LoL 2011

Due to a technical mishap regarding My Documents late in 2011, some categories will be skipped owing to my inability (or laziness) to reconstruct them. Nonetheless, the categories that remain succinctly sum up my year. Entries will be in ascending order of rating.

Playlist 2010

Albums

Port Entropy, SHUGO TOKUMARU - SHUGO TOKUMARU was rated in the Straits Times as the best Asian artist to perform in Singapore in 2010, but that was in March, when I wasn't around and wasn't a fan yet. His latest album Port Entropy has songs with lots of instruments and items, all played by himself, woven into dense harmonies and soundscapes, albeit with less of the interesting cacophonies and folk melodies of his previous album.

SENSE, Mr.Children - Mr.Children is not the name of a pederast, but that of a Japanese pop band. This album has only 1 single, the song fanfare from the latest One Piece movie. However, the dearth of singles does not lead to lower quality of music, and throughout the album great songwriting and Sakurai's emotive vocals demonstrate why they are arguably Japan's favourite artist. SENSE has fewer ballads than my impression of Mr.Children had led me to expect, instead having a wide variety of styles. I am not sure where to place this album within Mr.Children's oeuvre, having not listened to most of their works yet, a problem I shall be quick to rectify.

COME ON!, TETSUYA - L'Arc~en~Ciel's bassist and leader, formerly known as TETSU69, had an amazing year of releases this year, beginning with the single ROULETTE and culminating in this album, affirming TETSUYA's status as a brilliant writer of melodies and one of the key drivers behind L'Arc~en~Ciel's success.

Radio Free Kōan

If a radio is on but there is no one listening to it, does it still play music? I say no; sure it produces sound, but music exists only in the mind of the listener, as a complex interaction between perceived sounds in short term memory, experiences musical and non-musical in long term memory and expectation shaped by the above. In fact, it is fallacious to think of music as a complete structure as laid out on a score, which you can examine without temporaneity. Music is heard, therefore it is.

Good music, then, might be that which sustains the listener's attention for its entirety, since only then does the music exist entirely. It is difficult to offer much more considering the diversity of listeners. There are of course listeners who would disagree, preferring music which stays in the background without distracting them. It is debatable whether or not they are truly listening to the music (and hence if they qualify as listeners), but music has been shown in some instances to affect even passive listeners. Whatever the case, everyone can define his own idea of good music.