As mentioned in yesterday's post, this year's album ranking is based on the three-point numerical system of the constructed language Toki Pona. Part #1 set out the mute or many, but now we turn to those in second place (the tu) and my unequivocal favourite album of the year (the wan). ...
THE TU
KILLING JOKE PYLON
(SPINEFARM)
A band that has been around 36 years has no business sounding this furious. While Killing Joke’s basic song template has arguably changed little from their early days, they have undergone a gradual metamorphosis, becoming heavier and harder as the years go by – especially since 2003’s eponymous album. Pylon continues this trend of intensification, with some tracks arguably their most punishing yet. All of KJ’s trademarks are here – post-punk-meets-metal-meets-industrial rhythms, Geordie’s vicious, heavy but curiously elegant riffs, Jaz singing like a pile of burning tyres about conspiracies, geopolitical horrors, psychological warfare and the apocalypse – but just a little further, a little faster, a little more febrile than the last time. Yet for all that KJ excel at snarling vitriol and justifiable paranoia, they are at heart an accomplished, if idiosyncratic and aggressive pop band – most explicitly, on tracks like ‘Big Buzz’ and ‘Euphoria’. Fierce, timely and appropriate, Pylon is the perfect soundtrack to our age. And that should worry us all.
Despite all the metalhead praise heaped upon them, I’ve
never really connected with much-acclaimed Italian riff-lords Ufomammut. Yet
for some reason Ecate really got its
hooks deep into me. There’s just something so primordial and monumental about
their riffs here, almost as if they’re tapping into the pure, unfiltered,
Platonic form of the riff itself. It’s massive, powerful, feral and yet, for
all its bluster and violence, curiously Zen.
While collaborations with the likes of Asva, Wolves in the
Throne Room and Sunn o))) have associated her with the heaviest of guitar
bands, Jessika Kenney’s solo work and collaborations with Eyvind Kang are much
less visceral, but no less weighty. A devoted student of Indonesian and Persian
music, Kenney is also blessed with one of the most pure, expressive and
unashamedly beautiful voices on the planet. Atria
is essentially minimalist gamelan – still, spare, breeze-through-reeds slow and
spellbinding, driven by meticulous, chiming percussion. While strongly melodic,
its primary appeal is textural, lying in the sumptuous, sustained resonances of
struck metal, the honeyed tones of Kenney’s poised, elegant vocals, and the
mesmerising way in which the two interact – at times, so fluid as to be
almost indistinguishable from one another.
Loosely translated from the Spanish, this record is titled
‘Cut Everything’. It neatly sums up the content – angry, violent, lashing out
at an increasingly ridiculous world. Their previous album, 2009’s Carboniferous, saw Zu take their
spidery, complex, polyrhythmic bass/sax/drums prog and turbo-boost the
bludgeon, producing something stunningly heavy but also inviting, even
infectiously danceable. By contrast, Cortar
Todo and last year’s Goodnight
Civilisation EP take the sheer force and momentum of Carboniferous and turn it into a weapon.
Lead track ‘The Unseen War’ comes stomping in, all blunt
trauma and sudden flurries of body blows. The wild, tumultuous ‘Rudra Dances
Over Burning Rome’ evokes the firestorm of its title in (new to Zu, ex of The
Locust) drummer Gabe Serbian’s whirlwind of debris and the charred howls of
Luca Mai’s baritone sax. The title track itself gets locked into an
extraordinary bit of micro-focused repetition, all tapped hi-hats and
palm-muted chug, punctuated by malicious stabs, Massimo Pupillo’s bass rattling
teeth as well as guts through judicious use of a sadistic, piercing octave
pedal. Only ‘Serpens Cauda’ and the closing ‘Pantokrator’, twin slithers of
immersive beatless dread akin to Zu’s recent work with Eugene Robinson, offer
any respite from the pummel.
Zu’s music is still wildly inventive and damnably clever,
but – unbelievably – this is its heaviest, most punishing manifestation yet. If
it continues accumulating mass at this rate it’ll be a neutron star by 2030.
While the prospect of a new album, 18 years after the last,
was absurdly exciting, even the most optimistic of Faith No More devotees must
have approached it with a certain amount of anxiety. Reunion albums don’t
exactly have an illustrious history. What if they’d lost it? What if they could
no longer recreate that elusive magic?
The opening moments of Sol
Invictus might therefore appear slightly anticlimactic. Rather than
announcing their return with a bold statement of intent, the title track slinks
and saunters in, all widescreen shimmer, intimate crooning and spare piano.
It’s second track ‘Superhero’ that brings the metallic fire and spittle-flecked
bluster you may have expected. Yet this disarming opening gambit sets the
overall tone. While some tracks are as punishing and caustic as any FNM fan
would wish, Sol Invictus is also
characterised by a more restrained, cinematic character, which conveys greater
emotional depth than the band’s younger, more cynical selves would ever have
been able to muster. A spare, foreboding atmosphere, dotted through with
acoustic guitars and pianos, gives the album an air of seasoned elegance
– which only makes the furious bits more intense by comparison. The plentiful
peaks are as good as anything they’ve ever done: the relentless, claustrophobic
‘Separation Anxiety’, driven by a vicious, instant-classic Gould bassline;
‘Cone of Shame’s transition from ominous swamp-blues to feral noise rock; ‘Rise
of the Fall’s infectious patchwork genre-mash; sweet, sepia-toned closer ‘From
the Dead’. Best of all is ‘Matador’, the massive climax, which is jaw-dropping
in its scale and impact – ‘Just a Man’s scope and choral ascension meets
‘King for a Day’s multi-part structure and ‘Pristina’s emotional bruises, with
several new twists along the way.
Stripped down to a focused, concise ten tracks, Sol Invictus makes for a beautifully
balanced, varied and consistently impressive collection that far exceeds
expectations. It’s a record made by a band not softened by time, but honed by
experience. What it’s not is typical Faith No More – which, of course, makes it
typically Faith No More.
I recently became aware of the minimalist constructed language Toki Pona, which consists of just 120 words. Now, while this is perhaps inadequate for the purposes of the self-consciously verbose – indeed, positively sesquipedalian – music writer, it does present an elegant solution for how to approach the tedious business of ranking one's obligatory end-of-year list. Y'see, Toki Pona's numbering system comprises just three terms: wan (one), tu (two) and mute (many). This almost perfectly reflects my own in-head ranking system. There's usually one clear winner, several second-tier favourites, and a whole bunch of things that were also brilliant but cannot be arranged into any kind of order.
Here are the many, the mute. All fantastic records. In no particular order. Tomorrow, the wan & tu. ...
WILL HAVEN
OPEN THE MIND TO DISCOMFORT
(ARTERY)
Bleak and full of despair, Will Haven’s latest adds a
haunted, sorrowful air to their relentless bludgeon. The riffs here are
absolutely monstrous, but weirdly ill-defined, fuzzy around the edges, like
cirrus clouds made of cast iron.
MELECHESH
ENKI
(NUCLEAR BLAST)
Utterly dazzling Assyrian/Armenian death metal, bringing
together Mesoptomian melodic influences and razorwire riffs. It’s a perfect
synthesis, without a hint of gimmickry. Astoundingly adept, savage and
innovative. One of the best metal albums of the year.
JUTE GYTE
SHIP OF THESEUS
(JESHIMOTH
ENTERTAINMENT)
One-man DIY doom/black metal project, rendered utterly
nauseating by the use of microtonal scales. Sounds like a recording of several
bands slowly sinking into a swamp, being played back on a broken turntable.
Uniquely horrible, in a brilliant sort of way.
One of the more indefinable and unsettling releases of the
year – haunted location recordings, woozy beats, layers of fuzz and grime,
alien skronk, clattering improv, folky riffs and caustic guitar noise. It’s
like a radio half-immersed in honey in an Egyptian cafe, picking up two
stations at once. I’ve no idea who these people are or what they’re trying to achieve,
but I like it. A lot.
Bringing together Kavus Torabi’s ambitious prog ensemble’s
two previous EPs (Dear Lord, No Deal
and Clairvoyant Fortnight) and adding
one new, drifting, nigh-ambient track, Home
of the Newly Departed is likely to be familiar to existing fans. However,
it does brazenly illustrate that, far from being stop-gap throwaways, this
band’s EPs have been among their strongest work. At least four of these seven
tracks – the urgent and ebullient ‘Pilot Her’, the good-natured rolling groove
and fractured climax of ‘In a Foreign Way’, the Magma-esque stomp of ‘Prime of
Our Decline’ and the thoroughly unhinged 14-minute modular monstrosity ‘HMS
Washout’ – would surely dominate any semi-respectable Knifeworld top five.
MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE
FURTHER WEST QUAD CULT
Designed
to be played simultaneously with 2013’s Far West, though I have never done so
and it sounds great as a standalone entity. Entrancing sounds that take John
Carpenter’s synth aesthetic, marry it to Maryanne Amacher’s head music and
bounce sounds around your skull, or build beautiful drones packed with drama
and romantic yearning. Another left turn from this inventive, ever-evolving and
curiously emotional band, sadly and incongruously saddled with one of the
worst, most crass and stupid names in the history of music.
Full disclosure: Jason is a friend and occasional collaborator, but that doesn’t mean I felt duty-bound to laud his latest album. On the contrary, Home World is undeniably appealing – a delightful collection of low-tech DIY electronica and virtuosic live percussion that’s just brimming with charm, verve and originality. Look out for a remix album in 2016.
After losing interest in LB after Hypermagic Mountain, Fantasy
Empire picked me up by the scruff and dumped me back in front of Brian
Gibson’s monstrous amp stack, soaking up the octave-jumping abuse. Nothing
particularly new from camp Bolt, but it’s always a colossal pleasure to hear
them at full force.
CIVIL ELEGIES
FOR THE CONSIDERATION
OF AMATEUR JOCKEYS
Probably one of my favourite Glasgow bands at the moment, another
project from the ever-prolific Hamish Black. This is the band’s second album, recorded
live in a day. Lean and nasty, it’s a short blast of really inventive,
punishing and immediate noise rock/hardcore, with a constantly surprising
rhythmic and melodic sensibility that will leg you up and steal your shoes.
AUTHOR & PUNISHER
MELK UND HONING
(HOUSECORE RECORDS)
The mad scientist of industrial doom, Tristan Shone has a
unique approach to his craft – building an array of scratch-built
noise-making machines in what one can only assume is a subterranean workshop
filled with robotic bats. At its heart, Melk
en Honing (with harrowing artwork from Black Sun’s Russell MacEwan) is a
heavy, grimy work of cybernetic aggression, starkly impressive on its own bleak
terms. But what makes Author & Punisher special is something that
occasionally pushes through the mechanical filth like a weed through concrete –
an unexpectedly lavish and poignant melodic sensibility: ‘Shame’ coats a
bludgeoning trudge with incongruous beauty and layered harmonies, ‘Future Man’s
yearning lines soar desperately over a tar-pit trawl, and ‘Void, Null, Alive’
climaxes in a surprisingly elegant choral mantra.
Two sides of long-form ritualistic, psychedelic
trance/doom/drone from Finland. Low, slow, heavy, sensual and unashamedly
portentuous, this ebbs and flows between looming ambience and planet-crushing
riffs with deceptive ease.
Astonishingly, Guapo have now been at this heavy prog thing for 20 years.
They’ve mutated considerably in that time, shedding people, gaining others,
evolving from a two-piece to the current quartet – and they’ve also been
pretty consistently brilliant. Like their 2004 opus Five Suns, Obscure Knowledge
is a single, album-length composition divided into movements. However,
curiously, the three tracks’ running times and overall structure almost exactly
mirror their last album, History of the
Visitation. Whether this signifies coincidence or deeper conceptual
significance is moot, as the resultant album grooves, thunders, confounds and
mesmerises in all the right ways. Driven inexorably onwards by James Sedwards’
serrated basslines and the deft, subtle drumming of Dave Smith, it gallops
magnificently from big-riff bombast through cosmic mind-drift and lithe,
nigh-funky strut to a climactic wall of noise-rock.
A third outing from this Italian bass-and-drums duo. While
2013’s Opera was an impressively
complex and thoroughly pulverising experience, as dense and heavy as it was
disorienting, Motomonotono offers
some measure of refinement. It’s still ridiculously energetic and powerful, but
the emphasis has shifted slightly from bludgeoning, sculpted chaos to precision
and repetition, with the pair locking into agile, trance-like offbeat rhythms.
Luca Cavina’s bass has a more spidery, multi-layered tone this time around,
with chorus and synth effects broadening his formerly brutish palette. Allied
with drummer Paolo Mongardi’s lethal pinpoint polyrhythms, the results are
remarkable and instantly appealing – complex but flowing, hypnotic, full of
groove. Fans of Ruins and Zu will lap this up like thirsty dogs in a paddling
pool.
2014 snuck up on me. I spent much of the year thinking it
was quite a poor one for music. However, when compiling a list of aural
goodnesses that have pleased me greatly, there were two or three times as many
than in most years. My final list was nearly 70 albums long… in most years, I
don’t even hear that many albums, let alone that many good ones.
Anyway, there follows my top 20, most of which is in no particular order. As we
reach the top five, some rankings will come into play. Outside of this list,
there are dozens of excellent albums, with particularly honourable mentions to
Triptykon, The Cosmic Dead, RM Hubbert, Prescott, Godflesh, Thin Privilege, Innercity Ensemble,
Christina Vantzou, Swans, The Unsemble, Sound of Yell…
A
second outing and a new lineup for Obake, with Porcupine Tree/Metallic Taste of
Blood’s Colin Edwin taking over from now-departed Massimo Pupillo on bass.
There’s little change in the band’s aesthetic though – planet-smashing
mid-to-sloth-paced sludge, with occasional detours into pretty and/or eerie
ambience providing some tonal contrast. However, this is on the whole vastly
more focused and confident-sounding than its predecessor – bigger, tighter,
harder (to list but three sexually suggestive adjectives). Aside from one
weirdly aberrant bit of overly slick neo-psychedelic soft-prog/post-rock at the
mid-point, this is a relentless and aggressively assured collection. Whereas
the first album at times had the feel of experimental noise jams rooted in
doom-metal tropes and textures, Mutations finds Obake blossoming into a
sharp-fanged and gloriously brutal metallic unit with just enough experimental
leanings to keep things unpredictable.
Three tracks of extended, spiky, minimalist groove.
Super-lean and scarily efficient. Most thrilling of all, it sounds like they
took the choppy chukka-chukka guitar lick from ‘Bootylicious’ and constructed a
whole album out of it.
Tētēma – Geocidal
In his latest attempt to assuage a pathological fear of not making music, Mike
Patton finds himself recruited by electroacoustic composer Anthony Pateras for
this new duo. Seasoned Pattonites will hear elements of some of his more fringe
projects here, from the unsettling swathes of Maldoror to the rude rhythms of
General Patton and the brooding atmospheres of the soundtracks. But tētēma,
largely conceived by Pateras, has a curiously moreish flavour all its own.
Recorded in several different locations, it has the feel of a travelogue
through a quasi-fictional land, rendered as bristling misinterpretations of
traditional ritual, devotional music and forgotten noir cinema, taking in
scenes of dystopian dread and modernist composers festering beneath mosquito
nets. Pateras’ compositions span vast stylistic and emotional terrain, and
Patton gleefully pushes his throat into painful new areas in response. Heavy on
both beats and abstraction, it’s instantly accessible yet deeply strange and
indefinable too.
Can it be that Deerhoof have really
been around for 20 years? Yes, it can. At first, their 13th album seems to
consist of typical examples of their slightly more restrained and hugely
welcoming, but still offbeat latterday aesthetic. But with ‘Doom’s mid-section
wall of bristly guitar and the discordant stomp of ‘Last Fad’, the band’s
wilder leanings begin to dominate. By the time we reach ‘Exit Only’s uber-fuzzy
into-the-red garage-punk and ‘Big House Waltz’s dubstep-meets-Afropop reprisal
of the riff from Sepultura’s ‘Roots Bloody Roots’, all rationality is lost in a
giddy whirl of good-natured but raucous possibilities. It’s a gluttonous feast
of beautiful and ridiculous and sweet and silly and outrageously clever ideas
packed into 31 all-too-swift minutes. Can it be that Deerhoof have really delivered
their best album 20 years into their existence? Well, just maybe.
Dylan Carlson and Adrienne Davies return with the eighth
Earth (that’s difficult to say) album, sounding beefier and more aggressive
than they have since the turning point of Hex.
Still full of space and contemplation, but with a rockier, more aggressive
edge. The vocal tracks (from Mark Lanegan and others) didn’t really work for
me, but the instrumentals are among Earth’s finest.
Olga Bell – Krai
An enticing and unique melding of electronica, Eastern
European/Russian folk music and post-rock, though far less precious and much
more immediate than that genre-mash description might imply. Singular, fun and
beautiful.
Slomatics – Estron
One of the best relentlessly heavy albums I’ve heard all
year. Ugly, brutal riffs, dripping with foul ichor, complemented by incongruously
spectral vocals. Gorgeous Moebius-style cover artwork, too.
Knifeworld – The
Unravelling
In the five years since the last Knifeworld full-length, Kavus Torabi has
hardly been idle, releasing two Knifeworld EPs, playing with Gong, Guapo and
the Medieval Baebes, orchestrating the Exquisite Corpse Game project, running
his label Believers Roast and hosting a prog-rock radio show with snooker champ
Steve Davis. Somehow, he found time to record these eight lavish tracks,
brimming with imagination. More concise and focused than 2009’s Buried Alone,
this finds Torabi exploring bold new areas – like ‘The Skulls We Buried Have
Regrown their Eyes’ eerie manual imitation of electronica, or the eerie
abstraction of ‘This Room Was Once Alive’. Yet, for all its forays into way-out
psychedelic prog curiousness – and there are many – at the heart of The
Unravelling is Torabi’s warm and welcoming pop sensibility, which eases the
unsuspecting listener through a theoretically imposing world of intricate time
changes, sputtering horns and spiralling riffs.
Since
the dissolution of his former outfit Tattie Toes, Howie Reeve has been
pioneering the use of acoustic bass as a solo instrument. Although he’s an
extraordinary player, this is no noodly, self-pleasuring wankfest. Rather, his
songs are snare-tight, startlingly original compositions, rooted in post-punk,
but much more exploratory and personal. A unique aesthetic, both nakedly
intimate and giddily visceral, with lyrics crammed full of everyday yet
profound observation.
Superbly greasy and sleazy Glaswegian noise-rock quartet,
full of diseased groove and good-natured confrontation. One of the best live
bands I saw all year.
Promotional gimmickry and false-leak shenanigans aside, this
is a superbly upsetting collection from OMG, with barbed sounds, bantha-sized
riffs and oppression to spare.
OOIOO – Gamel
As
these words spill forth, dear reader, the sun is doing its best to bake any and
all puny human flesh that falls beneath its gaze. And it turns out OOIOO’s Gamel,
their first in five years, is an absolutely perfect soundtrack for a scorcher
of a day. As you might guess from the album’s name, Yoshimi P-We and her
psychedelic ritual/post-punk/trance-rock ensemble have turned their attention
toward the traditional sounds of Bali for their fifth full-length release. Both
in terms of composition and instrumentation, these 11 tracks draw heavily on
the chiming, tinkling, rhythmically complex music of gamelan, and in doing so
create something that fair sparkles with uplifting energy. They make for a
gloriously bright and euphoric confection of glittering cross-rhythms, pulsing
krautrock-style thrust and giddy vocal chants, with occasional bursts of
splattershot guitar. The unmistakable citrusy fractal tang of Yoshimi’s day job
as Boredoms drummer can be detected at times, but this is less monolithically
pounding than their current incarnation, more protean, playful and fun. It’s
beautifully euphoric and joyous, with an appealing lightness of touch, even
fragile and delicate when it needs to be – the sound of liquid summer being
piped directly into your lugholes.
Whether
it’s the packaging, the name or the two intense-looking bearded Italian blokes,
something about Zeus! suggests stoner sludge-doom. It is, then, a source of
extreme and giddy delight to find that this band are far weirder and more
interesting than all that. Theirs is a largely instrumental bass+ drums
hyper-prog, its manic energy, mischievous sensibility and super-intricate
composition most likely inspired by the Tatsuya Yoshida school of impossible
musics, but with added caustic metallicisms redolent of Fantômas or classic-era
Slayer. As an added treat, the titles are awash with delicious and terrible
puns (of which the best/worst is opener ‘Lucy in the Sky with King Diamond’).
As heavy as it is clever, as ridiculous as it is utterly, magnificently
brilliant.
It only came to my attention via the Quietus’s end of year
list, but Merkabah’s third album was an instant hit. Stunning, visceral noise
rock with a heavy dose of King Crimson threading through its intricately
interwoven physicality.
4. Richard Pinhas & Oren Ambarchi –
Tikkun
Tikkun
[…] brings the fire. While Pinhas and Ambarchi get the spine credit, they’re
joined on these three tracks by Masami Akita, Duncan Pinhas, and twin drummers
Eric Borelva and Joe Talia. Driven by an unrelentingly sexy 6/8 bassline,
‘Washington DC’ sets the tone, piling on layers of lavish noise and savage
beats, while ‘Tokyo’ is steadier but more imposing. But closer ‘San Francisco’
is the peak, a torrent of drums and joyfully busy noise that achieves the kind
of irresistible, ecstatic cosmic-psych solar flares of 21st-century Boredoms.
Anyone who’s seen Harvey Milk live will know that bassist Stephen Tanner seems
like the happiest man on Earth. Even through the sometimes overwhelming
darkness of their music, he remains a radiant transmitter of bonhomie and good
vibes. It’s therefore painful to hear that this an illusion. Recorded in the
wake of personal tragedy, Things Haven’t Gone Well is a reflective and
harrowing autobiography in instrumental form, the titles a timeline of his life
from difficult birth to adult depression. These 12 tracks were originally ideas
for a new Harvey Milk album, and it shows. It’s the sludgiest, dirgiest moments
of Courtesy and Goodwill or My Love…, minus Creston Spiers’
ursine howl, plus an ocean of despair. However, in true perverse Harvey Milk
fashion, there’s potent beauty in there too – as much as ‘It’s Not Going to Get
Better’ could crush tanks, it’s soulful, yearning and painfully human too. On
the face of it, Music Blues seems like a poor name for a project – so vague and
bland as to be meaningless. Yet in context, it makes perfect sense. This is not
blues as genre, but as simple, honest, direct statement. A stunning piece of
work, as viscerally invincible as it is emotionally vulnerable.
They’ve been unavoidable in 2014, for good reasons or ill,
drawing equal amounts of adoration and ire, but I for one bloody love
Babymetal. Their debut has been, by some margin, my most-played album of 2014.
Like most people, I first encountered them via ‘Gimme
Choko!’. Given my fondness for brutal metal, cheesy pop and many aspects of
Japanese culture, they seemed to be tailor-made for me. However, had the fairly
silly ‘Gimme Choko’ been entirely representative of Babymetal, that might have
been the end of my affinity. Luckily, there’s a lot more to them than singing
about chocolate. They transcend novelty and gimmickry. Their debut album is a
whirlwind exploration of myriad metal styles, from death, thrash and punk to
power and prog, djent, industrial and nu-. And it’s all done with remarkable
conviction and intensity (as you’d expect, given that the backing
band/songwriting team includes Takeshi
Ueda of Mad Capsule Markets).
The juxtaposition of actually really-bloody-good and super-heavy metal tracks
with ultra-sweet and poppy female vocals is supremely exciting. I generally
prefer female voices over male, and the uber-macho vocals on ‘proper’ metal can
be a bit wearing. So this is made for me. It has an element of extreme tonal
contrast that’s really compelling and addictive – it’s the salted caramel of
music. Aside from one track that’s a little too close for comfort to Limp
Bizkit, the entire album is really solid. It’s surprisingly diverse too, each track with its own distinct identity. Highlights abound, but here
are the top three: ‘Megitsune’, which combines more traditional Japanese music
with face-booting riffs, and even includes a heavy breakdown based on the old
tune ‘Sakura’ (also referenced by Martin Denny and Bon Jovi, as it happens); the
arty, obtuse ‘Akumu No Rinbukyoku’, which sounds like the hybrid of Bjork and
Meshuggah that has previously only existed in my dreams; and ‘Akatsuki’, an
unbelievably sweet and gorgeous ballad offset by full-force metal assault. When
Su-Metal sings that sublime chorus backed by all the heavy metal thunder
you could ask for… goosebumps the size of golf balls. Pure bloody pop/metal genius.
