FACT Magazine's 50 Best Albums of 2014

Mr. Mitch is one of a small group of producers who in the last few years have been re-imagining the decade-old genre of Grime. Miles Mitchell, a 26 year-old South East Londoner, started his own Gobstopper label back in 2010 after having his debut release on Butterz. Last year he started the flourishing Boxed 'Instrumental Grime' night alongside producers Slackk, Logos and Oil Gang. For Mr. Mitch, Grime has "…always been an experimental and progressive genre, taking elements of what came before it and pushing those boundaries to create something new". His debut album is called 'Parallel Memories' and Miles has an intriguing story that explains that title. When listening to his tracks, he sees the same vivid scenes in his head each time he replays the music, often repeated snapshots of his life in various impossible scenarios or distorted situations. This made him think "What if the images I'm seeing are memories from an alternative version of me in a parallel dimension?" A question which reflects his vision of Grime too, as his instrumentals are informed by a quite personal and emotive alter-life, where Grime's famous minimalism gives way to a gentle subtlety and is imbued with a very different feeling to the brash aggression associated with the genre. The album intro 'Afternoon After' is the bleary-eyed sound of the club the night before, broken down into swirling child-like synth melodies, coiling over flattened, but airy kick drums. 'The Night' follows, sounding like something Boards Of Canada might do if they came from S.E. London, its gorgeous flute melodies opening up gracefully over minimal rhythms and shifting static tones. 'Intense Faces' marks a shift in the energy to bassline, synth swoops and sharp claps, a child-like bleep tune playing out over the top. 'Don't Leave' switches the mood to one of sadness, its rising chords evolving over a repeated, slowed-down acapella. Elsewhere 'Sweet Boy Code', a collaboration with fellow Gobstopper artist Dark0, lets spacey kicks propel its gentle relaxed melodies over airy sampled vocals. The midpoint track 'Wandering Glaciers' twists Grime into what sounds like a tense piece of early electronica. Meanwhile 'Bullion' chops up a lumbering sample that sound like a marauding giant. The album finishes on 'Hot Air', with its drum pattern sounding like a slow heart beat and strange, backwards synths, it feels like a voyage around a body. This is an album that deserves to find an audience who are willing to go on a journey into new areas with Grime.

The conceptual sibling to his blinding 'Quantum Jelly' side for Editions Mego in 2012, 'Superimpositions' finds the Milan-based multi-disciplinary artist and owner of the brilliant Presto!? Records accelerating and evolving his idea of "Pointillistic Trance" - an ascetic, extreme approach to the aesthetics of '90s-style trance/hard-trance - in a broader range of song structures, hyper-lucid moiré patterns, and tantric dancefloor arrangements. Again, he "plays" a computer-controlled JP8000 Roland Digital-Analog Modelled S-Source Synthesiser to juice the most potent, searing saw wave arpeggios and spiralling melodies, finding the biting point between real-time, hands-on, emotive human input, and the sleek tension of synthesis. From the serotonin-flooding rush of opener 'Happic' to the beautiful come down of 'PointillistiC', the album plays out a sisyphean struggle for deferred gratification, challenging limbic systems and our sense of equilibrioception thru the spine-tingling aerobic coefficients of 'Elegant, And Never Tiring' and the scything, strobing rhythmelody of the title track, to peak with the palpitating surge of 'Forever Headline' at its white hot core. It's all more effective than a triple-barelled mitsi in the jacksy, and hasn't been off our turntable all summer... (Boomkat.com)

“Where We Come From” is the debut album from Jamaican superstar Popcaan. Executive produced by Dre Skull and featuring productions from Dre Skull, Dubbel Dutch, Jamie Roberts, Anju Blaxx and Adde Instrumentals, Popcaan’s first full length offering sees his signature melodies and uplifting tones on thirteen original tracks. As musicologist Wayne Marshall writes in his essay on the album: “Where We Come From” gives voice, as the best reggae does, to the contradictions of life in a society rife with inequities and yet so rich. Whether odes to the ghetto or the good life, Popcaan’s lyrics bring realist portraits and utopian visions into dynamic tension. Songs about struggle and sex and happiness occupy the same space because they do. And whatever the topic, Popcaan’s infectious positivity comes through.

With their eerie textures, spare pianos, and whispered vocals, Liz Harris\' songs send shivers up your spine, even as they emanate a certain warmth, like a ghost story told by a close friend. Recorded at an artist retreat in Portugal, *Ruins* is her most accessible release, with spectral odes like \"Call Across Rooms\" and \"Lighthouse\" eschewing the looping techniques of previous work for spare arrangements of piano and voice. \"Labyrinth\" pulls you in with circular piano lines, while Harris\' vocals in \"Holding\" drift by like clouds as samples of a thunderstorm populate the background.

Ruins was made in Aljezur, Portugal in 2011 on a residency set up by Galeria Zé dos Bois. I recorded everything there except the last song, which I did at mother's house in 2004. Iʼm still surprised by what I wound up with. It was the first time Iʼd sat still for a few years; processed a lot of political anger and emotional garbage. Recorded pretty simply, with a portable 4-track ,Sony stereo mic and an upright piano. When I wasnʼt recording songs I was hiking several miles to the beach. The path wound through the ruins of several old estates and a small village. The album is a document. A nod to that daily walk. Failed structures. Living in the remains of love. I left the songs the way they came (microwave beep from when power went out after a storm); I hope that the album bears some resemblance to the place that I was in.

With 17 songs and over an hour of music, *Pom Pom* reminds us of the daring experiments from Ariel Pink\'s formative DIY releases. But the eclectic songwriting, turn-on-a-dime influences and lush production demonstrate just how much the California musician has evolved. Sure, the album is all over the place—we’re warmed by the ‘60s-influenced pop sunshine of “Plastic Raincoats in the Pig Parade” one moment and tangled in the knotty guitars of \"White Freckles” the next. But the everything-at-once aesthetic is held together by an undercurrent of electro melancholy that’s most evident on icy, synth-based tracks like \"Picture Me Gone” and the ultra-poised “Lipstick\". As the mosaic ends with the bittersweet shimmer of “Dayzed Inn Daydreams”, *Pom Pom*’s kaleidoscopic beauty leaves our head spinning.

BUY VINYL (LIMITED EDITION) NOW @ bit.ly/3ASonqh

Composed in Berlin and Munich, 2011/2013. A former version of Miseri Lares was originally presented in 2011 at the festival “l’Audible” (Paris), curated by Jerome Noetinger. It has been 7 years since ”Metaprogramming from within the eye of the storm’, the last solo full length release by Valerio Tricoli. In the years between he has established himself as a formidable presence on the international experimental live circuit and released acclaimed collaborations with Antoine Chessex, ‘Coi Tormenti’ (Dilemma Records, 2010) and Thomas Ankersmit, ‘Forma II’ (PAN, 2011) along with the fifth full length release by his band with fellow Italiancohorts 3/4HadBeenEliminated, ‘Oblivion’ (Die Schachtel, 2010). Throughout these shows, collaborations and ongoing explorations Valerio has developed upon his signature style of beautifully unsettling Musique Concrète. The result of his tireless explorations, ‘Miseri Lares’ is his magnum opus, a multilayered and heavily nuanced work which epitomises the uncanny in the realm of sound. ‘Miseri Lares’ explores a variety of interlocking themes and sonic tapestries that combine in a quietly disturbing and deeply existential work. As a contemporary take on Musique Concrète Tricoli utilises his full explorations of the Revox tape recorder alongside digital processing whilst retaining all of the mystery and surprise elements found in the classic approach of pioneers such as Bernard Parmegiani, Eugeniusz Rudnik and Michel Chion. Themes of the internal, represented by both the psychological and the physical, play throughout the record. A mind lays waste to it’s own self abasement the immediate surrounds (casa or ‘home’) feeds on the collapse of the individual. As a symbol of spirits preying on the grief within, haunting wisps of sound swirl around a throbbing bass in ‘Hic Labor Ille Domus et Inextricabilis Error’, whereas ‘La Casa Deviata’ emphasises the paranoid structure as looming creaks make way for abandoned pipes and a cloud of escaping water. Here, the tension at play is injected with a treated dictaphone recording: “Tell me what happened”,”I can’t remember… THE SMELL!!! There was a tape recorder, where is the tape”? Spoken text (Italian and English) appears throughout the record, mostly as texture or as a dehumanised floorboard. A play on the albums themes of the psychological, emotional and irrational horror within. Texts by Italian poets Dante and Guido Ceronetti appear alongside excerpts from The Ecclesiastes (in hebrew, Qohelet), H.P. Lovecraft, E. M. Cioran, and writings by Tricoli himself. These add an extra weight to the recording, making it reminiscent of Robert Ashley or even the comedic tragedy of later day Scott Walker (baritone aside). Valerio Tricoli’s release for PAN adds another piece to the puzzle of narrative based concrete music, yet deviating from all conventional forms and playing out like a literary form of unsettling sound sculpture. The 2xLP is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, pressed on 140g vinyl. It is packaged in a pro-press jacket which itself is housed in a silkscreened pvc sleeve with with photography by Traianos Pakioufakis and artwork by Bill Kouligas.

Tomorrow Was the Golden Age is an album length composition by NYC minimalist ensemble Bing & Ruth. Written and conducted by pianist David Moore, Tomorrow Was the Golden Age is a halcyonic journey to a neverending place, where music waxes, wanes and drifts imperceptibly from silence to grand, glowing sound. Tomorrow Was the Golden Age achieves a canon-level quality for instrumental music inspired by the same intentions and practices that fueled works by Morton Feldman, Gavin Bryars, Steve Reich and Brian Eno. For More Info: shop.igetrvng.com/collections/all/products/rvngnl27

FKA twigs’ first full-length album brims with spartan, icy songs that whisk between distorted R&B and ethereal pop. While twigs’ pristine vocals and sensual lyrics are the cornerstone, *LP1* showcases the kind of confident production and instrumentation that play easily alongside celebrated pop minimalists like James Blake. Album highlight “Pendulum\" sees FKA twigs dabbling in manipulated vocals, as wavering guitars and electric drums stutter-step intoxicatingly, while “Video Girl” finds her melodic falsetto fluttering over churning, wobbling synths and creaking percussion.

"It's after the end of the world, don't you know that yet..." With recent reports from various think tanks predicting we have somewhere in the range of 15 years left before the collapse of society begins, it would seem like Kevin Martin's sonic predictions of dystopian London that were set out on 2008's London Zoo were pretty accurate. And if we are in fact declining rapidly to chaos, there's no better time then the present to take the focus of that sonic assault from earthly domains and blast it to the netherworlds above and below. The aforementioned London Zoo is where Kevin Martin, found his true voice. Pulling the fringes into a collective, unilaterally hateful assault. A psychological warfare driven by bass that on one hand captured a moment of London, yet also encapsulated a global message influenced by years of timeless and classic out-music. The latest offering from the The Bug, Angels & Devils, escapes the London cage, drawing on it for influence yet blowing it up into a world-view now seen from Kevin Martin's new Berlin home. A record that simultaneously draws on London Zoo, completes a triptych cycle which started with his Bug debut Pressure, and fills the spaces between and inserts what was missing previously. Both a year zero re-set and a continuation of what has been. Like the Bowie/Eno classic Low, or Can's Tago Mago, the album is split into two distinct themes and explorations of light & dark. Bringing the angel & devil voices together under a single common banner. Antagonist at times, but not solely for the sake of being antagonistic, there's a beauty and lush sparseness to be found within, even when at its most chaotic. Truly only The Bug could find the common ground between Liz Harris (of Grouper) & Death Grips and make it seamless. Angels & Devils stretches the polarity of its predecessor in both directions simultaneously and is even more extreme for its new found seductiveness and added intensity. Deep space is explored, and physical assault is administered. In these days of YouTube quick fixes, and single tune memory spans, its a joy to witness Martin actually charting a cohesive narrative that rejoices in celebrating life through sonic sex and violence, beauty and ugliness. This is an audio thriller that delights in pursuing its own singular path/vision. With the Angel side(s) up first, things kick off with Liz Harris (of Grouper) in the submerged lushness that is "Void". Followed by contributions from ex Hype Wiliams half copeland ('Fall'), the blissed out patois of touring partner Miss Red (Mi Lost), two truly zoned Bug instrumentals, and rounded out by Gonjasufi on "Save Me". It's a collection of heady, dubbed out cinematic blissfulness with a lurking darkness before giving way to devils... Devils leads off with the return of long time collaborator Flowdan on the mic and the guitar of Justin Broadrick (Godflesh / Jesu) bringing a complete about face to the proceedings and setting the tone with "The One". Roll Deep's Manga steps up next with the instant Bug classic "Function", which is being currently smashed on dubplate, by Mala, Kahn and Logan Sama. Death Grips raise the antagonistic bar with Fuck A Bitch. Flowdan & Justin Broadrick come back for the cinematic death crawl of Fat Mac. Warrior Queen steps in for hands down the nastiest vocal she's ever delivered (which is saying a lot) for "Fuck You", and finally Flowdan steps up again to round it all off with a Devils battle cry of sorts "dirty, fuck that murky...". The concept is completed by the artistic expression it's packaged in, courtesy of Simon Fowler (Cataract). Known for his work for Sunn O))), Earth, and others, Simon has delivered a stunning hand drawn illustration, that sort that would make Bosch proud, showing the duality of the proceedings. Not one to ease anybody into the proceedings, first out the gate for first listen will be a California combo, misanthropes Death Grips with their first ever outside collaboration "Fuck A Bitch", and and the Warp Records mystic Gonjasufi with the heavy nod-out of "Save Me" Utopian/dystopian, black/white, complexity/singularity, negative/positive... Angels/Devils.

Wilderness of Mirrors is the new album from Lawrence English. It is two years in the making and the first album created since the release of his 2011 ode to J.A Baker’s novel, The Peregrine. It is English’s most tectonic auditory offering to date, an unrelenting passage of colliding waves of harmony and dynamic live instrumentation. The phrase, wilderness of mirrors, draws its root from T.S Eliot’s elegant poem Gerontion. During the cold war, the phrase became associated with campaigns of miscommunication carried out by opposing state intelligence agencies. Within the context of the record, the phrase acted as a metaphor for a process of iteration that sat at the compositional core of the LP. Buried in each final piece, like an unheard whisper, is a singularity that was slowly reflected back upon itself in a flood of compositional feedback. Erasure through auditory burial. Wilderness Of Mirrors also reflects English’s interests in extreme dynamics and densities, something evidenced in his live performances of the past half decade. The album’s overriding aesthetic of harmonic distortion reveals his ongoing explorations into the potentials of dense sonics. “During the course of this record,” English explains, “I was fortunate enough to experience live performances by artists I deeply respect for their use of volume as an affecting quality, specifically Earth, Swans and My Bloody Valentine. I had the chance to experience each of these groups at various stages in the making this record and each of them reinforced my interest in emulating that inner ear and bodily sensation that extreme densities of vibration in air brings about.” The album is moreover a reflection on the current exploitation of the ideals of the wilderness of mirrors, retuned and refocused from the politics of the state, to the politics of the modern multiplex. The amorphous and entangled nature of the modern world is one where thoughtless information prevails in an environment starved of applied wisdom. Wilderness Of Mirrors is a stab at those living spectres (human and otherwise) that haunt our seemingly frail commitments to being humane. “We face constant and unsettled change,” English notes, “It's not merely an issue of the changes taking place around us, but the speed at which these changes are occurring. We bare witness to the retraction of a great many social conditions and contracts that have previously assisted us in being more humane than the generations that precede us. We are seeing this ideal of betterment eroded here in Australia and abroad too. This record is me yelling into what seems to be an ever-growing black abyss. I wonder if my voice will reflect off something?” Wilderness Of Mirrors is reflection upon reflection, a pure white out of absolute aurality.

On her third album, Angel Olsen rides waves of emotional intensity that take her from the depths of despair to the heights of hope. *Burn Your Fire for No Witness* is a worthy successor to her 2012 breakthrough *Half Way Home*, revisiting many of the earlier album’s themes with greater focus and maturity. Tracks like “Forgiven/Forgotten,” “Lights Out,” and “Enemy” probe the subtle torments of love with an unflinching hand. Olsen’s phenomenal vocal range—shifting from murmurs to howls and yodels with impressive control—brings out the expansive vision of “Iota” and the confrontational power of “High & Wild.” The album\'s pervasive angst gives way to a desperate yearning for healing and peace in the convulsive “Stars” and the tender “Windows.” Olsen’s expressive guitar work is lent sympathetic support by bassist Stewart Bronaugh and drummer Joshua Jaeger, who help her leap from the distorted alt-country of “Hi-Five” to the Leonard Cohen–like folk balladry of “White Fire” and the French chanson feel of “Dance Slow Decades.” Finely crafted and fearlessly sung, *Burn Your Fire* smolders with dark brilliance.

On her newest LP, 'Burn Your Fire for No Witness', Angel Olsen sings with full-throated exultation, admonition, and bold, expressive melody. With the help of producer John Congleton, her music now crackles with a churning, rumbling low end and a brighter energy. Angel Olsen began singing as a young girl in St. Louis. Her self-released debut EP, 'Strange Cacti', belied both that early period of discovery and her Midwestern roots. Olsen then went further on 'Half Way Home', her first full-length album (released on Bathetic Records), which mined essential themes while showcasing a more developed voice. Olsen dared to be more personal. After extensive touring, Olsen eventually settled for a time in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, where she created "a collection of songs grown in a year of heartbreak, travel, and transformation," that would become 'Burn Your Fire For No Witness'. Many of them remain essentially unchanged from their bare beginnings. In leaving them so intact, a more self-assured Olsen allows us to be in the room with her at the very genesis of these songs. Our reward for entering this room is many a head-turning moment and the powerful, unsettling recognition of ourselves in the weave of her songs.

originally published by workshop records in 2014

At first glance, the pairing of producer Madlib and rapper Freddie Gibbs seems unlikely. The former is the ultimate crate-digger, known as much for his reclusive tendencies as his endless collection of obscure soul, jazz, rock, and other musical ephemera; the latter is a street-hardened former dealer who rhymes about the perils of the dope game. But they say opposites attract, and in this case their two aesthetics complement one another. Gibbs is a nimble, gifted rapper, his syllables quick-stepping around Madlib\'s many twists and turns, from the grainy \'70s soul-funk of \"Scarface\" to the half-time disco of \"Harold\'s\" to the hazy West Coast G-funk of \"Thuggin.\" The duo\'s credentials are strong enough to pull some of hip-hop\'s finest into their orbit: oddball Danny Brown contributes a verse to the squirming \"High,\" while the crews from The Wu-Tang Clan, Top Dog Entertainment, and Odd Future are all represented (via cameos from Raekwon, Ab Soul, and Earl Sweatshirt, respectively). As a final shot of gravitas, Scarface drops a verse on \"Broken.\" It\'s a deserved blessing from one of hip-hop\'s finest MCs to one of its most unlikely but successful pairings.

Norwegian Grammy (Spellemannprisen) winning album in Open category. Vinyl edition is limited to 500, and is SOLD OUT per November 2016. The CD is still for sale. “Mythical animals were a big inspiration,” says composer and songwriter Jenny Hval about Meshes Of Voice, a new collaboration between her and Susanna. “We looked at Medusa, Athena and Harpy (a combination of woman and bird) – as examples of depictions of woman – the ugly, the goddess-like, the gruesome,” agrees Susanna. This collaboration – featuring the two strongest Nordic voices around today – started back in 2009 as an exchange of letters, then developed into two live performances, one at Oslo Jazz Festival, the other at the Henie Onstad Art Centre, where this album was recorded. Mixed and mastered by Helge Sten (Deathprod, Supersilent), Meshes Of Voice presents a stunning vocal universe of confessions, whispers and seductions. Tracks like “I Have Walked This Body” seem to rise monstrously and threateningly out of some mythological fog of distorted improvised noise. A key inspiration was film maker Maya Deren’s surrealist, cyclical Meshes of the Afternoon, a milestone of visionary film from 1943. Deren’s famous image of a cloaked figure with a reflective face recurs on “A Mirror In My Mouth”, creating a complex world of musical fictions akin to those of Julia Holter and Joanna Newsom. Susanna launched Susanna And The Magical Orchestra in 2000 together with keyboardist Morten Qvenild (Jaga Jazzist, In The Country). The duo’s Rune Grammofon albums List Of Lights And Buoys (2004), Melody Mountain (2006) and 3 (2009) contained a mix of original compositions as well as highly personal interpretations of songs by Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, Dolly Parton, Prince, Sandy Denny and KISS. In 2007 Susanna’s songwriting took a major leap with Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos (Rune Grammofon), released under her own name. It included twelve of her self-penned songs, and caught the attention of Will Oldham (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Palace Brothers), who posted Susanna a handwritten letter professing his admiration for her voice and music, which later led to the pair working together. Susanna has continued to release both her highly personal interpretations of other people’s songs Flower of Evil (2008) and If Grief Could Wait (2011, together with Swiss Giovanna Pessi), and written music to poetry by Norwegian poet Gunvor Hofmo Jeg Vil Hjem Til Menneskene (2011) in addition to her all originals album Wild Dog (2012). Jenny Hval‘s Rune Grammofon releases Viscera (2011) and Innocence is Kinky (2013) have both earned international acclaim (Pitchfork compared her to Laurie Anderson, Yoko Ono and “pre-Sledgehammer” Peter Gabriel) as well as extensive touring in the US and UK (most recently supporting Swans). Currently based in New York, her first two albums was released under the moniker Rockettothesky and more recently in the duo Nude On Sand. In her native Norway she is also a published novelist and writer. Meshes Of Voice is released on SusannaSonata, the label launched by Susanna in 2011, a self-operated outlet for her to curate her own back catalogue and develop new music. Last year she released her acclaimed album The Forester (2013), a collaboration with the Norwegian Ensemble neoN combining the antique notes of the Baroque theorbo, woodwinds and strings, and for which Susanna received a Norwegian Grammy (Spellemannsprisen). This is a meshing of two of the strongest contemporary voices and most independent musical minds active today.

2014 double EP “Music For The Uninvited” was widely praised and featured heavily on many of 2014’s ‘Best Of Year’ polls including DJ Mag (#3), Mixmag (#6) and XLR8R (#3). Resident Advisor called the album “one of the most eclectic and rewarding house records you’ll hear all year”.

Avant-hip-hoppers Shabazz Palaces finally let it be known that they\'re the master duo of former Digable Planets member Butterfly (now known as Palaceer Lazaro) and instrumentalist Tendai “Baba” Maraire. After the critical success of their debut, *Black Up*, it’s likely the follow-up, *Lese Majesty*, will draw even more critical and commercial interest. The sounds themselves are low-key, letting the various instrumental patches respond to one another or enhance the atmospherics. Maraire excels at minimalism and texture, creating a complete track with the least amount of ingredients and thriving on providing seamless interludes. Lazaro provides a variety of vocals that shift from philosophical quips to word-associated ramblings where seriousness and clever thinking often work together. “Dawn in Luxor,” “Forerunner Foray,” and “They Come in Gold” form an intense opening trilogy, while “Motion Sickness,” “New Black Wave,” and “Sonic MythMap for the Trip Back” close the album with a similar focus.

'Lese Majesty' is the follow up album to 2011's 'Black Up' by Shabazz Palaces.

For their first trick, the Chicago duo Supreme Cuts dazzled critics with an instrumental album that merged the aesthetics of Windy City genre footwork with flourishes of experimental pop and R&B. For its follow-up, they\'ve invited a host of vocalists up onstage, then sawed them in half ... metaphorically speaking. The tracks here stop just short of congealing into pop songs with traditional structures, instead unfolding in layers and waves, taking cues from the band\'s house music influences. \"Envision\" features the ethereal vocals of Polica\'s Channy; its swirling techno beat appears and disappears, only to materialize at the end. \"Down\" features more slight of hand, nodding to drum \'n\' bass in its opening minutes, then morphing into atmospheric trip-hop. The surprise star of this show is singer Mahaut Mondino, a newcomer whose airy vocals grace \"Brown Flowers\" and \"Gone.\" The latter is the album\'s centerpiece, a skittering track that\'s as hard to pin down as it is to forget.

Contemporary R&B is enjoying an embarrassment of riches, with innovative albums by FKA Twigs, Banks, and Kelela stretching the genre\'s boundaries. Tinashe\'s debut raises the bar yet again. Building on the momentum of the roiling summer jam \"2 On,\" *Aquarius* features a who\'s-who of names, from R&B iconoclasts like Blood Orange\'s Dev Hynes to bankable pop pros like Stargate. \"How Many Times\" is a throwback slow jam enlivened by Future\'s staccato vocals, while \"Pretend\" out-Drakes Drake with its liquid production and earworm hook. Tinashe remains the star of the show, cooing, rapping, and ruminating (via several interludes). It\'s one of the year\'s most adventurous pop records.