Bandcamp Daily's Best Albums of 2016

SUMERLANDS explode onto the scene with their incredible self-titled debut album of classic heavy metal. Inspired by the timeless guitar-driven sound of the 70's & 80's, SUMERLANDS feature former Hour of 13 / Atlantean Kodex vocalist Phil Swanson and renowned producer Arthur Rizk (Inquisition, Power Trip, Pissgrave) on guitars and behind the boards! Powerful guitar riffs and galloping rhythms meld flawlessly together with soaring vocals and pristine production to create strong, hook-filled, moody anthems. This is a new wave of American Heavy Metal at its finest!

This Detroit producer and New York rapper craft a flawless study in ‘90s street rap style. In “Jordans & A Gold Chain” and “Innocent Ambition,” Apollo Brown’s chopped-up soul samples and Skyzoo’s switchblade flows create a chemistry that demands respect from fans of Wu-Tang, Gang Starr, and M.O.P.

You have no right to be depressed You haven’t tried hard enough to like it There are two kinds of great lyrics. The first is the banger/anthem catch phrase: "Normal life is borin' / but superstardom is close to post-mortem." The second is more complex (and more rarely found): "Like a bird on a wire / Like a drunk in a midnight choir/I have tried in my way to be free" — with ideas, themes, and personae unfolding over the course of songs, contradicting each other, confronting the listeners' preconceptions, like Pete Townsend, Morrissey, or Kendrick Lamar. Will Toledo, the singer/songwriter/visionary of Car Seat Headrest, is adept at both, having developed them over the course of his eleven college-recorded Bandcamp albums and his retrospective collection last fall, Teens of Style. With Teens of Denial, his first real "studio" album with an actual band, Toledo moves from bedroom pop to something approaching classic-rock grandeur and huge (if detailed and personal) narrative ambitions, with nods to the Cars, Pavement, Jonathan Richman, Wire, and William Onyeabor. "I’m so sick of / (Fill in the blank)" or "It’s more than you bargained for / But it's a little less than what you paid for" are more than smart, edgy slogans. Over the course of Teens of Denial's 11 songs, Will narrates a journey with his mysterious companion/alter-ego Joe that addresses big themes (personal responsibility, existential despair, the nature of identity, the Bible, heaven) and small ones (Air Jordans, cops, whether to have one more beer, why he lost his backpack). By turns tender and caustic, empathetic and solipsistic, literary and vernacular, profound and profane, self-loathing and self-aggrandizing, he conjures a specifically 21st century mindset, a product of information overload, the loneliness it can foster, and the escape music can provide. “Fill in The Blank,” the mission statement of the album, kicks things off — it’s a fist-pumping anthem about feeling lousy in an ill-defined way, the fear of settling into a routine of futility, and not wanting to deal with it. Although it’s oddly joyful sounding, Toledo considers it the introduction to his angriest record yet. In that vein, “Vincent,” “Hippie Powers,” and “Connect The Dots” are about both fighting to hold your place in the crowd and to hold your drink, as well as DIY college house shows, and having no one to dance with, respectively. Initially similar, "Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” veers off in surprising directions, each piece flush with huge, irony-free hooks. At the heart of the album sits the 11:32 "Ballad of the Costa Concordia," which has more musical ideas than most whole albums (and at that length, it uses them all). Horns, keyboards, and elegant instrumental interludes set off art-garage moments; vivid vocal harmonies follow punk frenzy. The selfish captain of the capsized cruise liner in the Mediterranean in 2013 becomes a metaphor for struggles of the individual in society, as experienced by one hungover young man on the verge of adulthood. Teens of Denial refracts Toledo's particular, personal story of one difficult year through cultural touchstones such as the biography of Frank Sinatra, the evolution of the Me Generation as seen in Mad Men and elsewhere, plus elements of eastern and western theology. The whole thing flaunts a kind of conceptual, lyrical, and musical ambition that has been missing from far too much 21st-century music. I won’t go down with this shit I will put my hands up and surrender there will be no more flags above my door I have lost, and always will be There are two kinds of great lyricists. The first kind is one one you find in books, canonized by time and a lifetime of expression. The second has it all in front of him. Meet Will Toledo. Or at least one version of him.

Precious Systems is inspired and influenced by the landscape in and around New Orleans, particularly the juxtaposition of the natural with industrial and commercial constructs as they reflect life here. The songs on the album attempt to create contrasts of their own as a means of inducing unreality or altering perspectives. The sounds come from a variety of sources, but are anchored by several aging, outmoded machines. A beloved Rickenbacker 3000 in combination with a Roland R-8 drum machine and RE-501 tape echo set the tone of "technology-in-subsidence." from kranky: Melissa Guion is MJ Guider. She lives and works in New Orleans and previously released the Green Plastic extended play cassette in early 2014 on the Constellation Tatsu label. Using heavy washes of bass and a deft touch in mixing, she provokes stark contrasts to construct a semi-surreal environment. The result are songs that exist in a wholly contained sound environment, minimal yet lush, spare yet saturated, and most importantly, entirely compelling.

Dre Babinski’s seductive and sweeping dream-pop steps into the spotlight. The LA musician’s hushed, baroque delivery stuns across ghostly Cali-psych analogue meanderings (daintily perfect on “Your Version of Me”) and delicate rock beats (the Western swagger and soaring strings of “No Matter”). \"Hold me down in open water, it gives me such a rush,\" she sighs on seductive opening track. *Under the Influence* gives you just that rush.

ANOHNI has collaborated with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke on the artist's latest work, HOPELESSNESS. Late last year, ANOHNI, the lead singer from Antony and the Johnsons, released “4 DEGREES", a bombastic dance track celebrating global boiling and collapsing biodiversity.  Rather than taking refuge in good intentions, ANOHNI gives voice to the attitude sublimated within her behavior as she continues to consume in a fossil fuel-based economy. ANOHNI released “4 DEGREES,” the first single from her upcoming album HOPELESSNESS, to support the Paris climate conference this past December. The song emerged earlier last year in live performances. As discussed by ANOHNI: "I have grown tired of grieving for humanity, and I also thought I was not being entirely honest by pretending that I am not a part of the problem," she said. “’4 DEGREES' is kind of a brutal attempt to hold myself accountable, not just valorize my intentions, but also reflect on the true impact of my behaviors.” The album, HOPELESSNESS, to be released world wide on May 6th 2016, is a dance record with soulful vocals and lyrics addressing surveillance, drone warfare, and ecocide.  A radical departure from the singer’s symphonic collaborations, the album seeks to disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics.  ANOHNI will present select concerts in Europe, Australia and the US in support of HOPELESSNESS this Summer.

“A man of simple pleasures: soul sounds, peoples and stories, brothers, friends and family” Gilles Peterson “Spiritual similarities to the likes of D'Angelo, Theo Parrish, J Dilla, and John Coltrane” Dummy Mag “Cosmic-soul super talent. You need this guy on your radar” Stamp The Wax “The equivalent of an aural hug” Boiler Room “A lot of breadth and creativity” Ransom Note “Imbued with the sounds of funk, Latin, soul, African Nubian music” Hyponik The cult Peckham soul artist caps the release of three highly praised EPs with an album featuring his most confident songwriting to date. The album paints a collage of dusty drum hits, Sly Stone-esque bass lines and Mamode’s own one-take vocals. Themes go from the personal, such as relationship communication breakdown, to the universal, in the anti-war theme of ‘The Value’. It remains grounded in a love of syncopated drums, played out in the Dilla-esque ‘Talk To Me’, or the free jazz of ‘Omas Sextet’. Elsewhere, on album opener ‘Bruk Out’, the broken beat scene collides with the groove based jazz fusion of Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters, whilst on ‘Drums Of The Positive’, Mamode channels the “slave island music of my father’s heritage… Maloya, Sega, Nyabinghi”. "Nowadays music seems to be used more as a crutch for humanity.. Most people seem to have forgotten it's a life blood of our species. The natural rhythms of our hearts beating and the melodic instrument 'the voice' gifted to us at birth, are some physical examples of how inherent music is within our being. We all need this thing we call music. Just as all our ancestors did." - Reginald Omas Mamode IV This past year has seen Mamode perform live and DJ at the relaunch of London’s Jazz Cafe, Shapes, Ronnie Scott’s, Gottwood festival and dates in France, Netherlands and beyond. Headline UK and EU live dates will follow the album’s release in the autumn. Along with Mo Kolours, Jeen Bassa, Henry Wu, Al Dobson Jr and Tenderlonious; he’s helped forge in the 22a co-operative that The FADER calls “a kaleidoscopic patchwork of hip-hop, house, and groove investigations bound by one thread: a timeless belief in rhythm as a universal language”. Part percussive ancestral music, part post-Dilla funk, Mamode’s debut album is a galactic, joyful, and above all funky record. It is a statement of intent from this rising underground star.

Thank you for listening.

Indie-rap mainstay Aesop Rock has announced his new album, The Impossible Kid, dropping April 29th on Rhymesayers Entertainment, marking his first solo venture since 2012’s Skelethon. On the new album, Aesop continues finding new ways to improve on the skills that have made him one of the kings of indie hip-hop. His creative process now includes a newfound willingness to open up about his personal life, going deep on topics like depression, his sometimes rocky relationship with his family, and the turbulent handful of years that culminated in Aesop leaving his adopted home of San Francisco to live in a barn out in the woods, where he recorded the foundations of The Impossible Kid. There’s also moments of levity though, as Aesop taps into the funny side of his persona that he suppressed during the period where being taken as a serious lyricist was more of a priority. Like Skelethon, Aesop exercised complete creative control over every aspect of the album, from the production (which he handled himself, with instrumental help from Philly’s Grimace Federation) to conceptualizing the cover art by his friend Alex Pardee.

Clipping formed in Los Angeles in 2009. Initially conceived as a remix project, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson began pairing noise and power-electronics inspired tracks with (stolen) vocals by commercial rap artists. Jonathan and William did this mostly to amuse each other and the duo earned very few fans. However, the band began in earnest in early 2010, when rapper and friend Daveed Diggs joined the group. Clipping was their first project as a trio, building on both their long friendship and their many shared obsessions: rap, experimental music, and genre fiction, among others. Clipping released Midcity on their Bandcamp page in 2013 and signed with Sub Pop three months later. The band described their debut as “party music for the club you wish you hadn’t gone to, the car you don’t remember getting in, and the streets you don’t feel safe on.” In 2014, they released their Sub Pop debut, CLPPNG, omitting “I” in the title and lyrics to vacate rap of its traditional center, revealing instead a collage of recurrent rap themes. 2016’s Wriggle EP, released after Daveed’s Tony award for his role as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the acclaimed Broadway musical Hamilton, included “Shooter,” which used gunshot sounds as the beat for an imagistic narrative of three different violent encounters. Since the release of CLPPNG, things have changed for the band—William finished his Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies with a dissertation on experimental music, Jonathan composed scores for the films Starry Eyes, The Nightmare, Excess Flesh, and Contracted: Phase II, and Daveed hit Broadway. Their activities outside Clipping have always influenced their work in the band, but never as much as in the creation of Splendor & Misery. Splendor & Misery is an Afrofuturist, dystopian concept album that follows the sole survivor of a slave uprising on an interstellar cargo ship, and the onboard computer that falls in love with him. Thinking he is alone and lost in space, the character discovers music in the ship’s shuddering hull and chirping instrument panels. William and Jonathan’s tracks draw an imaginary sonic map of the ship’s decks, hallways, and quarters, while Daveed’s lyrics ride the rhythms produced by its engines and machinery. In a reversal of H.P. Lovecraft’s concept of cosmic insignificance, the character finds relief in learning that humanity is of no consequence to the vast, uncaring universe. It turns out, pulling the rug out from under anthropocentrism is only horrifying to those who thought they were the center of everything to begin with. Ultimately, the character decides to pilot his ship into the unknown—and possibly into oblivion—instead of continuing on to worlds whose systems of governance and economy have violently oppressed him.

Indie-pop miniaturist Frankie Cosmos makes music like minimal sculpture or haiku: radically simple but deceptively complicated at the same time. Her second studio album, *Next Thing*, is by turns tender and funny, innocent and wise, often within the space of the same brief line. (Take this one, from “Fool”: “Once I was happy, you found it intriguing/Then you got to me and left me bleeding.”) And though her songs are brief and the arrangements simple, the album feels surprisingly complete—the product of someone who knows exactly what they want to say and doesn’t waste time with one word more.