) after the jump…

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Adventures, Entertainment, Music, We Love Music

We Love Music: MoogFest 2010 (Night Two)

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All photos by the author.

Also check out my MoogFest 2010 (Night One) coverage.
Also check out my MoogFest 2010 (Night Three) coverage.

My second day of MoogFest began with an afternoon trip to the Moogaplex, to fiddle around with some Moog instruments first-hand and to attend one of the many afternoon discussion panels about the history of Moog instruments. I finally fulfilled a life-long dream of playing a Theremin. I played three different Moog Theremins actually, as well as a few different models of Moog synthesizers. I was not the only one in attendance having fun with the instrument petting zoo. There were about 30 or 40 people anxiously waiting in line to get their paws on a Moog. I can not think of another music festival where the fans get a chance to play with high-tech gear such as this. A very special treat provided by Moog Music.

The panel I attended was a narrated, power-point presentation about the treasure trove of Moog artifacts discovered in Moog’s country workshop and garage after he passed away. Thanks to a Grammy Foundation grant and countless hours of volunteer effort hundreds of documents, artifacts, and recordings have been cataloged and preserved. The panel made it very clear that this is an ongoing preservation effort and that donations would be helpful in saving all of this music history. Within this mountain of Moog documents all sorts of tidbits and trivia are being discovered. One example is that Moog’s first synthesizer prototypes were capable of polyphonic sound.* This was unknown to Moog historians until just a few years ago. The panel was the first time this information was made public; in a most spectacular way. By playing a recording of it.

For about ten minutes, Moog’s sound archivist played selections from rare recordings discovered in Moog’s workshop. These were some of the earliest synth recordings and proved fascinating listens. Two notable recordings were a riotous synth solo by Sun Ra and the earliest known recording by master synthesist Wendy Carlos. I’ll admit it was pretty mind-blowing to hear a recording of Wendy Carlos noodling around with a synthesizer for the very first time!** Hearing some of the earliest synthesizer demo recordings ever made was the perfect way to get psyched up for the performances ahead.

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Entertainment, Music, We Love Music

We Love Music: Caribou w/ Emeralds @ Black Cat 9/23/10

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All photos by author.

Last Thursday night Canadian indie-dance troupe Caribou made their second stop in DC in six months when they played to a nearly-full Black Cat. This time around they brought Ohio’s psychedelic/electro princes Emeralds along as openers. Combining Emeralds’ intense sonic textures and Caribou’s intricate dance music provided for an interesting evening of music that would have fit right in with last week’s Sonic Circuits Festival.

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