Witch Mountain emerged from a long hiatus with last year’s well-received South Of Salem. This year they decided to get all productive on us, releasing another record to capitalize on the momentum built by their reformation. Siren Uta Plotkin's powerful pipes take centre stage here, but equally impressive is the rhythm section’s controlled feel for the song, be it a doom trudge, a death grip riff, or behemoth groove. Guitarist Rob Wrong meanwhile gets to stretch out and lay down some tasty fuzzed out leads all over this bad boy. Throughout the playing is sharp, the songwriting is compelling, and Plotkin’s bewitching vocals are immediately recognizable and instantly unforgettable. It all adds up to the most addictive and replayable stoner rock record of the year. At a time when straightforward hard rock seems to have slumped into complacency, Witch Mountain has proven that there’s still some life left in the old beast yet.
Hundred Waters make beautiful and dreamy electronic music that incorporates alien hooks and a feel for texture into an easily digestible package. I found the gentle, percolating synths and ethereal vocals on this album to be absolutely irresitable. Although its ghostly qualities are similar to other futuristic pop acts like Grimes and Purity Ring, Hundred Waters are never as dark or as willfully weird as either of those two artists. They are also not as interested in grabbing you with a hook, instead being content to let explore sounds and textures, closer to drone music than the kind of future pop those artists are hinting at. The mood here is calm and tranquil, the perfect backdrop for relaxation and a fine launchpad for the imagination.
18. Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage
Gojira’s technical precision and capacity for outright brutality are above reproach. Since the late 90s, these French environmentalists have been decimating eardrums and championing green initiatives. On this, their fifth full-length, they add even more variety to their vocabulary, such as the dead-on staccato riffing of the title track to the mind-expanding tones of “The Wild Healer.” Upon your first exposure to the band, you might be a little overwhelmed by the all out ferocity and deathly precision of their sonic assault, but subsequent listens show this to be Gojira’s most dynamic record to date.
17. Andy Stott – Luxury Problems
Andy Stott’s newest album did something for me I thought was impossible… it made me enjoy the kind of pulsating four on the flour dance beats that electronic dance music is built upon. Let’s get this straight. I don’t dance, and I don’t like the kind of utilitarian, insistent drivel that drives people to gyrate in dimly lit rooms on MDMA. I HATE that shit.
Well, somehow Luxury Problems takes that one element and weaves a whole tapestry of textures and sounds around it. This has been done before, notably by artists like Cariboo and the Knife, but Stott’s work is even less geared to the dance floor, or car commercials. It’s drab and unsettling, music that sounds closer to a dystopian cyber punk future than any hedonistic utopia. Each track unfolds slowly, gradually adding and subtracting elements while using repetition to create a hypnotic effect. Stott’s brand of dark house music utilizes a similar aesthetic to a lot of the weird electronic stuff I do like; it’s music made for listening to, and it can be unsettling at times. Nobody’s having a good time here.
16. Liberteer - Better To Die On Your Feet Than Live On Your Knees
By working folk instruments and real working class grit into their grindcore, Liberteer have managed to take a familiar template and twist it into something epic. No two ways about it, this record is a call to arms, a battle cry for the downtrodden to take up the mantle of class warfare and attack with relentless blast beats and guttural screams of defiance. Not since Napalm Death christened the genre with Scum has a grindcore record sounded so revelatory, so fresh, and above all so NECESSARY as this . Class war has never meant so much.
15. Grimes - Visions
Sometimes an album is just so good but I don’t really have anything to say about it that hasn't been said better already somehwere else. “Genesis” might have been my favourite song of the year, even if it does sound a lot like the intro to Rush’s “Subdivisons.”
14.Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Although I knew that GY!BE had never officially broken up, I never seriously expected them to release another album. Then they did. And it’s good. It’s SO good. The best thing about the record is that it truly does sound like the work of a band playing together in a room. The guitars have real edge to them, the strings line the sound with a desperate urgency, and the crescendos thunder with the kind of power this band is legendary for. The quiet passages are equally as intense and unsettling, and never fail to captivate. Their last album, 2002’s Yanqui U.X.O. sounded meticulously crafted, but it lacked energy, a staid re-enactment of a formula that had worked before. Somehow the spark that lit their earlier triumphs was absent. I think Godspeed recognized this, and decided to hang up their spurs until they felt good and ready to pick up where they left off. This time out it feels like their speaking because they have something very important for us to hear. The world now is very different from what it was like in 2002, but we need to listen now more than ever.
13. High On Fire – De Vermis Mysteriis
Would
you believe it’s the heaviest High on
Fire album yet? After their razor sharp and airtight 2010 album Snakes for the Devine, you might be
forgiven for worrying that the Oakland power trio had gotten away from its
roots somewhat. Well, Matt Pike and company must have felt so too, since De Vermis Mysteriis is a sprawling,
earthy tribute to the power of the riff. Produced by Kurt Balou (who else?) ,
everything on this album is absolutely gargantuan. What’s more, Pike sounds
more comfortable with his legacy as a member of Sleep than ever before. On the
7 minute Madness Of The Architect, he
conjures up a riff as ferocious as anything his old band ever
summoned. On “Samsara” he allows himself to stretch out, playing a
slow-burn guitar solo and exploring tones and colours he hasn’t used since
journeying to the riff-filled land. The earth shaking rumble Jeff Matz on the
bass, Des Kensel’s primal pummel, and of course Pike’s savage guitar playing
combine to summon a sound as powerful as it is primal. With elemental fury
these songs bludgeon with a force rarely seen from anyone else. What’s more, De Vermis Mysteriis features some of
Matt Pike’s best singing to date – check his bellows in the utterly massive
“King Of Days.” Unfortunately Matt Pike checked himself into rehab during the
summer, but I am happy to report that as of 3 weeks ago he was in fine form
playing with Goatwhore and Ancients at Venue in Vancouver.
12.
Samothrace – Reverence To StoneThe only reason this wasn’t the best doom album of the year was that the Pallbearer record was so good. Samothrace more or less matched that record with a gorgeous statement of their own. But at just 34 minutes and only two (sidelong) songs, Reverence To Stone seems a little slight in comparison to the more expansive Sorrow & Extinction. But, Samothrace understand patience and how to leave an audience wanting more as well as anyone, as it’s been a full five years since their equally masterful debut album Life’s Trade. That they most certainly do on Reverence to Stone, which boasts miles of beautiful guitar terrain as well as a shamanic title to die for. The tones here are magnificent, and Samothrace bring an astute sense of texture and space which allow them to judiciously work beautiful post rock atmospherics with some jaw-dropping shredding guitar leads. Like Pallbearer, Samothrace too work from a solid emotional core, imbuing their work with real feeling as well as sonic heft. I might have wished for a little more material, but it’s far better than larding up a record with unnecessary filler. Let’s just hope they don’t wait so long before gracing us with another record.
Cosmogramma was a game changer, no question about it. It was impossibly dense, pulling sounds and musical techniques from all over the last century of music. Where else could Flying Lotus go? He must have recognized that he was staring into the void of the future, because Until The Quiet Comes sounds like Flying Lotus meditating on the wisdom he’s acquired at time’s edge. It’s as welcoming and comforting as Cosmogramma was harsh and confrontational.
It’s
usually difficult to isolate individual tracks on a Flying Lotus album, as his albums tend to resemble a mosaic, but
there are several standouts here. “Heave(n)“ “me Yesterday//Corded” have the
kind of mellow drift to them that Tycho
used so successfully on his Dive
record last year. “Electric Candyman” has a wobbly sort of strut that’s easy to
like even before you know Thom Yorke popped in to make an appearance. “The
Sultan’s Request” even seems like a tongue in cheek stab at the kind of heavy
bass music that’s taken over the dominant perception of electronic music the
last view years. Its regal stomp isn’t nearly as aggressive as the dubstep that
currently shakes subwoofers. The point is, Flying
Lotus is a master of his craft, and if Until
The Quiet Comes isn’t as revelatory or groundbreaking as Cosmogramma, that’s only because the
rest of the world needed to catch up. It might actually be a little bit more
fun to listen to anyways.
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