2011 in Music: Sounds

This is the fourth in a seven-part series on my favorite music from 2011.

I tend to fixate on sounds and tones in songs and records. These are my favorite sounds from this year.

There are two ways to listen! Press play on the blue-and-grey SoundCloud player to hear all thirty-three sounds isolated and arranged alphabetically back-to-back, following along with the list below. Or press play on the players underneath each sound in the list to hear it by itself.

Atlas Sound and Deerhunter – [various]
Short vocal loop Bradford Cox was obsessed with all year.
Balam Acab – Welcome
Cleverly panned and pitched-down shaker (I think).
Beyoncé – I Care
Insane vocal run that matches the guitar solo and then keeps going.
Blanck Mass – Raw Deal
Sample (I think) that comes in periodically and completely makes the song.
Blawan – Potchla Vee
Slow-down of the percussion sample into the beat.
Bon Iver – Wash.
Vocal cut-up and ping-pong.
Cass McCombs – Love Thine Enemy
Background sample and strange vocal effects.
Coldplay – Up with the Birds
Clipped, reverb’d vocal sample.
Cornershop – The Biro Pen
That drum solo!
Darkside – A1
‘Wuhwuhwuhwuhwuh’ vocal cut-up.
Eleanor Friedberger – Inn of the Seventh Ray
Delay on ‘oh’ and ‘ray’.
Hooray for Earth – True Loves
Super shrill percussion element.
James Blake – A Case of You/Why Don’t You Call Me/You Know Your Youth
Latter two songs (and possibly more that I can’t find) use samples from the former.
Junior Boys – Banana Ripple
‘Can you turn the, uh, click off?’
matthewdavid – Like You Mean It
Vocal sample drop.
MMJ – Circuital
Delay on ‘circuital’.
Oneohtrix Point Never – Andro
Screams and bongos.
Panda Bear – Sheherazade
Barely audible King Tubby sample from the single and live versions that was otherwise entirely removed from the song on album (presumably for copyright concerns).
Radiohead – Codex
Thom’s vocal fade-in.
Rarebit – Slime Time Live
Claps with delay, claps without delay.
Shabazz Palaces – An echo from the hosts that profess infinitum
Time-stretched kids’ vocals.
Taragana Pyjarama – Ocean
Dog shaking its collar after coming out of the ocean.
The Antlers – Putting the Dog to Sleep
Auto-panned snare.
The Field – Burned Out
Cut-up vocals.
The Revival Hour – Run Away
Heavily delayed vocals.
The Throne – Lift Off
Beyoncé’s cut-up, delayed vocals.
The Throne – Made in America
Bit-crushed beep.
The Weeknd – House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls
Pitch-down transition from part one to part two.
Toro Y Moi – How I Know
Rising piano embellishment.
Tune-Yards – My Country
Stapler.
Tune-yards – Gangsta
Hard panning and cuts.
Washed Out – Before
Bit of vocal left in the sample.
Young Man – Nothing
Pitch-shifted ‘toh toh toh toh’ right before the verse starts.

This was really fun to put together. Though a similar list has always lived in my head, I started keeping this particular list written down around the middle of the year. As you can probably tell, I very much like delay and vocal manipulation of any kind.

If you have favorite sounds I’d love to hear about them, and if you know of anyone else who has made a similar list, please let me know. (I did see in the Pitchfork Guest List Best of 2011 that Robin Pecknold listed the descending vocal melody contrasting the ascending piano melody in Radiohead’s ‘Codex’ as one of his favorite things about 2011.)