I was putting together some ideas for a New Year’s Eve playlist — you know, the types of things I’ll want to have going while I finish dinner on 12/31, and while I enjoy my last few beers of 2009 (I’ll be having Beck’s). I got to thinking more closely about my 2009 favorite albums list — which numbers will soundtrack my closing-out this year? There’ll have to be loads from the past decade, too, right? This list encompasses all that I’ve enjoyed in 2009, which includes pop & rock stuff as well as the electronic and related stuff that I’ve written about here and elsewhere.

I had the good fortune of contributing a couple of blurbs to PopMatters’ Best Electronic Music of 2009 feature this year. Alongside a handful of marvelously talented writers, I attempted to pitch in and whittle down a number of “best electronic ‘09″ lists so that we were able to condense selections from a multitude of extraordinarily healthy and provocative genres (and sub-genres, I guess) into a lean set of ten choices. Head over to PopMatters now if you haven’t already for the feature; don’t skip the introductory essay as penned by Timothy Gabriele — it’s a thoughtful discussion of all that’s happened in electronic music in 2009. Be sure to check in at PopMatters’ Best Psych of 2009 suggestions too, as well as everything else that’s going on over there today.

Cut-and-paste lo-fi pop and a soft spot for the 1960s make for a good start on Warped, the debut EP from producer Yair Rubinstein, who performs under the pro wrestler-styled guise Big Spider’s Back.  It’s a moniker that wouldn’t look out of place on a classic Fillmore poster, sandwiched between the Grass Roots and the Quicksilver Messenger Service. Read the rest of my review at BLURT.

Instrumental hip hop — the really affecting kind — isn’t as common as I’d like it to be. An early ‘09 debut from a Texas-based cratedigging producer/overall deep appreciator of diverse sounds really got me this year. I was also pretty confident that a couple of under-the-radar techno records, issued toward the start of this year, were going to be shoe-ins for my “2009 Best” roundup.  Have a look at the final segment of my favorite electronic, etc. records for this year.

I enjoyed a fair amount of dubstep this year, but, as usual, I can’t say I have a lot of proper dubstep full-lengths from 2009. The compilations offered a wealth of riches (Hyperdub, Tectonic, RSD’s Good Energy), and I’ve played the hell out of the mixes now filling up my relatively new hard drive (FACT Magazine, Joker’s Purple Wow Sound, Sonic Router’s offerings, etc.). Just grabbed Grievous Angel’s mix for Blackdown. Getting a hold of his Margins Music treatment is a high priority of mine — Dusk + Blackdown’s is easily one of the strongest, diverse dubstep albums to date. I wrote about it when it came out for PopMatters last year, and I hope to post about the new edits. Anyways, here are a few more of my favorite electronic- and hip hop-oriented releases for 2009, a couple of which are stellar examples of recent dubstep albums.

I’m having great difficulty with the idea that Deru’s record was pushed to 2010. I wrote about his Mush outing for Remix Magazine this year, and it was an absolute shoe-in for my favorites of 2009 lists (EDIT: My review, for now, seems to have vanished in the Remix/Emusician union. Stay tuned.). So I guess it’s been shifted to next year. Anyway, I’m recommending Say Goodbye to Useless if you shuffle past it in the digital or physical stores. It’s one of the more beautiful beat records out there. Or not yet out there. Here are a few more of my favorite electronic, etc. albums for 2009.