If you would like to be included in the Contrast Podcast voting for the best songs of 2011, Tim’s note here tells you how:

Hello Everyone,

It’s time for the final vote to determine the top fifty songs that will be crowned as this year’s Contrast Podcast Festive Fifty:

Select your favourite 10 songs from the shortlist of 128 below and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 and send the list to James or I. You may also (if you are feeling evil) give a negative vote to any single song of your choice! The deadline for doing this isn’t far away – Friday 9th December.

It would also be useful if you could indicate which songs you would be particularly keen to introduce.

Please ask your friends, family, blog readers and anyone else you know to send us their votes too – everyone can take part!!

Here for your listening pleasure is a flash player with all of the tracks on it:

http://www.contrastpodcast.com/festivefifty

and here’s the list …

A Winged Victory For the Sullen – Requiem For the Static King Part 1
Acid House Kings – Would You Say Stop?
Adele – Rolling in the Deep
Adele – Someone Like You
Airborne Toxic Event (The) – Numb
Alex Turner – Glass in the Park
Alex Turner – Hiding Tonight
Alexis Marceaux – Leila and the Orange Moon
Anna Calvi – Desire
Antlers (The) – Putting the Dog to Sleep
Arctic Monkeys – Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair
Austin Lucas – Nevada County Line
Beirut – A Candle’s Fire
Beirut – East Harlem
Beirut – The Rip Tide
Billy Bragg – Never Buy the Sun
Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears – Booty City
Black Keys (The) – Lonely Boy
Blanche Hudson Weekend – If You’re Still Together
Bottle Rockets – Lucky Break
Brenton Duvall – World Tour (Weezy, Wale, Dre)
Cashier No9 – Goldstar
Civil Wars (The) – Barton Hollow
Clive Tanaka Y Su Orquesta – All Night, All Right
Cut Copy – Need You Now
Cute Lepers – Noisy Song
Dawes – A Little Bit of Everything
Dawes – Time Spent in Los Angeles
Death Cab for Cutie – Codes and Keys
Death Cab for Cutie – You Are a Tourist
Decemberists (The) – Calamity Song
Decemberists (The) – Dear Avery
Decemberists (The) – Don’t Carry It All
Decemberists (The) – January Hymn
Decemberists (The) – Rise To Me
Decemberists (The) – Rox in the Box
DeVotchKa – The Alley
Elbow – Lippy Kids
Ellie Goulding – Lights
Elysian Fields – Red Riding Hood
Farewell Flight – Out For Blood
FareWell Poetry – As True As Troilus
Feist – Bittersweet Melodies
Feist – Caught A Long Wind
Feist – The Circle Married the Line
Feist – Undiscovered First
Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
Fleet Foxes – Lorelai
Florence + the Machine – What the Water Gave Me
Foster the People – Helena Beat
Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks
Fountains of Wayne – Cemetery Guns
Graveyard – Uncomfortably Numb
Half Man Half Biscuit – Fun Day in the Park
Head and the Heart (The) – Heaven Go Easy On Me
Herman Dune – Tell Me Something I Don’t Know
Hotel Lights – Falling Down
Hunters – Deadbeat
Imaginary Cities – Hummingbird
James Blake – Give Me My Month
James Blake – The Wilhelm Scream
James Vincent McMorrow – This Old Dark Machine
Jason Isbell – Alabama Pines
Josh T. Pearson – Sweetheart, I Ain’t Your Christ
Kills (The) – DNA
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Bats in the Attic
King Post Kitsch – Don’t You Touch My Fucking Honeytone
Kurt Vile – Jesus Fever
Ladytron – White Elephant
Lana Del Rey – Video Games
Lia Ices – Grown Unknown
Lindsey Buckingham – In Our Own Time
Lovely Eggs (The) – Don’t Look at Me (I Don’t Like It)
Lykke Li – Get Some
Lykke Li – I Follow Rivers
Lykke Li – Sadness is a Blessing
Lykke Li – Youth Knows No Pain
M83 – Midnight City
Middle Brother – Middle Brother
Mirrors – Into the Heart
Misty’s Big Adventure – I See a Cloud
Mountain Goats (The) – Birth of Serpents
My Morning Jacket – Holding On to Death Metal
My Morning Jacket – Victory Dance
Nikki Lane – Gone, Gone, Gone
Okkervil River – Hanging From a Hit
Okkervil River – Rider
Okkervil River – Wake and Be Fine
Okkervil River – We Need a Myth
Okkervil River – Your Past Life As a Blast
Pains of Being Pure at Heart (The) – Belong
Pains of Being Pure at Heart (The) – Even in Dreams
Pains of Being Pure at Heart (The) – Heart in Your Heartbreak
Pete Wylie & Wah! – The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies (A Party Song)
PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
PJ Harvey – The Last Living Rose
PJ Harvey – The Words That Maketh Murder
Professor Elemental – Fighting Trousers
R.E.M. – Discoverer
Radiohead – Bloom
Radiohead – Codex
Radiohead – Lotus Flower
Radiohead – Staircase
Raveonettes (The) – Ignite
Red Fang – Wires
Ron Sexsmith – Get in Line
Silos (The) – Teenage Prayer
Sleepies – Sludge River Mouth
Smith Westerns – All Die Young
Sonya Cotton – Man in a Tree with a Gun
Strokes (The) – Under Cover of Darkness
Tom Waits – Bad As Me
Tom Williams & the Boat – See my evil
Tombs – Vermillion
TV on the Radio – Will Do
Twilight Hotel – Mahogany Veneer
Vaccines (The) – Post Break Up Sex
Vetiver – Hard to Break
Washed Out – Amor Fati
Wilco – Art of Almost
Wilco – Dawned on Me
Wilco – I Might
Wilco – One Sunday Morning
Wilco – Whole Love
Wild Flag – Glass Tambourine
Wooden Shjips – Lazy Bones
Wye Oak – Civilian
Yuck – Holing Out

Happy voting,

Tim & James
Contrast Podcast Festive 50 Shortlist 2011
www.contrastpodcast.com

While you are narrowing down your votes, make this wonderful dinner. (If you have been stopping by here for awhile, you know my top 10 is going to be pretty predictable).

Back to this fast, fun dinner.

Sausage is so good covered in cheese and mustard and baked up in dough. The onion side is the perfect accompaniment.

Sausage Pasties with Sticky Onions

Ingredients:

200g pack bread mix (I used one can of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls)
8 sausages
1 Tbs grainy mustard
1 egg, beaten
1 Tbs olive oil
3 red onions, cut into wedges
2 Tbs brown sugar
2 Tbs red wine vinegar
4 Tbs grated cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Make the bread mix following pack instructions. Roll out the dough and cut into 4 diamond shapes measuring 12cm each side (you may need to re-roll the excess to make the final one. If you are using crescent rolls, unroll them onto a work surface).

2. Heat a large non-stick pan. Brown the sausages quickly, remove and set aside.

3. Heat oven to 400℉/200C/180C fan/gas 6.

4. Spread the mustard over each diamond and scatter over the cheese. Lay 2 sausages in the middle, then fold up the bottom point and bring the two side points across. Press to seal, then brush with egg and transfer to a baking tray lined with parchment. Leave to puff up for 5-10 mins (not necessary with crescent rolls) then cook for 15-20 mins until golden.

5. While the pasties are baking, tip out most of the fat from the pan you cooked the sausages in, then fry the onions for 10 mins until starting to soften and caramelise. Tip in the sugar and vinegar and cook for 10 mins more.

6. Serve the pasties with the sticky onions and ketchup, or more mustard if you like.

Serves 4

Recipe from BBC Good Food Magazine

I had not thought about what music I was going to play today until I picked up yesterday’s NYT to finish up the Arts & Leisure section. The Playlist column by Jon Pareles included Atlas Sound, who have a new album out ‘Parallex’.

Pareles used such descriptions as “songs that strum and muse”, “voices often doubled and staggered to dizzying stereo effect”, “thick electronic fog” and “ambient burble”.

Here is a video for Te Amo from ‘Parallex’. It’s quite nice. I cannot wait to use “ambient burble” in some future review of my own.

Here is an older song by Atlas Sound. I have always liked it.
Atlas Sound-Walkabout (With Noah Lennox)

Check out Atlas Sound on Myspace

Bradford Cox has another project, Deerhunter, which you can read up on the Website. really more of a blog.

You can buy Atlas Sound’s music on the 4AD Website.

Cheers!