Top Tracks 2015 Part X 10–01
10. Alessandro Cortini – La Guardia (Risveglio)
La Guardia is mind-set music for intellectual work as well as getting ready for a fistfight. There is creativity in the way Cortini utilizes the Roland MC 202 and TB-303 synthesizers. With this minimalistic setup he creates dense patterns, with a good amount of noise and grime but still able to appear clearly constructed and satisfyingly predictable. While I myself evoke images and Risveglio could easily be the soundtrack to a documentary of any sort or a new film by Nicolas Winding Refn, the purity of these tracks should not be overfilled with representations. Mind-set is the term, and you can feel how Cortini is transferring his onto the switchboards and showing us how mastering technology is close to overriding mind and matter.
09. Empress Of – Standard (Me)
Empress Of delivered the best electro-pop album of this year. Not only because of her superb and varied set of instrumentals, but for her songwriting. Not often do the lyrics of this genre play as much a role in my appreciation as with Standard. There is ambivalence, but read as a commentary on consumerism and so-called “first-world problems”, Standard has Lorely taking the perspective of someone poor looking at the more fortunate, and more than seeing the material difference, seeing a difference in attitude and drive. As the whole of Me is a kind of inner monologue divided and executed through the eyes of other people, Standard is the reminder of being willing and able to create.
08. Roy Wood$ – Go Go Go / Unleashed (Exis)
Read my full review of Exis here. Every year, there is one project I return to almost everyday for months on end. I still listen to Exis almost every day since it broke. Not only because of the short length, but because these songs have such power and intent in them, that I find myself humming them and retracing the lyrics when I´m not listening to them. Go Go Go and Unleashed are the standouts of the standout. Go Go Go with it´s melancholic lovelorn vibe and Unleashed as a pure flame, Wood$ taking his anger and frustration of his life and forming such a remarkable, howling delivering, the sharp intonations will stick with you, long after the drawn out moan has left.
07. Deafheaven – Brought To The Water / Gifts To The Earth (New Bermuda)
While Brought To The Water remains the perfect introduction to Deafheavens new chapter and the whole of New Bermuda, it is the closer Gifts From The Earth that has me returning and acknowledging the progression of this band. The mid-tempo, tortured ballad closes the existentialist journey of New Bermuda with Clark contemplating death in the form of a feminine figure submerging him in water. There is the reference to ritual, water and the ambivalence of birth and death through transubstantiation into the earth. At their most downbeat and depressing, the song redeems itself with what the band calls a nod to Oasis; some tambourine and a simple uplifting piano line reemerging the listener and manifesting one of the best musical journeys of this year.
06. Viet Cong – Death (Viet Cong)
First off, fuck all these moralistic assholes for giving Viet Cong shit for their name and hassling them into changing it. Sure, why keep a name when there is no connection or political statement to be made, but why pester a band for not even wanting to make a political statement or connection. Words are powerful, I know, but crossing them out doesn´t help in any way. By the way: Don´t say Satan three time, he´ll come and rip you apart. Sticking to evokative power of words: Death is the crushing post-punk epic of frustrating, angry and destructive guitar sounds. The almost uplifting, stadium-rock sounding intro, grows numb and unforgiving as the first words of Matt Flegel, "anker to the bottom" hit and evolve into a circular, dead-beat song. As the shouts follow, the weight on your chest grows, the atmosphere only growing tighter and tighter as the band goes full aggro, churning out a noisy instrumental mid-section, that shows itself out with loud drum crashes only to warp into a re-energized closing, swaying from dancy rock track to a full on temper tantrum.
05. Sumac – Thorn In The Lion´s Paw (The Deal)
Read my full review on The Deal here. Think about Thorn In The Lion´s Paw like this: As Adele swayed everyone with her whiny first single, Sumac found of very doom laden way of saying:
"Hello It's me,
I've thought about us for a long, long time
Maybe I think too much but some thing's wrong
There's something here that doesn't last too long
Maybe I shouldn't think of you as mine..."
04. Jonny Greenwood, Shye Ben Tzur & The Rajasthan Express – Allah Elohim (Junun)
The whole Junun project is worth checking out. Not only does this huge collective centering around composer Jonny Greenwood and singer Shye Ben Tzur, bend all styles of music into one even-flowing piece of art, Hindi, Urdu and Hebrew lyrics are knitted together, transgressing each other and giving a great look into various musical traditions playing together to form one whole body of work. Allah Elohim is the most sorrow inducing cut of the album. Not knowing any other words than Allah and Elohim, the tracks feels like hardship, a downcast appraisal of pain and humanity´s desire to thrive. Greenwood´s ripping synth beat in the back and his ghostly pitch, the melancholic guitar backed by percussions and swift bursts of the brass section and a single trumpet – every sound conjures a deep humanistic sadness that is only furthered by the female and male singers adding their beautiful voices.
03. Abul Mogard – Starring At The Sweeps Of The Desert (The Sky Had Vanished)
Abul Mogard came through with two of his best sets, Circular Forms and The Sky Had Vanished this year. Starring At The Sweeps Of The Desert is the pulsing opening of The Sky Had Vanished and evokes contemplation like nothing else this year. The change of urgency and what I would call the facile is what makes this wobbering long piece so intriguing. Something for nights, something for travel, somethings you´ll never grasp are the most defining.
02. Julien Baker – Rejoice (Sprained Ankle)
I´ve had the sensation of immediately falling for a voice two times in my life now: Once, Matthew Bellamy from Muse and this year upon hearing the lead single "Sprained Ankle" of Julien Baker´s debut record of the same name. When the whole thing dropped in October, Rejoice caught me at first listen. As Sprained Ankle as a whole is a very stirring and prevalently sad record, showing Baker as an old soul, living and reliving crucial moments of her inner and outer self, Rejoice had the first burst of light, which was always perceivable in Baker´s voice and her sparse guitar. As Baker breaks out "rejoicing", there is no catharsis, no letting go or being done with the hurt, but the knowing of being heard. In an interview on Nylon Mag, being asked about one trait of her personality that is integral to her personality, Baker replied by stating the importance of faith and spirituality in her life. Even when the whole religious thing might elude you, don´t shy away, because even when "rejoice" as a term is tinted in Christian practice, the feel of the song, Baker´s expressions, while being inspired by religion, exceed such categories and go to represent the bigger, more elusive and undefined spiritual aspects of music, of having faith and believing.
01. Prurient – Myth Of Building Bridges / Christ Among The Broken Glass (Frozen Niagara Falls)
I regret not writing a full review on this release. For all the German readers, you can check out an article I wrote for the art mag Sonnendeck here (page 7). What I write there, can only be repeated here: These two songs, the whole of Frozen Niagara Falls, was the ultimate listening experience of 2015. I instantly knew it when the chirping noises and loud crashes of Myth Of Building Bridges hit me on my first listen; what Prurient has crafted goes further than comprehension in reason and language. These sounds, completely set apart from the audaible and inaudiable spoken word are deeply human. Prurient set out to create a record utilizing only acoustic, i.e. non-electronic sounds. An idea which he abandoned quite quick, but whose vestiges can still be heard on Christ Among. But the intrinsic and organic somehow lingers throughout the whole album. These songs, opening and closing Frozen Niagara Falls, while being somewhat diametrically opposed in sound, resonate with you as a listener and both push you to the edge of being a perceiving subject. The clustered noise of Myth isn´t piercing or shrieking, not a industrial mindfuck, trying to break you, but is trying to evoke a settlement between you and the seemingly external sound, as a kind of silent-noise. Christ Among the Broken Glass does the opposite while working with the organic sound of a clear, nylon-stringed guitar. Your being drawn to the sound is reverted into becoming external and secluded again, the drones and the whispered tale of cold winter, homelessness and addiction creating a rift, conveying a sense of self. The whole experience was revealing to me and set in motion a urge to truly understand sound and being affected by it just as much as it drove me to address failings that were haunting me.
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