What are your favorite albums from this year so far?

[Initech]

Here's my top 5:

1) Vampire Weekend - Father Of The Bride
2) Cage The Elephant - Social Cues
3) Dream Theater - Distance Over Time
4) Amon Amarth - Berserker
5) King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Fishing For Fishies

Honorable mentions:

- Bastille - Doom Days
- Simple Creatures - Strange Love
- The Claypool Lennon Delirium - South Of Reality
- Flying Lotus - Flamagra
- Bad Religion - Age Of Unreason
- Devin Townsend - Empath
- Foals - Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Pt 1

Anyone else have any good music from this year so far?

[Still In Wisconsin]

1. Totally agree on Dream Theater... they just keep making great stuff! n/t

[Initech]

2. Barstool Warrior is an awesome song!

I was at this show! Dream Theater still knows how to bring it!

[mr_lebowski]

3. I've only heard the first two, I love #1 cause I love VW ...

#2 I'm still working through, just started, bout 1/2 way through, but good so far.

I'll check out some of your other rec's, I generally like DT, and Flying Lotus, and Foals

[Initech]

4. Yeah there's been a lot of great stuff this year.

But really if I had to pick a favorite album so far this year it'd have to be Father Of The Bride. I just got the LP over the weekend and have been listening to all the sides of it.

I also can't wait for the new Raconteurs album this week.

[mr_lebowski]

6. Yeah, it's really good. So is it a double disk on vinyl?

Bet that sounds awesome, nice wide grooves.

I'm in the process of upgrading my PC-connected sound system after having blown the right speaker on my trusty old Logitech 2.1 system (nice one from 2006-era, 8" sub) ... Cranking up The Cure-Disintegration, 30-year anniversary at Sydney a couple weeks ago ... that finally did it in

As such, busted out some dusty gear ... my old top-o-the-line 1991 Denon Integrated Amp (AVC-3030) to use as preamp/switching, and my 1992 Adcom GFA-555 (200W RMS/Side) stereo power amp ... and hooked up some old US-made Boston Acoustic Bookshelves from 1995 ... they're not all that nice, but all with the clean power ... sounds pretty decent. Still using the Sub from the Logitech rig ...

Pretty soon I'm getting some much nicer bookshelf's, a decent 'real' sub, and then my old Technics turntable will be getting in the action. Gonna need a new cartridge for that though, current one was cheap and has barely been used in 20 years.

Then I'll start buying vinyl again

[Initech]

7. I want to upgrade my speakers at some point.

I'm relatively new to vinyl and my record player is a very decent player with built-in speakers. I am going to try wiring it into my existing sound system at some point.

The VW is great. I've been slowly expanding my vinyl collection which was originally about 10 titles to 25 and I've got a couple of LPs on pre-order including the new Black Keys album.

[mr_lebowski]

8. Speakers are built into the record player? What unit is this?

I have lots of vinyl from when I was younger, probably only 100 or so LP's left. Lots of 'em I used to have, I traded in for cash at used record stores, some of them I REALLY regret doing that. And some were stolen or loaned/never returned, or I just lost 'em in a move.

I do still have many more CD's than that though.

I'm def. looking forward to Raconteurs and Black Keys as well

[emulatorloo]

5. Badflower's "Ok I'm Sick". It's really dark yet somehow uplifting at the same time.

Also The Chainsmoker’s “Sick Boy”. Nice to hear an EDM act address depression and mental illness. Opps that was last year!