Top Tracks 2016 Part IV 70 – 61

70. Lil Uzi Vert – Baby Are You Home (Lil Uzi Vs. The World)

Lil Uzi Vert might be the best encounter in rap this year, even though the focus was more on Lil Yachty and his very special blend of the old and the new. Uzi Vert is as much a singing-mumbling artist, favoring the melodic and atmospheric over actually saying something, as he is able to rap a few bars and earning his keep over a harder beat. In this, I see his abilities in the lane of someone like Future or Young Thug and a welcome new player in this growing world of rappers breaching the sonic divides of hip hop music. “Baby Are You Home” might qualify as an easily digestible version of a Future track. We get Metro Boomin´s on point production as Vert carries the digital indiscernibility of the new generation with swag and ennui alike. 

69. Tomorrow The Rain Will Fall Upwards – ...And I Tried So Hard (Wreck His Days)

It is hard to describe this track in any genre type of ways, just as it is nearly impossible to find any info about the project Tomorrow The Rain Will Upwards. All you can do, is sit attentively and listen to lovingly woven soundscape, drifting from ambient to psychedelic and never really sitting in any category at all. The keys on this track act like a saddening and yet playful stab at gospel music, almost in a chopped and screwed fashion, without ever falling into the distortion of bending time in an unnatural way. The vocals here provide yet another spiritual undertone, while still rendering the whole experience as a mimetic description of nature. I cannot help but be reminded of Eluvium if his music had lost its inherent melancholy and would trade the fantastic and otherworldly for an almost realistic or better said narrative approach. 

68. Kjartan Sveinsson – Teil II (Der Klang der Göttlichen Offenbarung)

When Kjartan Sveinsson left Sigur Rós, his lack was to be felt for some time. What the band had to do to move forward, was to experiment and push their sound into a new realm. We saw these results in Kveikur, a dark and somber experience, with the trio eschewing any kind of profound happiness for brooding intensity and flesh grinding grief. Sveinsson for his part stuck to his orchestral genius and develop it over the course of various soundtracks or collaborations. This year, we got this four-part opera and I can say that I´m happy how the split of creative energy went for both parties. This is beauty in the most expressive, and I usually shy away from describing something as simply “beautiful”. "Teil II" has the choir setting in after a sweeping instrumental introduction and the grace of the arrangements is reflected in the singing of the choir. While I don´t subscribe to the idea of religion, the quest for expressing the transcendental and that, what is above human understanding is a constant in making music and moreover in the human need for listening to it. This track alone seems birthed by this quest, for both Sveinsson and for us, as we are struck be these sonic forces. 

67. Yohuna – The Moon Hangs In The Sky Like Nothing Hangs In The Sky (Patientness)

Listening to Yohuna´s voice, the first association and classification would be “dreamy”. There certainly is a vastness and headiness that we might have heard on shoegaze acts before, but on “The Moon Hangs...”, I still sense an indie and explicit singer-songwriter attitude before anything muddling the clarity of the voice for a gauzy effect alone. The various distorting qualities of Yohuna on this track serve as a glue to a whole-hearted and emotional track. 

66. Gallant – Bourbon (Ology)

If you’re talking about belief and religion, do it an interesting manner, do it, so there is a message going deeper than “religion is good for you”! Gallant achieves what Chance did not on Coloring Book, with his song on the struggle and somewhat limiting nature of subscribing to faith. There is no certain outcome, but more importantly, we get a true fight of inner and outer beliefs and the differences between doctrine and action. When the songs hits its high point and we get a call and response phrase of intonating “low, low, low, low”, the gospel elements seem natural and driven, without being justified by being r´n´b or being about religion. A quarrel with faith that lets you draw lessons from it in any aspect of life. 

65. Clams Casino – Blast // Back To You (32 Levels)

Clams Casino made the smartest move yet with his debut LP 32 Levels: He released the instrumentals alongside the star-studded vocal features! While the features bring a nice variety to his still impeccable production, his instrumentals shine even more without anyone singing or rapping over them. Thank the Based God for the superb closer “Blast”, in which we get Clams production at its most grand, with the female vocals bits and pieces carrying the spacious instrumental and some other aural quirks, like the chopped and screwed voice, we have come to associate with someone like A$AP Rocky, adding to the whole. “Back To You” on the other hand, is the most fruitful collaboration with Wet´s Kelly Zutrau, providing longing and somehow childishly inflected lyrics to springy and quite straightforward happy production. 

64. Rrose – Cephalon (Infrastructure Facticity) 

Rrose (a beautiful allusion to Marcel Duchamp´s alter ego Rrose Sélavy) seems to have been around for quite a while and caught my attention last year with some energetic and diverse EP´s. This year her best track comes from the equally great Infrastructure New York compilation. “Cephalon” (maybe a reference to a drug / drug company?) is a frantic dance floor convulsion. There is a kind of enchaining airiness at the beginning of the track that gets tightened and less open when the harder drums hit over the steady streams of fast rippling synths. Nothing in this track relinquishes its attack on your sense of space.

63. Abra – Vegas (Princess)

"Vegas" and Abra´s music in general, is the perfect marriage of two distinct sounds. There is this alt-rnb sensibility, the hard hitting bass and you get dark meticulous synth-work that recalls a hyper-electrified and thoroughly stylized Depeche Mode. The mood is impeccable as is Abra´s ability to convey her sinister swagger with passion and even a little playfulness. 

This is not "Vegas", but check out her newest track "Bounty":

62. Body Sculptures – A Collection Of Ceramic Vases (Yves Saint Laurent Buried In The Garden Of His Marrakesh Home) (A Body Turns To Eden)

Believe it or not, Moroccan gardens served as an inspiration for Body Sculptures album A Body Turns To Eden. This reference pops up several times through the song titles and is most explicit in the closer, alluding to the garden of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. With all these references, this tracks is the most toned down iteration by the noise / electronic outfit and carries the atmosphere of a funeral march with it. Ghostly is one word to describe the wide open understated drone that is peaked by organic drums and crystalline synth keys. This is something for the night time and dissolving relationships. 

61. City Of The Sun – W. 16th St. (To The Sun And All The Cities In Between)

This instrumental outfit was one of the best finds of 2016. The band takes its roots in impromptu street performances and they were able to carry this to the recordings as well. Their grounding in this, coupled with the utilization of Spanish guitars, makes for an allure only a few other instrumental bands, especially in the post-rock genre are able to pull off. This is not about big explosions of reverb or distortion, but more about the acoustic-gravity and finesse understated acoustic (with minimal electronic alterations) playing can have.