#1 Chromatics - Kill For Love
(Italians Do It Better)
I have been waiting for this album for 6 years! I was a huge fan of their last album in 2007. Both Night Drive by Chromatics and Beat Box by Glass Candy made it into my top 50 that year. That was also the first year of the Amoeblog and my first top 50 for Amoeba. Glass Candy will have a new album out in 2013. But in 2012 we got a brilliant new album by Chromatics. These guys are from the beautiful town of Portland. They have been around for about a decade. But really became a different kind of band back in 2007. Another perfect album of dreamy electronic love songs. These songs are seriously breathtaking and they make it seem so easy. These guys can do no wrong and always manage to create exactly what I need from them.
Listen to "At Your Door" by Chromatics...
#2 DIIV - Oshin
(Captured Tracks)
The band formerly know as Dive is now called DIIV. This was another album that I was highly anticipating this year. Captured Tracks has done it again this year and released another group of amazing albums. They had two albums in my top ten last year and they have two more in my top ten this year. DIIV is Brooklyn based Zachary Cole Smith of the band Beach Fossils. I actually like this project more than Beach Fossils. DIIV is exactly what I have come to expect from this label. This is shoegaze and dreampop in the year 2012. It brings me right back to the early 90s. I never really wanted to leave that period of music. So I am happy to revisit if often.
Aaron Detroit, Buyer at Amoeba Hollywood. I've worked in Hollywood for eight years, but started my time with Amoeba - way back in 1998 - at the San Francisco store. This is my extensive list of 2012 releases that I fell in love with or had serious affairs over the past 365 days. 2012, for me, was a surprising and amazing year in music. Nearly all 50 releases here could have been a Top-Ten contender almost any other year, and the Top Ten is full of records that could easily have been #1.
50 Essential Albums of 2012
1. SCOTT WALKER Bish Bosch (4AD)
The 6-year-long wait was well worth it, as is usually the case with Walker. This isn't the latest indie background music du jour - It's an Absurdist's symphony. Melody is eschewed for repetition, but you still walk away with the damned thing in your head. E-bows, machetes as percussion and disturbing (as well as amusing) scatological metaphors are some of the unlikely ingredients that make up this terrifying (and weirdly infectious) beauty. There's really nothing else like it, so enjoy figuring it out for the rest of your life.
Today (Monday, November 26th, 2012), Amoeba.com is offering 20% off all purchases along with free shipping for Cyber Monday. Here is your chance to take advantage of the discount offered to expand your horizons. Today, we feature the hipster bar room vallenato of Very Be Careful and the lush anthem rock of Mexico’s greatest rock band, CafĂ© Tacuba. Check out Brazil’s equivalent of Sly Stone, Tim Maia. Also recently released is Latin Jazz legend Poncho Sanchez’s Live In Hollywood and African reissues from Tunji Oyelana and Super Biton De Segou.
Perhaps you want to take a chance at the incredible "indigenous meets futuristic beats" of The Future Sounds Of Buenos Aires? How about Jukebox Mambo, a collection of Latin inspired R&B from the '50s and '60s? What to try some Funk and Boogie from the country of Surinam, a former Dutch colony located in northern South America?
These are a few of my picks but the choices are endless at Amoeba.com
Best Selling World Music CD’s At Amoeba Hollywood For 2012
1. V/A- Bossa Nova Rise of Brazilian Music in the 1960s
2. La Santa Cecilia-El Valor
3. Rodrigo Y Gabriela-Area 52
4. Serge Gainsbourg-Historie De Melody Nelson
5. Eydie Gorme Y Los Panchos-Cantan En Español
6. Enrique Bunbury-Licenciado Cantina
7. Caifanes-S/T
8. Lila Downs-Pecados Y Milagros
9. V/A-The Original Sound Of Cumbia
10. Calle 13-Entren Los Que Quieran
Best Selling World Music LPs At Amoeba Hollywood For 2012
1. Beach House - Bloom
Song for song, Beach House’s Bloom is the most consistently great album that’s been released this year. The band sounds more energized than ever, grasping the pop brass ring with songs like “Lazuli” and “Other People” that match hookiness for sheer beauty. If Beach House are this generation’s Cocteau Twins, this is their Heaven or Las Vegas.
2. Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel …
Fiona Apple is no less mad or maddening than before on The Idler Wheel…, but her venomous lyrics have a new sting, her vocals are more accomplished than ever, and her arrangements are as bravely tangled and unafraid of ugliness as her lyrical content.
