We are in the future.
And the future looks good. In only 5 years, we'll have flying cars and hoveboards. In nine years we'll have life-like replicants that will work as laborers in dangerous off-world environments. Let's hope they don't decide to fight back.
So it's 2010 and it officially sounds like we're living in the future. Twenty-Ten. I guess it's a pretty big deal. I originally wanted to write up a "best of the decade" list of music albums, but there are too many. Do I limit it to ones I listened to as they were released, or do I include ones from the early-mid 2000s that I have only discovered recently? So many options. So I'm not doing that.
Instead, I decided to focus only on 2009 and create a party mix CD of some of my favorite tunes from the past year:
Jeff's 2009 Party Mix
- Röyksopp - Röyksopp Forever
- The Golden Filter - Solid Gold
- Black Moth Super Rainbow - Tooth Decay
- Simian Mobile Disco - Audacity of Huge
- Calvin Harris - The Rain
- Danger - 00:01
- MSTRKRFT - 1,000 Cigarettes
- Boys Noize - Starter
- Huoratron - Gbay
- Infected Mushroom - End of the Road
- Dan Deacon - Snookered
- Condo Fucks - Shut Down, Part 2
- Street Sweeper Social Club - Promenade
- Them Crooked Vultures - Gunman
- The Flaming Lips - Watching the Planets
Oh and look, somebody hosted it right here, and it's totally not even on my web server, completely absolving me of any legal issues. How convenient! Total playing time comes in at just under 70 minutes, so you can burn it to a CD which everyone totally still does.
And now for some miscellaneous fun statistics for the past year:
Top 10 Google Queries
- php date
- zenses
- totom
- foobar
- wamp
- sabnzbd
- adsense
- edmonton ab
- zend framework
- totallies
I can never remember how to format various dates in PHP, I guess.
Top 10 Last.fm Artists
- Nine Inch Nails (821 plays)
- The White Stripes (561 plays)
- Atmosphere (350 plays)
- The Beatles (285 plays)
- The Smashing Pumpkins (278 plays)
- Infected Mushroom (270 plays)
- The Flaming Lips (269 plays)
- Modest Mouse (264 plays)
- Beastie Boys (264 plays)
- Brothers Backword (179 plays)
No surprise here, except for maybe The Beatles being so high up there. I decided to listen to every single one of their albums chronologically since they were all remastered in 2009. It was neat. I might do it again.
Top 10 Last.fm Songs
- The White Stripes - It's My Fault For Being Famous (29 plays)
- Danger - 00:01 (feat. Vyle) (27 plays)
- The White Stripes - Astro (26 plays)
- Röyksopp - Röyksopp Forever (24 plays)
- Danielson - Did I Step On Your Trumpet (24 plays)
- Infected Mushroom - End Of The Road (22 plays)
- Street Sweeper Social Club - Clap For The Killers (20 plays)
- Nine Inch Nails - Not So Pretty Now (20 plays)
- Jane's Addiction - Chip Away (20 plays)
- Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks (20 plays)
This list differs quite a bit from my 2009 Party Mix album mostly because a lot of these songs weren't released in 2009. Go figure!
I wrote 34 blog posts. My website had 5,719 visits, 9,920 pageviews, and 4,276 unique visitors. I sent 92 emails. I wish I had more stats. I basically wish everything kept incredible stats and let me see them. How many tweets have I made in 2009? How many people did I befriend on Facebook? How many people did I remove as a friend? How many gigabytes did I download? I guess I could keep track of these things myself, but that's way too much work and requires way more discipline than I'm prepared to invest.
Anyway, here's to living in the future.
I'll get the obvious out of the way first and start with this one. For sale on the Nine Inch Nails website as a digital-only version for $5 or as an ultra-deluxe limited edition version for $300, this was a 2-disc album containing 36 entirely instrumental songs. There are no official videos for this album, but there was a partnership with YouTube to allow fans to create their own custom videos, sort of like an online film festival.
Another obvious one for me, this album was released for free online in digital form as a gift for the success of Ghosts I-IV. It saw a physical release on CD and Vinyl, but was limited to 250,000 copies worldwide. Many critics said it was Trent Reznor's strongest work since The Downward Spiral in 1994.
Everyone teases me for listening to rap music, but they don't know what they're missing. Atmosphere released several small EPs the past year, but their strongest was definitely this album. I was somewhat disappointed with their previous full length album so I didn't have the highest expecations for this one, but my doubts were erased when it was released.
This album made both 
Another favorite on Last.fm, also one of the catchiest albums I've heard in a long time. This is MGMT's first full length album and is sure to be played in my car for a long time.
This album fits into my "silly electronic music" phase that I've been in recently, along with several other albums released in the past couple years. This is the only one making the list, since it's the only one released in 2008.
Another electronic album, although not really that silly. Somewhat similar to Daft Punk in style, this one is best enjoyed when played very loud with a lot of bass.
I first heard of Man Man when I saw them opening for Modest Mouse. Their genre is hard to describe, so I'll just quote Wikipedia: "Their musical style has been described as Viking-vaudeville, Manic Gypsy Jazz. Man Man is known for their exuberant live performances. When performing, the members of the band dress in white outfits and wear war paint."
Another favorite weird band of mine, Why? is from the primarily hip-hop record label 
Yet another weirdo band from Anticon, Restiform Bodies is an experimental hip-hop group. I don't really know what else to say about them other than they're probably an acquired taste.