This weekend I asked folks around the office to share what they’re listening to these days — whether that be music, podcasts, or cries for new games from their children (see Emil’s response). Per usual, I’m seeing pretty diverse musical tastes within the office, though for once I noticed that someone (Steve Perkins) is listening to almost the same stuff as me.  I guess it’s time to raid his CD collection.

You’ll also notice that several folks (myself included) can’t even escape the world of gaming (via podcasts or official soundtracks) when they put their headphones on. As I’m writing this, I’m listening to last week’s Giant Bombcast.

Let us know what you’re listening to these days, and we promise to return to something game-related next time around.

Steve Perkins: The National, Titus Andronicus, Black Keys, Sleigh Bells, The Blackwater Fever, Broken Bells, Local Natives, Mumford & Sons, The Heavy, and The Soft Pack.

Laffy Taylor: Atlanta Theater Company’s live performance podcast of “The Call of Cthulhu.”

Shannon Bailey, Programmer: The list of what I typically listen to would fill a page, but Bellflur, Exit Clov, Typefighter, Twins of a Gazelle, Bluebrain, and The Junior League Band are some recent local discoveries people should check out.

Sam Bernstein: Bishop Allen, Bon Iver, Explosions in the Sky, Frightened Rabbit, and Ratatat. Oh, and practically anything from the Bootie Mashup Blog.

Jon DeVriendt: Catamenia, Crematory, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Behemoth, Septic Flesh… pretty much anything that is brutal and/or melodic. On the podcast side; Giant Bombcast, Rebel FM, The Geekbox, The Gamespy Debriefings, and the State of the Game SC2 Beta podcast.

Emil Pagliarulo: I’ll be listening to my sons begging me to buy the Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence Pack.

Ken Barner: Mark Lanegan, The Young Sinclairs, The Villagers, Louis Jordan, Jonathan Coulton, The Mountain Goats, Slayer’s “Bitter Peace”, Kotchy’s remix of “We are the People”, and various bands I have on commute mix CDs I don’t remember the names of.

Jeff Gardiner: Melvins, Bloodhorse, and Torche.

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As Nick already mentioned, this past weekend we had colleagues in from around the world for our annual holiday party. As a result, this week you’ll see some new names from other departments and offices. And in the coming weeks and months, we’ll continue to extend the invite to folks in the UK, id, Zenimax Online Studios, etc. — so they can share the games, music, movies, soap operas, and books they’re keeping up with.

So this week we’re looking at our favorite albums of the year, and as I expected, the results are quite diverse (Mastodon’s Crack The Skye was one of the few albums I saw mentioned multiple times).

Here’s the full rundown. We’ll be back later this week with more of our 2009 favorites.

Brian Bloomfield: Behemoth – Evangelion, Nile – Those Whom The Gods Detest, and Between the Buried and Me – The Great Misdirect.

Rob Bartholomew: Florence and the Machine – Lungs.

Deven Winters: Rise Against – Appeal to Reason, Stone Sour (self titled), and Smile Empty Soul – Vultures.

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