We've also been rubbing our crystal ball's around citizensound towers, as we guessed you might want a few recommendations for artists to look out for over the next 12 months. So here's Paul Martin's tips for 2008…

Tawiah (opposite) is currently unsigned, but check her forthcoming track Every Step. Forget all the other ex Brit schoolers, Tawiah is the real deal. Confident South London soul diva. Pure dynamite live.

Yo Majesty's forthcoming album, check out the track Nightriders (on Domino). Tough girls from the states with grooves and lyrics to shame the boys.

Temni (currently signed to SONY ATV Publishing) Unbelievably talented singer from Nigeria with the spirit of Lauryn Hill in her veins but a style of her own with on point mad funky productions to rule the world.

Cumbia fever. That’s Cumbia, not Cumbria folks. The new sound out of Mexico, was last year's Mexican Sound Institute album Pinata on Cooking Vinyl, and  the forthcoming Russ Jones and Felix ‘Basement Jaxx’ Buxton compilation. The sound for Summer 2008? While Fania, the classic New York label of the 60s and 70s, gets a remix makeover.

Bare Knuckle Soul – on the Knuckle imprint with a 4 track 12” single, check out Moon Dust. Proving that soul as well as rock comes from the city of Sheffield

Vampire Weekend - forthcoming début album from XL. New Yorkers with African touches.Check out their current single Mansard Roof on iTunes. 

Black Affair - Pleasure Pressure Point album. Steve Mason, the former Beta Band main man, takes us on a 80's electro throwback, and wins.

Inner City Dwellers are currently unsigned. This London duo mix the rock and the rap. The drum and the bass. The electronics and the live. Check also Dead Kids and Does It Offend You, Yeah? for similar mongrel crossbreeds.

Aaron Jerome - A Time to Rearrange album on BBE. A host of underground talent feature on this album. Check out the Yungun track Late Night Mission for a jazz hip house bump from the new wunderkid producer.

Jazz is still alive in the 21st century, and if you need proof check out José James’ album Dreamer on Brownswood. Keeping the flame of spiritual vocal jazz alive. A singer with John Coltrane in his lungs. On the instrumental jazz tip check out Polar Bear’s forthcoming second album, a sublime return for the twice Mercury-nominated Seb Rochford, pushing the envelope of jazz and electronics. Maybe a third nomination and a 1st ever jazz winner!

Christian Prommer - Drum Lesson: Volume One on Sonar Kollectiv is proper jazz -dance versions of classics including Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express and Derek May’s Strings Of Life.

James Chance and the Contortions new album on Trigger music. A new album twenty years on from no-wave, featuring the original line up plus some very special guests. Still funky and more edgy that most young pretenders.  'Plus two' like any good guest list, here's two rappers pushing not just licking the envelope:

Saul Williams The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of NiggyTardust on Wichita. He's back rockin' and a rappin'. The illest lyricist, this time produced by Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails. Highlight tracks include DNA and Trigger.

Jay Electronica Act 1: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge). No drums, no hooks, just new shit from this New Orleans native.

Settle down, settle down now. Our very own Paul Martin is a professional. And he's compiled us all an end of year chart. So pay attention, we'll be testing you later…

1. Tawiah - Watch Out on Brownswood Bubblers Vol 2 on Brownswood.  A vocalist with talent to burn.
2. Little Dragon’s eponymous album on Peacefrog.  Big basslines with soulful vocals. Swedish you know.
3. Black Affair - Tak Attack [vinyl only 12” single on V2. Steve Mason (ex-Beta Band/King Biscuit Time) morphs into Afrika Bambaatta via The Human League. Brilliant !
4. Dubstep produces some classic longplayers from a genre still joining the ring roads from Croydon to the rest of the world. If you want to check out what all the fuss is about here’s four places to start… Burial - Untrue on Hyper-Dub. Glitchy ravey 2-step soul to lift angels in the rain outside McDonalds. Pinch - Underwater Dancehall on Tec-Tonic. Dub still heavy in the waters around Bristol. Box of Dub - Vol. 1 and 2 on Soul Jazz. Classic reissue label with fingers still on the pulse of the city. Shackleton/Appleblim - Soundboy Punishments on Skull Disco. Ridiculous tribal dub-funk producer Shackleton is THE out there minimal man.
5. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - War 10” single plus others. The son of afro-jazzer Philip Cochrane keeps the woozy Southern state brass band alive and blows a sound to mourn the drowned and raise the spirits of New Orleans.
6. Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra - Hits the Hits on Ubiquity. Amongst the plethora of covers albums this one is the most irreverent and downright funky. Check the version of " Hey Ya " which goes all 60s Ramsey Lewis-style.
7. Michael Fakesch  - Dos on  K7. Prince may still be kicking it live but this electro funk soul singer takes us back to his best days in the studio.
8. Reverso 68 had three 12in singles out on Eskimo.  Check Especial and my favourite Take Me Back To Yours plus remixes. Cosmic grooves and dubby disco.
9. The ever foward looking Warp records still kicking it with three killer releases last year from Prefuse 73 - Preperations, Battles  - Mirrored, and !!! - Myth Takes.
10. Compilation of the year is Ethiopiques - the Very Best of Ethiopiques: Hypnotic Grooves from the Legendary Series on Manteca/Union Square. Selected best-of from 22 volumes containing the cream of the crop although you need all of them really. Previously featured in the Jim Jarmusch movie Broken Flowers, and also Charlie Gillet's album of the year in OMM. Spot on I say.

I'm a terrible one for falling asleep to music. I often plug into my iPod when I go to bed and either wake up in the middle of the night tangled up in my headphones, or can't nod off because I get too involved in the music I'm listening to! This widget is the perfect solution for me, and no-doubt other musicholics, who just can't get enough.

With this Widget, you will now be able to fall asleep and wake up in music! You can set the time when you want the music to stop and to restart. You can also set how long you want the volume to decrease. You can use SleepMusic as an alarm clock! Since the Widget acts on the master volume of the computer, you can use it with every music players (Winamp, ITunes, etc.). In fact, with any program using your speakers!

Get it here 

If you want some access to some truly exciting new music you need this site in your life. Daytrotter is one of the most highly rated US music blogs out there, and currently rated in the Top 10 on music blog aggregator Hype Machine. What makes the site different is not the writing but the fact that every band that comes through Daytrotter's home of Rock Island, Illanois, records a few exclusive live tracks for them. And you get to hear them and download them for free.

You won't find a better mission statement for a music site than this:

There are so many music/entertainment websites that copy one another, scrambling so fast to “discover” or present something new to the world. And just because you get there first, it doesn’t really make you an explorer. We did poke a stars and stripes into the moon, but we could always see it. We knew it was there. It wasn’t new. We can always come along and say we did, saw, heard something first, but we’re never right. What Daytrotter is attempting to do is to not kid around with you and tell you that we found something that you never knew existed. We are going to contribute to the musical landscape, not just toss it around like a used book or a stolen pick-up line. We’re going to give you something that you truly have never heard. We are not giving you songs from someone you love’s record album, thereby stealing from someone you love. We’re giving you exclusive, re-worked, alternate versions of old songs and unreleased tracks by some of your favorite bands and by a lot of your next favorite bands.

These guys are doing the right thing, for the right reasons. This is very much in the spirit of the old John Peel sessions on Radio 1. I also love all the illustrations that go with each artist,  making this site both aurally and visually stunning. They've had almost 2 million downloads of the tracks from the site since launch, which is no surprise considering the quality of the artists, even if they are not exactly household names. Recent sessions for Daytrotter have included: Oakley Hall, Sunset Rubdown, Deerhunter, The Magic Numbers, Emma Pollock, Okkervil River, Au Revoir Simone and The Dirty Projectors. Also worth checking out are sessions from the soon to be big White Rabbits, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Of Montreal, Shearwater, Willy Mason and the Maccabee's. All of the music is kindly archived on the site, so go and enjoy some new music. And if you like it enough go and buy their latest record release.

The ever excellent Pitchfork music site compiled their favourite 100 tracks of 2007. They also kindly provided a chance to hear each and every track via links to the video, a steam of the song, and in a number of cases actual free downloads. A great way to discover some new music. I particularly enjoyed tracks by Menomena, Air France, Rekid, Grizzly Bear, The Twilight Sad, Black Kids (who I suspect will be huge in 2008), Studio (one of my albums of the year), The Honeydrips, Sally Shapiro, The Tough Alliance, Of Montreal, Justice and the brilliant Atlas by the Battles. This lot beats most magazine cover mounts hands down. Go enjoy…

I've been compiling end of year charts for over 20 years now. Which just goes to show what a trainspotter I am when it comes to music! I like end of year charts, not because I'm curious to find of which records are rated better than others. I simply use charts to pick up on great records that I may have missed as the year goes by. Even though I'm a regular reader of at least four monthly music magazines, myriad music sites and blogs such as Pitchfork, and an avid fan of Last.fm, there's still loads of records that fall under my radar. I'm also an big fan of eMusic, which apart from some good editorial, is the only way I can afford to hear as much music as I do. Of the 90 albums I've listened to this year, only a small handful didn't come as part of my eMusic subscription.

However, one thing I find really hard, past the top few albums, is to try put a chart position against every entry. How can you rate Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' splendid take on Americana with Tinariwen's desert blues, or James Blackshaw's acoustic folk with the After Dark compilation of Italo-disco? Hard isn't it. So, after my Top 10, all the releases are in alphabetical order. I suggest that if you haven't heard any of my Top 10, then you should do yourself a big service and check them out immediately. While, for those of you with adventurous tastes, the rest of my Top 40 come very highly recommended. And while we're on subject, we'd love to know what your Top 10 albums of 2007 were, so get posting…

1. LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver

With an increasing interest in everything post-punk I was wondering how long it be before bands picked up on Talking Heads sinuous funk as an influence. Try listening to Someone Great or Us v Them from James Murphy's sophomore release and tell me you can't hear touches of Fear of Music or Remain In Light. While distant echo's of Joy Division and New Order can be heard lurking on All My Friends, which were brilliantly covered by both Franz Ferdinand and John Cale for an EP, along with Murphy and Co covering Joy Division's No Love Lost. Murphy is a clever enough to take whatever he 'borrows' and make it his own. And this truly is the album of 2007.

2. Radiohead - In Rainbows
They disappear for four yours and come back with an album that sadly got more column inches for how it was retailed, rather than the music. Apparently many of these songs had been part of their live set for some time, and were not written together for an album. However, you'd never guess, as this is a stunning comeback. If you failed to like some of the more recent albums for being a little too unconventional, this album should give you a nice warm glow.

3. St Vincent - Marry Me
This got an album of the week in the Sunday Times, but amazingly hasn't sent the critics at the Mojo/Uncut/Word into total paroxysm of pleasure. This is one stunningly inventive record. Like Kate Bush or Bjork, sidewoman to the stars Annie Clark (well, she's worked with the wonderful Sufjan Stevens and the Polyphonic Spree) is totally unique. This quickly became one of my favourite records of the year. Please give this record a listen…

4. M.I.A - Kala
All I'm going to say is if this doesn't win the Mercury Prize next year, the judging panel should be garotted. This is a stunning, inventive, buzzy and sonically inventive record that puts 90% of those 'UK indie guys with guitars and a couple of Clash albums' totally in the shade. If this record doesn't make you smile, jump up and down, and grin like an idiot you are sadly ready for 'pipe and slippers'.

5. New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
A great companion piece to the LCD Soundsystem. I was a huge fan of the likes of the Human League, The B52's and some of the ZE records catalogue back in the day. While I really enjoyed much of what was classed as Electroclash a few years back. NYPC often get bracketed with the Klaxons, but this is far better record than the 2007 Mercury Music Prize winner, which I thought was a pretty average record considering all the hype. You may have already heard the single Ice Cream (it was used in a recent Intel advert), but the rest of the album is almost as good. Their music certainly fits well with the Italo-disco scene, which was no-doubt one of this year's big things… (more…)