The Sly Stone of Acoustic looped guitar (was OT: Musical discoveriesof 2010)

[Art Simon <simart@gmail.com>]

The music that blew my mind in 2010 was Jarle Bernhoft from Norway. I just learned of him a few days ago on the Zonemobius mailing list. He channels the grooves of Sly Stone, right down to the mohawk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAnC7RTAMok

The track "On Time" is best looping I've heard since Fro Diddly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJfnvna4kwI

The thing about iTunes is that I can go back and see what music I've actually been listening to this past year. I went through my favorites, and surprisingly to me, only three others were released in 2010, and two of them are hip hop recordings. As a rule I don't listen to rap. I listened to Kurtis Blow back in the day, but I'd given up on rap years ago. So anyway, hear are my other top albums of 2010, all three of them:

• Kendrick Lamar EP, distributed as a free download
• "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" by Kanye West
• Azar Lawrence "Mystic Journey"

I did discover a lot of music this past year that I've loved, it's just much of it was recorded earlier, some of it decades ago:

• The long lost second ECM album "Spanish Bitch" by Mal Waldron (but never officially acknowledged by ECM) This one is highly recommended! http://orgyinrhythm.blogspot.com/2010/09/mal-waldron-spanish-bitch.html
• Richard Pinhaus and Merzbow "Keio Line" (Somebody on this list pointed out this gem. Metal/Crystal came out in 2010 but I haven't heard it yet)
• Ryuichi Sakamoto "Chasm"
• Two Banks of Four "Junkyard Dogs"
  
• The Polish Jazz recycling electronica group Skalpel
• The gamelan like electronica of Bonobo
  
• Amon Tobin "Chomp Samba"
• Billy Wooten "Lost Tapes"
• Sadao Watanabe at the Montreux Jazz Festival
• Robert Quine/Jody Harris "Escape"
  
• Frank Strazzeri's awesome fender rhodes playing on "Cloudburst" on his "After the Rain" album
• Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus "Dadawah -- Peace and Love"
• Steve Winwood "About Time"
• Sonny Sharrock "Dance with me Montana"
  
• And probably the musical discovery that has had the most impact on me, the guitarist Tisziji Munoz

Best wishes for the new year!
-- 
Art Simon
simart@gmail.com
myspace [dot] com/artsimon