My Best of 2010 was basically an attempt to carve my musical experience of the past year down to its most essential, most ingrained elements.  An attempt to sum up the music I feel had the largest impact on my listening, on my life.

I left out a lot of great albums.  Thankfully, they were drawn from a text file kept on my desktop throughout the year, chronicling each album I decide, at a given moment, is awesome.  Yes, it’s that simple.  As time passes I remove the fleeting infatuations, anything not holding up.  So I’m left with a solid list I can refer to in search of everything I really, truly enjoyed this year.  This is it, in order I heard them.

• Bullion – Say Goodbye To What EP

• Four Tet – There Is Love In You

• Arrington De Dionyso – Malaikat Dan Singa

• Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra – Kollaps Tradixionales

• Autechre – Oversteps

• Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

• Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh

• Ikonika – Contact Want Love Have

• Take – Only Mountain

• LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening

• Boris – Heavy Rock Hits Vol. 3
  

• Connect_icut – Fourier’s Algorithm

• Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid

• Rollo – 3

• Yellow Swans – Going Places

• Sightings – City of Straw

• Guido – Anidea

• Lorn – Nothing Else

• Teebs & Jackhigh – Tropics EP

• Infinite Body – Carve Out The Face Of My God

• The-Dream – Love King
  

• The Sight Below – It All Falls Apart

• Deepchord Presents Echospace – Liumin

• TOKiMONSTA – Midnight Menu

• Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal 7″

• Scuba – Triangulation

• Sepalcure – Love Pressure EP

• Imbogodom – The Metallic Year

• Singing Statues – Outtakes EP

• Flying Lotus – Patter + Grid World EP

• Seefeel – Faults EP

• Mark McGuire – Living With Yourself

• Efdemin – Chicago

• T++ – Wireless

• Gold Panda – Lucky Shiner

• Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest

• Balam Acab – See Birds EP

• Gonjasufi – The Caliph’s Tea Party

• VHS Head – Trademark Ribbons of Gold

• Marcus Fjellström – Schattenspieler

• Zach Hill – Face Tat

• Games – That We Can Play

• Zs – New Slaves

• Fenn O’Berg – In Stereo

• Richard Skelton – Landings

• James Blake – Klavierwerke EP
  

• Fursaxa – Mycorrhizae Realm

• Dimlite – My Human Wears Acedia Shreds EP

• Kurt Weisman – Orange

• Clubroot – II MMX
  

So there it is.  Something to remember is that any one of these albums may end up defining the year as much as the ‘true’ list – and that something I haven’t even heard yet may best them all.  It’s happened before.  This is why Optimistic Underground will soon post its first Music From Before 2010 But Discovered This Year list.  This will cover the much wider range of music I was into this year, since there is already much more music out there than is being released at any given time.

[This post is subject to change.  Like I’ll probably add one or two more by January.]