My Year in Music

This has been a good year in music for me.

I said good-bye to my first genuinely high-fidelity stereo system.

I became more familiarwith some vintage (or at least old school) gear.

I developed an affinity for portable “head-fi”:

This includes the lovely ALO National portable headphone amp.

The second half of the year saw the arrival of a pair of Zu Omen Dirty Weekend speakers and after a few false starts the glory that is the Audio Research VSi60. Speaker upgrades are on the horizon taking advantage of Zu’s generous upgrade policy. I also got some good Schiitfor Christmas to feed my head-fi interest. My wife is pretty awesome and indulgent in this stuff. Be sure to check out Scot Hull’s site, Parttime Audiophile’s year review. He was cool enough to let me to contribute from time to time.

I also listened to a bunch of music. The lists below shows some of the music that I listened to seriously and mentioned on my weekly “What I’m listening to” feature in my Friday Varia and Quick Hits:

Rock Music Wooden Shjips, Back to Land Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt The Knife, Shaking the Habitual Francis and the Lights, It’ll be better Bad Religion, Christmas Songs Ex Cops, Hallucinations The Soft Pack, Strapped Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism Los Campesinos! Now Blues Arcade Fire, Reflektor Lou Reed, Transformer The Walkmen, Heaven The Radiators, Ghostown Chvrches, Bones of What You Believe. Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets II Minutemen, 3-Way Tie (for last) Youth Lagoon, Wondrous Bughouse Crocodiles, Crimes of Passion The Clean, Vehicle The Mekons, Fear and Whiskey Mumford and Sons, Babel Sea Lanes, Sea Lanes Mikhael Paskalev, Jive Baby Sleep Study, Nothing Can Destroy Various Artists, Anti Records Summer Sampler 80-R, One Night The Oblivians, Desperation Frightened Rabbit, Pedestrian Verse Alphaville, Forever Young Daft Punk, Random Access Memory The National, Trouble Will Find Me Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City Mikal Cronin, MCII Pete Murray, Feeler The Men, New Moon Big Scary, Vacation Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Mosquito Frank Turner, Tape Deck Heart Young Galaxy, Ultramarine Shuggie Otis, Inspiration Information/Wings of Love The Gospel Whiskey Runners, Hold On Bim Sherman, Miracle Kurt Vile, Walking on a Pretty Daze Shout Out Louds, Optica The Clinic, Free Reign II Phosphorescent, Muchacho My Bloody Valentine, mbv Ten Years After, Cricklewood Green Ten Years After, Ssssh Ten Years After, Stonedhenge Autre ne Veut, Anxiety Atoms for Peace, Amok Unknown Mortal Orchestra, II Jack White, Blunderbuss The ABCs, Stona Rosa June Panic, Glory Hole; Frightened Rabbit We Are Augustines, iTunes Sessions Son Lux, At War with Walls and Mazes Foxygen, We are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic The Bears of Blue River, Dames Yo La Tengo, Fade Kishi Bashi, 151a Father John Misty, Fear Fun

Reggae Lucky Dube, Prisoner Lucky Dube, Slave Freddie McGregor, Bobby Bobylon

Jazz Stan Getz and João Gilberto, Getz/Gilberto Ella Fitzgerald, The Cole Porter Songbook The Jazz Crusaders, Live at the Lighthouse ’66 Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, Jazz Samba Miles Davis, Dig Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain Miles Davis, Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet Donald Byrd, Up with Donald Byrd Grant Green, The Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark

Hip Hop De La Soul, Three Feet High and Rising Tribe Called Quest, Low End Theory Guru, Jazzmatazz Volume 1 EL.P. and Killer Mike, Run the Jewels Kanye West, Yeezus