TranscendNoise

 4 0. Prurient – Creationist (The Ultimate Evil) Creationist is a stark addition to the style of noise compositions Prurient excelled at in 2017’s Rainbow Mirror . The idea of doom electronics as music drenched in noise without sacrificing listenability for alienation nor musicality is something that sets apart Prurient from many other noise artists. Conceptual strength and treating his fans with hand-crafted packages full of ephemera and goodies is what makes these sounds of horror and disgust even more enticing. Somewhere between the connection of the creation myth of the bible and references to the New York serial killer dubbed Son of Sam, the different ephemera, for instance in form of an anti-record, become a form of research into a subject expressed in sound by Fernow. In recent years Fernow has begun to split up his three main projects into more distinct wholes. In the case of Prurient this entails largely eschewing any beats or techno-esque structure for long hisses of no...

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, b...

40. Gas – Rausch  Like many albums of this year´s list, Rausch represents a way to channel the recent Zeitgeist in sound. Gas build Rausch to grapple with the ideas of home, nationalism and right-wing sentiments, hijacking them for their absurd politics for a visceral thump that overrides any sense of comfort and meaningful discourse. The best description there is, is placing yourself, sonically, on the fringes of a Volksfest and experiencing the same sounds and affects as Rausch in its 60-minute runtime. The instinctive stomp, the musicality of feet marching lurking in the back all the time, surfacing for acute minutes of semblance, horror, even warmth to die out again and get lost in the miasma of sound that Wolfgang Voigt creates. Rausch evokes two distinct feelings and collapses them for a political and social statement: The feeling of ecstasy and the feeling of stark discomfort that can only exist in traditionalism and the untraceable affect of your environment going sour...

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 aggre...