TranscendNoise

20. Pusha T – It's Almost Dry We might never again receive this kind of production masterpiece. With Kanye West moving further and further away from the charity of his peers with his comments and odd behaviours and his peers failing to help him in any meaningful way, another meeting of Pharrell Williams, West and Pusha T is unlikely. As Williams did at the start of Pusha T’s commercial success with Clipse, West enhanced and reinvigorated Pusha’s career with his production. The rapper never lacked in lyrical prowess, colorfully painting his gangster saga full of cocaine dealing and material excess, but without the production chops of both Williams and West, his best verses would have never hit the same. Splitting the production duties in half and producing “Rock N Roll” together, West and Williams elevate every boast, every grim detail and yearning of Pusha. Running with the motif of painting and chemical processing of cocaine, a great painting starts with the background, priming ...

20. Andy Stott – It Should Be Us Eight years after blessing us with his second LP We Stay Together which established his signature sluggish broken dub music and served as the inspiration for other artists to rethink and slow it down, Andy Stott gives a tasty reminder that he is still helming the boards with muse and efficiency. We Stay Together saw a much-awaited release this year and by the start of November "It Should Be Us" seemed to relive and update the best negative bangers ever produced. With Boomkat mentioning the similarity to some of the sounds and tweaks of Stotts early work and Low´s Double Negative that broke the idea of what establishes a band and shoegaze last year, It Should Be Us returns the formula with a bigger focus on driving beats and, as described by Stott himself, tracks for the dancefloor. From the get-go, the sludge of Stott mingles with his shine and polish, the ghostly twinkle of "Promise" incentivizing to rethink dance music wh...

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...

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...