The last time Big Business played the District, writes Brent Burton in his City Lights pick for tonight, “the bass-drums duo seemed to be almost twice as loud as Kylesa, the other metal band on the bill. This was especially impressive because, at the time, Kylesa had twice as many members and three times as many amplified instruments.”

Read the whole Big Business pick.

Here’s my top ten. This year, for once, I tried to focus on ten albums that I listened to a lot. In previous years, I gravitated towards major statements, and a list-wide balance marked by genre eclecticism. This led me to include records that I neither like nor listen to any more (see: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, among many others).

If I wrote about a record on this list for publication, I’ve included an excerpt below. If not, I’ve tried to find a good excerpt from another writer, someone I admire. There are no audio samples, because: A) I’m old (mid-thirties) and I don’t even own an iPod and; B) every time I try to teach myself something new on the computer my infant son tells me, in his own baby-rageous way, that I should give up. Happy holidays.

1. Meanderthal, Torche (Hydra Head)

Pitting Torche toe-to-toe with Rihanna may be reaching (people are still grousing about the time Decibel’s resident genius/ heathen Kory Grow dropped Missy Elliot’s name in a Nachtmystium review), but even at its most skittering, math-y moments (“Little Champion”), Meanderthal has a rhythm made to shake rumps. Shame on me, shame on us, we won’t get fooled again. Maybe it’s time to start booking the arena tour. Hello, Cleveland!

—Nick Green, May 2008 issue of Decibel

2. Black Sea, Fennesz (Touch)

One gets the sense that, even as he slouches toward easy listening, Fennesz is wary of making music that is too beautiful or unblemished. There’s a cold, clinical aspect to Eno’s ambient music that’s missing from Black Sea. It’s not just the fact that you can hear Fennesz’s acoustic guitar or imagine him sitting in the space where it was recorded. It’s all of the digital pockmarks and instrumental imperfections combined. Perhaps more than any other Fennesz record, Black Sea exemplifies the kind of ambient music that’s never so seamless that you forget it was made by a human being.

—Brent Burton, Washington City Paper

[More below the jump!]

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