*Legion*'s 2009 "Golden Asterisks" Music Awards

Sephirotic wrote:

I'm surprised to not see Baroness on here. Blue Record is quite good!

I'm not done! I've just been slapped around like a ping-pong ball back and forth between holidays/vacation trips and work deadlines.

I think of jakelegg every time I listen to that album.

Yeah, me too! I included "Steel that sleeps the Eye" and "Swollen and Halo" on my year-end compilation for best of 2009.

And that album cover! I've got a new art-crush in John Dyer Baizley!

Sephirotic wrote:

Yeah, me too! I included "Steel that sleeps the Eye" and "Swollen and Halo" on my year-end compilation for best of 2009.

And that album cover! I've got a new art-crush in John Dyer Baizley!

Great stuff there.

I'm back!

Golden Asterisk for Achievement in Metal

Minsk - With Echoes in the Movement of Stone [Relapse]

IMAGE(http://www.thesirenssound.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/minsk-with-echoes-in-the-movement-of-stone.jpg)

Oh man, do I love this album. My first exposure to Minsk was 2007's The Ritual Fires of Abandonment, the group's first album on Relapse - which, of course, made the inagural Golden Asterisks list. This album is even better. Tribal rhythms permeate. Vocals smoothly move from howls to pensive chant, providing a nice range and complimenting the compositions brilliantly. Strong, "catchy" riffs bring out melody from inside the thick, hazy wall of sound. It's hard not to compare this to Neurosis's landmark Through Silver in Blood, but Minsk make it sound like they invented the sound.

Minsk - The Shore of Transcendence

Minsk - Means to an End

Golden Asterisk for Achievement in Internet Mash-Up Videos
Golden Asterisk for Achievement in Auto-Tune

DJ Steve Porter - "Press Hop" and "You Play to Win the Game"

After seeing his latest, I had to make a new category to put him in. And I ended up making two.

If you hang around the sports boards, you know these videos. If you don't, you probably won't be interested. But they get their Golden Asterisk.

DJ Steve Porter - Press Hop:

DJ Steve Porter - You Play to Win the Game:

Golden Asterisk for Achievement in Ambient / Drone

Aun - Motorsleep [Alien8]

IMAGE(http://static.boomkat.com/images/216592/333.jpg)

If the word "Frippertronics" means anything to you, then you mostly know what's going on here. Aun is an "ambient doom" project by Martin Dumais. It's very much Fripp and Eno through the lens of a modern, post-shoegaze music world. It's fuzzy, undefined, and a bit more busy than the classic Fripp & Eno (or Cluster & Eno, or just Eno) work that it brings to mind.

AUN - Rzot (live clip from 2008, short clip)

AUN on MySpace (some full length tracks there)

Hopefully I'll finish this list before it's time to make next year's!

Golden Asterisk for Achievement in Soundtrack

Stingray Sam [BNS Productions]

IMAGE(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.cinematical.com/media/2009/10/stingraysam.jpg)

My choice for best soundtrack also goes to my choice for best movie (were I to give such an award). Cory McAbee's musical-space-western instantly became one of those movies that will always be present in my personal collection, after my wife and I caught it at an Alamo Drafthouse late-night showing when we were in Austin a few weeks ago.

See it. Now. Torrent it. I did, right before sending $50 McAbee's direction for the deluxe DVD set.

The soundtrack zips between genres, bouncing back and forth between insanely catchy songs to sing along to, and excellent atmospheric, post-rocky background tracks.

Watch the movie and get the soundtrack, and I guarantee you'll be singing "Stingray, Stingray, Stingray!" for weeks.

The Billy Nayer Show on MySpace (entire soundtrack there to stream)

*Legion* wrote:

Golden Asterisk for Achievement in Internet Mash-Up Videos
Golden Asterisk for Achievement in Auto-Tune

Have you seen "Auto-tune The News"?