I never got around to mentioning, but for anyone who looks at my mixes over at 8tracks , I finally got around to a "Best Of 20123 mix and put it up there, instead of the Opentape thing I had been doing for the last few years that I doubt anyone ever used. Here's the tracklist for 2012 : 01. Moses Gold - Powder and Blood 02. Grimes - Oblivion 03. Serengeti feat. Yoni Wolf - Geti Life 04. Sean Born - Pour Out Liquor 05. Divine Fits [...]
1. " You as You Were " Shearwater 2. " Animal Life " Shearwater Download Shearwater - "You As You Were".mp3 The top 2 songs of the year come from the same artist, a not uncommon feature in the Vague Space end of the year countdowns, and the sounds of the songs were similar -- shimmering pounding beats slowly ebbing and rising to powerful explosions. I really [...]

(photo by cubagallery ) These are 50 tracks that delighted, inspired and fascinated us in 2012 and that we think are worthy of remembering long after the year is over. We present them here in highly unscientific ordered list form, with Matt's songs marked with a "-MG" and my choices with a "-TJ" next to them. To better spread the love, we've stuck with the one song per artist rule. Click here to download all the tracks in a zip and subscribe to our Spotify Playlist to stream them all. Enjoy y'all! [...]
#1. Moonface with Siinai - Heartbreaking Bravery Well I figure there isn't much reason to leave anyone in suspense because yet again -- for the 7th straight year -- a Spencer Krug album makes its way to the top of a Vague Space end of the year countdown. In 2007, it was Sunset Rubdown. 2008, Wolf Parade. 2009, Sunset Rubdown again. 2010, Wolf Parade's Expo 86 edged out Arcade Fire and Frog Eyes (and looking back, the album I've listened to most since then among the three is Frog Eyes' [...]

Emily Berger While it's true that Toronto's days of having a BIG annual music festival out on the islands appear to be over - the locally-grown, Wavelength -affiliated ALL CAPS fest has been more then happy to step in for those needing to combine a ferry crossing with live music to make their Summer worthwhile. Since their inaugural edition in 2009, they've put together bills that have showcased a lot of local and a little bit of imported talent, combined with art and film components [...]

photo via cubagallery We've hit the halfway point for 2012 and that can only mean it's time for our annual mid-year recap of the best albums of the year so far. Looking through my list of favorite albums, I've noticed a surprising dominance of guitar-oriented rock and folk music and a general lack of electronica (with Grimes, Hot Chip and Chromatics being the exceptions) . If you told me at the beginning of the year I'd have so many guitars and so few synths in my mid-year tallies, I may not have believed [...]

Derrick Belcham It figures that the first year that I would have been able to actually attend the long-list unveiling for the Polaris Music Prize , they up and move it from its usual home atop the Drake clear across the country to give Vancouver a taste of what the grand unveiling of the 40 albums selected as the top musical achievements in Canada over the past 12 months is like. But that's alright because as it turns out, this was also the first year that I don't need to make any changes to [...]

If you've been living under the proverbial rock this past week, you might have missed the return of several big names: Best Coast, Japandroids, and Sigur Rós. All solid offerings that should keep you satiated until next week. Enjoy. A-Trak feat. Juicy J and Danny Brown - "Piss Test" It seems like it's impossible to go a week without a Danny Brown spot coming in on our Top Ten MP3s list. This time he pops up on A-Trak's cut from the upcoming Fool's Gold Records compilation, Loosies . "Blunt and [...]

Frank Yang Despite only seeing four bands, I like to think that I covered a fair bit of ground - stylistically, geographically, exploratorily (?), what have you - on the first night of Canadian Musicfest . The Friday night stuck slightly closer to home on all fronts but yielded much better and consistent results. The evening kicked off at Rancho Relaxo with Neufovin in all the way from Finland (I mistakenly called them Norwegian in my festival preview and apologize profusely). Besides having an affinity for anything [...]

Montreal's equivalent to South by Southwest, Pop Montreal will see 600 acts playing over 50 venues across the city between September 21st and 25th. And because it's the festival's 10th anniversary, one of those 600 acts will be the band formerly known as Shark Attack! , who will play a *free* outdoor show at the place des Festivals of Quartier des Spectacles. The rest of the bill includes names like Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Chromeo, Peter Hook, The Raincoats, Liam Finn, Yuck, Japandroids, Girls, tUnE-yArDs, Bass Drum of Death, Liturgy, Moonface, Purity Ring, and [...]