SEVEN NOISES

After the overexposure of end of the year (and decade) best of lists, this year for the first time in ages, I've decided not to do one myself. Whoever has spent a bit of time checking this blog during its nearly one year of existence will already know some of the singles I considered worth of checking and buying so you can do the review yourself going through the old posts. Anyway, after checking some of those lists you can just see some are just repetitive and some have nothing in common, looking as if they were from different planets taking into account the source they've been brewing in.
Anyway, If I don't do any kind of review about the last 12 months, it doesn't seem end of the year so I thought I would just comment what's been about in general 2009. And this year, more than the previous years and as it used to be in the nineties, everything's been about the record labels so i thought I would resume 2009 through them.
If there's been a label that has been the protagonist of the year this is Captured Tracks: managed by Blank Dogs, it has brought us not only his own releases but also great singles and EPs by Dum Dum Girls, Woods, Ganglians or Christmas Island. Together with them, the Brooklyn label Woodsist has worked as a parallel label to Captured Tracks. Managed by Woods, every single release they've put out has got the attention of the media, from Fergus and Geronimo, Real Estate or The Mayfair Set to Fresh & Onlys, Ganglians or Woods themselves.
We've seen as well the resurrection of a mythic label which was 20 this year; Slumberland Records, mainly thanks to Pains of Being Pure at Heart, has also brought us great records from Crystal Stilts, Brilliant Colors, Lichtenstein or Frankie Rose.
In the UK, Transparent Records has brought us great limited singles from Washed Out, Small Black or The Smith Westerns, Young Turks discovered us The XX and released singles by Wavves and Tanlines and No Pain in Pop brought us A Grave with No Name, Deep Sht or Trailer Trash Tracy's. Other great labels of the year were Mexican Summer (Washed Out, Weekend, Pearl Harbour), Art Fag (Crocodiles, Best Coast) , Black Iris (Foreign Born, Fool's Gold), Upset the Rhythm (Xiu Xiu, Future Islands) or Moshi Moshi (Kindness, Thecocknbullkid).
We also see how stablished record labels were as good as ever (Sub Pop and its singles Club) or got back on track (Matador releasing Girls, Cold Cave or getting Sonic Youth).
According to sounds this has definitely been the year when Lo-Fi was back in track and popularised again, folk overlooked and electronic music mainly resting. And yes, it was the year when Animal Collective got full coverage in the mainstream world, something that, looking way back, looks like it could never happen so maybe not everything's lost in popular music.