Top Tracks 2018 Part VI 50 – 41

50. Travis Scott - Watch (feat. Lil Uzi Vert & Kanye West)

"One year it's Illuminati / next year it´s the sunken place" stands as one of the most telling Kanye lines of this year and incorporates both his twitter persona and all political disarray regarding our former Yeezus. Released as a teaser track for Travis Scott´s Astroworld, "Watch" was the powerful riposte towards talk about the album not happening. With both Lil Uzi and Kanye appearing on one track, Scott made one of the best and most surprising collaborations happen before people thought about something like Kanye and Lil Pump being possible. In a swagged out fashion both Scott and Vert introduce the carnivalesque sound of Astroworld and do so with immediacy and playfulness. And yet Kanye switches away and takes over with his last verse, going IT on people expecting a simple and funny verse, drowning us in his addiction, him feuding about his political and personal views and laying down his ever-apparent need to change and become other than the ye of last year. Maybe it is this sourness that made Scott decide to leave this track off his album, the unbearable weight of West and his multi-versed strength of mania. Vert may look the part, but West is the true rapper of 2018 in his spur of the moment attacks, giddiness and pure energy that knows no morals. 

49. Vince Staples – Tweakin (FM!)

Staples closes his excellent FM! with a nocturne side hook. By the hand of Kehlani´s hook, Vincent reflects on the deaths of his friends and coping with the fact that the neighborhood that produced him and his success is the same neighborhood where every weekend might mean new deaths. Coming from all the powerful bangers, "Tweakin" is the moment of reflection and realization that reveals the paradoxical nature of the Summertime universe Staples has been building since his earliest releases.

48. Freddie Gibbs – Weight (Freddie)

Leading us on with an RnB-esque smooth cover, “Weight” kicks of Freddie with the right dose of not a single fuck given. Freddie Gibbs goes in on a bass-heavy, almost carbon copy kind of beat, but his voice, the rasp, and the razor-sharp delivery make every bass hit pop. Just as this is an anthem for dope dealing by its subject matter, this one is for high volume and nightly car rides.

47. DJ Nigga Fox – Sinistro (Cranio)

At some point, Kuduro will become embedded in pop songs and mainstream productions like the sounds of dancehall have in recent years. Expect Drake hijacking the sound to churn out some hits and highlight others artists that were biding their time in the underground. Up until that point, DJ Nigga Fox, other artists from the Principe roster and beyond will create a base that will infect dancefloors in an international setting. Jumping from Prince to powerhouse Warp, Cranio is a mind bender from start to finish. The staggering sound effects and infectious beats of "Sinistro" skip the conscious hearing and crawl right into the subconsciousness. The tracks begin in such a dark tone that the catchiness might not become apparent a few listens in, and at that point, the sharp synth line will become tinnitus in your daily life.

46. Gang Gang Dance – Lotus (Kazuashita) 

Describing the multi-faceted music of Gang Gang Dance will never actually capture the sensation of hearing it for the first time (and about ten times after that). "Lotus" is an aquatic shift from "J-Tree", going from a life-affirming jungle to a meditative state of the sparse resonant beat opening a state of becoming anew. Lizzi Bougatsos could as well be a member of Boredoms or the more recent SAICOBAB, but more restraint and loving in her vocal approach. When the track lifts off, goes from aquatic to free-floating, the disorientation peaks in the very minute the band tapers off and lets every little shred of texture air out and devolve into ambiance.

45. Jóhann Jóhannsson – Odi et Amo (Theatre of Voices version) / Children of The New Dawn (Englaborn / Mandy OST)

By a twist of fate, Jóhann Jóhannsson died a mere month before his first album Englaborn saw a remastered re-release and expansion by reworks and variations of its tracks. Jóhannsson hit the scene in 2002 and within the following 15 years made his music to a staple in film soundtracks and everyone trying to express the sullen mood of his classical music with an electronic mindset. After his work on Orphee, Jóhannsson set out to work on his first album again, to finish or better what made his career and to implement his new self on his first musical outing. Maybe he felt there was a need to do this, step into his past and test his skills, or maybe, in an uncanny premonition, he felt the need to close the circle which always felt like a man deeply aware of his Weltschmerz and able to channel it through sound. The Theatre of Voices version of his statement track “Odi et Amo” trades the once computer generated voice speaking the poem on the human counterparts of love and hate with a ghostly choir, employing humane warmth where there was intended to be the abstract voice of a computer. This shift alone transforms the track and is Jóhannsson embracing his status and deftness as a composer. The track feels majestic and less insular with the idea of a choir singing these words over the subdued instrumental. And yet, the hue of lingering sadness translates, either way, becoming an update and not a completely new version without anything tracing back to the beauty of the past.

With all the reflection and the slow realization that the biggest and best composer to finally uproot the sameyness of Hans Zimmer is gone, it is necessary to highlight “Children of The New Dawn”, a track from the very different soundtrack Jóhannsson made for the film Mandy. This is a retro style of hard rock music gone cinematic. The faint vibes of a band playing a song and deconstructing their sound in a jam are steadied by metallic electronics, making for a spacious kind of tension no swelling strings could manage to capture. This is an arrival, the aural evidence left behind by a man that never hid behind one way to work or to think. Just like he was big enough to kill his sonics for Mother, he lived for the subject matter to translate and catch you visually and aurally in the best way possible. With both Englaborn and Mandy reaching us this year, the spectrum seems endless, as was the creative drive of Johann Johannsson.

44. Nils Frahm – Human Range (All Melody)

Following Jóhannsson with one of his contemporary that might be able to carry the flame in his own way, Nils Frahm was building and collapsing worlds with every track on All Melody. “Human Range” stresses his idea of pushing his own threshold and introducing the voice into his workflow. While his music never felt as if it was lacking this component, it was absent apart from Frahm himself harmonizing with his piano playing in a goose-bump inducing way. This instance serves as a reference point for how "Human Range" develops and how the choir of voices is utilized. Every instrument is a voice, a breathing entity here. When the vocals come in after a long drawn out trombone setting the stage, they work as another layer of the strings at first, but take the front in time to deliver short bursts of raising the volume until they diminish into the background again. At first, listen, it feels as if Frahms had set up his instruments in his newly built studio and noticed the choir he invited halfway through the track, but with due time you´ll come to realize that he was always aware of when, where and why. Working with the title, it naturally is the human range of the voice, but with the perspective of a studio dude having at hands all the instruments he could collect, it must be the range of humanities way to interact with the environment, build an atmosphere and affect others. The voice is an integral part, but, at the end of a day's work, all is sound.

43. Oneohtrix Point Never – Still Stuff That Doesn´t Happen (Age Of)

It would be the easy route to call the tracks on Age Of, broken pop or simple restructuring of radio-pop. Moreover, Lopatin went where his work with Anohni has direct him and taken the cues of this ultra aware fashion of synth-pop that deals with identity and the fluidity of the body in his own language of abstract jazz, chamber music and the Mad Max vision of a future between barren lands and 4Chan. Anonhi´s tenderness is like a blimp on a radar that one wants to move closer too, radiation with the opposite effect of wanting to come in full contact with. When it first loses all electronic effects, the plucked strings, the Lopatin cembalo pull you away and fit your listening into the No man´ s land of a sound collage never allowing for a footing to be found and multiplying the yearning for understanding. A closer listen to the human speaking through the waves of noise. There are sad songs and these is “Still Stuff Taht Doesn´t Happen”, a strange tale on the human condition that ultimately leads you nowhere.

42. Zombie-Chang – Ai No Seide (Petit Petit Petit)

Going from her electronic heavy and fast-paced songs, “Ai No Seide” is Zombie-Chang channeling an indie rock vibe in the name of Waxahatchee. Here her singing voice takes all the shine with a strong hook and off the bat songwriting tackling all the feels and building something uplifting and easy on the ears without any need for effects of the loud and obnoxious j-pop realms (although I still love them).

41. Keiji Haino & Sumac - American Dollar Bill - Keep Facing Sideways, You're Too Hideous To Look At Face On

The music that sprang from the Haino and Sumac collaboration was quite hard to imagine before a single snipped was released. After the release, the album made even less sense as an avid fan of Sumac and their usage of pummeling metal assaults to express the most basic human motivations and feelings. Maybe it was just the lack of Aaron Turner singing or the even more deconstructed approach the band had to take in playing with Haino, but you can hear their growth as a band by the minute, from track to track and lastly in their live show and taking their Love in Shadows which was recorded before American Dollar Bill to the stage. The title track of the album “American Dollar Bill - Keep Facing Sideways, You´re Too Hideous To Look At Face On” has Sumac finding their groove to the experimental mindbending of Keiji Haino. For the first ten minutes, the parts just dissolve into each other, with Haino throwing in some lines, letting noise and insanity take over the sonics and Sumac serving as a backing band an trying to soundtrack what is happening before them. After that Haino goes into a ranting spoken word style, stuttering, shouting and repeating the same phrases or particles in ecstasy. You can hear the guitars hanging in the back, their strings being touched in full gain and just waiting for their turn to burst away. And yet, they remain subdued, there is no crazy break, just a few touches here and there and Nick Yacyshyn going jazz in the most minimalist way possible. After this point, both parts work in unison that evolves Sumac´s usual style of big moments and heavy onslaughts into a visceral noise that fits Haino´s cat-like scream and downtrodden performance. Everything drowns in noise and disorients itself from any semblance of a band and a solo performer in the same room. Here Sumac becomes Haino, take over his off the bat improvisation to let their sound and their own definition of a band dissipate. Just with the many references of Turner to becoming and changing states, the three-piece broke away from every single idea their music carried with their first two releases and invented themselves anew with the help of the experimental music buddha Haino.