So. Why pick the ANBAD End O’ Year List, which starts in earnest next week, over any other music blogs’?

Well, there is no real reason, though if you’ve had the determination to read past the first paragraph, maybe you have a modicum of interest in slip-sliding into the grubby, ragged, and frequently ludicrous world of new bands from a slightly different, dubious angle.

Still, while you’re deciding whether it’s worth the plunge or not (HINT: it actually is – there were some genuinely terrific bands on ANBAD this year), here’s Part One of the patronising pat-on-the-head for the bands that were really great, but not quite really great enough to make the Top Ten…

•  PIXELS – In a moderately rare instance of ANBAD picking up a band that goes onto moderately bigger things, Pixels, “drag ideas from jangle-pop,with a vaguely hip-hop rhythm and an entirely disconnected outlook.”

• ARC VEL‘s songs “seem to be composed of snippets of other lovely songs –  dreamy, anti-brash, anti-form soundscapes is that… may only exist in the world of Arc Vel, and we’ll never hear them.”

• GALA DROP‘s song “Rauze is so devastatingly successful – looping noises back and forth, gaining momentum, pausing, unfurling – I wonder why music like this isn’t made more often.”

Gala Drop // RAUZE

• Where are PRAIRIES  from?I can think of some antecedents – for some reason T.V.O.D. springs to mind, apropos of almost nothing – but in all honesty, Prairies may as well be beamed from the future.

…Part 2 of ANBAD’s best runners-up arrives tomorrow!