Clash's Albums of the Year 2017

No MC represents the fluidity and versatility of UK rap better than Momodou Jallow. While the vivacious “Did You See” cements his position as a captain of London’s Afrobeats scene, he constantly escapes pigeonholing on this magnetic debut. The title track offers sax-topped G-funk, “Leave Me” sets brooding guitar riffs to trap beats, and “Plottin” recalls UK garage’s melodic glory days. Over those sounds, J Hus switches from staccato belligerence and joyful bravado to downbeat reflection without missing a beat—or the chance for a sharp punchline.

In the two years since *To Pimp a Butterfly*, we’ve hung on Kendrick Lamar\'s every word—whether he’s destroying rivals on a cameo, performing the #blacklivesmatter anthem *on top of a police car* at the BET Awards, or hanging out with Obama. So when *DAMN.* opens with a seemingly innocuous line—\"So I was taking a walk the other day…”—we\'re all ears. The gunshot that abruptly ends the track is a signal: *DAMN.* is a grab-you-by-the-throat declaration that’s as blunt, complex, and unflinching as the name suggests. If *Butterfly* was jazz-inflected, soul-funk vibrance, *DAMN.* is visceral, spare, and straight to the point, whether he’s boasting about \"royalty inside my DNA” on the trunk-rattling \"DNA.\" or lamenting an anonymous, violent death on the soul-infused “FEAR.” No topic is too big to tackle, and the songs are as bold as their all-caps names: “PRIDE.” “LOYALTY.” “LOVE.” \"LUST.” “GOD.” When he repeats the opening line to close the album, that simple walk has become a profound journey—further proof that no one commands the conversation like Kendrick Lamar.

The album that finally reveals a superstar. Sampha Sisay spent his nascent career becoming music’s collaborator à la mode—his CV includes impeccable work with the likes of Solange, Drake, and Jessie Ware—and *Process* fully justifies his considered approach to unveiling a debut full-length. It’s a stunning album that sees the Londoner inject raw, gorgeous emotion into each of his mini-epics. His electronic R&B sounds dialed in from another dimension on transformative opener “Plastic 100°C,” and “Incomplete Kisses” is an anthem for the broken-hearted that retains a smoothness almost exclusive to this very special talent. “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano,” meanwhile, makes a solid case for being 2017’s most beautiful song.

Until a late flurry of percussion arrives, doleful guitar and bass are Solána Rowe’s only accompaniment on opener “Supermodel,” a stinging kiss-off to an adulterous ex. It doesn’t prepare you for the inventively abstract production that follows—disembodied voices haunting the airy trap-soul of “Broken Clocks,” “Anything”’s stuttering video-game sonics—but it instantly establishes the emotive power of her rasping, percussive vocal. Whether she’s feeling empowered by her physicality on the Kendrick Lamar-assisted “Doves in the Wind” or wrestling with insecurity on “Drew Barrymore,” SZA’s songs impact quickly and deeply.

Since emerging onto the scene in 2014, Moses Sumney has ridden a wave of word-of-mouth praise, hushed recordings, and dynamic live performances. It's an organic, patient ascent all too rare in today's musical climate. In a voice both mellifluous and haunting, Sumney makes future music that transmogrifies classic tropes, like moon-colony choir reinterpretations of old jazz gems. His vocals narrate a personal journey through universal loneliness atop otherworldly compositional backdrops. Following the self-release of his debut cassette EP, Mid-City Island, and 2015's 7", Seeds/Pleas, Sumney has performed around the world alongside forebears like David Byrne, Karen O, Sufjan Stevens, Solange, James Blake and more. With his 2016 Lamentations EP, The California and Ghana-raised troubadour widened the spectrum of his heretofore "bedroom" music, incorporating songs that feature more elaborate production and evocative songwriting. Now his inspired ascent continues. His proper debut album, Aromanticism is a concept album about lovelessness as a sonic dreamscape. It seeks to interrogate the social constructions around romance. The debut will include the devastating, billowing synths of "Doomed,” which in a way serves as the album’s thesis statement, as well as new versions of standouts "Lonely World" and "Plastic.” It’s a deliberate, jaw-dropping statement that can leave you both enlightened and empty.

As its title suggests (albeit a little backhandedly), *Flower Boy* explores a softer side of Tyler, the Creator. Not that he wasn’t thoughtful before, or that he’s lost his edge now—if anything, the dark wit and internal conflict that made *Goblin* a lightning bolt in 2011 has only gotten richer and more resonant, offset by a sound that cherry-picks from early-\'90s hip-hop and plush, Stevie-style soul (“Garden Shed,” the Frank Ocean-featuring “911 / Mr. Lonely”). “Tell these black kids they can be who they are,” he raps on “Where This Flower Blooms.” “Dye your hair blue, s\*\*t, I’ll do it too.”

While evolving from the feral roar of 2007 debut *Strange House* toward the saucer-eyed dance rock of 2014’s *Luminous*, The Horrors have often sculpted sharp pop tunes. Their fifth album fully embraces those melodic instincts while exploring the possibilities offered by mixing psychedelia, rock, and synth-pop with their gothic otherness. The results are disparate and gripping, from “Machine”’s grinding urgency to the woozy swagger of “Press Enter to Exit.” Finale “Something to Remember Me By” is the towering peak of their most assured album to date, evoking Balearic-period New Order with its yearning fusion of house and synth-pop.

Venezuelan producer Arca typically makes compelling, lyrical music without saying a word, twisting digital dissonance and gorgeously rendered synth tones into songs you could practically hang on the walls of the Guggenheim. But on his self-titled third album, words become the focus. While an abrasive, intricately programmed instrumental like \"Castration\" says a fair bit on its own, \"Anoche\" and \"Piel\" reach a spellbinding new level for Arca, as he sings Spanish-language poetry about shedding identities and the messiness of love over truly haunting textures.

BROCKHAMPTON call themselves a boy band, but take that with a grain of salt: With “HEAT,” the L.A. rap collective’s first album of 2017 opens with a grinding beat and the ominous admission, “I hate the way I think/I hate the way it looms.” It’s not all so aggro: “GOLD” is a breezy ode to self-love over a golden hook, while the spacious, springy “BOYS” lets the crew’s rappers show off their range of flows—playful, slinky, menacing, and above all, seductive.

R&B singer Kelela’s deeply personal debut LP does just what it says on the label. Over beats from Jam City, Bok Bok, Kingdom, and Arca—which swerve from warped and aqueous to warm and lush to icy and danceable—Kelela turns her emotions inside out with a sultriness and self-assuredness that few underground artists can muster. She’s tough and forthright, tender and subdued on songs about breakups (“Frontline”), makeups (“Waitin”), and pickups (“LMK”)—and the way she spins from one mode to the next is dizzying in the best way possible.

“WE IN YEAR 3230 WIT IT,” Vince Staples tweeted of his second album. “THIS THE FUTURE.” In fact, he’s in multiple time zones here. Delivered in his fluent, poetic flow, the lyrical references reach back to 16th-century composer Louis Bourgeois, while “BagBak” captures the stark contrasts of Staples’ present (“I pray for new McLarens/Pray the police don’t come blow me down because of my complexion.”) With trap hi-hats sprayed across ’70s funk basslines (“745”) and Bon Iver fused into UK garage beats (“Crabs in a Bucket”), the future is as bold as it is bright.

Pushing past the GRAMMY®-winning art rock of 2014’s *St. Vincent*, *Masseduction* finds Annie Clark teaming up with Jack Antonoff (as well as Kendrick Lamar collaborator Sounwave) for a pop masterpiece that radiates and revels in paradox—vibrant yet melancholy, cunning yet honest, friendly yet confrontational, deeply personal yet strangely inscrutable. She moves from synthetic highs to towering power-ballad comedowns (“Pills”), from the East Coast (the unforgettable “New York”) to “Los Ageless,” where, amid a bramble of strings and woozy electronics, she admits, “I try to write you a love song/But it comes out a lament.”

Nearly 20 years into the band\'s career, The National have reached a status attained only by the likes of Radiohead: a progressive, uncompromising band with genuinely broad appeal. Produced by multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner in his upstate New York studio (with co-production from guitarist Bryce Dessner and singer Matt Berninger), *Sleep Well Beast* captures the band at their moody, majestic best, from the propulsive “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” to “Guilty Party,” where Berninger’s portraits of failing marriage come to a sad, gorgeous, and surprisingly subtle head.

Sleep Well Beast was produced by member Aaron Dessner with co-production by Bryce Dessner and Matt Berninger. The album was mixed by Peter Katis and recorded at Aaron Dessner’s Hudson Valley, New York studio, Long Pond, with additional sessions having taken place in Berlin, Paris and Los Angeles.

After the introspective reflections of 2015 debut *Ibeyi*, twins Naomi and Lisa-Kaindé Diaz set their focus on the volatile political landscape. The spare, percussive “Away Away” clings to the hope of a better tomorrow with an uplifting, hymnal hook before Kamasi Washington’s saxophone underscores a gripping mood of defiance on “Deathless,” an account of wrongful arrest. However, “No Man Is Big Enough for My Arms” best encapsulates the album’s blend of bold expression and entrancing, experimental R&B, striking at misogyny with a fierce punch wrapped inside a velvet glove of beautiful harmonies.

Kieran Hebden’s restlessly inventive, genre-splicing music is often as unpredictable as it is hypnotic. That holds firmly on his ninth album as Four Tet, where harp-mottled openers “Alap” and “Two Thousand and Seventeen” suggest the supple, folk-inflected electronic of 2003’s *Rounds* but soon give way to singular experiments in ambient techno (“LA Trance”), head-nodding deep house (“SW9 9SL”), and abstract neoclassical (“10 Midi”). As ever, Hebden builds his music with precision, warmth, and a rare gift for consuming melodies.

Broadly cut from the synth pop cloth, Maus has fashioned the frosty minimalism of its fabric into a cloak of infinite meaning, genuine grace and absurdist humor over the course of three defining albums since 2006. His fourth album Screen Memories, follows six years after 2011’s We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, which appeared like a thunderbolt of maniacal energy and turned everyone’s heads. Screen Memories was written, recorded, and engineered by Maus over the last few years in his home in Minnesota. It’s a solitary place situated in the sub-zero winter temperatures creep into the songs as do the buzzing wasps of summer.

It feels right that Future’s first self-titled release allows his different personas to grab the mic: Depending on the track, he’s the party starter, the ladies\' man, the hustler, or the hedonist. *FUTURE* pays homage to the ATL rapper’s roots (and now-legendary string of underground mixtapes) with plenty of 808 boom, warped synths, and jittery rhymes. When his lyrics look back on the experiences that shaped him—especially with tracks like “Feds Did a Sweep” or “When I Was Broke”—it\'s a hypnotic glimpse into the mind of Atlanta’s trap king.

Even in the increasingly crowded field of electronic music, Kelly Lee Owens’ debut album arrives as a wonderful surprise. An album that bridges the gaps between cavernous techno, spectral pop, and krautrock’s mechanical pulse, 'Kelly Lee Owens' brims with exploratory wonder, establishing a personal aesthetic that is as beguiling as it is thrillingly familiar.

On their second album, Wolf Alice continue to draw their cues from ’90s alt-rock. They do it with such adventure and panache that it never becomes simple mimicry, though. The melody and dissonance of shoegaze are fashioned into aching, beautiful tributes to passed friends and relatives (“Heavenward,” “St. Purple & Green”), “Yuk Foo” mauls misogyny with punk fury and wit, while the title track is an epic journey in stoner rock. Out front, singer/guitarist Ellie Rowsell is an increasingly assured presence, skillfully inhabiting the many moods of her rivetingly personal lyrics.

Kehlani Parrish reached the release of her debut album the hard way—dues paid in a teen pop band and on *America\'s Got Talent*, various personal struggles—but it’s helped sharpen her silky R&B with a bewitching edge. She can do radio-friendly summer jams (“Distraction” and “Undercover”), but really comes alive when the Sweet and Sexy gets outmuscled by the Savage. “Not Used to It” hits deep, while “Too Much” and “Do U Dirty” are gloriously lewd and completely brilliant.

Josh Tillman’s third album as Father John Misty is a wry and passionate complaint against nearly everything under the sun: Politics, religion, entertainment, war—even Father John Misty can’t escape Father John Misty’s gimlet eye. But even the wordiest, most cynically self-aware songs here (“Leaving L.A.,” “When the God of Love Returns There’ll Be Hell to Pay”) are executed with angelic beauty, a contrast that puts Tillman in a league with spiritual predecessors like Randy Newman or Harry Nilsson. A performer as savvy as Tillman knows you can’t sell the apocalypse without making it sound pretty.

'Pure Comedy', Father John Misty’s third album, is a complex, often-sardonic, and, equally often, touching meditation on the confounding folly of modern humanity. Father John Misty is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Josh Tillman. Tillman has released two widely acclaimed albums – 'Fear Fun' (2012) and 'I Love You, Honeybear' (2015) – and the recent “Real Love Baby” single as Father John Misty, and recently contributed to songs by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Kid Cudi. While we could say a lot about 'Pure Comedy' – including that it is a bold, important album in the tradition of American songwriting greats like Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, and Leonard Cohen – we think it’s best to let its creator describe it himself. Take it away, Mr. Tillman: 'Pure Comedy' is the story of a species born with a half-formed brain. The species’ only hope for survival, finding itself on a cruel, unpredictable rock surrounded by other species who seem far more adept at this whole thing (and to whom they are delicious), is the reliance on other, slightly older, half-formed brains. This reliance takes on a few different names as their story unfolds, like “love,” “culture,” “family,” etc. Over time, and as their brains prove to be remarkably good at inventing meaning where there is none, the species becomes the purveyor of increasingly bizarre and sophisticated ironies. These ironies are designed to help cope with the species’ loathsome vulnerability and to try and reconcile how disproportionate their imagination is to the monotony of their existence. Something like that. 'Pure Comedy' was recorded in 2016 at the legendary United Studios (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Beck) in Hollywood, CA. It was produced by Father John Misty and Jonathan Wilson, with engineering by Misty’s longtime sound-person Trevor Spencer and orchestral arrangements by renowned composer/double-bassist Gavin Bryars (known for extensive solo work, and work with Brian Eno, Tom Waits, Derek Bailey).

Long before London-by-way-of-Belfast’s Andy Ferguson and Matt McBriar released their first 12-inch as Bicep, they’d proven themselves curators of the highest order, plucking out crucial techno, house, and disco tracks for their *Feel My Bicep* blog. This self-titled debut LP is where their impeccable tastes and killer DJ instincts all come together. “Glue” wears the duo\'s classic dance influences on its sleeve: It starts like a breaks-driven UK garage tune, but slyly morphs into something resembling atmospheric, ‘90s downtempo. And their love of ethereal vibes and Balearic house lives in the moody, blissed-out “Drift” and “Ayaya.\"

Phoebe Bridgers wrote her first song at age 11, spent her adolescence at open mic nights, and busked through her teenage years at farmers markets in her native Los Angeles. By age 20, she'd caught the ear of Ryan Adams, who listened to her perform her song "Killer" in his L.A. studio, inviting her to come back and record it there the next day. The session blossomed into the three-song ‘Killer’ EP, released to much acclaim on Adams’s Pax-Am label in 2015. In the two short years since, Bridgers has toured or played with Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, City and Colour, Violent Femmes, Mitski, Television and Blake Babies among others. On September 22nd, Phoebe Bridgers will release her debut full-length, Stranger In The Alps. From the weeping strings and Twin Peaks twangs of opening track Smoke Signals, to the simple heartbreak of Funeral and melancholic crescendo of Scott Street, Stranger in the Alps is a swooningly beautiful record with a gothic heart.

Cigarettes After Sex frontman Greg Gonzalez uses his music like a diary, each song framing a vivid, intimate memory of a lover or friend. They’re bracingly honest dispatches, recalling moments of helpless obsession (“Sweet”) and snarling at infidelity with dark, profane humor (“Young & Dumb”). Tethered by bittersweet melodies, the band’s slow, hazy pop-noir gives the joy and pain of Gonzalez’s tales time and space to sink in, and your heart might race and break as hard as his on “K” and “Apocalypse.”

Chris Clark’s ninth album of adventurous electronica draws on most of the genres he’s experimented with over his career—often within one song. “Hoova” turns sharply from industrial techno to joyous trance to celestial ambience in just five minutes, while the bass of “Peak Magnetic” groans through birdsong and glimmering euphoria like tectonic plates shifting beneath a dawn rave. It works because Clark constantly arranges the noise into spellbinding patterns that settle just long enough to pull you in before his next idea arrives.

After years of strong guest features and acclaimed mixtapes, North Carolina MC Rapsody comes into her own with her ambitious second LP, *Laila\'s Wisdom*. Backed by a slew of vintage samples and soulful live instrumentation, Rapsody flaunts unhurried flow, consummate storytelling skills, and a knack for memorable choruses on songs like \"Pay Up,\" revealing her frustration with deadbeat dudes over slinky electric guitar and the swirling \'70s funk of \"Sassy.\" Longtime compatriot Anderson .Paak delivers the hook on the languid \"Nobody,\" and Kendrick Lamar, Rapsody\'s original cosigner, elevates the woozy, psychedelic \"Power.\"

The Mississippi MC’s ambitious third album is split between his stage persona and private life—the first half opens with “Big K.R.I.T.”; the second, “Justin Scott.” Fittingly, K.R.I.T.’s Southern rap purism is at its most personal here: “Price of Fame” explores the disconnect between success and true happiness. But the mood lifts on trunk-rattlers like the T.I.-featuring “Big Bank” and space-funk slow-burner “Aux Cord,” an homage to soul legends from Parliament to B.B. King.

In the wake of their arresting debut album, Big Thief find further beauty in ever harsher realities on *Capacity*. It\'s bound together by singer/songwriter Adrianne Lenker, who’s achingly fragile and coldly confident within the same song, as she shares vivid, intimate details of kisses, crashes, and a long-lost brother. Stark acoustic numbers like \"Pretty Things\" and \"Coma\" glow with a warm, vintage sheen, making them timeless, while expansive heartland rocker \"Shark Smile\" gives Lenker\'s wraith-like presence room to truly soar.

Released on 2LP/CD by Stickman Records and Armageddon shop. US: armageddonshop.com Europe/World: www.stickman-records.com/shop/elder-reflections-of-a-floating-world/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reflections of a Floating World is Elder's fourth full length album and second LP released via Stickman Records (EU) and Armageddon Label (US). Long, undulating and dense tracks float between psychedelic passages and progressive rock without missing a beat; adventurous and unpredictable songs are punctuated by hypnotic jams, all colored by the tendency toward melody and dynamism that has become the band's hallmark. In keeping with their motto of expanding and expanding upon their repertoire, guest musicians Mike Risberg and Michael Samos joined the core three in the studio to add extra guitar, keys and pedal steel, adding vibrancy and lushness to the album. In all regards, Reflections shows a band with a clear vision honing their skills with every year.

Syd, of The Internet and Odd Future fame, shows another side of her musical persona. *Fin* takes a carnal R&B turn with all the complex emotions it brings. Her demure voice gives strong vapors of Aaliyah and *Velvet Rope*-era Janet Jackson on “Drown In It,” “Body,” and “Know.” Syd gives herself a pep talk on “All About Me” and gets lit on “Dollar Bills” and “Nothin to Somethin.” And this being Syd, the tracks glisten with futuristic shine.

Rocket is Philadelphia-based artist Alex G’s eighth full-length release—an assured statement that follows a slate of humble masterpieces, many of them self-recorded and self-released, stretching from 2010’s RACE to his 2015 Domino debut, Beach Music. Amid the Rocket recording process, Alex made headlines for catching the attention of Frank Ocean, who asked him to play guitar on his two 2016 albums, Endless and Blonde. More than any stylistic cues, what Alex took from the experience was a newfound confidence in collaboration. Rocket wears this collaborative spirit proudly, and in its numerous contributors presents a restless sense of musical experimentation - effortlessly jumping from distorted sound collage to dreamy folk music to bouncing Americana. Rocket illustrates a cohesive vision of contemporary American experience; the cast of characters that Alex G inhabits have fun, fall in love, develop obsessions, get in trouble, and—much like rockets themselves—ultimately they burn out. Alex, though, in a collection of songs that’s both his tightest and most adventurous, is poised only for the ascent.

2 Chainz is a hit maker, but *Pretty Girls Like Trap Music* shows there are deeper ambitions afoot. His production arm is strong—Mike WiLL Made-It, Murda Beatz, and Mike Dean all put in work. He speaks his mind, dissing the government and “mumble-rap” while Nicki Minaj references her Remy Ma beef on “Realize.” Pharrell leaves his platinum imprint on “Bailan.” Then 2 Chainz puts his life story out there on the revelatory “Burglar Bars”—the realest song he’s ever cut.

*I Decided.* is a departure from Big Sean\'s IDGAF past. “Voices in My Head/Stick to the Plan” and “Bigger Than Me” show him confronting reality, openly baring scars and lessons learned. “No Favors” features one of Eminem’s most lethal guest spots. Sean Don turns stockpiled venom into an antidote, and with his overpowering verbal jiu-jitsu skills, the redemptive message comes across loud and clear: “I feel like I sent the prayers up and God blessed back/Whoa.”

On her sophomore album, Japanese Breakfast\'s Michelle Zauner seeks grounding in an unlikely place: outer space. Her evocative metaphors and hefty subject matter find lightness in shimmery, spacey electronics, most potently on the expansive, krautrock-like opener \"Diving Woman.\" She deals with femininity and sexuality in synth-pop reveries like \"Road Head\" and the Auto-Tune-enhanced \"Machinist,\" and cuts deep into trauma (\"The Body Is a Blade\") and grief (\"Till Death\") by finding comfort in ‘90s indie guitar pop, fluttering keyboards, and gentle wafts of mournful horns.

Japanese Breakfast's 'Soft Sounds From Another Planet' is less of a concept album about space exploration so much as it is a mood board come to life. Over the course of 12 tracks, Michelle Zauner explores a sonic landscape of her own design, one that's big enough to contain her influences. There are songs on this album that recall the pathos of Roy Orbison’s ballads, while others could soundtrack a cinematic drive down one of Blade Runner's endless skyways. Zauner's voice is capacious; one moment she's serenading the past, the next she's robotically narrating a love story over sleek monochrome, her lyrics more pointed and personal than ever before. While 'Psychopomp' was a genre-spanning introduction to Japanese Breakfast, this visionary sophomore album launches the project to new heights.

Amber Coffman is best known as a singer and guitarist for the genre-bending Dirty Projectors. Co-produced by head Projector Dave Longstreth, *City of No Reply* proves Coffman a dynamic songwriter in her own right, from the off-kilter girl-group shoop of “No Coffee” to the dusky, Caribbean inflections of the title track. “There’s a voice inside of me/And it’s time to listen,” Coffman sings amid the ‘50s-ish lilt of “All to Myself.” Time to let it out, too.

On her first proper album as Jay Som, Melina Duterte, 22, solidifies her rep as a self-made force of sonic splendor and emotional might. If last year's aptly named Turn Into compilation showcased a fuzz-loving artist in flux—chronicling her mission to master bedroom recording—then the rising Oakland star's latest, Everybody Works, is the LP equivalent of mission accomplished. Duterte is as DIY as ever—writing, recording, playing, and producing every sound beyond a few backing vocals—but she takes us places we never could have imagined, wedding lo-fi rock to hi-fi home orchestration, and weaving evocative autobiographical poetry into energetic punk, electrified folk, and dreamy alt-funk. And while Duterte's early stuff found her bucking against life's lows, Everybody Works is about turning that angst into fuel for forging ahead. "Last time I was angry at the world," she says. "This is a note to myself: everybody's trying their best on their own set of problems and goals. We're all working for something." Everybody Works was made in three furious, caffeinated weeks in October. She came home from the road, moved into a new apartment, set up her bedroom studio (with room for a bed this time) and dove in. Duterte even ditched most of her demos, writing half the LP on the spot and making lushly composed pieces like "Lipstick Stains" all the more impressive. While the guitar-grinding Jay Som we first fell in love with still reigns on shoegazey shredders like "1 Billion Dogs" and in the melodic distortions of "Take It," we also get the sublimely spacious synth-pop beauty of "Remain," and the luxe, proggy funk of "One More Time, Please." Duterte's production approach was inspired by the complexity of Tame Impala, the simplicity of Yo La Tengo, and the messiness of Pixies. "Also, I was listening to a lot of Carly Rae Jepsen to be quite honest," she says. "Her E•MO•TION album actually inspired a lot of the sounds on Everybody Works." There's story in the sounds—even in the fact that Duterte's voice is more present than before. As for the lyrics, our host leaves the meaning to us. So if we can interpret, there's a bit about the aspirational and fleeting nature of love in the opener, and the oddity of turning your art into job on the titular track. There's even one tune, "The Bus Song," that seems to be written as a dialog between two kids, although it plays like vintage Broken Social Scene and likely has more to do with yearning for things out of reach. While there's no obvious politics here, Duterte says witnessing the challenges facing women, people of color, and the queer community lit a fire. And when you reach the end of Everybody Works, "For Light," you'll find a mantra suitable for anyone trying, as Duterte says, "to find your peace even if it's not perfect." As her trusty trumpet blows, she sings: "I'll be right on time, open blinds for light, won't forget to climb."

31 AUGUST 1997 was one of the hottest nights in Paris that year. Just after midnight a black Mercedes Benz rushes through the dark streets with a horde of ravenous paparazzi on tow. In the Pont de l’Alma tunnel the car swerves into a roof-supporting pillar and in the echo of the metallic roar dies Diana, the Princess of Wales. The world has lost one of its greatest icons and the morbidity of popular culture hits a new high. The story is strangely resonant with the myth of the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman: Diana) and the hunter Actaeon, who, after having seen the goddess bathing naked, is turned into a stag and torn to pieces by his own hunting hounds. This picture opens Ulver’s 13th album, The Assassination of Julius Caesar. Such historical quantum leaps often occur in Ulver’s musical universe, which has never been bound by any physical law. And the band’s unruly play with myth, history and popular culture has never been more manifest than now. From the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II on one day in May 1981, to the queer, black house with the address 6114 California Street, San Francisco, better known as the headquarters of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan – Ulver moves seamlessly through time and space, and manages, in their own strange ways, to create a coherent tableau with a deeply personal backdrop. “I want to tell you something / about the grace of faded things,” as it goes in the song “Southern Gothic”. Those familiar with this stubborn pack of wolves from Oslo will not be surprised that they also this time round are shifting shape. Never afraid of challenging or redefining current musical conventions, Ulver has now enacted what they are calling “their pop album”. You don’t have to worry about vexing radio humdrum or pastel ear candy though – Talk Talk and Music Machine are pop music as good as any in the universe of Ulver. A universe where “pop” is more a mark of distinction, denoting immediacy and possible body movement. Factory Records and Welcome to the Pleasuredome. The Assassination of Julius Caesar is an album the band has been longing to do for many years, to delve into the music of their childhood, along with the now fading memories and drifting clouds of romance. After the (to them) surprising success of last year’s hybrid ATGCLVLSSCAP, released on the recently established House of Mythology, the way was eventually cleared for a full status studio album from Ulver. Not since Shadows of the Sun, now ten years of age, has the band worked under such clearly defined criteria, staying true to an aesthetics. Such music is never easily conceived, but Ulver’s unyielding ethos of following their instincts has again showed them the way. Fear of repetition and standstill is just as instinctive in the mind of this group as hunger is for their counterparts in nature. The core crew behind this album is Kristoffer Rygg, Jørn H. Sværen and Tore Ylwizaker, in company with Ole Alexander Halstensgård, who has also been an important contributor to earlier albums. As usual, there are prominent guests, the renowned experimental guitarist Stian Westerhus puts his personal signature on several tracks, the same goes for associated members Anders Møller and Daniel O’Sullivan. Legendary Hawkwind shaman Nik Turner adds his sax to “Rolling Stone”. The Assassination of Julius Caesar is mixed by Martin “Youth” Glover, known from bands such as Killing Joke and The Fireman (with Paul McCartney), plus producer of The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” and many other major players. The result is epic and wide-scoped as a historical drama, without ever mollycoddling the listener. “What have I done to leave you here,” asks vocalist and primus motor Kristoffer Rygg on the last track, “Coming Home”. Since Ulver was formed a quarter of a century ago, their musical odyssey has taken them round the world in many shapes. This year will see them perform in select places with a new spectacular live production. And even if Ulver might have brought home the game with their most ambitious and majestic work thus far, rest assured that the wolves will keep on following you through the night. – Ando Woltmann

‘Embers’, the new album from Ross Tones aka Throwing Snow, is a conceptually imaginative and musically atmospheric recording that draws stimulus from laws and patterns of the natural world. Excelling creatively from the freedom and restrictions of applying aspects of these elements, ‘Embers emerges vividly from the processes employed in its creation. “Our complex world arises from fundamental laws. These laws constantly sculpt and shape our surroundings through repeating cycles, forever moving forward. Cycles interact with each other, endlessly morphing an interconnected landscape. Viewed over longer periods of time seemingly static objects like mountains ebb and flow like water, and yet over the same time frame countless lives appear like waves oscillating in a blink of an eye.” ~ Throwing Snow Recorded in Daddry Shield, County Durham, sounds captured in the surrounding area became part of the music. Rain is transformed into white noise, at one point a melody line is mimicked by a starling - all the result of endless processes and cycles. The techniques used in creating ‘Embers’ allegorically mirror these processes. Reproducing the way materials are reused in the natural world; tracks are born, live and then die only to be reborn into a new form. All the tracks have similar counterparts whether in structure, dynamics or melodies. Arpeggios self-evolve and are interconnected, randomness introduced utilising two similar pairs of synthesizers so that their cycles are ever changing and naturally evolving. “There is self-similarity over all scales and time frames, but nothing is exactly repeated because everything has its own life story. We are always at the mercy of entropy, that slow decline into disorder, towards death. It is the process that the delivers the raw material back to the start, allowing new lives to be born. Life comes from the embers of death.” ~ Throwing Snow Roughly an hour long, the albums start and end appear the same allowing it to cycle endlessly - the vinyl edition has been created so that the listener can mix the album without breaks across two turntables. The album artwork itself is an interpretive score of the music, using another media to view the world from a different angle. “We are macrocosmic, pattern forming life forms because we have been fine-tuned by evolution to see and hear things in a certain way in order to best survive. We find nature aesthetically pleasing because our minds recognise the complex repeating patterns. Art interprets nature and tries to capture, solidify, use or derive meaning from it in some way. This can be seen in the works of Jackson Pollock with his fractal-esque painting technique, or even in the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi with its appreciation of transience and love of perfect imperfection.” ~ Throwing Snow Migrating from England’s northern wilderness to London and now Bristol, Tones schooling in astrophysics didn’t deviate his desire to be musician. Following a prolific run of well-received EPs and singles, his debut album‘Mosaic’ was released by Houndstooth in 2014. Live he has supported Bonobo, Atoms For Peace and Jon Hopkins; as well as completing a stint at Red Bull Music Academy and making numerous Boiler Room appearances. Not one to be content with merely making his own music, Tones is also co-owner of the Left Blank and A Future Without record labels as well as running his own imprint, Snowfall. He also records as Snow Ghosts with vocalist Augustus Ghost and releases music with his brother under the name Vellico. _________ ‘Embers’will be released on 20th January 2017, also presented as the fabricfirst subscriber CD that month - the first time an artist album has appeared there.

Beautifully crafted alt-punk that grooves and inspires.