Darktremor's current favorite tracks and albums - November 2008 on

Rattelschneck is really an awesome track, I just love it. It reminds me of a giant, evil, slithering mechanical snake. I've never checked out anything else they've done, but I've intended to for a little while. I'll get ahold of Zinnobar ASAP, I'll probably love it.

I looked up cafe zen, but I can't remember what my opinion of it was - I've heard so many chillout compilations over the years with zen or cafe or something like that somewhere in the title that I can't remember which one your suggestion was.

I'm studying experimental psychology, but I'm heading in a neuroscience direction. Here's some of my research:
http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.36296

Don't approve of them? Lol, how so if you enjoy them? Are you confusing current favorites with all-time favorites by any chance? The two are very different things.

And I thought I might add I cannot stop listening to The Girl From Ipanema! Is the album as good as the song by any chance?

Sure, I'll check it out (when I can download again...)

Overall, I found it to be a good list. It did what any good year-end list should do: introduce readers to some great music they missed throughout the year. I obviously don't agree 100% with the order and necessarily all of the tracks (although they were all good), but no one ever would: it was literally the average of all of RA's featured critics' year-end favorites lists.

I had heard a fair number of them already (and liked them), and I was a fan of most of the choices I hadn't heard (hence the additions).

Haha, yeah. I sort of whipped this list off in an infatuated daze. Thanks, I'll fix it.

Actually, italo-disco has some "street cred" because it really was innovative: the first genre of dance music to be purely electronic.

Still, I've never been able to get into it. I intend to at some point, I just have trouble getting past its tinny sound quality.

I'm not sure either, but it might be because it's more electro-house than grime, and a lot of grime fans seem to dislike other styles of dance music. Grime was initially a rebellion against the banal silliness of speed garage - these artists wanted garage to have more depth, and especially more of a lyrical focus. Wearing my Rolex is almost everything grime rebelled again. This isn't an attack on the track: I think there's nothing inherently wrong with music that only aims to be fun.

However, I see their point. Whenever a genre becomes exclusively about fun, it often very rapidly becomes exclusively about money. Grime essentially became the voice of London's underprivileged, and I can understand why people would see a track like "Wearing my Rolex" as a threat to that: it tells major corporations that grime is commercially viable. Cue major label execs, and shortly after, a loss of all originality in the genre.

I have no idea. Maybe it's the sheer stupidity of the song, which the band itself seems to realize:
from www.teamyacht.com/
"Included are all the songs off of See Mystery Lights, excluding the A Cappella version of "Psychic City" for obvious reasons."

Either way, I find it to be a hell of a lot of fun. I'm guessing you're not a fan?