Top 20 Albums of 2010: Part Two, the Top Ten

NUMBER TEN

BATHS: CERULEAN

While some music sounds timeless, as if it could come from any era (see: Cosentino, Bethany), some music is inextricably linked to the time it was created. Cerulean, the debut LP from Will Wiesenfeld's Baths project, could only have been conceived, written, and created in modern music. Brian Eno and Aphex Twin and J Dilla and the Postal Service and Flying Lotus before we can get to the point of "Hall" or "Maximalist," where ambient, hip-hop, melancholy electro-pop, and killer breakbeats come together in the service of fragile love songs that still make your shoulder lean back and your head nod. Wiesenfeld has been doing this damn thing for awhile, and the experience in a group like [Post-Foetus] shows through on Cerulean. The strange conjecture of styles and emotions isn't a happy accident, it's a labored, intensive process that somehow still pulls off sounding wrought and relaxed, tense and cathartic.

Peep numbers nine through one after the jump.

Top 50 Songs of 2010, Part Two: 40-31

NUMBER FORTY

The "K.R.I.T." portion of Mississippi rapper Justin Scott's stage name stands for "King Remembered in Time." If dude keeps on rolling out jams like "Country Shit," K.R.I.T. will be remembered right this moment, too. A lot of Southern rappers go for porch stoop communal tracks or maximalist crunk. On "Country Shit," K.R.I.T. splits the difference, throwing in a little bit of Dilla-esque spliced vocal samples for good measure, and creates something that expresses the pride and depression, the dreams and the reality of Southern living.

Hit the jump for numbers thirty-nine through thirty-one.

Shameless Self-Promotion #4

My review of the Baths album Cerulean, for Audiosuede. Click here.