Top Albums 2018 Part II 40 – 31

40. Gas – Rausch 

Like many albums of this year´s list, Rausch represents a way to channel the recent Zeitgeist in sound. Gas build Rausch to grapple with the ideas of home, nationalism and right-wing sentiments, hijacking them for their absurd politics for a visceral thump that overrides any sense of comfort and meaningful discourse. The best description there is, is placing yourself, sonically, on the fringes of a Volksfest and experiencing the same sounds and affects as Rausch in its 60-minute runtime. The instinctive stomp, the musicality of feet marching lurking in the back all the time, surfacing for acute minutes of semblance, horror, even warmth to die out again and get lost in the miasma of sound that Wolfgang Voigt creates. Rausch evokes two distinct feelings and collapses them for a political and social statement: The feeling of ecstasy and the feeling of stark discomfort that can only exist in traditionalism and the untraceable affect of your environment going sour, hatred and anger bubbling up and waiting to explode. In Germany, the most recent and striking moment might be the marches by right-wing political groups and Nazis in response to the murder of a young adult in Chemnitz. The allegation of the crime being committed by two refugees burst into the wide solidarization of neo-nazi groups, hate speech politicians and normal citizens to take to the street and muddle the mourning of a life lost with xenophobia and the ecstasy of “giving it to the man”. The thing went south (or east?) on many ways: Nazi salutes, anti-semitic statements and a lot of dumbfounded shit took place. If there remains one feeling that Rausch doesn't incorporate in its spur of the moment way of expressing such events, it is the shame that follows and maybe build this album, the shame of witnessing as much as maybe becoming the naive contributor to expressions of hate and spitefulness in the name of wrongful politics and a sense of “them” against “us”. 

39. Skating Polly – The Make It All Show

Either as pop-punk or what the band themselves title ugly pop, The Make It All Show is one of the best rock albums of this year. Not only for the freak-out on tracks like “Camelot” or “They´re Cheap (I´m Free)” but for the sisters´ prowess in building tight songs and anthems of empowerments without relying on hooks alone. The drive of “Free Will At Ease” is a much free-flowing as it is a meticulous song on letting go and growing up that highlights the second voice of Peyton Bighorse and serves as one of the highlights in its divergent style from loud songs. And it is in those moments, the “Beverly Hills” feeling of “Hollywood Factory” or the early Avril Lavigne like “Flatwound Strings” that embolden The Make It Show to the best Skating Polly album yet, with a higher sense of self and still much room and styles of songs that reveal untapped potential for years to come. 

38. A$AP Rocky – Testing

While I get the inspiration Rocky derived out of Blonde, a mere comparison of these albums just doesn't cut it. In his drive to be the rapper doubling as a Dior model, feeling at home in the art galleries of this world as he does in his native battlegrounds of Harlem, Testing is the most polished attempt of weirdo rap coming from a major label artist. Here Rocky does what he has been talking about from his first tracks: being the best, most innovative and fearless among his peers and he does all this with the experimental intro of “Distorted Records” until the Ocean assisted guitar floater “Purity”. While there have never been any aesthetics statement by the ASAP movement, their work has always stood for being the haute couture of rap, not just in the way they look, but by the way they sound. As AT LONG LAST ASAP had Rocky mostly trying to remain true to his hip-hop roots, on Testing he is finally able to understand his own position apart from heavy spitters and politically charged forebears like Kendrick. Tracks like “Praise The Lord” or “Tony Tone” still resound as great rap statements, but only paired with “Kids Turned Out Fine”, “Fukk Sleep” or the manifesto “ASAP Forever” do they become telling of a man that can be the pretty boy running with the hood rats as much as the suited up gangster in a gallery. Wherever Rocky might take his sounds, with Testing he has proven to be concerned not only with his image and the movement but making art as an artist and caring for the genre and culture from his designer fitted throne. 

37. Pisitakun – SOSLEEP

Pisitakun established a new non-genre with SOSLEEP, Thai funeral industrial. His standpoint as a musician led to one of the most immersive ways of dealing with the loss of a loved one I ever listened to. Pisitakun mixes field recordings of Buddhist chants and the sound of hospital equipment that helped his own father stay alive into a flash of industrial techno and noise. With a slow start that is organic and telling, the album takes off into darker corners of the mind, hard-hitting and uncompromising like death itself. In a way, this might be a vision of the Buddhist underworld, the spirit moving through different realms, encountering the source of life and evil in the same place and transitioning through chants and instruments of the living to yet another plain. As Pisitakun followed tradition and joined a monastery after the passing of his father, SOSLEEP feels like his synthesis of following the funeral rites of this system of thought with his own experience and creativity. It might be hard to image setting this up at a funeral site, but when listened to in one sitting there is the feeling of catharsis and transitioning into a altered state of mind, letting grief shout through the attacks of noise and deluge of sound to arrive at the circular embrace of the bells and traditional strings leading you to acceptance.

36. Pusha T – Daytona

Daytona is the album Pusha T needed to make to recover from the slump of his previous albums, released and announced. With the help of Kanye becoming the old Kanye beat wise and chopping up some of the freshest beats this year, Pusha T was able to show his lyrical genius and mind-bending wordplay without the need for many features or a pop-sensibility. Pusha speaks with the immediacy of a hungry rapper 20 years his junior and never loses one cadence of pocket to shine. My Name Is My Name or The Prelude could never capture the purity Pusha holds as a spitter and with Kanye keeping it simple he was able to reach what many people heard in his words and work with Clipse but what was lost in becoming a heralded feature artists and sub-par solo rapper. There is all the controversy that followed and the hate his relation with Yeezy might have brought, but after all the talking is done and the stupid questions of who is better are answered, Daytona will become an instant classic of two great artists becoming titans in hip-hop. Kanye might have already used the Watch The Throne title and tried to bring the heat with his Good Music roster, but at the end of the day, he only needed one of his soldiers and Wyoming´s spacetime. 

35. Happy Accidents – Everything But The Here And Now 

Sometimes I still marvel at the discrepancy of indie-rock and pop-punk. Music made by mid-twenties for teenage listeners to sink their teeth in, find meaning in the small poetics of minds that seems similar and bring to the point what a fourteen-year-old might struggle to accomplish. Maybe it is because the way I and many peers went through their early twenties was far from being connected to a youthful self and meant dealing with other struggles altogether. Yet, Happy Accidents hit the sweet spot on this question and still make relevant music for someone who seeks the haunts of electronic music and social consciousness of rap as a norm. Glowing with youthfulness and honesty, Happy Accidents concern themselves with the little big things of life, wanting time to escape the daily grind, wishing for a different tomorrow of resolute comfort in your identity or the feeling of seeing someone sinking in their sorrows and not being able to help. The vocal dynamics that build through the inclusion of Phoebe Cross on vocals do wonders for their set up and add a sense of the female perspective and warmth to their music. Everything But The Here And Now will work wonders for feeling nostalgic but still finds its relevance in the knowledge that you might never actually leave behind your inner teen. 

34. Beach House – 7 

7 is best described as Beach House in Beach House mode, the band soundtracking their own mission statement after seven albums and building their own mythology from the parts they have been harnessing for so long. It is a band coming into full effect in their artistic vision, becoming playful and direct in the same vein and doing a victory lap in their own right. You can take “Dive” as the prime example here: The sprawling organ vibe that slowly builds to a blanket of sound for Victoria Legrand to float over, in nostalgia and reflection. Then the song takes a turn for the uplifting and energetic, the drum machine kicks in and Legrand sinks and swims in the flurry of noise. Beach House have become the masters of dream pop and will stand as such for another 7 albums to come. Innovation and experimentations will come, but it feels like 7 will double as their mid-career debut album, showcasing a pre and post in their oeuvre. Either way, they have become a band that is unmissable and create the best entry point for a whole genre. 

33. Broken English Club – White Rats

Back at it again with the noise-ridden dirty industrial collage. Ending his first duology with the English Beach last year, Oliver Ho announced a triplet of an album with White Rats being the starting point. The sinister feeling his music usually carries is amped up even more, as are the vocal pieces that sound like crazy industrial commentary spoken by a beatnik turned goth after breaking his back as a british factory worker for a while. And this is one thing that sticks out on many tracks of White Rate, Ho diving even deeper into the dirt and sludge of industrial music and the sentiments surroundings a mundane life for the factory. Updating this vision from smoking chimney to creepy news reports and political commentary on Brexit with lines like “barking nazis”, “savage dogs” or “everything becomes television” the visceral pieces that lead into the banging underground raves feel tighter and more focused on White Rats then they did on The English Beach. In a way, White Rats lives from the feeling of bleakness it channels and creates a vision for the dancefloor and deep listening sessions from it. No matter the cause, no matter the sun, we are crawling in the dirt and Oliver Ho is there to bring his comment by means of piercing synths, menacing drums, and his WWII voice commentary.

32. Freddie Gibbs – Freddie

This is the hardest knocking rap album this year. Freddie Gibbs has the perfect voice to go over jazzy beats, complex movements and be as musical as his words. But he was equally made for droning bass that makes speakers move, car windows vibrate and drowns consciousness in tales of gangbanging and drugs. Even when he goes smooth and grows closer to his artwork on “Triple Threat”, singing a few lines under the banging instrumental, his bravado feels like a boot on your neck. Apart from that, Freddie feels like Gibbs showing his contemporaries how it is done. A true G descending for a quick assault on generic trap beats, with the swagger of Kingpin taking on a menial task because one of his useless subordinates has fucked up too many times. 

31. Gaelic Psalm Singers - Salm, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 (Gaelic Psalms from the Hebrides of Scotland)

While the albums themselves might be old, Arc Light Editions released both Volumes on vinyl for the first time and my mind is still blown by the sheer intensity this special kind of choir singing carries. Stemming from the north of Scotland, this form of worship comes off by a free spirited and improvised choir singing in which a precantor sings a line and the others follow in their own pace and intonation. It really feels like a wave crashing over you, different currents running together to create one immense force that fires back through church walls and the gorgeous reverb created by it. While religion is far from me, the unique way this congregation or region worship stands as one of the best expression of relating to each other and to God. While the unity of a choir always harbors on uniformity and killing the individual voice in the process, the controlled chaos of this heterophony lends every breath their power. Everyone says the same thing, but their expression remain their own. It is as if recent protesters used this technique to amplify their voice without electronic means and created the same texture of voices to let one person speaking be heard by all, only that this is a glorious version of playing telephone with God. Listening to Salm in different settings and moods throughout the year, the sense of community in simply listening to these voices come together stands as one of the awe inspiring moments of 2018. You should dive into this small window of recordings done over 15 years ago, to understand the beauty of diverse musical cultures and to marvel at the creation of sound that feels uncanny at first, but is brimming with the warmth of the human will.