Adult Swim’s summer Singles Program is back, and it’s bringing you 15 weeks of (good) free music.
Going somewhere? Anywhere? Put on these tunes during your aimless getaway.
Last month ALARM presented its 50 favorite albums of 2012, an eclectic, rock-heavy selection of discs that were in steady rotation in our downtown-Chicago premises. Now, to give some love to tunes that were left out, we have our 50 (+5) favorite songs of last year — singles, B-sides, EP standouts, soundtrack cuts, and more.
Another year, another torrential downpour of albums across our desks. As always, we encountered way too much amazing music, from Meshuggah to The Mars Volta, Converge, Killer Mike, P.O.S, and many more.
Dethklok: Dethalbum III (Williams Street, 10/16/12)
“I Ejaculate Fire”
It shreds? Check. It pummels? Check. It has a song called “I Ejaculate Fire”? Checkity check check.
Killer Mike: RAP Music (Williams Street, 5/15/12)
In May, Atlanta MC Killer Mike released one of the year’s best hip-hop albums — “rebellious African people’s music” — in collaboration with producer/rapper extraordinaire El-P.
“Reagan” is one of the album’s most fiery tracks, addressing the former president’s “war on drugs” and how it disproportionately targeted African Americans while actually making black neighborhoods more drug-infested. Mike ultimately proclaims, “I’m glad [that] Reagan[‘s] dead,” but he lumps all recent presidents together as serving the same unseen forces, launching overt and covert wars to make the rich richer.
Killer Mike: RAP Music (Williams Street)
“Don’t Die”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Killer_Mike_Dont_Die.mp3|titles=Killer Mike: “Don’t Die”]Like words themselves, Atlanta rap veteran Mike Render (a.k.a. Killer Mike) has the potential to be misunderstood. The hardcore southern rhymer — who first came to prominence thanks to his affiliation with Outkast — is a self-proclaimed “pan-Africanist gangster rapper, civic leader, and activist,” and his profile as the latter has been elevated recently by outspoken campaigns for Trayvon Martin, Troy Davis, and the Occupy movement.
ALARM leaves no genre unloved in our round-up of 50 albums that didn’t receive enough attention in 2009.