Indeed, we’ve been fairly quiet for the last month or so. I’d like to blame this on the comprehensive year-end list building going on everywhere else, but the reality is that I finally picked up an Xbox360 and have been wasting my time away - mainly watching my wife play Oblivion.

Every year, I make the commitment to keep better track of what I’ve listened to, and just like every other year, I’ve failed pretty miserably again this year. It’s not that there haven’t been great releases this year - far from it, 2007 is arguably one of the strongest years in recent memory. It’s more that I’m terrible at cataloguing the several hundred albums I’ve listened through this year, most of which have been, thankfully, quite good.

But with that said, there are still quite a few notable releases in 2007. Given that the number of albums we’ve perused here at tSoS was higher this year than probably any year in recent memory, there’s obviously going to be several gems I’ll forget to note. This whole exercise is doable if you listen to only fifty or a hundred albums a year - but I think any honest music addict will have to admit that that quota can be filled in a matter of weeks, making the overall pile of competition staggering and, honestly, incomparable in any quantifiable way.

Admittedly, it seems like 2007 was the year for established bands to release highly-anticipated albums, many of which broke away from pre-established conceptions of their creators. Low’s Drums & Guns furthered the band’s transition from the quiet slowcore of its early releases to a much more experimental outfit. Do Make Say Think, one of post-rock’s most venerated outfits, featured vocals on a handful of tracks on their release You, You’re a History of Rust. Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam (and its accompanying tour) was a lively, electronic affair, full of allusions to family life and domestic bliss.

Panda Bear got into the best-of act early with his solo release Person Pitch. While many of the songs on the album had appeared on various twelve-inch and ep releases, the palette employed here created one of the brightest soundscapes of the year. With samples ranging from Berlin techno to tropicalia, the Animal Collective drummer bridged the (ever-shrinking) gap between electronic music and experimental indie.

Lights Out Asia’s Tanks & Recognizers, which had been on my most-anticipated list for qutie awhile, finally arrived this year as well. Their soundwashed electronics coupled with the tension-building dynamics of post-rock on their n5md release solidified the group’s status as one of the pre-eminent bands on the ambient/post-rock scene.

It is in this crossover genre that I think 2007 really stood out. Port Royal and Ulrich Schnauss both delivered solid albums consisting of equal parts silicon and soul, while labels such as Resonant, n5md, and Type continued to push the boundaries between techno, downtempo, folk, and post-rock. My biggest discovery of the year was easily the British imprint Unlable, who were responsible for many of the better albums of 2006 through installments of their series52 collection (an album a week throughout the year). The label is not afraid to disregard genre boundaries (postrock, folk, downtempo, glitch) in order to provide interesting, compelling releases.

Shoegaze and dreampop re-emerged this year as well. Scandinavia was especially productive this year, with releases by Rumskib, Doi, and Hearts of Black Science all standing out. Japancakes gave the classic Loveless a laptop steel sound from beginning to end, and, finally, Kevin Shields and company confirmed not only new material, but a reunion tour as well.

Techno just kept moving forward, sideways, backwards, and, outside of the Midwestern U.S., everywhere. Berlin and Detroit continued their courtship with solid releases from The Field, Echospace, Swayzak, and even Slam. While Sasu Ripatti’s Vladislav Delay guise received a great amount of admiration for the Whistleblower album, it was truly Ripatti’s other aka - Uusitalo - who provided the better release, with Karhunainen.

The biggest a-ha for me this year was undoubtedly dubstep. Late to the party, of course, but it took awhile to dig past the initial grime offerrings to finally get into not only this year’s biggest releases, but the back catalogue of the past few years. Even the big names like Skream, Shackleton & Appleblim, Digital Mystikz, et al, impressed with steady releases throughout the year. Cross-pollination ran rampant on this scene, which has managed, for the most part, to maintain a tightly-knit community while at the same time going global.

Dubstep also gave us the album of the year. Burial’s Untrue picked up exactly where his self-titled debut left of, and then went even further. A true modern soul classic, the anonymous producer’s recent efforts are soaked with emotive vocals kept at right at the tipping point throughout, and has set a new standard for the movement. This one will be ranked right there as the Dummy or Blue Lines of the ’00s.

I tried to sift through my Last.fm playlist to get a good sense of what made the biggest impact for the year, but honestly the service just wasn’t reflective of everything that was played in one format or another through the past 12 months. So with that, I really can’t offer up a “best-of” list, because in reality it would probably stretch out to a few hundred albums and I’d be coming back to revise this thing every day or two as some worthy release or another came popping back. This may have been the year where the small labels - and the bands they support - finally saw their efforts pay off, as the stream of brilliant albums released from unknowns was fairly steady throughout the year.

There are a few releases, though, which left a great deal to be desired. As much as I love Low, the decision to mix the vocals entirely to one channel on Drums & Guns was the straw that broke Dave Friedmann’s back. Modest Mouse lived up to expectation by delivering an absolute steaming pile of crap, signifying that the days of Lonesome Crowded West or Moon and Antarctica are truly, truly over and are never coming back. For all the praise given to Battles’ Mirrored album, it was a mess compared to the group’s previous eps, and was that much worse for the inclusion of Tyondai Braxton’s unlistenable vocals. Furthermore, MIA’s Kala was, to me, just as unlistenable, bland, and soulless as Arular.

There were several more stories from this year - Radiohead’s In Rainbows sales approach, the RIAA judgment (and the continuing idiocy surrounding this group), the shut-down of OiNK and Demonoid, the still-teetering digital streaming royalties questions, and of course the myriad of reunions and breakups that fill every year.

A couple of predictions for next year - nothing earth-shattering really - but here goes:

Underground, independent music is going to feel the brunt of the impact of the RIAA and DRM in 2008, and it’s not going to be pretty. Where the last couple of years have seen a real emergence of talented - or at least entertaining - groups from nowhere, the “industry” has positioned itself to throttle its competition, if given the chance.

Secondly, live music will continue to grow and outpace record sales. On one hand, this will be a benefit for the artists feeling the crunch from the disappearance of accessible file-sharing and the further Clear Channeling of corporate-owned sites like Myspace and the big-business music blogs. On the other hand, gigantic festivals like Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Coachella will continue bringing in huge acts and hundreds of thousands of attendees - all in the name of corporate sponsorship. Success has always been a double-edge sword . . .

So there’s to 2007, and here’s to 2008. I hope the truly independent artists and labels continue the strong showing they produced in 2007. I hope everyone who deserves to buy new guitar strings and have their rent paid thanks to their hard work and creativity begins to or continues to do so, and I truly hope that everyone who’s sucking the tit of art and expression dry in the name of commerce winds up working two jobs, hopefully serving under those who are actually giving it a sincere go.

And who knows, I might go ahead and give a top-something or other a shot before the end of the year anyway . . .