Top Albums 2019 Part II 40 – 31

40. David Granström – A Distant Color, Secluded

The synth rises, the never-ending grandeur evoking sounds of A distant color, secluded create a cosmic event of sorts. The first tracks, while holding their own, live to end in the closing, 20-minute opus "Waning Moon". Granström is a sound artist obsessed with the inner-workings of sound-synthesis, fine-tuning tones to achieve overarching timbre and using algorithmic processes to structure his patterns and build these tracks as perfectly shaped pieces. Going with harmonics that enable the sonic intricacies of what the universe must feel like, the push and pull of symmetries and asymmetrical listening as human beings find its greatest expression in this LP. Intriguingly enough, Granström never feels like he´s simply letting a computer do his thing or is reliant on the perfection of numbers and patterns, there is warmth in his production, the sonic life, dwelling within your senses and slowing unraveling into motionless, brisk air.

39. Broken English Club – White Rats II

Returning with the second entry of his White Rats trilogy, Oliver Ho speeds up the dread and banging industrial anthems. The narrative, post-punk tracks remain and don´t feel like simple interludes anymore, but above that, the album shines when the dull drums, the metal-on-metal comes into full effect and paints sinister streets and a society obliterated by poverty and crime. In a way, White Rats II falls between the apocalyptic fever dream of a world like the Walking Dead but doesn´t go for fantasy or the supernatural. Ho describes the tracks full of grit and senseless deterioration and by his words alone you understand the visuals that inspire what might be the best parallel of black metal-becoming techno music without turning towards pure noise or harbingers of war and death in the vein of Vatican Shadow. While Ho is in love with old TV narrations and the thatcherist oppression that made rave music a means of resistance, White Rats II feels like the futuristic sounds of a post-Brexit Britain even the best writers of Black Mirror wouldn´t dare describe. The streets are empty, your sense of democracy and society has dissolved into the underhanded methods of perpetuating power against the people in a prison state and the unfettered beings of dusk turn out to be rabid dogs that stroll around to kill and eat whatever comes their way. If you need a vision of tomorrow and your aural realism is the common man's pessimism, White Rats II is the place to be.

38. MC Yallah x Debmaster – Kubali

The Nyege Nyege Tapes companion label Hakuna Kulala focuses on the less (?) experimental and club leaning output form the greater East African countries that make up the ever-growing roster of artists around Nyege Nyege. Their first full-fledged full-length LP, however, has MC Yallah and producers Debmaster ganging up to make explosive rap with an electronic guise that takes industrial, dnb and freakish trap beats to let loose what feels more experimental and left-field then many other releases on the label this year. Still reeling from the energy that was the Sounds of Sisso compilation in 2017, the need for a wider cast of MC, especially female rappers to take the helm has me praying in anticipation of every single release from these houses. Yallah heard these pleas and spits unapologetically fast flows over the dark production Debmaster provides. The purely instrumental tracks show the chops of the latter and provide sweet ear fillers between tracks, but never really steal the show of both artists appearing together on the track. Title track "Kubali" is the ice-cold trap anthem kicking of Yallah´s ability to find and ride a pocket under the 90s call back until the bass hits in full. "Balibanyoma" is the great war cry, the spaciousness of Debmasters electronics becoming the needed counterpart for MC Yallahs frantic action and "Sifa Leero" has the duo taking it slow and steady whereas the incredible heart piece of "Dunia" is a crowdpleaser shown by their performance on the Boiler Room as it a perfect instance of swag being alive and well in 2019. Thanks to albums like this, we get first-hand accounts of different movements of sound and rap being transcended in the global south while the west sits in awe.

37. black midi - Schlagenheim

At some point in time, between King Crimson and Can pushing the idea of guitar music to unknown territories, making psychedelia a middle-class experience, rock music was destined to sound new and refreshing for years to come. It wasn´t about the big choruses, the rock attitude or the huge following screaming teens, but the exploration of sound, long stretches of improvisation and becoming one with your instrument to express everything that comes to mind. But the very real need for the masses being swayed, for simplicity over experimentation and anxiety over free-flowing emotion, rock music made many twists and turns. The more refreshing it is to hear bands like black midi reconnect to their progressive heritage whilst sounding different and completely untouched by expectations of genre and musical ancestry. In that, hailing the British band as the next big thing after the Arctic Monkeys is as fitting as it is failing the premise of their music. The off the wall lyricism and vocal styles by Picton, the psychedelic guitars ranging from metal, math rock into funk and folk music and the stellar drumming by Morgan Simpson exude perpetual creativity. Apart from the Arctic Monkeys and their snarky attitude towards success while making poppy rock music, black midi seem only concerned with themselves and their ability to make their music as strange and impressionistic as possible. When Picton goes for the gibberish dada bits of pieces or the whole band tosses out a driving and catchy song for a crazy freakout only a few minutes in, their collective ADHD turns neon pink and as a listener, you have the seldom experience of surprise and excitement in a genre that – apart from its most extreme iterations – relies on repetition and traditional verse-choruses-verse structures. Schlagenheim is exercise in patience and a carnival of unpredictable sounds.

36. Show Me The Body – Dog Whistle

Dog Whistle is the soundtrack of angry revolution, embarking on a fight against hegemonic rule and institutions in utter disgust of how these structures have pushed morality and ideas of freedom to the brink of non-existence. With a rhythm section that sounds ripped from industrial music most of the time, the anger of Rage Against the Machine in their heyday and the snark of hardcore and punk music, Show Me The Body make political music without preaching or going for the ironic take on things. This lets Dog Whistle sit somewhere between Full of Hell and Idles and throughout their constant drive and changing up their sound Show Me The Body become their own beast. Nowhere else have I´ve heard a powerful statement inspired by concentration camps and forced labor moving into an anti-capitalist chant. The immediacy of Julian Cashwan Pratt´s vocals fit the harsh instrumental side of the album, and might sometimes fail to live to the rest of the album's standard on the spoken word tracks "Animal In A Dream" and "Die For The Earth To Live". This has nothing to do with the content and meaning of Pratts lyrical ideas but the power of relying on politics and making them felt through harsh sounds. If our times need a musical mirror, it might as well be the wild sounds of Dog Whistle.

35. Maja S. K. Ratkje - Sult

The rattling, snarling and hissing pipe organ on Sult produces some of the best and off-kilter ambiance imaginable. At times the vibe comes off as broken and akin to a cartoon or comedy version of organ playing, but most of the time, especially when Maja Ratkje´s voice melds with these sounds, there is a haunting effect of alien realms of beauty transitioning into your lived experience. Composed for a ballet centered around the novel by Knut Hamson´s semi-biographical story about a starving writer, you can picture Ratkje herself as a similar musician, playing her pipe organ, clashing with her unsatisfied audience while bringing pure virtuosity to the forefront. Between thinking about the performative qualities of her music and the synergy of these sounds and her voice for a ballet, the recording is spacious and carries an inviting warmth – the handmade nature of it protrudes Ratkja voice, the usual sublime nature of the pipe organ oscillating between the minimalism of a dirty street and the full-fledged transcendence of a concert hall. Nowhere else would you find a whistled song going from kitsch to disquiet in an instant.

34. british murder boys – fire in the still air

This live set by the british murder boys, or Regis and Surgeon brings every aspect of their very own Birmingham sound to the front and acts as a relentless assault on the senses. The first five minutes are enough to captivate the audience or you as a listener without the need for any reaction or external sounds (guess you would even hear it anyways), just Regis´ incitements over the evil bang of Surgeons drums and you´re inside the bunker of fire in the still air. After this almost chopped and screwed beginning the duo never let up, the beat bangs on at a steady eardrum-shattering bpm and grime ensures. As dance music in the minds of many is meant for positive reinforcement, what bmb create through the thick atmosphere of aggression is much more in line with pushing positive and freeing movement while remaining in a political sphere of techno music actually carrying a spirit and meaning in banging beats and cavernous drum patterns. These sounds are in essence anti-consumerist and anti-ideological, creating a space of relief in their vacuous tension and complex liminality. Surely these sets are as much meant for a night out to forget your everyday life, as they are a reflexion of channeling and criticizing the circumstances that create unrest and disillusionment within society; in turn, leading to leisure being created as glorified distraction and diversion. fire in the still air sounds and feels like raising your middle finger and saying "no" in a way that will remain noise for every other person but resurrect and reinforce everybody within this industrious nihilist exercise.

33. Kevin Gates – I´m Him

Of all the rappers claiming to be the hardest working in the game, the title certainly belongs to Kevin Gates. Blessing us with a release almost every year, never featuring other artists (who is Bread Winner Entertainment apart from Gates?) and not dropping in quality or going for the endless repetition or stupid bangers. Gates is a spitting and writing machine, maybe reiterating some themes in his work, but never taking the same angle twice and opening his wordplay and emotionality from release to release in various ways. After the pop-leaning Isiah, his second official studio album goes for the sound he was performing on his superb mixtape series Luca Brasi and By Any Means and leaves out the songs that would sound unfinished or rather meant for the quick consumption of mixtapes. Here Gates zooms in and out of his lustful love anthems, his downtrodden reflections on crime with bravado and regret, never pulling any punches over 17 tracks. While Kendrick and other lyricists excel in letting you into their political and personal side as a person that is struggling to reconcile multiple personalities, Gates is the purely personal, affectioned gangster, lover, and storyteller. His politics don´t matter, he is prone to quoting his own bland mantra of self-sufficiency, but when he spits the same lines of street-wisdom, you feel his presence and his humanity in all its magnificence and contradiction. He can even go Caribbean for "Pretend" or sugary on "Say It Twice" without losing his voice and sense of authenticity. The rest are all bangers, pure introspection by a man that collapses inner- and outer self with his willpower alone.

32. Woman´s Hour – Ephyra

One of the least expected returns of this year, Ephyra shows a group of like-minded individuals after the collapse of being a band and trying to sound a voice in an overtly populated space of music and the pressures that come with trying to sell and make a living of being a musician. I commend their strength to relive and rework their tragedy to a complete album and to shine a light on their supposed failure of a band. And yet Ephyra is far from being fan service. Their unique blend of synth-driven tenderness on the intricacy of human relationship remains central to the experience, but their usual style of songs like "Don´t Speak" or "Mirrorball" becomes at times superseded by tracks like "Heathen" or the stunningly crafted "From Eden Into Exile Into The Dust". Even if the band was struggling to live up to external expectation and on the brink of collapse when writing these songs, their drive and love towards their music was always apparent and retrieving the husks to polish them three years after their end feels like the most "Woman´s Hour" thing to do. I´ve always loved the intimacy of Fiona Burgess's voice, but the duet of "Mirrorball" with either William Burgess or Josh Hunnisett tinges the song and others where both voices appear with different tactile strength. Encountering Woman´s Hour in 2013 brought a band to the forefront that lived in the same realm as other dream pop-leaning outfits using noise and heavy instrumentation or the opposite of strings and more classical approaches to enliven their perspectives. Woman´s Hour reveled by letting you enter into their headspace and feeling a certain closeness and closed-off nature in their music. Granted, this world might have been difficult to enter for most, but their thoughts and letters to relationship and the overall human condition will remain with me and will hopefully be dug up by others for years to come. Let´s hope the trios musical lives haven´t concluded fully and they might rise again in a different form and name.

31. Deathprod – Occulting Disk

You know shit is bad if a soundscape artist on a hiatus comes back to bleed you dry in the attempt to give a statement on the recent rise of nationalism and politics of hate and fear. In liner notes written by Will Oldham, the project Occulting Disk finds its best description in the term "being impaled with sound". Impaled with sound as being confronted and coming to terms with hate, fear and the worst iteration: hatred without fear. Between the many images put forth by the short text accompanying the album, sound impaling you as a means to spring into attention, reflection and action is Occulting Disk in a nutshell. The synth waves, flashes of noise in subtle and more abrasive instances give a visceral feeling to a state of mind shocked by recent developments. While many political scholars or schools still like to teach democracy as a high point of reason and the discourse of people well aware of it being the height of reason and discourse, Occulting Disk is the swan song and lapsed reminder that this state is neither secure nor a requirement of the contract of what humanity means. Deathprod molds these eerie instrumentals titled "Occultation" with the terrific call-to-arms alarmist opener "Disappearance / Reappearance" as husks of remembrance and energy. Following his sentiment of fighting negativity with its opposite, you are to strife for understanding these sounds as hopeful and affirmative while questioning if they are expressions of the counterpart, the negative force or an antiseptic. Maybe Occulting Disk is meant as source material for alchemy, changing what is into something different, transitions and having to pay a fee or withstanding the inevitable loss of sacred materials. Either way, in my experience Occulting Disk, is the moment of reality breaking through with the noise of realization and the nausea of sudden deafness. I´ll always remember Kendrick Lamar´s verse on "Lust" about "hoping election wasn´t true" and the flustering sense of having to admit that the worst in people such as nationalism, racism and sheer hate of difference is alive and well in every society and will forever make viable topics to build politics around. Deathprod is shaking us, slapping us and expressing the yearning to finally understand and do something about it, even if it is just to learn to hear those that hate without fear.