Fennesz, Becs
Ambient/fucked up guitar/white noise
Fennesz is one my all-time favorite “weird” composers. People
always talk about how textured Fennesz's music is, and they're right
(“like gauze becoming gossamer”). Big fan of the liberal use of
white noise, and I find myself simultaneously distressed and
comforted by his music. It's a very ethereal feeling (maybe
primordial? eternal??). Very impressive for a guy and a guitar, I
must say.
Madlib Invazion
Hip-hop/gangsta rap
It's about damn
time Freddie Gibbs got the love he deserves. He's got one of the best
flows in the game, but after a number of 20+ track mixtapes, his
somewhat uninspired rhymes start to wear you down. Bumped him a
decent amount in high school but stopped paying attention to his
doings until he popped back up with Piñata. Gibbs at his best.
Harold's is probs my fav track if only because it's largely about
eating food (last I checked, Tom is also a big fan of this song and of food).
Flying Lotus, You're Dead!
Warp
Beats/slacker sounds/aspiration
Flying Lotus is a
chill guy with lots of interesting feelings about death and
creativity. You're Dead! is another great album by America's
post-digital golden age beatsmith boy.
Grouper, Ruins
Kranky
Ambient/repetition/reality breaking apart
There's a lot of
think pieces out there about Ruins and Grouper in general.
Dreamlike, floating melodies. Wintery but also not really. Hauntingly
spacious, maybe. Hell, I don't know, I'm not a music writer.
Beautiful good shit, though (“there's nothing left to hold to”).
iceage, Plowing into the Field of
Love
Matador
Punk/post-punk/Denmark
Always been a
pretty big fan of iceage but never would've guessed they'd have it in
them to make an album that sounded so radically different than their
last two efforts yet also hella realized. Taking a turn toward the
postier half of post-punk. Never thought I'd Elias Ronnenfelt's voice
so much.
Self-released
Hip-hop/emo rap/crooner
I would argue that
French Montana is semi-covertly making a grab at rap illuminati
status, collaborating with rap royalty and dating celebrity royalty.
But if French Montana is the court fool eying the king's throne, then
ilovemakonnen is the sad clown who everyone shits on, whose
performance art is dismissed as “emo bullshit”, without real
artistic merit. But fuck the haters, ilovemakonnen is crying all the
way to the bank, snagging Drake's attention and sounding like nobody
else in the rap game today. Honesty and originality can bring you
far. Also he has the best hair.
Ian
William Craig, A Turn of Breath
Recital Program
Ambient/drone/choir music
When
it comes down to it, I think the human voice will always be the mostbeautiful sound anyone can make. Not just the things it can do, but
the things it can sound like with the wonders of technology and
technique. A Turn of Breath
has been described as “Beach Boys vocal-only tracks put
through an electrical storm”, which seems very apt and I agree
wholeheartedly.
Joyce Manor, Never Hungover Again
Epitaph
Punk/emo/my life OST
Let's be honest,
this is the only album I really listened to this year. In
copious amounts. Like, legit listened to this album in full well over
forty or fifty times. There is not a single flawed song in the
tracklist, all cut deep and hit me comparatively harder than Cymbals Eat Guitar's
new shit. “End of the Summer” was a verbatim encapsulation of
everyone's end of the summer. If I could only pick one best album of
2014, this would win unopposed.
PC Music and
Manicure Records are the essence of all I want from music on the
internet. Vaporwave has more or less died and now PC Music has taken
up the reins of the post-capitalist sound. Warped pop reflected in a
funhouse mirror, maybe. I'm addicted. I can't tell if their energydrink is real or not but I want it.
Self-released
RAP RAP RAP/swag/the future
RAP RAP RAP/swag/the future
Did Kool AD have
the best Twitter feed of 2014? Perhaps. So so so excited for his
novel. Kool AD is life, Kool AD is the future. Kool AD is just
generally a pretty chill dude. His video art and his regular art have
gotten me through the year on more than one occasion. Kass is okay.
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