The Most Out-of-Date 'Record of the Year' this Side of J-Lo's Ass

Sorry.

It's nearly the end of two thousand and fourteen (FUCK) and I thought about writing another top 20 records of the year list.

And then I remembered that I didn't actually finish last year's.

So here's the top 5:

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5. Haxan Cloak - Excavation
4. Julia Holter - Loud City Song
3. The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
2. Tim Hecker - Virgins

1. Oneohtrix Point Never - R Plus Seven

Daniel Lopatin keeps delivering, and on R Plus Seven there’s a real sense of him trying to do something more consciously important and high-concept than previous releases. The album is more cohesive – texturally – and more overt in its groping towards grandiose sentiment in a strange and disorientating digital environment.

The album features Lopatin’s definitive jittery structure that applies on both the macro and micro scale; clipped, repetitious vocal samples that dart about the mix are woven into a fabric that never quite settles in one place. A consistent mood is achieved from extremely fragmented components – the mark of excellent abstract art of any stripe – and our listening experience is one of almost constant tension and surprise.

Inside World, for example, prods at us with really strange synthetic vocal ‘ahs’ that seem to meander and peter out, before a sumptuous string line, backed by lush digital hiss, bleeds in and – just as we’ve adjusted to its relative calm – gives way to another series of bubbling, stop-start samples. The experience borders on frustration, but it keeps the ear focused and re-contextualises every little thing we hear into a singular revelatory moment.

The aesthetic is akin to James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual in its hyper-digital glossy sheen but the irony is stripped away to reveal some genuinely beautiful moments of euphoria, melancholy and sensuality. Zebra threatens to burst into a hands-in-the-air house track at any moment but becomes subsumed in a cascading barrage of synth layers and, once again, tantalisingly rejects the economy of set-up and pay-off for a more complex and jarring arrangement that revels in the diverse qualities of synthetic sounds.

There’s a conscious religiosity/spirituality in the effects that Lopatin utilises – uplifting choral vocals, hypnotic church organ pieces – and this feels entirely appropriate for the strange magic at work in this album. Lopatin has allowed the music to cover extraordinarily wide ground in its aural symbolism and, therefore, unlocked a sense of infinite complexity, primitive humanity and revelatory wonder in the journey through brief flashes of experience and sustained, elegiac, hymnal passages.

In utilising a truly odd combination of new-age meditation sounds, commercial muzak gloss, synthesised baroque horns, religious harmonics and jazzy erotica, Lopatin has possibly created something of a definitive album that plays on the still unknown nature of the relationship between ultra-consumerism, hyper-connectivity, spirituality, nature and humanity.

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I had only written the review for Oneohtrix Point Never's deserved winner, so there it is. I won't bother writing about the others; I ain't gonna waffle on about records that are a whole year old now. We've moved on. Andy Murray won.

Look ahead to a shimmering future with hundreds more end-of-year lists and global tragedies.

Who will it be this year?

Kanye?

Tay Tay?

Bill Maher and guests are so wrong on Gaza

Bill Maher and his guests should be ashamed of their horrible portrayal of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza on Realtime (19.07.14 – view the full episode here).

As a proviso – I’m intending to criticise the show’s particularly awful moments and not attempting a balanced assessment of all the guest’s points. There is, of course, truth in their criticism of Hamas; I’m pro Israel and pro Palestine, but this ‘debate’ was particularly one-sided and bizarre for something outside of Fox News.

Some of the misinformation and opinions presented were bordering on offensive – to my intelligence, not my sensibilities. I like Bill Maher, I like the show. Consider this a friendly reminder.

Absurdity No. 1: Israel ain’t that bad

Maher begins by suggesting that Israel is actually demonstrating restraint in its invasion by not simply destroying Palestine:

‘Israel has the opportunity to kill way more, and they do not. It seems like they are victims of the soft bigotry of high expectations.’

This is ridiculous. And delivered with that little look that Maher always has on his face when he’s done a nice sentence. Israel has the opportunity to kill way less, and they do not. If Israel was purely defensive in their military operations in Gaza, then over 800 civilians would not be dead.

Plus, the international community would undoubtedly not allow Israel to commit full-scale genocide or decisive ground invasions, so they are not as free to ‘kill way more’ as Maher suggests; they get away with what they can (which Hamas does too).

Absurdity No. 2: Jews are superior

After opening with this interesting angle on Israel’s ruthlessness, Maher asks why it is that ‘Israel wins every war’ and, hence, ends up killing many more Palestinians than it suffers Israeli casualties.

Shockingly, he puts it down to the amount of Nobel prizes Jews have: ‘A big advantage to team Hebrew’. This not only implies that Arabs are inferior, which is pretty dangerous ground, but also overlooks a pretty significant fact: the unwavering support and monumental financial backing of the world’s largest military superpower.

Does Maher really think Israel’s ‘atheist’ (!) scientific community gives it the edge over oppressed, destitute, isolated, barricaded, sanctioned and blockaded Palestine? Maybe it’s got something to do with the fuckload of weapons and money they get from the US.

Absurdity No. 3: Gaza isn’t occupied

Next, one of Bill’s guests, Jane Harman – a former Democrat member of Congress – points out that ‘Israel doesn’t want to be in Gaza’ and that Gaza hasn’t been occupied since 2005, implying that Palestine has no claim to being oppressed and, therefore, enacting ‘resistance’.

That’s a nice line for apologists to repeat as it suggests that Gaza is actually a free, independent state since Ariel Sharon ‘disengaged’ 9 years ago but it masks the truth. Occupation is a legal designation and, by many accounts, Gaza is far from unoccupied. The UN has noted Israel’s ‘effective’ control of Gaza by way of:

1. substantial control of Gaza’s six land crossings
2. control through military incursions, rocket attacks and sonic booms, and the declaration of areas inside the Strip as “no-go” zones where anyone who enters can be shot
3. complete control of Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters
4. control of the Palestinian Population Registry, which has the power and authority to define who is a “Palestinian” and who is a resident of Gaza.[1]

Palestine is definitely not a free, independent state with no legitimate gripes.

This is a particularly pernicious lie because Harman, as a high profile politician who is presumably aware of diplomatic history and international law, must know that calling Palestine an unoccupied territory is contentious at best and completely disgusting at worst.

Absurdity No. 4: Israel’s military action is wholly defensive

Harman goes on to say that ‘the purpose’ of this current incursion, the purpose, is to take out Hamas’ tunnels and missile launchers. The shelling of schools and hospitals, alongside the UN’s suggestion that war crimes may have been committed, completely undermine this argument.

This is disproportionate, psychological and inhumane warfare, whether you think some level of Israeli military action is justified or not.

Plus, just two days ago the US posted the only NO vote on a motion in the UN General Assembly to set up an independent inquiry into Israel’s potential human rights violations. This would suggest that the US is not entirely confident that the result will be in Israel’s favour or, as a Washington State Department spokesperson put it: ‘[the US] will stand up for Israel…even if it means standing alone’[2] – a more candid admission of blind support.

The Times of Israel suggests that the US didn’t back the motion because it was one-sided and doesn’t mention Israeli deaths or Palestinian attacks, but that’s not true; sections 3 and 4 explicitly include condemnations of Israeli civilian deaths.

Once again, Israel is disproportionate, ruthless and murderous in its ‘retaliation’ to Hamas attacks and American apologists claim the military action is purely defensive before vetoing any UN action. This happens all the time. I put ‘retaliation’ in scare quotes since the 3 Israeli deaths that apparently sparked this conflict were actually preceded by 2 Palestinian deaths at the hands of the IDF that went unnoticed.

If Israel’s behaviour isn’t completely inexcusable, then its justification is at least questionable, while Maher’s panel doesn’t even discuss the possibility that targeting civilians might be problematic or that Israel might not have carte blanche to eviscerate whole communities.

Absurdity after absurdity after absurdity

There are more hilarious/disgusting distortions in the programme and this is only a short 15 minute segment.

Palestinians are referred to as ‘professional refugees’ who are used ‘as a symbol of propaganda’ by Jamie Weinstein, senior editor of the Daily Caller, and trusty Jane Harman claims that the million and a half Arabs living in Israel are ‘treated as Israeli citizens and afforded democratic rights’. I don’t even need to rebuff this Ministry of Truth bollocks.

It is amazing (or perhaps, sadly, not) that this passes for acceptable debate on US television. You’d expect this shit from Jamie Weinstein, but Bill Maher is apparently a liberal/libertarian and Jane Harman is a Democrat; not that I expect Democrat politicians to express pro-Palestinian sentiment, but at least not to resort to Bill O'Reilly levels of bull. 

Realtime is a show for the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert demographic and, while I don’t expect members of the American political elite to be wearing Keffiyeh’s, I was shocked by the way this level of extreme rhetoric went unchallenged (I suppose Maher’s audience are the most sycophantic and clap-happy morons around) and elementary falsehoods were fired around so rapidly.

I’m no scholar on Israel-Palestine and nor am I a hardened pro-Palestinian, but I recognised much of what was said by apparently educated and knowledgeable pundits as heinous.

We will not see peace between Israel and Palestine until the US allows it to happen, and the US won’t allow it to happen while this sort of self-censorship abides. At least Maher recognises the Israeli gag placed on the whole of America’s political class at the end of the segment, but he, unfortunately, seems to be wearing it too.

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[1] http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8807/is-gaza-still-occupied-and-why-does-it-matter

[2] http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/24/headlines#7246

Berlin

Berlin

It’s a great word, visually. It feels composed.

With a proud B followed by a subtle curve, formed by the peak of the l, sloping into in.

Austere and romantic, assertive and seductive – Berlin.

  

Berlin is great art.

It’s not effusive like Paris or rarefied like Vienna, but elegant and tragic; its absurdist logic imbues the steely exterior with an intoxicating poignancy. It’s turgid with potential energy – the echoes of horror; restrained tears; austere concrete veined with graffiti arabesques (matte neon, dulled vibrancy); serious fun.

Muffled kick drums, silver noise, beautiful bludgeon, concrete flowers, murdered gypsies in as-far-as-the-eye-can-see park, white sun, a flash of gold at the edges.

The tears are brought on by beauty, by spectacle, by death, by love, by endless possibility.

Hedonism is no vacuous escape here – it’s meaningful immersion.

That sunset orange stays long.

10-6 of The Records of the Year of My Choosing

It's the top 10! Which feels significant because our mathematics is predicated on a decimal base! Because we've got 10 fingers! How many fingers will we have in the future?

10 Deerhunter – Monomania

Deerhunter have produced excellent albums from day one, but it took Monomania for me to appreciate them as more than just another decent guitar band.

It’s a weird turn in their discography and one that could have come across as too self-aware and corny, in the sense that there’s a new braggadocio in their style and posturing in the lyrics that is, essentially, an introspective indie band playing at being proper rock ‘n’ roll.

But, in the stripping away of their noisy/ambient characteristics and the dreamy romanticism of Halcyon Digest they demonstrate the same attention to detail and texture, albeit applied to engineering a grinding, sleazy sensibility full of sawing guitars and delayed vocals. It’s like a studied exercise in notching up classic rock references (shitty bars, neon lights, leather jackets, motorbikes) that manages to appear both postmodern/wryly humorous and immediately believable.

Tracks like T.H.M. showcase their ability to encapsulate simplistic cool (an excellent bassline always helps), while Back to the Middle is a shit-hot garage pop tune and The Missing nods back to previous albums’ indie balladry.

9 Powell – Untitled EP

Powell makes the kind of music I’d make if I made music.

I think Boomkat described it as ‘techno for people who like rock and rock for people who like techno’, and I agree. This sense is largely produced by the extensive use of No Wave samples and Powell’s narrow but signature palette of drum sounds and effects – it satisfyingly combines a knowledge of its underground heritage with a rawness in its surface and a neck-snapping rhythm that places it in that murky territory between dance and rock.

Techno, at one extreme, can be obsessed with production and structure in such a way that it consistently ossifies conventions and appeals to tutting specialists who wear expensive headphones.

Rock can also too easily forget the importance of dancing, hypnotic rhythm and the texture of sound - but No Wave and Powell shrug off those potential flaws in both genres, with No Wave artists introducing repetitive rhythm and electronic noises to a punk shell and Powell reinserting the punk aesthetic into the often mechanically flawless surface of techno.

It results in a really filthy industrialism that’s got way more swing than much that’s previously been released under that banner - A Band being a fine example of an almost funky rhythm being wrought from clangs and clatters, and stand-out track Oh No New York directly referencing its No Wave heritage with foot-stomping beats, steampunk hisses and dissonant synth buzzes.

I say it’s the kind of music I’d make because I love this fusion of Industrial dirt, sonic innovation and rock 'n’ roll abandon, but also because that punk aesthetic feels inexpensive, DIY and approachable in that it wrenches something admirable from simple and unassuming components.


8 Vatican Shadow – When You Are Crawling / Remember Your Black Day

Dominick Fernow is no shrinking violet. As Prurient, he makes uncompromising Noise with a ferociously political performative aspect and he has explored the nexus of ritualistic spirituality and mass murder in his guise as Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement.

As Vatican Shadow, Fernow continues his commitment to imbuing traditionally nihilistic and self-contained genres with an explicit content. In this case, he utilises the repetitious and structured nature of techno to invoke the conformity, relentlessness and violence of the military-industrial complex.

The success of this project could be called into question since, ostensibly, the legibility of his message appears to rely on the excellent imagery on his album covers and the poignant and evocative track titles (Contractor Corpses Hung over the Euphrates River, Jet Fumes Above the Reflecting Pool). Nevertheless, the music manages to capture something of that weird marriage of beauty and horror in military imagery through wrenching some melancholic resonance out of industrial soundscapes.

There’s an element of satire in the use of sonic aesthetics that might just about fit in a Call of Duty soundtrack, but they’re lent a sinister malevolence that brings a reflective quality. The collagistic anti-propaganda that was explicit in the early cassette releases has matured into a subtle atmosphere of distant dread – of atrocities committed far away that scratch at the Western conscience.

When You Are Crawling is an EP that acts as something of an addendum to the full-length Remember Your Black Day and – with Silent Servant getting production credits – it packs a more immediate punch as out-and-out techno.

Both releases, taken together, present a compelling, thoughtful and resonant body of work that navigates a minefield of extremely serious subjects.

There are few people attempting such high-minded, coherent and controversial music around; it’s extremely hard to ignore.


7 Laurel Halo – Chance of Rain



I have to admit, I didn’t quite get Laurel Halo before. I found Hour Logic a bit stark and disjointed and, although I appreciated Quarantine’s scope and originality, it left me cold.

Chance of Rain adds a lot of physical depth and some darker shades to Halo’s sound, giving it far more traction than previous efforts. She’s removed the vocals that were foregrounded in Quarantine, but the album somehow presents a more engaging face and, true to its place in Hyperdub’s stable, adopts a more rhythmic focus.

The title track’s a belter, perfectly encapsulating everything that works about this album. High tempo kick drums are given a huge amount of momentum by filtered arpeggiations that climb up and down in the mix – and it’s given some serious bite by whip-crack snares that sustain throughout – but the whole thing segues into a melancholy keyboard phrase that sounds like it’s been lifted out of In a Silent Way.

The entire album revels in this sort of oscillation; between hard-edged metallic sounds that are expertly modelled into jittery digital rhythms and a warm, blue-filtered jazz sensibility that only occasionally flickers into view.

The album comes across, therefore, as lurking in that territory where the bleak landscape of fragmented digitalia and mechanical dance music – disjointed rhythms and stark sounds (think Mouse on Mars circa Glam) – meets an irrepressible musicality. It’s easy to identify the former with sinister, mindless process and the latter with human warmth and creativity, but Halo brilliantly blurs these distinctions by delighting in the rapturous possibilities of anonymous sounds.

6 My Bloody Valentine – m b v

Probably the only reason this isn’t higher in the list is that it was so bloody late and I’ve penalised it for tardiness. Some of the textures and influences on this album do sound too 90s for an album that was released in 2013 (like the vaguely D&B clamour of Wonder 2), giving the whole thing an atmosphere of curious distance.

But My Bloody Valentine transcends all that nonsense about time and space. Coming after 17 years of Shields’ digestion and monkish crafting, m b v blew most other records in 2013 out of the water; it hopefully made swathes of half-arsed indie bands realise that transcendental aural experiences can make people physically shit themselves, and that they should be attempting to elicit this most flattering of responses from their listeners too.

Some of the tracks on this album are up there with moments on Loveless, and I really didn’t expect that. Who Sees You achieves that characteristically stirring, queasy beauty that can make both tears and blood stream down your face like Eisenstein’s screaming nurse, and If I Am manages to sustain a real groove behind its ephemeral vocals and gorgeously subtle guitar line.

Nothing Is takes the record somewhere a little different, spearheading its riotous close. Something of Shields’ love for balls-out rock ‘n’ roll creeps out here and it’s the only track I actually remember from witnessing them live (virtually unconscious for 80% of the gig). I remember the stage looked like the mouth of hell and I was about as happy as I’ve ever been.

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There ya go; eat yer cauliflower and you'll get the next lot fer afters...



 

Trickling Music

The next part of my 25 RECORDS OF THE YEAR will appear soon; here's a distraction:

 

Trickling Music

It’s probable that innovations in the musical avant-garde ‘trickle down’ into more popular forms. 

This notion appears to provide an easy justification for the often technocratic and rarefied explorations of ‘difficult’ composers and sound artists.

“They make waves, and slowly inspire more popular artists that actually have a direct impact on mass sonic culture”.

In a real avant-garde, activities are (ideally) unfettered by the need to function and can be truly autonomous, allowing the sort of genuinely innovative developments that would otherwise be filtered out. These innovations don’t just stay floating around in the world of musical academia however; there exists a sort of musical hierarchy of mass appeal, through which ideas can be passed.

The need to see these avant-garde experiments as having a real ‘impact’ or ‘effect’ completely undermines the very notion of a rarefied culture of innovation that isn’t smothered by the crippling demands of utility. In seeking justification for avant-garde art, we succumb to an implicit capitalist ideology, wherein nothing has inherent value beyond its power to generate further value (defined abstractly).

We shouldn’t view this web of inspiration as a justification of the initial act, but as an inevitable process of cultural digestion.

Do avant-garde artists feel vindicated by their displaced notoriety? What happens to these ideas once they are adopted in other forms? Are they bastardised or simply utilised? If we layer a William Basinski loop over a drum-track, is it even the same thing at all? What’s carried over into the new form, if anything?

I have a feeling that, in the main, avant-garde composers are imbuing their work with a fair amount of conceptual content that cannot possibly be carried, in toto, into other forms.

But, this amounts to saying that two pieces of art are different, having different inceptions and different meanings. A Cageian would say that two different performances of Beethoven’s 9^th have two different meanings and effectively constitute two different artworks.

When sonic tropes from the underground (e.g. early dubstep) are imported into other cultures (e.g. brostep), we are simply witnessing different attempts to realise the objective potential of aural materials.

We must be careful in conflating the morphological similarity of sounds with an ideological or functional proximity.



15-11 of the Records of the Year of My Choosing

Sharpen your ears: it's the records that are a bit better than the last lot but not quite as good as the others!

15 Factory Floor – S/T

Thing is, all the best tracks on this album have been released before (Fall Back, Two Different Ways) which makes the record something of a disappointment. Despite that, it’s full of sophisticated techno that’s got Industrial/Noise chops as well as analogue dance appeal. In contrast to Nik Void’s work on Transverse with Chris & Cosey, the washes of noise are kept to a minimum and the album operates largely on the interplay between the excellent drum programming and Void’s treated vocals.

Sometimes it can be a bit route-one with its reliance on arpeggiated synths (guaranteed to make you move) and thunderous New Order beats, but it’s all so well orchestrated, sharply produced and deadpan in its delivery that it overcomes a limited dynamic by staring you down and bludgeoning you to dance with relentless techno sex. I want a befringed robot to fuck me right in the 80s.

14 Grouper - The Man Who Died in His Boat

 

Pretty hard to argue with this one; Liz Harris has released a bunch of older material under this title that deals with her witnessing of an empty boat washing ashore – the owner apparently absent and, presumably, lost at sea.

She deftly confounds expectations in her unusual compositions that threaten to be merely pretty in their reverb-drenched greyness, by allowing layered vocals to clash and melodies to hang, unresolved.

It’s heart-breaking and tender, with Harris’s gorgeous high vocal register breaking free of the murkiness of the mix – not enough to enunciate clearly, but enough to intone and generate a melancholic ambiguity.

13 Darkside - Psychic



This was obviously going to be good – Nicolas Jaar’s got a virtually impeccable back catalogue and he marries an evident intelligence with a searching ear and attention to detail, always managing to retain an immediacy in the sensuality of his production and vocals.

As Darkside, Jaar works with guitarist Dave Harrington to create music that bears all the hallmarks of Jaar’s own work, but expands into a space-disco aesthetic that’s propelled by Harrington’s 70s noodlings. It’s telling that Darkside released a remixed version of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories earlier in the year, since they’re also operating in the same territory – slickly produced, ambitious long players that hark back to the era of disco and prog.

Darkside shit all over Daft Punk’s syrupy mess by still retaining a progressive attitude and merely learning from past eras, rather than just creating a novelty record with all their mates. The album is full of space and moments of reverie, allowing the grooves to bubble up organically and, while Harrington is no Nile Rodgers, the funkiness is couched in subtly inventive electronics that allow the album to snake around into surprising corners.

Sometimes it’s in danger of meandering aimlessly, but the psychedelic and exploratory attitude opens it out to unusual modes of engagement, while the humanity is retained in Jaar’s characteristic vocals and jarring keyboard melodies.

12 Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin

Yes, yes, yes. As soon as this fucking monster opens, it’s pretty clear that it’s Thee Oh Sees on top form. On occasion, Dwyer’s bloodlust lyrics can sound a bit daft, but there’s cartoonish edge to Thee Oh Sees that suits the balance of seriousness and hedonism in garage.

There’s a lot of breakneck riffing that stays amazingly rigid despite the spectre of chaos and mayhem that’s always behind Dwyer’s innocent falsetto (the cover depicts a load of strawberries intermingled with bared fangs) and there’s a well-judged balance of wide-eyed psychedelia with crisp melodies (No Spell); dirty, drifting grunge (Strawberries 1 + 2) and dexterous foot-stompers to lose your shit to (Maze Fancier).

Play it loud and take your shirt off, please.

11 Demdike Stare - Test Pressings #001, #002, #003, #004



 

A strange and audacious set of 12” singles from Demdike Stare; the Test Pressings series sees them adapting the production techniques that had previously generated their haunted, pagan techno to a slew of recognisable dance formats.

The mystical strand of occultism that colours their take on dance music produces a violent, satanic, sexualised broth. They’ve successfully married the hedonistic and hypnotic nature of house/techno with the psychedelic abandon of pagan ritual. It’s fucking volatile. If anyone could actually play it to a dancefloor, they’d all start fucking each other with crucifixes.

In the Test Pressings series they disappointingly dial down the vampiric bloodlust but compensate with improved dancefloor mechanics. It’s all excellent, and makes explicit the origins of Demdike’s previous dancefloor emptiers by re-examining the classic dance templates that have inspired the explosion of sonically innovative electronic artists with tangential relationships to their Detroit / Chicago / Berlin origins (see Blackest Ever Black).

It’s all about Eulogy and Dyslogy from #003 for me however; an engrossing cut of dubby techno from the Basic Channel mould on the A-side with a ridiculous bit of pots-and-pans breakbeat on the other.

The only disappointment is the loss of all the weirdo-chanting, doomy piano chords and atmospheric hiss that made their earlier material so compelling; perhaps their next release will be a perfectly symbiotic pairing of The Wicker Man and Drexciya, but this is pretty good for now.

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Get in the recovery position and await your top 10...

20-16 of the Records of the Year of My Choosing

Continuing yesterday's ball-tingling countdown...

20 Matmos – The Marriage of True Minds



Matmos can come across as annoyingly conceptual and didactic, but often the conceit behind the album is so esoteric and charming that you kind of let them off, before being slightly bored by the album.

They manage to overcome a lot of niggles with this record, producing a really engaging, sometimes danceable, often amusing and completely weird album that’s eccentric, intelligent, coherent and unpredictable.

Matmos apparently got a bunch of test subjects together and tried to telepathically convey the concept of the album to them, before recording their responses and building the album around the subjects’ fumbled attempts to describe half-imagined sounds and shapes.

It sometimes sounds like The Books, with plucked strings and metallic plonks supporting lots of vocal samples, and it sometimes sounds too slick – like the backing track to an educational documentary about the Future of Cell Biology – but it won me over with its highbrow humour and smart production.

19 Co La - Moody Coup
 

If Co La’s latest album had matched up to the promise of some of the better moments from Daydream Repeater and the brilliantly glossy dub on Dialtone Earth, it would easily be up there at the top of this list.

Unfortunately, Moody Coup struggles to coalesce into a really satisfying whole, but Co La’s overall project is so aesthetically coherent, blissfully lush and compellingly inventive that it’s still a real stand-out.

Moody Coup retains the dubby roots of Dialtone Earth in its vocal samples and use of reverb/bass, as well as the fluorescent sheen of Daydream Repeater, but it moves on from both works by dropping the rhythmic tethering to Bmore and Dub, and opening up weird syncopations that challenge its dancefloor aspirations.

The extension of his sound is evident in the album art, which drops the quasi-satirical, VIP sleekness of previous efforts to utilise an artfully textured and tactile surface with an abstracted grimace in the centre, reminiscent of Benedict Drew’s artwork. It speaks of Co La’s desire to look away from Earthly concerns, existing genres and recognisable sounds to grope for new and transcendental noises.

Get fucked, drink coffee, take drugs, sit in the sun, stroke the bonnets of cars and see faces in spray-painted driveway gravel.

18 The Field - Cupid's Head



I think The Field loses something in this record by adding something – his previous, From Here We Go Sublime, was almost sublime in its repetitious clarity; gorgeous loops lifted out of the sludge of reality through sheer persistence.

Nevertheless, even though Cupid’s Head is a little less striking due to its more conventionally full sound, it still achieves moments of hypnotic bliss. It’s pretty much simple 4/4 house beats from start to finish, but there are beautifully subtle rhythmic touches throughout, absurdly simple chord shifts that are so warm they make your face red, and smothering walls of glistening noise that would make your Nan chew her face off.

17 Dirty Beaches - Drifters / Love is the Devil

I can’t work out whether this album is anything other than just really fucking cool.

It’s all submerged, lo-fi vocals, stuttering drum machine loops and no-wave basslines that owe a massive debt to Suicide, but stand-out tracks like I Dream in Neon add an extra facet of sleazy nihilism that feels trippy and warm as well as foreboding and confrontational.

Plus, there are moments when it’s got a weird funk to it (e.g. Casino Lisboa) or an unhinged sadness (Alone at the Danube River) that take it beyond mere retro fetishism and the tired ‘neon city’ tropes that threaten to overburden it. While Suicide sound rightfully angry at New York’s underbelly, Dirty Beaches has had time to stop and rue some of that neglect, kicking litter about and wondering what it all means.

It’s important that you wear leather and eat glass bottles while listening to this album.

16 Blood Music - Blood Music EP

I saw these guys play live at Wysing Arts Festival with a raging hangover and a belly full of potent, homemade alcoholic ginger beer. I can’t be sure whether that experience has coloured my appreciation of this record or not, but it’s stood up to repeated listens.

The EP is really percussive, with stabs of distorted guitar backed by both live drums and a punchy drum machine; both of the longer tracks are, consequently, propulsive and menacing, engineering a restrained anger through layers of noise, semi-whispered vocals and a snarling, throbbing backbone.

This EP was released on Powell’s ‘Diagonal’ label and, while their sound possesses a more traditional guitar-based tone, it shares something of the potent marriage of rock’s darkness and techno’s propulsive, electronic rhythm. In that sense, the guitar – although sounding often like it’s coming from a metal band – isn’t used for riffs, but to bolster the backbeat and to build texture.

It's managing to do something a little different with a potentially tired template, without sounding contrived.
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Records 15-11 in the post...