Okay, the diskant top ten albums and films of the year articles are finally online. Every year I start things off earlier and every year we still manage not to get things online til mid-January when everyone is sick of end of year roundups. This year has been the most difficult yet – I almost ditched the albums poll at one point when there was so little agreement in the voting that we couldn’t even come up with ten that had 2 or more votes, not to mention the fact that zero of my picks had ended up in the top ten. Thankfully some late votes fixed this and the resulting articles are full of the usual enthusiasm and disdain from the diskant team. I hope you enjoy reading them and discover some new records to seek out. I’m certainly itching to hear more of them. Feel free to comment below.

As an extra bonus this year, you get to see exactly who voted for what as I’ve published everyone’s individual top tens.

If I get a chance I’ll post up some thoughts on why everyone else is wrong and my picks were actually the best ten records of the year but we’ll see. It’s probably more pressing that I dig into that pile of review CDs by my stereo.

I thought I was forgetting something when I was posting about why the Grand Ole Opry is so great the other day but I really can’t believe I forgot about THE MAN SELLING HOT PIES. The sooner all venues have a man wandering around the audience with hot pies for sale, the sooner I can give up my plans to become evil dictator of the world.

But anyway, ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES is here, once again. I’m getting the train tomorrow and hope to see some of you there. We’re usually at the bar side of the room between gigs (which room depends on many things) or getting overexcited in the arcade. So, look out for us. There’s photos on some of our profiles linked on the left there and I’ll be selling hot pies BOXES on the record stalls on Sunday morning (so bring a spare fiver).

A Few Things Of Note

– I’ve tidied things up a bit here, you may have noticed. Hope you like it.

– Congratulations to Stewart and Beard for winning the EMAP Fanzine Award for best music fanzine presented by, of course, Steve Lamacq. The new Beard zine is well worth buying and not just because there’s an interview with me in it, ahem.

– Those of you missing listen-to and/or looking for a new Friendster/Myspace fix should sign up to Audioscrobbler which tracks your listening habits if you play music while online and links you with other people with similar listening tastes. Typically, I recognised a few of mine from zine/blogland. My page is here – feel free to mock me.

Apologies for lengthy delays in getting this next lot online. You’ll understand why when you see the epic article Chris Summerlin submitted entitled ‘diskant Gets The Blues‘. You may be edging away from your screen at this point but don’t be scared. Set some time aside and let Chris educate and entertain you with his best article yet. I live in fear of the day someone takes Chris away from us (which is why I bribe all editors to turn down his pitches).

We also have two marvellous Talentspotter label profiles by Simon Minter with Unpopular Records and Kabukikore. Both are incredibly interesting and full of ideas, insights and enthusiasm. So, welcome to the new diskant updates – where you can learn while seemingly wasting time on the internet!

Also, fame at last for a certain diskant blogger.

One year we might manage to get our end of year polls online before the end of January but it is not this year. Getting votes and comments out of our contributors is one of the more difficult tasks of the year but now it is finally done and you can enjoy it. As always there was little agreement amongst us as to the actual best records and films of the year and much complex maths was required to get fair and true top tens. This also means there is lots of disagreement in the comments which makes a nice change from most overly upbeat end of year lists.

So go read about our favourite albums and favourite films and please post your comments here and let us know what you think.

Dave Stockwell has also done us a seperate column about his favourite records of 2004 which overlap with our main choices more than he expected. Not so obscurist now eh Dave?

And to finish off JGram has been chatting to his favourite new band of the year, The Go! Team from Brighton.

Hello!

I’ve been busy (BUY OUR RECORD) but I now hope to be able to stop neglecting diskant and do some much-needed redevelopment and updating, in between spending hours at the post office sending parcels (BUY OUR RECORD). So expect some changes round here. To show you just how serious I am, I’ve just spent all of 10 minutes adding commenting to the blog so that we can carry on in-jokey conversations and you, yes YOU the reader, can tell us how great we are, or how wrong we are, or, er, how great we are. Please do add your comments if you have anything you’d like to add.

I have lots of other things to post but not now. Soon, though.

No, really, BUY OUR RECORD.

Firstly Blogger has had a redesign so you may be spotting some changes round here. Already you can view our fancy Blogger Profiles to the left instead of those horrendously out of date pop-up profiles. Also means if you only like one of us you can just read their posts on their profile and pretend the rest of us don’t exist. HAHA.

While looking for ATP photos for our ATP Round-up I stumbled across the website for Everett True’s forthcoming post-CTCL magazine Plan B. By the looks of things it’s fairly similar in terms of contributors and subject and thus very much worthy of your time. Check out the three different reviews of ATP for instance. They’ve got a launch issue out soon but they’re posting reviews and stuff on the site all the time as well as blogs from some of the writers including the lovely Andrew Clare and ET himself.

And finally, WHAT THE HELL? story of the week as Freaky Eyed Hobbit Boy^TM Elijah Wood gets the chance to take over John Peel’s show for a night. Just ‘cos you saved the world from the wrath of Sauron doesn’t mean you can stand in for John Peel. “Elijah is a really big music fan,” a Radio 1 spokesman said. Well, so am I!

actually, finally, WHERE IS EVERYONE ELSE?

Coincidentally, it’s my birthday soon! My personal birthday comedy is to find a great gig happening on my birthday and then insist it has been specially organised as MY BIRTHDAY PARTY and force all my friends to come along. Hence my birthday party a few years back in Aberdeen when Godspeed played and wee Stuart Mogwai drove all the way from Glasgow just to be there (for My Birthday Party! etc.) . This year My Birthday Party is being held in the Scala in London and will be hosted by Steve Albini and his rather good Shellac band. I hope to see you all there brandishing cake and presents. The date for your diaries is March 25th which is also Hobbit New Year, giving even more excuses for the consumption of cake.

This will then be followed by ATP Weekend One fun. There’s been some talk that Weekend Two looks to be better. But are the diskant staff going to weekend 2? NO. Therefore weekend two is FOR LOSERS, once again.

I urge you all to go see Paper Cut Out if their extensive tour happens to visit your town. It’s always a relief when your friends bands aren’t dreadful and it’s even better when they’re really fantastic. I was mightlily impressed with their complicated rock and glad I am in a simplistic lo fi electronic band.

I just want to draw your attention to some diskant updates including the long-awaited results of our best of 2003 poll of albums and films. Yes, it’s extremely out of date and no-one cares any more. I know this. It’s still interesting though. I particularly like the fact that I am diskant Overlord and yet I have heard only four of our top ten albums of the year. So, something new for everyone to discover, maybe. There’s also a super-exciting interview with US label Wantage USA and some new columns by Wil Forbis and Hugues Mouton. Enjoy!Snow Update: Rubbish snow is almost as bad as no snow.

While trying to think of something to play yesterday I had a sudden realisation that I had almost missed the window of opportunity to most suitably listen to Low‘s Christmas album. So out it came and I’ve been listening to it on and off today at work (and with only six of us the office I can actually hear it as well). If they piped this through shops during December I might not go mental so quickly. Go dig it out if you’ve forgotten it yourself.

I see the 2003 Best Ofs are getting off the ground too. Ours are in the pipeline but, judging by the first batch of votes, it’s going to be as wideranging and random as last year with hardly any two people voting for the same record. We seem to be more in agreement (more commercial?) when it comes to films.

Having been particularly skint this year it’s not altogether surprising how few of Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2003 I’ve heard, let alone own. A mere 5 to be exact. Number owned = 0. More worrying is the fact that I have heard of less than 50% of the artists. I fear I may be becoming Out Of Touch. Oh well.