Well, Heart On A Stick Blog has gone and done it– they’ve compiled the big master-index-searchable-aggregate-etc. spreadsheet of all the blogger picks for Top Albums of the Year. Go check ‘er out.

Personally, I can’t help but go back and check to see how eerily prescient my predictions were back in September, and I didn’t do too bad, considering that I put the list together 3 months before the lists started being posted, and before Crane Wife, Boys and Girls In America, and Cookie Mountain had even been released. I mean, sure, I could’ve selected more accurately if I’d waited longer, but where’s the fun in that?

Maybe next year, someone who’s a much bigger nerd than me can make a whole interactive Web 2.0-enabled online prediction contest thing.

And maybe it can be sponsored by AXE and Zune.

Just kidding.

OR AM I? DUNH-DUNH-DUUUUUNH!

That limited-edition FADER 7-inch series I mentioned awhile back has finally kicked off. The first release, M Ward/Jim James “Magic Trick (Kansas City Remix)” b/w Ladyhawk “Soap” is now available, but you can’t just go down to yr local record shop and pick it up; ’tis not available in stores. You can, however, get one by being one of the first five people to email contests@thefader.com and answering this question: What was the theme of M Ward’s 2005 album?

Get on it!

Sweden’s Envelopes have a new website, and a new record, Here Comes The Wind, slated for release in June. It will be preceded in January by a limited vinyl EP, which will probably only be released in the UK, since the kids over there are so cool they’ve actually made vinyl a viable format* again.

(*not that vinyl isn’t alive and well in the US… it’s just a different market. I mean, if CBR was UK-based, I’d be crapping out nothing BUT vinyl.)

Oh, and SF’s Antenna Farm (who released this year’s amazing Donkeys record) have signed on to release the new Je Suis France record, Afrikan Majik.

::: Je Suis France - Thank You For Being A Friend* :::

(*yes, THAT one. NOT from Afrikan Majik, btw.)

You can check out the first mp3, “Double Vision,” (alright, cool it with the Foreigner jokes already) from The Ponys‘ upcoming Turn The Lights Out over at Matador. I would just link directly to the track, but Matador has the totally asinine and policy of “no deeplinking,” which I realize is but a minor, tiny little hoop to jump through, but it’s one that TOTALLY annoys the piss out of me regardless.

Apparently, Elephant Micah’s Hindu Windmills vinyl LP is now finally available from Time-Lag. There was apparently also a new CDR, Embarrassment Of Riches, out in October.

::: Elephant Micah - Events Near Dove Cottage :::

Hey, if you want that 23-minute Loscil Destroyer’s Rubies track, but you don’t have a turntable, I would advise you to buy the Acuarela version of the album, because that’s the bonus track on that version of the CD. You can order the disc from them right now for approximately $15 US, but I think that’s a special offer that ends tomorrow. So do it now, if’n yr gonna do it.

::: Loscil - (Loscil’s Rubies) Carmine :::

December Mix = most all mostly favoritish tracks of the year.