Dam's lushest production work and his strongest songwriting. Fantastic variety too, especially compared to his previous releases. 'O.B.E.' is straight-up deep acid house, 'Surveillance Escape' is probably the most intense thing he's ever recorded, and it features some of his most out-there instrumentals. The Pitchfork review was spot on when it said that the pop songs are the poppiest he's ever produced, and the experimental stuff is the most experimental. Even given all of that, it's a remarkably cohesive listen, flowing very nicely without ever letting itself get into a rut where you feel like ideas are repeating themselves. Coaxed some really great verses from Snoop and particularly Tip, too. Whilst I loved it, I thought that 'I Don't Wanna Be a Star' was distractingly in thrall to Prince, and the Higher album he released with Steve Arrington was amazing but probably too content to play to Arrington's strengths, but here Damon has really found his own voice, with layered, luxurious production and genuinely catchy hooks. Lyrically it's obviously well-trodden ground, mainly concerned with positivity and the neverending power of funk, but I wouldn't expect anything else from Damon, and he's put together an album that will likely stand as his masterpiece, one where he got to follow all of his musical instincts in whichever direction they took him, all whilst remaining true to himself and strengthening his signature synth-funk sound.
Some really beautiful microhouse/minimal tech shit, pretty in line with Kompakt's Pop Ambient series (if anybody is familiar), but maybe more poppy, recalling Gas at his(/their?) most 'dance'-y. An album that just refuses to leave me alone, with plenty of layers to unpick on each subsequent listen - little melodies that anchor tracks whilst beautiful synths and plenty of pleasant, cuddly static swell around, and quiet percussion that still proceeds to drive everything forward. I liked it a lot on first listen, but figured it might be something that would turn out to be all surface beauty and nothing underneath after a few more listens, but it only continues to grow on me. Perfect for sunny Sunday mornings, or long train journeys (for which it has become my go-to soundtrack). I dunno, there's something just really inviting about the whole thing - it electronic music that's definitely aimed at electronic music fans, but I could also see it being very accessible to pretty much anyone (without losing sight of its target audience).
(Maybe this one doesn't have many rating because it's only a week or so old, or maybe I'm just being hopeful.)
Skinny wrote:
It shouldn't come as any surprise when a new Scarface album turns out to be fantastic, but with a seven year gap between records - I'm not counting Dopeman Music, which was largely forgettable and far too reliant on a pair of anonymous weed carriers - you always have to approach with caution. Added to the fact that most rappers who have been around as long as Face has have stagnated, and the omens weren't exactly great for Deeply Rooted. Also, I must admit to being pretty ambivalent towards some of the advance "singles" (not really sure what constitutes a single anymore); I thought 'God' was decent, but I generally find John Legend to be a little clean-cut for my tastes, and the concept wasn't exactly handled with subtlety, whilst 'Steer' was even more disappointing - whilst Face went hard, the beat and chorus sounded like one of those overwrought dubstep crossover efforts from 2011 that could've soundtracked a commercial for Gatorade, and it gave the impression of a middle-aged man trying to be "down wit da kids". Thankfully, my concerns about the state of the new album were entirely unfounded. Scarface is in beast mode throughout, rapping with a passion and a fury virtually unknown amongst rappers of his age, and he displays a great economy in his writing, giving his themes and concepts a simple, powerful clarity that routinely makes his message as effective as it can be. I also like the way the album evolves as it unfurls, beginning with trademark tales of the hood but gradually widening its lens to handle bigger, weightier, more universal ideas - isolated, I found both 'Steer' and 'God' to be pretty underwhelming (as mentioned above), but in the context of the record they work, almost acting as counterpoints that give a real balance to the more philosophical second half of the album. Personally I think the first half is stronger, with its more traditionally Southern-sounding soul beats, and a couple of amazing hooks from Z-Ro (although I would've loved for him to have dropped a verse at some point, too), and he handles gangster tropes with a real lightness of touch, refusing to either glorify or condemn that lifestyle, allowing his direct lyrics and gravelly, bluesman-esque voice to lend his songs a gravitas that most other rappers are incapable of summoning (although the likes of Gibbs and Kevin Gates seem like natural heirs to Face in that regard). I find the second half of the album is more hit and miss, and I'm definitely colder on the ballads than the rest of material ('Voices' is built around some pretty cheesy, Eagle Eye Cherry-knockoff guitars, whilst I have reservations about that Cee-Lo hook on 'You' as well), but on the whole Scarface displays a real maturity in managing to broach weighty, often dangerous topics (religion, community, racism) without ever sounding preachy or self-righteous, positioning himself as a concerned observer who has been around the block and has some stories to tell, the very definition of growing old gracefully in hip-hop. Overall it's a stunning album, getting off to a blistering start before settling into something more nuanced and emotional, containing some dazzling moments (honestly, that transition from 'Anything' into 'Do What I Do' might be my favourite musical moment on any album released this year, across any genre) and managing to add up to more than the sum of its parts, proving that Face is hip-hop's premier 'wise elder statesman', touching on a variety of ideas and handling them all superbly. At this stage, I'd say that I prefer it to both Emeritus and Made, which truly is a pleasant surprise given how long Scarface has been away.
Music for Church Cleaners vol. I and II is an expanded 2LP re-release (on MIE) of a cassette that came out in 2012, and it features O’Dwyer’s improvised work on pipe organ, recorded at St. Mark’s Church in Islington. And, more importantly, it is one of the most mesmerising albums I have had the pleasure of listening to in recent times.
Writing about this type of music is perhaps even more redundant than writing about classical music or hip-hop, simply because there is so little to analyse beyond base human emotions. I’m unable to really describe what this record sounds like, because there aren’t too many reference points in popular music that I can hark back to. It’s not as though these songs are bereft of structure or are particularly simple, but rather that they inhabit a space in which we are forced to see the beauty in things which normally exist outside of our consciousness, unwittingly written off as strictly functional or even mundane. For many, the pipe organ signifies little outside of the church, and for the secular amongst us that almost exclusively means memories of carol services or funerals, two events which we’d never attend if only they could be avoided. On the album we hear O’Dwyer coming to terms with her instrument, but in a very real setting, aided and abetted by voices and laughter, slamming doors, the whoosh of an old vacuum cleaner. This is very much ambient music, in the sense that it encourages the effects of outside/inside sounds on the music, most memorably when ‘Deep Sound Invocation’ is cut short by a woman (presumably a cleaner) bemoaning a low, sustained note that is “all we can hear”. I guess, in a weird sense, this is a live album, as enhanced by these unique adornments as Live at The Old Quarter is by that audience member joining in with the MC’s pre-show announcement about all the things you can find upstairs (“payphone... cigarette machine... pool tables”), or as One More From the Road is by the new legendary requests for ‘Freebird’. The press release describes the effect of the environment on this record as “Cageian”, but that seems a far too stuffy and aware term for something that feels so natural and uncalculated.
And so everything here becomes part of the music, intentionally or otherwise. The pedals act as a blunt percussion instrument, and never more effectively than on the gorgeous, humming ‘Mass of the Rosary Ring’, on which a melancholy, flute-like melody slowly builds over a cyclical baritone groove, swerving gracefully like a lone bird caught and tossed momentarily in a sudden breeze. At times those pedals actually sound like old cassette clicks, and at other times like footsteps on the upstairs landing. Occasionally a louder bang rings out, perhaps a door shutting or a pew being clumsily bumped into, and the effect is somewhat startling. When ‘Return to Fugue’ dissolves into a psychedelic 1950s B-movie drone, you can’t help but get the feeling that O’Dwyer has happened upon a bum note and decided to go along with it anyway, and it turns out to be one of the album’s most enduring moments. ‘The Feast of Fools’, the second of two ten minute long drone pieces that open the album, begins only seconds before somebody turns the hoover on, and the two instruments work in strange harmony, the mid-range buzz of the vacuum gliding frictionless between the organ’s bed of elongated bass notes and the ye olde worlde folk motifs that play out patiently on the high notes. When the hoover drops out again, either turned off due to a clean floor or taken beyond the microphone’s reach, it leaves an oddly depressing gap, that feeling that you’ve left the house without something but you can’t quite put your finger on what. And it somehow makes it beautiful.
Despite being recorded in cavernous surroundings, the album has an incredible warmth to it. It comes on like a talkative old friend, easy and welcoming, but somewhat embarrassed that the two of you haven’t spoken in years. To obtain this level of openness on an instrument so commanding is astounding, and it often feels as though you’re listening to somebody shyly strumming a guitar behind closed bedroom doors, as opposed to filling a large church hall with booming organ drones. There’s a lightness about this record that stands utterly at odds with the sheer force of the organ, and it sounds quiet even at high volumes. However, there’s also a quiet confidence here, the sound of a musician entirely comfortable with what she is trying to achieve, unravelling as fluently and freely as that aforementioned conversation between reacquainted friends – and it’s a pleasure to eavesdrop.
In plain terms, it's just a mildly gothic, harmonium-heavy, indie rock/garage rock album that I've been enjoying far more than I ever expected to. It's disarmingly open and direct at times, often built on little more than a plodding - dare I say exhausted - rock'n'roll rhythm section, but adorned with (and, to be honest, completely carried by) that aforementioned harmonium, droning and swelling (and thankfully pushed very high in the mix), some occasionally beautiful twinkling synths (I'm particularly fond of that little starry-eyed arpeggio on 'Sanitary Pad'), and Shilpa Ray's Patti Smith-esque catcall, which contains an anger and a clarity and a bizarre beauty that allows her lyrics to really stand out (plenty of great one-liners throughout, utilising the same sort of sinister and sexual impressionistic imagery that Nick Cave has been dealing in for decades). There's not really a whole amount of variety here (occasionally there's a rockier number, occasionally there's a dronier number, but on the whole she has a formula that she's happy to stick with), and it certainly isn't concerned with being revolutionary (or even particularly contemporary, for that matter), but it's just a wonderful, intense little record that knows its strengths and milks them for all they're worth.
My favourite metal album of the year - some brutal, very loud, molasses-thick doom that does exactly what it says on the tin. Plenty of catchy riffs, but also a subtly melodic (if not occasionally theatrical) streak running through it. Plenty of growled vocals, driving percussion (even if some of the songs play out at a creeping tempo), heavy riffage in the traditional sense, layers of suffocating fuzz. As you can tell, describing what I like about certain metal albums isn't my forte, but I know what I like and I very much like this. It's become a record that I actually listen to quite a lot in bed, because I find that its slow-motion thump is really quite relaxing in a 'counting sheep' sort of way, and I largely allow its foggy, grizzled textures to just submerge me.
Also, it's Tad Doyle from Tad (perhaps the most Black Sabbath-influence of all the "grunge" bands, and certainly one of my favourites), so you should listen to it on that basis alone.
Another record I find hard to describe, or pinpoint exactly what it is I like about it, but it's just really cool, an experimental, often shifting, ambient/New Age album that refuses to let the listener relax, but somehow still feels cleansing, therapeutic. The entire thing sort of requires this suspension of cynicism, and it definitely feels to me like a love letter to Mother Earth and all of her beautiful children. Difficult to explain without sounding like a twat, but extremely highly recommended.
Boosie hones the angry/triumphant vibe he brought on last year's excellent comeback mixtape Life After Deathrow into album form, and it's as brilliant as I'd hoped. There's something wonderfully retro about Boosie, whose time away in jail means he appears to have missed hip-hop's recent move towards more cohesive album statements that try to convey one vibe and do it well, and so he's delivered the sort of album that was last seen sometime around 2008 or 2009 - a major label rap record that tries to tick all the boxes, with street songs, songs for the ladies, and slower, contemplative moments, harking back to a time when the likes of 50 Cent and T.I. were rap's reigning kings. Whilst this makes Boosie sound like something of a man out of time, the energy and urgency with which he's rapping more than make up for this, leaving the newly rechristened Badazz as something of a wondrous anomaly, a rapper who was never known for his rappity-rapping actually bringing his lyrical A-game at a time when lyrics are about as inconsequential as they've ever been in rap, especially in the South, where Boosie is as beloved as he is relatively unknown in virtually every other part of the world. Here, he tears through synthetic yet soulful trap beats with a passion and honesty the like of which Tupac used to conjure, and it's beautiful to behold.
Moody, cinematic, minimal techno, that calls upon beautiful baroque strings and delicate little piano motifs and clean drones and water droplet synths, and then marries them to the kind of relentless ambient industrial rhythms perfected by Kangding Ray in order to craft a record that really evokes its album cover unlike any other I've heard this year, feeling like something slight and oddly beautiful that finds itself in a concrete jungle, but strong enough to withstand life in that unforgiving urban environment. The sort of record that is just as effective playing quietly in the background whilst you see to other things as it is when listening intently in the dark, very loud through headphones.
The kind of album that could be quite easily be dismissed as a slapdash, forgettable jam session with nothing underneath the surface, but which has wormed its way further into my brain with every listen. It takes in all sorts of influences, from cloud rap and jazz fusion, to African rhythms and video game soundtracks, and plays like a drunken collaboration between Thundercat and Ariel Pink, except not like that at all. Very sketchbook-esque, and tracks often fizzle out after around 2 minutes, but there are so many cool surprises going on everywhere - in terms of effortless melodies that pop in to say 'hi', percussion that seems to gallop and swerve and drop out altogether (like a frightened animal unsure of where to step next), textures that change from ecstatically happy to tired and woozy to sinister and foreboding (all the while, slathered in tape hiss) - that the tape flies by, a selection of fun and fantastic ideas that are thankfully held together by a few (very tasteful) aesthetic choices. Largely instrumental, but with a couple of vocal tracks that give the whole thing a real vulnerability. Also, the record sounds completely of its time, which is not necessarily a good thing in most cases, but which works for (((( Yawning )))), in that it gives the impression of a hyperactive young adult trying to make sense of the manic world around him, to bring some calm into his life but not really quite managing it. I dunno, it might seem like a quirky home tape and nothing more, but something about it really resonates with me, and listening to it on the bus on the way to work (which I now do most mornings) really help me see clearly and ready myself for the day ahead. Should probably be higher on my chart than it is.
Anyway, I may return to add 11-20 at some point. Hope somebody listens to something here and finds something that they enjoy. As always, feel free to come and drop me recs (and I'll continue picking them up from this thread and others). _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
. if forum posts were life vows, my favorite album would still be a four-way tie between Violent Femmes' self-titled and three pre-1965 Beatles albums.
Heh, surprised at how similar mine and Sp4cetigers are. Or maybe I shouldnt be..
But Dumb Flesh, Olympic Mess, Folk and Just for a Thrill are definitely in my top 10 as of now. I havent really been keeping up with 2015 as Id hoped so I wont put a full list here yet.
Also I know I had heard that Dave DK album a while ago, but I didnt think much of it then. Skinny's description is enticing though so Ill have to relisten at some point.
all i remember from this thread so far is that a lot of people seem to like Pitchfork's 9.3s
I was curious so here are the pitchfork ratings for my top 10 of the year:
Pale Horses - 7.2
Tetsuo and Youth - 7.2
To Pimp a Butterfly - 9.3
Run - not reviewed
Dying - not reviewed
Time? Astonishing! - 6.8
Hyperview - 7.6
Peripheral Vision - 6.6
The Night Took Us in Like Family - 7.1
Abnocto - not reviewed
Average among those rated: 7.4
This is why I never go to pitchfork. _________________
Ugh, I'm the worst. I still have all four of them in my top ten at 1, 3, 6, and 7.
😜 there's nothing wrong with it. tastes is tastes. just a funny observation on my end. for all the dislike i have for Pitchfork, i can't deny that they have their finger on the pulse of what's going to have broad-base appeal.
my scores:
Jlin - Dark Energy 8.5 BNM
Bekele Berhanu - Untitled N/A
Elysia Crampton - American Drift 8.1
Amnesia Scanner - Angels Rig Hook N/A
Francesco Cavaliere - Musica Virtuale N/A
FKA twigs - M3LL155X 8.6 BNM
Tzusing - A Name Out of Place Pt. II N/A
M.E.S.H. - Piteous Gate N/A
Ahnnu - Perception N/A
Sicko Mobb - Super Saiyan Vol. 2 7.9
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