Wire Magazine Records of the Year 2011 (Spoilers)

[Tanner]

Not as if I'm gonna lose any sleep over this, but I will lend my voice to the choir and say this Wire list is overwhelmingly bland. Although I'm probably blissfully out of touch. I still haven' t heard the Corrupted, although now I have serious doubts to its merit. ftw

[billygomberg]

Lescalleet and Darge in the archival 50 list. but the Feldman Orchestra disc is nowhere to be found? Risking to set an impression as a total fanboy - that disc was beautifully recorded, and loaded with first recordings.

also the Steve Hautschildt (sic) was serious panned in the last ish of The Wire, yet it makes a columns list?

edit: and wow I'm having a bitchy Tuesday.

[mudd]

it's wednesday here. maybe you should visit.

m

[laughter_CS]

so many of those albums are genuinely bad, IMO

seeing as they're so accepting of different genres, I find it hard to believe they actually think these are the best records of 2011. that's more or less a "hot now" list with some good stuff included by sheer chance.

Thundercat? Honestly?
James Ferraro? That record sounds cheap and tossed together... maybe it's entertaining somehow, but there's nothing there that I'd count as "the best," unless we're arguing about the cheesiest and most insincere albums of the year.

[leroysghost]

Nice to see Lulu made it in the top ten though,

Except it's position should be flipped with Speculative Solution

This list is par for the course, the only time EAI ever makes it on there is when they can kill two birds with either the classical, drone, or out genres.

[Matt Wuethrich]

For the sake of balance in this discussion, here—to the best of my knowledge—is how The Wire selects its releases of the year. I should make clear that my only connection to The Wire is as an occasional contributor and I'm speaking only for myself here, not the magazine.

1. Contributors are asked to submit a list of 10 releases that came out this year, ranked 1 to 10. We also submit a list of 10 reissues (that's expanded from 5 in previous years).

2. The lists are then tallied, with points being assigned based on where a record was ranked. The results determine the final list. From what I can tell, no editorial input goes into forming the final rankings which appear in the magazine. I've no exact idea how the rankings are actually weighted, but I think it's pretty straightforward.

3. We submit the list in early November.

The consequences of the above:

- As long as enough contributors put a record high enough (not necessarily as their top release), it stands a good chance of finishing towards the top of the list. Without having a copy of the mag in front of me, I can't say how many actually chose the Ferraro record as their release of the year.

- Releases that come out late in the year usually get jilted, hence the absence of, say, Feldman's Orchestra, which certainly would've made my list. This is no different than most other lists that get published before the end of the year.

-The genre lists are made, I believe, by the contributors who regularly write those columns during the year. I don't know this for a fact, but every year they state exactly who compiles each list.

********

Personally, I like the fact that The Wire's list doesn't really reflect my taste. It's a nice challenge to reflect on the differences, and when so many contribute to it, it's inevitable that it often diverges significantly.

Just for fun, IHM should do the same process (ten albums, ranked 1 to 10), just to see what pops out at number one. We might be surprised!

[Jesse]

well, your apologia for the aggregate list is fine, as far as it goes, matt- but 1] the wire selects & retains the contributors who make the lists, and 2] some of the lists contributed are not used/tallied [cf.richard pinnell last year, for example]. so that sort of masthead governance does influence the outcome significantly. this accounts, to some extent, for the weak showing of improvised music generally, contrasted with the sorts of lists you'll see on ihm annually - the chief contributors are not into the aforementioned areas of music.
of course magazines do this as a matter of editorial course. i think the hue & cry on fora like this one is that few wire regulars, aside from warburton and cain, know this area enough to contribute to the wire's adventures in sound & music; whether that points to how little they are *recruited*, or how few exist, is open to discussion. it even took them awhile to get pinnell aboard, and he's of the u.k., for crikey's sake.

[Matt Wuethrich]

I'm not apologizing for anything, really, just trying to make sure there's a little more background for the critique. Nor can I really speak on how contributors are chosen and whether or not all lists submitted are used. Your claims regarding Pinnell's list is the first I've heard of that. Maybe I'm misinterpreting people's comments, but my point was to suggest that the sources of the year-end list are perhaps broader than was being suggested here.

[Jesse]

no sleight to your points intended, matt- nor, as you know, is an apologia an apology.
pinnell stated that his list wasn't used at a public level, not telling tales there. other contributors have reported similar stuff, so that's hearsay, but i heard it firsthand.
my response is to your reference to the possibility of a *broader* base - not if broader encompasses, as i said, writers who have followed this area of music with breadth and depth.

i have read the wire since 1992, off and on, my perspective is not a response to one year-end list, but to the magazine's inexorable drift towards the ephemera of trendiness. i am confident if you and i looked at the year-end lists from 5-10 years back [a staggering historicity for magazines like the wire, look at their covers], we'd see as many names that elicit a wtf? [who-the-fuck?] response as anything else. that's all i'm saying.

[bedouin]

*adventures in sound and music*

*adventures in synth-cheese pop* more likely
I guess the influence of depeche mode on most of the folks that make up the list still looms large.

Beside this subjective point, I noted that the list includes 21 titles published in the US and 20 published in the UK, which leaves the rest of the world musical output for 2011 fitting in 9* entries...

correction:
*8 entries as there is a dup

[Matt Wuethrich]

No slight taken! And I guess I wasn't really defending The Wire's list or its selection process, just adding what I know of its mechanics. To really analyze the list, we need to look at the contributors who helped create it, as you rightly suggest.

But how is it that just because the proportion of improv/eai releases, for example, seems to have diminished, that it means the magazine is somehow drifting towards trendiness?

On what planet does a list with an Eliane Radigue archival release at number three indicate trendiness?

[Jesse]

[quote="Matt Wuethrich"]

But how is it that just because the proportion of improv/eai releases, for example, seems to have diminished, that it means the magazine is somehow drifting towards trendiness?

it doesn't, considered as a simple axiom, as you've expressed it.
improv/eai releases are being released at an increasingly ridiculous pace, so the corresponding diminished coverage is an aspect of the wire's focus on the vogue.

On what planet does a list with an Eliane Radigue archival release at number three indicate trendiness?

on the planet wire, where it represents 2% of an aggregate list comprising names i will, as i said, wager you will be unable to recall in a few years.

[Matt Wuethrich]

improv/eai releases are being released at an increasingly ridiculous pace,

Couldn't you say this about nearly any form of music right now?

so the corresponding diminished coverage is an aspect of the wire's focus on the vogue.

Isn't this what monthly magazines are, at least partly, supposed to do? 'Focus on the vogue'? My issue here is this: why are newer forms/genres so often written off as trendy? We don't always know what will stick or have meaning in ten years, so it also pays to cast the net wide, to think about what could have meaning. Sometimes you come up with a winner, sometimes you come up empty-handed.

[Alastair]

Smile is #5 on their list while at the same time they have a separate top 50 reissues list.

Which it's not on. I imagine as it wasn't technically released the first time round, they've decided it's not a reissue.

It is, however, about 100,000,000 times better than the Brian Wilson presents version that came out a few years ago. I couldn't get through that one twice.

[Matt Wuethrich]

What releases do people think have relevance for this forum? Out of the new releases, I would suggest the following:

3. ELIANE RADIGUE - TRANSAMOREM / TRANSMORTEM
‎10. JOHN WALL & ALEX RODGERS - WORK 2006-2011
11. KEIJI HAINO / JIM O'ROURKE / OREN AMBARCHI - IN A FLASH EVERYTHING COMES TOGETHER AS ONE THERE IS NO NEED FOR A SUBJECT
20. THOMAS ANKERSMIT & VALERIO TRICOLI - FORMA II
22. CORNELIUS CARDEW - THE GREAT LEARNING
24. HECKER - SPECULATIVE SOLUTION
29. JIM O'ROURKE - OLD NEWS No 5
34. MILES DAVIS - LIVE IN EUROPE 1967
36. HELM - CRYPTOGRAPHY
47. MUSIC FOR MERCE
48. PETER EVANS QUINTET - GHOSTS

Over 20% of the entire list is relevant. That's not such a bad figure.

And the reissue list certainly has plenty worth talking about here.

[jon abbey]

Matt, people know how the list works, I'm pretty sure, since we have this exact same discussion every year. it's just that this year's results seem even worse than usual (and that's saying something).

the Wire is in desperate need of a revamp of their process for this, starting with essentially cutting off the last two months of the year. hell, a possible record of the year candidate (in my book), the new Rowe/Tilbury on Potlatch, hasn't even come out yet (but will be out in the next week or so). what is the rush? at the very least, they could push the whole process back a month, because right now it just makes them look bad to anyone paying any real attention on their own. why does anyone need year-end results in early Dec? solely because the issue says "January" on it? in the immortal words of Michael Schaumann, "get it fixed".

[Matt Wuethrich]

Matt, people know how the list works, I'm pretty sure,

I was thinking the same thing myself, but I also thought since this thread has become an annual tradition, I'd make sure the traditional caveats got included

In other news, new Rowe/Tilbury? Just spent the past weekend listening to Duos for Doris a lot. This is very good news—and yet another one that might have changed my list.

[William Hutson]

since turning in my list, i've heard at least ten more things that should have been in the running...

[Richard Pinnell]

Seeing as my name has come up:

well, your apologia for the aggregate list is fine, as far as it goes, matt- but 1] the wire selects & retains the contributors who make the lists, and 2] some of the lists contributed are not used/tallied [cf.richard pinnell last year, for example].

If my contributions last year were not used (and I am not certain as to whether were or were not) then this is because I sent them in too late, no other reason. Now, this year the CD I placed at number one in my list did not appear anywhere in any of the lists. At first this seemed strange to me, but then when I looked closely neither did the first picks of about half of the writers that contributed. If I was the only person to pick a particular album (which is really quite likely) and given that there are more than fifty writers contributing, there is every possibility that my first choice wouldn't make the chart.

so that sort of masthead governance does influence the outcome significantly. this accounts, to some extent, for the weak showing of improvised music generally, contrasted with the sorts of lists you'll see on ihm annually - the chief contributors are not into the aforementioned areas of music.

The Wire covers a wide area of music, and it is fair to say that only a very small proportion of its regular readership will crossover with the readership of this site. Like any magazine that has managed to survive as long as The Wire has, the balance has to be struck between knowing who your readership are and who you would like them to be. I write the odd thing here and there for the magazine in the hope of helping "our" music find a slightly larger audience, but its fair I think to say that a minority of people buy the magazine to read about the music I am interested in.

of course magazines do this as a matter of editorial course. i think the hue & cry on fora like this one is that few wire regulars, aside from warburton and cain, know this area enough to contribute to the wire's adventures in sound & music; whether that points to how little they are *recruited*, or how few exist, is open to discussion. it even took them awhile to get pinnell aboard, and he's of the u.k., for crikey's sake.

I was, for the record, recruited. I didn't submit anything for consideration. As I believe also was Bill Hutson, whose no.1 pick this year was the Frey/Hennies disc on L'innomable. Derek Walmsley, the reviews editor certainly has at least one ear firmly pointed in the direction of "our" music.

Regarding the points Jon makes about the timing of the list- I agree, the ten CDs I sent in would be quite different a month or two later. My solution though would be scrap the whole process anyway as I see little value to lists like this one, but then I suspect that more people read the Rewind issue each year than any other, and in today's fragile market for print magazines that holds a lot of weight, and I can understand why.

[antihipster]

disappointed