TRACKS
1. Rihanna - Umbrella
2. Roland Appel - Dark Soldier
3. Ame - Fiori
4. Escort - All Through the Night
5. Eve - Tambourine
6. Roisin Murphy - Let Me Know
7. Osborne - Outta Sight
8. Motiivi:Tuntematon - Mankind Failed
9. Keyshia Cole - Let It Go
10. Redshape - Unfinished Symmetry

REISSUES
1. Miles Davis - The Complete On the Corner Sessions
2. Sly & the Family Stone - The Collection
3. Ramp - Come Into Knowledge
4. Bennie Maupin - The Jewel in the Lotus
5. The Black Dog - Book of Dogma

COMMENTS
ROCCO BALDELLI LIVES

Tracks one through five were sequenced on a nice day, at least by mid-December Michigan standards. Tracks six through 14 came together within 15 minutes of returning home from driving an hour through a blizzard. (Ice-caked wipers on I-96: no good.) This probably explains the disc's abrupt switch from generally upbeat glitz to several varieties of unease. From any standpoint, including personal, it isn't necessarily an ideal summation of 2007: Anything exceeding ten minutes in length was consciously avoided (hence the lack of Redshape and Petre Inspirescu, and the favoring of the eight-minute club edit of "Fiori" over the superior 17-minute original), and rap was subconsciously squeezed out (so no Freeway, Black Milk, Prodigy, UGK, or Jay-Z). And there's no Donnie—Donnie released The Daily News, a courageous synthesis of walloping funk, glorious gospel-soul, and substantive protest. There is so much love in it, but it contains not one love song (at least not by commercial radio's definition).

The unjust level of attention given to Donnie would be one of many rants that could be filed here. There's the matter of Amerie's Because I Love It, represented here by one of its "Rich Harrison who?" tracks, not being released in a country where the singer's previous albums went Top 10. Someone should get around to talking about the Field in a specific way—how From Here We Go Sublime, with the exception of its closing title track, can sound increasingly tedious and riddled with seams with each play, and how the album should've been centered around his near-perfect first single, and how each of his most durable tracks from the past couple years features no thumps. Keri Hilson, Teedra Moses, and Maxwell were supposed to release albums in 2007 (or was it 2006)? Compression still sucks, and so does some label for not overhauling the Prince catalog. (Catalog Department Cock-Up Award, several years running.)

"Let It Go" initially sounded ripe for a rant—did "Juicy Fruit" need to be re-purposed again, even with a little Yarbrough & Peoples for accent?—and then clicked once heard on the radio and still forces the volume-blast reflex months later. Escort, who are now four-for-four, were only teasing with their first three singles. Sorcerer gets sand between Metro Area's mid-tempo electro-disco toes; Metro Area switches tack by making a song instead of a track. Halved and given some bottom, "Fiori" in club edit form sounds only slightly less epic and floatational than in its original state. Matias Aguayo: making less sense yet obviously trying to get in your pants (still). Rahsaan Patterson morphs into an early-Cure-loving paranoiac droid. Ta'Raach and Joy Jones drift through a drowsy Saturday morning; Waajeed and Tiombe Lockhart strut through alleys with frayed nerves. Pinch twitters, glimmers, and wobbles, presumably somewhere beneath sea level. Jochem Peteri provides his most mind-bending ambient techno production, as Newworldaquarium, since Newworldromantic's "Noworldbutu." Roland Appel's "Dark Soldier" soothes or disturbs (take your pick) while Motiivi:Tuntematon releases the most startling apocalyptic stomp since Continuous Mode's "Kryptic Mode," closing with five minutes of Tangerine Neubauten—sheets of crumpled metal flung into space over synth drones worthy of Michael Mann's Thief.

Why not finish by stealing an idea from Douglas Wolk? Artists heard for the first time this year: four. Songs heard on the radio: two. Songs encountered through audioblogs: none. Songs from records obtained with money: eight.

Native Ypsilantian Andy Kellman is an editor at All Music Guide.