Kind of feel like a lot of music stayed in their designated corners this year.. I hope 2015 is WAY messier
— Pete Swanson (@pete_swans) December 19, 2014
Outside of music there has been one concept that has dominated my thinking and outlook on the world this year. That would be the Wunderkammer or Cabinet of curiosities. The wild, over-the-top miscellanea of the natural and ethnological worlds curated by eccentric characters. Something about it just hits home. Maybe because I've moved into a good-sized flat with a lot of room (for London anyway) and I just want to fill it with stuff. This year I've marvelled at the surreal juxtapositions of Svankmajer's cabinet at an exhibition in Barcelona; discovered puzzling collections of magick artefacts at the Pitt Rivers museum and swooned over the sublime and ridiculous collection of modern dandy Viktor Wynd.
Anyway, back to the music, I've decided to spice up this year's list of my favourites albums by constructing my own little Wunderkammer pairing some cool albums with some similarly themed pictures I've taken at displays in Barcelona and the Pitt Rivers in Oxford.
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A breastplate made of feathers and a shrunken Orang-utan head
Kemialliset Ystävät - Alas rattoisaa virtaa
A multi-coloured, bonkers confection that is just the right side of weird.
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Erotic figures hidden in ceramic fruit
The Soft Pink Truth - Why Do the Heathen Rage?
Matmos' Drew Daniel returned to his Soft Pink Truth project, mapping aggressively male musical genres to the sphere of more inclusive dance and club musics. This time it's the sometime racist and misogynist elements of black metal that are lambasted by funky synths and satirical sampling. Subversive, without ever losing it's sense of sheer fun. Put on your corpse paint and start raving!
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A mask made of broken kitsch
VHS Head - Persistence of Vision
VHS Head (as the name suggests) makes music by splicing together audio from old VHS tapes. As such it is dripping with that classic Carpenter-esque sound of grimy straight-to-video horror movies. It's the aural equivalent of binge watching David Cronenberg films in a disco. Yes the touchstones are 80s and 90s nostalgia but when the music is this ridiculously fun and enjoyable who am I to argue.,
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The desecrated skull of our enemy
Pharmakon - Bestial Burden
Another year, another crushingly powerful release from Pharmakon, although this very nearly never saw the light of the day. This album was forced to be born after a truly terrifying emergency surgical procedure had to be performed on the artist. As such, this is blunt, direct music about being a mass of flesh and blood that threatens to fail you at a moment's notice. Take heart though, as gruelling as Phamarkon's pained screams are the more art reminds us of death and disease, the more we can feel truly alive.
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Sentient dust
Actress - Ghettoville
What may be the last album from the Actress outfit, Ghettoville represents little more than the dust and rubble of a blitzed civilization. Dancefloor beats reduced to funeral dirges and wailing elegies. Brixton after a nuclear war perhaps. However, there are shafts of light that pierce the darkness. From the ruins we can re-build.
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...uhhhh
Ok I've given up on this mental exercise now. As consumers of art one of the greatest joys to be had is that of establishing connections between thoughts and ideas, such as my painfully laboured idea of linking obscure, musical ephemera to weird and magical objects. We like to ascribe deeper meaning when perhaps in reality there is nothing more than surface. There is no greater example this year of a piece of music so caked in possible meaning that we could barely even attempt to unravel than Valerio Tricol's Miseri Lares. A strange, poetic horror story told only through veiled sounds and mumbled voices. Infinitely fascinating.
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That's it? Only 6 top albums this year?
Although I've been a bit down on choosing what I deem empirically the "best" albums of the year - hey, maybe that's a sign of emotional maturity - there has still been a lot of music which I've really enjoyed. And any good Wunderkammer needs to be filled with lots of stuff. So further plaudits need to go out to some other bits of beautiful shelf clutter:
- Richard Dawson for making an epic mythology based on teenagers getting drunk at Featherstone Castle.
- Klara Lewis for the most impressive debut release of the year, already a master sculptor of sound.
- Susanna & Jenny Hval for their hauntingly beautiful songs. See my taste is not always just abstract noise.
- Scott Walker & SunnO))). While I wouldn't rank this collaboration as highly as either Scott's Bisch Bosch or SunnO)))'s Monoliths & Dimensions, anything from these masters of gloom is always something to be cherished.
- Russell Haswell, Kemper Norton, Flying Lotus, Afrikan Sciences... oh wait you're expecting my 2014 playlist.
Wishing everyone all the best for 2015!
