The Top 10 Albums of the 2010s
Around ten years ago at a bar in the Village a few hours before we rang in 2010, I had a spirited debate about what were the best albums of the decade that had passed. I still maintain on some (Discovery, Demon Days, Stankonia) while have forgotten others. As I’m reaching that point once again, I’m taking stock of the albums that have captured me in the last ten years.
I typically put them out in no particular order, but it felt right to put them in the order where they meant the most.
2018 – Mitski – Be the Cowboy
There’s more to Mitski’s latest album than fitting it into critics’ tired description of the sad girl breaking down over an electric guitar. On this one, the songs come from a blend of anecdotes and allegory. She pulls away from the curtain of these lives, constructed from songs like “Washing Machine Heart” and “Me and My Husband,” and allows you to look into for a fleeting moment. Is there still that tinge of melancholy that is part of her style? Of course, her lyrics very much keep that part in check. But the range of sound makes it deeper.
Favorite Song: The best way to describe the juxtaposition of despair and musicality in Be the Cowboy is in “Nobody”. Mitski cleverly mixes her desperation from solitude with a catchy indie-pop hook and it works.
2017 – Arca – Arca
This is what happens when you make an abstract Venezuelan beatmaker become BFFs with Bjork- you end up with something defenseless and cacophonous, brave yet jarring. Ghersi’s voice is arguably the most important part of this album, as it reveals her Latinx identity, using the folk song “Caballo Viejo” on “Reverie”, releasing a blossoming hurt in her voice mixed within the sweeping distortion. The distinctive marks of Ghersi’s industrial brooding remain locked in a melody of her own design, and somehow this strange monstrosity works.
Favorite Song: “Desafio” is the odd mutant out in the album. While the rest of the album is this sinewy beast, this starts with an air raid horn and Europop sensibilities. It’s her most accessible song to date, despite having lyrics that literally translate to throat slitting and euphemisms of orgasms.
2013 – Disclosure – Settle
Electronic music is in a weird place now that it’s in a more recognized place. That’s why it’s refreshing to find two brothers from Surrey take a modern spin on house music. Settle’s influences, ranging from deep house, synthpop, and UK garage, create a high-energy trip that harkens back to the 90s house beats I grew up on with flourishes and features that make the songs sound like they are a uniquely 2010s creation.
Favorite Song: “When A Fire Starts To Burn” chops up a preacher testifying and blends it with the thumps of deep house into a highly danceable banger. As the intro song for an album, it definitely let’s you know what you’re getting into really fast.
2012 – Killer Mike – R.A.P. Music
Years before Killer Mike became a Bernie Sanders stan or released a Netflix show, he was an underground virtuoso on his mixtapes. It was this album that served as a prequel of sorts, a prototype of what would become of his career in the 2010s. El-P’s synth-heavy beats served as the bedrock of Mike’s fiercely political lyrics. He
Favorite Song: “Untitled” comes in like Southern freestyle and becomes this dark meditation into Mike’s worry on his legacy, but it ends with a defiant punch at authority. That, with El-P’s production and tribal drumming in the back, bring out this almost-sinister track.
2015 – Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
I have a serious issue with “woke” rap, which is really difficult to come to terms with living in a Black Lives Matter era. What saves Kendrick from the incredibly tired cliches of many 2010 conscious rappers is that TPAB weaves a clever mosaic of what it means to be a black American. Each song serves as a piece of the musical and racial history they have struggled, and Lamar (with the help of an amazing cast of features) pulls it all together into this pseudo-concept album that is not overbearing. Even when it veers towards protest rap, you still remember that it has the DNA of West Coast hip-hop. The tinges of jazz give TPAB a sound that seals its “instant classic” label.
Favorite Song: The parable in “How Much A Dollar Cost” is a powerful Kendrick narrative. It’s haunting, and you know that the person, refusing to be charitable to the divine, will end in heavenly ruin, but it’s still strong words nonetheless. The Ronald Isley outro is killer, too.
2016 – David Bowie – Blackstar
Can anyone listen to this album without the feeling that Bowie is telling you goodbye? It’s almost impossible on this one, and once again he reimagined himself for this album. This time it was of the artist in reflection, staring at what he’s created before it ends. Songs like “Tis A Pity She’s A Whore” and “Dollar Days” both recall his history while cryptically signal his end. The album isn’t dark, but one that rekindles your admiration for Bowie.
Favorite Song: The final song of his career, “I Can’t Give Everything Away” is a swan song, but the reason it’s good is that he’s cleverly telling us that he’s walking away, taking some of his secrets with him. Like any good rock star, they have to take the mystique with them.
2011 -Florence + The Machine – Ceremonials
There are countless instances of indie-pop that came after this album but Florence Welch served as a standard-bearer with this one. Her distinctive vulnerability in lyrics is amplified in the baroque and bombastic (“Shake It Out”, “What The Water Gave Me”). On Ceremonials, Welch is a hopeless romantic with a booming voice that never stops howling for that lost feeling of love. And there’s no shame in diving deep into that spiral along with her.
Favorite Song: Florence Welch has made her share of hangover songs, with “Shake It Out” being one of them. But this one is somewhere between a celebration and a call for help on those 3 AM nights after way too many drinks. She’s reminding you about those dives into drunken abandon, but just maybe there’s a way out.
2014 – Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 2
Fast-forward two years after Mike and El dropped not one, but two gritty, grimy collaborations that attracted a sizable amount of buzz, and they released a follow-up to RTJ1 that was unrelenting, grimy, and witty as hell. The bars Killer Mike and El-P trade-off on songs like “Close Your Eyes(And Count To Fuck)” and “Oh My Darling Don’t Cry” take no prisoners and slap the everliving crap out of you over tried-and-true El Producto dystopia-scratch beats. The duo produced a brick to your face that has you asking for more, and miles from Def Jux and Pledge Allegiance To The Grind.
Favorite Song: “Blockbuster Night Part 1” is an introduction, to the normies as well as the hip-hop heads, to the assault they cleverly hide behind wordplay and fuzzed-out aggression of El-P’s beats and synths. It punches you in the gut, and you smile before you want more.
2010 – Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
To take a bit of a phrase from comics writer Kieron Gillen and fuss with it, we all live in the shadow of MBDTF. Regardless of whether you are a Kanye stan or if you vilify him for the myriad faults he’s accumulated over the years, this album is epic, as badly as the word’s been overused. West takes the grandiosity of production and stretches it to what could be the closest thing to a hip-hop prog album readily available for the mainstream. His beats and words spill out the excess of his life to the maximum, and artists have been pouring it into their musical DNA throughout the decade (and perhaps more).
Favorite Song: It’s hard to choose a favorite from this album. His enormity and vulnerability seemed to have hit me at all points, and it eventually became a three-way tie between “POWER”, “Runaway”, and ‘All Of The Lights”. For personal reasons “Runaway” edged out, but from an objective POV, the song bangs due to how that simple piano intro can become an anthem for break-ups, arrogance, and insecurity all balled-up into genius.
The Tenth Spot
Now the last one should be reserved for the best album of 2019, which I’ve kind of decided at this point but you’ll see in another post. When it comes down to it, I’ve always had more of a soft spot for Gorillaz, so Plastic Beach takes the spot.
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
There was no way beat the alt-pop perfection of Demon Days from last decade. This time around, they stayed on the wave with some added guests that really popped. We got De La Soul once again, but also Snoop Dogg and the pre-Yasiin Bey Mos Def. Newcomer Little Dragon was an outstanding standout while legends Bobby Womack and Lou Reed provided the foundation for an ambitious concept album only Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett could devise.
Favorite Song: The intro to “Empire Ants” lulls you into a summer beach, Albarn singing you out of your comfort zone right as Yukmi Nagano pulls you into a vulnerable melody of broken machines.
Best Cosplay Photos of NYCC 2019
I’m still working on some other posts, but in the meantime for an update’s sake, here are some of my favorite photos from Saturday/Sunday’s NYCC 2019 cosplay (you can see the rest on my Tumblr):
This Vero Thing Kinda Sucks. Let’s Have Some Fun With It.
So I joined Vero a few days ago and I’m going to be honest, I’m still not entirely impressed. I got over their serious server overload issue (I’ve sat through enough games to know the score) but there’s still something missing that will make it an Instagram-killer.
Don’t get me wrong, what the app offers is cool. Algorithm-free, more post options, selection of who can see your post – those options really go after a lot of crowds. Doesn’t cover up the fact I might have to end up paying for it, or that the owner basically committed human rights abuse back in the Middle East.
So my days on the app are rather limited. I won’t extend my “brand” there – Haiku Mixtape, photos, and other stuff won’t be posted there – because this is just a fun transient thing. When the going gets fatalistic, the fatalist gets funny.
I’m putting up a different kind of poem/passages on my Vero. Consider them as manifestos from what drives me insane on IG and poetry in general. I think of my Vero account as a rage-dump, something were I can poke fun at the waves and waves of insipid content I see day after day.
I’m writing on borrowed time here. The moment they ask for my credit card, I’m going straight for the long, arduous process of deleting the account. Until then, #veropoets, let’s have some fun, shall we?
Confabula Baraja – A Card Game Mash-Up
My previous post was about Emma Larkins’ Confabula Rasa storytelling card game. I went into it as a word generator for poetry, but this time around I got a bit weirder. That tends to happen when you dive into tarot.
Always Playing With Weird Stuff, Aren’t You?
I said that I was going to play around with tarot cards and Confabula Rasa at the end of the previous post, so I’m following through. I already owned a deck of baraja española cards from a few years back. Almost any Latino is well-acquainted with this deck of cards – they have at least one auntie that has one hidden in a drawer somewhere that reads cards to your mom from time. I’ve seen readings with these cards personally growing up, so I’m used to seeing them if not play around with them before getting smacked upside the head by some bruja.
So, What Are Baraja Cards?
Anyway, they are a bit different than the tarot cards that you may see in the stuff you see in popular media. You can actually replicate it with a normal pack of playing cards, but the iconography is so tied to its cultural and spiritual significance it just seems cheap to perform it that way. That’s why I bought a pack, as well as the fact that there’s no way in hell my aunt would let me borrow hers.
The Confabula Baraja Set-Up
The cartomancy of baraja cards works alongside the numbers and suit of the card. I used the baraja deck in a 40-card format taking out a few numbers from their suits. I then chose one of the many spreads available, a planetary spread. Here’s how the spread looks like:
With just some cursory research on the suits/cards and their meaning, I formed a system before I used the Confabula Rasa cards. For example, the top card, the three of clubs, represents magic, packages, religion, etc. So you can imagine how this can serve as a bedrock of sorts for the words you will form from the Confabula Rasa cards.
The Cartomancy And Logomancy Meet At A Crossroads
Here’s where the beginning of my headaches started. I decided that it would be a fun idea to use the very same spread to put down the Confabula Rasa card. needless to say, it took a long time to get the words out. I will give out props to Emma for her Power Cards, but I feel as if the game might need more, or at the very least there is room for more ideas for Power Cards somewhere.
So it was time to put together the mysticism with the game. I came up with eight words, and with the interpretations for each card, I formed this strange mini-fic out of thin air. Is it amazing? Probably not. But I will admit the combo was a stronger engine than what I had done previously.
The Thieves Of the Sea (Or What Came Out Of Confabula Baraja)
Here is what came out:
I packed my bags and headed towards the sea – more like ran away from this podunk town. I was on my way towards the arms of a woman with her wits about her, hiding all kinds of clever tricks and unknown pleasures beneath her rags. Our plan was to steal something of worth from an emir of considerable power. The man curiously left his precious platinum ore in an abandoned clinic. Once we pulled off the job, the deal was made with our connections in the underground before we could even take off our disguises. It was the mob’s problem now, and my lady and I could now enjoy the spoils of our heist for decades to come.
Final Remarks
Seeing the effectiveness I reached, I think I might try this again. I will use this for a longform poem in the near future, and after seeing what the baraja cards can do as the basis of a gaming device (kind of what Weave is doing for roleplaying games) I think I might try to do something in the future as well, perhaps something that really represents Latin culture.
Confabula Rasa – A (Poetic) Review
So I received a test copy of Emma Larkins’ game Confabula Rasa today. From her page, it is an ” a cooperative word construction and storytelling game” where players take the role of kids who found scraps of paper in a creepy house in the woods. The way you win is that you have to figure out the story on the paper or the ghosts will get ya.
Now, I can’t give a review of the actual game, as it is a minimum of two players and I’m missing one. When we spoke earlier she also wanted to know if it’d also work as an idea-generating/solo storytelling tool. I kept that in mind when she asked if I would test the game.
Picking Apart The Scraps – First Try
I’m working on a personal poem side-project I’m keeping under wraps for now. I’m working on it at a strict rule of three and three lines per day. I wanted to see what the card “scraps” could do in generating ideas for lines. For the sake of my sanity and simplicity, I tossed the rulebook aside (sorry Emma!) and kept it to five cards:
I’d written one line earlier after noticing something from the design of tiled walls:
unique is a blue diamond –
and worked from there. The first word that came to me was the first I saw staring at me – sed, or thirst in Spanish. I jotted it down and went on my way as I scanned for what else came from this tangle of mangled letters.
This is where I made my first break using Confabula Rasa in Idea Mode. I found the word “crack”, which became pivotal to the line. From there I found other words – “dives”, “disarm”, “match”, “altar”, and “bed” -which eventually became the three lines I needed:
unique is a blue diamond –
cracked tiles forming entry
to an altar that matches a bed
Picking Apart The Scraps – Second Try
I used the Confabula Rasa rules this time to work on on a complete six-line poem this time around. I set up the deck as the rulebook said and dealt card. I started with the first word I formed, “one”, and went on from there. out came a logorrhea mess.
I was stumped for a while, so I actually had to use one of the mechanics of the game, the Power Card and played it so I could discard the card in my hand so I could play another. I found the product more creative but slightly rough and in need of an edit, so I won’t post it. It was interesting that I had to resort to the Power Card in order to keep going.
Additional Thoughts
Confabula Rasa as a creative engine shows these peculiar signs of promise if you aren’t inclined to play, or just don’t have a buddy on deck and feel like making a game of your own. Work along the rules still produces a playing experience of its own, and there’s enough there to make homebrew stuff.
I wish I could check out the entirety of Emma’s design right now, but from what I could do with it, I would recommend it as a novel way of thinking up new ideas. Writers looking for more unorthodox writing prompts can really cook up something with the scraps hidden in Emma’s cards.
I found an old tarot card deck that I might mix with this and make a Confabula Tarot mashup and see what I can do with it. But I do recommend this for an atmospheric experience with friends and family.
The Gears Are Spinning
Something I’ve been working on for a few months is finally making its way out of design documents. I’ll put up some updates as it comes along.
A Lost Generation No More
A few minutes ago I was of a generation that saw the World Cup qualifiers as a gloomy cloud. Now, I can finally take that away from me. VAMOS PERU A RUSIA CONCHESUMADRE.
Epil(NaNoWri)epsy Month Thoughts
November is an interesting month for me, personally. I always try the NaNoWriMo thing (never completing, because it’s just not something that works for me but hey it’s fun). But also that it’s also Epilepsy Awareness Month (because that that’s not so fun, but hey, it completes me as the person I now am).
One day, I probably should combine the two. But I don’t know how. Some ideas have popped into my head, but they’ve all come out like both writing a novel or having a seizure – erratic, auric, and confusing. In the meantime I’ll just ramble on this month, working on both with one on haikumixtape and the other perhaps here, perhaps on things that will never see the light of day.
My Cosplay Pics From NYCC 2017
My time at New York Comic-Con this year was pretty low-key. Didn’t go to any panels or take as many photos as I regularly do, but I still had a lot of fun taking them. Here are my faves.
Festival in Reverse
These were the best photos that came out of the chaotic fun I had at Governors Ball NYC I had last weekend. I saw around 19-ish acts, give or take a few more.
The interesting highlights were explaining Wu-Tang to a Guatemalan guy from LA who’d never heard of them, discussing US politics with a Canadian before the Avalanches set, and shutting down some punk kid who said he didn’t “respect” DJs.
As to why this was in reverse. It was after the Wu-Tang show that it occurred to me. I had started listening to them and by extension all of their work in earnest when I was in college. Flume, who I saw the night before, was now. Tool who I saw on Sunday was emblematic of my teen years. It was as if I watched what I have been listening to for the last fifteen years in reverse, right in front of me. An oddly cathartic and spiritual feeling.
