Tiny Mix Tapes' Favorite 50 Albums of 2012

Tiny Mix Tapes' Favorite 50 Albums of 2012

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50.

Mykki Blanco - Cosmic Angel: The Illuminati Prince/ss
November 9, 2012
Critic Score
68
1 review

49.

November 26, 2012
Critic Score
84
7 reviews

Raime is at the forefront of a project concerned with exemplifying an appreciation for the musical ancestry they have inherited, and their determination to connect the dots through re-imagining a specific set of aesthetics is unparalleled.

47.

Internet Club - Vanishing Vision
July 27, 2012
Critic Score
80
1 review

46.

October 9, 2012
Critic Score
85
20 reviews

All We Love We Leave Behind entices kinetic release in every possible way, irrational and otherwise, allowing unchecked ventilation as means for escape through a medium that has never sounded so engaging.

44.

June 19, 2012
Critic Score
87
33 reviews

The Idler Wheel’s ramshackle, barely-holding-it-together aesthetic can’t be anything but carefully constructed, but in an artistic sense, that’s a virtue, not a vice.

42.

October 1, 2012
Critic Score
76
13 reviews

One of the most interesting aspects of this record is how very paranoid it is, how it bites us on the hand when we get too close. 

40.

Lil B - White Flame
January 31, 2012
Critic Score
66
2 reviews

39.

Ahnnu - pro habitat
July 16, 2012
Critic Score
80
1 review

38.

Ian Martin - Mechanical Rain
February 20, 2012

37.

October 5, 2012
Critic Score
86
35 reviews

It may not break much new ground, certainly not for instrumentation or other reasons given, but it’s one of the most solid albums all year. To hate it really would be extraordinary.

36.

March 6, 2012
Critic Score
82
25 reviews

35.

February 12, 2012
Critic Score
85
18 reviews

The cuts on Kindred aren't simply longer than before; they introduce a completely different sense of space and continuity ... this is why Kindred is so strong.

34.

September 11, 2012
Critic Score
75
21 reviews

33.

August 1, 2012
Critic Score
80
1 review

MTDE is the sound of a postmodern nervous breakdown. In being so, paradoxically, it creates its own weird authenticity.

28.

November 20, 2012
Critic Score
70
25 reviews

Instrumental Tourist is an attempt to cleanse the listener of "urban discontinuity" and experience the world as a passenger (something that's lost on a generation so used to being in control).

27.

April 17, 2012
Critic Score
83
3 reviews

At just barely over 33 minutes, Sinews wastes no space in articulating its demanding and defiant disorder.

25.

Mediafired - The Pathway Through Whatever
July 27, 2011
Critic Score
90
1 review

22.

Demdike Stare - Elemental
March 13, 2012
Critic Score
80
7 reviews

21.

January 31, 2012
Critic Score
87
4 reviews

20.

October 22, 2012
Critic Score
90
32 reviews

Throughout these 12 songs (often bi- or tripartite), Lamar reshapes and improves upon enough modern rap tropes to at least partially justify the “unique” and “forward-thinking” mantles that have been placed upon him.

19.

April 17, 2012
Critic Score
80
7 reviews

18.

The Caretaker - Patience (After Sebald)
February 14, 2012
Critic Score
80
9 reviews

[Sketch for a short history of the gramophone, to be read repeatedly before bedtime]

17.

March 26, 2012
Critic Score
80
3 reviews

16.

April 21, 2012
Critic Score
83
26 reviews

Death Grips have managed to situate themselves in a unique and peculiar territory in which they are both peerless and able to appeal to fans of almost everything.

13.

November 13, 2012
Critic Score
75
10 reviews

12.

July 10, 2012
Critic Score
91
42 reviews
Ocean's work is almost as good as those he references; his lyrics are almost uniformly terrific, sensual, specific, and unpredictable

11.

February 21, 2012
Critic Score
80
41 reviews
We need pop music that sounds like this right now, because no one else seems quite so capable of confronting the tangle of expectations (or lack of expectations) in the post-capitalist music terrain.

10.

Dean Blunt - The Narcissist II
February 19, 2012
Critic Score
76
5 reviews

9.

YYU - TIMETIMETIME&TIME
May 7, 2012
Critic Score
90
1 review

8.

October 29, 2012
Critic Score
83
18 reviews

A memorable, impermanent joy, it restores, rather than disturbs, the equilibrium — a feat of engineering in the service of artistry.

7.

April 24, 2012
Critic Score
81
20 reviews

6.

Macintosh Plus - Floral Shoppe
December 9, 2011
Critic Score
64
2 reviews

4.

September 4, 2012
Critic Score
79
15 reviews
This dark gravity limns the most potent expression of Elverum’s infatuation with the extreme sonic density of black metal, marking Mount Eerie’s furthest point of departure from The Microphone’s quintessential lo-fi indie pop.

4.

May 22, 2012
Critic Score
81
19 reviews

The album is wonderfully uneven and mysteriously unfinished, and while we might look forward to its second half for a sense of balance and completion, I’m content enough to dwell amidst its own jagged remains.

3.

August 28, 2012
Critic Score
86
34 reviews

It’s an exhausting and maddening document, but one can’t help but emerge from it filled with a renewed radiance.

1.

December 4, 2012
Critic Score
78
33 reviews

This very refusal to cohere, to make sense, to play the game of identity and otherness, of harmony and disharmony, makes Bish Bosch this year’s only necessary work of art.

Original Source: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/2012-favorite-50-albums-of-2012
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