Part Two!

Part 1 is here

Part 3 is here

25. Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes

 

After exploring the depths of space and time with the absolutely incredible Cosmogramma in 2010, Stephen Ellison a.k.a. Flying Lotus decided to explore the only other terrain that is as vast and unknown as the universe itself: the mind. If you picture Flying Lotus’ music as a fractal, which at times it can often sound like, Until The Quiet Comes exists as the infinite contraction inward to Cosmogramma’s infinite expansion. The result of this is an effort that is a lot more subdued to its predecessor, and necessarily so. Cosmogramma was highly influential to more recent years’ producers’ engagement with maximalism, and a retread simply wouldn’t have been possible given how perfectly that album was executed. Until The Quiet Comes is cut from much of the same cloth as Cosmogramma, but much less fabric is used. It is an album about the exploration of the subconscious, and much of the music reflects this with its dream-like qualities. The heavier, bassier tracks do show up, like vivid, vibrant dreams, but there are few to be found and they’re often whisked away as quickly as they appeared as your mind/the music drifts to another dream/song. Its nowhere near as immediate as Cosmogramma (which wasn’t really that immediate itself) and many fans will take that as a sign of its inferiority. And no, it may not feel as objectively good as Cosmogramma was, but it feels every bit as necessary.

24. Godspeed You! Black Emporer – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

The arrival of this album was one of the greatest surprise gifts to music lovers that I have experienced in my lifetime. There were whispers that the recently reunited and touring GY!BE would put out a new record but that was mostly just fan fantasy talk. Then completely out of nowhere, copies of this album were being sold at their merch table at shows in October. No one knew they were even working on anything and then they just fucking gave us this new album. Such a release method stinks of half-assery but A!DB!A! is just as much of a testament to the power of this band as it is to the fact that they love exclamation marks. The album sees the band at its most fundamental form, consisting of only four tracks, two of which some would argue aren’t even ~real songs~ due to how drony they are. But those people are full of shit so who cares what they think. The drone tracks are gorgeous, and the other two, 20-minute long epics are two of the best songs in this incredible band’s discography. So make sure you thank Based God for this beautiful, dynamic, and completely unexpected album before you go to sleep tonight.

23. Frank Ocean – channel ORANGE

 

What else can I say about this album that hasn’t already been covered to death by music journalism twice or three times over? This was truly Frank’s year, and you know what? Good for him. I’d say he deserved it with this album. His extremely well-timed, yet strikingly poetic coming out(?) statement probably helped with the hype, but this collection of mature, impressively original songs was the reason people couldn’t stop talking about him even after that whole controversy settled down. channel ORANGE is a showcase of Ocean’s mastery of timeless R&B, proving that sometimes the hype is worth it.

22. Primitive Weapons – The Shadow Gallery

I honestly don’t know a single god damn thing about this band or the people in it, which is PRETTY WEIRD FOR ME. I like to know things. All I know is that they’re from the States and I think one of the members owns a hard rock bar or something like that. I don’t know. What I do know is that this album is their debut, and that it fucking ROCKS. Primitive Weapons play an extremely fresh brand of heavy music that synthesizes just about every metallic subgenre you can imagine into an organic culmination of modern metal/hardcore. It’s a relatively short listen, only 7 songs and about 27 minutes, and this leads to an all killer, no filler tracklist that doesn’t let up in its energetic brutality. Keep your eyes and ears on this band, because this is surely the future of heavy music.

21. Burial – Kindred/Truant

“Oh great, here comes another Burial circlejerk” said absolutely NO ONE EVER, because as hyped up and critically adored as Burial is, there is no doubt whatsoever that he is deserving of it. This man’s musical output in the past 7 years or so has singlehandedly changed the landscape of electronic music, pushing dubstep into the spotlights and into the curriculum vitae of a stupid amount of subpar producers. Burial has become the all out god that he is due to his consistently boundary-pushing releases, so when the Street Halo single came out back in 2011, it got into many people’s heads that maybe Will Bellam had lost his touch. It was a great single but it didn’t show his sound moving in any different directions. So then he released the Kindred EP earlier this year and everyone stuck their feet right into their mouths because it is impossible to deny how brilliant this record is. The title track sees Burial working with his dubstep roots but building the genre into something much, much larger. The EP’s second track, Loner, is a bit of a left-field move from Bellam, as it sees him dabbling in pretty straight forward techno. And I don’t even know how to categorize the last track on the album, Ashtray Wasp, other than GIGANTIC. Seriously though, these tracks are massive. Burial earns his production software Soundforge’s namesake by carving out huge chunks of bassy atmosphere in his songs, but they’ve never sounded bigger than they do on this EP. He also released the Truant single a few days ago, and it’s pretty sweet so I decided to include it too.

20. Blut Aus Nord – 777 Cosmography

Apparently Blut Aus Nord is black metal. If that’s the case, ‘black metal’ has to be one of the most vague, ambiguous genres there is because this album sounds absolutely nothing like any other supposed ‘black metal’ that I’ve listened to. While the first two albums in the 777 trilogy admittedly do sound a lot more like what you expect the genre to sound like, Cosmography abandons it altogether in favour of early Devin Townsend-esque industrial metal. I have no idea whether or not Townsend was an actual influence on this music, it’s just the only comparison I can make. The tracks are lengthy, but instead of relying on harsh drones like typical black metal, these songs rely on krautrock-like repetition as the keys and vocals soar through the mix. Its a suitable, epic ending to a trilogy of albums that will be looked at as a staple of modern experimental black metal in the years to come, whatever that is even supposed to mean anymore.

19. The Twilight Sad – No One Can Ever Know

This Scottish band’s third album, No One Can Ever Know, is heartbreaking. Every now and then I come across releases that are so good but filled with some much emotion that I can only stand to listen to them every once in a while lest I have a total breakdown. This is one of those records. On this album, The Twilight Sad have ditched the wall-of-noise approach and replaced it with sparse, cold synths that reflect the sombre nature of the music. The music compliments the real star of this record, James Graham’s absolutely heart wrenching vocals and lyrics that speak of loss and impossible love. His ridiculously charming, thick Scottish accent also really helps too. I know its kinda unfair to say that this guy’s accent makes the music better, but there’s just something about it which speaks to the universality of despair, and how personal devastation is something that can happen to anyone, even the ridiculously charming Scottish guy. Realizations like this only add to the level of sadness conveyed in this album, so like I said before, listen with caution.

18. Kendrick Lamar – good kid, mA.A.d city

Probably the only other album to match the hype of channel ORANGE (hey look they both have ~artsy~ capitalization in the titles isn’t that a coincidence), GKMC took the hip hop world by storm when it was released this October. We’ve been beat to death with praise about this album so I’m going to take this time to talk about what I don’t like about it. For such a supposedly autobiographical work, after listening to this album a bunch of times, I still don’t really know who Kendrick Lamar is. He’s a fantastic storyteller and one of the best lyricists out there, but I could not tell you a single thing about his actual personality. Recent breakout acts like A$AP Rocky and Danny Brown have succeeded because their raps contain such distinctive voices; you could be handed a random lyric sheet from either of these rappers, and if you know your shit, you’d easily be able to determine that the particular track is by one of those gentlemen. I don’t really feel like that’s the case with Lamar, though. While the multiple personas and point of views displayed on this album further the story, they don’t further any notion of who Kendrick Lamar really is as a person. Who are you really, man!? The world wants to know! Anyway, despite all this, GKMC is still definitely one of the best hip hop releases in recent years.

17. How To Dress Well – Total Loss

Speaking of overwhelmingly emotional experiences, I saw the man known as How To Dress Well twice this year, and both times felt like revelations of the human spirit. Total Loss is a great record, but to really experience the true beauty that is Tom Krell and How To Dress Well, you must see him live. His modest presence is extremely arresting and captivating, and I know for a fact that as he poured his heart out into the mic as the sets went on, I wasn’t the only person in the audience close to tears. How To Dress Well has been labeled as many things in its short existence, but if you ask me, it exists as a testament to the power of one person and a microphone. Or even without one; both of the times I saw How To Dress Well, Tom Krell would come out on stage after the set by himself and sing one of his songs acapella, without a mic or anything. And both times, despite the few hundred people in either venue, despite the drinks that had been flowing all evening, the audience was so silent you could hear every soft syllable he sang.

16. Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory

I heard this album for the first time roughly a year ago. It was late December 2011 and I was eager for any leaked 2012 releases, wanting to get a head start on the game. Attack On Memory leaked and I downloaded it not really because I was stoked on a new Cloud Nothings album, but just because it was music from a year I wasn’t even a part of yet. I wasn’t really in to the Wavves-lite sound of early Cloud Nothings so the raw, grungy post-hardcore of this record took me seriously off guard. What surprised me even more was how fucking good it was; this album is no feeble attempt at being angsty and hardcore, this is the real thing. Suddenly it seems as though Drive Like Jehu and similar early 90’s acts will not have been in vain, as Attack On Memory is charged and catchy enough to inspire a whole new generation of pissed off kids with guitars.

15. Death Grips – The Money Store/No Love Deep Web

Easily the most controversial group of the year, Death Grips’ nihilism ruled supreme over underground music news in 2012. Everybody knew that Epic deal was a silly idea, but I don’t think anyone foresaw the hilariously cataclysmic way the entire situation came to a head over the release of No Love Deep Web. What the hell is up with these guys? Is it all some sort of over the top martketing ploy? I couldn’t have been the only person to think this as everything unfolded, yet when the band finally decided to do a series of video interviews a few weeks ago, it became pretty clear that these guys do not, in any way, fuck around. When I fell in love with Exmilitary last year, there was no possible way of knowing that Death Grips would blow up to be as massive as they are now, but their two releases this year have in no way shown any compromise to their sound and core ideals. There is something undeniably appealing in the danger of Death Grips’ music, something essential, especially now in these darker times, in the disgusted reaction to our sick world that compromises these songs.

14. Animal Collective – Centipede Hz

Check out my review of this album here!

13. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Mature Themes

Check out another of my reviews here!

12. Neurosis – Honor Found In Decay

Check out yet another one of my reviews here!

11. Baroness – Yellow & Green

I couldn’t believe my ears the first time I listened to this
record. For the life of me I could not comprehend what would possess Baroness to make a fucking Nickleback album, and I found myself genuinely laughing aloud to some of the songs (I still think some of the lyrics are pretty hilarious). But I kept on listening. And listening…and listening…and eventually the genius of this record sunk in. This wasn’t a record of Baroness trying to sound like Nickleback, if anything, this was a record of Baroness showing Nickleback what they should sound like. Alternative rock is definitely the touchstone of this album, yet there is enough sludge intact to retain echoes of the bands much, much heavier past. As always, the double-album seems unnecessary, and many of the songs from both Yellow and Green could have been culled for a denser, higher quality running time, but Baroness have a bulk of creativity to their advantage, and all the songs are pretty great considering how many there are. Baroness’ new sound really shines on Yellow, the obviously more accessible of the two, containing what really should be radio hit after radio hit on some really awesome alternative rock radio station. If radio rock actually sounded more like this, maybe it wouldn’t be the total joke that it is today. I dare you to find me a more lighter-ready, fist pumping track than “Eula”. Buy this record for your dad!

Stay tuned for the final installment of my favourite albums of the year, #10-#1!