Maybe it’s not saying much, as I feel like I have been coming to this conclusion often yearly, but there were some truly fantastic records released this year. It would be a bit dishonest if I didn’t mention that as someone who fell in love with music through hip-hop, the genre is definitely the one that I keep up with the most. Left-field hip hop - the more lyrically abstract an … [Read more...]
Nextbop/The Art of Cool Project’s Favorite Everything Else Albums of 2013, #10-1
I spent quite a while looking through our staff list to find some sort of theme for the music we liked this year, but try as I might, there was nothing I could say. There was no overarching, coalessing word I could lasso around these albums other than what we could probably say about the rest of the albums we're discussing this week, or this time of year, or what we hope to do … [Read more...]
Anthony Dean-Harris’ Favorite Non-Jazz Albums of 2013
"...Keep in rotation." It's a term I happen to use a lot. Usually it means there's some album I just can't help but remove from my phone's memory when its space is wearing thin through week after week of constantly acquiring new music. This means a lot to me in jazz; it's my job, of course. But when I happen to say this in reference to a non-jazz work, those outside interests … [Read more...]
The Best Non-Jazz Albums of 2012: #10*-1
To be honest, these are the top ten non-jazz albums as voted by our staff, but since ties are a habit with this year's lists, we're going to start things off at #8. We'd be a little more accurate in the title of our list, but the desire to make round numbers beat out the need for complete accuracy. It, much like our balloting, was a weighty decision. Nevertheless, these are the … [Read more...]
Nextbop’s Best Everything Else Albums of 2011
I knew this list was going to be interesting. We've got a pretty diverse staff of writers with different sorts of taste. As diverse as our jazz list is for this year, when lumping every other genre of music together and giving everything a ranking, it doesn't lead to the typical lockstep decisions. We had a lot of ties. It's a sort of interesting list.--ADHTie 9) PJ … [Read more...]