Year End Polls and All That Jazz

It’s about that time of year where every website, magazine, and blog out there starts churning out year end lists. Despite the presence of some more interesting “Top 5 of 2008” lists over at Little White Earbuds and other places, I find that my mind just doesn’t work like that. I did submit some choices for the polls over at Resident Advisor (in fact, I even got to write the blurb for 2008’s top live act DBX) but that was mainly to ensure that the kind of music we cover here at ISM got some representation. If you check their user-generated Top 100 DJ poll, you can see why I was concerned!

I’m not gonna bore everyone with posting all my choices, but even coming up with those lists at all was rough. This being the first full year of ISM, I had our archives to go back and look through to find what albums, singles, and remixes I got excited about. The problem is, I didn’t write about EVERY record that I got this year. For example, Moritz Von Oswald’s remix of Sebbo’s “Watamu Beach” was not a record I mentioned in a post, and thus it got left off my list. And one of my top choices for albums, Karizma’s excellent “A Mind of Its Own” which I picked up in April and my man Jwan picked up in January, has a release date of March 2007 listed on Discogs. Is that even correct? How can I verify it? I also felt uncomfortable voting for numerous tracks by the same artists (even if they probably deserved it) in the name of getting more of my favorite artists in the mix so they could get some love shown for them.

The whole process just goes against how I consume music. It’s tough to pinpoint exactly, but my guess is that over 50% of the money I spent on music this year went to old records that cover the last 50 years or so in many genres. This year saw a large increase in the amount of jazz music I purchased, with basically none of that coming from the last 25 years. And those were some of the records I was most excited about! Because my music purchases are drawn from such a huge pool, the decision made when purchasing something is “Is this the best value for my money?”, not “What new things do I need?” Looking at Philip Sherburne’s list of 2008 albums for eMusic, I realised that I probably didn’t buy 12 albums from this year to make up a list that long. I don’t even feel bad about it, really. When it comes down to it, I only have so much time to spend listening to music and I’m not gonna waste it on something that isn’t interesting in the grand scheme of things just because it came out this calendar year. When you’re competing for my listening time in 2009, you’ll be going up against all the greatest artists to ever record music, not just the guys who put something out the same week as you. If you can’t fuck with John Coltrane in the big picture, I’m probably not going to listen to your shit anyway.

We definitely review much less new stuff on here than other “techno and house” blogs do, but we cover more old shit than most of them do, especially things that haven’t just been reissued. That’s an important part of who we are. I could try to do a big rundown post about my favorite things that came out in 2008 like I did in 2007, but I don’t really feel like it. There are little links on the sidebar to sort posts into the categories they’re filed under. Click on the one that says “Records” and check the posts we made throughout the year to see how we felt AT THE TIME. No revisionism necessary, no conveniently wrapped up list for you to download effortlessly, no bullshit. You can get a nice slice of new and old hiphop, soul, jazz, ambient, and more, along with what we felt stood out at various points through the year in house and techno. I think that’s a better way to look at it. You can see how we collected the records, the moods we went through, the undercurrents of buying different genres at different times in the year, etc. Not to get all High Fidelity on you, but the way we do it allows you to see how WE lived this year, as if the record titles were chapter names in our autobiographies.

We cover music with purposeful prejudice. Taking our personalities and tastes out of the equation would make this blog totally meaningless. The cats who write here were chosen for a reason, and that reason wasn’t because they were “objective” journalists. We can’t speak definitively on anything other than what we like, and that is based on years of culture and experience. We’re not going to listen to every single record that comes out in the genre of “techno” just because we are a techno blog. In fact, I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there who have listened to 100 times the number of techno tracks from 2008 that I have. What makes us unique and our voice meaningful is our perspective, and that’s what you’re going to continue to get through 2009 and beyond.

I’ll probably have one more post about new records this year as Moodymann finally dropped his “Det.riot” album and there’s a bunch of other dope sounding jams out there. I also grabbed a bunch of old records I’d been looking for for a hot second, including some things I was obsessing over on CD this summer. In the new year, we’ll have some more great interviews, record reviews, guest mixes, mixes by our resident deejays, parties, commentary, exclusive unreleased tracks to download, and whatever else we can cram into our little corner of the interwebs.

I want to give a big shoutout to all the blogs and sites listed in our “Essential Links”, you guys laid it the fuck down in ’08. I hope everyone checks those guys out regularly as they are all truly essential. To the ISM readers, a huge thank you. The fact that you guys constantly comment and dialogue with us shows that we have a thriving community here, which in turn makes artists and deejays want to work with us so that in the end, everyone wins. To those artists and deejays, another huge “muchas gracias”. We’ve had so many great guest mixes and interviews this year that I can hardly believe it. You guys are a big inspiration, and we’re happy that you’re down with something as underground as we are. It’s been a really fun year and a half or so thus far, and we intend to keep upping the ante, trying to outdo ourselves. If things go as planned, 2009 should see the first vinyl releases associated with this blog. We’re taking this shit big time. Peace.