1. Animal Collective, "Unsolved Mysteries" (from Strawberry Jam, Domino)
2. Black Dice, "Toka Toka" (from Load Blown, Carpark)
3. Uusitalo, "Karhunainen" (from Karhunainen, Huume)
4. Celebration, "Tame the Savage" (from The Modern Tribe, 4AD)
5. Chromatics, "Running Up That Hill" (from Night Drive, Italians Do It Better)
6. Trailmix, "You Make Lovin' Fun" (from 12-inch, Synergize)
7. High Places, "Head Spins" (from 7-inch, Ancient Almanac)
8. Knob A Siesta, "Etude No. 1" (from In My Head There Is Silence and a Hula-Hula Girl Dancing to a Make-Believe Tune, Tonometer)
9. No Age, "Dead Plane" (from Weirdo Rippers, Fatcat)
10. Luciano, "Drunken Ballet" (from Shut Up and Dance! Updated, Ostgut)
11. Shackleton, "Blood on My Hands" (R. Villalobos Apocalyptico Now Mix)" (from Skull Disco: Soundboy Punishments, Skull Disco)

Near the end of the year, a good friend and I sat on a park bench and concurred that, while our favorite band in New York, Animal Collective, had no doubt released their most underwhelming album, we were both still giddy about one song, "Unsolved Mysteries." From there our perceptions diverged. He perceived within in it that sense of "inevitability," of growing old and losing innocence, to where you only "feed on the traces" of that remembered past. I heard instead a tale about staring into the eyes of my beloved and seeing something monstrous instead. "Could your perceived betrothed actually be Jack the Ripper?" Avey Tare riddled me. "Is it possible to tame the savage heart of men?" Celebration's Katrina Ford asked. Such is love, this calendar year taught me.

It was a year of misperceptions for sure. Tallying a Top Ten album list, I realized that nearly half of my entries were actually collected singles (Panda Bear, Lindstrom & Prins Thomas, No Age, Ricardo Villalobos's Fabric mix). In the noises of Black Dice I could hear something bizarrely playful, while "Karhunainen" proved that Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti might be stronger making pounding dance tracks as Uusitalo than drugged ambience as Vladislav Delay (though I'd always thought it vice versa).

Further adding to confusion in the present was the intrusion of the past, be it via the Chromatics making Kate Bush's wispy "Running Up That Hill" wiry or that fact that my most played song of 2007 was a mischievous updating of Fleetwood Mac's "You Make Loving Fun," grafting Christine McVie's vocals to a robo-house beat complete with an effect not unlike the sound the Transformers used to make when they shape-shifted. I had other crushes as well, falling hard for High Places and the winsome exotica they ply in my zip code. How can the familiar be foreign as well? And what to make of Knob A Siesta, who not only have the shittiest band name I heard all year, but also the worst album title too. Yet their drones were restrained and mesmeric in a manner that's hard to nail.

The most exhilarating moment in music for me had to be the 2:48 mark of No Age's "Dead Plane." Noise? Punk? Sure, but doesn't the sentiment of "My baby's coming back" work in any genre? Luciano's "Drunken Ballet" made me similarly dizzy, as did fellow Chilean ex-pat producer Ricardo Villalobos, who lets dark energy seep into his remix of a Skull Disco track. In a way, this track is a most disappointing end to the year; not because I learned that the vocal isn't a sample of Arnold Schwarzenegger reading a poem he wrote about 9/11, but because it's the swiftest 18 minutes around, emulating how 2007 inevitably passed in a similar blur, leaving only these traces.

Andy Beta writes for Spin, Vibe, Paste, Stop Smiling, Village Voice, Fanzine, and elsewhere. He has a column on movie soundtracks at Idolator and also maintains the Beta Blog.