Top Albums 2022 Part V 10 – 01

10. Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul – Topical Dancer

Rarely do dance music centered albums come along with such political urgency. Topical Dancer follows in the line of Arular and Kala, the first two M.I.A outings that were aural and political lighter fuel. Charlotte Adigery and Bolis Pupul magically switch from tongue in cheek moments in “Esperanto” to sarcasm in “Blenda”. Lyrics like “Siri, can you tell me where I belong” or “You’re the Columbus to my America” on “Thank You” not only make you chuckle, they encapsulate the strange awareness of a POC living in a dominantly white culture. Topical Dancer handles these moments of alienation with comedy, but never uses laughter as a cheap thrill. Tracks like “Reappropiate” and “Ich Mwen” grapple with the intersections of race and sexuality in an honest manner. “Ich Mwen” prominently features Charlotte’s mother, the singer Christiane Adigery in a heart to heart of mother and child, touching upon self-care, motherhood, and the strange values of a Chrisitan culture of self-sacrifice rolled up in one. All this happens between moments of ambient soundscapes, acid-tinged bops, or the spacy house of standout “Mantra”. None of the themes weigh down the musical bliss the duo creates, their thoughtful compositions and political leanings blend into their electronics and incentive to make people dance. Dance to think and grown.

 

09. JID – The Forever Story

The Forever Story has all the makings of an instant classic. It follows JID’s career as his third major label LP and is a continuation, as a sort of prequel, to The Never Story. Here the rapper examines his growing up, with many references to poverty experienced. The unique perspective JID finds however, is rooted in the shared experience of family, best represented through the tracks “Bruddanem” and “Sistanem”, dedicated to his brothers and sister and reflecting their relationships as well as JID’s growth through their kinship. Much of The Forever Story is a social and communal biography, the people JID meets making his mind and changing the trajectory of his life. The rapper accomplishes this without using the same inflections and flow twice, going ham with Earthgang on “Can’t Punk Me”, laid-back with 21 Savage on “Surround Sound”, or when trading verses with Yasiin Bey and Lil Wayne back to back. All the guest verses on the album mirror the personal narratives, much in line with how J. Cole appears as stencil of inspiration and instigator of JID’s growth in the background. In all this, “Kody Blu 31” is one of the best tracks of 2022 and a career-defining piece by JID. Not only does he carry hope and pain from the personal to the historic and communal with ease, he does this by carrying the metaphor of “swang” throughout. And to top this off, his singing voice is one to behold.

 

08. Demdike Stare – Testpressings

Compiled on cassette for the first time since their run of EPs from 2013 until 2015, Testpressings is the release I will point people towards if they need killer gear to test their stereo and are preparing sets. The duo showcases their craft and command of programming drums and weirding out a mix of a banger time and time again. Different from their usual work, this here has them streamlined at high bpm tracks meant for the floors. Bastardized jungle on “Collusion”, cavernous garage on “Misappropiation”, bass driven house on “Eulogy”, the beginning of an industrial track taken to full-length as “Fail” and springy punk a la Container on “Past Majesty” – this doesn’t even cover half of the album clocking in almost two hours of insanity. While Demdike repeatedly show their disregard for straightforward electronic music to dance to, with their latest released pointing towards the anarchival excavations of sounds, gear, and ambiances as they revel in them, this does not take away from the commanding craft they can bring to such productions. If anything, their experimental hinges let their club tracks sound holistic and inventive.

 

07. Lupe Fiasco – Drill Music in Zion

Much like the painter and the patron on the track “Ms. Mural”, Lupe Fiasco’s music has been an uphill battle with genre expectations, current trends, and people, mostly label executives, but fans of his work as well, telling him whether he is successful or not. Perfectly encapsulated in the line “Less like putting on some makeup, more like severing a face”, Lupe’s past work was a shapeshifting undertaking , taking on multiple personas, narratives and styles to capture a larger connection to himself and to a lesser part his audience. Ideas of Lupe being a rapper’s rapper as well as underrated and a failed pop star all float around simultaneously, something Lupe has struggled with, more often than once calling his career in music over and ceasing to release music for several year. At the end of “Ms. Mural”, we learn that this is all setup for an enraged painter setting his patron on fire – a cunning deception to create a new work in burning down his old. Drill Music in Zion does much of this without sacrificing Lupe’s rich history. Here, apart from what he was trying to achieve on the Drogas trilogy turned duology, the rapper delivers a collection of songs unchained from higher concepts but fully entrenched in the themes central to his career from a young age. Lupe can be hedonistic on “Autoboto” but is always aware of the materialism that makes culture tick and rap appear as the genre of slinging raps, like slinging drugs with the violence connecting both for a white audience of appreciators. The “drill” in his music is an acrimonious look on the genre of rap focused on violence, bling, and loss as well as a drilling down to core of existence and finer motivations. Every theme Lupe tackles on the album shines in his pin-point accuracy while retaining his illustrious play on words and making everything seem connected to videogames, religion, and TV. Without sounding like a disservice to the overall oeuvre, Drill Music seamlessly connects to Food and Liquor and The Cool but could not have been made a reality without Lasers, Tetsou and Youth, Drogas and the second Food and Liquor. No discards, but the honing of a blade that is Lupe Fiasco.

 

06. Vatican Shadow - Coast Guard Gulf of Blood / It Stands to Conceal Remaster

No good year without another release by Vatican Shadow. His newest attack on the ideas of democracy through aural warfare in the form of Coast Guard Golf of Blood follows in the more viscerally tinted Black Bird LP. The beats and combinatory rhythms rarely reach into forward-facing club territories but remain in the abstract clang of materialities of warfare. At times, following an aquatically minded theme, this project edges closer to Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, but retains pressure in what would be ambiance in the latter. I must connect this release with the superb remaster and reissue of the It Stands to Conceal compilation. Drawing from earlier works of Vatican Shadow, this release compliments the more recent extensions into the underbelly of political histories with stabbing immediacy. Especially the microverse of Jordanian Descent, which makes up the first two tracks on the compilation is a powerful recall to the most haunting compositions of Fernow’s career. Not only do these tracks add to the industrial techno mindset of the project but appear as conflict in the form of airwaves. With political disarray showing its extensions in the examinations of January 6 or the haphazard leaving of Afghanistan and its renewed capture by the Taliban, the overarching themes of warfare and concealment give the experience of relistening to Vatican Shadows’ work even more eerie dimensions. This mechanist onslaught of electronics utilized provides new fodder of reference to a world wrought by conflict but stuck in eudaimonia.

 

05. Maxime Denuc – Nachthorn

Composed entirely on a midi-controlled organ situated in a Duesseldorf Church, Maxime Denuc’s Nachthorn is a proper mindbender of capabilities and expectations. Allowing for the computer-assisted triggering, programming, and sequencing of an organ, the instrument itself mutates from usual contemplative or spiritual sounds to bright synthesizer-like swells of phrases. Denuc utilizes these sounds in the full effect of what techno and dub music would make out to be strong lead melodies. Only here the organ is used for every element, from whistling percussives to staccatos and bass-laden low-end drones. The transgression of organ-playing into techno sounds would be very much at home in records by Nils Frahm, Kompakt or how Tim Hecker turned samples into glaring explosions on Love Streams. For lovers of the instrument, this is a stark showcase of the timbral and mechanic strength of the instrument as well its evolution. In term of electronic music akin to techno, Nachthorn carries with it the sunrises after raves and the euphoria of sharing a time and space giving way to the melancholy of bidding farewell and the comedown of heightened senses and bodily exuberance. I can’t help but imagine how this album would sound in a church and over a massive soundsystem, steadily carrying and resolving the duality into unending rises of timbral colour and percussive hammering as if the bass was three concrete walls removed.

 

04. Shinichi Atobe – Love Of Plastic

This transmutation by Shinichi Atobe plays like an uncanny spiritual successor to Susumu Yokota’s album Sound of Sky. The latter was an album full of house bliss channeled through Yokota’s growing ability to create ambient tracks as soundscapes with a thump and drive. Tracks like “King of Darkness” and “Crash Marble” stand as perfect examples of how to express house music’s sunny side with cooling airwaves of lounge and breakbeats. Love of Plastic sees Atobe use the same spirit to create his most cheerful collection of songs yet. Everything is centered on movement, even the trickles of piano on “Beyond the Pale” appear as downtempo reminder of high-spirited times and glorious sunrises to come. Atobe allows acid to shine on “Love of Plastic 8” while tinging his production in a powdery disco-esque string sample on “Love of Plastic 6”. Regardless of the inflection, the rhythm sections bustle and brim with springy energy, at times aquatically subdued kick drums underlie the tracks as a warm embrace. Everything leads to the subtle finish of “Ocean 2” coupled with the summery wave of “Severina”. In all the obscurity of Atobe’s music and release policy, this LP feels like love letter to the subtle refreshment of sounds in summer by an author that is more than capable of tension and darker moods in his usual work. Like the title might suggest, this is artificial perfection, a revolutionary process molded into the everydayness of usability and comfort.

 

03. Chat Pile – God’s Country

Slint are a quick reference when it comes to Chat Pile. In some nooks and crannies of his psyche, Raygun Busch is Brian McMahan’s purple Grimace. The despair of art grown into desperate life, screaming and wailing somewhere between performance and insanity of understanding the situation our world is in. Chat Pile update not the formula of Slint but the rage that was present in the direst moments of the band’s album. God’s Country begins with screams of “Hammers and Grease” on “Slaughterhause” and the instruments pretty much mimic the noise you might imagine on the killing floor that is the polluting exploitative behemoth we call society. This freakout is followed by the equally harrowing “Why”, dealing with homelessness in the paradox of available housing and insurmountable wealth of others. While the band may be open to meming their own song with captions like “why do people have to park inside?” on Instagram, the flesh pounding nature of their music is anything other than a mere meme. Chat Pile can turn from these harrowing observations to abstract pieces like “Pamela” in an instant. From the directly political to iterating on rage and violence by writing from the perspective of a grieving mother turned serial killer, even if fictional in nature. “Anywhere” is one of my favorite tracks of 2022 and sees the band turning up this spine-grabbing noise in their riffs and the grinding bass for a fusion of Joe Casey, Nu Metal and the abstract expressionism of brains splattered on sneakers. The band’s ability to play on themes of time through their sound as well as express the mind-blowing reality of surviving a shooting amp up the noise in your brain even further – this riff will not leave me for a long time. God’s Country is industrial music in the best sense of the word. Technology utilized to process sentiments of slaughter, despair, greed, and distress of being alive into a burst of rage and disobedience. I wonder if the “grimace” in the closing track isn’t actually a figure stopping you from killing yourself, fueled by the creative process described as involving massive amounts of THC. Substances to overcome the ultimate futility at the core of Chat Pile’s critique.

 

02. Dream Unending – Song of Salvation

Song of Salvation offers the epitome of grace and violence packed in an album without operatic allures or anything close to experimental art. In this, Dream Unending move in the unwritten trajectories of what great doom metal music should achieve. Before drawing from a simplistic form of heaviness and martial riffage meant to overwhelm, the duo forges their impression to a consistent and concise embodiment of both harrowing density and gentle fluidity. You could listen to Song of Salvation for the oceanic evocations of the reverb trails alone. Every strum and chord sparkles and flutters, the dampest signals still appear in perfect balance with the unyielding onslaughts of pure affect and forward-driven motion. Both the title track and “Ecstatic Reign” are superb longform compositions with tension and release at the right moments and not an inch of fat or bloat in the form of useless repetition or meandering on an emotion to overarch the experience with musical or lyrical meaning. On the side of meaning, Vella and DeTore, titling themselves as Architect of Dreams and The Bridge Between Two Worlds respectively, leave enough room for interpretation in their meditation on grief and salvation. You could read much of this in quite literal or romanticized terms, for sure. For me, the atmosphere of Song of Salvation strangely points toward a very different understanding of the political fraying of societies. As we climb out of the allegedly collective experience of the pandemic, the racial and social difference are tucked in between calls of declining trust in democracy and renewed fears of economic decline. In its calls for empathy between pain, Song of Salvation echoes a somber hope of renewal and trust in utopian musings. As the traces of reverb find their decline, the lines from “Secret Grief” are stuck in my mind, compassion as release and unachievable ideal: “The pain we share/ Is mourned alone”.

 

01. Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

“2Pac dead, gotta think for yourself”

Capturing the scope of Kendrick’s fifth studio album is insurmountable. Taking the evolution of the persona of a self-loathing rapper as a starting point, Mr. Moral & The Big Steppers offers the first time that this trope finds a sense of conclusion. Drawing Kendrick in a triangle with both Kanye West and Drake, rappers he mentions in his quest for overcoming his daddy issues, both rappers have failed to offer up a perspective on their crafty and lofty expositions of the lavish life full of hurt and betrayal. Kanye changed his sound, then his name, his affiliations and lastly went into a frenzy between religion and megalomania – something that should be acknowledged not as pure hubris and ill-will, but the misguided plays of capitalism and West perceiving himself to be a player of value in a rigged game of vested interest and carnivalesque spectacle. A black rapper still provides a field day for attention grabbing headlines, outrages in media filtering into dismissals of craft, feeding back into villainification and hatred towards those who are perceived to be agents of power and centers of guidance for some. Drake, on the other hand, guided his craft into a chameleon-esque persona, that is rarely able to transgress his own musical worlds of love, wealth and stunting while heartbroken. He does this with different sounds and an evolving caste of younger artists feeding his craft. In other words, Drizzy is still the personification of petty heartbreak, and he will continue to be a the forefront of this as long as there are artists to put on the map and sounds to bring to a larger audience.

We might also look at how these three rappers incorporate their fatherhood into their musical careers, with Kanye playing into his own kardashianification as an absent and off-the-rails father (as in villianification for the universe of real life *unscripted* drama pouring into his actual life) and Drake parallelizing his musical image from his private life for cute pics and media appearances that surely help to do numbers.

Kendrick gives a resounding answer to questions of becoming a father and being a self-loathing superstar in the eyes of the public:

He went to therapy.

The arc of Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is a genuine and at times unapologetically stark look into Kendrick’s personal life and sees him figuring out his vices and position in the world for his children to witness. I’ve always been intrigued by the moment of “Keisha’s Song” of sitting down “his little sister” to play her that song and think Mr. Morale is meant as a recorded journey for his children to hear. The episodes of having sex with white women as a reviolation seeped in colonial racism stands as strong as the long walk towards redeeming his ways and admitting to needing help. Kendrick artfully plays with being the black-faced entertainer until Whitney, his wife and therapist of sorts, urges him to “stop tap-dancing around the conversation” on the back end of the first LP. Throughout the album, he transcends his materialist self “grieving different” in his riches to recenter himself on his faith, thoughts, and family. He accomplishes this through meditations on masculinity, cancel culture and his own hyped-up role as the savior of modern rap music. All to arrive at the simple statement of “I chose me” as the ultimate rebuttal of appearing as a persona other than a flawed human being, not a rap god, nor a Christian finding betterment right this minute (as Kanye sometimes tries). As a fan, falling victim to apotheosing artists, especially someone like Kendrick is easy, and he shows us how this position looped back into his destructive persona in harrowing ways. In the end, Lamar sets himself free, a feat none of his fellow rapper even thought about without counting sales or viewing themselves as moguls or eternal hermits with no admitted interest in the game. Mr. Morale is the tale of growth, thinking for yourself and overcoming a world of racist and capitalist ties that have existed for generations. Above all, it is a personal story of growth that pretty much does not concern us beyond its existence as unique and memorable musical experience. A creative stake Lamar seeks to continue in his work for pgLang and beyond music as well.

Over Section 80 and good kid, Kendrick established his name as a historic being. On To Pimp A Butterfly he bought into the idea of having to be a savior and ameliorating his success by conscious efforts to change the culture, which led to the inevitable struggle of being a savior on DAMN. Now, and again, Lamar appears to be a peerless musician and creative, turning to his personal life not only as a marker of a larger cultural image, but in the humanity of what a once younger Kendrick dubbed as HiiiPower to begin with. Heart, Honor, and Respect as an audible task of self.