Spectrum Culture's Best Albums of 2018 (So Far)

As the singer for Mount Moriah, H.C. McEntire first gained attention presiding over the North Carolina band\'s earthy country-rock realm. And while her solo debut is just as rootsy, it finds McEntire adopting a more nuanced approach to her Americana inclinations. Her organic Southern charm still spills out from every corner, whether on the graceful, piano-based ballad \"A Lamb, a Dove,\" the chamber-folk feel of \"Wild Dogs,\" or the full-bodied forward momentum of \"Quartz in the Valley.\"

German electronic producer DJ Koze has always been a self-selecting outsider, the kind of artist who sits blissfully on the sidelines of the big picture while the world passes him by. His third proper studio album unfolds like a daydream: breezy, sunny, and strangely beautiful, filled with ideas that don’t make sense until they suddenly—thrillingly—do. As with 2013’s *Amygdala* (as well as his endlessly inventive DJ sets and remixes), the style here is curiously out of time, touching on house (“Pick Up”), hip-hop (“Colors of Autum”), and downtempo soul (“Scratch That”), all with a slightly psychedelic twist that keeps everything hovering an inch or two off the floor. Fashion is fine, but it’s no match for a muse.

*“Excited for you to sit back and experience *Golden Hour* in a whole new, sonically revolutionized way,” Kacey Musgraves tells Apple Music. “You’re going to hear how I wanted you to hear it in my head. Every layer. Every nuance. Surrounding you.”* Since emerging in 2013 as a slyly progressive lyricist, Kacey Musgraves has slipped radical ideas into traditional arrangements palatable enough for Nashville\'s old guard and prudently changed country music\'s narrative. On *Golden Hour*, she continues to broaden the genre\'s horizons by deftly incorporating unfamiliar sounds—Bee Gees-inspired disco flourish (“High Horse”), pulsating drums, and synth-pop shimmer (“Velvet Elvis”)—into songs that could still shine on country radio. Those details are taken to a whole new level in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. Most endearing, perhaps, is “Oh, What a World,” her free-spirited ode to the magic of humankind that was written in the glow of an acid trip. It’s all so graceful and low-key that even the toughest country purists will find themselves swaying along.

CHILD OF MICROTONES (this is COM 53!) also released on feeding tube LP (ftr 364) and baked tapes DOUBLE CASSETTE. ********************************************************************************************** Utterly boo-licious debut slab by this new duo, made up of Matt “MV” Valentine and Pat “P.G. Six” Gubler, who have been in cahoots since the near-forgotten days of Memphis Luxure. The pair (mostly known for guitar-aktion) create a full band's worth of jams using percussion and keys and all-else. The results make for one of the more mind-melting platters to've hit the Valley in a good while. Like many of the best sides this pair has been associated with, the music on Livin' the Die is an elegant balance of ramble and spear. The songs' formats are as loose as Earl Butz's shoes but each of them is lanced with guitar sounds as tight as his legendary fist. Around these spumes of electric menace you'll find rings of crazy space burble and vocals so deeply layered they sound like something happening in the back of Daevid Allen's brain. But large swathes of the album are rurally expansive, as befits the mountainside on which it was recorded. Pods of guitar-pedal-whomp slowly surface in the middle of whirling sea of harmonica slurps, juice harp bwongs and vocals as dreamy as they are lost. Roll a bone or be one. The choice, as always, is yours. - byron coley winter 2018

In 2016, Alex Turner received a piano for his 30th birthday and started playing seriously for the first time in over 20 years. Songs for Arctic Monkeys’ sixth album eventually emerged—a collection of brooding, cosmic lounge-pop that’s typical of the band only in its disdain for playing it safe. Here, light-years from their previous riff-driven adventures, melodies unspool slowly but stick faster with every listen. A watering hole on the moon provides the conceptual framework for Turner to muse on life, pop culture, and technology with heavy-lidded introspection. “I need to spend less time stood around in bars/Waffling on to strangers about martial arts,” he sighs on “She Looks Like Fun.” He shouldn’t be hasty: Wherever he finds inspiration, it takes his band to daring new places.

Listing their priorities on breezy road-trip jam “Weed, Whiskey and Willie,” the Nashville-based brothers make it clear they have few troubles. “Don’t take my smoke, my jug of brown liquor or my country music,” they plead, casually. It’s a vibe that surrounds each hazy track on a positively horizontal second album. You’ll hum in time to the billowing choruses of “Shoot Me Straight,” toe-tap to twin guitars on “Tequila Again,” and sway gently to “A Little Bit Trouble.”

Back when he was still one-half of Clipse, Pusha-T dazzled listeners of the Virginia duo\'s mixtape series *We Got It 4 Cheap* by annihilating popular beats of the day. The project\'s sole criticism was that the production was already so good, it could carry anyone. *DAYTONA*, copiloted by hip-hop production genius Kanye West, upends that conceit, with contemporary boom-bap built from luscious soul samples that would swallow a lesser MC. With Pusha at the absolute top of his game, *DAYTONA* is somehow more than the sum of its parts, a fact the rapper acknowledges proudly on “The Games We Play”: “To all of my young n\*\*\*\*s/I am your Ghost and your Rae/This is my Purple Tape.”

In November 2014 Wulfband, consisting of two mysterious and very secretive members known only as 7 & 9 (or Sieben Und Neun), redrew the map of EBM as we knew it forever. Their debut album viciously and ferociously struck the whole scene like a nuclear attack. Wulfband brought EBM to a new level and previously unknown territories, away from the same old DAF clones we already have heard thousands of times, creating a new benchmark. People referred to it all as EBM version 2.0, going back to the pure roots yet adding new flavours, with underground hits such as "3,2,1 Nein", "Panik" and "Jetzt". Now it´s finally time to once again unleash this ever hungry, always aggressive beast. The sophomore album "Revolter" is an atomic bomb packed with even more energy than it's predecessor. Wulfband takes the harshness from straight-to-the-point punk music and mix it with the elegance of electronic body music, all with an attitude that will smash you like a sledgehammer straight in the face. And you won't even know what hit you. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Brace for full frontal impact.