To be honest, I haven't gotten much new music this year, been mostly getting a load of old albums(the big story of the year being the Zappa reissue series, meaning that many of his albums have now become affordable again...), though I did get a few:
Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paradiso UFO - Son Of A Bitches Brew
combining their usual sonic spacerock freakouts with free jazz stylings, AMT have come up with an exciting album creating vast audio worlds of sheer madness. It's really fun to listen to and totally out there. Their best album in quite some time!
Hawkwind - Onward
This year has been marked by the tragic death of Huw Loyd Langton earlier this month, but man, Hawkwind managed to get a good album out around spring time. It's taking their more typical sound but using a lot more modern production and stylings, so took a while to get into. It's just great that a band consisting of guys in their 50's-70's is making music more modern, fresh and exciting than the newer psychedelic bands who mostly just copy what Hawkwind did 40 years ago. It's good music, though hit and miss in parts, and lacks the continous trip feeling of earlier Hawkwind, but when it gets into the Blanga zone, it's great.
Madness - Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da
let's face it, it would be impossible to surpass 2010's The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, so what Madness have instead done is focused on what got them respected back in the eighties, a series of superbly written short length tracks about life. Now sounding closer to The Small Faces than ever, but still definative Madness, great album. Get it.
Like I said though, this year I've mainly been focusing on getting old stuff, records, tapes and whatever, and it felt like another year where most've the new bands around didn't really do anything new or interesting. Lawrence Arabia is carrying the 60's style singersongwriter mantle pretty well, and is pleasent to listen to, though top new band of the year?
perhaps
Syd Arthur? They've taken the modern indie rock and just rewrote the rule book by adding heavy elements of the canterbury scene into it, just putting those soft folk/jazz dynamics into the music and breaking up the monotomy adding a laid back sophistication. It's 'prog lite', and just glides over the ears.
EDIT: Actually the biggest music story of the year was the official release of Captain Beefheart's Bat Chain Puller, after like 35 years in development hell, the Zappa family trust were finally able to release it since he died in 2010. Unfortunately, I haven't got a copy yet, which sucks.
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this year in music thread 2012