Top Albums 2017 Part IV 20 – 11

20. The Body & Full of Hell – Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light

The Body are one of the most interesting acts in heavy music by far and them teaming up (again) with Full of Hell, another band that stretches the perception of what heavy or abrasive music can be, provides one of the finest moments of 2017. Full of Hell´s Trumpeting Ecstasy saw the band experiment with different textures and feeling themselves, ranging from noise-ridden escapes to featuring Nicole Dollangangers in a toned down ballad of sorts. With The Body, the band gained a counterpart that is equally into noise and atmosphere over aggression, handing a sense of naiveté and wonder to their refinement. In return, The Body found a group of people that revel in immediacy and help develop their own affection for grinding sounds into beat-driven joints and forward-thinking musical ideas. Apart from these comparisons and additions, the project does sound like one entity playing music. Ascending A Mountain especially shines in the usage of drum computers and beats, even resembling dancehall or hip-hop at points to set forth the eternal noise and metallic droning into a different field of experience that do not share much with what most would consider metal. In this, the bands make something that is larger than genre and will have genre purist reeling – just as it should be.

19. Max Richter – Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works

The best modern classical album of this year has to be Three Worlds by Max Richter. Conceived as the accompaniment for a ballet on the writing of Virginia Woolf and her works Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves, Max Richter has made another striking entry in his discography and classical albums incorporating electronic elements seamlessly. One might get vibes of Johannsson’s latest work on these pieces and especially Orlando with its short tracks and use of electronics might feel like a rendition of the Arrival soundtrack. However, the emotional pull and immersion are different, mostly due to this music not being concerned with language and a cinematic experience but much rather the visceral experience of dance and performance. Mrs. Dalloway bears more melancholic and conservative tracks in comparison, something that has less friction within before going spacious and atmospheric with an organic vibe of chamber music. The single piece for The Waves is introduced with a reading of Woolf´s suicide note and while I can´t speak much on her writing or the ballet, these few words alone set the stage for one of the most intrinsic moments of this year. This durational piece edges on Gorecki and his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and yet, in its eerie and ghostly vibe – when the voice creeps in shattering in sadness, you connect with the contemporary vibe of this expression. Listening to this piece, everything feels unnatural and alive at the same time – a feeling that might capture those of someone willing to take their life by drowning. 

18. Novo Line – Dyad

After last year’s mathematical stutter of Movements, Novo Line reprises his broken electronic sound with a new approach and a set of seven tracks that can be played in both 33rpm and 45rpm. This is a fitting step for someone who makes electronic music using outdated hardware and software and who pushes nostalgic sounds into new molds of cluttering and stressing speakers and listeners with his dense beats. Using the materiality, the analog and mechanical disposition of vinyl, Dyad´s set of tracks can be understood as two different albums. My favorite, the 33rpm version is driving and fast-paced already but allows for breathing spaces and the sounds to unfold in their compressed glory. The 45rpm version is pretty much the trip, the sounds growing closers together and the drum patterns and small details often becoming a jitter that still feels like an original version of themselves. I can´t help recall this simple effect in Street Fighter games when you´re about to run out of time and the theme music is just sped up. It reveals the tension and suspense of each theme again and instigates an immediacy that was already inherent in the slower pace. 

17. Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement – Ambient Black Magic

During a run of re-releasing his old material as RSE, Prurient and Vatican Shadow mastermind Fernow came at us with a new installment of dreadful jungle soundscapes as well. With only four tracks and the major opener “Jungle Is A Shape Shifter”, which lasts over 30 minutes, Ambient Black Magic is yet again a visceral encounter with the aural fiction of field recording and synth sounds recreating a sense of lushes green in all its dreadful danger. This fiction of building on tropes, narratives and a few actual facts surrounding rainforests and those cultures dwelling within – don´t forget the huge portion of voodoo and other esoteric influences that run through this project – provides an immersive point of no return. The rain keeps pouring, the synth waves feel like flashes of atmospheric static and the simple drum beats carry with them the immediacy and, in the west, the slight unease of rituals and experience that do not retain themselves to logical explanations. Ambient Black Magic expands these inherent features and is yet another reason to crown Fernow as the king creating visceral soundscapes that break the skin.

16. Alessandro Cortini – Avanti

Avanti is Cortini´s foray into his own past while still remaining abstract in his approach to music. For an artist that works with a limited set of old synths following something remotely narrative is a huge jump and one I didn´t expect to follow 2015´s great Risveglio. Set in motion by old recordings, or better-said home video of his childhood and life with his family, Cortini went with the idea of stepping back to forgotten and misremembered experiences and filtering them through his sonic vision. With a few field recordings or snippets of dialog ripped from these videos, there is a soothing vibe of returning to known surroundings. A kind of heartwarming nostalgia triggered while looking at an old photograph while still remaining in motion with these memories and making them dynamic for unattached listeners and an unknown future to appreciate.

15. SAICOBAB – SAB SE PURANI BAB

The idea of Japanese musicians tapping in on Indian musical traditions, ragas, in particular, sounds far out on paper alone, and the product that is SAICOBAB is an intriguing lesson on the transgression of musical boundaries and the eternal virtuosity that can spring from understanding and appreciate music from different cultures. Armed with the sitar as the centerpiece of classical Indian music, in addition to gamelan and bass, the quartet around YoshimiO pushes the formula of original ragas in their non-western patterns and timbres out of their own comfort zone and create something that is brimming with energy and aural “wtf?”-moments. O´s vocal work, which is mostly ecstatic gibberish fits these pieces and amplifies their raw, out of body atmosphere. With all that, SAB SE PURANI BAB still remains an enjoyable listen, the band never goes fully abstract and thanks to the variety of the raga formula there is no moment that feels tiring or repetitive in an annoying sense. SAICOBAB is one of these unique cases of a band that prove that there are still so many musical worlds to encounter and to mix while honoring the source material and keeping it from becoming exploitative. This is pure joy. 

14. Idles – Brutalism

Brutalism is the catchy political slap in the face that doesn´t tire you, something that is badly needed but seldom achieved without sounding preachy. You can easily listen to Idles in complete ignorance of their lyrics and enjoy the energy and sheer aggressive power of their music. As a band, they work perfectly and for almost the whole album there are few moments of respite or even going mid-paced. With this, the lyrical themes of this record hit home. The ode to Joe Talbot´s mother is a driving attack with lines like “The best way to scare a Tori is to read and get rich” or the bridge on sexual violence letting a chorus that breaks down into "mother -- fucker!!" take on a new meaning in all its non-meaning. There is so much friction in these tracks, so many moving parts that are held together by the performance of straight-forward post-punk tracks. Brutalism plays like the weird intoxication after reading Marx and going out with your friends for a few drinks to wash down a world that is already close to the drain.

13. Emptyset – Borders

As one of the best electronic albums of the year, Borders has the most organic feel to it. Recorded as a live performance by the duo, the sounds featured on Borders is the translation and transference of human interaction and material playing from an instrument into electronic signals. Making your own instruments, a zither-like string-instrument and a drum, processing your playing by electronic means. The best moments arise when this approach and electronics that sound like a super distorted synth or sampler are played at their most percussive. “Speak” lets you hear in on the organic string until the extremely harsh drums come in, it does resemble the connection and conversation of two instruments, while weaving together as two immaterial structures collapsing over each other. The whole album in all its abrasive abstraction still is just that, two people pushing the boundaries of music made with instruments and in all the metallic and white noise derailing’s of organically occurrences, like hearing a chainsaw against metal, this shit is catchy as hell.

12. Julien Baker – Turn Out the Lights

Turn Out The Lights introduces explicit hope into the developing narrative of Julien Baker. With the lines “Maybe it´s all gonna turn alright, I know that it´s not, but I have to believe that it is” on "Appointments" the album takes you into the personal fight of overcoming the dark times while still living through and with them in the fashion Baker laid bare on Sprained Ankle. This spirit was there on my favorite track of that album “Rejoice”, but here it becomes a method of Bakers experience and storytelling. Going from the bitter to the bittersweet has never sounded so refreshing and like a progression for a musician. Don´t get it wrong, there is so much struggle on these tracks, the hardship of coping with yourself on the title track or “Shadowboxing”, tackling sobriety in the face of loving someone who is not, or being there for friends in dark times and finding a will to live in “Hurt Less”. Instrumentally Baker went more colorful, employing her piano skills on many songs and being accompanied by strings or different vocals, a step away from gracing the stage with a single guitar and looping herself, almost like a stop to bouncing off of herself altogether. Overall Turn Out The Lights is a great sophomore effort of the most intriguing songwriter I´ve ever heard. Development, musical and in her mindset can be felt throughout the whole record – a person finding strength while the questions and the hurt remain, fresh eyes.

11. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.

DAMN. is Kendrick’s best album to date. Not only for marrying his biggest traits of the last projects but for being his first collection of tracks that do not actually have a conceptual thread running through them, at least none that is as apparent as in good kid or TPAB. Here, after the social commentary and destructive savior complex of To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick steps down from the podium, not losing his high ambitions but arriving, again, at the ground level and demonstrating his own humanity. To show that his biggest ambitions and deep lyrical statements commenting on the state of being black or pretty much trying to be a good person are rooted in a tortured personality that tries all these things while being a product of his surroundings and a world that is toxically build on materialism, the hunt for fame and the suppression of others for the sake of self-preservation of a few. You can strip away the political context and Kendrick’s position of trying to do something for his peers and understand DAMN. as a single dude coming to terms with his own life, between being heralded as raps Jesus and the kid from Compton that got fucked up by gangbangers. I still remember reading the genre description of “Human Music” on O.D and can see this ambition coming full circle here. Kendrick is not just the grand preacher or the genius artists, he is all those things, but lastly a man that struggles to create a greater understanding of himself and his world through his music and in prepared to be torn apart in the process of making these expressions for the world to hear – from being the strange rap feature on a Taylor Swift single to talking about the theory of African-Americans being the real Israelites condemned to a life of hardship by an obscure and scornful god in an America that is run by obscure and spiteful 1%.