Best Music of the Decade: 2010-2019

Zephyr's recent thread got me thinking about decade in regards to stuff i've found or think will stand out. hard to pin down what will really last, i know some of what i think will stick with me... but i'm curious what y'all think is the best, your favorite, or the most interesting music (genre, label, albums, artists, trends, whatever) of the decade. catch-all for anything and everything i guess. lists? sure, idk. maybe even worst trends you're hoping get forgotten. i'm putting my thoughts together and trying to order/contextualize the massive amounts of music, and discussing it helps me to sort my ideas.

tl;dr: 2010s music discussion

oh and duh, my first thoughts:

lots of great Autechre

no Portishead

Bandcamp/Soundcloud's impact on the music industry as a whole is pretty important. also obv streaming is very important.

  On 9/6/2019 at 6:04 AM, MIXL2 said:

 

 

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i hope you are not serious loll

Sleepy, off the top of my head list of favorites while on my way to work:

2010 - LCD Soundsystem, This is Happening

2011 - Yohuna, Revery

2012 - Grimes, Visions

2013 - Deafheaven, Sunbather

2014 - Koen Holtkamp, Motion: Connected Works

2015 - Panopticon, Autumn Eternal

2016 - Emma Ruth Rundle, Marked for Death

2017 - Kelly Lee Owns, Kelly Lee Owens

2018 - Camp Cope, How to Socialise & Make Friends

Honorable Mentions

2010 - Sufjan Stevens, Age of Adz / Robyn - Body Talk

2011 - Braids, Native Speaker / Chelsea Wolfe, Apokalypsis

2012 - I can’t remember anything about 2012 besides Grimes, tbh

2013 - The Courtneys, The Courtneys

2014 - Aphex Twin, Syro

2015 - Grimes, Art Angels / Holly Herndon, Platform

2016 - Datach’i, System 

2017 - Blanck Mass, World Eater

2018 - Emma Ruth Rundle, On Dark Horses / Zoë Mc Pherson, String Figures

Striking to me is how much I was into the witch house/chillwave stuff in my late teens as the decade turned over, but that’s not represented here. That Salem album is still really good though, I wonder whatever happened to those crackheads. 

Kanye

in no order really but here's what i would put forward:

VHS Head - Trademark Ribbons of Gold

CN - Nu

Autechre - Oversteps

Machinedrum - Room(s) + Vapor City

0PN - R + Seven

LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening

Atom TM - Pop HD

Kendrick - To Pimp A Butterfly

Bjarki - His trio of albums from 2016: AE, "B" and Lefhanded Fuqs

Oh yeah... and the entire colundi catalog / everything Aleksi has done since colundi level 1 came out in 2014. (IIRC colundi level 5 came out first but whatever) The amount and quality of all the music he's made in the last 5 years is insane. The man is a genius.

hard to believe Radiohead didn’t put out a win this entire decade (unless they’ve got a stunner about to drop in these last few months) but I guess they were doing plenty of touring and solo/soundtrack stuff, all interesting in its own rights.

first things that come to mind as like defining the decade for me would be

Vladislav Delay - Visa

Machinedrum - Rooms

Autechre - AE_LIVE / NTS Sessions

Lorn - Misc./Lorn & Dolor - Drugs

Kelela - Take Me Apart

Rezzett - Rezzett LP

 SHXCXCHCXSH - just in general?

lots and lots of misc ambient

  On 9/6/2019 at 4:09 PM, dr lopez said:

VHS Head - Trademark Ribbons of Gold

 

Come on now

  On 9/6/2019 at 4:23 PM, Blir said:

 

Come on now

i said in no order and also use your ears that album is amazing

I did use my ears, once the album had finished I needed recovery time from the ear fatigue. I can't think of an album I've revisited more and not been able to understand what everybody was so fussed about. So samey and uninteresting aside from a couple of tracks.

Each to their own I know. Blah blah.

  On 9/6/2019 at 4:24 PM, dr lopez said:

i said in no order and also use your ears that album is amazing

It is an amazing album, sorry Blir

I don't know about the best releaes but the ones I keep listening to repeatedly.. it's subjective anyway innit. In a kind of semi-timewise order:

Shit tons of Autechre (Move of Ten, Oversteps, Exai, AE_LIVE, Elseqs, NTS) (Oh man this was a good decade to be an Ae fanboy)

Seesaw - Poetry

Seefeel - Seefeel

Konx-om-Pax - Regional Surrealism

Dead Can Dance - Anastasis & Dionysus

The Gaslamp Killer - Breakthrough & Instrumentalepathy

NHK'Koyxen - Dance Classics vols I - III

Lotide - Moonless

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Phono Ghosts - Chrome Position

36 - Dream Tempest

Biosphere - Patashnik 2, Shenzhou reissue, Senja Recordings

Earth - Primitive and Deadly

Kyoka - IS (Is Superpowered)

Biosphere & Deathprod - Stator

The Fear Ratio - Refuge of a Twisted Soul

UFOCUS - Guidance for the Puzzled

Galaxian X Stingray - NU-1000

The Transcendence Orchestra - Modern Methods for Ancient Rituals

Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement - Ambient Black Magic & Panama Canal Left-Hand Path

Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure

Wanderwelle - Gathering of the Ancient Spirits

Yann Novak - The Future is a Forward Escape into Past

Star Shepherd - Current Explorations in Star Synthesis

Also I would say Grischa Lichtenberger but hard to pick certain releases only because I kind of mix & match the tracks.

now u know tha deal 4 real and u dont survive will be with us for a long time

Shackleton - Music For the Quiet Hour

Might be some overlap with prior posts, but:

Actress - Splazsh, R.I.P.

Ae - Exai, AE_LIVE, NTS Sessions

DJ Rashad - Double Cup

Lone - Galaxy Garden

Oberman Knocks - Dilankex, Trilate Shift

Seefeel

Squarepusher - Damogen Furies

Team Doyobi - Digital Music Vol. 2

VHS Head - Trademark Ribbons of Gold, Persistence of Vision

Here's some personal favs:

- Garden of Delete by Oneohtrix Point Never

- Ex Military by Death Grips

- Another Life by Amnesia Scanner 

- Replica by Oneohtrix Point Never

- Sushi by James Ferraro

- That's Harakiri! by Sd Laika 

- Mega by Blank Banshee

- Bells and Whistles by Blockhead 

- Mutant by Arca 

That's all i can think of at the moment... There's def some releases I missed and I'm gonna kick myself for not including later I bet.

How did I forget that Seefeel self-titled? I blame sleep deprivation.

Turns out it’s hard to wrap the brain around a whole decade of music, especially when a lot of it was killer. 

  On 9/7/2019 at 6:57 AM, Lada Laika said:

Turns out it’s hard to wrap the brain around a whole decade of music, especially when a lot of it was killer. 

Right?! So much nice music this decade... And there's still a year left!! 

This is a tough one, and probably deserves more thought/memory wracking than I'm giving it right now, but here are some of the standout artists of this decade to me:

Autechre, Loscil, Zabutom, Chris Douglas, Oneohtrix Point Never, Mark Fell, Cygnus, Sendai (Ground and Figure), Fennesz (Agora)

  On 9/7/2019 at 7:06 AM, KingBo0 said:

Right?! So much nice music this decade... And there's still a year left!! 

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Technically under 4 months, but I’m picking up what you’re putting down. Recency bias will make it hard to judge stuff from recent years vs the beginning of the decade. Still, I like the topic and am super game to further the discussion.

Clark - S/T

Sorry I had to say it. 

bye

It was a weird decade for electronic music for sure. I had an early infatuation with the dubstep scene and the speed at which things crashed and burned was surreal. Had some good parties and some joints by Burial and Mala are still worth a listen, but the formula got old fast. My best memories of tracks are lost forever as they were mostly heard in obscure mixes around the turn of the decade. The same kind of meltdown happened across the board (glitch/neuro hop was promising until Monster Cat annexed the whole genre), but it seems to have been a good thing as deeper genres are making a return and people are more open to dynamics and alternative recording techniques. It's been great to see the rise of laid back genre-benders like Lusine, Tycho and Bonobo. Some bass-heavy producers remained relevant with really polished releases (Noisia, Billain, Icicle, Joe Ford, Loxy, Tipper & Koan Sound to name a few). I'm kind of sated with that sound pallette however and am more intrigued by inventive developments like the audiophilic electro-acoustic weirdness of composers(?) like Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds. Johann Johannssons untimely passing was a major sorrow.

Very few straightforward electronic/IDM releases held my attention. I was more impressed by Ae's lengthy mix shows than any of their albums, Tomorrow's Harvest was a snoozefest and Squarepusher still hasn't won me back after all the post-Ultravisitor letdowns. Syro was monumental of course but for me, Dave Monolith stole the show and Flektro is my favorite electronic release of the decade. Luke Vibert put out loads of good stuff as well. 

The indie scene was the real winner overall, both in terms of the bandcamp DIY boom and a surge of brilliant indie rock and folk groups. They all sound great whether it's clean like Real Estate and Deerhunter, or more sunburnt like Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing and Washed Out.

An amazing example of great folk recording is Matthew & the Atlas' unplugged version of the Temple album - not a single bad track and the soundstage is perfect. I second The Courtneys honorable mention above. Real Estate's Days, Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest and Wild Nothing's Nocturne are other favorite indie rock/dream pop albums off the top of my head. 

In the Ambient world, Celer kept its head high despite the group being (sadly) halved. Alio Die's Deconsecrated and Pure is probably the most meaningful ambient album of the decade - most of his releases since are disappointing resamples of textures in earlier albums. Robert Rich has released a ton of boring crap (though not to the same degree as Steve Roach) but Ylang and Nest are on par with earlier works. Ex Confusion's Embrace is a strong hallmark of the decade. 

I was never enthralled by all the nostalgic lofi "-wave" genres, although some cheesy synthwave and sample-heavy instrumental hip hop has been in rotation. My hope for the future is that streaming services will profile and aggregate themselves better so that DIY cassette extravaganzas don't get buried under the next Lil Mumble Rapper. 

Other noteworthy mentions (the ones that I can recall while at work anyway) 

The Grits - Make a Sound

Speedometer - Downtown Funk '74

Leifur James - Argonaut

Kristine - S/T

The Midnight - Endless Summer

Michael Oakley - California & Introspect

Cold Cave - Cherish The Light Years 

Owen - The King of Whys 

Hiroshi Watanabe - Sync Positive 

K-X-P - III

Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment - Surf

Small Black - Limits of Desire 

Tied & Tickled Trio - La Place Demon

Scott Hamilton - Ballads for Audiophiles

Brian Eno - LUX

Yndi Halda - Under Summer 

Avalanches - Wildflower
Beak - (all time relevant releases)
Low - Double Negative
AFX - Orphaned DeeJay Selects
Hot Snakes - Six Wave Hold Down
Dungen - That one
Chemical Brothers - Gravity Drops track
Thundercat - Drank (Chopped and Screwed)
All my soundcloud mixes.
Goat - I Sing In Silence
Chevron - Britain ( or whatever the albums called)
Total Control - all albums
Palms Trax - Sumo Acid Crew
Now I Am Become Death - NIABMovement
Slowmile Swift - 4 Keeps
Part Chimp - IV
Laurel Halo - Quarantine
Good Time - OST (OPN)
NMW - World Inside
BOC - Mixtape
Ross From Friends - whatever
Ralomomdo Simmons Quest - whatever
Great God Pan
LFO Tribute Set at Warp 30
AE Tapes at Warp 30




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on top of my head, kanye man is mister dank tunes universe 2010-2019 no doubt

autechre pretty much owned everthying cause oversteps and nts sessions are the sickest music ever + i saw them live 3 times i think woow

afx cause those unreleased tracks blow everything away and that collapse ep rules

Everything arca and john maus released.  Every Danny brown album was excellent. Flying cat and thunder lotus rocked, i also realy liked the later dmz stuff 2

fuck and about 100 more albums and about 1000 trxxx i love that are forever branded in my brain, can't wait to hear what the next 10 year brings lol