Haha: Impose Picks The "Best New Music of 2009"

On Monday, our home slices over at Impose unveiled their year-end 50 favorite acts of 2009. It's a uniquely varied list of familiar blog-sprayed faces (Animal Collective, Fever Ray, Black Lips, Dan Deacon, Black Dice), mixtape rappers (Gucci Mane, Freddie Gibbs, Drake), relative unknowns (Nisennenmondai, Eat Skull, Phantogram), and YIMBY stars (Oneohtrix, Drunkdriver, The Beets). As a kind service to readers, fans, Mediafire trigger-fingers, they've logically compiled a corresponding three-zip downloadable mix to go with their awards. The awesomely funny part: as a package, the damn thing's called "Best New Music of 2009."

A little background. Ever since everybody's favorite tastemaking web site opened a Brooklyn office, and thereby pillaged the local loft spaces, all-ages shows, and rooftop parties for America's Best New Music, we've all watched our local art-spazzes go from harmonizing a cappella from Death By Audio tabletops to appearing on the Late Show With David Letterman to being responsible for Brooklyn's resurgence as "the creative capital of the country." All well and good and blah blah blah no beef here and buy local.

Yet we'd be remiss not to mention that mopping up the Schlitz-sticky floors of local DIY-show culture for years, on barely any budget, has been Impose. A self-described "independent media outlet" that began in 2002 as a quarterly music magazine, it's since evolved into a frequently updated web site, homespun record label, and enthusiastic event thrower. Less crass than Vice, far more scrappily adventurous than your average music blawg, and labor-of-lovingly run by Derek Evers and our own Villagevoice.com contributor/Indie Cribz cinematographer Jeremy Krinsley, Impose had the foresight to pose frantic shred-queen Marnie Stern with eventually uberhyped duo High Places for the cover in 2007. They sent disposable cameras on the road with Crystal Castles long before Alice started beating people up. They've been Vivian Girls supporters for practically as long as Katy's been playing kickball, and riding Dan Deacon as long as he first (perhaps regrettably) boarded Greyhounds. Matter of fact, that was an Impose CMJ show in those unauthorized bus ads.

But in the last two-plus years, the haypitchers have come to town and claimed this domain. Impose, who've meanwhile been chilling in the back room of Don Pedro's, seems to want their lunch back, and by christening their year-end kazoo concert "Best New Music of 2009," they just stole a potato chip. (SEO, friends.) Good on them. [Impose's "Best New Music of 2009."]