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 ...

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...

30. Ragana – Inviolate (Let Our Names Be Forgotten) While Ragana appear on the same split with dark overlords Thou, "Inviolate" purposefully seems to delay and misdirect their crushing outbreaks in a post-punk cloak. What the band has been perfecting for a few albums now comes in full effect on the slow start, growing from a form of tedium and invocation into a bolt of focussed friction. As Thou drag these moments through sludge and dirt, Ragana´s guitar remains clear even in the black metal turnups. After a small silence the song transitions into a more direct assault, the harsh vocals sweeping in and exploding into a clean section of both voices congealing. The dynamic here is airtight, Ragana not only hold their own against two superb Thou tracks but with "Inviolate" alone carve a different wound of dread and draw blood by never standing still to let light or relief subside into a sense of beauty and comfort.  LET OUR NAMES BE FORGOTTEN (Split with THO...