The top 10 records of 2012, Mark Morford
Its that time of year again, when my friend Andy sends out a hotly excitable e-mail asking a dozen of his most music-crazed friends sound engineers, clubsters, DJs, anyone for whom music is less a casual dalliance and more like lifeblood to compile their personal lists of the years best music, so we can all discover something new and/or gently mock each others weird tastes in African banjo disco, kazoo jazz funk or ambient doom metal.
As usual, I dive into this venture with a great and all-consuming fervor, ignoring how Im no music critic by training and instead opening wide to 30+ years of serious music obsessiveness; couple it to a bottle of Casa Nobles anejo while I blithely ignore all other overwhelming meta Top 10 lists like this one, and its all sorts of delightful indulgence. Plus I get to hear what an idiot I am for ignoring the likes of Frank Ocean and Grizzly Bear. Bonus!
Heres my contribution for 2012, a damn fine year for music indeed
(10) Too High to Move Quiet Village remixes. Tough to classify, endlessly wonderful to sink into. Nearly two hours of deep, intimate, yet playfully epic doses of groovy, world-beated electronica with a hint of jungle rhythms, sunburned dub and international flavorings. Quiet Village, the moniker for producers Joel Martin and Matt Radio Slave Edwards (AKA Maxxi & Zeus), who collate some of their past recordings and most famous bootleg remixes to make this unexpectedly varied, groovy record, has/have an expert ear and makes every track from a wide variety of producers and defunct labels feel unified and sumptuously coherent. Best grower record of the year.
The rest: http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2012/12/27/the-top-10-records-of-2012/