Top Tracks 2018 Part II 90 – 81

90. Lingua Ignota – Holy Is The Name (Of My Ruthless Axe)

Kristin Hayter first made an impression through her work with the body. The at once beautiful and violently commanding strenght of her voice gave rise to many of the finest moments of the newest output of No One Deserves Happiness and I Have Fought Against It. Her solo work as Lingua Ignota is as pressuring to be comprehended and positions toward in the same way. Self-released in 2017, Profound Lore gave All Bitches Die a major release this year and thus it is only right to highlight the intensity of “Holy is The Name (Of My Ruthless Axe”. Closing an album of industrial electronics mixed with metal and operatic vocal styles, “Holy Is The Name” is a nocturnal and transcendental conclusion. Hayters performance opens towards the operatic and ecclesial music while still grappling with rape and sexual violence in the framework of vengeance. It brilliantly captures the exhaustion of laying down between cold bodies of your aggressors and succumbing to a numbing slumber of vengeance enacted and blood spilled for blood.

89. Joyce Manor – Friends We Met Online (Million Dollars To Kill Me)

Got to give it to Joyce Manor to always capturing the depths of existence and contemporary life in simple words and driving instrumentals. “Friends We Met Online” is pretty much the bittersweet anthem of building relationships by digital means. The excitement of picking each other's brains, building feelings by text alone, into the distance and beyond normative means of human relationship (at least in the past). The conclusion is where Joyce Manor mix in harsh reality in nostalgia and blend the highs and lows into the inseperable burst of rememberance happening as quickly as this two-minute track.

88. Let´s Eat Grandma – Cool & Collected (I´m All Ears)

Let´s Eat Grandma prove themselves on their sophomore album. Not only that they are sure to be around for some time, but that there are building their own creative enterprise apart from similiar acts of young singers with a hang for the strange twists and turns amidst instrumental experimentation and the pains of growing up. In this, “Cool and Collected” is a sweet ballad that morphs between an angsty musing and a psychedelic anthem. The simple guitar chords and fragile vocals bloom and expand after meandering and open themselves up under a keen sense of songwriting and building a satifying climax. All this while touching upon the feelings of seeing your crush, the infatuations and the resolve to stand up to these feelings and breach beyond mumbling and blushing like an idiot.



87. Drake – Summer Games (Scorpion)

The first few times “Summer Games” felt like a strange joke on Drake being Drake. The man struggeling to be hard and soft at the same time, while people constantly question his craft and sincerety goes full synth pop. I thought the last thing missing was a Taylor Swift feature popping up. But after finishing laughing and digging deeper on all other tracks, “Summer Games” proved to be the best standout and the time Scorpion didn´t feel too redundant for it´s own good (in all honesty, I could listen to yet another version of Take-Care-Drake). The deep icy synth, heartbreak Drake crawling out of the instrumental to mellowing tears before laying down few lines in verse – falling back into singing and progressing into a sweet chorus of synthetically overlayed “breaking my hearts”. Every part conveys the feeling Drake does best. Not the triumphant man standing on top, but the boyish man that was trusted and misguided only for him to take the hurt and understand he is the weaker part of the relationship. The minimalism and pop-sensebility by 40 takes a formula other artists would fail to carry, be it someone like Swift or the in-house duo of Majid Jordan, and executes in a sense by timeless openness and a knack for the right hit of bass and organic “electronics”. All of it proves that Drakes has to sing to beat everyone questioning him.

86. Haley Heynderickx – Oom Sha La La (I Need To Start A Garden)

Losing the grip on life, becoming stuck on minute details and unable to become active. Rotting milk, rotting mind. Haley Heynderickx captures this feeling in her superb song and tops this off with the best non-sense chorus of “Oom Sha La La”. The peak of her shouting “I need to start a garden” brims with energy only self-loathing or rather the end of it can bring.

85. Pallbearer – Dropout (Dropout Single)

If the sound of Dropout is the next step Pallbearer want to take in their sound, I´m all for it! My mental image of their sound, the way I describe their music to people who know the common knowledge bands, used to be “Doomed out Guns and Roses”. Now I get the hints of stoner rock that work incredibly well in their subject matter and song structures. It is as if Dropout could stem from a rusty Qotsa demo or a strange one off track on the Desert Session. Only with the downtrodden energy and reflective gaze of Pallbearer, a vibe that never seems to miss.

84. Flatbush Zombies – Vacation (Vacation In Hell)

Flatbush Zombies tell it themselves and they mock the idea while delivering on a full scale: You need that stupid song with the sung hook that just makes you feel good. Zombie Juice is almost channeling the likes of the Black Eyed Peas and their hollowed out moments of “I got a feeling”. Between the greatest hook by Juice, who for his part has a voice that has me asking for an RnB album, every verse delivers with its own countenance and is tied together by this feel good moment. Joey Badass takes the reigns lightly and doesn´t break a sweat and Meechy Darko is yet again the showstopper going from crude to hilarious in his signature rasp. Silly songs work well when executed right and the irony of it all seeps through while the hook will remain ever present for years to come.

83. Humeysha – My Limit (Departures)

Humeysha made a short and sweet return with Departures this year and I hope there is more to come. Dealing with home, refuge, and ideas of identity in their own way, the brain child of Zain Alam seems more relevent than ever, even when many of these stories and inspirations might stem from history. Alam moves the instrumental side slightly away from shoegaze and deeper into psych rock here. "My Limit" is the daydreaming closer of Departures and does well in fusing the influence of Indian music and multiple languages with straight up heavenly devices. After a short bridge of warm sounds, the instrumental grows more crystalline and bright with every second and the band sets for great heights before dissipating into the vast unknown.

82. Pisitakun – SOSLEEP01 (SOSLEEP)

The opening track of Pisitakun´s impeccable outing SOSLEEP captures multiple worlds in one sitting. Grappeling with the death of his father and his last days in the hospital, Pisitakun weaves Buddhist instruments, chanting and field recordings from the days with his father and a buddhist monastery afterward together with a slew of noise and high bpm techno. Everything climbs after a sullen and traditional moment of chanting and a reed instrument. The industrial noise as a palette to enhance and morph the sounds of respirators or traditional flutes is as eerie as it provides a point of reference in handling loss and finding a creative output. Pisitakun does not rest, he channels the messiness of life and death in a statement close to real and uncompromising buddhist thoughts on death and loss.

81. Broken English Club – Anonymous Death Tape (White Rats)

Wherever Broken English Club takes his versions of industrial squalor, the ironic or deeply disturbing, the tracks land as moments of arthouse dread. Apart from filling White Rats with a few bangers, the real meat lies within the narrative and mood building pieces. "Anonymous Death Tape" takes a dead pan delivery of psychological pointers under a slow grind of a hallowed out drum machine and screeching metal sounds. It is a fantastic look into a violent world that only adds to White Rats other themes of gore, fetish and serial killers. If you took something like Mind Hunter and flipped the script to be fully set in a point of view already corrupted, you´d end with sounds like these.