Ado

With no more further ado, and with very little ceremony, pomp or otherwise here's a couple of lists. Albums of the year, films of the year. Personal choices. I've not heard every album that came out in 2012, nor did I see every film that got released. I can only go on what I heard and what I saw.

FILM

1. Martha Marcy May Marlene
2. Untouchable
3. Lawless
4. Killing Them Softly
5. Life Of Pi
6. Samsara
7. Hunger Games
8. Young Adult
9. Sightseers
10.The Imposter

I saw my film of the year on a trip to London back in February and it has really resonated with me ever since. Creepy as anything, there's a hanging dread throughout the film, a superb atmosphere created for the most part by what isn't said and what isn't shown. It could easily have gone wandering off into cliched territory but it's supremely restrained and subtle all the way through. An absolute gem.

[And a special mention to the film that had the most impact on me this year, so much so that it inspired a whole series of [url=http://www.blipfoto.com/browse/search/?q=tagged+myantipodes]blips[/url]. But, I don't think it actually got a general release in the UK, it was just a festival screening where I saw it, hence its absence from the list]


MUSIC

1. Perfume Genius - Put Your Back N 2 It
2. Forward Strategy Group - Labour Division
3. Andy Stott - Luxury Problems
4. Nils Frahm - Screws
5. Raime - Quarter Turns Over A Living Line
6. Eccentronic Research Council & Maxine Peake - 1612 Underture
7. Goat - World Music
8. Magnetic North - Orkney: Symphony Of The Magnetic North
9. Django Django - Django Django
10. Julia Holter - Ekstasis

My listening tastes tend quite often towards the more rugged dance end of the spectrum - industrial techno, deep house, that kind of thing but I absolutely fell in love with that Perfume Genius album on first listen and I haven't changed my opinion on it since, not one jot. Brief, but incredibly affecting torch songs that are often fragile to the point of breaking. A mixture of Twin Peaks-esque soundscapes, piano and Mike Hadreas' vocals. Gets me every time.

[A few special mentions to things that didn't make the list for one reason or another. The latest album from Scott Walker [i]is[/i] incredible but is out there on its own really and as Antony said in his Mercury prize acceptance speech some years ago, this categorizing of music and putting things in ordered lists is sometimes like trying to compare 'a grapefruit to a spaceship' anyway and for something so different to everything else, where exactly do you stick summat as singular as Bish Bosch? There's also been a few things that have come out as download collections only so not strictly speaking 'albums' as such - Four Tet's 'Pink', Perc's 'Industry & Empire (Complete Remixes)' as well as things like Burial's 'Kindred' and 'Street Halo' EPs collected together on a CD (and I have seen this appear on a couple of end-of-years lists too). And then of course there's the high quality audience recording of a recentish Luke Haines gig in Copenhagen that would be a cracking live album in its own right if it was an actual proper release. I could claim that that was my real 'album of the year' and it wasn't even an album, but that would just muddy the already cloudy waters even further so I'll stick with Mike!]