Mark Templeton – Carved And Cared For (Under The Spire)
A true winner right here. Templeton’s newest solo venture is the stuff dreams are made of, taking the murky majestic melancholy of Leyland Kirby and tying it in dynamic loops, reminding me a bit of Nicholas Szczepanik’s We Make Life Sad but with loops that grow, a half-forgotten memory of a seaside jazz lounge playing swamp horns, drugged drums, and meandering pianos, all smeared into an intimate haze of organic harmonies, ancient gritty tape loops warped by your brain under the load of more recent experiences, found object clattering in the back room, an impossibly perfect balance of everything, retaining a beautiful clarity in the fog of drone, the analog warmth amidst the glitchy processing, the dark dank depression intertwined with bright bittersweet hope, nothing sounding more right at this moment. Only 300 copies pressed, available in March, preorder now and save yourself the heartache of missing out on this masterpiece.
Ben Bennett – Everything / Everything / Everything (Experimedia)
This is the definition of hard to peg. Minimal power electronics? Noisy jazz punk? Funky field recordings? Not quite any of those but kinda all of them. Bennett takes whatever the fuck he can get his hands on and makes the craziest racket ever. This dude doesn’t know what acceleration means, he’s only got 3 speeds: silent, quiet, and brain boiling, and he jumps in between them with super precision, but there’s something about the brain boiling mode that, even though it’s chaotic as fuck, still has a maximal minimalism, knowing that whatever you’re hearing is basically just a handful of everyday items and Bennett is going to town on them, it’s fucking raw & primal, without being simplistic or boring. And I’d swear there’s some electronics or effects going on here but apparently that’s not the case, this is pure analog in all its caustic glory, and maybe you could chalk it up to lo-fi recordings, but he goes from blown out in the red explosions to painfully detailed squeaks & scratches in half a second, so fidelity buy cialis soft tabs online ain’t the answer. This is just the sweetest fucking noise and Bennett is a master of his tools, which are almost impossible to guess. Some are decipherable… Are those pots & pans? Oh, yep, he mentions a “camp cook set.” Some aren’t… I bet this is a percolating coffee maker. Haha nope, it might be either a “mason jar ring with latex glove stretched across it” or “the narrow part of a balloon.” Then there’s the truly bizarre moments, like the track that literally sounds like a motherfucking freight train. I have no idea how he did that, but it’s insanely awesome. Maybe he used his “pizza cutter” and “wheelbarrow.” Clearly the “how” isn’t the reason to check this out, though. Just know this is some fucked up shit that sounds incredible on the turntable. Don’t miss out.
P.S. “All proceeds from digital sales of the album will go to Living Energy Farm, a project to build a farm, community, and education center without the use of fossil fuels or electronic media. More info at livingenergyfarm.org“
Giles Corey – Blackest Bile (Enemies List)
I’m a terrible person. I’ve loved this record from day one (and I mean love) which was almost 2 years ago. I got pumped for the video for “A Sleeping Heart” but never followed up with a full review. Plus, I walk past the site where Giles Corey got crushed on my way to work every day (REPRESENT). Anyway, here’s what I should have written long ago.
Giles Corey is Dan Barrett’s solo project, the dude behind Enemies List and half of the immortal Have A Nice Life, this is his Dust Bowl era spectral folk side where he takes on death, the occult, suicide, depression, and supreme heartache, turning terrible shit into the most powerful & amazing music ever. Depressing as fuck lyrics chanted & crooned & shouted like “I’m going to kill myself,” “I want to feel like I feel when I’m asleep,” and “I open up my heart and let it all in and it kills all my love and hope for everyone,” bleeding through everything, reaching soul wrenching depths, rooted in bittersweetness, even evoking some mid century pop/doo wop sounds, his voice the richest imaginable, so pure & raw, layered a hundred times over surrounding himself in a choir of his own nightmares, armed mostly with just an acoustic guitar and percussion that sounds like an oil drum being pounded in an empty warehouse, kicking the hushed intimacy into enormous bombastic anthems, sometimes bringing in some brass for an extra old timeyness, but always perfect, every fucking song is as good as it could possibly be, Barrett’s song writing is unmatched and inimitable. The original release came in a DVD style case bound by rope to a 150 book filled with a crazy fucking story and lyrics and photos and shit. That’s way sold out but for $5 you can still get the download and it includes digital versions of everything except the rope.
There’s a super weird noise/drone/wtf record he put out “designed to induce possession states” called Deconstructionist, a second full length set for this year (on vinyl!) and, awesome news for you New Englanders, there’s a GC mini-tour coming right up. Three shows, (NY, Boston, & Enemies List HQ), all with Planning For Burial on the lineup, and I’m hosting the Boston show. On Saturday, 2/23 at PA’s Lounge with High Aura’d and Ehnahre helping to usher in the new darkness.
More photos on Flickr.
I’ve been wanting to reorganize my records for a while. I had them alphabetized, which was decent enough, but that always felt lacking. I could never remember where I put those weird records (was Pronouncing The Scientific Names Of Seashells Of North America recorded by R. Tucker Abbott filed under “Pro” or “Sea” or “Abb?”). Elise would want to listen to “old & folksy” albums or something similarly genre-oriented. But most of all, alphabetical wasn’t how I pictured my collection. I think of it in terms of genre, the blues or drone records, the kind of African music I have, and how pitiful my soundtracks section is.
I spilled over into a second 2×4 Expedit sometime in the past couple years, which just turned into a catch-all for new acquisitions. I had a full shelf that was alphabetized and one that was roughly chronological. Fuck that. I had a lengthy winter break from work, so it seemed like the perfect time to tcb.
My main concern before I began was that I’d forget where I shelved a record and be unable to find it. A beautifully simple suggestion made by my pal Michelle was to keep track by using the notes field in my Discogs collection (where every record is cataloged, except for a surprising amount of stuff not in their database). But once I started spending more time with my records, figuring out their top-level genre and what my genres meant to me, it seemed almost impossible to forget where I put something. I ditched the Discogs notes idea but still used the site heavily in comparing my impression of a record’s genre with the ones Discogs use.
My plan wasn’t really a plan. I had a vague idea of the genres I’d use (one of which was “Holiday”) and I wanted to cherry pick a few of my favorite record labels to have their own section, so my general hierarchy was Label > Holiday > Genre. Christmas buy cialis thailand With John Fahey Volume II would get filed under “Takoma” but Boże Narodzenie: Polish Christmas Songs And Sketches would go under “Holiday” instead of “International.” And I knew I didn’t want a miscellaneous section. I’ve been taught as an archivist to despise it and I’d be damned if I couldn’t fit a record into an appropriate genre. That was it for a plan of attack, though. I was basically winging it. I had the end result in mind, organizing my collection to mirror my perception of my collection, and I felt that was all I needed.
I wanted to be efficient, which to me meant not deliberating over where to put an individual record for too long and not having to look at/handle a record more than once, so I figured I’d take all the records out of the shelves, store ’em in boxes, and go to town. Except I didn’t have enough boxes. So I took out as many records as I could and forged onward, one LP at a time.
There were some things I knew I’d have to deal with during the re-org that I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) plan for. Should drone & noise be two separate sections? Probably but I’d play it by ear. What about folk & blues? I started out keeping them together but the section got too big & varied, so I bisected it.
I ended up singling out more labels than I initially thought. I think I originally picked about 6 or so and ended up with double that. I’d come across a few special records and be reminded of another label worthy of solo shelf space, like Isounderscore or Editions Mego & its subdivisions. Some of them aren’t very robust but I hope they will be at some point. Plus I have a soft spot for some labels and it wasn’t fair for them to get shafted for having a small vinyl discography (<3 u Enemies List).
I had the idea of making a compilations section (either part of or separate from soundtracks) but I stopped that almost as soon as I tried. It didn’t feel right having a classic rock radio comp next to a New Wave comp next to a ’90s alternative comp. So they all stayed put.
There were lots of problem records, those that walked the line between genres, those that I couldn’t remember well enough to categorize without playing again (one of the perks of spending 3 days with your collection is listening to everything), and those that clearly didn’t belong in the genre I was putting them in but had nowhere else to go. But with each problem I came across, it allowed me to better understand what I had and what I thought of it. In my head, I was putting Mick Barr in my “New Rock” section but as soon as I threw on Coiled Malescence I knew it needed to go in “Metal” (almost “Noise” but not quite).
Sometimes I’d shelve a record in one genre even though it didn’t feel quite right. This lead me to break my rule of efficiency. Once I re-shelved everything and had gotten a feel for what each genre meant, I went through the sections and looked at every record again trying to find outliers. If I had enough outliers, I made a new genre, which actually happened a lot.
Prime example: ’80s music. I honestly never thought I had much of it but I ended up with a pretty substantial “’80s” section, culled from “Pop, Hip Hop, Techno, Beats,” “New Rock,” and “Early Rock, Oldies, Psych,” because Bonnie Tyler and Journey share a very special place in my heart. I pulled the early avant garde/electronic stuff out of “Drone,” and the country & ragtime/dixieland records out of “Folk” & “Blues.” I tried incorporating some new weird folk records into my “New Rock” section but that just didn’t work. Laughing Eye Weeping Eye was pretty much the sole catalyst for starting a new genre. They couldn’t find a home anywhere and I was able to find some other (loosely) similar records to give “New Folk” a spot. None of the new sections were huge but I gathered enough records to warrant them getting their own genres.
As I was going through, I was alphabetizing records within genre so I could still easily & quickly find things. I opted to switch it up for the “International” and labels sections, though. “International” has a bit of a gradient effect that’s organized by broad geography, usually by country or ethnicity, for maximum collocation. Each label is sorted by catalog number/chronology because it looks good (especially with Experimedia & Type). The exception is Smithsonian Folkways, which got kind of a micro-genre sorting because I have lots of them and, again, that’s just how I think about them. It didn’t make sense to have Sounds Of Insects right alongside Khamis El Fino Ali’s Music For The Classical Oud. Doing the granular work on Folkways was a ton of fun and probably my favorite part of the whole project. I’m especially fond of my Folkways collection.
I have a modest sized collection (a little less than a thousand) and felt that was the perfect size to let me do what I wanted and what was needed. If it was any smaller, I probably wouldn’t have bothered with this at all. Any bigger and I probably would’ve needed a better plan ahead of time.
I learned that my collection is unique, the way I think of it is unique, and by necessity the way I organize it is unique. I doubt anyone would categorize my collection the way I did. My genre definitions mean something specific to me and I filed records (mostly) according to my opinion of them. My collection feels much more personalized, and while part of the reason I did this was to help Elise figure out what record she wants to listen to (so she doesn’t accidentally pick out Prurient thinking it’s Phantogram), I feel like no one could navigate my collection properly and no one could mimic my organization. I already felt devoted to my records but that shit just got leveled up.
I’m sure I’ll end up re-organizing my records again at some point. New genres will undoubtedly pop up as my collection grows, but during this project, I couldn’t help but think of what having a genre spectrum without cardboard dividers would be like. There was so much internal debate over genre. How noisy can a drone record be? Are there enough riffs in the noise to be metal? I know the song titles have “Blues” in them, but isn’t this pretty folky? I imagined having my collection as a rainbow of genres with Sutekh Hexen falling between Ash Borer & Kevin Drumm or maybe Big Bill Broonzy sitting in the middle of Leadbelly & Charlotte Daniels & Pat Webb. It’d most likely make more problems than it solves because there’s always problems (but it’d be super fucking fun). A record collection is never neat & tidy. So as hard as I tried, I still ended up with a dumping ground for outliers, a small & pathetic crew of New Age, Bossanova, and college vocal groups, which I could barely be bothered to name.
Black (Metal) Mixmas III
- December 13, 2012
- Tagged as: free, list, mixtape
This is the third installment of Black (Metal) Mixmas. The “Metal” is in parentheses because I hoped to make the Black Mixmas/Black Christmas pun a tad more obvious and because this isn’t entirely black metal. There’s some black doom, black noise, black ambient, etc. But it’s primarily black metal so don’t lose your shit if you’re a purist.
Speaking of which, this here’s a three parter, and each part has its own aesthetic. Part I starts off with your more straightforward black metal. It’s still raw and brootal and super awesome, just not too many bells & whistles. Part II gets a bit more melodic and moves towards some of that shoegazey post-etc stuff. Part III (my personal favorite) gets totally fucked up and brings in the twisted shit, extra raw, extra noisy, extra extraordinary. Each part stands on its own as a killer mix but back to back to back they make the biggest most badass black metal adventure you’ve ever been on.
As with everything else on this site, I tend to give priority to the under-represented and pass over the more high profile bands. That means as amazing as Ash Borer and Panopticon are, they don’t need to be here. But tons of awesome blackened shit came out this year that wasn’t on Profound Lore and in fact is available for free/name your price downloads on Bandcamp. I linked to all the ones I knew about but dig around and you might find some more. Also, everything on this mix (except Esequiem’s track) came out in 2012, so consider this the unofficial AGB Best Of Black Metal list.
I’m taking an AGB vacation for the holidays starting now. If I’m not back before the new year, I’ll be back after the new year. These 3+ hours of depravity should keep you sane until then.
Download Black (Metal) Mixmas III
Part I
1. Aven – The Last Thought Of Judas
2. Kaevum – La Mitt Rike Komme
3. WORT – plumplestiltskib (download)
4. Mgła – With Hearts Toward None V
5. Pendulum – Le Verre
6. Klor – Helmet Overgrown With Weeds
7. Alkerdeel – Horsesaw
8. Larvae – Cold Dead Face (download)
9. Jute Gyte – The Cry Essaying The Waters (download)
10. Lucifugum – Щелочь антинатализма
11. Obolus – Desolation (download)
12. Permafrost – Ende
13. Esequiem – An Old Castle In The Fog
Part II
1. Vattnet Viskar – Weakness
2. Aegrotum – Thy Perdition Manifest
3. El-Ahrairah – Drown Alone
4. Loss Of Self – The Mind; It’s Form And Function (download)
5. FIN – Insignia (download)
6. Aisuragua – A Mirror Reflecting The Silence
7. Ragana – Burning Structures (download)
8. Rhinocervs – Untitled (track 1 from RH-12)
9. Hordes – The Darkest Conjuration (download)
10. Infinitas – Immerwährende Nächte
11. Daughters Of Sophia – III: Black Sun Enlightment
12. Seirom – Strands Of Golden Light
Part III
1. Sutekh Hexen – Lead Us In Warfare
2. Mhönos – Ex Nihilo… Ad Nihilum…
3. Funeral Depression – Visions Of Broken Life
4. Misery – Sous L’égide Des Martyrs (download)
5. Gates – Forest Passageway, Hallway to the Void
6. OEDE – 8063 (download)
7. Затухание – зора утихает (download)
8. Dead Times & TRTRKMMR – An Appendectomy
9. Trepaneringsritualen – All Hail The Black Flame
10. Cloak Of Altering – Ancient Paths Through Timeless Voids
11. Immaculate Paragon Of Insanity – Invaders From Darkness
12. Venowl – Hung Alive By The Ribs To A Gallows
Technical Note: Затухание’s whole album is way loud, like, louder than anything else on this mix. I tried to tone it down in Audacity but I’m not totally sure how that worked out. So just beware. When that track comes on, you might shit yourself.
Drone Grandmaster Nicholas Szczepanik and I must be vibing on the same wavelength. He was one of the next two artists (in my head) to ask my questions to and he approached me first, just to throw his name in the hat as someone who’d like to contribute. Obviously, I took him up on the offer. Be sure to check out any/all 3 of his killer albums out this year (The Truth Of Transience made #3 on my Top 10 Drone Records list).
What is the best way to die?
Death is inevitable and unknown. The uncertainty is what makes it scary, but whether it’s seen as a beginning or an end, death is always change. Yet life is also change, and since it is a series of passing moments, we should enjoy each one as best we can before we too pass. I know this is all much easier said than done, but this is what I have decided works best for me. The best way to die is to live.
How do you think you’ll die?
I guess because I’m slightly morbid, I sometimes imagine myself dying unexpectedly at a relatively early age. Strangely, I think I do this as a strategy for self-motivation. In all honesty, I just hope I die after my mother; she already had the burden of bringing me into this life, she doesn’t need to be around when I leave too.
What makes you happy?
Chocolate; a hot tea in my favorite mug from Mexico; a home-cooked meal to share with someone; the smell of the fallen leaves in Autumn and how they crunch under my feet; the animals I see and hear each day; the silence of snow; the warmth only love’s laughter brings; crying, because it means I feel.
How can you die happy?
Knowing that you lived for those two or three things that mean something to you.
How close have you come to death?
We’re always close. Life is one big, ever-changing risk. I imagine we’re all teetering on the brink of death by the simple choices we make each and every day. Though, somehow, I still think we die at a particular point in our lives for a particular reason. Or maybe I just hope it’s not completely arbitrary—that would be a bit discouraging. Either way, I try to remind myself that being alive means eventually dying, and that being dead means having lived.
What does kindness mean to you?
An instinctive, incidental gesture.
Where do you find love?
Now, I find it everywhere: in sharing and forgiveness, in laughter and heartache, in knowing that things will happen and still wanting to experience them with that one person who makes the world a little less daunting.
When were you most afraid?
When I tried to make sense of it all.
How do you listen to music?
With my gut.
Venowl – Gnawed Gristle And Bone (Ominous Silence)
These dudes already put out one of the most visceral black metal/doom records this year, Patterns Of Failure (sold out quick and already in its second run), and they’ve decided to drop another brutal bomb as this Gnawed Gristle And Bone EP. A single 20+ minute track of pure fucking hell, these guys conjure Khanate and The Body but add up to something uniquely bleak, coming from the depths of demon’s dungeons, tortured howling, vocals that can only be screeched with a throat full of blood, monstrous drums keeping the perfect bangability, atonal lurch, scratched grit guitars, prolonged buzzing feedback, and bass that will rupture your skull and tear your house down, this is the blackest doom you can imagine, disgusting & depraved, disastrous & devastating, a true horror. If this doesn’t fill your nightmare niche, you’ve got some problems dude.
In celebration of AGB turning 5 in February, I’m putting on my first show (with a lot of help from John Kolodij because I’ve never done this shit before). So so so fucking psyched for this lineup. It’s gonna be gloomy madness.
Giles Corey, aka Dan Barrett, aka the driving force of Have A Nice Life, aka Enemies List honcho, is gonna be doing a stripped down set of his spectral folk, maybe playing some HANL songs, maybe some new stuff, but 100% guaranteed to be rad as fuck.
Planning For Burial will be doing a drone set, although every time he’s said that it still ended up caving the fuckin roof in. Always bringing some dark shit.
High Aura’d basically had to play this show. He made my second favorite drone record this year and the dude always fucking delivers live.
Ehnahre are the one band I haven’t seen yet but their records are insane, some dreary jazzy avant metal that’s weird as fuck and unlike anything else. Can’t fuckin wait to see these guys.
You are cordially invited to this dark night of exceptional entertainment on Saturday, February 23, 2013, at PA’s Lounge in Somerville. 9:00. $10. That’s assuming the world doesn’t end in a couple weeks. But either way, we win.
And here’s the Facebook event page if you’re into that sort of thing.
Top 10 Drone Records Of 2012
- December 7, 2012
- Tagged as: list, Top 10
A couple months ago I was lamenting that 2012 had shit for good drone records. The words of a madman, clearly. This year was chock full of goodness, although to be honest, nothing this year is quite as good as my favorite drone record from 2011, Nicholas Szczepanik’s Please Stop Loving Me, which will always be the best thing ever. Still, there’s tons of amazing drone this year and it was damn near impossible to keep it trimmed to a tidy 10.
I know genre-specific lists are already niche enough, but I decided to give myself a couple new rules to help narrow my focus. First was defining “Drone Record,” which I hadn’t really done before. If you know the site, then you’ll know my drone tag is liberal. I throw that fucker on everything. But to me, for a record to be on a list of drone records, its top-level genre has to be drone. If I was cataloging it by genre, it would have to go under “Drone.” Not “Noise,” not “Black Metal,” not “Doom,” not “Folk.” Those could be sub-genres, just not the main one. This cleared out a lot of records. It meant I couldn’t include Horseback’s Half Blood (probably my favorite non-drone record this year), Gates’ Eintraum, Sutekh Hexen’s Behind The Throne, etc.
Second, I decided no reissues or box sets. I’ve sorta followed this one in the past, but I didn’t want highly publicized massive tomes like William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops or Pauline Oliveros’ epic 12 disc Reverberations stealing the thunder here.
As you know, I only write about the most top notch shit that gets me super psyched. Every drone record that came out this year and I reviewed should be on this list. So go digging through the drone tag and find the rest that just barely missed the cut. They’re all #11.
10. Moonshine Blues – Through (Hidden Vibes)
“Floating in the grey and rapt in heartache, while sheets & swells of euphoria shimmer in the dark, dragged to the edge of oblivion and left alone…”
One of the best drone releases this year is free. So go download this bleak beast right now and you can feel totally guilt free doing so. And it came out of left field, too. Self released (on his own label), solo Ukrainian guy making some sad fuckin jams, usually as Endless Melancholy, but venturing out into more “ambient” territory as Moonshine Blues. He’s got this blues drone thing down pat and it was more or less an experiment. A+ dude.
9. Wastelanders – Cosmic Despair (Calls & Correspondence / Basses Frequences / Space Idea / Hewhocorrupts Inc.)
“The first few tracks are as depressing as it gets, gloom thick enough to asphyxiate on, solid minimal melancholy that turns your heart into lead and brings gods to tears.”
Gloomy. As. Fuck. The kind of sadness reserved for royalty eulogies & the internal monologue leading to suicides. Long torturous tracks that take the cake for most depressing drones. And super fucking gorgeous.
8. Concern – Misfortune (Isounderscore)
“…nervous nondescript fumbling & fidgeting to keep busy while the drones flutter, then a huge blissful shimmering cloud of hand-wringing uncertainty, slightly transparent and hovering right in front of the sun.”
Edgy box harp drone that’s as jangling as it is soothing. When a drone record has a certain novelty (like an atypical instrument as the primary focus) I usually get sucked in regardless, but this one is outstanding in its own right. A bittersweet swansong from Concern, Misfortune being the last release under that moniker. One of two Isounderscore releases on this list because that label is 100% quality.
7. Andrew Weathers & Andrew Marino – We Don’t Have Sun Like This (Full Spectrum)
“…always with a delicate tenderness that feels like Weathers is hugging you through your speakers.”
A unique book release with no physical music included. Marino did the photos for the book and Weathers’ tunes come via download. I honestly can’t get enough of Weathers. Everything he does is magic. The absolute perfect blend of folk & drone, he fucking nails it every time. His banjo can do no wrong and his voice is probably the only one that should be allowed to sing over drone.
6. Portraits – Portraits (Important)
“…an impossibly minimal drone that’s almost too beautiful to handle.”
The supergroup to end supergroups (this time it’s true I promise). Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Evan Caminiti, Jon Porras, Gregg Kowalsky, Marielle Jakobsons, and Maxwell August Croy to name about half of them, all working in perfect unison, somehow making harmonies that I still can’t wrap my head around. Long form drones that some work years to achieve, these guys kicked out while they all still have their regular bands & shit going on. Unreal.
5. Kyle Bobby Dunn – In Miserum Stercus (Komino)
“…the soft subtleties & elegant dances are still the core, but instead of charming or uplifting, we’re given somber & melancholic, tones dipping into ethereal, haunted dreams…”
Nope, not Bring Me The Head Of…, this one is better because it’s darker and a more unique addition to KBD’s discography. Plus it’s just better. The most beautiful misery I’ve ever heard, overwrought but without tension, intimate & devastating, delicate & harrowing. This is Dunn at the top of his fucking game.
4. EUS, Postdrome, & Saåad – Sustained Layers (BLWBCK)
“Dense and soaring, black anvil clouds rolling over open plains, always on the edge, seeing the sun rays glow and the grey mass shift, an impending fury that always threatens, never breaks…”
This is beyond gloom. This is as dark as you get before you hit black ambient. It would be downright terrifying if it wasn’t so fucking majestic. And I’d never heard of any of these three guys or the label before. Totally opened my eyes to a new minimal darkness. Supremely awesome.
3. Nicholas Szczepanik – The Truth Of Transience (Isounderscore)
“…a wonderful long form rhythm, it starts out menacing, all horror movie suspense style, with percussive gong-like warnings and imitation bowed cymbals, turning into a loud and blissfully unnerving swirl that eventually fades to nothing…”
Szczepanik put out 3 records this year (this, We Make Life Sad, and Luz, a collab with Federico Durand as Every Hidden Color). And Szczepanik is probably my most favoritest droner right now so why & how the fuck did I chose just one? First, not only did he take the number one spot last year but he was on that list twice (his Ante Algo Azul series couldn’t be skipped). And while this is a totally biased & subjective list, I still feel the need to be a little fair to everyone who’s not Szczepanik. I mean, if he put out 10 records, chances are they’d comprise the whole list, so I tried to restrain myself and only picked one. While Luz is incredible, it didn’t hit me the way his other two did. And We Make Life Sad is one of the most personal and unique albums this year, truly amazing, but I thought I could exclude it due to it being less droney than The Truth Of Transience. Oh, and because Transience is fucking stunning. Out of the three, this one unquestionably wins the gold.
2. High Aura’d – Sanguine Futures (Bathetic)
“…a foggy midnight journey through the middle of the ocean, with distant muffled canons fighting off some ancient sea beast, mythical & literal sirens wailing, calling with sweetness & alarm, chimes and clatter rattling in the still darkness…”
How the hell did High Aura’d make a record this goddamn good? Seriously, this is amazing in so many ways. Dark & minimal rumblings that breathe soft and threaten your life. I literally can’t imagine him ever making a better record than Sanguine Futures and it’s only his third outing as High Aura’d. I’m pretty sure he will at some point, though, because this dude gets exponentially better with each release. But even if he doesn’t, this is a black star that’ll forever outshine so many other records.
1. Superstorms – Superstorms (Experimedia)
“Crushed bits and burnt clouds, a blurred fury dipped in bliss, sunsets viewed through a grit lens, a trillion grey sky pixels fractured with the glow shining through, brittle static & warm drones blown out, scratched out, washed out…”
There’s a lot of dark & depressing shit on this list (tough times this past year) but the Number One sidesteps my masochism in favor of something that resonates so profoundly with me. Superstorms crafts the kind of drone that I feel is at my core, the kind of drone I crave more than any other: gritty, blissful, and fucking loud. I feel most at peace when records like this are so loud they obscure everything else in my brain. I can barely stand how fucking awesome Superstorms is. Serious next level drones. I’ve never heard anything else quite like it. I hope that you like this even half as much as I do because FUUUCK I love it too fucking much and the world would be a better place if everyone shared in this stupidly perfect love.
Villages – Nesting Grounds (Bathetic)
Unbelievably awesome new record from Ross Gentry, taking what I love from Andrew Weathers’ folk drone and spinning his own tale with it. Super organic, lush, and insanely fucking gorgeous, weaving banjos & organs with digital minimalism, spots of rhythmic bells and resonant pianos come and go while everything is bathed in a soft glow, too clean & clear to feel nostalgic but still brings to mind my summer family camping trips as a kid, slow & meandering with a purpose, not lazy, just not rushed, all the time in the world to conjure intimate stories and doing it with ease. A stellar fucking drone record from one of this year’s more exceptional labels. Limited to 312, hand numbered, and totally worth every penny.
Gog – A Promised Eternity Fulfilled With Cancer (Utech)
Hard to believe this is just one dude makin all this fuckin racket. So much volume on this. Ironworks, aka “an epitaph for the death of the American dream,” is a monster of black industrial noise, huge walls of distorted guitar scrape, cliffs crumbling from the reverb, with a persistent percussion that doesn’t so much keep rhythm as it creates a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, machines running on their own because there was no time to shut them off, a thick black cloud that lasts for miles, vocals that range from shamanistic chants to DSBM howls, a somber piano’s final eulogy, a lifeless greyscape where the massive drone rolls and the dirt is caked in blood, brooding & brutal, this is perfect destruction. Do not miss.
Zurvan – Bones Like The Mountains (Rubber City Noise)
I’m always psyched for some new Zurvan material. And Chapter IV is about an hour long, so there’s plenty of goodness to dive into. These two dudes really know how to bring the darkness. They craft a super minimal monochrome drone here, so quiet & subtle that the instruments are indistinguishable, a meditative fog seeping through your thoughts, neither dense nor massive but undeniably invasive, wrapping your soul in death’s shroud, a smoke & mirrors magik that scrapes your inner skull, bending light in transdimensional travel while galaxies evolve into black holes and time stands still, sounding like a motionless river of sacrificial blood, cloaking everything in nothing. Truly awesome work from these guys, definitely not something to skip out on.
Mind Over Mirrors – Second Nature (Hands In The Dark)
Pure fucking bliss. Jaime Fennelly drops a full length of new material that’s ripe for mind blowing. Last year he put out one of my favorite drone records, The Voice Rolling, so naturally I had high expectations for this. Not let down in the slightest. Basically any harmonium drone record is gonna get me psyched though so I guess he’s kinda got it easy. But seriously, this dude knows how to process his harmonium and make it sing the beautiful song. Check Your Swing isn’t just more of the same though, this time Fennelly is taking a bit of a Mountains approach, where his last record was super organic, here he’s gone a bit bloopy & sci-fi while still retaining the organic feel, like some real eXistenZ type shit, lush & buzzy with rhythms a hair too slow for dancing but perfect for spacing out & soaring, dense warm washes of digital reeds soaking up the sun then hiding under a mushroom, the complete opposite of a Cylon, an electronic shell with a bio-core, a perfect hybrid. Basking in the glory of MOM’s incredible harmonium drones is the only way to spend the rest of your life, so don’t mess up by skipping out on this.
Kyle Bobby Dunn – Meadowfuck (Komino)
The dude can’t stop. The drones compel him. In Miserum Stercus is Dunn’s second record this year, after the double disc Bring Me The Head Of…, but this is a whole new beast, as you might be able to tell from the title (roughly translated as The Wretched Refuse). This is some dark depressive shit, going places we haven’t yet heard from KBD. I’m not talking black ambient or anything, the soft subtleties & elegant dances are still the core, but instead of charming or uplifting, we’re given somber & melancholic, tones dipping into ethereal, haunted dreams, sometimes with a bit more bite & atonality to them, even bordering on a sickly wobble, although even more delicate than ever, cautiously boasting its minimalism, brilliant in blending the warm & cold. But it’s not all gloom, it ends on a much brighter note than it begins and you can almost trick yourself into thinking you weren’t just sunk into a pit of despair. Obviously, this deserves all sorts of high praise as it’s now competing for my favorite Dunn record next to Ways Of Meaning. Lovingly delivered to you in its waxen glory by Komino. Don’t miss out.