50. Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
I’m pretty sure this is the only country record I’ve ever heard that subjects like DMT and reptilian aliens filled with light are sung about.
49. John Wayne Frankenstein - Family Planning
Mathy folky indie rock that will leave you scratching your head (in a good way).
48. Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes – Thom York
Overall this is a record that favors creating an atmosphere over songwriting – but it does do a real solid job of the former. And there are a few songs where you get the best of both worlds (like the closing track "Nose Grow Some") that make it worth checking out for folks who are a fan of Thom’s stuff.
47. Giggle (Happy You)
Let’s talk about the first 30 seconds of this record (spoiler ahead) – you first hear this beautiful pastoral soundscape, then there’s this Spice Girlesque rising “aaaaaaahhhh”, and then shit starts rocking out.
46. Live at the Village Vanguard – Marc Ribot
Great live album with a couple of really
beautiful ballads sandwhiched by some real gnarly free jazz.
45. Bestial Burden - Pharmakon
Intense, brutal, visceral noise music.
44. Commissions 1 – Oneohtrix Point Never
This is the only EP on this list - it's a collection of three pieces that he was commissioned to do for different art instillation and films. If you were a fan of his album last year "R Plus Seven" (which I regrettably was not in the loop about last year - but it definitely should have been near the top of my top 50 album of 2013 list for sure), or a fan of his work in general, I would definitely recommend checking it out.
43. LP1 - FKA Twigs
UK Contemporary R&B produced by Arca, thats slow moving and psychedelic pop that has an interesting artsy/experimental aesthetic.
42. Music for Heart and Breath - Richard Reed Perry
I tend to be a bit wary when indie-rock dudes try to release “serious”/modern-classical music since so much of it is boring and terrible *(cough, Sufjan BQE)* with a hand full of exceptions – such as Johnny Greenwood and David Longstreth. But anyway – there are plenty of moments on here where what he’s going for works really well and make it worth checking out. In a nutshell the basic concept is that the pulse of the performers dictates the pulse of the piece and the performers wear stethoscopes and such, and there are pieces where one performer's breath dictates the ensemble's movements and such. And the performers he uses such as Nico Muhly, the Dessner brothers, and the Kronos Quartet definitely makes a huge difference in bringing these pieces to life.
41. Landmarks – Brian Blade
Although this record fails to capture the intense spiritual energy that the Brian Blade Fellowship are able to summon live (which could be said for any of their other releases as well) – this record still has some extremely powerful passages on it and is a worthwhile endeavor for anyone who’s into the fellowship or interested on checking out the soul-searching spiritual music that the Brian Fellowship create.
40. Ultima II Massage - Tobacco
The best record from Tobacco so far. If this was cut down to like 10ish tracks it’d be amazing as there’s some on here that don’t hit quite as hard – but the jams that do are serious bangers and more than make up for any lag, especially the track “”Father Sister Berzerker” .
(but for real, just click that track "Father Sister Berzerker" above if you want to hear the best song on this record)
39. CLPPNG – Clipping
Great noise-hop record that would definitely appeal to fans of groups like Death Grips.
38. We Like it Here - Snarky Puppy
Snarky Puppy might have the worst band name ever – but don’t let that turn you off, these guys are the real deal. Their sixth record is a live album that shows the collective grooving super fucking hard, rocking on some middle eastern tinged harmonic stuff, and has some great catchy hooks.
37. 21 Again – Mouse on Mars
Mouse on Mars throw a really fun 21st birthday party (in celebration of making music together for 21 years) which is a collection of collaborations from artists such as Tortoise and Laetitia Sadier (of Stereolab). There are some collaborations that work better than others, but there are some real jams on here, and as a whole it’s definitely a great party for any MOM fan.
36. Here and Nowhere Else - Cloud Nothings
Cloud Nothing’s music can kind of be summed up as post-punk influenced angsty indie rock that delivers quite a punch. “Here and Nowhere Else” is a solid follow-up to “Attack on Memory” and contains what may be the most epic and cathartic song of theirs yet, “Pattern Walks”.
35. Salad Days - Mac Demarco
Stylistically this record continues where he was going with his second record “2” – but is a bit more personal and has tighter production.
34. Rock Konducta - Madlib
Two discs of hip-hop instrumentals from Madlib sampling from all rock music – ranging from 60s psychedelia to progrock and krautrock
33. Antemasque - Antemasque
Antemasque is the newest group formed by Omar and Cedric (previously of the Mars Volta and before that of At the Drive In). Gone are the over ten minute psych/prog rock epics of the Mars Volta – only one song on this record is over 4 minutes. But these short songs pack quite a massive punch and still contain a solid amount of psychedelia. In a way it’s kind of a meeting point between the post-punk/hardcore of At the Drive In and the epic prog/psychedlia chaos of the Mars Volta – and it works pretty well. A really promising debut – pumped to see where they bring things from here.
32. Mise en Abime - Steve Lehman Octet
Holy crap this record is an intense mindfuck. Definitely takes some listening endurance, but anyone into the Mbase stuff should definitely give this a try.
31. La Isla Bonita - Deerhoof
A way more raw rock record from Deerhoof – and a damn good one at that.
30. Fuck Off Get Free, We Pour Light on Everything - Thee Silver Mount Zion
29. City Noir – John Adams
John Adams making a soundtrack for a film noir film that doesn’t exist which is a saxophone concerto with some serious Slonimskyesque things going on and some really beautiful movements as well.
28. Mutations - Vijay Iyer
Vijay doing orchestral stuff is worth checking out for any fan of his work, but not a good starting point for anyone unfamiliar with him.
27. Faith in Strangers - Andy Stott
A bleak and ominous album from Andy Stott that is relatively varied. Some tracks that are drones that sound other-worldly and others that are more active, such as "Violence" which sound kind of like a dubstep drop slowed down a shit ton with some really eerie vocals on it.
26. Lily-O - Sam Amidon
Not the strongest release from Sam Amidon, but definitely an interesting one with a good amount of tracks that are real stand outs. Bill Frissell is kind of filling Nico Muhly’s shoes on this release – replacing the space the orchestration filled on the records he collaborated with Sam on (“I See the Sign” and “All is Well”) with some really beautiful and textured guitar work. This is his darkest record yet (especially with the epic title track), as well as his most subdued.
25. All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller - Jason Moran
24. Soused - Scott Walker + Sunn O)))
One of the most interesting drone/noise collaborations I’ve heard in a long time. The atmosphere that Sunn O))) creates here is haunting and arresting while Scott Walker is more in the forefront providing vocals with some angular and strange melodies.
23. Macrocope – Nels Cline Singers
The fifth Nels Cline Singers album is their most accessible to date – and possibly their best. It’s pretty diverse and genre bending – moving from the hypnotic trippy groove oriented “Climb Down”, to the epic post-rocky “Seven Zed Heaven”, to the gnarly noise-rocker “Hairy Mother”…it’s an upredictable and surprisingly fun record.
22. The Satanist - Behemoth
Behemoth started very influenced by black metal with very raw lo-fi production, then transitioned into death metal and got more and more production value – and this new album has more black metal influence again (but still with a good deal of death metalish stuff going on – such as the vocals). Huge walls of sound (not as symphonic as a band like Emperer – but some interesting instrumentation that adds to the vibe), and some other tasteful surprises like straight-forward rock and roll guitar solos Polish spoken word, and some surprisingly hooky choruses with singing layered in.
21. Run the Jewels II - Run the Jewels
This collaboration between Killer Mike and El-P is a great example of rappers who come from different backgrounds getting on the same page. El-P tones down the cerebral stuff (not as much word-play and showy technical ability) and Killer Mike tones down the southern style and they meet somewhere in the middle. This record is aggressive and raw and a remarkable improvement from their first record from last year and a much more ambitious record.
20. Roads to the North - Panopticon
Panopticon might be metal's greatest kept secret, and this is hands down the best record he’s made so far. Musically he continues with the direction he took off with in “Kentucky”, combining black metal with folk and bluegrass – but this combination works way better on this record. Shifting from extremely beautiful to down right brutal – (or sometimes both simultaneously) while grooving super hard.
19. Lese Majesty - Shabazz Palaces
A more spacey, soundscapey, stream of consciousness album from Shabazz Palaces. The album is comprised of three suites – with a total of 18 songs total (some of them under a minute long). The lyrics don’t really stand out like they do on Black Up – but I don’t think they’re supposed to. In some ways – the lyrical approach reminds me a lot of “Reachin’” – for instance the first song on the second suite of songs, “Solemn Swears” with the lines "I’m comin’ up like Donald Duck/I scream and yell like Samuel L/I’m often on like Chaka Khan” – being reminiscent of rhymes of his from early Digable Planets tracks like “Rebirth of the Slick”…where words are more used as facilitators of timbre rather than for meaning - playing more with phonetic sounds than semantics. And if you really want to stop and read into the lyrics on here: instead of just talking about how cool he is ( like “Rebirth of the Slick”) – on this track it’s more the many sides of being human…or something like that. These words aren’t super profound like many of the lines in “Black Up” – some on here are kind of comical, and delivered in a way that feels very stream of consciousness. I feel like most Shabazz fans were afraid that this follow up to “Black Up” would be too similar, and despite this record not being any where near the caliber of that debut record, at the very least they definitely did not repeat themselves at all and are taking a step in an interesting direction.
18. Ghettoville - Actress
Minimal and stripped down electronic music with relentless experimentation. It takes many elements of different styles of electronic music (such as house) and mutates them into something that is pretty genre defying. More bold and cohesive than his previous release “R.I.P.”, but definitely a bit more of a difficult listen which requires a bit more patience.
17. The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint - Ambrose Akinmusire
A genre bending album from trumpet player Ambrose Akinmusire mixing jazz with modern classical, spoken word, and pop. It’s an ambitious 79 minutes of music, barely fitting on one disk – but it’s definitely a worth while epic listen for folks willing to take it on.
16. Rite of Spring – The Bad Plus
The Bad Plus’s take on “The Rite of Spring” is performed as piano trio (with minimal electronic sounds as well), and without any improvisation (in the traditional jazz sense at least – meaning no improvised solos). Their interpretation stays true to Stravinsky’s piece while maintaining their own identity making an essential listen for fans of the The Bad Plus and fans of the original piece wanting to hear a new and interesting take on it.
15. Inevitable Western - The Bad Plus
This record was released only 6 months after their previous release (and previous album on this list), “The Rite of Spring”, and is comprised on 9 tracks (3 songs written by each member), and is one of the trio’s strongest albums to date. Plenty of really good hooks, interesting song forms, and proggy mind fucks.
14. Our Love - Caribou
The pop hooks on this record are super infectious – some serious ear worms with some serious grooves. It picks up where his previous record, “Swim” left off – and is his strongest record to date. The record lags a bit on the later half, but the highlights such as “Do Without You” and the title track more than make up for it.
13. What is this Heart? - How to Dress Well
“What is this Heart” takes more risks than any album from How to Dress Well yet, and is his strongest so far. Mixing impressionistic post-pop/electronic music with 80s and 90s R&B, and lyrics that are emotional, personal, and at times pretty darn existential on themes such as love, loss, and doubt.
12. Acapana - David Binney
This album often brought Chris Potter’s Underground Band to mind (and fans of that would most likely dig this), it's groove driven music that blends jazz and rock aesthetics. This comparison is maybe in part because of the strong presence of Adam Rodgers and Wanye Krantz on this record - who definitely aren't afraid to rock real hard at times. There’s some really interesting instrumentation (like all the synths and electronics on the opening and closing track and the vocals in a handful of track) – which as surprising as they can be upon a first listen, is always used very tastefully. A much more electric record than he (or the Criss Cross label) has put out before - and I think Binney’s strongest album as a whole so far.
11. Your Dead! - Flying Lotus
Some great vocal features (Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dog, Angel Deolorean). The albums’ 38 minutes is comprised mostly of short musical passages (a lot of tracks that are around a minute), with a few more longer more pop-centric songs, but these short pieces build on one another to create what might be his most holistic and cohesive project yet where the album truly feels like one composition. Jazz fusion prog rock, hip hop, psychedelia that creates one hell of a fun death trip.
10. Piñata - Freddie Gibbs & Madlib
Madlib on top of his game – often the instrumentals sounding straight out of a blacksplotation film from the 70s, being trippy while often also being cinematic and beautiful. And Gibbs sounds really focused – hands down, the best thing I’ve ever heard from him. And even though there are moments and tracks that aren’t up to par with the rest of them, the album as a whole is extreamly strong and the best collaboration album Madlib has done since Madvillany.
9. Become Ocean – John Luther Adams
John Luther Adam’s music is the kind of stuff where you can get enveloped and lost in the textures – and this record of his accomplishes that extremely well. It’s a sonic meditation on the ocean that uses three mini orchestras (with plenty of harps). It creates something that is extremely beautiful, meditative, and awe-inspiring.
8. High Life – Brain Eno/Karl Hyde
Eno’s greatest vocal record since the early 80s. It uses a good amount of afro-pop rhythmic grooves along with interesting textures to create something that is hypnotic and often very meditative – but always remains within the realm of pop music.
7. SYRO - Aphex Twin
A modern approach to retro-sounding electronic music. Extremely detailed and layered. In my opinion, it sounds like a record where he really doesn’t give a fuck in the best way possible: where he’s making and releasing the music that he wants to make without concern for it following the current trends in electronic music – which is a great thing for his first release in 13 years. He has stated that this is his “pop” record – and it really does have some infectious hooks and a lot of pop elements to it. Despite some tracks being weaker than others (such as the drum and bass track towards the end which kind of pales in comparison to some of the drum and bass releases he was putting out around the turn of the century) it’s a real solid return from this giant of electronic music and I am very pumped to see where he will go from here.
(yes, that's the artwork above in case you're unfamiliar - it's a list of all the expenses he had in making the album)
6. Two Boys - Nico Muhly
Leave it to an opera to be the most fucked up and have the most perverted content out of any record on this list. "Two Boys" is Nico Muhly’s first opera – and it’s probably my favorite opera in nearly 40 years. This opera is unique in many ways – but perhaps what stands out the most initially is the subject matter of this opera, as it’s a murder mystery of sorts that’s story is told primarily through the transcripts of an internet chatroom. The libretto even uses internet slang such as "n2m", "a/s/l", "lmfao", as well as countless spelling errors. It takes place in the early 2000s, the wild-west days of the interwebs – a day when chat-rooms were still a popular thing among teenagers and such. Musically what stands out the most upon first listen is the way Nico Muhly creates buzzing vocal textures – overlaying multiple conversations from different chat rooms simultaneously. Everything Muhly tries here works really well to depict the weird world of the internet – even as out of the box as some of his techniques are – they help tell a truly haunting and human story that will definitely stick with you. As modern as the music and subject of this opera is – there are still a lot of traditional underpinnings of ancient opera that make it work really effectively. It’s a tragic story that uses the convention of deception and masked identity, but rather than characters at a masked ball or something along those lines as would be in a super old opera – the characters are hidden by screen names in a chat room. In Muhly’s words, “There’s this sense of longing that pervades all these interactions online, and the sense that, if you’re lying to someone or being lied to, does that matter, if you’re hearing what you want to hear? It’s a contemporary take on a very traditional story of what people do in the face of loneliness, at a cost to themselves to make connections with other people”. It very well might be the biggest cross over in the genre of opera that the world has seen since John Adams’s “Nixon in China” (1987), or maybe even Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach” (1976), which will definitely reach a generation of folks who had little interest in opera before – and maybe a new generation of composers as well.
5. Drop the Vowels - Millie & Andrea
Millie & Andrea is a collaboration between Miles Whittaker and Andy Stott - and this collaboration is a more accessible and fun project than either of their solo stuff (or Mile's work with Demdike Stare). This album uses some tracks from previous releases as well as some that are new - and jumps around stylistically from trap, to break-beat, to post-dubstep, to ambient/noise, but it somehow works as a whole as it gets darker as it progresses - feeling kind of like a descent into the void (especially as it ends on it's most ambient track "Quay").
4. Black Messiah – D’Angello & the Vanguard
D’Angello’s first album in 15 years is worth the wait and couldn’t be more needed in the genre of R&B today. His previous two albums “Brown Sugar” and “Voodoo” were game changers for modern R&B and pivotal in the neo-soul movement. This album shares some similarities with “Voodoo”, but also is a departure in many ways. It’s got very live instrumentation and it grooves indescribably hard, it’s more crazy vocal things going on than his previous releases as well as some stranger grooves. The lyrics on here are really personal at times and really powerful and the production is stellar and very detailed. My expectations for this record were sky high – and it absolutely met them if not exceeded them.
3. Radiorewrite - Steve Reich
This might be the most important release from Steve Reich since the turn of the millennium. Needless to say, Reich has had a huge impact on the direction of electronic music – from his early tape music and phasing to his use of melodicising recorded vocals with compositions such as “Different Trains”…it’s impossible to even imagine how much his music has shaped the world of popular and electronic music today – and on this record that influence comes full circle, where he draws from music that was initially drawn from his own.
In the piece Radiorewrite, he uses his source material from two pieces from the band Radiohead, “Everything in It’s Right Place” and “Jigsaw Falling into Place”. Rather than being in three movements – fast, slow, fast (like he’s been doing more often than not recently) – this ones got five sections (the first, third and fifth being fast and drawing more from “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”, the second and forth being slow and drawing more from “Everything in It’s right Place”). The way he uses the source material from these two Radiohead songs is more using their harmonies and fragments of their melodies – slowing them down and manipulating them in different ways as well as creating his own harmonies that are less directly related to the original source material. There’s some of the techniques you’d expect from Reich (such as canons and such) but the slowed down harmonic structured that stem from the harmonies of Radiohead make this sound remarkably fresh. And the moments where you clearly hear the vocal melody that he’s taking it from are very emotive – such as at the end of the 4th section with the “What was that you tried to say” melody from “Everything in It’s Right Place”.
Both reinterpritations that are present on this record are remarkable as well. The later is “Piano Counterpoint” which is an arrangement of “Six Pianos” which uses a single performer with several prerecorded layers. This arrangement is notable because it displaces the live piano up an octave - making the phasing process/pattern displacement more clear to the listener. The music that Reich wrote around this period (the early seventies) was very much centered on a process that is clear to the listener and this technique of process oriented music/phasing is one that is very prevalent in electronic music today – and this arrangement that highlights this element of this piece will definitely resonate with folks who connect to modern electronic music as it sounds much more in that vein than the original recording from 1973.
The first piece that’s on here (and the last that I’ll talk about from this disk) is “Electric Counterpoint”, performed by Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead. Reich hearing Greenwood perform the piece live was his first exposure to Radiohead – sparking his interest in the group – and inspiring “Radiorewrite”. This is a piece for electric guitar initially released in 1989 and performed by Pat Metheny – which had a huge impact on electronic music and specifically rock music that draws from electronic music (like Radiohead). The piece was sampled a few years later by The Orb on the song Little Fluffy Clouds – as well as imitated a countless number of times by different electronic artists. Greenwood’s interpretation of this is important as his tone and groove is one of someone in this vein rather than a jazz/fusion guitar player (Pat Metheny), giving the piece a new life for a new generation to be inspired by.
2. To Be Kind - Swans
To say this album is any less amazing/perfect than the album I put at number 1 on this list is absolute blasphemy - they are both a 10 out of 10...but anyway, Swans are the real deal – Michael Gira (leader/singer/song-writer of the band) has been at it for 32 years and Swans have explored everything from Post-Punk, to ambient music, to post-rock but have been on to something new since their reformation in 2010. Drifting more from the folkyness which was present in the Seer to something that is heavier, has even more tension, and is even more spiritual.
The sound draws a lot from minimalism – not only hypnotic/repetitive musical structures but also lyrical structures such as in “Screen Shot” and “Things We Do”. It's most primal, animalistic and insane that Gira has gotten since their early days – but much more complex and emotive than their work during that time period. The sound of Swans currently, might seriously be the heaviest band I've ever heard. The drones on this album definitely bring the listener to the void and brings composers like Pauline Oliveros to mind, where sound/deep-listening is used to create a religious experience. This music is cerebral, but meditative – it can be machine like in it's hypnotic grooves, but emotive and extremely human. This is Swans most cohesive album, and in my opinion their greatest - which is a bold statement considering how long these guys have been at it. Just as their work from the late 90s (like "Soundtracks for the Blind") helped shape a wave of post-rock (for bands such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor), they are currently creating a new wave of this post-punk/post-rock sound - one that heavier, darker, and much more spiritual.
The sound draws a lot from minimalism – not only hypnotic/repetitive musical structures but also lyrical structures such as in “Screen Shot” and “Things We Do”. It's most primal, animalistic and insane that Gira has gotten since their early days – but much more complex and emotive than their work during that time period. The sound of Swans currently, might seriously be the heaviest band I've ever heard. The drones on this album definitely bring the listener to the void and brings composers like Pauline Oliveros to mind, where sound/deep-listening is used to create a religious experience. This music is cerebral, but meditative – it can be machine like in it's hypnotic grooves, but emotive and extremely human. This is Swans most cohesive album, and in my opinion their greatest - which is a bold statement considering how long these guys have been at it. Just as their work from the late 90s (like "Soundtracks for the Blind") helped shape a wave of post-rock (for bands such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor), they are currently creating a new wave of this post-punk/post-rock sound - one that heavier, darker, and much more spiritual.
1. Benji - Sun Kil Moon
I’ve already blabbered about how amazing this record is a bunch on here – but this record has truly had a significant impact in the way that write music and I've heard the same from many other song-writers. It continues the shift in direction he took with his album from a couple years ago, “Among the Leaves”, steering away from abstract metaphorical writing and instead being extremely literal and relatively verbose. He refines this style on “Benji”, and it’s perhaps even more personal and naked than it’s predecessor – rewinding back more to his childhood and growing up, giving vinnets of things that happened to him (sometimes very mundane trivial things, sometimes more life changing and tragic), and often relating to mortality. And despite much of this record being focused on death, tragedy, and sadness - there is also a lot of humor in it, such as in the details of eating blue crap cakes at Perry’s and staring at the walls that are cluttered with “sports bar shit” in the song “Ben’s My Friend” or in the Nels Cline joke/reference in “I Love My Dad”. The writing is often very meta, and often very stream of consciousness and creates a collage of sorts that is very emotive and in a way very transcendental. And the production on this record is absolutely stellar – things like the way the vocals are overdubbed on songs like “Dogs” and “Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes” as well subtle background parts add a depth that allow you to keep hearing new things upon repeated listens.
-I know I usually mention that I also released a record during the year at the bottom of these...but for once I didn't this year. I released this video of "Time Travel is Dangerous" in February though that which will at least give you an idea of the direction I've been going in with my music if you're interested. There's a visual album in the works - and I will be posting stuff from it on here as it gets put together.
-Thanks to all the folks who shared any of this music with me, thanks to all those folks who made the music on this here list, and thanks to all the folks who read this here blog.
Much love,
Mike
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