My late top ten

Here's my Top 10 records of the year:


1.Spaceghostpurrp: Mysterious Phonk/BMW
2.Rome: Die Aesthetik der Herrschaftsfreiheit (all three?)
3.Robert Hood: Motor (Nighttime World 3)
4.Young Smoke: Space Zone
5.Virtual Information Desk: Contemporary Sappho
6.Raime: Quarter Turns Over a Living Line
7.Ariel Pink: Mature Themes
8.Vessel: Order of Noise
9.Guided by Voices: Let's Go Eat the Factory
10.Hype Williams: Black is Beautiful

Rome's 3 part Die Aesthetik der Herrschaftsfreiheit, an evocative folk-noir sequence that mixed industrial textures, musique concrete and Nick Cave-style balladry with a concept involving 19th century European freedom fighters; the whole thing was ambitious, deeply romantic and highly moving but, sadly, spread across 3 separate albums (not discs, albums) which diluted the impact somewhat as no one release summed the whole thing up. Nonetheless, taken as a whole, it's a powerful body of work and one of the most richly enjoyable audio experiences I've had all year: thanks to Totem Records in Wien, Austria for giving me the heavy tip on this one, it paid off!

Shout-outs to MJ Linckoln, Vatican Shadow, :Wumpscut: and Royal-T, all of whom have been firm fixtures of my listening this year but who, for various reasons, don't cut into the top 10. MJ Linckoln is probably because I've digested so many EPs and albums at once and all the 'best bits' don't occur on one release; not to mention that one of my hands-down faves this year has been Malibu Locals Only Matterhorn pt2 but, for some reason, I found it difficult to squeeze it into the top 10.

SGP has taken up most of my listening this year; Rvidxr Klvn's Greatest Hits (nearly my #1) and BLXCK SMVRF's Mortal Kombat III were key texts while Mysterious Phonk was a great, gloomy rap record that, although totally lacking in fun and not quite heavy, kept going around my head and tempting me back. Furthermore, just when I began to question SGP's bars (you know, when you listen to a rapper so much you begin to pick holes in their flow), the fucker drops Black Man's Wealth for free, like the other day! A brilliant half-way house between Phonk's clean(er), considered tracks and God of Black's scuzzy fizzle (which, in spite of their brilliance, were annoyingly under-mastered).


New Dreams Ltd was a surprise entry for me as it was an album I found myself revisiting more and more. It pretty much kick started my fascination with vaporwave (despite already making Replicas and Far Side Virtual my no. 1s from previous years). I didn't realise how important it had been this year when I checked popped it on the other day and discovered I knew the thing really well (as in, 'this next track is that one with the weird sax, I love that!' or when I knew when a sample would stutter/chop).

How to choose which of the three GBV albums to 'top 10'. Class Clown Spots a UFO is possibly the better record, but Let's Go Eat the Factory was the one I obsessed over and listened to the most (because it was the first, maybe). One of my favourite lyrics of the year has to be from The Head:

"We have found/what appears to be the head/of the operation...but we've not yet found the body"

Slightly annoyed that there's not been any grime albums worth cherishing this year. Royal-T's came close, a brilliant package of grime and bass styles which featured my favourite track of the year: Cruel to be kind feat P Money. An intense, punkish grime-house monster that caused me to dance stupider than ever before in a variety of places: a) on the way to work b) Motion c) my front room d) my classroom e) The Exchange and f) Blue Mountain. Very difficult not to rave to the drop, wherever you are. Only problem with it was that much of it appeared to be genre-experiments or dull features -I didn't see Royal-T indulging in his strengths, y'know, like if they'd collected up his 12"s to date and then put the best tracks from Rinse Presents... in as the filler...that's be a fucking sick grime album, without any girly features.

Wiley did release Evolve or be Extinct, a fine album that sadly overstretched itself with sketches and a few quality, but ultimately toothless and indulgent, concept-songs e.g. Skankin'. Kylea's excellent Step Freestyles is around #12 on my list (I may have to extend it to Top 20 now...), chiefly down to his freestyle over Preditah's Circles. God almighty: choon, etc.

No black metal caught my ear, sadly, as Burzum's two efforts, Umskipitar and From the Depths o of Darkness were confusingly obtuse and a misguided re-recording of older standards respectively. The overall effect was a little unsatisfying because I really liked Umpskipitar but didn't find myself going back to it to explore further; no moments of revelation or ecstasy. Similarly, there was nothing new about the re-recordings of the earlier pre-incarceration material. It felt like a cash in, event though I suspect it was a genuine gesture. I doubt he cares anyway. I did get a few LPs in the genre but, meh, maybe it wasn't my year for such styles.

Tri-Angle label were, this year, fantastic in every way. All releases were intriguing, beautiful and challenging. Holy Other's dense and seductively mournful album Held was a highlight (probably my #15), as was the so-early-in-the-year-he-spoilt-his-chances disc from Balam Acab. However, Bristol boy Vessel takes the Tri-Angle prize for me. Order of Noise is airily spacious, grimly human and imbued with such a deftness of hand with regards to style (something not shared by the other Tri-Anglers) and technique as to allow the record to appeal to listeners on the level of a bass-y ghost-rave classic and skeletal Surgeon-esque dub-techno LP (similar-ish to his terrific Breaking the Frame LP). Slippery and elusive, this was one of the year's best UK records for me.

Malibu Locals Only

Matterhorn pt 2

Malibu Locals Only isn't a new moniker from Sean M. Petell, just a reactivation of the guise he used to release a collection of New Age tracks earlier this year on the lovely Politesse split We Rusticated Earth. Others tracks from this period, best found here and on the 2012 Living Room Visions compilation which also features MJ Linckoln's Doug Prishpreed (titled after a sports reporter), weren't tied to a dedicated MLO album or EP but seemed to trickle out over a 4 month period.

Only one track has reappeared on MLO's debut-proper on Sunup Recordings, the sublime and dreamy Sunday Drive into Sunset, opening with clip-clop horse hooves and fireside guitar that degenerates into serene drones which chime and unfold gradually, more like descending bliss than the forward motion of motor travel, when sleeps begins to drip-drip itself over your eyes and the flames settle to dozy embers.  

The tape opens with a masterful 11-minute suite, Nayru; Farore, Din a dusky, crackling keyboard drift set across gently rattling tins or pans that calmly circle the implied campfire. This arrangement, keyboards over found or concrete layers (usually water trickling/running, the shuffling of people, crackles), forms the backbone of the album with the playing endearingly patchy -the enjoyment of the player and the value of the task is evident, even if their hands pause or miss the odd note.

This is the key element that I spoke of/looked forward to in my earlier post about vaporwave artists developing: actual playing. Who'd have though it? Real instruments and musicianship isn't really my thing (I sympathise with OF's Jasper when he says "...rapping's stupid and it's hard"), I can live without them and am rarely impressed by virtuosity -give me a well-programmed piece of electronic music any day; skill's overrated.
However, here, the conceptual message (implied my Petell and inferred, correctly or otherwise, by me) is that the found-sound/ready-made collage/cut-up/loop of eccojams, vaporwave compositions has run its course. Aesthetic lessons have been learned, audiences garnered and collectives formed, but now this progress needs to be harnessed and deployed rather than allowed to drift endlessly (and fruitlessly) on like, well, an eccojam. 

Matterhorn pt 2 has something playfully real about it, whether it's the choo-choo and clatter of a train that opens and trundles throughout Albert Rosenfield or the aforementioned environmental elemental soundscapes, this recording appears to reject the Second Life, pre-rendered Internet artificiality that was/is so fetishised in vaporwave. Refreshingly so, too, as real flesh and blood playing has never felt so welcome to me; this is the webwave equivalent of going acoustic, of switching off the wi-fi for the night.

I'm persevering with my webwave tag, by the way, because it allows me to keep track of a bundle of developments that shared some origins or overlaps at one point, be it Seapunk, Eccojam, vaporwave, distroid (arf!) or the Hypnogogic Pop and New Age revivals of last year.

Overall, Matterhorn pt 2 isn't the most exciting release from Petell but is an important palette cleanser, a vital road sign forward for an artist whose grip of musical concepts isn't bound by style, genre or even tools used. Whereas we've become insulated and acclimatised to the schmaltzy-cheese that's gleefully (even perversely) referenced/deployed by many webwave artists (New Dreams Ltd, Uncle Dan Lopatin and Mr Ferraro chiefly responsible), this release is easier on the noise-fan's ear on account of the concrete backdrop, fewer excuses needed for passers-by or family members ("...why're you listening to this? I thought you were into weird music..."), while retaining more authentic versions of the emotions and atmospheres these New Age and Muzaks of old were only able to artificially imply.

A very successful release and worth your time (and $! Get the tape!).  

MJ Linckoln and the webwavers (# optional)

MJ Linckoln

Wading through and chewing over the below webwave compilation (the snappily titled 

:​:​:​:​:​蒸気​:​:​:​:​:) yielded much treasure but, as with compilations as expansive and bewildering in diversity as this (RVIDXR KLVN's Greatest Hits comes to mind), the iPod star rating comes into its own as a sorting tool: 'avoids' are given 1, excellence recognised with a 5 and songs of note, intrigue or requiring further research get a 4; 2 and 3 aren't used.

One of my webwave 5 star champions, MJ Linckoln, has a decent and recommended discography available for free through bandcamp on Sunup Recordings. My personal favourite is the Matterhorn pt 1 EP, containing some fine, suffocatingly slurred eccojams named after American celebrities, their names oblique and mysterious to me.

Elsewhere, with the Now that's what I call Music! vol 2 EP (credited to マイケル·ジョーダンLINCKOLN, Japanese for Michael Jordon or 'MJ'), we're treated to a earnest chopped n' ecco'd showcase, smearing and mystifying classics from Enya and Berlin -the Enya track in question (from 'Memory of Trees') was one of my first CD purchases as a young boy, so hearing it again for the first time in about a decade was neatly nostalgic and the first personal fluttering connection I've made with a track from this genre, what with other chopped/screwed/slowed/throwed/eccojammed/skrewed songs being relatively easy to identify by sound or by tag.
A certain admirable balance is achieved between a pop-musik black mass and dadaist joke, deadly serious exploration and tongue-in-cheek irony; the revealing chorus for many songs acting as punchline. Just when you're noddingly up to your ears in reverb, appreciating the disorientating slab of sound that churns, heaves and seems to struggle to breath out its own colossally wheezing chords, drums falling in a heavy stumble, the whole avant-garde noisescape is revealed to be Take My Breath Away by Berlin (if you don't catch the telltale bass melody, that is, which my wife didn't: when the chorus came, so did the guffaws).

The effect is one of deconstruction, conceptually as well as sonically. Like a dadaist ready-made, Daniel Lopatin's genre-defining Nobody's Here (as Chuck Person) took a terminally uncool music faux pas and turned it into a cutting edge, highly influential webwave 'masterpiece'. Playing with the giants of pop, simply slowing them, altering their tone and introducing some choice cutting and a dose of sub-aqueous reverb, is close to the 21st Century Internet equivalent of scrawling R. Mutt across them.

Yet, despite this gnawing feeling of 'am I listening to great/nearly great art or am I the butt of someone dicking about on Audacity's joke?' (which does fade), I'm utterly in thrall of MJ's work and that of his contemporaries and peers (Internet Club, $PL$H ¢LUB 7, Mediafired and just about anyone on the :​:​:​:​:​蒸気​:​:​:​:​: compilation ['vapour', in Japanese, badaway]) because, on one level, they appear to have quickly exhausted the possibilities of this technique and so, being evidently creative and productive minds, I want to know what they'll turn to next.

Already, since I began typing this, Matternhorn pt 2 has appeared on the Sunup Recordings bandcamp (although credited to 'Malibu Locals Only', an alias of Sean Petell of MJ, named after a small, violent gang from Malibu, the MLO) which is a more expansive creature, more indebted to sun-kissed drone, psychedelia and has more composed, cleaner feel. A wonderful tape, I'm thrilled to hear this maturation of style and purpose occur so quickly.

Although a fan of chopped and screwed, I'd never immersed myself in the blurry, aqueous, sensory-deprivation to any great extent, merely listening and enjoying albums as sonic curiosities rather than distinct pieces of work, such as the 'purple' versions of my favourite hip-hop artists. My first exposure to the style came through Hype Williams, of Hippos in Tanks association, with their drained, dreamy slo-mo bass music that held me in thrall for most of last year. Since then, I've casually sought out examples where the technique is applied, strategically and alongside other tricks n' tools, rather than expressed in pure form. Apart from Salem, who I feel sort of cheated despite being ahead of the (wider) game, I wasn't wholly satisfied.

MJ Linckoln, despite facing the initial blurry danger of blurring into the previous blurry-eccojam, has managed to keep my attention with his overall thematic content: the naming conventions of releases after famous American cars -from where the name derives, albeit with a kinky additional K -the curious reference to Michael Jordon and aforementioned American B-listers used as track titles (Art Garfunkel being the A-grade exception, maybe) tie the whole thing up into a neat, not too flashy, not too ironic, not too drained of substance package.

I'm still devouring the releases, trying to make time to consolidate them in my mind alongside other releases in the wider-genre, but hope to revisit MJ with a solid release review and verdict/discussion.

Webwave labels

Webwave labels

Let's not get too grubby too soon, shall we? I don't want to wade, without due caution, into the muddy mire of the genre game (otherwise known as 'What do you call it?') with this lot just yet. Just now, I'm referring to it as Webwave (other tags include the ubiquitous hypnagogic, the unsuccessful vaporwave and the frequently inaccurate Eccojam) because that was my favourite tag for recently downloaded, and startlingly high quality, compilation ":::::蒸気:::::" ("JOUKI"["VAPOR"])

This is just my first post on these wonderful artists. Download this (a mere 50 JPY!) as your gateway drug. From this shit I've become hooked on MJ Linkcoln, artist wise, among others.

Labels to spooge all over are: 

http://ailanthusrecordings.bandcamp.com/

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/sunup-recordings

and http://beerontherug.com/

Doitnowgo.

Ekoplekz: Intrusive Incidentalz Vol. 1

Ekoplekz: Intrusive Incidentalz Vol. 1

Nick Edwards has long been on my radar, first as a local proponent of the tape loop and analogue electronics scene name-dropped and referenced by the ageing (no offence meant) 'head' crowd who  made a fetish out of 90s Warp and 70s Industrial abstraction and technique -a group I'm guilty of being a young adherent to; my late teens were spent deliriously vacuuming up old Warp albums while they still retained their playful mystery and searching desperately for concrete links between them and the steadily growing stack of early Industrial (SPK, CV, TG, Clock DVA, Severed Heads et al) I was amassing.

 Abstraction, complexity, non-conformism and a spiteful (if occasionally unintentionally ironic) rejection of pop music and its perceived norms (coherant lyrics, if any, digestible melody, verse-chorus-blah, 'normal' drum/guitar sounds) were my touchstones and criteria for buying or even acknowledging the existence of any music. Therefore, Cabaret Voltaire's Methodology: The Attic Tapes was my bible, an encapsulation of a passion and ideology in uncooked form; no studio-sheen (I still rejected clean music, in spite of Warp's sharp-focus, polygon aesthetic) or pretense, just 3 dudes in someone's loft, a bunch of homemade/scavenged electronic equipment and a feeling. This was my punk rock, my reductionist ideal and idea of purity...you only need an oscillator and, if you were a maximalist, a drum machine of some kind (having a commercial synth was like having a string section by my reckoning).

By this logic, I should love Nick Edwards aka Ekoplekz. Nick is of the generation, with all due respect, for whom the Warp set were present day and the Industrial lads mere recent history. For me, the former was a recently missed boat and the latter ancient history. However, Nick has the advantage of also being well schooled and a firm part of the latest UK Bass Music phase (actually a distant lineage, including Warp et al) which includes Dubstep culture and its offspring/descendants. He's made it plain that his music is intended to marry the UK industrial heritage (70s style) with Bass Culture developments, a worthy and enviable field of research (something I've fewer achievements in), and in terms of presentation -released on Punch Drunk, Bristol's top boy dubstep label, Edwards depicted as mixer-abusing DJ on the cover (albeit with evil fish head) -it's on the mark but, when the needle drops, the marriage seems merely political; strictly separate bedrooms.  

The trouble is, this is a fantastic 70s Industrial record. Really good. Tape loops of astounding quality, virtuoso even, drum sounds that inspire swoons and flashbacks to my pubescent, lights-off bedroom TG revelations, smattered liberally and, dammit, seemingly so effortlessly about these pop-song length incursions. Edwards' synth swoops, oscillations that hang in the air like ectoplasmic vapour trails, have an authenticity that Demdike Stare are both wanting and cripplingly unable to produce. Droney synth stabs, redolent of The Voice of America by CV, give a mean-faced throb to proceedings but, overall, the functionality of the Bass Culture that Edwards has been so embraced by is lacking. I'm not asking for dancefloor material, far from it, but I don't see how these excellent and passionate recordings transcend or depart from the aforementioned Methodology or Rough Trade era CV stuff at all. 

This isn't a criticism, as Edwards and I obviously share an admiration for the Sheffield Sonic cowboys, and I love hearing CV-soundalikes, really. My problem is that I feel that Edwards is abusing a fortunate position. Had I the skill to reproduce, with such loving care, the experiments of the Cabs and do so with the keen ear of the (post)dubstep community at my disposal, I'd feel compelled to draw a strong, black line between the two eras and show how music that sounded and obviously reference CV, was also able to be reconstituted into a modern, even forward looking, piece of UK electronic music. Could I get dubsteppers and grime fiends nodding, skanking, pointing and bobbing to a CV-style track? I'd love to try and, gosh, how wonderful would it be to succeed. 

I admit, this is my personal agenda. I constantly attempt to repay the decade of joy, influence and revelation that Richard H Kirk and Stephen Mallinder have given me with nods, salutes, references and attempts to keep their (obvious to me) relevance and influence alive by recognising and indicating their greasy prints wherever I see them. I don't expect Edwards to do the same and, unfairly, I expected that a fellow CV-head might feel that compulsion. I see now that Ekoplekz is a man revelling in sound, welded to a thrilling aesthetic about which he and I obviously feel very passionate about and, in reality, I should be grateful that he's bringing that sound back to life by releasing period-sounding pieces on a modern, dynamic label and not seeking to compromise the initial qualities with potentially flash-in-the-pan developments.

I'll wearily check out the rest of Nick's stuff, to see how he develops, but otherwise I've heard it all before...thankfully, everyone else hasn't and for them this'll be a great, potentially gateway, experience.

Hirsute Pursuit: Tighten That Muscle Ring

Hirsute Pursuit: Tighten That Muscle Ring

Finally, a bit of extremity. Hirsute Pursuit have made me squirm and wince like no other music has since I was a 17 y/o sitting, jaw-dropped, before TG's Very Friendly or perhaps listening to SPK's Leichenscrei for the first time in University.

Industrial music should make you uncomfortable, it should provoke and challenge you. It is, perhaps, the Burroughsian legacy that compels so much Industrial to be uncompromising and stark in its subject matter and its delivery; the cut-up novels (especially Junky) are not only disorientating and impenetrable but, when you do attempt to navigate the jungle of words, it's pretty gross and disquieting (if realistic).

Such things are, no pun intended, hardening. Little offends me or revolts me now. Tighten... doesn't offend though, it just forces me to engage with music in a different way, one my mind isn't used to. We've all heard weird sex stuff in music, or even downright disturbing rape/abuse claims/allusions for shock value (and not just lyrically a la Tyler and Earl), but the slurping, plopping, groaning and grunting of Hirsute's sophomore disc are a new level for me. 

I'm heterosexual but won't shirk or besmirch gay content in culture; it's all culture. However, HP's use of such graphic and immersible bodily and contextual asides (such as a breathless response of "Yessir" make for a compelling atmosphere of sexual intensity)  really bring you in close to gay sex, audibly so. It's not that I'm repulsed by gay sex at all, but that such proximity to a sexual act makes me uncomfortable, shy even, and forces me into a momentary moral dilemma: how should I be feeling? Should I feel bad that I said 'eeew' aloud after a few tracks of relentless, sloppy anal pummeling put to a trip-hop beat? I've not been engaged in this way since the aforementioned Leichenscrei where dead-voiced women discussed sexual abuse at the hands of their carers.

Repulsion isn't the issue. These recordings are so intimate and so unashamedly so that one feels as voyeur but, being heterosexual, a uninvited one. The atmosphere, eventually, solidifies to one of concentrated transgression; this is Industrial, this is the anything goes because there isn't anything else worth going and doing; the sound of freedom and expression. Boyd Rice (featured here on a cover of Boys Keep Swinging) does this elsewhere, he creates an atmosphere of saying what the fuck you want but, rather than obscure it, making you feel as if you've been dropped into a very intense conversation about said subject and might drown for want of context. I feel out of my depth  and yet riveted.

The beats? 90s electronica through a post-industrial lens. Trip-hop, some slimy house and guttural exotica are wrapped up in skittering textures, spittle-flecked flexes of bass and synth but, otherwise, overly percussive and reliant on the chorus of gasps and grunts. Happily, I was expecting tepid DAF-impersonations, but this is a fuck to Gabi and Rob's cheeky tease.

A challenging, deep listen. I'll happily revisit.

Rrose: Artificial Light

Rrose

I don't know a thing about Rrose and I don't want to. These shadowy, slurred, hissing and creeping Industrial-House tracks are great and, moreover, the overall presentation interests me just as much as the sounds. 

Check out that picture from the label, above -it's weird, but not quite creepy enough, a suggestion of some fun is there and although it appears to foretell abandonment and darkness it's also, well, a little cheeky perhaps? I'm reminded of the Robert Rental and Thomas Leer album The Bridge...I bought that on the strength of the grey cover, name of the artists and the title that revealed nothing about its contents. 

Artificial Light plays the same trick. The side featuring our bony friend is superb, Shepard's Brine beginning as a menacingly slow thump, the track progresses into a wall of synth-strobes, drones and nagging, crunchy percussion. As with so much, I'm reminded of the glorious Bourbonese Qualk.

The flip, Waterfall, begins as a calm, atmospheric click n' shuffle fest before a strident kick sets in and allows grizzled synths to saw up and down oblivious to the central pulse. A calmer, is no less intense composition.

I'm resisting finding anything out about Rrose -is it one dude? A girl? Two guys? I don't care. I'm determined to slowly find out, probably avoiding interviews and just picking up the "12s where I can find them.