Top Albums 2016 Part I 50 – 41

50. Mothers – When You Walk A Long Distance You Get Tired // Graveyard Lovers – Past The Forest Of The Fruitless Thoughts

For the first spot, I couldn´t help myself and decided to let two records take the merit. There isn´t that much similarity between Mothers debut album and Graveyard Lovers sophomore release, musically. Mothers take a route of silent disruption and diminutive vulnerability, while GL change between subversive sucker punches against the system and introspective anecdotes and encounters of personal growth. Yet, they both share the spirit of thought-provoking rock / folk music, neither of them play music solely for entertainment purposes or to create music that just sounds good. The instrumental choices of both bands are reflected in their musical messages. In When You Walk, you´ll get the forlorn opener “Too Small For Eyes”, sounding almost like sung in solitude, more for Leschper herself, then for a crowd or microphone for that matter. But Mothers will step up the pace for tracks like “It Hurts Until It Doesn’t” and their overall volume for something like “Lockjaw”, all the while retaining their heavily introspective layers, leaving singer Leschper´s voice enough space to travel and self-containment of her performance. Lyrically, Mothers content is akin to listening to a form of a diary entry. Highly vulnerable and in a way saddening to see Leschper grapple with her demons and insecurities and painfully state something like “I cut out my tongue, seeing you speak for the both of us”, setting off one’s own experience of failing communication and passive aggressive self-loathing. The best moment of this songwriting and even some instrumental sparkle with that, we´ll find in “Hold You Own Hand”, with the singer burning her own songs, feeding them to her dog and neglecting the literal hands reaching out to her – a step into clarity, sounding equally bitter (or realistic), refusing the other, who might be the cause of pain and learning to stand on your own; even if only in a weakened state. Graveyard Lovers tell the story of a misfit in society, fighting against unification and the overall sentiment of coping with differences between inner beliefs and outer realities. The great thing about their approach is the grounded nature of their content. There is no idealism, the keen knowledge, that you cannot escape the grinding forces of society, but you´ll have to find another way of coping with these inconsistencies. Tracks like “Gabe” or “Partner” give perspective above, “everything is fucked” and provide a strength that is reflected in the straightforward rock of the trio. Musically they have evolved to include more acoustic and open moments, still retaining thunderous tracks like “Funmachine” and “Told A Lie”, but spiking the experience with slow-burning outro “Indian Summer”. This track lets the first spot of the best albums of 2016 come full circle and connects Mothers and Graveyard Lovers over folky tunes of reflection and personal growth through pain. 

49. Electric Rescue – Parallel Behaviors 

I´m always intrigued by the far-reaching capacity of electronic sounds, their materiality when played in the setting of dancefloors or large spaces and their atmospheric force to shift visual experience in directions the images could never contain by themselves. In Parallel Behaviors by French producers Electric Rescue, I sense the same fascination and the utilization of these elements. Their album works as one long dancefloor exercise, taking you through the motions, while still urging you to move with the sounds, and yet pointing towards the moment of dissipating your proprioception and self-control for ecstasies; closing your eyes and being carried to a different plain altogether. I wouldn´t want to diminish their musicianship and suggest that the album is soundtrack music per se or could function well to scenes on a screen. Electric Rescue´s sounds carry bombastic tension and relieve, something one has to experience by himself and not just perceive others acting and moving to. And if you´re of the non-dancing fraction like myself, you´ll find enough strength in listening to this stuff in solitude. Each musical idea, such as the child-like whistle of “Petit Zebre” or the choppy warps of “In A Retro Futur…”, has a transformative appeal, deepening their aural imagery and color palette and creating techno as a deeply introspective and emotionally dense experience. 

48. Fatima Al Qadiri – Brute

Since the times of fascism in Germany and Italy, there has always been the fear of socialist or fascist ideas taking over whole societies and states. With growing perspective of global occurrences and the furthering transparency/ visibility of injustice and mistreatment of people, the reality is worse than that fear and sounds much like the haunting, surveilling gaze of Brute. Al Qadiri clearly references the occurrences of protests over the last few years, may it be the Arabian Spring or Ferguson, the focus is not on the hopeful side of people getting together and fighting the system and its idiosyncrasies, it is about the system itself: The power of state officials rising up to counteract and plainly attack the citizens carrying ideas like free speech or equality. Brute is the sound of being constantly targeted and driven to exhaustion by artifice and non-addressal. The soundscapes don´t give way to any kind of aural reassurance of positive ideals, giving the impression of an indiminishable force of opposition. Qadiri stepped to the boards after fucking with Orientalism on Asiatisch to stampede through our imagination and happy-spirited believe of making a difference by voicing our concern and getting together for a change, but not without flipping the finger herself with the last tracks. As “Power” rings out, you´ll get the impression of the comical sickness of control over people; being drunk on power, stepping up against unarmed citizens in military gear and vehicles, vowing to protect and serve, while kneeling to obscure structures of upholding a system you’re a pawn of. In other words, Fuck The Police. 

47. Gallant – Ology

Ology is Gallant´s way of searching for himself, the dissecting of one´s own feelings, experiences and mostly troubles. The sound of the album is pretty driving throughout, with explosive choruses and heartfelt vocals. You´ll get a good amount of funk and soul influenced instrumentals like “Episodes”, recalling a more straightforward revivalism Blood Orange has been pushing with his last two albums, choir-like call and response themes on “Bourbon” or smooth jazz on “Miyazaki”. The “Ology” serves as a loose concept of Gallant remaining on a commentary and soul-searching journey most of the album, even when going sensual like on the latter track. This is only stressed by some of the vivid metaphors, allegories and similes Gallant uses, from things like “pulling my weight in gold” to “I can hold my liquor, like the saints do”, the images never portray a clear meaning, but achieve their full potential through his superb vocal performances and the fitting atmospheric settings through these sounds. The album isn´t a progression from beginning to end, more a cyclical collection of poems, letting one move back and forth according to the mood and finding the fitting cryptic message for your own modes of emotional decryption. 

46. yndi halda – Under Summer

Enjoy Eternal Bliss was the first album I ever bought! The four tracks of this album will forever hold a special place in my experiences of growing up and developing a sensory field of my own: How the world functions, how emotions can be displayed and paralleled through the arts and even in the deeper form of what kind of person I want to become. While it is a blank label or sorts, post-rock was my mind-set growing up, and as I can say that I´ve moved in a great many directions, the bands creating music in these directions still provide a feeling beyond sheer nostalgia. Therefore, I´m happy about the progression of Yndi Halda on Under Summer, even if my sixteen-year-old-self was hoping for something purely instrumental. The band was always leaning towards vocals and even if that wasn´t that explicit in the first record, the few moments, “Dash And Blast”, with its grand explosions and the quiet fog of words on “A Song For Starlit Beaches”, created a great compliment to the bands flourish of guitar and violin. From the first words on “Together Those Leaves”, the maturity and calmness of the band instantly strikes a chord: Even when aiming for catharsis and letting their guitars sing the highest praises of distortion with the string beaming through these washes of sound, the band doesn´t feel the need to blast your speakers anymore or to push you into heights by simply being loud. “Golden Threats From The Sun” is a somber experience, and while it doesn’t have the beautiful closing section of their life performance, which I was hoping to hear on a good recording (here), the small organ sounds and the clear violin – neither mournful, nor joyful – are like sitting on your front porch after a life lived and battles lost and won. Overall, these four tracks are the best progression for a band that broke by delivering shimmers of beauty in washes of distortion. Under Summer is the gaining of respect and knowledge after growing from a teen into a full blown adult. Keeping the high energy, widening the dynamic range of your emotions and winding down on getting drunk and shouting, exchanging it for being in higher spirits through the moments lived and the prospect of a life to come. 

45. Lil Uzi Vert – Lil Uzi Vs The World

Lil Uzi is catching a lot of heat for his style, fashion-wise, and his rapping. It is the age old dispute of rappers breaching the invisible boundaries, set up by older generations on what is rap and hip hop and what is not. Singing is still a gripe for many, alluding to a non-rapping performance and worse yet, a feminine or queer mindset. People thought Kanye was going soft on 808´s and still make fun of Drake for his rnb appeal. The list goes on to people hating on Future or Young Thug for their vocal performance, even if they still act as masculine as their peers. Uzi is the natural progression of these elements, and much like Yachty, brings a flow / non-flow versatility in his refusal to actually hit the notes when singing, spitting clear lines or even going somewhat faster than talking. What has to be understood, apart from hip hop living through this fluidity, are two things: The sing-song style has been present from the beginning of rap and rap can be about content and lyrical prowess, or it can be about sound and atmospheres, without these two elements ruling each other out. Uzi and his Vs. The World project clearly fall into the realm of stressing sound, swagger, and atmosphere before actually saying something interesting or thought-provoking. The bass on these tracks alone carry these tracks and Vert´s vocal performances, from drugged out singing / wordless chanting to him slurring his lines and excessively relying on ad libs. This does point towards the producers making these varieties of music, but also to an artist’s personality being the main selling argument before his lyrical content or skill. And Uzi isn´t even trying to rap, not like Rocky tried on his debut mixtape, he goes with the flow of the beats, stressing the new relation between beat and MC that his spiritual successors were creating since Kanye howled over 808´s. 

44. films – signs from the past

films featuring the vocalist endower of two evocative singers, delivering their performances in an imaginary language, is also a great collaborative effort from the musicians around the Ricco music label. Pianist Yuki Murata und composer Takahiro Kido and multi-instrumentalist/ maximalist Kashiwa Daisuke put their skills to signs from the Ppst from writing the music, to mixing and mastering it. The result is a grand journey without the utterance of an actual word. The way the vocalist use their voices, from an operatic howling to a melancholic whisper, does not need any semantic quality to resonate with you. The duo themselves describe their music as dark fantasy, and you´ll get more than just the depleted musical components of movies like Lord Of The Rings or some other fantasy flick. What they create on signs from the past is a self-contained journey. Through beautiful scenic vistas without ever reaching too far into visual likeness (except maybe for their titles). This music is not mimetic in any sense, more like a pastoral filling of your actual life-experience with what can be called “darkly fantastical” aural colors. You´ll be in for a ride from top to bottom and if you need a fantastical visual allusion to complement these experiences, think of this record as stemming from the greatest Studio Ghibli movie that never saw the light of day, remaining in Miyazaki´s dreams for all eternity and becoming the edifice pushing the creativity of visual artists everywhere. At least, you´ll be able to hear it. 

43. The Weeknd – Starboy

The Weeknd, king of paradox returned with Starboy, reprising his unique, and somewhat absent from Beauty Behind The Madness, atmospheric cuts about abuses of drugs and self, while still maintaining his pop sensibility. Like with “Can´t Feel My Face”, this leads to him having a bunch of young girls scream “God Damn Bitch, I Am Not A Teen Choice” back at him, while seemingly being in denial of the paradox. It does seem, this incredible power over the masses is what drives The Weeknd to make infectious pop songs with his usual dark subject matter. What can be greater than have the crowds sing your songs of pain and loathing back at you, echoing the deep sentiments you try to carry with your music? Starboy plays on this paradox way better than the previous LP, mixing the pop sounds of soul and disco with a darkwave sound, resulting in a perfect fit that recalls the production of the first mixtapes without space and sparsity. The features on this album range from Kendrick Lamar delivering a verse on “Sidewalks”, Lana Del Rey delivering a nice female counterpart on “Stargirl” to Future furthering the darker parts of the LP. The last collaboration is the best pairing, with Future being the perfect fit for gloomy singing, being even more menacing on the uncredited chorus in “Six Feet Under”, than on actual feature “All I Know”. The former track plays on their previous collab “Low Life” and is one of the best throwback songs with “Reminder” and “All I Know”. One other component that serves as the most progressive part of Starboy, are the tracks that have Abel showing a more vulnerable side. Actually longing for his love interest – at least those he really wants, and not those who never seem to go away – and wanting to be loved and taken seriously. Here, on tracks like “True Colors” or “Nothing Without You”, the pop sounds really work and recall much mentioned Michael Jackson. I will always hold the first three mixtapes dearer, but it seems that Weeknd is coming to carve his sound, moving the masses, even when they shout back lines about Asian chicks going “lo main”. 

42. Overhead, The Albatross – Learning To Growl

I feel like I could write a book on instrumental rock, it´s intricacies as much as it´s pitfalls. The first descriptions of post-rock ranged from “rock, played with rock setup´s, that isn´t actually rock” to “classical music played with rock instruments”, but never did this umbrella term prove a good descriptor for the various mindsets of the bands making this music and never was this word or any definition quite able to capture the emotional pull of the music either. We see elements and sounds of these artists transgress into soundtracks and other styles of music, becoming an equal mainstay, like ideas from hip hop or house music. And we equally see many great bands creating great music in their usual mindsets, probing new ideas or furthering their catalog by the steady drive for mastery alone. The one´s that fail to live up to their expectations or are bitter by being pigeon-holed, part ways and become something completely different, or quite simply disappear. There is still a lot going on and many new bands sounding like lifeless reincarnations of EITS or Caspian. All the more exciting is the debut album by Overhead, The Albatross, Learning To Growl. Here, I hear a band that is capable of capturing the great elements of instrumental rock, without ever falling into the trappings of delivering crescendo after crescendo. The band provides a steady stream of great motifs and their dynamics from track to track remain distinct and consistently unique. The whole of Learning To Growl takes you through every emotion, providing breathing space and never dwelling on a theme or an idea for too long. Maybe, what many bands lacked in their approach on instrumental rock was good songwriting and OTA have a ton of that with their knack for maximalist setups. Something to behold, return to and be happily excited for the next project. 

41. Kjartan Sveinsson – Der Klang Der Offenbarung Des Goettlichen

Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen plays with the universal theme of finding divinity in sound, expressing what is beyond comprehension and rationality, through the power of music. These four pieces were created as an opera featuring a changing state setup with scenery and different weather conditions, without ever letting an actor step on the stage. This combination is fitting, not only for the grandiose music but the aim of expressing divinity. We find the old way of finding God or the divine through nature, through divine creations and the reflection of human experience in the external world – implementing the concepts of beauty and the sublime. The opera takes off, after a purely instrumental introduction track. The choir on the other parts is subtle, swaying with the music and never arching to the forefront and recalls the approach of solely vocal church music. The arrangements by Sveinsson are beautiful in every sense of the word. He doesn´t go out and experiment too much, amplifying the classical quest and musical form even though he retains a minimalism we saw emerge in this music after the 19. Century. All tracks play out in very reflective and quiet ways, as trying to find the divine (don´t know where the explosive of the English translation of the title comes from), in the diminutive moments of looking at nature and your surroundings, not by shaking you up and reminding you of your smallness in the vain of a sublime performance. While I don´t really enjoy much classical music, Sveinsson delivered the best elements from this music in a very fresh and equally captivating cloak.