Chi can now move his leg when instructed and vocalize through basic sounds, as well as responding to basic commands.

The 60mph crash which Cheng was involved in left him battered and in critical condition, requiring intensive, life-threatening surgery. His family’s insurance company cut off coverage early in treatment, leaving them with little recourse to cover mounting medical costs. In addition to various benefit shows and massive showings of support from friends and fans around the world, a website has been setup – OneLoveForChi – so well-wishers can check on his progress and donate to his recovery.

We’ll keep you posted as more news on Chi develops. Needless to say, we’re on pins and needles with excitement.

You can watch a video of Cheng’s progress in hospital below:

Special thanks to Jonah Matranga for the heads up.

Firstly, Deftones seem to be well into the recording of the follow-up to 2010’s Diamond Eyes. The band recently posted three pictures from the studio, with one appropriately titled “Back at the office.” If recording for their seventh album is already underway, it would be reasonable to expect it in 2012.

Meanwhile, Crosses are teasing the release of their second EP, appropriately called EP ††. The following teaser trailer was recently posted to YouTube:

We certainly look forward to hearing any new music that comes from both Deftones and Crosses. While the former has no tour dates scheduled at the moment, the latter will make a live debut at the Glass House in Pomona, CA, on January 31st, followed by three more CA dates.

With only 1,000 copies available worldwide The Vinyl Collection will feature all six full length albums released by the group over the past 15 years. Also included in the set will be Covers, the limited edition Record Store Day 2011 release featuring covers of classic tracks by Duran Duran, Jawbox and many more. The albums have been re-cut from the original master recordings and pressed on 180-gram European virgin vinyl.

Each hand-numbered box set is set to include a unique lithograph. While there is no mention of how much this set will cost at this time, it will be available on Tuesday October 25^th, 2011 via Deftones’ official site and Because Sound Matters. There is no doubt this limited edition set will sell out quickly so make sure you grab one from the band so you don’t find yourself paying five times as much via Ebay.

The video, directed by 13thWitness, features a tasteful example of the often-used live footage compilation technique, in a tour diary of sorts. If anything, it’s a great excuse to revisit a great song.

The band is currently on tour through Europe. However, in recent interviews, they’ve hinted at the possibility of recording a new album later this year. Meanwhile, check out lead singer Chino Moreno’s side-project with Far guitarist Shaun Lopez, entitled Crosses.

Originally started in 2007 as a celebration of over 700 independently owned record stores across America, Record Store Day has spun out of control and transformed into a stressful (yet still enjoyable) world-wide event for the most hardcore of music addicts. With it being next to impossible to get your hands on every tasty morsel your soul desires, we here at Antiquiet have compiled some of the finer moments of Record Store Day 2011 for you to sink your teeth into.

Originators of Hardcore Punk Bad Brains re-released their first single, Pay To Cum, on 7″. The Jimmy Quidd produced track features original artwork and lyric insert. For the most hardcore of Bad Brains fans, there was a very limited run of 250 red and 250 green copies.

Bad Brains: Pay To Cum

With Hot Sauce Committee Part Two set to hit shelves May 3rd, the Beastie Boys have put out a limited edition 7″ of the records first single Make Some Noise. While the 7″ (which features the album version on side A and a Passion Pit remix on side B) didn’t make it onto store shelves in time, it was sold via the official Record Store Day website on Record Store Day starting at 3 AM PST. Now sold out, all proceeds from Make Some Noise will be donated to the Red Cross for victims of the devastating Earthquake and Tsunami that struck Japan last month.

Beastie Boys: Make Some Noise (Passion Pit Remix)

The sixth full length effort from Portland Oregon based experimental folk rockers Blitzen Trapper is not due until the fall, but fans of the Eric Earley led outfit can rejoice as the group put out a two song 7″ exclusive for Record Store Day 2011. The A side features the song Maybe Baby while the B side features Soul Singer.

Blitzen Trapper: Maybe Baby

Fresh off of the success of the soundtrack for the Walt Disney Pictures feature Tron Legacy, French electro-darlings Daft Punk have released a 10″ in honor of Record Store Day. The picture disc is available in multiple colors, and features three songs from the soundtrack as well as the Record Store Day exclusive Castor.

Daft Punk: Castor

As previously reported, Deftones have found themselves in the holiday $pirit with Covers. For the first time on vinyl, the collection features eleven previously released cover songs by the Sacramento California five piece. While most tracks were found on 2005’s CD/DVD B-Sides & Rarities, fans can finally get their hands on a physical copy of the three bonus tracks that came with the iTunes release of Diamond Eyes. At a suggested retail price of $25, this collection is only for the most intense of Deftones fans.

Deftones: Savory (Jawbox Cover)

Foo Fighters returned earlier this week with the well-received Wasting Light. For those looking for just a lil’ more Foo, the band has put out Medium Rare. This 120 gram 12″ covers record features the band’s successful take on the Prince classic Darling Nikki, as well as quality cuts from the likes of Wings, Angry Samoans and Pink Floyd. The band celebrated Record Store Day 2011 with a sold-out, in-store performance at Fingerprints in Long Beach, CA. In the event that all that is still not enough Dave Grohl for you, Nirvana has re-released the Hormoaning EP. Originally pressed for Australia only, the collection is available in the US for the first time.

Foo Fighters: Band On The Run (Wings Cover)

Fear not Metalheads, Record Store Day has you taken care of, too. Long standing Los Angeles based Metal Blade Records has pressed vinyl for some of their up and coming acts including Job For A Cowboy, Whitechapel and Between The Buried And Me. Doom metal legends Neurosis have pressed 600 copies of their 2001 EP Sovereign. Produced by Steve Albini, Sovereign has been out of print for years.

Fans of Black Sabbath can check out solo releases from the late Ronnie James Dio and the 2011 Record Store Day Ambassador himself, Ozzy Osbourne. If that’s not enough metal, Mastodon have put out a limited edition 180 gram vinyl version of their first live album Live At The Aragon. Limited to Record Store Day 2011, the Live At The Aragon vinyl also includes a copy of the live DVD.

Mastodon: Oblivion (Live At The Aragon)

Featuring members of Circle Jerks, Burning Brides and Redd Kross, OFF! Is releasing a 7″ recorded live in a record store. Live At Generation Records features four songs recorded in New York City on October 22nd, 2010. Some of the songs included on this Record Store Day exclusive pressing include Poison City and Rat Trap.

OFF!: Live At Generation Records

Vermont Jam kings Phish have issued their first Record Store Day release. Limited to 2000 copies, Two Soundchecks no doubt lives up to its title. Side A features an ambient instrumental jam from the bands August 7th, 2010 show at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA. Side B is a random moment shared between drummer Jon Fishman and Guitarist/vocalist Trey Anastasio in Hartford, CT on August 14th, 2009. Replacing his signature Languedoc guitar for a Bass, Anastasio and Fishman create a solid grove over nonsensical lyrics about Couscous and Coconut Juice. Listen to both here.

If the twelve full-length albums released by Ryan Adams since 2000 is not enough to keep you satisfied, he has joined his long time band The Cardinals to bring you the Class Mythology EP. Released as a limited-edition gatefold double 7″, the EP features four previously unreleased songs from the Cardinology era. The package includes never before seen photos, artwork created by Ryan Adams and a sticker.

Also, don’t miss this new Brother Ali track from the Rhymesayers crew’s RSD release.

Here’s the tracklisting for Covers, which will be released on April 16:

Side A:

Drive (The Cars)

Caress (Drive Like Jehu)

Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (The Smiths)

No Ordinary Love (Sade)

Savory (Jawbox)

Do You Believe (The Cardigans)

Side B:

Simple Man (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

Ghosts (Japan)

The Chauffeur (Duran Duran)

If Only Tonight We Could Sleep (The Cure)

Sleep Walk (Santo & Johnny)

Record Store Day may be just a cesspool of bad attitudes, bad selections and records you can get for cheaper on eBay, but occasionally, it’s rare gems like this one that make it worth checking out.

This year’s Record Store Day will also see the release of several unique offerings, including (but certainly not limited to) a vinyl re-issue of Glassjaw’s Worship And Tribute and a Rekords Rekords sampler featuring tracks from Queens Of The Stone Age, Alain Johannes, Mini Mansions and Desert Sessions. Mastodon’s Live At The Aragon will also be issued on vinyl.

To find out which one of your local over-priced record stores will be participating in Record Store Day, you can head over to the event’s official website.

We’ll undoubtedly catch fire for our number one selection, and truth be told it’s a bit of a surprise even to us. But the goods speak louder than hype, and that’s what matters long after the trolls have gone to sleep. So as long as the Gorillaz don’t blow everyone’s minds with a free album on Christmas morning that shakes up the list, we’re good to go.

If you don’t know a name on this list it’s time to start digging (the links provided with each selection will help), because there’s not an album on here that hasn’t earned its share of repeated full-volume listens at dangerously high speeds through some mountain range or seaside cliffs over the past year, with yours truly wide-eyed and white-knuckled behind the wheel. 2010’s been one hell of a great musical ride – here’s 20 reasons why.

1. Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye West returns to the full-length two years after the release of the cold-beat pity party 808s & Heartbreak, and there’s a maniacally inspired ambition to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (formerly Good Ass Job) that immediately sets it apart from not only the entirety of his previous catalogue but the current climate of Hip-Hop as a whole. Every boast we’ve heard, every ridiculous claim we’ve seen is rendered somehow, some way, justified, if only for the duration of the album’s 68 minutes.

A rampantly evolving talent, ambitious orchestral production, unabashed grandiosity and full-throttle confidence has just upstaged & ante-upped the entire rap scene in one fell swoop. Check mate.

No album better captures the Zeitgeist of 2010. That makes it bigger even than Kanye West thinks he is. Ultimately, he’s served the highest purpose of an artist, and that is to be a conduit for all of which a society is unable to, or unwilling to articulate. MBDTF will forever be a time machine back to 2010, the year of the douchebag.

Kanye’s Good Ass Job

2. Black Keys
Brothers

Recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, Brothers is a riff-roaring cumulation of the Keys’ strongest blues grit, with a return to the production gloss they warmed to for 2008’s Attack & Release. A linear path of development and exploration is evident in even the most casual stroll through the band’s catalog, but never has the Akron blues duo pooled their stylistic strengths and transcended their own standard more than on this latest release.

There’s a reason Brothers sounds like a hard-fought leap of progress for the pair, who each explored solo albums between releases; Carney said as much in a recent interview with Billboard: “Dan and I grew up a lot as individuals and musicians prior to making this album. Our relationship was tested in many ways but at the end of the day, we’re brothers; I think these songs reflect that.”

Despite running fifteen tracks, Brothers never suffers a lull, and the castaways are minimal on an album that explores many different threads in the blues tapestry. The open spaces are vital, as overbuilding any of the songs would amount to covering their core, simple beauty. In more than one way, this is the Black Keys’ Goldilocks album, where all the variables seem to have come together just right, no element is too high or low in the mix. The result is a glowing success.

The Black Keys In Top Form On Brothers

3. Eminem
Recovery

Recovery is without question the strongest, most potent & versatile offering Eminem has delivered yet, possessing the most devastating and detailed lyrical narratives this side of Fear Of A Black Planet. It certainly doesn’t have Planet’s revolutionary soul, but what it lacks in a greater movement it compensates for in the most clever, obliterating character annihilations and hilarious, rewind-demanding multilayered entendres the game’s ever seen.

From the perspective of a 24-hour music junkie, a fanatic for evolution of form and transcendental devotion to the craft, this album reaches new heights of lyrical prowess and delivery. Marshall Mathers has a new lease on the mad scientist lyrical-savant funhouse he calls a life, and he’s earned every bit of praise he’s bound to receive for this one.

Eminem’s Undeniable Recovery

4. Gorillaz
Plastic Beach

Ambitious, avant-garde and about as complex in flavor as a mouthful of Jelly Bellys, the album isn’t nearly as pop friendly as the first two Gorillaz releases; there’s little to no sign of the 19-2000s or Feel Good, Incs of yesteryear. There are strange new peaks, however, that simply dismiss outright commercial appeal ambition

Addictive beats, otherworldly effects and the occasional super-gravitational black hole of a hook ensure that Plastic Beach will be held in high regard. The 80s love-pop throwback instrumentation of On Melancholy Hill is heart-brimmingly adorable and as catchy as any ditty Air’s come up with, as Albarn’s Vicodin tenor softly washes through in passive fashion.

There’s kneejerk fault to be found in the missed opportunity for a smash hit, but ultimately it’s missing the point entirely. Plastic Beach is a snapshot of a wildly colorful jungle of influence & inspiration, a futuristic clusterfuck that takes repeated listens to settle in – but once the clouds of alien adaptation break, a strange new sun shines through, and the Gorillaz soar to entirely new heights.

Strange Waves On Plastic Beach

5. Deftones
Diamond Eyes

Diamond Eyes is a brilliant and fiercely colorful collection of tracks that finds the Deftones reaching a new stage of evolution, delivering the most progressive, dynamic work of their careers.

Refusing to hide behind the touchstone familiarity of their previous albums, these Sacramento rockers have obliterated any notion that they’ve been irreparably weakened by bassist Chi Cheng’s departure. He’s undoubtedly strong in their hearts and thoughts, but rather than dwell on the pain the band has risen to remarkable new heights with an album that surges into the light and establishes promising new horizons.

Diamond Eyes Is Everything We Didn’t Dare Hope It Would Be

6. Alain Johannes
Spark

Spark explores an even-heeled balance between tribute, mourning and send-off romanticism that speaks volumes of not only Alain’s songwriting and performance abilities, but as a testament to his production prowess. It’s a purely-driven full-circle experience in ways that only one in his shoes can truly understand. “I actually finished the album 25 years to the day that Natasha and I met, November 29, 2009,” he explains. “That was our anniversary. In many ways, I was really just trying to make a record that she would be proud of.”

After one, two, fifteen listens and more, we’ve not a shred of doubt that she would be. This album is for guitar aficionados, for lovers of naked, powerfully honest music, for the eternally insatiable message board minions who scour the cyberscape for all things related to the world of Homme for another dose of Rock excellence, whether desert-infused or otherwise. They can rest comfortably, knowing there’s a new and very special gem in the family crown.

Alain Johannes Keeps The Fire Alive With Spark

7. Fitz & The Tantrums
Picking Up The Pieces

At the beginning of the Summer, Fitz & The Tantrums were an LA band, in a sea of LA bands, that we weren’t going out of our way to discover. Then our readers started recommending them, and that’s when we knew they deserved a chance.

To answer the question inherently presented by anything retro, this band’s debut represents a true revival, rather than an exhumation; Without heart, you’re just a zombie, and Fitz & The Tantrums are not lacking anything in that category. In fact, many of the compositions on Pickin’ Up The Pieces are so perfect and full of conviction that it’s hard not to call them classics without exaggeration. To say that the swaggering, funky street corner sermon Rich Girls one-ups the likes of Mark Ronson and Wino and Duffy is not saying enough, and to say that the flawless, heartstring-plucking album-closer Tighter gives Elton John a run for his money might not even be saying too much.

Through the past few months since its release our acquisition, Picking Up The Pieces has achieved the last thing we expected of it: It only gets better and better. Over just a short period time, it’s already matured beyond any suspicions of gimmickry, and it continues to expertly pluck our heartstrings.

Fitz & Company Raises A Ruckus

8. Arcade Fire
The Suburbs

The Suburbs digs through the dregs of lost identity and heartache, staring mortality in the face while casting a musical Molotov cocktail into the scene that both birthed and anchored Arcade Fire.

A brief, palette-cleansing reprise of this album’s title track bookends a 16-song, richly spellbinding journey that eclipses 2004’s Funeral and its 2007 sequel Neon Bible. There’s a clarity and currency of heart at play within these songs, a finely-tuned meeting of inspiration, vision and ability that will serve as a milestone in what’s sure to be a lengthy, illustrious career for Arcade Fire.

Arcade Fire Incinerate The Suburbs

9. Janelle Monae
The Archandroid

Janelle Monáe’s ArchAndroid is one of the most interesting pop albums to come along in a very long time, if its Gaga-trouncing boundary busting don’t disqualify it from the typically formulaic genre entirely.

Like esteemed new-school funk-mongering crossover pioneers such as Outkast, Gnarls Barkely, and Saul Williams, Janelle Monáe brings a lot more to the table than Gaga’s theatrics and costume, even more than Winehouse’s comparatively straightforward soul revival, and to our delight, advances the entire institution of pop music a step further into exciting new territory.

Anima Ex Machina

10. Sleepy Sun
Fever

If you listened to any of the albums on this list and didn’t like them, that’s okay. But promise us this: If you haven’t listened to Sleepy Sun’s Fever, do so right now. Give it a chance. We’ll wait.

Approach this album as cynically as you wish; as cynically as I did if you’d like. It will surprise you. Sleepy Sun gets absolutely right what too many bands in their genre get wrong: Heterogeneity. These musicians communicate, but it’s always a new angle to the conversation, and there’s always a point. They go down into the rabbit holes, but there’s always someone holding a string leading back out. It’s the opposite of the tiresome excessive hedonism so common among the rest of the atmospheric hippie jam-happy noisemakers.

Sleepy Sun Raises Desert Gods

You’ve Seen The Butcher, another standout track from the album, gets a video that’s (mostly) business as usual. The band plays amongst a bunch of hot College grads (and we doubt any of those ladies went to actual College), until a certain twist happens towards the end. It’s not quite as gorgeous as the Sextape video, but it’s visually appealing nonetheless.

This seems to be final video to spur from Diamond Eyes, and we applaud the band for all the eye candy it brought to the airwaves. You can read our enthusiastically in-depth review of the album here.

In case you missed it, here’s our in-depth review of the 5-star album.

The BlackDiamondSkye Tour has been announced as well, featuring Mastodon, Alice In Chains and Deftones. Hit up the site for dates & deets.