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...

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...

Since the dread dub exploration of their 2016 sophomore album, Raime have been steadily shifting their sound in every EP. First offering Notion 2 Notion  gave insight into more club-oriented attacks in the same sonic universe of previous album Tooth . The tunnel these two tracks dugs, the bass, sparse drums and compressed feeling of dread and loss moved slightly faster than the previous year. Despite this, they didn´t stray too far, blended nicely into the known universe Raime build.  A bigger venture indicative of what would happen with their main project came under the Yally moniker and their Dread Risk / U-Eff-O 7-inch for Diagonal. Here the duo sped up the comatose drums and bass into frantic hammering, incorporated vocal snippets and delivered a direct connection into the jungle and footwork roots of the abstract main project. What came to the fore in this release was a clear understanding of sonic storytelling. While Raime and Tooth certainly don´t lack in t...

30. Voices from Deep Below – I Want to Stand Where the Sun Himself Shakes with Fear Voices From Deep Below are one of my top finds of 2016 and this year they delivered yet another epic shoegaze album. While they even sing “I´m hazy” in one of their songs, this album is more than just one of the best shoegaze offerings I heard in a long while. The compositions are long, hazy and reverb-soaked until the brim. But without becoming too dreamy or ethereal, Voices From Deep Below keep it on the hard-hitting side of the genre and offer up respite only to drown out the negativity and longing their songs carry. It feels good to experience this kind of aggression in such an outfit and a hunger to deliver something that feels instantly recognizable in a sea of carbon copies. If one track, check out opener “This Is The Way” to be instantly immersed and turn that shit up! <a href="http://voicesfromdeepbelow.bandcamp.com/album/i-want-to-stand-where-the-sun-himself-shakes-with-fe...

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. ...