TranscendNoise

5 0. Vacant Gardens – Under The Bloom / Obscene Re-released in 2022 after flying under my radar in both 2020 and 2021, Vacant Garden’s provided two albums of delightful shoegaze / dream pop. The last time a band sounded this ethereal as the greats such as Cocteau Twins or Slowdive, must have been Asobi Seksu. Vacant Gardens pull together the sweet mixtures of fuzz, gloom, and vocal transcendence. There is rainy melancholy in the guitar hazes, counteracted by flourishes of powerful chords, arpeggios, and gentle strumming, all coming together in the float of Jem Fanvu’s ethereal vocals. Atmospheric density does not need to be inventive as such, it just needs to be well made and full of intricacy. Seldom do albums capture the yearnings of youth I encountered when first making contact with shoegaze. While nowadays most find the best conflation of dream pop and shoegaze in Beach House and their synthetic rhythms and uplifting haze, Vacant Gardens deliver a proof of concept in striking gre...

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...