Top 10 albums of 2018

This was a sneaky great year for music, in that I didn't truly appreciate the amount of great stuff that was released this year until I sat down to process it as a whole.  And that's why I continue to make lists (and read year-end pieces) despite all the changes in how I discover, acquire, and listen to new music.  December really is the best month of the year to be a music fan.

I've become so disconnected from the mainstream music press that perhaps it's not a surprise that this list contains so many acts that I've been familiar with for years.  But most of them released their best work in eons, even though I'd assumed that their prime years were long since over. 

Honourable mentions:

Not necessarily #12 and #11 on my list, but in the spirit of old faves making new music, I wanted to write something about these two albums:

Woob, 新 プログラム, Time Limited

After a quiet couple of decades, Woob returned out of the blue and became a prolific artist, with upwards of ten albums released over the past several years.  Most of what I've heard is standard Buddha lounge fare that can't touch his still classic 90's albums.  But this one comes closest to capturing the old Woob formula of bizarre field recordings, blunted beats, and icy cold extended ambient passages.   

Spiritualized, And Nothing Hurt, Bella Union

Despite what Jason has alluded to in interviews, I don't believe this is the final SPZ album, but it does come off like a long slow goodbye.  The transformation from space rock outfit to full fledged gospel wannabes is complete.  Everything here is solidly hummable, but it's the lack of a truly classic song to rank along the best of their 28-year career that keeps the album from reaching another level.

10.  Animal Collective, Tangerine Reef, Domino

The reviews for this album were mostly negative, in part because AC have steadfastly refused to make "MPP II" for nearly a decade.  Is there really such a demand for more bouncy, reverb-filled pop with intelligible vocals from AC?  Be careful what you wish for -- listening to "FloriDada" on a loop for one hour might sober you up.  I loved how "Tangerine Reef" brought the mystery back to Animal Collective, recalling the days when they'd appear on stage wearing masks playing weirded out improvisations.

9. The Caretaker, Everywhere at the End of Time Stage 5, History Always Favours the Winners

Less abrasive than Stage 4, but arguably more terrifying.  Once all traces of the original music become completely smoothed out by noise, the inevitably frigid end of this series starts coming into view for the first time. 

 8.  Abul Mogard, Above All Dreams, Ecstatic

This year I suddenly became overwhelmed by the amount of great ambient music out there, largely due to sites like Mixcloud.  Abul Mogard relies largely on elements from analog masters (Tangerine Dream, Steve Roach) to create maximalist, yet billowy atmospheres that can leave you in a daze for hours.

7.  Gas, Rausch, Kompakt

Last year's comeback album "Narkopop" has some awe-inspiring textures but ultimately wasn't epic enough.  A great Gas album is more than lo-fi minimal isolationist disco with photos of dense forests.  The music should be smoky, blunt, and entirely overwhelming, with recurring themes a must.  "Rausch" delivers all that in spades.  The bass!

6.  No Age, Snares Like a Haircut, Drag City

Taking a step back from the more experimental, less rock "An Object", No Age returned after a five year absence with another great album.  It finds a balance between their more boisterous albums of a decade ago, and the abstract anti-rock of "An Object" (which has grown on me a lot over the past couple of years). 

5.  Autechre, NTS Sessions, Warp Records

There is plenty both wrong and right about Autechre's latest gargantuan filedump.  With so much material, there are bound to be some misses, and even the best stuff on "NTS Sessions" can be difficult to digest for durations longer than one hour.  Autechre started their career at a time when every IDM album had roughly the same format -- a double album of roughly 70-75 minutes running times, with most tracks falling neatly into the six to seven minute range.  None of their contemporaries have done more to take advantage of digital formats and destroy that antiquated album formula.  Seven hours of material?  Nobody buys CDs anymore, so who cares how long the album is?  Almost no tracks under ten minutes?  Without LP side/CD length to worry about, every track can be as minimalist or as maximalist as they want it to be, with no self-filtering, and editing only optional. 

4.  Anna von Hauswolff, Dead Magic, City Slang

This feels like the first fully realized Anna von Hauswolff album.  It goes far beyond the gimmicky marketing points of previous albums ("she plays a really huge church organ!") and combines her distinctive vocals and playing with the epic grandeur of black metal.

3.  Beach House, 7, Sub Pop

There are countless Sonic Boom-styled details imprinted on this album that I can't unhear now that I've become completely attuned to them.  On one hand, "Dive" is one of the best two or three songs on "7", but on the other hand, you could slot it midway through side one of the worst Spacemen 3 album (i.e."Recurring").  Can this really be an upgrade in studio composition and technique for Beach House if they're churning out content for the contractually obligated final album of a past their prime, unmotivated Spacemen 3? 

2.  Ancient Methods, The Jericho Sessions, Ancient Methods

It's no secret that Ancient Methods have been one of my favourite techno acts for years. AM's Michael Wollenhaupt might claim that it took ten years to make his debut album because he simply didn't get around to it, but after more than a dozen stellar EP's, he must know that it's still the ideal format for his work.  Crush the listener with heavy beats for twenty minutes or so, go hard, and get out.  However, when I think about my hopes and expectations for a full Ancient Methods album, "The Jericho Methods" delivers exactly what I'd envisioned.  The album format allows him to explore some ambient and experimental textures, but the focus is squarely on AM's signature hard techno style.  It features a number of tasty collaborations (Orphx, Regis, Prurient), which are the calls you make when you need to pull out all the stops on your debut album.

1.  Low, Double Negative, Sub Pop

If there was any band that could be fully at peace with themselves despite falling into a comfortable creative rut, it was Low.  That's not to say that they never deviate from their signature style, their catalogue is scattered with many examples where they dabbled in electronica or cranked up the noise.  But twelve albums into their career, I expected that Low would be content to tour forever on the back of pleasant yet benign new records.  The kinds of records that get middling grades from music publications because they're always solid enough to keep up the legacy of the band, but never good enough to be memorable except among hardcore fans.

"Double Negative" took a sledgehammer to all these expectations.  Even after reading the online reactions of many fans, most of whom were struggling to pick their jaws up off the floor and properly describe what they were hearing, I was unprepared for the total deconstruction all my associations with Low and their music.  Andy Stott wandering through a depressed, harmony-laden haze?  Bursts of static pulsing along to pitched down vocals filtered through one of William Basinski's tape-eating machines?   No description could properly do it justice.  But to borrow from the most common online sentiments -- who does this twelve albums into their career?  Who has the guts, the ambition, and the vision to pull this off?

Pete Shelley RIP

For years, the sum total of my knowledge of Pete Shelley was the video for his 1981 non-hit "Homosapien".  I still love everything about that song.  Years before the likes of New Order perfected their formula, Shelley fused rock, electro, and disco into a coherent whole that still sounds ahead of its time.  The video had a hazy, artsy "Ashes to Ashes" type of feel but Shelley was this relatable geeky character as opposed to Bowie's air of impegnability. 

Years later, I learned that the Buzzcocks were the punk icons who gave Joy Division a big break by inviting them on tour.  But I didn't start listening to their music until years after that.  Welcome to the filesharing era, and my dl'ed copy of "Singles Going Steady". 

The story of punk that I knew had always drawn a line from reggae as the music of rebellion straight through to Sex Pistols and the Clash working to smash the system.  Even though the Ramones were in plain view as punk (and alternative) heroes, the idea of punk as fun, bouncy rock and roll was overlooked, and to some extent still is.  Punk could be an outlet for teen angst, a safe haven for complaining about boredom or bad habits or getting dumped.  Buzzcocks helped teach me that. 

I was lucky enough to see them live twice, post-reunion in 2006 and 2011.  And more recently, I learned even more about what a generous soul Pete Shelley was from reading Peter Hook's Joy Division bio.  Buzzcocks were elder statesmen (despite being in their early 20's themselves) to virtually every young, hungry band in Manchester at the time, and went out of their way to mentor young musicians and help grow the scene.  

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 40

"November 2018 techno comeback", 59 minutes

My first mix in over a year.  A comeback of sorts for the long dormant podcast.  And dare I say it, this mix is a banger.  Simple but effective, featuring many of my techno favourites of 2018.

"A Star Is Born", dir. Bradley Cooper

There are plenty of things to appreciate about this movie (the always great Cooper, riveting stage scenes, at least two thirds of the music) and plenty of negatives (the horrible miscasting of Dave Chappelle, the completely one dimensional sleazy manager albeit played to maximum effect by Rafi Gavron).  But the movie ultimately fails due to two, huge reasons that completely blocked me from suspending my disbelief:

1) Bradley Cooper is completely convincing as a broken down, insecure, drunk and drug addict.  However, I couldn't buy him for one minute as one of the world's most famous rock stars, not when his act amounts to (at best) a cowboy-fied version of Dave Matthews. 

2) Lady Gaga had zero "it factor" as a genre-transcending pop star.  Think about that for a second.  They cast Lady Gaga in a film as a working class songwriter who turned to the pop side and became a huge star but stripped away all the intangibles that mirrored her real life rise to superstardom.  I could practically hear Simon Cowell saying "I've always said that it's not just about the voice" as a voiceover during half  of her scenes.  

Her character could have fully embraced pop music and foresaken the rootsy blues and country style of her husband, which would have led to friction between them and all the necessary plot points.  But I can understand the decision to feature Lady Gaga unplugged and nearly free of makeup, in which case her character could have gone full blown Adele.  That's who she is by the end of the movie anyhow, singing eye-rolling sub-Diane Warren love songs at Kennedy Center style galas.  Instead, the movie tried to split the difference and I found myself constantly asking myself "why is she a Grammy-winning singer"?