Dragons of Disgust Best albums 2014 (40-11)

Before I get to THE VERY BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2014 I thought I'd highlight just how much superlative music has come out in the last twelve months. I've listened to a lot of records that deserve to be championed and given the full attention of your ears so here are thirty of 'em. The numbers really aren't all that important.

40. Lone – Reality Testing (R&S)

39. Luke Abbott – Wysing Forest (Border Community)

38. Paul White – Shaker Notes (R&S)

37. The Phantom Band – Strange Friend (Chemikal)

36. Tobacco – Ultima II Massage (Ghostly)

35. Wildbirds & Peacedrums – Rhythm (The Leaf Label)

34. A Sunny Day In Glasgow – Sea When Absent (Lefse)

33. Pye Corner Audio – Black Mill Tapes Volumes 3 &4 (Type)

32. Timbre Timbre – Hot Dreams (Full Time Hobby)

31. Earth – Primitive & Deadly (Southern Lord)

30. Goat – Commune (Rocket)

29. The Budos Band – Burnt Offering (Daptone)

28. Actress – Ghettoville (Ninja Tune)

27. Aphex Twin – Syro (Warp)

26. Fatima Al Qadiri – Asiatisch (Hyperdub)

25. Wild Beasts – Present Tense (Domino)

24. Future Islands – Singles (4AD)

22. Sharon Van Etten – Are We There (Jagjaguwar)

23. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – Piñata (Stone's Throw)

21. Gazelle Twin – UNFLESH (Anti-Ghost Moon Ray)

20. Eyedress – Hearing Colours (Self-Released)

19. Kiasmos – Kiasmos (Erased Tapes)

18. Lawrence English – Wilderness of Mirrors (Room 40)

17. Lockah – Yahoo or the Highway (Donkey Pitch)

16. Flying Lotus – You're Dead! (Warp)

15. Owen Pallett – In Conflict (Domino)

14. The Body – I Shall Die Here (RVNG Intl.)

13. Leon Vynehall – Music For The Uninvited (3024)

12. A Winged Victory For The Sullen – Atomos (Erased Tapes)

11. FKA Twigs – LP1 (Young Turks)

Top ten coming soon. Can you handle the suspense?

Album Review:Brian Eno – The Drop/Neroli/Nerve Net/The Shutov Assembly

(All Saints Records)

Arguably Brain Eno's most recognisable piece of music from the nineties was only five seconds long. He'd been hired by Microsoft to create the start-up sound for Windows 95. Though he still managed to put out a lot of work during this period, as well as producing record with U2 and reuniting with collaborator David Bowie. Still, his own solo releases from this period may be amongst his most eclectic releases as these recent reissues on All Saints Records seem to highlight.

Brian Eno is known for many things not limited to Roxy Music, his own forays in Ambient music and production for the likes of The Talking Heads, Coldplay and U2. Though his solo and collaborations work is were he has reached critical acclaim for his novel approached, be it in the experimental pop of Here Come The Warm Jets or Another Green World, where his pop music enter more left field and ambient realms.

Nerve Net is the earliest of these reissues, originally released in 1992, and sees Eno taking on some of the styles he help to popularise, merging blissful spacey electronica with strange pop and sampled loops. The first track Fractal Zoom is not a world away from the looping drum patterns of My Bloody Valentine's Soon, which came out only a year earlier on Loveless. It balances a darker ambient sound with softer layered vocals and centred with a solid funk-inflected bass line. Whilst some of the sounds show they're age others are forward thinking, Wire Shock has chopped up vocals arranged into a rhythm, still a staple of contemporary electronica whilst The Roil, The Choke, one of the few tracks to feature Eno's voices prominently, is one of the best tracks here, with more in common with his music from the seventies with echoes of tracks like The Ship and On Some Faraway Beach.

Niroli is a purely ambient one track album, named after a plant oil and made at a time when Eno was obsessed by smells and fragrances and even developed his own perfumes. The hour long piece of music is slight enough to fit in along side Eno's Ambient series. Like those works, such as Music for Airports there is still enough here to capture your attention in odd minor key flourishes, but its submerged sound can sink into the background just as easily. In fact Eno claimed in the linear notes for Airports that he aimed to make music “as ignorable as it is interesting” and Niroli easily fits the same bill and could have been included under the same series, maybe as Music for Daydreams.

The original cover for The Drop featured some of the worst album artwork ever made, a computer made image that is more clip art than virtual reality. Thankfully the computer-indebted music that makes up the album fares a little better. Brian Eno described the music on The Drop as jazz made by an alien who'd only heard descriptions of jazz music and the album mostly succeeds in creating music that is alien and familiar. It seems to continue some of the synthesized jazzier moments of Nerve Net over a collection of short tracks, like sketches and ideas laid out that loop into focus before fading out. Whilst it doesn't all work, some of the ideas like dreamy Spanish guitar chords that ring out on Dutch Blur or Boomcubist which has echoes of In Dark Trees are interesting enough to recall Music For Film or Eno's defining moment Another Green World. The Drop seems to aim for that kind of varied experimentation but never reaches the same quality or consistency.

The Shutov Assembly is a glacially cold piece of ambient music, made up of shorter pieces that offer more variation than his longer form works. It's cold textures could see it sit alongside the frozen soundscapes of Biosphere's Substrata. On tracks like Stedelijk and Alhondiga notes linger and echo like sounds bouncing between the walls of a vast cavern as distant hums fall in and out of the background, it's never busy and sees Eno push his interest in texture and space to the forefront. Shutov makes for a slow and solitary listen that seems a suitable fit for short winter days.

All of these albums are packed with bonus tracks and alternate versions, many are forgettable and easy to pass over, but some offer interesting ideas and pretty moments. Tracks like Prague on The Shutov Assembly see Eno using a solo piano rather than electronic textures creating a more melodic take on the albums frozen sculpture. Nerloi features another hour long track, New Space Music, made of low hums and tones that gently shift between tones whilst being void of any obvious melodic lines, it's ever shifting noises create a hypnotic effect.

Even when he doesn't always hit the mark these reissues that to their extensive linear notes full of interview and essays allow an insight into the thought processes and ideas that sparked these releases which seem to be, at least in a few cases, more interesting than the finished result. That's where Eno's brilliance lies, in trying unexpected things and taking different routes. These albums are a mixed bag of Brian Eno's nineties output. It does show a musical range and a willingness to explore, though not every gambit hits the mark, it still displays a singular talent.

Album Review:Scott Walker + Sunn O))) – Soused

(4AD)

At one point on Brando, the opening track from Soused, Scott Walkers' unique and heavy-hearted croon infers that 'A beating would do me the world of good' alongside a beat made from the lashings of a whip. It's a line that drips of violence and masochism and stands as a good warning of the sonic punishment that you can hear over over the album's fifty minutes.

Soused is a collaboration between former pop star and now Avant-Garde artist Scott Walker and earth-shattering drone worshippers Sunn O))). The drone group had sought out Scott Walker for their 2009 album Monoliths & Dimensions (which seemed to incorporate disparate arrangements and instrumentation one of Scott's albums) but conflicting schedules got in the way. Walker since wrote some material with the band in mind and when they finally got together they recorded it over a week. It shows through the album, it lacks in detail but makes up for it with a rawer immediacy.

Brando's first thirty seconds make you wonder just what you've gotten yourself into. High synthesizer's ring out over guitar lead melodies like some dreamy ballad from an eighties David Lynch film. It then falls to silence before those familiar heavy waves of drone pile in over a one note bass pulse and that whip lash beat. Scott Walker's voice carries a horror like a man brought to the edge of sanity by some horrific, unspeakable experience. At this point it become clear whether you will become enraptured or repulsed by the mesmeric dark guitars and vivid, haunted scenes that form the core of Soused.

As much as Scott Walker has gained a reputation as a meticulous, serious artist punching away slabs of meat as he hides away recording his albums, his music does a have a humorous and playful side that often come out through his use of language with lines like 'Leaping like a river dancer's nuts' in the Sabbath like proto-metal of Bull. Other tracks give themselves up completely to painting a picture with only a black and grey colour palette. The biblical Herod 2014 repeats a haunting mantra, 'She's hidden her babies away' over slow ghostly moans that carry the promise of a forthcoming terror. The beat-less track builds with what sounds like squealing, pained horn sounds and industrial sounds of clattering, shuffling machinery with colossal doom riffs that create unease without a drumbeat to hang on to.

Fetish begins with Walker's voice in near silence, punctuated with sharp staccato jabs that could have come from an old film's soundtrack paying homage to Psycho's shower scene. Dissonant and jagged art rock riffs and harsh screeching horns pick up the track as drums crash and tumble in a perfect exercise in loud and quiet dynamics as the song writing seems to tell a story in itself. Lullaby is a haunting drifting ending to Soused, more likely to inspire hellish nightmares if listened to before bedtime as it's quiet lulls are split between harsh dissonance and Walker's tortured wails.

In many ways this is one of the most accessible records in both Walker's and Sunn O)))'s recent output as they are both confined to a more rigid rock band set up. Sunn O)))'s heavy drones a pinned to drumbeats and Scott uses a smaller range of sounds to complements his twisted narratives. It's still alienating listen for the uninitiated, but for those who like their music with an undercurrent of horror this may well be a good introduction for these artists who exist at the far reaches of experimental rock music as Soused is a focused and compelling for those who can take the beating.

Album Review:Caribou – Our Love

(City Slang)

Caribou is the long standing project of Dan Snaith, an artists who was always effectively balanced the producer and musician roles. He's always had a pop core to his music, even when exploring krautrock tangents on The Milk of Human Kindness, which could lead him to crossing over into being an altogether bigger act and with his fifth album, 2010's Swim, he finally did it, showing up on the soundtrack to the FIFA video game series, moving up in festival bills and reaching a whole new audience with his turn towards dance music. His most recent release was 2012's Jialong diversion into immediate dance music under his Daphni moniker. The William Onyeabor sampling Ye-Ye in particular was one of his best tracks as well has the most direct example of intent from his dance floor excursions.

Whilst Swim still contained some of the heady psychedelic pop of earlier Caribou, Our Love is undeniably a purer electronic album, full of drum machines and analog tones, but for all that it still bares a something very human at it's centre, one of Caribou's real strengths. Opening track Can't Do Without You quickly settles into a locked 4/4 groove sounding distant like a party in the next room as a sample repeats the song's title before breaking out of it's filters. Drums kick in as synthesizers rise and swirl under and around Snaith voice, shrouded in echo.

The title track brings in an almost disco feel, with Snaith's falsetto, computerised soul vocals and Arcade Fire and solo violinist Owen Pallet contributing string arrangements that seem to interrupt the track at just at the right moments. It then takes a turn as it a British house breakdown with obligatory pitch shift vocal takes over, with an energetic like that of previous single Odessa on a gritty club rush. Jessy Lanza, who was responsible for one of last year's best debut albums Pull My Hair Back, appears on Second Chance. That track buries it's mid-tempo R&B beat under Lanza's voice with widescreen synthesizers that melt and reform around her voice to a dizzying effect.

The persistent grooves of beat workout Mars and the frustratingly short loved-up house of Julia Brightly show how far he's come as a producer as they just rely on machine rhythms with Snaith's reverb affected vocals left aside. Back Home delves into analog theatrics, part John Carpenter score, part melancholy synth-pop. Building around a triumphant lead line, placing layers of beats and melody on top of each other, it's a welcome change, slowing down the tempo but still providing on of Our Love's biggest peaks.

Low-key closing track Your Love Will Set You Free sneaks in some guitars to add a little funk to the filtered and phased vocals. Ending with a refrain of the song's title 'Your love will set you free' fades out as a mantra as a beat winds down. It's a tidy conclusion that backs up Our Love, a big declaration for losing yourself in dance. Not only has Caribou effectively tapped in to dance music rhythms he's brought his own soul into it and made it his own. The results make Our Love an affirming mixture of Jialong's instant pleasures and Swim's details and intricacies brought together with Snaith's pop heart. It makes for an album brimming with positivity that effectively taps into dance music's loved-up sense of togetherness that only the sour-faced individual wouldn't want to be part of.

Album Review:Flying Lotus – You're Dead!

(Warp)

Concept albums in electronic music are few and far between (and generally in music since the seventies) though hip-hop seems has a couple of examples with albums like Deltron 3030. Still, L.A. beat maker, label-owner and more recently rapper Steve Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus, is no stranger to big ideas. Showing himself as a consistently creative producer since breaking out with his second album, the urban grit-fused Los Angeles and following it up with the heady jazz psychedelics of Cosmograma and Until The Quiet Comes' more softer dream state Flying Lotus has gone further into making music that contains that spur of the moment feel of jazz with the laboured perfection of electronica.

His latest release You're Dead! Is his concept album, based on ruminations and pondering into the afterlife. Life, or existence, after death is an idea explored in everything from Hinduism to the Jedis in Star Wars but may not be a widely explored topic in music. Flying Lotus takes it on with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of his Auntie, Alice Coltrane's, forays into spiritual jazz.

It begins with a low earthy drone before the track breaks out into a number of false starts like its trying to settle on an idea to begin with. The result can sound overwhelming like it's through it's many, many sounds at you all at once, and serves as an apt taster of what to expect for the next forty minutes. You're Dead! is mad and excessive enough to have as much in common with prog-rock (yes, really) than anything with the current L.A. Beat scene. There are even a couple of lead lines from electric guitars showing up here and there. Still, there are no five minute solos here, tracks are short and sharp, skipping from one idea to the next.

In demand serial collaborator and Kendrick Lamar appears on Never Catch Me and justifies his contribution with the best verses on You're Dead!. He raps 'Ain't no blood pumpin' no fear, I got hope inside of my bones', the lines tumble and free fall over a constantly evolving Footwork beat. On the next track Snoop Dogg shows up to deliver his distinct, blazed rhymes alongside Lotus' rapper alter-ego Captain Murphy on a track that lurches forward with a stoned, stomping beat. There are some familiar collaborators for regular listeners, Thundercat and Niki Randa appear, with Thundercat's distinctive fret-hopping bass playing, which has been a constant in the last two Flying Lotus albums, featuring throughout the record.

At the albums centre is Coronus, The Terminator ushering in the albums' more introspective, meditative second half by providing a cut of lush and dream-like slowed down soul, taking the tempo down a notch and bringing in some layered vocals which segues perfectly into the equally sedate Siren Song featuring Angel Deradoorian of The Dirty Projectors' voice jumping to and fro. Herbie Hancock appears on Moment of Hesitation which lets go of its beat trappings and becomes a rhythmic jazz freak-out. Pong-style bleeps of carry Ready Err Not before the album introduces some more standard but still appreciated beat driven fare with tracks like Turtles, Obligatory Cadence and closer The Protest.

For all it's indulgences it just about manages to stay on the right side things, staying playful and thoughtful with it's many ideas that blur genre and style into a strange but complete whole, leagues ahead of any contemporaries. The many jumping off points and collaborators make for a jumbled and intense listen, lacking the cohesiveness of lotus' other albums but it's twists and turns are always interesting. His push into more real instrumentation really pushes to set it out as something different from his back catalogue and through its many faces it only goes to reinforce how unknowable death is. If Flying Lotus is right about anything on You're Dead!, wherever it leads, the afterlife will be a wild trip.

Album Review:Thurston Moore – The Best Day

(Matador)

For all the downsides of Sonic Youth's members calling an indefinite hiatus on the long running band in 2011, it has allowed the band's member to branch out and try new things. Sonic Youth's three decades of noise rock lasted through New York's undergrounds no-wave heyday, through grunge, MTV and into the digital age. Sonic Youth's distortion and dissonance hast always been a constant, influencing scores of groups in the process.

Free of that influence though still carrying a reputation to live up to, the band members have all embarked on their own projects. Lee Ronaldo has put out two solo albums of R.E.M-esque indie rock, whilst Kim Gordon went down a more experimental route with her more abstract noise project Body/Head. Meanwhile, Thurston Moore has been equally busy, joining two bands Chelsea Light Moving and Black Metal supergroup Twilight over the last three years.

Now he has a new solo album following his last, the Beck-produced acoustic affair Demolished Thoughts, with The Best Day. This new album comes with a few changes, a recent move to London has prompted Moore to gather a new backing band. It's no surprise to see Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley here (he also appeared on Ronaldo's solo albums) but Moore also drafts Guitarist James Sedwards of Nought and My Bloody Valentine's Debbie Googe on bass.

Speak To The Wild begins with echoing harmonics, the guitars chime and ring recalling some of Sonic Youths high points like the Jim O'Rourke produced Murray St. It all follows a simple but driving two chord riff as Moore jumps between lead lines, setting up a melodic tone that much of the album follows. The title track delivers upbeat riffing that recalls early post-punk like Television, with a bit of New York glam-rock power chords, it even breaks into a surprisingly big melodic solo at one point, which might possibly be Moore's most melodic lead line in his thirty odd years and thankfully it never goes to overboard as his cool keeps the whole thing grounded.

The11 minute long epic Forevermore builds on a droning riff with a constant drum beat and Neu!-like repetition. Full of sharp, serrated lead lines and violent peaks, it's exciting and justifies it's length. Detonation manages to recall some of E.V.O.L and Sister era Youth with a downright nasty sounding ascending lead with aggressive more-shouted-than-sung vocals that isn't to far away from a Liars track. The instrumental Grace Lake transforms from a major key the a distortion fed beast that, whilst not doing anything new, has some the the album's best riffs.

It's still missing something from his main band though, maybe the variety of vocalists or the call and response guitar riffs between Lee and Thurston. But there is something here that makes me think maybe it is the kind of record Sonic Youth could still be making. Amongst it all there's Those who are looking for a fix of music from Moore's former band may get it from The Best Day, it carries that noise rock torch and fills it with reflection and hope with a few unexpected turns and a personal feel to what you'd expect from a Sonic Youth record but retaining enough similarity that would have made a worthy addition to their catalogue.

Album Review:Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Singer's Grave A Sea of Tongues

(Domino)

Will Oldham, better known as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, or Palace Brothers or a whole load of other names, makes country folk music that digs deep into existential themes and religion, on a search for an answer to unknowable questions. Through his two decades long career his music has become bigger, more accomplished and his new album Singer's Grave A Sea of Tongues is a perfect showcase for his progression, but for all that Billy can still draw you in as he did when it was just his voice and an acoustic guitar.

Singer's Grave A Sea of Tongues is Bonnie "Prince" Billy's tenth proper album, though there is a lot more Oldham material around out there, and offers some new songs, along with some updates of older songs. Those updated tracks originally appeared on 2011's Wolfroy Comes To Town, a stripped down affair with a small backing band that featured Emmett Kelly and Angel Olsen, and here those songs become bigger, filled out with strings, slide guitar, banjos and gospel style backing vocals. It isn't that different but is a little more fleshed out similar to how Townes Van Zandt updated his songs over his albums.

The result is a lot lighter than say I See A Darkness' weighty existential folk, but it's not all bright as familiar themes of death and religion resurface. We Are Unhappy paints images of religious apocalypse with it's vivid lyrics, 'Mind, it is going/ and faith is destroyed/ It's emptiness showing/ God's cruelty deployed'. The dark lyrics are evened it out with the contrast of a lightly picked chord progression backed with a banjo and Gospel choir.

The album begins with Wolfroy's last track Night Noises a slow and tumbling track, powered by big, sustained piano chords. Quail And Dumplings is another track getting a fix-up, and prominently featured the vocals of Angel Olsen. This version sounds fuller as Oldham takes over Olsen's verse and adds a string section for the tale of aspiration as Billy softly pines for a better future with a chorus of 'We got empty tummies but it won't always be/ One day it's gonna be quail and dumplings for we'. The meal may seem like something from another era but it's theme of wanting what you don't have is timeless.

It's not all misery as Whipped shows, with an altogether brighter side of Oldham, contains a joyous refrain of “I'm in Love”. The music is often upbeat too, Mindlessness almost prog-folk main hook could have come from a wild sea shanty and is worthy of a drunken jig with it's plucked violin and drum rolls. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's musical ability is on display on Mew Black Rich (Tusks), a downcast and contemplative turn that shows some searing, emotive violin soloing that really lifts the song into something that could have come from The Dirty Three.

Singer's Grave A Sea of Tongues is, like a lot of Oldham's work , an often affirming listen, with the updated songs becoming much warmer with the bigger backing band in tow. Some may be disappointed that the album isn't just dedicated to new material but all the songs here are full of life, light and dark, and really seem to serve Billy's intent. It may not pack the emotional gut-punch of I See A Darkness, but it's clear that he, and this latest collection of folk songs, is still intent on finding answers.