Best new music of 2012
» Our predictions for developments in the year's music world.
Image by Eyebodega.
Welcome to 2012, the year we've all been waiting for. Perhaps it's the end of the world; probably not. If not, perhaps you are wondering who will be the acts to look for this year? Here are the predictions of the Impose staff.
- Lana Del Ray will be unveiled as a spam bot, explaining the coverage virus infecting and tarnishing oh, so many reputable publications.
- D'Angelo will go full-monty once again, but this time in a better lit room. Chris Cornell will make a parody video and wear a prosthetic.
- The Das Racist solo mixtapes will be considered "too ethnic" by Sasha-Frere Jones. The New Yorker will loose its brief street cred and Jones will be diagnosed with delirium tremens.
- After the release of Guided By Voices final album, the entire state of Ohio will lift from the earth, revealing a spaceship. The Alien Lanes record will replace Bee Thousand as the most discussed GBV record.
- Gonjasufi's MU.ZZ.LE record will be enjoyed by only three parties: Steven "Flying Lotus" Ellison, the Pitchfork editorial staff that gave his previous record BNM, and Impose Senior Editor Blake Gillespie.
- The Craig Finn solo record will be played in many bars in 2027. But, by then no one will have recalled him going solo and mistake it for another The Hold Steady or Lifter Puller record. The album will be mentioned in numerous police reports regarding the reason a fight broke out.
Total Control
Total Control can rip thrash with a jangle in their step, and they can sound stone cold glum on a shimmery garage tune. They also have a soft-bellied taste for home chemistry kit drum-and-casio ballads, and that was just on their 2011 album Henge Beat. We're really excited to see them show up another time in the USA, to be able to find them more easily on the internet, and to watch them show up on the radar of more Guitar Lovers, just as that particular species starts creeping towards the endangered list.
Schoolboy Q
The absence of Schoolboy Q’s Setbacks from 2011 Year End lists is puzzling, but chalked it up to first quarter amnesia - a legit disease among journos. Schoolboy Q is fearless in the first quarter though. He’s releasing Habits & Contradictions on January 14. If the Academy of Music Lists fails to recognize Q in 2012, bet Impose will be first to sing praise for the unsung hero of the Black Hippy crew.
The Internet
2011 was the year Syd from Odd Future won the battle for what happens when you google "the internet cocaine." And while Frank Ocean got all the love for some silky vocals... Uh...
PPM
Post-Present Medium kicked us in the nuts with Total Abuse's Prison Sweat, sucked our blood with Eric Copeland's Whorehouse Blues 7", consoled us as we bid Silk Flowers fair well and rolled joints with us to SFV Acid's New West Coast last year. January leads off with a C.R.A.S.H. EP, a punked'up all-star band comprised of Dean Spunt, Brooks Headley, Cundo Bermudez and Michelle Suarez, while February invites EARN to mellow us out and Eric Copeland to do whatever he can squeeze onto a 7". Oh, and a No Age LP entitled Collage Culture: Examining the 21st Century's Identity Crisis.
Heems' mixtape
Das Racist’s Heems kept busy on tour and between press junkets by updating his Nehru Jackets Tumblr with tracks from his mixtape of the same name. Kool A.D. was first up and drunk as hell, but Heems sounds as though his new year’s resolution was to pop the balloon on the slacker rap he coined in jest.
Dive vs. Friends
Only one leaves Brooklyn alive.
Fiasco
A band that blew our brains out years ago is finally hitting drinking age any day now. Their first release was recorded in about 15 minutes when they were 17 and 18 in their parent's basement and we loved it so much we put it out on vinyl. A few years later and they're big kids now and they're putting out LP number two. Cannot effing wait.
Homeboy Sandman
The Brooklyn MC broke into the Stones Throw offices and ransacked beats from the desk drawers and file cabinets. This might be the first Stones Throw debut devoid of Madlib, J Rocc or Oh No production, but a few students of the ST school (Johnwayne, rthnic RTNC and 2 Hungry Bros) hold court like a Rookie All-Star squad. Is Stones Throw finally entertaining the thought of letting insanely talented rappers (excluding M.F. Doom, of course) bless their records?
Talk Normal
We're unabashed buddies of these two, but this isn't bias so much as pure love: their next record is most definitely an election year LP...
Julia Holter
2011's NNA Tapes and Leaving Records releases whet our whistle for more of the advanced-yet-baroque songmaking of Julia Holter. The first single off of her 2012 RVNG Intl full-length, Marienbad, is one of the most perfect instances of looped vocalism we've ever heard, and it caused immediate heartbreak to learn that we'd have to wait an entire three damn months to hear the rest of the record.
Lee Bannon
Lee Bannon’s Plastic Fantastic full length on Plug Research was supposed to be his big premiere, but he went ahead and dropped Gnarlon Bando’s Midnight Noir soundtrack. The recklessness hints to a back log of releases he’s itching to disperse. He’s been spotted playing dance sets in Midtown Sacramento instead of hip hop gigs and beat battles, which gives the impression Bannon’s well beyond hip hop these days.
Tearist
A little birdy told us they have a 12" in the works with some special exclusive remixes. It might not land them on Conan, but the names being tossed around are noteworthy to say the least.
Black Marble
Ty from Team Robespierre has ditched the microphone and positive vibes and teamed up with longtime friend Christ Stewart to create some some nu-morose tunes. Think a two-man Joy Division, but you won't have to think long, because they have something (7"? EP? LP?) forthcoming on Hardly Art.
Outkast
Rumors are the duo will release their first LP together since 2006's Idlewild in "early 2012". While these rumors also came with the news that both Andre and Big Boi planned to release new solo albums by the end of 2011 before dropping the new joint effort (which has yet to happen), we're not giving up hope until the Mayan Calendar runs out.
Thee Oh Sees
With John Dwyer and the gang dropping a release like clockwork every 4 months or so, 2012's follow up to last year's Criterion Crawler/The Dream should descend quicker than you can say Interstellar Overdrive 2012: A John Dwyer Odyssey.' It could be the shape and sound of 2012 SF garage to come and by which surrounding luminaries like the Fresh & Onlys might begin to play it even stranger.
Ty Segall
For a man that runs marathons on dropping garage nuggets on as many indie labels as possible; we await the follow-up to 2011's Goodbye Bread for his next rock n rolling sojourn on Drag City. We predict a 2012 refinement of 70s glam rock chunkier than Joan Jett's revisionist take on the Arrow's apocryphal, "I Love Rock n' Roll." This could be the shape of SF pop to come.
The Soft Moon
Luis Vasquez self-titled album had us brooding down spiraling hallways of striped black and white lights while the Total Decay took us into the void of pop mangled into dirty, lovely refuse. With a sophomore LP in the works we got our money on a weirder, darker and muddier treatment of electro organica that only the Soft Moon can provide.
Black Bananas
Jennifer Herrema has rebranded herself again into Black Bananas from RTX, beget from the legendary Royal Trux franchise. The upcoming Rad Times Xpress IV due January 31 on Drag City presents Herrema and company doing a dolled up arena ready pop on "Rad Times" presents them as the glittering harbingers of yesterday, today and tomorrow's rock equpped with sleazy mechanical beat plods.
Cloud Nothings
Seems like only yesterday Dylan Baldi dropped out of a college and kicked out Turning On on Bridgetown, then an excellent self-titled on Carpark and now he's got himself a record produced by the almighty Steve fuckin' Albini on the upcoming Attack on Memory out January 24 on Carpark. Expect a tighter Cloud Nothings like the Albini essence on "Stay Useless" and the band's darker strolls like on "No Future/No Past."
Hunx
Riding the Gravy Train! synth bloops to Nobunny liasions, strutting with his Punx and Punkettes; front man Seth Bogart is taking a center stage of his own making where he wears his "Lover's Lane" 50s homoerotic fantasies next to his appreciation for the ensuing decades on Hairdresser Blues out February 28 on Hardly Art. Not to be missed, as Hunx actually gives his vocal range the community- college-of-esthetics go on his solo outing.
Main Attrakionz
The illustrious North Oakland duo's big follow up to 808 and Black Grapes II is rumored to be here in the spring with Mondre and Squadda B working more with Shady Blaze, maybe another Danny Brown collaboration on the album (or a phat loosie) as well as rolling with the Odd Future crew along with some cloudy hints of more choral Friendzone production and plenty of surprises ahead. Shady Blaze also has a mixtape in the works expected to drop soon.
Weekend
Ever since the San Francisco trio followed up their debut Sports with Red we have been pleading with the trio for any hits on the follow up album. All we know us they are brushing off the blogger dorks, J&MC comparisons and Huey Lewis jokes and making some damn good rock and roll like that "Hazel" single that blows the anoraks off their Slumberland labelmates.
Posted on January 04, 2012. More on: ppm, schoolboy q, total control, friends, dive, julia holter, lee bannon, talk normal, homeboy sandman, stones throw, fiasco, heems, the internet, syd, odd future
