From the record label hype:

sbtrkt’s debut album pulls off a series of impressive feats: it’s bursting with fresh ideas, and yet it sounds immediately familiar. it’s sound-patterns and rhythms can easily soundtrack the ecstatic hands in the air dance floor moments as well as reliving the monotony of the morning commute. its influences are incorporated with subtlety and sophistication: dense enough to interpret, light enough to dance to. while he has had multiple releases in single and ep forms, this is his first full-length, and about that he says “this release is the culmination of a longer period of constant writing and collaboration, tracks on previous eps were written as singular pieces. this record is much more of a whole project, more representative of my thoughts and ideas as an artist and each track was completed with the aim to be coherent together.” in a bold move this album could easily be compared to massive attack’s debut ‘blue lines’. as that classic explored and used all the sonic moves of the uk at that time (1991 in fact) so does sbtrkt. house, dubstep, techno, funk and soul – it’s all here – but twisted and turned the only way sbtrkt knows how. the breakthough here is he manages to compact what could easily be a seven minute club banger into a complete three minute single. the album is full of absolute moments and is sure to soundtrack many a night out, in and everything in between from here on in. hard to see any electronic album beating this for a very long time…

Could this be said to explain the sameness of the Nike/Fader mixes we mentioned the other day?

LPs
1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion – Domino
2. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – Glassnote
3. Neko Case – Middle Cyclone – Anti
4. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz! – DGC/Interscope
5. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca – Domino
6. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest – Warp
7. The xx – xx – Young Turks
8. Raekwon – Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Part II – Ice H2O/EMI
9. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic – Warner
10. Girls – Album True – Panther

Singles
1. Jay-Z (ft. Alicia Keys) – “Empire State of Mind” – Roc Nation
2. Phoenix – “1901″ – Glassnote
3. Animal Collective – “My Girls” – Domino
4. Grizzly Bear – “Two Weeks” – Warp
5. Dirty Projectors – “Stillness Is the Move” – Domino
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Zero” – DGC/Interscope
7. Lady Gaga – “Bad Romance” – Streamline/Interscope
8. Girls – “Lust for Life” – True Panther
9. Phoenix – “Lisztomania” – Glassnote
10. Taylor Swift – “You Belong With Me” – Big Machine

Chuck Eddy has an interesting piece on the consensus, wondering why the dinosaur critics appear to be more wide-ranging in their listening than the indie-rock crew.

An important distinction: We’re not looking for everyone’s favorite albums or songs, but rather ones that had some sort of historical significance. These are the game-changers — ones that signaled some sort of shift in music, or ones that were particularly influential in some way. We’re looking for the albums and singles people will still buy, share, listen to and talk about for years or decades to come.”

NPR: The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings is the plain, unadorned, list. You can see a written discussion of the list here. They take pains to say that these are “important” choices rather than “favourites”. But, given that they solicited input from their listeners, it’s no surprise that the list plays pretty safely within the limits of middlebrow, educated, white American tastes. Of course, by specifying “important” the NPR staffers get the chance to incorporate a salting of “outsider” stuff. I’d really have to try hard to find ways in which Juanes’ Fijate Bien” can be claimed as influential.

The NME, on the other hand, decides to sit around the pup and scribble a list of guitar and indie rock items on the back of a coaster and give it to an intern for a couple of hours so that (s)he can add some of the “yoof” influence and make sure the items were actually released in the 00′s. Then they spread The Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade over a bunch of web pages in order to boost their page view numbers.

Paste Magazine has another, somewhat less predictable list.

Earlier, Pitchfork concluded their 200 Albums of the 2000s with the final 20

Can’t find the Uncut Magazine original list, but Stereogum has the top 20 here

Someone will probably put these all together. If you know a link lemme know.

Oh, yeah, f**k Radiohead

Florence And The Machine 5.00
Lily Allen 6.00
Bat For Lashes 8.00
Doves 8.00
Little Boots 8.00

I’m a little surprised by Lily Allen and Doves being so high up. Their stars had seemed to be declining. Florence and Doves apparently benefited from well-received performances at Glastonbury (despite the prize being awarded “solely on the basis of the music on the album”). You can see the full list at the: Ladbrokes betting line on the Mercury Music Prize

Energy Flash – The Hardcore Continuum

Theory and Its Discontents
The text of a talk by Simon Reynolds delivered at FACT, Liverpool, Wednesday 11th February 2009. 
PLUS
notes for points to be brought up during the dialogue segment with Mark Fisher but weren’t owing to time running out
PLUS
afterthoughts on the past, present and future of the hardcore continuum