XLR8R's Best Releases of 2016
We run through our top albums and EPs of the year.
Published: December 23, 2016 21:32
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After the vibrant frenzy of *Syro*, Richard D. James slows down. The *Cheetah* EP is a brief but luminescent set of velvety acid and warped sound experiments—made with the notoriously difficult, early ‘90s synth of the same name. As heard on highlights “CHEETAHT7b” and “2X202-ST5,” James makes the most of the challenge.
Brood Ma\'s experimental first album for Tri Angle is a perfect fit for the label\'s dystopian aesthetic. Like his peers Lotic and Rabit, the self-described \"cybergoth\" revels in shuddering rhythms and broken-glass textures, and he treats his synths like molten plastic, stretching viscous tones into wildly contorted shapes. The queasy sirens of \"Molten Brownian Motion\" sound like rave music for the end of the world, and there\'s a hint of pop in the chopped and charred vocals of \"Sacrificial Youth.\" Meanwhile, \"Dim Returns\" carefully balances violence with grace, like the album as a whole.
More trauma and travails with the magnetic Detroit MC. Like *XXX* and *Old* before it, *Atrocity Exhibition* plays like a nightmare with punchlines, the diary of a hedonist who loves the night as much as he hates the morning after. “Upcoming heavy traffic/say ya need to slow down, ’cause you feel yourself crashing,” Brown raps on “Ain’t it Funny,” a feverish highlight. “Staring the devil in the face but ya can’t stop laughing.”
KAYTRANADA\'s debut LP is a guest-packed club night of vintage house, hip-hop, and soul. The Montreal producer brings a rich old-school feel to all of these tracks, but it’s his vocalists that put them over the edge. AlunaGeorge drops a sizzling topline over a swervy beat on “TOGETHER,” Syd brings bedroom vibes to the bassline-driven house tune “YOU’RE THE ONE,” and Anderson .Paak is mysterious and laidback on the hazy soundscape “GLOWED UP.” And when Karriem Riggins and River Tiber assist on the boom-bap atmospheres of “BUS RIDE,\" they simply cement the deal.
On *Under the Sun*, abstract techno mastermind Mark Pritchard steps off the dance floor and into a free-floating ambient excursion. In place of the almighty beat are acoustic flourishes, musique concrète-style experiments, and synth-driven textures, often assisted with some heavenly voices. “Infrared” is ragged and noisy industrial, while “Falling” finds Pritchard noodling up and down the scale with warped organ tones. But the gems here are folk singer Linda Perhacs’ haunting vocals on the lush “You Wash My Soul,” and “Beautiful People,” on which Thom Yorke is equally gentle and soulful over a lo-fi Latin beat.
The first sound on Nicolas Jaar’s new record Sirens is a flag whipping in a gale. It’s the sort of sound you don’t realize you know until you hear it. But it’s unmistakable. And pregnant with meaning: nation, memory, conquest—but also frailty, a delicate thing buffeted by mercurial winds. The second sound is breaking glass. Nicholas Jaar has been busy. Since 2015, he’s released Nymphs, a series of four EPs, and Pomegranates, an alternate soundtrack to Sergei Parajanov's 1969 film The Colour of Pomegranates. If Nymphs and Pomegranates represent two sides of the coin of Jaar’s work—club and experimental ambient respectively—Sirens, he says, is“the coin itself”: the terrain, the constraints, the material conditions from which the others emerge. Sirens is animated by an ambivalence at the heart of American music: that, in some fundamental sense, the history of American popular culture is a history of theft. The six lush tracks move seamlessly from rock to reggaetón to doo-wop, each exhibiting Jaar’s signature sensitivity to restraint and exuberance, disjuncture and groove, comfort and disquiet. Foregrounded throughout is the question of what these forms—artifacts of empire and its resistance both—can do for us today. Jaar, whose parents lived under dictatorship in Chile and whose grandparents are Palestinian, ascribes to Víctor Jara’s philosophy that you’re making political music whether you want to or not. The injustices of the past weigh heavily on the living, structuring the possibilities of the present. As Jaar sings, “we’re all waiting for the old thoughts to die.” For now, they’re our thoughts too. Jaar composed and recorded all the music on Sirens himself, with one exception: a sample of the Andean folk song “Lagrimas”—tears—which appears, almost unadorned, in the middle of “No,” the fourth track on Siren. “No” recalls the Chilean national plebiscite of 1988, when artists and activists organized millions of Chileans to vote “no”to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The song is a meditation on the seeming futility of protest against systems that structure our very reality. Over a loping reggaetón beat, Jaar laments, “ya dijimos no, pero el Si está en todo.”We already said no, but the Yes is everywhere. The songs on Sirens are fiercely critical, but they are generous too, even loving. “I made these songs to play for my friends, for people going to see music,” Jaar says. The place he wants to be is liminal: between the precious sense of freedom that only music can provide, and the reality that there’s no escape; between “knowing that we’re trying to get away and knowing that we can’t. That maybe,” he says, “we shouldn’t.” After the glass shatters, a rush of sound, fluttering pianos and synth mingle with the shards. The shimmering music billows and quiets. There is calm. Then the glass shatters again.
‘Oddments of the Gamble’ is a continuation of the unique, analogue concoctions that formed Nonkeen’s first album, very much like a ‘part two’ in many ways. Although it inevitably draws on a similar formula to the previous LP – pensive loops and melodies, sweeping arpeggios, post-rock jams, and rolling jazz breaks – the second installment by childhood friends Frederic Gmeiner, Nils Frahm and Sepp Singwald still stands alone as another statement from the trio despite originating from the same recording session. Choosing only their favourite tracks for the debut album turned out to be a challenging endeavor, there were still too many for a single album. In the end, the three of them agreed to flip a coin: let chance decide and the band would follow, with the winning album known as ‘The Gamble’. But the warm reception that followed its release flattered Gmeiner, Frahm and Singwald, encouraging them to make available the collection that had first lost the toss: ‘The Oddments of the Gamble’. After all, everything – just like everyone – deserves a second chance. Nonkeen’s ‘Oddments of the Gamble’ was first released in July 2016 by R&S Records, LEITER is now re-issuing the band’s complete catalogue.
Planetary Assault Systems | Arc Angel | ostgutcd37/lp23 Five years after his last album release Luke Slater returns to Ostgut Ton with a new Planetary Assault Systems longplayer, titled Arc Angel. In its 23rd year of existence Luke Slater’s Planetary Assault Systems keeps exploring space and time with different musical means. Staying true to the project’s initial mission statement, Slater comments on the new yet familiar musical direction: “For me music has to go forward. I’d feel I was cheating by sticking to tried and tested formulas. There’s a valid use for these, but this album has its own agenda.” With Arc Angel, Planetary Assault Systems departs to new musical frontiers by focussing on melody, but staying rooted in the purist values of Techno that Slater shaped over his decades- and generations-spanning career. additional info: Besides the individual tracks, all full album purchases on bandcamp also include the mixed double CD version of the album as two digital download bonus tracks (Arc Angel CD1 & Arc Angel CD2).
Radiohead’s ninth album is a haunting collection of shapeshifting rock, dystopian lullabies, and vast spectral beauty. Though you’ll hear echoes of their previous work—the remote churn of “Daydreaming,” the feverish ascent and spidery guitar of “Ful Stop,” Jonny Greenwood’s terrifying string flourishes—*A Moon Shaped Pool* is both familiar and wonderfully elusive, much like its unforgettable closer. A live favorite since the mid-‘90s, “True Love Waits” has been re-imagined in the studio as a weightless, piano-driven meditation that grows more exquisite as it gently floats away.
Completing a triptych of fantastic LPs for 2016, Will Saul’s Aus Music is delighted to announce the debut full length fromYouandewan. The Berlin based Brit’s ten track ‘There Is No Right Time’ lands in October 2016 and shows a distinct development of his musical style. Youandewan is Ewan Smith, a DJ and producer who has quietly but consistently gone about forging his own tender brand of deep house. He has been doing so since 2009 and most recently settled on this label with tracks that are shy but seductive, and full of both motive and emotive forces. This album stays true to that narrative, but sees Ewan finding his feet with his most accomplished and elegant work to date. Much of the music was sketched out during a wintery Berlin three years ago. Having left London, hungover from a breakup,Smith found himself broke and secluded in an apartment for four months. All this lent the music he wrote a melancholic vibe;one that nods to the lonely nature of the job and to the darker side of constant partying and all that comes with it. A swelling, expansive piece of melodic atmospherics starts things off, then the soft hues of analog chords bring a neon glow to the weightless whirl of ‘Be Good To Me, Poly.’ Soaring synths marry with a raw drum and bass combo on “Waiting for L,’ then ’Time To Leave (Can’t Mix)’ resets to a piano laced beatdown vibe that is wilfully wallowing. ‘10405 (Alice)’ is a shimmering, crescendoing piece, and from there the second half of the album begins to take an upward and optimistic swing through the floating, graceful harmonies of ’Our Odyssey.’ ‘Something Keeps Me Real Quiet’ is a concession to the ‘floor with its rusted electro slither, ‘Left On Lucy’ calls upon friend Huerta for a hi-tech soulful house cut Derrick May would be proud of, and 'Earnest Kelly' nods to the ‘80s with its stomping retrosynthesis. Finally, ‘4D Anxiety’ allows all the pent up emotion and energy to dissipate with a playful hip-hop jam effortlessly tapped out on an MPC. ‘There Is No Right Time’ is a listening album which proves that deep house done well needn’t be reserved for the club. It’s a vulnerable and musical work that stays with the listener long after the final chords have dissipated.
