Top Tracks 2015 Part IX 20–11
20. World´s End Girlfriend – Whims of A Spring Day「春日狂想」feat. BOOL (Voices Of Days Past)
Poemcore is the name of the genre BOOL is trying to establish. I can´t say for sure what it is that distinguishes Poemcore for other spoken word enterprises, but if I had to pick, I´d say it must be the deep weaving of sound to create a texture beyond the words. On the tracks Whims of A Spring Day the words and sounds are heartbreakingly beautiful. World´s End Girlfriend contributes a quite conservative instrumental, keeping the electronic glitches on a low and letting the piano and strings take the lead. BOOL`s poem touches on keeping on living after a loved one has died. First, stating that there is no other way than killing oneself, he transgresses into the notion of having the urge to serve after this tragedy has befallen you. Feeling the springday, its little details and having a chance encounter with a random aquataince, BOOL resorts into telling that the way to go on must lie in "the right tempo", the tempo of shaking hands or walking at the right pace. The visuals evoke a rainy spring day, and this is transported by the words and music as well. Be sure to check the video with the English subs!
19. port-royal – Death Of A Manifesto (Where Are You Now)
Six years after their last real full-length release, port-royal returned with Where Are You Now. The album is one of the clear highlights of electronic music this year. While often dabbling in vocal performances, on Death Of A Manifesto, the vocals are brought to the front completely. The song almost play´s as a high-minded take on euro-pop and house music, all at once while remaining a sense of ethereal beauty through the glittering mid-sections, the clear guitar sounds and the keys keeping the song from falling flat or repetitive. And that´s what port-royal have mastered over each and every release: bringing tension, total energy and then pulling the plug in the most beautiful way, opening a dense dance music track up for somber mood and pretty glimmers.
18. Waxahatchee – La Loose (Ivy Tripp)
If Katie Crutchfield was writing today´s pop music meant for radio play, pop music would boost it´s honesty and realism, to being too realistic and honest – she could break the system. La Loose is the perfect example of her incredible skill of taking feelings and situations around human relationships, more or less everything about romance, and expressing them in a way, rappers describe their surrounding and the only thing left to say is "word"! This tracks revolves around the undefinable, being with a person and willing to be with him/her while not getting the gift and/or curse of definition. With honeyed, somewhat old school pop sounding "uh´s" and and funny twangy bassline, Crutchfield delivers this sentiment just as being in love would sound and feel like: air-headed, a little anxious and still with a damn good feeling about it.
17. Aïsha Devi – Mazdâ (Of Matter and Spirit)
Mazdâ is one the oddest and scariest tracks I´ve heard in a while. If Aisha Devi wanted to recall something like prayers in Of Matter and Spirit, she has succeed throughout the whole body of work. The high-pitched vocals, that might recall Grimes meeting Oneohtrix Point Never and Fatima Al-Qadiri in a fucked up nightmare, seems to be invocating something transcendental, while the hollow synth beat bears recognition to percussions of Buddhist ceremonies. The overall feel of Mazda is a mixture of prayer circle and cleansing ritual, all wrapped tightly in an EDM package, that might as well have people praising their existence through the out of body experience of dance.
16. Oneohtrix Point Never – Lift (Garden Of Delete)
If Garden Of Delete is Daniel Lopatin´s take on grudge music, I sure as hell want to know what one of the most awe-inspiring musicians of our time would do, if he was to put his mind to classical music – it might be the most beautiful thing on earth. Taking the idea of grunge from Lopatin´s own description, Lift might be his "The Day I Tried To Live", as I feel, this track is the haunt of R Plus Seven mingled with his recent concept. The elements of his music can be pinned down by now and reoccur even on the most distant iteration from his previous work, but the shattered digital voices, the short glimpse of a guitar solo, everything points to the identity crisis Lopatin describes in theme with being a teen. The day he tried to live, he went and made a electronic grunge record; just another liar.
Can´t find Lift, check out the superb video for "Sticky Drama" instead:
15. Ash Koosha – I Feel That (GUUD)
I must say that any tracks from Ash Koosha´s Guud could have taken this spot. The whole thing doesn´t really work with the traditional boarded thinking of separate tracks; and doesn´t fit the notion of one long concept album either. Koosha creates tracks akin to fleshed out sketches, minutely crafted pieces of modulations and feelings. If you want to make the difference of painting and sketches in visual arts, Koosha takes fleshing out aural sketches to an artform in itself – “micromanaging” included. I Feel That opens GUUD and introduces the eerie warped sounds, blips and vocal implications that enfold throughout the album. In a way this is the elevator to GUUD; before the whole thing starts you´ll get every facet, heard from a very cohesive sounding distance, maximized when you arrive wherever you thought you were going.
14. Chelsea Wolfe – Grey Days (Abyss)
If Jesu ever got into explicitly using strings in his downtrodden moments, he would arrive at something akin to Grey Days. With her gripping voice Wolfe seemingly sings about loss of memory, loss of time and drug abuse, tying this together with the color grey. If there is any synaesthetic reaction to this song, this should evoke the blackest grey there is. The drums roar, Wolfe whines and the circular cello line comes close to the endlessness of feeling forlorn; be it in depression, drug abuse or the seasonal anti-bliss of winter.
13. Puscifer – Simultaneous (Money Shot)
Read the lyrics and listen to this song, compare it to K. Lamars "How Much A Dollar Cost" and ask yourself, if it´s the same topic that is being discussed. This year Maynard James Keenan once again reminded me, why I love not only the music, but the lyrical world of TOOL and A Perfect Circle. The conclusion of this song, world peace only being achievable if three people can look each other in the eyes "simultaneously", seems like Maynard alluding to opening the third eye, as it is a recurring theme in many Tool songs. But his twist, the enlightening being not a thing that is meant to be a personal, but a interpersonal, a related experience, breaks the esoteric touch of the idea and grounds the whole problem of misunderstanding and conflict in the fake relation of self and other being binary categories; either the one or the other. With three people looking each other in the eye, the experience of self and other opens up, going from empathy to knowledge of an third entity, or world. It´s the strange beauty of Keenan that this great idea is hidden in plain sight of his third Puscifer album, the true Money Shot.
12. Low – The Innocents (Ones And Sixes)
Don´t think about the context, the lyrics and the reference they might have at first. Listen to the warm guitars, the muffled drums and the angelic vocals by this incredible duo. Everything just flows together, bundles into light and takes you away. I don´t want to evoke dreaming and floating away, but reassurance in yourself being footed where you are.
11. Liturgy – Vitriol (The Ark Work)
Liturgy, maybe accidentally, or in following through with the whole transcendental black metal concept, delivered the best trap beat of this year. No rapper on earth could have flowed over this thing as Hunter Hunt-Hendrix did backed by the moans of his choir. Vitriol is the collapsing of boarders, a kind of end-of-the-world scenario played at an highly futuristic and spiritually closed off. Yin and Yang will collapse, ADHD kids will be quiet at last and all struggles will be recreational. With this banging beat Liturgy show us what will happen with metal: it will be bumping out of Beats by Dre (who will be a feminist advocate by then).
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