With the end of 2011 ever so close it is time to reveal Auxiliary Magazine’s Top 20 Albums of 2011. This list isn’t ranked because it is a group of favorites from all our contributors. Please check out all the albums (minus Displacer and IAMX for now) in one convenient spot, our Spotify Top 20 Albums Playlist.
Apparat Devil’s Walk
Emotionally rich, intimate, and personal, this quiet journey reflects its Berlin and Mexican settings making the bleak sound sunny. Minimal instrumentation from a variety of instruments ground the quiet and engaging words.
Covenant Modern Ruin
Covenant returned with a new member and a killer single, “Lightbringer”, to lead off a powerful album. Finding new depth to their musical style they have a new and improved level of sound that should sustain them through another decade.
Crystal Stilts In Love with Oblivion
Dark neo-psychedelic music that sounds like Joy Division in an argument with Phil Spector.
Displacer Night Gallery
The enjoyment of this album is its ability to entrance the listener and let their imagination go wild.
Ghost & Writer Shipwrecks
Each song here is a well told story captivating the listener every time, plus the music is top notch synthpop.
God Module Séance
A perfect blend of creepy electro-industrial and pop elements, these songs get stuck in your head for days.
Haujobb New World March
With the end of the world coming in 2012, we’ll be playing this album as it all goes down.
IAMX Volitile Times
This album was like a fine wine, the longer it sat around our music players the better it got. Who knows a few more years and this could be the album of the decade.
John Maus We Just Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
Sounds like a long-lost cassette recording of an obscure, extremely lo-fi synthpop band from 1983.
Krystal System Nuclear
This heavy electro industrial album coming from the French underground emits enough powerful energy to fuel millions of people.
M83 Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Exploring both sides of M83 with its mixture of dreamy ambient songs and powerful dream pop, the epic double album is appropriately an exploration of dreams in both their essence and emotion.
Necro Facility Wintermute
Industrial with a dose of pop worked wonders on this album. Necro Facility went from a follower to a leader with this album.
Nicolas Jarr Space is Only Noise
Experimental electronic that defies categories, each song creating its own strange living space.
ohGr unDeveloped
Nivek Ogre and Mark Walk made a highly addictive album, arguably some of the best music either have been associated with.
Selebrities Delusions
A perfect example of how to pull influences from 70s postpunk, 80s synthpop, and new wave yet still sound current and fresh.
Skinny Puppy hanDover
Listen deep and this album comes to life. The originality and attention to details makes this puppy amazing!
Slug Guts Howlin Gang
Angst-ridden, old school, badass goth/postpunk with basement vocals a la The Birthday Party.
SONOIO Red
No stranger to the music world, Alessandro Cortini’s solo project SONOIO’s latest album, Red, is an excellent modern alternative rock/electronic-industrial album.
Sons & Daughters Mirror Mirror
What if The White Stripes and The Kills had been more influenced by The Cure and Gang of 4?
Tim Hecker Ravedeath 1972 Hypnotic ambient electronic that weaves noise and beauty into one seamless whole.
* listed in alphabetical order
Listen to these albums on Spotify :
www.open.spotify.com/user/mikekieffer/playlist/6oXS4QFjEqcHxF72qDR4hXMUSIC
First mention of Covenant I’ve seen around. A definite guilty pleasure for me. Industrial isn’t really my thing, but something about that album keeps me coming back.
Saw God Module recently and now want to hire them to host my end of civilization party^
We did an interview with God Module last year too. :)
http://www.auxiliarymagazine.com/music/2011/10/interview-god-module