Thankfully, I've been mostly ignoring all that stuff this year and instead have been eagerly mining a rich seam of unique, innovative and just bloody brilliant musical gold buried within the outer fringes. Here are 10 albums which have defined my year and restored my faith in the boundless and infinite creativity of mankind. Every year all I want is to hear something I've never heard before. Why don't you try the same?
In a completely arbitrary order here are my 10 favourite albums of 2013.
Pharmakon - Abandon
This year has seen a lot of the (relatively) big names of the noise scene re-emerge after a bit of an absence. Hair Police, Prurient, Wolf Eyes, Sissy Spacek, Pete Swanson, all came out with differing takes on their once uniform noise blasts. However, for me the most arresting album in this most ear-splitting of genres was by a new face on the scene. The pseudonym of Margaret Chardiet, Pharmakon's music is remarkable in the power electronics scene for being so honest and personal. The electronics themselves are subdued and claustrophobic but the real highlight is Chardiet's voice. Varying from ear-splitting scream to haunted moan, her voice confronts you with intense emotion and refuses to let you turn away. This is heart-on-sleeve music where you can almost see blood pumping down an exposed forearm.
A rather short album, it's padded out on Spotify with a 27 minute long bonus track. This extra material feels like a mixture of sketches and amorphous ideas but that is no bad thing. Instead, it's exciting to see a young and intensely passionate artist demonstrate their raw creative potential.
Forest Swords - Engravings
Matthew Barnes' first full length release as Forest Swords is more a refinement of the project's core sound than anything radically different. Yet there really is nothing else like it. It somehow pulls off the trick of sounding both ancient and yet completely modern with its unintelligible reverb-drenched vocals, subterranean dub rhythms, lonely Morricone-like guitar melodies and touches of exotic quasi-Oriental ornamentation. Apparently, the album's sound is heavily influenced by the landscape of the Wirral. In which case the tourist board should really get a hold of this stuff, is there really such a strange and magical place in North-West England?
Okkyung Lee - Ghil
Cellist Okkyung Lee has essentially re-invented the cello with perhaps some of the most amazing music for a solo instrument in recent memory. The cello is often seen as very romantic instrument, well not any more! Lee almost seems to torture her instrument, alternating between blistering high-speed attack to laboured and forceful dragging of the bow that makes each vibration of a string seem palpable. At times the wooden body of the instrument itself creaks with the strain. Lee's incredibly skilled and expressive technique seems to put the very acoustic nature of her instrument to the fore. The result is music that feels incredibly alive, stressing the importance of physical instruments in our digital age.
It can't truly be said that this is a solo album though. As much a stamp of identity as Lee's idiosyncratic technique, is the recording process of collaborator Lasse Marhaug. Rather than record in some state of the art studio, they chose to record this album on a 4-track cassette player from the 70's in such diverse locations as an Oslo back-alley and a disused hydroelectric powerplant. As such tracks vary from strong timbral clarity to muddied lo-fi assaults, via ominous reverberant spaces, all of which serve to confront and enhance Lee's playing in equal measure. Ghil is thus a perfect marriage of acoustic and digital techniques. It's the best full-on noise album of the year, the best improv album and it's probably the most exciting modern classical music I've heard in years. Just when you fear there was no where to go in experimental, instrumental music this album comes along and blows everything else away.
Atom TM - HD
A 21st century digital version of Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine except here there is no symbiosis, the computers have won and are revelling in our downfall. HD is collection of fun and satirical pop songs about pop culture's place in the digital maelstrom of the globally interconnected modern world. The only human presence on the album is Jamie Lidell's robotic soul singing and even that is a heartfelt love affair to a machine, I Love U (Like I Love My Drum Machine). Elsewhere the seemingly embodied voice of the Internet itself seems to delight in the destruction it's caused, "MP3 killed the MTV / I am thrilled / All I see is fake and raw / Is empty". There are further bits of twisted lyrical brilliance in the affectless protest song Stop (Imperialist Pop). But don't think that there is also not some pure and simple brilliant music here. The vocal processing in Strom is simply sumptuous as is the twisted and roiling rhythms of The Sound of Decay. In an album filled with highlights, it's the cover of The Who's My Generation that really stands out. A rebellious attitude twisted into a digital glitch-fest it captures an individual sensibility and concept better than pretty much any cover version I've heard before. If this is the sound of the ever approaching age when the computers gain sentience and enslave us all, well then it can't come fast enough!
James Ferraro - NYC Hell, 3:00am
Where previously James Ferraro has made intentionally soulless, hyper-modern background music for futuristic sushi restaurants (2011's Far Side Virtual) it was an unexpected thrill to hear some of his most personal and moving work. NYC Hell, 3:00am is a rather bleak and unflattering portrait of the city that never sleeps, projected through a warped take on contemporary R'n'B and pop music. While New York's modern chic, urban squalor and pop cultural yuppie-ism (expertly highlighted with a sampled reference to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) are all represented in the music, its the human presence - of night-owl, raver and hustler alike - which is at the fore.
Ferraro seems to have perfectly captured that unique loneliness that only can only felt amidst vast crowds of people. As someone who has recently been to New York I can attest to being over-awed and slightly terrified of that giant metropolis. A feeling which seems to be at the core of Ferraro's music. The accompaniment to the "songs" are all submerged low-end as if heard through a neighbour''s wall. But the real expressive heart of this album is Ferraro's singing. Whether intentionally or not his voice sounds distinctly amateurish. However, this gives the music so much more emotional weight and pathos than any musician it may have been directly styled on. We've become so de-sensitized to over-produced X-Factor approved standards of vocal technique, pop songs have lost pretty much any sense of honesty or true feeling. The effect of Ferraro exposing his unprofessional vocals, seemingly performed without any hint of irony, is truly heart-rending. Who knew I'd ever be so moved by someone who once wrote a song called "Find Out What's On Carrie Bradshaw's iPod".
Ferraro seems to have perfectly captured that unique loneliness that only can only felt amidst vast crowds of people. As someone who has recently been to New York I can attest to being over-awed and slightly terrified of that giant metropolis. A feeling which seems to be at the core of Ferraro's music. The accompaniment to the "songs" are all submerged low-end as if heard through a neighbour''s wall. But the real expressive heart of this album is Ferraro's singing. Whether intentionally or not his voice sounds distinctly amateurish. However, this gives the music so much more emotional weight and pathos than any musician it may have been directly styled on. We've become so de-sensitized to over-produced X-Factor approved standards of vocal technique, pop songs have lost pretty much any sense of honesty or true feeling. The effect of Ferraro exposing his unprofessional vocals, seemingly performed without any hint of irony, is truly heart-rending. Who knew I'd ever be so moved by someone who once wrote a song called "Find Out What's On Carrie Bradshaw's iPod".
Oneohtrix Point Never - R Plus Seven
Considering the source material of this album - new agey synths; cheesy exotica; that choral sound you get on cheap Yamaha keyboards - it really has no right to be as amazing as it is. It is a testament to the incredible skills of its maker and the craft of arranging and shaping synthesized sound. I don't have the semiological skills to really get into why this album works on a conceptual level. It's just incredibly entertaining and who would really want to ask for more than that!
The Knife - Shaking The Habitual
A sprawling, conceptually ambitious and thoroughly brilliant double-length album from Sweden's finest alternative synthpop duo, Shaking The Habitual is one of the most remarkable releases of the year. The Knife's warm electronic sound has expanded to incorporate more acoustic sounds and, paradoxically, harsher electronic squall. Their vast musical palette moves from multi-coloured ersatz world music (Congotronics-like opener A Tooth From An Eye, frantic percussion and breathy wind instruments on Without You My Life Would Be Boring) to fraught atonal ballads (Cherry On Top). Full Of Fire is a particular highlight and one of my favourite individual songs of the year. A nine minute long epic of pulsating industrial beats, squealing electronics and Karin Dreijer Andersson's unnerving semi-sung vocals.
This is all conceptually packaged up with lyrics on subjects as diverse as fracking, white male privilege, the continuum of gender and global capitalism. While the lyrics may be a bit politically dense for me to really appreciate them, what really matters is that the actual music itself is so inventive and powerful. Furthermore, the duo are more than comfortable dispensing with lyrics altogether and producing driving instrumental workouts (Networking) and blistering noise pieces (Crake, Oryx), though 19 minute drone piece Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized kinda kills the pace a bit. Still to get all of this on what is essentially an electronic pop album, albeit one at the very fringes of said genre, shows that there are still so many musical frontiers yet to explore.
Matmos - The Marriage Of True Minds
If anyone has ever read any of my blogs before you'll know much I admire the core aesthetics of Matmos' music. Theirs is a very playful creativity, a concept-driven music that understands that the best way to create is to limit oneself to a central idea and push it to its extremes. The Marriage Of True Minds is probably their greatest example of this ethos. The core theme here is communication both passive and active and Matmos approach this by performing a serious of extra-sensory tests whereby they blindfold a willing participant and play white noise into headphones. The intention is to create a environment of sensory deprivation and once this is achieved one of the band tries to telepathically transmit the idea of the new album. The participant tries to receive this message and then describes what comes to them and then this becomes the "score" of the album. It's all just a way of generating ideas and there are some great ones here. The participants speak of strange geometrical landscapes; environments shifting from cityscapes to deserts and an odd proliferation of gigantic triangles. Out of this Matmos conjure an album of all sorts of weird and wonderful treats from the ridiculously fun psych-out of Very Large Green Triangles; making sloshing water a groovy rhythm instrument on Mental Radio; detailed sonic dreamscapes (Ross Transcipt) and a truly bonkers death-metal-cum-americana cover of The Stooges' E.S.P. It's all ridiculously fun while still being experimental and sonically adventurous. Guaranteed to leave a smile on your face.
Rashad Becker - Traditional Music Of Notional Species Vol. 1
Wow. I know I talk a lot about wanting to hear things I've never heard before but until hearing this album I didn't really think that was still possible. Traditional Music Of Notional Species Vol. 1 is a series of 8 short electronic sound pieces that are cheekily split into Dances and Themes (they are neither). These peculiar sound-worlds are teeming with invisible, amorphous life darting across the speakers to return to whatever strange corner of existence from whence they came. The best analogy to listening to this music that I can think of is watching a nature film on deep sea creatures. Through amazing advances in under-water photography we can witness these never before seen animals, monstrous and glowing with bio-luminescence. Such strange beings exist on our planet, you can see with your very eyes that these unbelieveable creatures are real and yet they still seem completely impossible. And so it is for Becker's carefully sculpted sounds, completely alien and yet very much of this planet. Of flesh and blood. Something that much electro-acoustic music fails to capture. What's even more stunning is the quality of the sound itself (Becker is known best for his work as a mastering engineer adding a seal of quality to a large number of techno 12-inches) which breathes so much life into the music. It's like watching those freaky fish in full HD! Whether Becker's creatures are human or not its hard to say. To really appreciate this music you have to open yourself up on a level that almost no music before has asked you to explore. But any challenge is so immensely worthwhile. I can't wait to hear more.
Also I love him for this quote which highlights the ridiculousness of calling any music like this experimental,
"I really don't feel my music is experimental music. I reject that notion because I'm not experimenting."
C. Spencer Yeh, Lasse Marhaug, Okkyung Lee - Wake Up Awesome
Not content with creating one stunning album this year, Okkyung Lee and Lasse Marhaug team with electronic improviser C. Spencer Yeh to produce a more collaborative work that is just as remarkable. The performers are following an area that I've always found fascinating, the interplay between live acoustic instruments and improvised electronics. There's a lot of scope in this arrangement for compelling ways to make music, from supportive dialogues between instrument and electronics to full-on violent confrontations. A lot of these approaches are experimented with on this album which makes it such as varied and exciting listen. It's never clear which direction it will go in next.
This variety extends to Lee's cello playing. She is given the chance to be more conventionally expressive with sonorous, romantic melodies (Ophelia Gimme Shelter) as well display the virtuosic fireworks that made Ghil so captivating. The electronic portions of the album are equally as impressive. Dense multi-coloured textures, threatening squalls of noise, humourous sound effects and playful melodies. Listening to this evokes the pure experimental joy of early laptop groups, such as the legendary FennO'Berg, that began to emerge in the early 2000s. We need to see a lot more improvised music which has such a strong sense of the joy of creation.
And because every year I seem to give out some random award that seems like a good idea at the time. It's:
Harry Hipster's Genre Of The Year Award
Footwork
It's been quite an incredible year for the in-no-way-fledgling-but-feels-like-it-as-all-the-music-journos-have-just-picked-up-on-it dance music style. What's really been impressive is how the genre is evolving. This year we've had the individualistic pop-cultural wizardy of RP Boo; 2 EPs from DJ Rashad expanding on the genre's complicated affair with vocal samples; a more instrumentally-focused release from DJ Spinn and another assured collaboration filled full-length release from DJ Rashad. For those not yet in the know footwork is an intoxicating mix of jittery, mercurial rhythms and samples chopped within an inch of their life often focusing intently on one phrase or emotionally resonant utterance. Despite the fact that it borrows very liberally from musical genres I have pretty much no connection too (R 'n' B, hip hop, trap, jungle) it never fails to draw me in with its ambiguity. Upon chopping-up a hip-hop vocal praising the voluptuousness of a gyrating dancer in a club is it revelling in such misogynistic behaviour? Or is it intentionally robbing the words of their impact, returning such declarations to the primordial sludge of meaningless phonemes? Regardless, all the best footwork of this year has been united by the fact that it is just so addictively entertaining.
Best Tracks Of The Year:
As I did last year, I've been maintaining a playlist of sounds from 2013. Below are some random thoughts on these sounds that have kept me feeling alive this year.
- All year I've been stalked by Very Large Green Triangles...
- "Your shoelaces are bleeding" is probably one of the best lyrics ever.
- Listening to a fist-pumping double of Fuck Buttons and Pete Swanson is a very dangerous thing. Not only will you be so pumped up you'll think you can punch through concrete, you might actually try!
- Re-contextualizing Tarzan's yell as siren warning of a battle in the urban jungle... sheer brilliance!
- Young Echo have pretty much proved the mantra "More than the sum of its parts"
- More and more I seem to be turning away from instrumental music. On that playlist are 2 rock songs, some cello and solo guitar. The rest is all electronic. I imagine it's just a phase... like nu-metal or 19th century classical music were...
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