TranscendNoise

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. 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...

50. Pray For Sound – Waves / Mono – Nowhere Here Now Post-Rock carried me through my teenage years and will always stand as a genre of contemplative sounds, dramatic crescendos and mirroring experiences of nature of emotion in (mostly) instrumental sounds made by a band flowing together into a holistic entity. In recent years, many bands changed it up, have taken their sounds into more electronics realms, started to experiment with vocals more. Even Mono made the choice of letting their bass player Tamaki come to the forefront and deliver breathy vocals to their usual blend of tender destruction. Gladly for Mono, this move served as a welcome addition to their incredible body of work. Pray for Sound seemingly discontinue the progression of the genre, the need to reinvent to stay relevant or avoid a creative misfire of repetition by sticking to their guns, taking instrumental music and fleshing out the sound and interplay as a band. Waves as a listening experience is full of nost...