Benjamin Carignan!!!!

FAVORITE SONGS OF 2012

It was a good year for music.  Not in any super particular order.

1. PARALLEL SIGN - LAMA

LAMA has been an increasingly bigger part of my entire musical being for over a year now. With their recent release, “Modanica”, LAMA solidified themselves as the quintessential “band I wish I was”.  LAMA has inspired me inside and out, being amazingly effective and emotional music with minimal presentation, but also being a band full of fully admirable and massively talented individuals that very obviously enjoy each other’s processes and presence.  Parallel Sign itself encapsulates a very droney feel, where you find yourself getting easily lost in the low-key melody and hard beat.  It’s a feeling I’d love the envoke in my own music, and listening to LAMA has taught me so much in how to make my own music how I want it to be.

It’s relation to Eureka Seven is only a coincidence, I assure you.  I don’t even like AO…. right???

2. SAKAMICHI NO MELODY - YUKI

Sakamichi no Melody.  I song I can’t completely rightfully listen to without getting teary-eyed or otherwise very emotional over.  This song belongs to the show “Sakamichi no Apollon”, or Kids on the Slope, which is a show about the very complicated process of adolescence, friendship, love, and finding yourself.  Sakamichi no Melody is a piece that envokes the very emotion of being amongst friends, basking in the feelings of love and inspiration as you find yourself in a state of self-discovery and experimentation.  It’s a scary time, but a wonderous one, and this song calls it forth perfectly for me.  When I listen to it, I feel as if I am back with my best friend in high school, trying with such misdirection to create something together when we really didn’t have the drive to.  Kaoru and Sen definitely had more drive than us, but within them lied more problems that anyone who has ever been a teenager can strongly connect with, and within the song, those feelings transfer.  It is just a wonderful experience to become connected to, the song.  And when you do, you can never listen to it casually again.  It is a blessing, and also a curse.

3. INTRO - SLIME GIRLS

I’ve had the utmost pleasure in 2012 of becoming incredibly close friends with Pedro of Slime Girls, who I would now consider to be amongst my closest friends.  Pedro and I alight on so many wavelengths, but where he excels, much to my jealousy, is his feeling of earnest hope and deliberate striking against adversity of depression.  The introductory track to his album “Vacation Wasteland”, and the whole record itself, evokes a feeling of hope and vengeance against sadness.  It is a struggle for optimism, a fight for happiness, and with Slime Girls, happiness always wins.  The sadness may always dwell, but with Vacation Wasteland, you feel empowered as you fight against your troubles, you feel sad, but so smug and bitter that you are happy in spite of your sadness.  It’s a very “punk” feeling, one I don’t know very well, but one I’m glad to be familar with within Slime Girls’ work.  I’m very grateful for this song and this record.

P.S. Pedro very very very recently just reuploaded all of the Vacation Wasteland tracks with brand new recordings/mixes, and you should definitely give them another download.  What’s better than an album you already loved sounding a ton ton better?

4. FEEL SO MOON - UNICORN

Space Brothers is a piece of media that without, I would have been nothing in 2012.  Space Brothers gave me more hope than anything this year, and taught me that in the face of any adversity, amidst any failure, you could still accomplish any dream you had.  Space Brothers is about that struggle of accepting your dream as reality, and 2012 was very much that for me.  ”Feel So Moon” is very much an encapsulation of those themes for me, much as “Sakamichi no Melody” was.  I could talk for days on how Space Brothers saved my life this year, but for now, I’ll just leave it all at, “Feel So Moon” by Unicorn was a very amazing and hopeful beacon of optimism for me, and I owe it a lot.

Also, what a fucking wonderful PV!

5. FASHION MONSTER - KYARY PAMYU PAMYU

Kyary just rules.  Moving on.

6. SHADOW WORLD - SHOJI MEGURO

This is the most recent of my acquisitions of music this year.  Only about a week ago, I purchased Persona 4 Golden and heard this song for the first time.  Persona 4, as I’ve learned, is a very solid story of friendship, love, unity, and a solid search for truth for the sake of peace in your small town and in your heart.  It’s a very earnest tale, one where everyone involved just wants to do right.  Everyone is perfect in that they are flawed, everyone has a “shadow” to the front they provide, but in the end, everyone wants to do the best they can.  It doesn’t matter why they want to, as long as their heart leads toem to doing the right thing.  ”Shadow World” is a song that calls to mind so much optimism, that despite everything, times are going to be so incredible.  I listen to it and feel so emotional, and this has happened ever since my first listen.  Certainly the visuals involved had something to do with it, but the song now is so attached to all of these feelings of hope.  I’ve sort of irresponsibly attached it to my hopes for 2013, that this feeling will carry me over into an optimistic year myself, where I will overcome my own shadows and become the best person I can now.  I can’t wait for it.

7. MOE MOE KYUNSTEP - CHIBITECH

What is there to say that hasn’t been said already?  Chibitech has simply changed the game completely with this two-part piece that she wasn’t even thinking about releasing for a while.  As soon as I was losing much hope or interest in chip music as a medium, Chibitech swoops in to deliver one more reminder that chip can produce some of the most awe-inspiring and fun music around.  In creating such a varied and huge sound using the Famicom alone, it calls to mind so much for myself as a chip musician.  That I have so many desires as a musician to have a big sound that I have deemed impossible to achieve using gameboys, after Moe Moe Kyunstep, is this really true?  Or have I just not discovered  the ways in which to achieve my goals on the gameboy?  Either way, Chibitech has given me a feeling in chip music I haven’t felt since Knife City’s “Slam Dunk Lifestyle”, and that is a feeling of absolute lack of control, but euphoric bliss, that I would gladly give up just for a moment to jam the fuck with everyone to this incredible and dynamic musical journey.

8. NEW YORK CHEESECAKE - PROTODOME

motherfucker stole my style and wrote an amazingly cute song that I can’t stop thinking about.  Protodome, you rule.  Even if your previous albums were a bit more solid structurally, you know how to bring the jams, and with your release only a week ago, “Blue Screen”, you brought many to brighten my end of the year.

9. SUMMER BLUE - MEISHI SMILE

When I first heard this song, it was on my way to Philadelphia for the first time after saying goodbye to my best friend.  I haven’t seen him since, and when this song came on, it truly stuck with me.  Meishi Smile’s “LUST” is a fantastic record full of very emotionally honest music, and at the time it was what i needed.  It is always what I need.  I appreciate music that I can get completely lost in with my feelings, and Meishi Smile continues to deliver in every way with music that serves this need completely.  When I listen to Meishi Smile, I think of life, I think of the changes 2012 has brought me, I think of my friends moving on, I think of life progressing.  I think of something more than I have now.  I love Meishi Smile.

10. DAWN PRAISE THE WORLD - TODDLE

It’s not a new song, but it is a song that has resonated with me very recently.  I was made aware of toddle and Hisako Tabuchi from her involvement with LAMA, and grew more and more accustomed with her work over the year.  Toddle proved to be something that stuck with me very vibrantly, particularly with the record “Dawn Praise The World”.  The title song in question is a song about the world being what it is, and your focus being on good, on being on thoughts and feelings of hope, enjoying all you can.  That the world is beautiful, and the small joys bless you and make you feel good and grateful.  My resolution for 2013 is to be grateful for everything that makes me happy, and this song, this album, this band, truly encapsulates this feeling of gratitude that I would love to strive for.

I laugh with an ordinary smile, I laugh with an ordinary voice.