In lieu of a boring year-end list, Man of the Year Recycle Culture releases a "remixtape" made up of inspired re-imaginings of his favorite tracks of 2014, featuring Ariel Pink, Lana Del Rey, Lewis, Grouper, Taylor Swift, How To Dress Well, jj, Dean Blunt, HTRK + more...
Here are our favorite records of 2014. The general consensus seems to be that this was probably not the most amazing year of all-time for new music, and further, we just weren't feeling that many of the unanimously lauded critic/indie blog favorites this time around (many of which we wanted to love, but it just didn't work out, with a few notable and very obvious exceptions). But as always, if you looked beyond the basic jams that everyone else insists are great, there were some serious jewels to be uncovered just below the surface. And we only had to cheat a few times this year, that I'm aware of (sup Lewis, Burial, & Johnny Jewel). Check the full list + an essential/beautiful spotify playlist after the jump, and as always, we'd genuinely like to hear your picks too. Thanks for sticking with us for another year, look for our perennially more interesting Songs of 2014 list in the coming days...
"Recorded pretty simply, with a portable 4-track, Sony stereo mic and an upright piano. When I wasnʼt recording songs I was hiking several miles to the beach. The path wound through the ruins of several old estates and a small village...
"I have been playing pop music with some friends and we made a 7". We're playing under the name Helen." -- Liz Harris of Grouper
Grab Helen's beautifully blown-out debut Felt This Way / Dying All the Time 7" single on iTunes...
We're psyched to announce that we've teamed up with our friends at Austin's Chaos in Tejas to help present a couple of amazing shows at this year's fest, starting with one of our favorite / most important artists in the history of this site, Portland's Grouper, along with Jessica Pratt and Silent Land Time Machine on May 31 at the beautiful Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Austin...
Download a somber, unsettlingly eerie new mix from Portland's Liz Harris for FACT, entitled Image Of True Death. No tracklist / more info here:
mp3:
(81 mb)
Our friends at self-titled magazine have hooked us up with a copy of Liz Harris of Grouper's beautiful, extremely limited (100 prints), signed Repeating Patterns 2 print -- pictured above -- to give away to one of you...
