I know we are early in December here, but I am on night shift the next month without a day off the next 16 or so days with no intention of taking in any new music during that time, so if y'all don't mind I am going to be doing this kind of piece-by-piece (5-10 albums or so at a time) as I get reviews written and links updated for my top 50 this year. However, if it bothers y'all let me know and I will just slap a numbered list up here with no useful information at all and call it good.

Here goes:



50. Bill Callahan – Apocalypse: Really as I think about it, there isn’t anything terribly special about this record. It’s a well written, well sung, rock record, pretty much what you would expect from this guy, nothing more really. I have noticed the past couple of years though I have been enjoying things like this more and more. Perhaps I am getting older, and I don’t mean that in some shitty “Everything was better back when…” way. The facts are; my daughter is six years old now and actually pays attention to what daddy has on the radio, I am married to an awesome woman who just really doesn’t dig Skullflower and Merzbow as the first things she hears when she wakes up, so albums like this get a lot more play on Sunday mornings now. So while I may not find this the most exciting record of the year, probably not even one of the fifty most exciting records of the year, it is something that has stood up really well for what it is, I enjoy it, the family enjoys it, and things like that matter now. While I may not need/want a lot of music like this, when I want something in this realm, this is going to be the album I reach for most of the time—as such it definitely deserves a spot on here.





49. John Luther Adams – Four Thousand Holes: The dude is an American treasure as far as I am concerned. There are very few composers who have done more to advance the not so long ago “rebellious” ideas of phase music and electro-acoustic inclusion in the classical world than he has. This piece is absolutely remarkable and ranks among his best works. Only using two musicians + his remarkable processing it plays like a full blown orchestra at times. The shifts from slight piano twinkling to earth shaking bass with the use of only major and minor triads (all in true Western keys here) are done so well, they just seem effortless. Much of this is a result of the beyond impressive piano work of Stephen Drury, who may be at his all time best here, Adams incomprehensible control of rhythmic shifts (though there is no question he is still very much a student of everything Cowell did, he has certainly made it his own), and Adams’ way too often overlooked processing abilities which he explained (in part) as follows;



Bottom line is that this is a truly monumental piece of American composition that (though it really wasn’t in question) cements Adams as one of the greatest American composers of all time.





48. Sissy Spacek – Dash: On the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Callahan and Adams, it’s Sissy fucking Spacek. Forty one blasts of vulgar blow out your eardrums noise from the incomparable John Wiese and friends. The thing clocks in somewhere around nine minutes (about 13 seconds per song) and by the time it is over you will be exhausted and need a shower. It’s filthy, it’s dissonant, it’s reckless, all attitude and spazz. I love it.





47. Grouper – A I A: This is a return to the more spaced out ethereal Liz Harris than what Dragging…was, and I like this side of her better personally. Her ear for layered sustain is so impressive, and honestly it is a quality that I think she just has, it can’t be taught. Notes float and drift around here finding one another when the time is right. Nothing is ever rushed and consequently a sense of effortlessness just unfolds on both of the records. One more thing that really impressed here is her use of recycling—similar to what Brightblack and Jeck have done that I always have enjoyed. Reusing something that is familiar, blatantly been used by the artist before, but knowing that it fits here as it did on any song before, and not being afraid to let a certain older piece of recognizable music be heard right up front. If anything I think it shows a sort of quiet confidence in her, which is often hard to find in music that can be so unassuming and pretty, that confidence is largely what sets her apart from the Christina Carter’s of the world in my opinion. If you aren’t already a Grouper fan, this record probably won’t make you one, but this is a really gorgeous quiet album no question.






46. Sleepingdog – With Our Heads in the Clouds and Our Hearts in the Fields: Pretty much anything that Adam Wiltzie (Stars of the Lid) is involved with is going to be worth hearing. He has been working with Chantal Acda for awhile now as Sleepingdog, this is certainly their best work together to date though. Wiltzie’s drones are as pretty as ever and his ability to add a level of flight to those with the addition of cellist Hildur Gudnadottir and violinist Chester Diamond on this record serve as the perfect backing for Acda’s unassuming vocals. This is a “pop record” really, it is not a drone or minimalist album as you might expect from the players, but as a straightforward album it is really great. There are moments that immediately bring to mind Sigur Ros, other times it sounds like Rachels have been beamed in, and it’s just a sort of bliss that wanders all over here; lush and rich and pretty—but surprisingly very accessible. The standout here is no question “Polish Love Song,” as it both showcases the strength of Acda’s songwriting and voice and Wiltzie’s sonic backdrops which turn these nicely done folk songs into something spectacular—they both make each other better, it’s what collaboration should be. I don’t know maybe Acda will someday go the way of that Lana del Rey chick that is fucking everywhere right now for some unknown reason as her voice and songs certainly lend themselves to major label breakthrough, I hope not though. These two are good for each other and I will keep looking forward to where they go next.

Thanks for this, K. Playing the Sissy Spacek now on and digging it despite the gaps inbetween in each track that Spotify is throwing in. Must be in the right mood. FYI, both Spotify and AMG have this as a 2010 release.

Seeing a lot of love for that Bill Callahan but haven't heard a note of it yet.

right with you on the Grouper – A I A.

will be following this thread man!

Wow. Nice work, man. I haven't heard a lot from '11 so this is great. I look forward to hearing that Sissy Spacek.

Agree that Grouper is really good, even if I am still pissed it was so limited and I can't get the vinyl without overspending now. Will be interested in what else comes up here.

Very cool. Gonna have to hear that Sissy Spacek.

well, you've rendered me meaningless! thanks man, thanks.

but yes, awesome.

Excellent man. Look forward to exploring some of your picks.

Yeah, I think Wiese self released the cassette last year in a pretty small batch. Gilgongo gave it a proper release on vinyl this year though, so I am bending my own rules and counting that. Really the vinyl treatment works so good on that record. There is something about pulling out that little slab of black, flipping the turntable to 45RPM, and just bracing for what is about to come out of the speakers. Very few noise records translate better on vinyl than cassette, but this is definitely one of them. I really do need to come up with more strict rules on release dates though.

Either way, glad you are digging it. If you (or anyone) ever gets the chance to see them live, absolutely go, it is a live experience like nothing else I have ever witnessed.

Sissy Spacek....really??

A couple more before I head to work for the night:



45. Derek Rogers – Informal Meditations: No Kings might have been the surprise label of the year this year as they put out great releases from Brandal, Molyneux, Sexton, Rambutan, and this spectacular live cassette from Derek Rogers. Hopefully they will use their success to start dubbing larger batches, as getting your hands on anything from them is a truly painful exercise at this point. That being said, if you can track them down these are gorgeous tapes. Receiving this in the mail I was instantly impressed with the care put into the packaging; a nicely printed pattern on a very cool green cassette, an acetate overlay on top of some nicely printed super thin paper (apparently it is made from flowers). This is what cassette collecting is all about.

Now, onto the music. Rogers sculpts some beautiful synth drones on both of these pieces. They are nicely oscillated and filtered creating some nice drift/harmonics. However, he never lets them roll too long. His ability to interrupt these drones with some metallic clatter and contact mic scraping adds just enough edge to keep this from just going nowhere. As a result each of these live recordings has a definitive beginning, middle, and end. This is important as it leaves no question there is an aim, a purpose, to each stretch of music and sound here. This isn’t lazy, let’s plug in some pedals and see where the feedback goes music. This is well orchestrated sound. He moves easily from pretty organ bends that sound completely unprocessed to stuttering synth lines that don’t so much jar you as direct you to a different place. Generally if the word “meditation” appears in a drone work it is likely not going to have a lot of movement—Rogers breaks that rule here and has made something very unique and very much his own in a genre that can sometimes suffer from an amount of sameness.






44. Deaf Center – Owl Splinters: It is hard to judge this record objectively. Any Deaf Center/Greiner/Skodvin/Totland/Nest release is going to have such huge expectations that really there is nothing it can do but fall short. There are some moments on this album that are mind blowing. There are very few artists that can accomplish the huge cinematic moments that these two pull off on “The Day I Would Never Have,” my favorite track on the record. Those elongated swells and resulting collapse have such an impact and make the sound seem bigger than it actually is. It’s those moments on here that are reminiscent of the classic Pale Ravine, but there are a few pieces here that seem incomplete or just disconnected. Maybe it’s because there are more solo parts here, and while those times definitely leave no doubt that both of these guys are absolutely brilliant musicians, they lack not only intimacy but they don’t seem connected to the rest of the record unfortunately. That being said, the high points here are as good as anything any other ambient record had to offer this year, and pretty much make up for the handful of shortcomings.





43. Ken Seeno – Invisible Surfer on an Invisible Wave: This is the guitarist from Ponytail making a record that sounds like nothing you would expect from the guitarist from Ponytail. I haven’t listened to this much the past couple of months, but I played the hell out of this record this summer. I like what is going on here. So much dream/ambient music is associated with desolation and cold, wintery stuff, this tape though is the complete opposite as hinted at by the title. This is for lack of a better term, beach ambient. What Wavves is to punk rock, this record is to ambient music. It feels like early morning surf or pitch black evening cool beaches. There is a calm here that is very organic but it’s a warm almost happy calm. It’s a sense that sometimes people just want to be alone, not because anything is wrong, but just because sometimes the quiet is really fucking nice. The arpeggios here are nice, simple but nice, not too different than some of the solo Emeralds projects. When the guitar breaks in it seems like Seeno is just kind of messing around, enjoying doing what he gets to do for a living, and that is what sets this record apart. He isn’t miserable and isn’t just making music to show off what he can do. This is the sound of an artist pretty content with where he is just making a record that he wanted to make. We could use more albums like that in my opinion.





42. Imaginary Softwoods – The Path of Spectrolite: Imaginary Softwoods is John Elliott from Emeralds. He is the big guy with the monster Doepfer sequencer and ridiculous amount of CV gear that probably goes pretty unnoticed during Emeralds sets. The fact is without him Emeralds would probably be a bit less exciting as his sequencing and coordination of washes with them is what, in my opinion, propels their sound constantly forward and has allowed their evolution into a band that is incredibly successful in the 3-7 minute song realm. Bottom line: He is way more awesome than he gets credit for.

With that out of the way, this record is really, REALLY good. Here he completely steps out of McGuire’s shadow (which is quite a feat as McGuire casts a pretty long one) and shows an attention to synthesis detail that is remarkable. Every tone, every sequence, every drift here is so completely comforting and warm. There is no despair, nothing dark, this is what Ecstasy sounds like. I think part of the comfort of this comes from the familiarity of tones used. This record is not about the processing of any sound, but rather the creation, and the more importantly the sequencing of each note. From what I can tell part of the formula here was to use a varying number of steps within a sequenced group. So, though multiple sequences may contain a repeating CV the first sequence might be eight steps, the second four steps, but then the third an odd three steps, so the tones only align every twenty-fourth step which is where the group would then repeat. It’s fucking great, as depending on where you focus on the song you are going to hear something different than the person standing next to you. It makes me excited. It lets me know that this was well thought out and that this guy isn’t some fucking lackey just turning knobs on an expensive piece of gear.

The guys at OCRB may have said it best:


This record succeeds by being a nearly perfect blend of technical ability and relatability (as well just generally making you feel like you going to float away). Even if you throw out all of the proficiencies that I love this is still just a beautiful album that can be enjoyed by most anyone. It isn’t some huge statement about the state of anything, it doesn’t try to convince you of anything, it just exists to be enjoyed, and I am sure to hopefully make anyone that hears it a bit happier.

I am interested in seeing where Elliott goes from here, as I think the continued growth of Emeralds’ relationship with Lopatin will result in more focus on what he brings to the band, and as great as McGuire and Hauschilt are, and as great as the three of them together are, I am most interested to see singularly where he goes next as an artist.

41. Thundercat – The Golden Age of Apocalypse: The guys over at Brainfeeder have to be the most brilliant bunch of weirdos in the world. Seriously. Last year I had my mind blown by that Flying Lotus record (which was my introduction to Thundercat), and this year I got this wonderful mess of a record from them. Really this record can be summed up and reviewed in one sentence; the dude can flat out play. I don’t have many things as reference points for what he does on this album (when it comes to funk and jazz my knowledge is extremely elementary), I just know it is really different than anything else I have ever heard. There are bits that sound like Mouse On Mars, which I assume are Flying Lotus’ touches here, other tracks make me think of Midnite Vultures had Stereolab backed Beck on that record, other times I hear Curtis Mayfield and Sly Stone backing tracks, but mostly I just get a sense of swagger from this. My favorite track here without a doubt is “Fleer Ultra”, which no matter how many times I hear it, it is still just a total mindfuck for me. It’s a track that makes me think there is nothing else this kid could do—he has to be a bass player, it’s just some sort of unnatural gift that he is. The lines he lays down on that song make no sense to me, the whole thing should fall apart, but it doesn’t. It’s just an amazing piece of work that would only rank behind “Chinese High” as my favorite song this year. This is a record that I really think there is something for everybody on, just the coolest and strangest record of the year.

Not my link:


 



40. Alexander Turnquist – Hallway of Mirrors: Alexander Turnquist is another one of the pseudo Takoma revivalists. He can play, no question, but where Fahey, Jones, and Jack Rose succeeded was that there was so much feeling and story in each of their songs. Most of the guys I hear playing that style these past couple of years are just playing…there is no story in their work (Blackshaw is excluded from that group). This is one of the areas this record succeeds for me. It isn’t just referential and showy. While giving a respectful nod to the past, Turnquist has put his own spin on the style and is starting to become a great storyteller of his own. Part of this comes from his inclusion of strings, vibraphone, and piano throughout the album. It’s nothing new, the aforementioned Blackshaw has been doing it for years, but Turnquist doesn’t just use the other instruments as atmospherics, he recognizes places where guitar isn’t the most fitting sound and lets others who have been as inspired by the older players as he has add their touches/interpretations to his stories. Nowhere is it more evident than on his tribute to Jack Rose “Waiting at the Departure Gates,” the centerpiece and highlight of this record.

There have been a lot of well done tributes to Jack Rose the past few years, and rightfully so, this song is special though. This one is so deeply intimate, it’s not just a tribute to the style, but this is a kid really putting his heart out there and saying goodbye to one of his heroes. There is a catharsis here that is beyond moving. The guitar pushes as hard as it can just spitting out all of the praises, and more importantly questions it seems, that he has for Rose, and then it stops. He lets the strings come in, it’s almost like he needed a break here, like there was some sort of breakdown and composure was lost, so the strings get to say their part, and even they sound like Rose. He recomposes himself and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t attack the strings from there on out. There’s an urgency in his playing until the end where things slow down, the same phrase is repeated, but more controlled, and it seems like you get to hear this kid get some sort of closure. After hearing it my immediate thought went to Panda Bears’ “Young Prayer”, a record that said a ton with a very little bit, and that same thing is accomplished here. Given my adoration of Jack Rose perhaps my take is a bit biased. Maybe that’s what it is though, this track, this record, is the closest thing I have heard to him since he passed, and it is pretty comforting in that way.

I fully recommend this for anyone who was a Jack Rose, Fahey, or Richard Bishop fan. It sucks that those guys have left us behind…a lot. But artists like this kid are doing a pretty great job of trying to fill the void that’s been left.

i guess I want to hear a song called Fleer Ultra.

Yeah the Thundercat album is really good.

yeah k, i rate Owl Splinters almost on par with Pale Ravine. genius work.

K's annual list is always one of the most interesting on Obnercsh. Droney ambient stuff that's not for pussies. Seriousness of intent.

Without fail you'll describe something I've never heard of, I'll get it and really like it.

I like the Owl Splinters, but not on a level of Pale Ravine.

I'm certain that Radcliffe is a huge fan of this thread.

Holy Opa!

Same with yours, I always find something on there that I missed out on.

I agree with you on that Deaf Center. I still love it, obviously, but Pale Ravine was a really special record and I don't know that they will ever duplicate it.

I love it. I have only had it for a little while, given more time it probably would have ranked way higher. I know you, Harry, and a few others on here have way more funk/jazz knowledge than me. I would certainly be interested in hearing anything you all can recommend that is similar to what he does on there.

I'm interested in what you think of the next three or four as I have never completely figured out your taste dude. I know you dig some metal and some really fucking dark ambient (which there was a ridiculous amount of really good albums of this year), but I don't think you are into stuff like Prurient or the Hanson Records catalog, so yeah definitely looking forward to your thoughts on the next few.

39. KPLR – s/t: I don’t even know how to begin to classify this record. KPLR crafted a great single in “Tek No Muzik” (horrible title, but great song) and then followed it up with this odd piece of gorgeous vinyl (cut at D&M, released by Digitalis, you know it’s quality). Each song here is a series of really basic waves, most square, and there is really nothing that sets any one song apart from the others, the guy sticks to his formula. They do the bleep-bloop thing, and then they keep doing it, then another wave, and it keeps on doing it’s thing, and they never stop—the devotion to repetition is insane and just outright hypnotic. By avoiding really anything complex tonally (there are some good little knob tweaks here and there, never anything too much, just enough texture to soften things up) or rhythmically this album will just completely suck you in and have you nodding your head to what appears to be the simplest, most minimal, brain frying stuff ever made—think maybe Aphex Twin playing a John Cage interlude with Genesis P-Orridge processing a handful of notes here and there and you might get something close to this. This is forward thinking stuff for sure. This whole thing is mechanical, cold, rigidly structured, and one of the most cerebral records out there. There is nothing that is like this to the best of my knowledge—again I don’t even know what this is—but it is pretty impressive.



 


38. Mike Shiflet – Sufferers: Here is another great slab of vinyl cut by the guys at D&M, aside from that however it has nothing in common with that KPLR album. This is an (in)tense album all the way through. Shiflet starts off with some brilliant abrasive pure noise that leaves whatever source recording used just laid to waste. Impressively though the sound quality is great, it never ventures into a degraded lo-fi form, and I am not just talking volume wise (it is loud, be prepared). The attention that is put into the sound is retained, there are still definitive highs and lows, and the sounds remain separate. He doesn’t keep it in the harsh realm here though—something that is vastly different than a lot of his older tapes. Maybe it is a result of hooking up with Keith Fullerton Whitman or maybe with the guys at Type, I have no idea, either way it was a good move on his part. The patience he exhibits with tracks like “Blessed and Oppressed” have that constant build and grit and chill inducing quality that the best Kevin Drumm albums gave us. It is scary stuff. Not in any startling way, but in a long drawn out torturous manner. Where Prurient (well, older Prurient, we will get to the new stuff later) was going to stab you in the face and call it good, this dude is going to get all Hostel on you…for a long time. That’s not to say this is a violent album throughout, “Axle Grease” hints at Fennesz with it’s very logical progression through sounds, there is a certain metallic quality that is reminiscent of Eli Keszler’s best work, and it is the blend, or maybe more correct to say the walk through of all of these different attributes and processes that makes this record stand out. This one is a must for any fan of progressive noise. Link is for the extended mixes version (the better in my opinion).

i listened to that 35 minute piece by John Luther Adams, it was good chill saturday morning reading music. But I'd like to give it another go on the real sound system to really appreciate it. Not typical of what i listen to, but it was a nice change of pace.

I've played that Ken Seeno a ton this year and really like it. But put me in the group that hears of a lot more in this thread than I have actually heard yet. Hoping to change that in a lot of these cases.