Next Year

With 2008 winding down, the usual things have been going down. On the music front, "best of" lists are starting to trickle in and I've been using those to check back on releases I missed out on the first time around. I won't link them all but Pitchfork, Paste, Popmatters, Stereogum and amazon have all started rolling in their end-of-the-year content. It's always great seeing the similarities and differences between the editor and customer lists at amazon.com but I really enjoy seeing where my favorites fall on those lists.

Some of wrapping up the year in music relates to the mix club. I'm struggling through completing my own 2008 mix cd (like I did last year) and a lot of that has to do with differentiating between songs that are consider my favorites and songs that might make for a better, more wide-ranging cd. Basically, how do I play to my tastes while keeping things interesting? And I won't lie, it's always nice dropping something somewhat obscure in there to turn people on to new things. Right now, I've got about 70 tracks I need to whittle down to around 18 or 19, and that could be a long road...

But this has temporarily gotten my mind off of 2008 and caused me to get really excited about 2009:



News of this album have been popping up here and there but I never took much notice until I heard about a track with Kanye, Santogold and Lykke Li. Nahright just posted it, which reminded me to do some N.A.S.A. research. The acronym stands for North America/South America, as the project sees primarily US rappers/singers/musicians do their thing over Brazilian-based beats. Basically, it's like DJ Zegon and Squeak E. Clean got together and made an album specifically for me, on paper anyway. As you can see in the video, somehow they managed to gather a who's who of some of my favorite rappers and indie singers and the beats they threw down sound really fresh. Now, compilation albums and DJ/producer albums aren't usually that great but I have high hopes for this one based on the talent and scope of the project.

Check out an old poston Ricky Kim's Evil Monito for more info, including a tracklist. N.A.S.A. has a myspace page too, but I haven't actually looked at it yet.