Top ____ lists are an idiotic farce.
Ain't nobody out there who has either the expertise or the taste to
say anything really meaningful. With the canon of "great art"
throughout the ages so disputed, coming up with the best of a certain
year with only the resources of one pair of ears is absurd.
So here's an incarnation of ego-pushing
delusion.
10. Wormsblood - "Black & White Art for
Man & Beast" [Brave Mysteries]
Wormsblood? Because I need my doses of
"wait what the fuck was that noise" and I will not be
content without them. Conscious LLN for the new age. I could call it
"consistently engaging exploration of timbre and intervalic
tempering," but then you'd laugh at me.
9. Sutekh Hexen - "Luciform" [Wands Records]
There are a couple ways we could
approach Sutekh Hexen's LP "Luciform." I could discuss how
they've revolutionized the sound of black metal. But they haven't,
really. Luciform reminds me of that Nightbringer LP from a few years
ago: absolute black metal built of giant spaces and night. Sutekh
Hexen has a bit more of dynamics and different sounds, but it's all
space and darkness. Play it inside and the lights go out and the room
becomes miles larger.
8. Wreck and Reference - "Black Cassette" [Self-Released/Music Ruins Lives/Flenser Records]
Wreck and Reference's Black Cassette is
right. It's that strength inside. It's music that doesn't have to be
thought, it just is. Solid, noisy, black heavy everythings in a
greater-than-the-sum mesh.
7. The Body/Whitehorse - Split [Aum War Records]
Faster The Body (crushcrushcrush) and
Whitehorse is new on me, but "Fierce Reprisal" is the
perfect blacknoisedoom punk companion to The Body, which makes it
awesome. Destroy destroy destroy, lalala.
6. Mount Moriah - "Mount Moriah" [Holidays for Quince Records]
To call Mount Moriah a traveling record
perhaps doesn't make clear its strength. Just remember; I need that
engagement, just enough change, crativity, complexity and beauty to
keep me alive, content, thinking, and singing across thousands of
miles of empty road past the beauty of great untamed fields. I'm
sorry that you folks in Europe are so crammed together. You'll have
to live with us to understand why this music is America.
5. Locrian - "The Clearing" [Fan Death Records]
The sort of language I mentioned around
Wormsblood is better suited to the new Locrian full-length. It's old
news now that they're working with Steven Hess, who is something of a
modern experimental mastermind (not just "a drummer").
Hess' contributions, along with what I have to imagine is more
leisurely and better-equipped studio time, have made for a Locrian
that's not only a feeling, but development, flow, and, well, a
consistently engaging exploration of timbre, auditory space, and
perfect understatement wrapped up in structure.
4. Wrnlrd - "Unknown Tongue" [FlingcoSoundSystem]
Wrnlrd has shown that all the things
that are great about "fucked-up" black metal don't have to
stay in a little black metal cage and pander to black metal idiocy;
they've taken all of those things, shed their black metal bits, and
made something worth listening to. Yes, this is an EP. It's important
enough.
3. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "Wolfroy Goes to
Town" [Drag City Records]
Wolfroy Goes to Town is lulling me. Not
to sleep, because I daren't miss a moment of it, but I can't do
anything but listen to it right now. I'm writing in the midst of
sketching out this list, and I'd like to check out some more of my
maybes, but God I have to keep listening to this.
Jon and I agree that this is the best
album Will Oldham has put out since The Letting Go, and its sparsity
suits it beautifully. Not only do hundreds of albums wish they could
write like this, probably even more wish they could sound this good.
Yes, I'm gushing. You would be too.
2. Low - "C'mon" [Sub Pop Records]
I know I'm at least the third person
here alone to mention C'mon. There's a reason for this. If you listen
to it, you fall in love with it. The only way to avoid this is by
having a deliberately bad attitude, and then it's only a matter of
time. Like Drums and Guns, there're a few new sounds we didn't think
of Low doing before, but the songs are perfect and there.
1. Haptic - "Scilens" [FlingcoSoundSystem]
Haptic is dangerously close to being
the kind of meandering, meaningless series of sounds that always
disappointed me in much of the old musique concrète scene. But
damned if I couldn't listen to Scilens for hours. The sheer range of
sounds and structures that Hess and company make into their music
pulls me in and makes me feel an other-where that normally requires a
damned good book. Top score not only for quality but for making me
love something in a genre that nigh-always fails me.
Honorable mentions:
The Judas Horse - "Holy War" (Inherent Records): This is beautiful.
Peste Noire - "L'Ordure à l'état Pur" (Transcendental Creations): If they hadn't essentially done this
album before, it'd be better.
Rab'ha - "The Defiance Demos" (Small Doses): The world needs more real
noise/black/doom like this.
Nooumena - "Argument with Eagerness" (Antithetic Records): Really creative sound: sort of an
Ulver/Toby Driver blend.
Cara Neir - "Stagnant Perceptions" (Self-Released): Amazing stuff, all the more so
considering the way it's made.
Sky Burial - "Aegri Somnia" (Utech Records): Sky Burial's ritual ambient wrapped
around the soul of Nik Turner's saxophone.
Botanist - "The Suicide Tree/A Rose For
The Dead" (tUMULt Records): Because what is this. It's a bit too
stereotypical and could have been made godly with more artistry.
-V.
