Dusted Magazine has been one of the web’s best sources for music reviews for years now, and their end-of-year lists are always one of the highlights of my holiday season. With two new lists (one from each of the site’s reviewers) published every day, the cumulative effect of sifting through each individual’s favorite albums allows the reader to catch many of the releases that might have otherwise slipped through the cracks over the course of the last year.

I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve skipped over reviews of or articles about Shabazz Palaces in the last few months, and I actually caught some of their set at the Treasure Island music festival recently, but it wasn’t until I saw them included in nearly every Dusted reviewers’ best-of-2011 list that I finally decided to give their album a chance (not surprisingly, said album is quite good).

There’s also something satisfying about getting a glimpse of each reviewer’s personal tastes, and realizing which artists are universally-loved on your own, rather than simply being presented with a definitive list of the ‘Top 50 Albums of 2011′ compiled via some arcane voting process.