TranscendNoise

30. Caroline Polachek – PANG Polachek's first album under her full name and without the guise of another project or approach shares parallels with Charli XCX self-titled Charli released this year. This doesn´t only apply for both artists choosing the futuristic PC Music production team to exponentially grow the instrumental side of their music but in their attempt of going for the heart of pop experienced in their own voices. Polachek released two more experimental or left-leaning albums, notable her first 2014 album Arcadia as Ramona Lisa, trying to put her voice in all its effortless baroque abilities to the front and ultimately bordering from airy to incredibly vapid art-pop. On PANG the best elements of her vocal abilities grow together with her sensibility for sweet pop about love and heartbreak, elements that made the best Chairlift tracks lustrous or would come to the forefront when lending her voice to artists like Blood Orange. Opposite to Charli , PANG is an as...

20. The Body & Full of Hell – Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light The Body are one of the most interesting acts in heavy music by far and them teaming up (again) with Full of Hell, another band that stretches the perception of what heavy or abrasive music can be, provides one of the finest moments of 2017. Full of Hell´s Trumpeting Ecstasy saw the band experiment with different textures and feeling themselves, ranging from noise-ridden escapes to featuring Nicole Dollangangers in a toned down ballad of sorts. With The Body, the band gained a counterpart that is equally into noise and atmosphere over aggression, handing a sense of naiveté and wonder to their refinement. In return, The Body found a group of people that revel in immediacy and help develop their own affection for grinding sounds into beat-driven joints and forward-thinking musical ideas. Apart from these comparisons and additions, the project does sound like one entity playing music. Ascending A Mountain esp...

20. Oneohtrix Point Never – Garden Of Delete Toying with Oneohtrix Point Never and his conceptual ideas is great: Garden Of Delete is his reoccurrence of youth, the revenge of a kid, not cool enough to be grunge. His own Jeremy, “Ezra” is not the story of shooting up schools, it´s about a acne ridden kid. Garden Of Delete as a whole is the guitar wielding dream of Daniel Lopatin, the wish of becoming like the great bands of the 90´s, shredding away their pain. But dude only knows his electronics, his weird sounds and warped processed voices and has to make do with what he can. So you´ll hear the weirdest and roughest of Oneo´s digital clash yet, like puberty, not knowing where to go and what to do, your face melting constantly. 19. Battles – La Di Da Di La Di Da Di is pure energy. A band playing math-rock with such an intensity and sense of progression over crazy starts and stops, you´ll never catch a hint of strain in the twists and turns of their music. ...

10. Alessandro Cortini – La Guardia ( Risveglio ) La Guardia is mind-set music for intellectual work as well as getting ready for a fistfight. There is creativity in the way Cortini utilizes the Roland MC 202 and TB-303 synthesizers. With this minimalistic setup he creates dense patterns, with a good amount of noise and grime but still able to appear clearly constructed and satisfyingly predictable. While I myself evoke images and Risveglio could easily be the soundtrack to a documentary of any sort or a new film by Nicolas Winding Refn, the purity of these tracks should not be overfilled with representations. Mind-set is the term, and you can feel how Cortini is transferring his onto the switchboards and showing us how mastering technology is close to overriding mind and matter. 09. Empress Of – Standard ( Me ) Empress Of delivered the best electro-pop album of this year. Not only because of her superb and varied set of instrumentals, but for her songwriting. N...